Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – everything is available in the spiritual realm from love’s open hands, but not everything is experienced and received for there is a responsibility to receiving.
Hebrews 4:1-3 TPT
[1] Now God has offered to us the same promise of entering into his realm of resting in confident faith. So we must be extremely careful to ensure that we all embrace the fullness of that promise and not fail to experience it. [2] For we have heard the good news of deliverance just as they did, yet they didn’t join their faith with the Word. Instead, what they heard didn’t affect them deeply, for they doubted. [3] For those of us who believe, faith activates the promise and we experience the realm of confident rest!
Observation
God makes incredible promises to us and we wonder sometimes why we are not experiencing them. Does God hold out on me? Do I have to earn his goodness, so am I not good enough? Does he not love me? Explaining my lack of experience of God’s promises leads me to paint a picture of God that is not congruent with the God we see the person of Jesus.
The challenge is that love never forces itself. It does not even force good promises on me. Love stands vulnerably open-handed giving herself totally without restraint but I do not know how to receive love’s offer, love’s promises. “Faith activates the promise,” and then we experience “the realm of confident rest!” Faith does not move love, love has already moved, and faith receives love’s extravagance.
Doubt has me look at love and question love’s motives. Doubt has me look at love and disqualify myself from love’s advances. Doubt has me stand before love’s outstretched hands, offering me the confident rest I so desperately need, yet walk away without partaking. We are responsible for “embracing the fullness of that promise and not fail to experience it,” by holding our doubts and questions in our hands, whilst exercising receiving faith. Faith does not demand the absence of doubt, it just demands that doubt takes its place as secondary information in the decision-making process. Our faith does not get rewarded by God, there is no transacting with God, it simply receives what is already freely and passionately on offer – the experience of the realm of confident rest! To me, this is what our world so desperately needs if we are to walk through these days of mental health issues, anxiety, stress and burnout.
Application
Exercise faith to activate and experience the already available promises of love. If love stretches out her hand with her offer by faith I will take hold, making doubt and the logical interpretations of circumstance subservient to faith. I will live in the risky business of exercised faith that I may experience the realm of confident rest.
Response
Thank you that you do not demand me to earn or deserve your promises. Thank you that you make all of yourself, all of your promises, available to me always, without reservation or conditions of entry. Thank you that love is you and shapes what you do. Thank you that faith is the way to live in the fullness of your realm of rest. This is a wonderful life that is open to me, and all.
Meditation
Meditate – experience the realm of confident rest!
Consider:
How often does doubt fuelled by circumstantial evidence speak louder than faith in your life?
What stops you from exercising faith and activating the promises of God in your life?
JOURNEY DEEPER
