Almost immediately following my husband's election to the office of General in July 1994, I became aware of how dramatically both his and my life would be altered by this turn of events. The Salvationists here will tell you: "As goes the General's schedule, so goes the General's wife's schedule." Of the various expectations concerning the office of the General, one appears to be set in cement: Generals do travel.

Therefore, when I saw the topic "Resting: Time with God," I was convinced that God really does have a sense of humor. What could I possibly say about resting?

You see, I had assumed that there would be time with God following the elections—I would see to that! However as September swept into October, October sailed into November, and November into December, I became increasingly aware of the demands of this new lifestyle—a lifestyle over which I had very little control.

During our first three months in England, we located an apartment (a flat), moved our belongings and ourselves into the flat, traveled to three continents, and visited seven countries. In addition to joint responsibilities, I found myself on a solo mission to Rwanda in order to check on The Salvation Army relief operations there. Meanwhile, back in London, life whirled around us like a tornado as we began learning new jobs, new faces, names, phone numbers, banking and health systems, and much more (not to mention learning how to drive on the left-hand side of the road!).

1995 proved to be even more intense. The more I move from airport to airport, suitcase to suitcase, preparation to preparation, meeting to meeting, the more I realize just how crucial is this matter of resting: how intensely significant is the matter of time with God.

Isn't it amazing how well God knows our struggles? He never leaves us stranded in airports—or anywhere else. In the Book of Hebrews, chapter four, a word from the Lord to me—to you: "There is a rest for the people of God." Finding it becomes our problem.

Perhaps you will identify with me when I say that I often come to the water in order to have my spiritual water jars refilled, and, like the woman of Samaria, I find Jesus there (and he was there taking a rest, you know), but also, like the Samaritan woman, I assume Jesus has no bucket. John 4:11 (Good News Bible) says, "Sir, you have not a bucket. And the well is deep. Where would you get that living water?" The Good News Bible is well known for its illustrative sketches. The 1976 edition included a sketch for John, chapter four, that pictured Jesus sitting beside the well and at the end of the well rope is a bucket. That particular edition is known as the "bucket Bible." In subsequent editions, the bucket was removed from the picture.

In my opinion they should have kept it, because the meaning of the scripture is found neither in the presence nor the absence of the bucket. The point is the woman's assumption concerning the bucket.

How often we come before the Lord seeking rest, only to find ourselves facing Jesus who offers us life-giving water, water to quench the thirst forever, water to satisfy the thirsty soul, and we, like the Samaritan woman, say, "But sir, you have not a bucket and the well is deep."

Oswald Chambers calls this, "inferior misgivings." "We know exactly what we cannot do," he writes, "but we do have misgivings about Jesus. We are rather hurt by the idea, that He can do what we cannot" (57).

Having finished a business meeting with members of staff in my husband's office recently, one of the members was asked to close the meeting in prayer. We bowed our heads and he prayed, "Father, we rest before you."

Hebrews 4:1-13 is about God's promise of rest for the people of God. It is called a Sabbath-rest because it is their (or our) participation in God's own rest. Commentator F. F. Bruce says, "One way or another, this blissful rest in unbroken fellowship with God is the goal to which his people are urged to press forward. Professor of Systematic Theology at Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Laurence Wood, says: "The idea of the promised rest found in Hebrews 4 lends itself to the symbol of the perfect Christian life of exclusive worship and love for God."

Discovering the secret of entering into unbroken fellowship, this blissful rest, or exclusive worship and love for God, will help us tonight as we consider this subject, "Resting: Time with God."

Hebrews 4:1-5 being one of the problematic texts of the New Testament, biblical scholars and commentators explore every possible avenue of meaning. In most cases, their conclusion, in plain sense and language, is "The good news of this promise—this Sabbath-rest—has to be appropriated and assimilated by faith if it is to bring any benefit to the hearers." Here lies the precise problem: The Appropriation and the Assimilation of the promise.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of mothers creating a "world within a world"; when they create homes for their children. Here God creates "rest within a rest." A peace in the eye of the storm; tranquillity in the midst of turmoil. You and I must enter his Sabbath-rest—the rest of God. We must become participants in God's own rest. But all too often we are held back by that which held the Children of Israel back—Unbelief and Disobedience.

One of the phenomena of our modern world that never ceases to intrigue me (those primarily affected being women), is the hauling of water. Even in our modern world, millions of gallons of water are borne on the heads, backs or the shoulders of millions of women. Often a simple solution seems obvious, but far more often lies well beyond the reach of the burden bearers. To an American, a dry tap simply means we must call the water department, or the plumber, or the nearest fix-it person (oneself, perhaps!). Not so these women. They don't know the luxury of options. Hauling water falls into the same category as other curses placed upon them by virtue of them being born female.

