August 19 -- Safe and Rested -- Lomé, Togo

Good Morning, I am sitting in the hotel dining room without any coffee.  I have a glass of a bottled drink that Mariusz left in my suitcase.  He did not intend to leave it but that is the way it worked out.  I did not intend to drink it but I am glad I have it this morning.  Papa is taking care of me even when it is not our plan.  The hotel is a small African hotel; it is not part of any international chain.  There are only about 10 rooms.  The primary business is a bar at ground level.  This dining room is on top of the bar and the rooms are spread out around this main structure on 3 levels.  There is no coffee yet because Vivian, the cook, only comes to open the kitchen when we need her for a meal.  This morning she will come and prepare breakfast about 8:00 (90 minutes from now).  Ken and I arrived safely mid-day yesterday.  We came through customs and immigration smoothly, praise God!  We got a SIM card for my phone at the airport.  We tried to buy one that would give this iPad internet access but the card the seller tried simply would not work so I do not yet have Internet access.  Perhaps we will have grace to solve that problem today.  After the drive in from the airport, we were both ready to clean off the travel grime, have a light supper, and sleep.  Ah, the bed was a big improvement over airplane seats.  Poor Ken, on all his flights he was sitting next to wiggling noisy children, he got no rest at all on the planes.  Even his lovely wife, Erin, at home with their 4 children, will feel some compassion for him.  Ironically, breakfast time this morning is just about the time his body clock will be telling him it is time to go to sleep.  But I suspect, after those plane rides, he probably slept at least a little through the night.  I do not expect him to be early for breakfast today.  So, perhaps the title should have been "Safe and Somewhat Rested".

How about you ?  Are you resting well ?  There are very few things about which the Bible tells us to be diligent.  One is: we are to be diligent to enter into Father's rest.  In a world of religion it is almost impossible to enter into Father's rest.  Religious leaders are continually exhorting us to do, do, do.  We are urged to attend meetings, witness to our neighbors, maintain worship rituals at home, etc.,etc.  Betwen the demands of employment, family, and religion we are all squeezed into nothing left for our selves or for healthy relationships.  

The wife of a dear friend of mine lived through his hyper-religious days.  She is the mother of six children and was at the time homeschooling the ones she was not nursing and changing.  He was leading the prophetic ministry teams, traveling on mission trips, spending weekends teaching in other groups, he was a star player in their congregation whether the games were away or in the home building.  The wife went to talk with the "senior pastor" saying, "I am not a football widow; I am a ministry widow.  He is never home with me."  The "pastor's" response, "You just need to develop a hobby to keep your mind off it."  Really, you cannot make stuff up that sounds that strange.  Her response was to go home knowing that the "church" has no answers for her.  So she turned to God in prayer.  It was not long before Holy Spirit confronted her husband with a simple revelation:  "Any thing that will not serve your bride and your children in your home will not serve Jesus's Bride or the Father's children in the House of the Lord." 

The Bible tells us to enter into REST.  How is that possible ?  Well, the Creator is our example.  When He entered His Rest, how did He do it ? In Genesis (see Scripture below) we are told that God rested because He saw that everything was done.  In Ephesians we are told, the purpose for our creation was not for our own work but to walk in the works which God already did.  You recall that Jesus never did anything except first He saw the Father doing it.  So we see the Creator rested because everything was complete.  There is NOTHING left to do.  We enter His rest by doing the same thing.  We believe there is nothing left to do.  We then stop all our good ideas and simply walk in the things the creator has already completed in the eternal realm.  Nothing depends on my activity.  God has already done everything that needs to be done.  Relax and rest in Him.  Just walk through with Him the things He has already completed.

Life is as simple as a child walking across a field holding His Father's hand.

His, thus Yours,

  Stuart

Genesis 1:26 - 2:2. (NASB). 

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

Ephesians 2:10  (NASB)

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.