The Confidence to Rest

The righteous man’s steps are ordered by the Lord, so we need to pause every now and then to make sure God is the One directing our steps. We must make sure that we’re not being moved by good ideas that aren’t God’s ideas. Operating with a mindset that only moves when He says to move helps us to become highly dependent on Him. God desires to be depended on and trusted. When we depend on Him instead of being self-dependent, we trust Him like a barefoot priest who says, “Lord, I need Your directions. I depend on You.”

Imagine a life that is lived in total dependence upon God. Imagine being confronted with life circumstances and having the automatic response of depending on God. You get a report from a doctor and say, “I depend on God.” You look at the budget and say, “I depend on God.” You look at all situations and say, “I depend on God.” He loves, loves, loves to be depended on. You cannot produce God-kind of results unless you’re dependent on God working in you. People who are confident in themselves instead of God don’t last for long and end up in failure. We need to understand that if we want God to work for us, we must learn how to rest.

God doesn’t need our help. I want to remind you that according to Joshua 24:13, He can give you cities you didn’t build, houses full of good things, wells that you didn’t dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you didn’t plant. He gives so much that we don’t have to labor for. In other words, God is really saying, “I don’t need you to be Who I am; you need Me to be who you are. I can do stuff without your labor to get that thing. I need you to labor in one area: the area of rest.” The combination of rest and worship is the highest place you can operate in. Once you enter into rest knowing that God has already handled the situation, there’s nothing left to do except worship, praise, and thank Him.

“For we which have believed do enter into the rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:3). He says you can enter into My rest because the things that you worry so much about have already been finished. Healing is a finished work; if you need healing today, you were healed over 2,000 years ago. Deliverance is a finished work; if you need deliverance, it was finished over 2,000 years ago. Prosperity, soundness, and so much more are all finished works of Jesus. At this point, your faith depends on your level of confidence in Him. Your confidence gets stronger by spending time with God and it’s what escorts you into the place of rest. It is rest that places you in a position to receive what God has already done on your behalf.

Why does God do this? Why does He even bother to bless us with unmerited favor? Why does He want us to rely upon Him? The answer is simple: the Gospel of Grace. There’s not a gospel of healing, there’s not a gospel of prosperity or anything else; there’s only one gospel—the Gospel of Grace. Everything else is made available by God’s grace.