Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Let Us, Part 1: Enter a Special Rest

Episode Date: October 9, 2016

The incredible happens when we embrace the things God has Let Us do. Want to know how? Dive into a special mini-series with Pastor Craig—you’ll only find it online, in the Life.Church App, or on the Life.Church podcast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thanks for joining us here at Life Church, where we are one church meeting in multiple locations and reaching around the world with the help of church online. If you have any questions or you'd like to learn more about us as a church, you can always check us out online simply by going to life.church. Or you can stay connected throughout the week and everywhere you go by downloading the all-new Life Church app available today wherever you download your apps from. Coming up today, we start an all-new and exclusive mini-series where our senior pastor, Craig Rochelle will walk us through the scriptures in the book of Hebrews,

helping us find faith, find rest, and find God. All in a message series, we're calling, let us. What we're going to do over the next three weeks is a little bit different. Normally, you would hear the weekend message, but for a three-week window, we're actually not able to show the messages after they are taught live. And so what I'm going to do is kind of bring a little extra teaching just for fun, and I hope it's really helpful to you. What I'm going to do is call these three weeks,

let us, let us, not like lettuce, like the lettuce, you eat in a salad, but L-A-T, new word us, U.S. I was reading in my own daily devotion through Hebrews chapter four, and I noticed a little portion of scripture that three different times the author is encouraging the reader to do something, and he uses the phrase, let us, let us, three different times in a six-verse span. I like that instead of saying, you need to, we need to do this.

He says, let us. He's encouraging all of us together to do these things. And so what I want to do is cover one let us per week over the next three weeks. What are the let us that the author to the Hebrew said? He said, let us enter a spiritual rest. He said, let us hold firmly to what we believe. and he said, let us enter before God's throne to find help. Let us enter boldly before his throne.

And so what I want to do is each week talk about one of those in kind of a behind-the-scenes devotional. So we'll start with the very first one in Hebrews chapter 4 when he says, let us enter a special rest. I'll start in verse 9 when the author said this. So there is a special rest. I like this. It's not just a regular rest, but a special rest,

still waiting for God's people. verse 10, for all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. Verse 11, here's the first let us. So let us do our best to enter that rest. Let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God as the people of Israel did, we will fail. So let us do our best to enter that rest. Notice this is a very special rest. And you may ask, what is at rest. Well, some believe the author to the Hebrews was talking about an eternal rest, like rest in peace after you die. Others believe that he was referring to a deep, meaningful, spiritual Sabbath rest where we actually rest from our work on earth. From my study, I'm going to actually

apply this principle to both, an eternal rest and a temporary rest on earth. For example, eternally, the good news is we will rest from labor. We will rest from labor. We will rest from sorrow, rest from sickness, rest from lost, rest eternally from sin. We will never ever sin anymore. In fact, one time I was on a mission trip and we were visiting a Compassion International site that our church is involved in, and I was with the president of a Compassion International, and we were in a home that's, perhaps you've been in one before. It had no floor, no plumbing, no electricity. There was actually a garbage dump outside that, you know, the water would flow through this house when it would rain into this horrible, just flooded dump area.

And there was this precious lady that was just always hurting, grieving, in deep poverty. And the president of compassion prayed with her, and I never will forget, he just, he prayed about eternity. And he thanked God that one day she wouldn't suffer and her kids would have everything they needed. And afterwards, I kind of looked at him and I was curious because that's not how we typically think when we're praying with people in the West, where we're so blessed and prosperous. And he said, you have to remember these people, they're going to suffer and suffer and suffer on earth.

And so their faith is really an eternal blessing where there is rest from all this suffering. That's a special rest. And you may live in the West right now, and you're suffering in some way, maybe some physical ailment, maybe some, so many people battle with depression. It could be your kids are doing something that really is difficult. There'll be an eternal rest from. all the hardships in this world for those who are followers of Christ. Now, on a different level, I want to talk about this. What if God has a special rest for us on earth? What if we can do our

best today to enter into that rest? And here's what we have to understand that God values rest. In our culture today, many of us, we just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, but God deeply values rest. He works six days, and on the seventh day, what did he do? He rested. In fact, we have to remind ourselves, one of the Ten Commandments is to observe the Sabbath, to keep it holy, to take a day and commit it to God, that on this day we are not working. This is a day we're setting apart for God. What does the word holy mean? The holy actually means set apart.

