Daily Word

How do you enter the life without achievements – what the Bible calls “His rest” – the rest of God?

It begins with a revelation in our spirit about the deepest reality of the spiritual life.

What does that mean?

An “aha” experience in your spirit: you see that there is not an iota of achievement in the spiritual life. It flows like streams of living water when you live by faith: in complete dependence on the Lord, in a deep and intimate love relationship with Him.

You can therefore call it “the rest of faith”.

But if you have lived a life of achievement, which most people have done to varying degrees, then achievement sits like a thousand needles in our soul and our body.

And it takes time to get them out!

We must make a decision that with our entire being we want and need nothing more than to enter into God’s rest.

But achievement has penetrated our subconscious – and the subconscious controls our conscious thoughts and feelings.

How do you change that?

We must let God’s Word penetrate our subconscious to eradicate all stress and worry and the need to perform, and create the deep faith and trust in God that leads to a deep, inner rest.

This means that we must stop thinking performance thoughts and feeling performance compulsions – calm our restless little soul, force our thoughts and feelings to stillness, practice being still before God.

And this takes time!

A thousand thoughts and feelings fly through your mind as soon as you try to be still in the presence of God. It is an exercise that must be done with purposeful determination without giving up!

It is possible, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to “calm and quiet your soul” – your little restless earthly soul.

But then comes what takes even longer!

The body – the nervous system!

The performance has settled in our nerves.

And it is our nerves that control our behaviour.

Our nervous system must be reprogrammed from performance to rest.

In the presence of God, in the Holy Spirit, there is a wonderful stillness and rest, and when we force ourselves to remain there – not rushing through a short devotional, but really taking time before the face of God – His rest and wonderful peace slowly but surely penetrate our nervous system and dissolve the tensions and stress that have settled there.

You could call it a divine invasion and reprogramming of our nervous system.

We become like little, satisfied and contented children in the arms of the Father.

Have you entered the achievement-free rest?