Theme of the Week: Assess Your Goals
Bible Verse: “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2, ESV
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 30:11-20
What I do best is describe, as much as human words allow, the hope to which they have been called, the glory we are to receive. I describe how Jesus has power to bring everything under his control, and how he exerts that control on our behalf, to take us at our lowest and change us into people who resemble him.
This is worth waiting for.
This knowledge is our secret treasure, hidden in a place our enemy can’t find. But we know where it is.
Maybe now all we hold from it is one small token, a brooch, a coin, a clasp, something so small we can enclose it in a fist. But it is enough to remind us that one day, when we need it most, we inherit all. And then, no matter how wide we spread our arms, it won’t be wide enough to hold the overspilling abundance of God’s full redemption.
Apart from a compelling vision of things unseen, our lives shrink to things as they are or things as they were.
Is the problem you face right now, the family issue or business fiasco or church quarrel or financial dilemma, really as large as you’ve made it out to be?
This is where the book of Hebrews’ slant on the Sabbath takes on deep resonance. Hebrews makes explicit the joining of the three dimensions of past, present, and future—then, now, and when— and makes it exactly at this point of Sabbath rest.
It is a rest both present and future. It is a rest we taste now, enjoy now, receive now. But this present Sabbath is only a shadow of another Sabbath. This other Sabbath is beyond this world. Earthly things suggest it but never fulfill it.
Even the rest that God’s people received under Joshua, when they entered the Promised Land, was at best a rough facsimile of the rest to come (Heb. 4:8–9, 11).
By faith, we make every effort to enter this rest, not by striving, but by trusting. Not by works, but by believing.
Taken from The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan. Copyright ©2006 by Mark Buchanan. Used by permission of Zondervan.
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