How quickly our lives run thru the days…

Rest is often forced, not forged. Today is half gone before we know it. Tomorrow either never comes fast enough, or too fast. We just don’t embrace enough in the moment. But TODAY is a good day to be living in the present. TODAY is a day God has set aside for us to HEAR. Today if we soften our hearts… No wonder Jesus said let tomorrow worries take care of themselves. !!!!!!! Listen today, take care of today. 

Today is Monday, and I didn’t finish this writing on Sunday, the Sabbath, but it’s OK I was living in the present yesterday and I rested some too, and I was busy taking my daughter back to school, shopping, and sightseeing in a window of opportunity. I enjoyed yesterday. I also rested. I relaxed a little too. There’s a DIFFERENCE. The fortune cookie saying I have taped inside my cabinet says: “Take time to relax especially when you don’t have time for it.” That’s good advice, but that also is DIFFERENT, REST is NOT the same as relaxing, because rest is RESTing in God’s moments, LETTING HIM HANDLE THINGS, and also to HEAR to SOFTEN OUR HEARTS to  “enter His REST”… Ah, Rest takes movement to enter, takes understanding and it’s not just waiting, it’s actively understanding Rest – and for that we must take time to understand God.

Our rest is not just about napping, our rest is demonstrating that we comprehend that even God took a day to Rest from His Works, but not His Word. 

I appreciated the last bit of an online sermon, which put this end cap on my day while driving on Sunday night, driving home from my busy day. The pastor preached at the end of a sermon about John the Baptist, that Jesus said “follow me” to new believers and if we go to where He is, trusting Him, following Him, THAT IS where we will see Him working, see His power. If we follow Him. Today we need to be hearing His voice… and TODAY WE DEMONSTRATE OUR FOLLOWING OF JESUS.

We rest AND follow because of this scripture: “Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest,…, God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” …. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

That’s why we take the Sabbath for the sake of REST, sharing the Word and living it too, take it so that we help others MOVE forward into where He is. Everyday and especially TODAY we pray for a moving rest for softening of hearts, ours and theirs.

Our dedicated following of powerful Jesus will let us see “where His power RESTS“… 

Amen (and please read the scriptures)

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Paul to the Hebrew church (ch4): 

A Sabbath-Rest for the People of God

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.  For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,

“So I declared on oath in my anger,

    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.” And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:

“Today, if you hear his voice,

    do not harden your hearts.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.  Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.