God Will Always Bless Your Rest, by Graham Cooke
Graham Cooke:
"So in Genesis 2, by the seventh day, God completed his work which he had done and he rested on the 7th day from all his work he had done, and then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.
God will always bless your rest.
Always.
Since I learned rest, there has never been a time when God has not blessed that rest and honored that rest and sanctified my rest.
In other words, set aside peace for me; set aside rest for me.
So, for me, therefore, when God blesses something and sanctifies it and sets it apart; what that means is rest is always available as an absolute essential for life.
So, every circumstance you encounter already has rest in the issue.
No matter how hard, no matter how harsh, no matter how difficult, no matter how awful; every single circumstance has rest, because it's the one thing that God has blessed and sanctified, in terms of his relationship with you.
So, it's available always.
Ephesians 2:6, I think, is a mirror image of those verses in Genesis, when it says, "we have been raised up with him and seated together with him in heavenly places." The whole sense of being seated together is all about rest. When you sit down, you relax. You are in an attitude of rest. You are taking a weight off. You are taking a load off. You are sitting down, you are relaxed. Your whole mindset shifts when you sit. It's just that something comes to you. A peace comes to you. In the natural, something happens physically to your body when you sit. You relax, you rest. You have that moment. What's true in the natural is true in the spirit. To be seated is an attitude of rest.
Rest is physical, rest is emotional, and rest is mental and spiritual. It's the tangible expression of God's presence: rest.
In Exodus 13:14, God's promise to Moses was that, "my presence shall go with you and I will give you rest." We are not a people looking for the presence of God. We already have it. He is inside us. You can't get any more presence than that, inside you.
Anything that happens externally: fabulous bonus, but you don't actually need it. But it is a great bonus. Who doesn't want the physical tangible touch of God on their life.
....Here's the thing: If you practice rest, you'll feel the touch of God so much more.
If you practice rest, you'll hear his voice physically.
If you practice rest, you'll feel his breath; you'll feel his hand as a physical thing.
'Cause he is very tangible. All relationships have to be tangible. At some point, they have to touch, they have to connect, you know; that's a physical thing, it's an emotional thing.
And if you practice rest, you will feel the presence of God so much more strongly in your own life.
Now, rest is something that we receive. So we must be willing to allow rest to displace the opposite. And I think that's where we partner with God. You can't trust the Lord and be anxious. Because those two things are incompatible. They can't exist at the same space at the same time. One of them has to go and you get to choose.
Life in the spirit is we have been given this incredible freedom to choose what God is doing.
So, trust (or) anxiety? It's a no-brainer.
Choose.
Choose what you're going to think. Choose what you are going to see. Choose how you are going to connect. You have the power and the freedom to choose. That's what Jesus died to give you.
We need to displace the opposite of rest. It's impossible to rest all the time that you are fearful, panic driven, full of anxiety or worry. Rest comes to displace any negative that may be trying to infiltrate your life.
Rest is a weapon and you need to see it as a weapon. Rest is a sword in your hand and you can put to death, you can put to the sword; anxiety, lack of peace, unrest, fear, and so on and so forth.
What does that look like to you, to see rest as a sword? That you can cut away from your circumstance
that thing that you don't need to affect you wrongly. This is a partnership here. Worry, anxiety, and fear are not going to go away by themselves. They need to be helped to leave the premises by themselves. They need some assistance. They need the left boot of fellowship. It's like, "see ya, don't want to be ya." You get them out, you push them away.
Rest is brilliant because if rest takes up residence, then a part of that rest is actually militant against the negative. Rest will go after the negative because you can't have those two things at the same time. You are choosing to partner with rest. Rest is a gift, but then you have to work to partner with that gift and make it work. In other words, you have to learn to say no to a negative and rest helps you do that.
There is a principle of rest in all of life. In Leviticus 25:4-5, it talks about a sabbath rest and even also a year of rest. Rest is a really serious business in the kingdom. God gave us one day a week for rest. It's really important that you take one day a week for rest...
Leviticus 26:34-5 talks about how even the land needs rest...
God gave every creature the ability to sleep or rest, because rest is a key part of everything he is and everything he does. He only operates out of rest. He may get lots of urgent requests, but he only ever operates out of a place of rest.
That's why Jesus was the prince of peace and and he could say, "my peace be I give you", because peace is something to be guarded.
Peter the Apostle wrote that in his letter, "let the peace of God guard your heart".
So, rest is a sentry over your life. You put it at the entry point of your life. You put it at the gate of your life. Anything that wants to get in is going to have to get through peace.The job of peace is to keep negatives out there and never allow then in here.
You have to guard your inner territory and rest enables you to do that."
-Graham Cooke
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