Finding Rest

• Since reading the first chapter of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together for the officers’ retreat, I’ve been happily stuck on the notion of living by faith in what God has already accomplished in Christ, rather than what I’m planning or inventing or accomplishing on his behalf. In other words, what if what he has done is more significant and powerful than what I am going to do?

• Of course it sounds ridiculous when you frame it that way, but most of us are guilty, in day-to-day life, of being more excited about the next hot Evangelical book/study/conference/celebrity than we are about, say, the power of the Resurrection. Evangelicals get excited about excitement and every generation is plagued by the disease that had infected Athens in Acts 17:21: “all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” 

• Here’s why we do this. All the great truths of the Christian faith are, subjectively speaking (and of course historically), in our past. We already know the beauty of David’s life of love and faith, the weight of the Exile, the hope fulfilled of the Incarnation, the power of the Cross, the victory of the Resurrection. And yet here we are, spiritually flat, maybe disillusioned. We naturally look to the future. Maybe there’s a fix out there: a book, a small group, a conference, a new church, new friends. In this way we misunderstand both our own souls and the Christian faith.

• Hebrews 4:2 says “[the] good news came to us just as to [Israel], but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.” The Gospel is powerful only to those who listen in faith. It’s not that the great truths of the faith are powerless to transform our lives, but that we do not trust in them, rest in them, hope in them. 

• This is important: only when we cease to believe in other support structures (people, plans, places, doctors, money, careers, inheritance) and shift our trust entirely to God himself, will we lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees. Ps 77:8-12: “Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? …I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.”