DAILY MEDITATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS - 296

[Albert Finch]

Isaiah 66:1 - "Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house would you build for Me? And what kind can be My resting-place?"

God does not want what we have: he wants who we are. He seeks to create in our hearts a sanctuary for Himself - a place where He may rest.

Psalm 95:8,10,11 - "Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, For forty years I was grieved with that generation, And said, 'It is a people who go astray in their hearts. and they do not know My ways.' So I swore in My wrath, ' They shall not enter My rest.' "

In the scriptures this rest is called "The Sabbath Rest." It does not, however, come from keeping the Sabbath, for the Jews kept the Sabbath, but they never entered God's rest. This rest was something beyond keeping the seventh day holy.

Genesis 2:3 - "Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

Rest is not in the Sabbath, it is in God. Rest is a prevailing quality of His completeness.

John 10:14,15 - "I am the good Shepherd: and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so, I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep."

John 14:10 - "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works."

When God's rest abides upon us, we live in union with Jesus the same way he lived in union with the Father. Christ's thought-life was completely enveloped (surrounded, encircled) and permeated with the presence of God.
There is rest because it is Christ working through us.

Affirmations:

I ALLOW CHRIST TO CHANGE ME AS I CEASE STRUGGLING, CEASE WRESTLING, AND CEASE STRIVING AGAINST HIM.

I AM BECOMING A HOLY PLACE WHERE GOD CAN REST.

The Kingdom of Heaven is invisible and we have to learn to see differently. That's why Paul said, "What you see is temporal, what you cannot see is eternal." The Lord is trying to engage us -- He is trying to get us to reach into the invisible, because where your heart is your treasure is. Wherever you sow yourself is where your heart will be.

Jesus said to Nathanael, "You will see greater things than these...I say to you, you will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. - John 1: 50,51.

"Before she went into labor, she had the baby. Before the birth pangs hit, she delivered a son...So I open the womb and not deliver the baby? Do I, the One who delivers babies shut the womb?" - Isaiah 66:7-9

There is a fire -- there is an anointing that can fall on us so that we are literally overcome with the heart of God. There is grace available from the Lord to bow before Him on our face, weeping, crying out, and there is grace for us to be touched by the Holy Spirit to labor and travail for souls. And God can take us out of our comfort zone and compel us by His Spirit to go and share the gospel with the lost.
We will not be operating from a sense of duty and obligation. Jesus never ministered to people because it was something he had to do or because it was His job. Rather He reached the lost because of His great love for them.

ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY
http://afministry.ning.com/