Two Salvation Army leaders from Africa are here with us this evening. We were together in Zimbabwe recently for a conference last January where we heard the story of another of our colleagues. She was from East Africa. Her name is Leunita. As a young girl, it was her duty, one with which she faithfully complied, to fetch water every day for the family. The watering hole was not only a long distance from the village, it was located at the foot of a very high hill. So the girls had to climb down the hill, fill their water pots, and then struggle up again. But they discovered a solution—a way to alleviate their suffering. They cut steps into the side of the hill. How they rejoiced over those steps, Leunita told us—steps to the top! A stairway to rest.

John Wesley was convinced that this rest spoken of here in Hebrews 4, came as a result of what he called a "single eye and a pure heart." "God coming to those that fear him," said Wesley, "and fixing his abode (as we would say taking up residence) in their souls, bring them into the rest which remains for the people of God" (Wood). God shows us how to carve out the steps to the top.

"Lord, I believe a rest remains to all those people known," wrote John Wesley. "A rest where pure enjoyment reigns and Thou art loved alone. Where doubt and pain and fear expire, cast out by perfect love. To me the rest of faith impart, the Sabbath of Thy love" (26-27).

What are the steps to the Sabbath-rest? One psychologist said: "Rest is found in what is, never in what ought to be." 

Hidden there in that hillside in Africa were the steps that Leunita and her friends carved for themselves. The stairway leading upward. They just needed to appropriate the provision—and then, putting one foot before the other, climb to the top.

The writer to the Hebrews leads us to the steps, the first of which is found in chapter 4, verse 3, "Now, we who have believed enter that rest..." The Amplified New Testament has it this way: "We who have believed, adhered to, trusted, and relied on God, do enter that rest."

I. This is an attainable rest. It is not beyond our reach.

Peace comes in resting in God's unconditional love for us. "True peace," wrote Catherine Booth, "divine peace, the only peace that will do to die with arises out of a settlement of our differences and a cessation of hostilities toward God, and reconciliation with God, bringing assurance and quietness in view of the past, present, and the future."

As we carve out the steps to Sabbath-rest, we look at verse 7, chapter 4, and rejoice that:

II. This rest, too, is available.

"Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today..." (4:7). It is a new day and God gives another opportunity of securing that rest. Here is made clear the superiority of Jesus to Joshua. This mention of rest was not a reference to those whose bodies fell in the desert (you'll find that in chapter 3, verse 17); not a reference to their entering into Canaan—"For if Joshua had given them rest," (verse eight) "God would not speak later of another day," as he did to the psalmist in Psalm 95:11 (reference to this is found in verse 7). This rest is available, and it is available—now.

The third step is found in verse 9. Our attention is drawn to these words, "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God" (NIV). The Amplified reads: "So, then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest, reserved for the people of God."

III. This rest is undeniable

New Testament scholar, lecturer Donald Guthrie, points to the possessive aspect of God here. "He delights to call the believers his people," says Guthrie. "God's people share his rest. What he did, they do. By identifying with him they enter into his experiences. There is no doubt that the writer is implying that the believer's present rest is as much reality as God's rest. Not some remote hope, but a hope that is immediately realizable. So, then, there still awaits a Sabbath-rest, reserved for the true people of God."

A former leader of The Salvation Army, General Freiderich Coutts describes the Sabbath-rest in this way. He says: "It is experiencing God's infinite succor before we can face in his strength his infinite demand." He goes on, "Restless souls frequently know a great deal about God's demand, but little of His succor."

In her book Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle writes:

. . . there is time in which to be—simply to be—that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who He wants us to be. It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what He wants and drain away the business with which we inevitably get involved in the dailyness of human living.

There is an exposure to God that renders us powerless to keep going as we are. We must seek the next step. Here it is in verse 11.

IV. The realization that this rest is within our grasp.

In other words, don't miss it! "Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience" (4:11). We are to be zealous—to exert ourselves—to strive diligently to enter into this rest of God. If we are to find that "rest with a rest," we are to know and to experience it for ourselves.

Twelve years into missionary experience, I had lost all hope of ever knowing this Sabbath-rest. I couldn't see the bucket. Stuck on the banks of the Jordan, to my mind, nothing seemed more remote than this rest. Struggle had become the name of the game. No steps carved in the side of the hill and no way to carve them. Nestle was out, wrestle was in. Preoccupied with the personal Mt. Everest of frustration, nagging feelings of injustice, particularly in relationship to my role as a married woman officer, wife, and mother of three children, I became spiritually paralyzed by fear and doubting. Strangely enough, because this spiritual slump of mine came at a time when the Christian churches of Korea were experiencing what was described as "an explosion of the Holy Spirit," I was hit by a "holy hand grenade"—friendly fire—which fell right into our front room where I was sitting — having an encounter with the living God, earnestly exerting myself to enter into this promised rest. Determined to stay there until rest came, even if it meant staying the night, I could have borrowed a prayer by hymn writer Timothy Dudley- Smith:

At last the truth of God's word came to my heart—that God's "today" still exists and the promise is still open—(the final appeal of Hebrews, chapter 4) broke through to me. The urgency of His word—"Today does not last forever"—became unmistakably clear. In that moment I knew the promise could be missed and I was close to missing it. "Therefore," says the writer to the Hebrews, "here and now through faith, enter into the very rest of God."