This is a day set apart to glorify God by doing what he did, by resting from our work and from our labor. And so I have to recognize rest is a holy act before God. A day of rest is actually pleasing to God. But in fact, I've shared many times, just from a real personal perspective, that working too much has been a problem for me. And I've been to counseling in two different seasons to deal with my problem as a workaholic. And the big problem for me, maybe some of you can relate to this, is that my identity was wrapped up in what I produce, not who I am.

I find value in doing hard work by producing something instead of who I am in Christ. And so my counselor helped me to say, no, first of all, I am a follower of judgment. Jesus. I'm a child of God. I belong to Christ. That's what makes me valuable. So my counselor, really, in working with me, said one of the most spiritual things you can do, Craig, is to rest. One of the most spiritual things you can do is to rest. And that was just a, it totally completely blew my paradigm because I thought my spiritual value was in what I produce, but it's actually pleasing to God when I rest. So I'm going to ask you the question, does your body, need rest? Does your mind need rest? Does your soul need rest? Okay? If you're not keeping the Sabbath,

if you're not taking a day off, I can almost answer, absolutely completely the answer is yes. Okay. Psalm 37, verse 7, I like this in the King James Version. It's translated this way. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. I love that phrase that we rest actually in the Lord. We rest in the Lord. I'll be honest, for a long time, I had trouble sleeping at night. my mind would race, thinking about all that I had to do. But the closer I get to being in the Lord, the more I focus on him, the more I draw near to him, the closer I get to true rest. Now I sleep quite well most nights. What do we need to do? Rest in the Lord. Rest in his promises, rest in his provisions, rest in his faithfulness. Whatever is a burden to you say,

you know what, I'm trusting this to Jesus. I'm giving this to him. I can rest because my God has this. In Matthew 1128, this is what Jesus said. Let's go New Testament. Jesus said, come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Okay? Some of you right now, what are you? You're wearied, you're burdened, you're overwhelmed, you're freaked out.

The weight of the world is on you. You feel like there's too much for you to do. You can never get it all done. You're always tired. You're always overwhelmed. What do you do? Come to Jesus. go to Jesus today.

Jesus invites you. When you come to him, he will give you rest. I love the way this is translated in the message version, it's actually a devotional version of the Bible, and the message translates Matthew 11 this way. Jesus said in that version, Are you tired, worn out, burn down on religion, come to me, get away with me,

and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. I love this line. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Isn't that good? Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Jesus says, I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. The first let us from Hebrews chapter four is this. Let us do our best to enter his rest. Father, today I pray that for those who are especially burdened that we'd come to Jesus, we'd come to Him, that we would enter into his unforced rhythms of grace. And we would recognize, God, one of the most spiritual things that we can do is rest. Give us the power through your word and by your spirit to enter your special rest.

In Jesus name we pray. As a church, it's our honor to play a small part in all that God is doing in and through your life. And we would love to continue with you on that journey. To find out what your next steps could be in your relationship with Christ, all you have to do is go to life. church slash next. You know, one of the biggest blessings that God has allowed our church to be a part of in the spreading of his word is through the U-Version Bible app. Now downloaded by more than 140 million mobile devices worldwide. Millions of people literally are able to engage with God's word on a daily basis.

And one of those people is named Noah Snyder, who lives on the outer banks of North Carolina. He's an ex-pro surfer, and with the help of the U-Version Bible app, he's able to grow stronger in his faith. I grew up here on the coast, and I've spent most of my life as a professional surfer. And now I'm a fitness trainer and a gym, and basically I enjoy watching people get their lives back and being trained. The fitness journey is tough. It's a matter of just coming and put it in the time. Come on, let's go. Drive, drive, drive.

And it's my job to get in their face. Like, come on, you know, you're gonna do this, you're gonna make it. You have to believe it. Three, two, one, and go. Come on, pretty work, pretty work. Yeah, when people walk through the door here at Momentum, they're carrying a lot.

It could be emotional, it could be physical, the pressures of life. You can look at everything around you, and you can almost have this sense of just wanting to give up. So encouragement is a huge part of my life being a fitness trainer, but first and foremost, I also need to be encouraged myself. I've got to get plugged in every single day to God's word, and I do that through the Bible app on my phone. Even if it's just for one minute, two minutes, five minutes, where I get the word in me. I become a little bit more confident. I get a little bit more boldness. I need those things to do what it is that I do.

Where is what will sustain you. Your strength is only going to get you, but so far, but it's his strength that's actually going to get you through that finish line. To download the U-Version Bible app, all you have to do is go and access it wherever you download your apps from or go to Bible.com slash app. Here at Life Church, it's our mission to lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ. That statement drives everything that we do here as a church, and we do everything, because because we believe whoever finds God finds life.