Enter the Rest–2023

By Fred Pruitt

A friend asked the following:

“Sometimes I feel God’s rest, joy, and peace when I praise Him or read Bible, it’s like Jesus who live my life, and I know it is the truth. But it’s temporary. The rest will leave after one day or some hours if I’m not doing those Godly activity again.

Is the temporary rest that I get like the promise land’s rest? When the children of israel enter the promise land, they didn’t back again to the wilderness. But I always back to the wilderness of life.

It’s so tired, for do Godly activity to get His rest. I know it’s not the real way to get the rest, but I don’t have other way.”

The Reply:

My friend, you are already IN the rest, though you do not yet see it. Christ Himself IS the rest, and He dwells in you, in every part of you. There is no part of you that is not Him as well.

He says, “My peace I give you, not as the world gives.”  (John 14:27) Not as the world gives. The “peace” or “rest” you are describing when you “do godly things” is really not the peace or rest He is talking about. We learn as you grow in Him that whatever our feelings are, whether elated and joyful, or sullen and tearful, either way we live inwardly in His peace and rest. Because He is already that in you.

For quite a few years I lived as you describe, where I “felt” more spiritual if I had done my Bible reading, prayers, witnessing, etc. I thought that my success or failure to live in the Spirit depended on how much I applied myself to those activities.

But the condemnation only increased for me, because in taking that road what happens is that those activities are never enough. God gets more elusive the more we “seek Him” in that way. And what I am meaning is to keep asking, seeking and knocking for the same things every time we go to Him in prayer. Where is the faith in that? The faith that God answers prayer?

But we do get an education also at this time, because the Spirit is showing us something greater and more permanent than transitory feelings. A thousand things can affect our “feelings” (emotions) because they “feel” the strife and conflict in the world, and even in ourselves sometimes, and go up and down based on the way temporal things seem to be going.

But we learn in Christ to live in a deeper place than that. The Spirit brings us to the realization by faith that Galatians 2:20 IS true about me, in this current moment, and that the life I am now living is Christ living it, in union and oneness with me, so that it is Christ living His own divine/human life in the person that is you, and me, right here right now. No waiting until we get to heaven. No worry about whether we “feel” like it or not. No concern about how much Bible we read or how long we prayed. None of that has anything to do with it. We do not seek good feelings, we seek God, and He is not a feeling!

Feelings can be altered, manufactured, misleading, manipulated, etc., but Christ cannot. So we rest in Christ regardless of feelings.

This is really what we call discerning soul and spirit. Feelings are soulful and are transitory, or temporary as you said, and go up and down and in and out. Spirit is eternal, and what is true in Spirit is that the Lord has come in and become one Spirit with us (1 Cor 6:17), fulfilling His own prayers in John 17:11; 20-23, that we would be one in Him and the Father even as He is one in the Father.

What is true about us since we have come into His kingdom, is that the Father has “delivered from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son,” (Col 1:13), and in Him we are His expression in the world. We have changed countries. We lived in the country of darkness, where the ruler is the hidden devil whose main work is to convince the world he does not exist, so that he might continue to cause blindness to those who believe not, thereby holding them fast in his unbreakable deception.

“In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” (2 Cor 4:4).

We do not know that we are His expression in the world, as we “try” to adjust ourselves in some way to “try” to do things in a more godly way. We enter and “tackle” the message of Christ in the same way and with the same methods that have “worked” for us in our business in the world.

The Fall made us “outer” people, unable to see spirit. Therefore, because of that mindset, we see everything and everyone around us as individual objects apart from “me.” Everybody, including God (who is just BIGGER), we see as independent self-contained units. It’s like those old “Chick” tracts that circulated for years. They would always show Jesus about a hundred feet tall and all the rest of us standing around Him in our normal earth height. Why are people standing around Jesus?

A reason they might do it “on earth” is because they’re waiting to be “given” some stuff by Him which they can apply and become “Godly” people, whose deeds please the Lord. Because everything in my consciousness sees from this outer perspective, that everything is outside of and apart from “me,” we can then see why we would look to the “outer” for the solutions to our problems, which are almost always problems having to do with temporal life. Therefore, we believe rest in our temporal environment is what we’re after, simply because we are aware of no other kind of rest.