Mine was an instant prayer. A prayer of four words: "Lord, this is it!" Instantly I knew rest. Rest from myself, rest from preoccupation with nonessentials—trivia; rest from depression, rest from self-inflicted stress. Through faith and with the help of Galatians 2:20, I claimed the "Today" of Hebrews 4:7. It was my day. D-Day. Deliverance from doubt, disbelief, and disobedience. I was no longer blind to the bucket whether it was visible to the eye or not. In that moment I, too, could rejoice over the steps cut into the hill. From then on I knew that the burdens would never be the same.

Indeed, from that moment there would be no time-outs with God. I knew I could find my rest in his unconditional love. And He has never failed me even during times of greatest stress.

There is pressure on the Sabbath-side, you know. Mine, yours. There are ministerial stressors. Peace comes in resting in God's unconditional love for us. Ed Boshman in Faith Today magazine listed some of the greatest stressors facing ministers today:

• ongoing minor squabbles and differences, such as, problems in the congregation resurfacing and demanding our attention again and again
• disunity in the congregation
• lack of adequate volunteers. Overextension of ourselves
• dry spiritual life
• Then, of course, gossip.

In the March 27, 1996 London Times, Ruth Gledall, Religion

Correspondent, adds to the list: "Eighty percent of clergy complain of working abnormal hours and say it is making a misery of their home lives. Nearly 60 percent say they have no social life, 80 percent say the abnormal hours they work are a cause of marital tension and that their homes lives are suffering because of this stress."

Ministerial work is not a nine-to-five job. And the glorification of rest is not intended to imply that work is therefore a misfortune, either. You and I are hard workers—we will remain hard workers. We work hard and hard work often results in pressure and stress.

Pastor and author Michel Quoist prays,

Lord, here we are, out of breath, out of courage, and almost out of hope. Caught between the infinity or our desires and the limitation of our means, we're tossed about, torn, pulled here and there, confused, and exhausted. So, Lord, here we are, finally still and finally ready to listen. Lord, make us strong enough to do what we should do, calmly, simply. Help us, above all, to find you in our commitments. You are the wellspring and all things are drawn to you. So we have come before you, Lord, to rest and to gather our strength.

We are to anticipate these—peace, joy and concord—even in the midst of pressure, if we have entered into the Sabbath-rest. Being on the Sabbath-side of rest puts pressure in its place—in the hands of God. God has given a rest to his people. Our part is to be careful lest anyone be found to have fallen short of it (Hebrews 4:1). We must beware lest we think we have arrived too late in history ever to enjoy the rest of God. There is a story about a child, on being told some of the great Old Testament stories, who said wistfully, "God was much more exciting then."

We have a continual tendency to look back, to believe God's power has grown less and to believe the golden days lie behind. The good old days of the holiness camp meetings when people testified with boldness about the Sabbath-rest of God. Hebrews 4:9—"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. . . Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest."

Or this prayer:

Perhaps tonight you want to pray the prayer of John Wesley: "to me the rest of faith impart. To me impart the Sabbath-rest of Thy love" (26 -27).

In chapter four, the writer to the Hebrews leaves us at the throne of grace. Ultimately it is there we find rest. In Jesus we receive all the strength we need to maintain our faith and to resist the temptation to let go and fall back.

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:16).

"Let us make every effort to enter that rest of God."

Let us pray.

So, Lord, here we are, finally still and finally ready to listen. Lord, make us strong enough to do what we should do, calmly and simply. Help us, above all, to find YOU in our commitments. YOU are the wellspring and all things are drawn to YOU. So we have come before you, Lord, to rest and to gather our strength. Amen.

Bruce, F. F. Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids,
       MI: Eerdmans, chapter IV, "The True Rest of God May be Forfeited."

Catherine Booth, Her Continuing Relevance. Essays edited by Clifford W.
       Kew. London: The Salvation Army International Headquarters.

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. New York: Dodd, Mead
       & Co., 1935.

Coutts, Freiderich. Commentary on the New Testament. London: The Salvation
       Army International Headquarters.

Dudley-Smith, Timothy. Someone Who Beckons: Daily Readings and Prayers.
       Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994.

Gledall, Ruth. London Times: March 27, 1996.

Guthrie, Donald. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Hebrews. Grand Rapids,
       MI: Eerdmans, 1960.

L'Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art. Wheaton,
       IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1980.

Pearson, William James. Songbook of the Salvation Army song #431, London: The
       Salvation Army International Headquarters

Quoist, Michel. Prayers. Translated by Agnes Forsyth and Anne Marie de Commaille.
       New York: Avon Books, 1963.

Tate, Nahum. Songbook of the Salvation Army song #557, London: The Salvation Army
       International Headquarters

Wesley, John. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. London: The Epworth Press, 1970.

Wood, Laurence. Pentecostal Grace. Wilmore, KY: Francis Asbury Publishing Company, Inc., 1980.

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