Likewise, when we look “up” to the Lord, we’re expecting (if we have any faith at all) Him to provide instructions for us to follow in order to gain a “victory” in our outer circumstances. We want it to show up in the “real” world of here and now, it never occurring to us that the “real world” is the kingdom of heaven within us, and “heaven” is the Life that is filling us in this current moment, in the artesian well of the Spirit that even now bubbles up within us, because it is its nature to do so.

However, as we receive by faith that His life IS right now, in this moment, expressing into my world as the person I am, then we know.

Here’s something that happens with me. Something gets me hot and bothered. Something upsets my soul-peace. Doesn’t matter what – it tries to pull me out-of-sorts. How? By stewing in the juices, the deliciously dark pleasure to self-affirm by self-pity, some injustice I’ve suffered, some offense committed against me, some unfair thing left hanging “me” in a bad light, stewing in the juices of righteous indignation – and always with good cause, I might add!

Then I remember the Light. And there I’m brought up short. Who am I? Ah, oh, once again, I see! I’m not that toxic stew! That’s not me! He’s the Me I Be!

NO CONDEMNATION! There is no, “You shouldn’t have ….” Just a moment of recognition … and then somebody flings open all the doors and windows and light floods the whole room!

Christ has come into you and me not just to be around to help out when needed, but to be your and my every moment reality or truth. The fulfillment or more than adequacy available in every moment!

I’ve heard many say that God waits for us to try to get it done ourselves, which is, according to them, His desire for us, so that, when we have exhausted all our strength and still haven’t won the victory, that’s when God arrives on the scene to fix everything. But Paul said, “to live is Christ,” and we find that is also our lives as well. Living IS Christ and Christ IS Living it. It isn’t we “try first and fail and then turn to God,” but rather to LIVE CHRIST every moment, so that we don’t “try” to be “like Christ” but instead the Spirit manifests Christ in us, through us and as us by the power of God and the flow of the Spirit.

And Christ is not just to be found in so-called “godly” activities, like Bible reading, prayer, listening to sermons, etc. Christ is found in EVERY moment of life, in everything we see, hear, experience, because we learn by the Spirit to see no more as the world sees.

To see as the world sees is to be transfixed or hypnotized by the daily temporal appearances in the world, and to find all our rest, reality or truth there. And since that world is always temporary every moment, as long as our faith (committed attention) is dictated by what appears in the temporal, then what appears in the temporal becomes our all. We seek our fulfillment there where it can never be found. That is what it means to see as the world sees.

But when the Lord in Spirit says to us, “Friend, come up higher,” we see in His vision, not anything like a “vision” with angels, etc., but the vision I am speaking of is inner knowing through the Holy Spirit Who lives in us. This is what Jesus was talking about when He spoke of “the single eye.” (Luke 11:34) The Apostle John also spoke of it – “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”  (1 John 2:27)

When we see that God is not feelings and God is not events and God is not found in the temporal, in Christ we begin to see what is the Eternal truth, which is that God is All in all. We see that He is All in all in us, and then what we see inwardly begins to be what we see by the Spirit in the outer. If God is All in all in us, then He is also All in all everywhere.

That is our Spirit living. We live from what is True and Eternal, and by living from that, our “view” of the external world changes from a constant sad tragic vision of suffering and gloom, to seeing the works and wonders of God everywhere working out His reconciliation, which He by us gives this invitation to all humanity:

“Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light.”  (Mat 11:28-30 KJV)

So the key then, is to “know” Who you are, which is Christ in you. You are not separate from Christ but instead by the Spirit you are His expression of Himself in the world. His Life in you does not depend on anything but Himself. He is His own instigator, and fulfiller of His own Word, which He does by us. He is every moment bubbling up from an eternal well within us, and what is bubbling up (not by our efforts but by the force of His love), is the Water of Eternal Life.

But now it is not just for me, though I did first have to discover this eternal spring within myself before I was then able to realize what Jesus said — “He that believeth on me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of Living Water.”

You are blessed and have become a blesser!

“He that believeth on me …” There is nothing about doing anything else there. Because faith is pure and simply accepts the gift which has been offered! There is nothing to do but to receive, or take it. “Here,” the Lord says, “this is yours, I want you to have it. You shall be a well of living water, springing up to flow out in blessings and Life into your world.”

I hope you are seeing my point. We do not base anything on our feelings. We base our lives on Him. And “how” we do that is to realize we cannot do it ourselves, but that “He” IS now fulfilling His own word in me, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13).

Trust the Lord to fulfill Himself in and even AS you! It is His business, and He knows what He is doing!

blessings,

fred