Working and Resting

We have a popular restaurant chain in the St. Louis area called Steak & Shake. Their TV commercials are very creative. One of them is as follows:
The narrator says that when you go in to eat, you look at a menu on the wall, walk up and order at a counter, carry your food to a table, eat, and then clean up your trash and carry it to a disposal. All the while, the TV shows the hustle and bustle of a typical fast-food establishment. Then a curtain descends on the scene and you see the inside of a Steak & Shake. Everyone is seated at tables and is being waited on by serving attendants. Everyone is happy and relaxed. The narrator says over this happy scene, “Steak & Shake is a RESTaurant, not a WORKaurant!”
God says that there is a type of working that IS resting. The writer to the Hebrews (probably Paul) declares that this life has rest, not strain as its basis (Heb. 4:1-11). It is the rest God has had since He rested on the seventh day after completing the creation. It is also that of Israel entering into the land of Canaan. But he goes on to say that the true rest is what we have in Christ, our Joshua.
That rest is by no means a folding of the hands, but a fully active life that is a thrill to live because it has adequacy at its center, not inadequacy. Living life without what it takes to live it causes strain; living life with what it takes to live it produces rest. The resting life he describes this way: “He that has entered into His rest, he has also ceased from his own works, as God did from His” (4:10).
Living by my own works was when I was the worker. The rest-life will have even more works, for He is the worker. BUT THAT TYPE OF WORKING IS RESTING.
He defined rest as being a ceasing from our own works. Not from work, of course – that is an impossibility – but from works proceeding from self-effort. In other words sharing God’s rest doesn’t mean ceasing from work, any more than our ever-active God ceases, but resting in our work. If our activities are dependent on our own resources, we work from strain; if upon His, we work from rest.
That is also the “second rest” Jesus spoke of in Matthew 11:28-30. He worked from rest, and He was so evidently relaxed. Why? Because in humbleness He thoroughly knew His human incompetence, and therefore could also know His indwelling Father’s allness. And being meek of heart, He knew how to abide in His Father in times of stress, rather than rushing off to handle situations His own way.
The key to entering into God’s rest and continuing in it is by a revelation nowhere else so clearly stated in the Bible. The Hebrew writer distinctly connects the experience of this rest with ability to discern between soul and spirit (4:12). And my experience is that a great many of God’s people are confused and frustrated, and live in a great deal of false condemnation, because they have not learned this distinction.
Modern psychology has invented its own vocabulary for what it considers are the subdivisions of the human personality, such as the subconscious, the super-ego, and so on. But God gave us His own definition and analysis centuries ago, and that will never be bettered.
Man, the Bible says, is tripartite – spirit, soul and body – and in that order of importance (1 Thes. 5:23). In the Hebrew passage, it stresses that the difference between soul and spirit is very subtle, and indeed can only be recognized by inner revelation. Only the Word of God, it says, applied as the sharp sword of the Spirit to the human consciousness, can pierce “even” to that depth, sever between the two, and give soul and spirit their proper evaluation – so we can recognize the proper function of each without mistaking the one for the other, and thus enable the human personality to move forward in gear and remain there.
The first essential is a clear recognition of the human spirit as the real self, the nature and ego within us. Soul and body are the clothing or means of expression of the spirit. The human spirit is that “image of God” spoken of in the Genesis creation. When I say, “I myself,” the I is the spirit, the inborn nature which can look out from within, as it were, and knows the myself, the rest of me (soul and body). The human spirit is love – self-love through the Satanic nature in the Fall, and when joined to Christ by grace, God’s selfless love expressed through the human love-faculty.
Now we reach the important point: In what does the soul differ from the spirit? It is the means by which the invisible spirit can express itself. The soul is the reasoning mind, the emotions and feelings, and the chooser of action.
Now unless we have a clear differentiation between the properties of these two, we can get into a great deal of trouble, because the soul is the intermediary between ourselves and the world. And it not only channels the spirit to the world, but has the reflex activity of channeling the world back into the soul’s decisions. Reason and emotion are wide open, not only to our spirits, but to the world around. Therefore our soul can be very variable. We may like this, or dislike that. This may appeal to us, that repel us – either things or people. We may feel exalted at one moment or lowly at another; dry at one time, fresh at another; fervent or apathetic; bold or fearful; compassionate or indifferent.
If, therefore, we confuse soul with spirit, we quickly fall into false condemnation. Why are my feelings so variable? Why do I feel cold, dry, far from God? Something is wrong. Why do I dislike this person, or resent this happening? I am wrong with God somewhere.
But I am beating myself in vain. Soul is variable, spirit invariable. In my spirit joined to Christ’s Spirit, I live with an unchanging and unchangeable Christ, and am myself equally unchanging by faith. I am not my soul feelings. I AM spirit. But if we didn’t have sensitive souls, we could not be affected by the cross current of human living; we wouldn’t be humans. We are to be affected by them, but not governed by them, just as He was “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”
But we so often allow our souls to be influenced by the world’s input of external appearances. They would lead our emotions to “feel” spiritually cold, dead, apathetic, hard, dry. We feel that we are a disappointment to God. We feel out of touch with God. NO WE AREN’T! All we need is not to be fooled by our souls! The well of living water has not stopped springing up within us, the living bread in our spirits has not gone stale, the fire of the Spirit has not burned low.
Look within where you and He really are, spirit with Spirit. There is no change. Don’t be fooled by the color of your clothing – you soul feelings. You and Christ in you have not changed. Indeed we will have those kinds of feelings, and God intends that we should have, to stabilize us in the walk of faith. They are useful in driving us back to Him in our spirits. As we learn to walk more steadily in Him, we will find ourselves less and less bothered by that type of soul-feeling. A whole lot of the hunger people say they have, or need of spiritual refreshment, is at the core because they are mistaking soul-reactions for spirit-facts. The Reviver is already and always within! There would be much less talk of revival among Christians, if we had learned to walk in “vival” – in the fact of the unchanging life which is the real we, Christ in us.
In our spirits we are undifferentiated. That is where we are all one person in Christ. In our souls we all vary, and are meant to. That is why the salvation of our souls is an ongoing necessity, because it is through the infinite variety of our souls that all the glories of Christ will be seen, each of us manifesting some different facet of His unsearchable riches.
It is not wrong for the reasoning faculty of the soul to question and doubt, any more than it is wrong for the emotions to have their varied reactions. The Bible says that we have the mind and the faith of Christ joined to our human spirit (Galatians 2:20). When we understand the balance between the spirit of faith and the uncertainties of reason, and how the reasoning faculty is given us to face squarely all the various possibilities that confront us in life, then we enter with zest into life’s dialogues. Is a thing this? Is it that? We are not afraid of the cold winds of skepticism. We are not shaken by questions that seem to disturb our faith. We weigh things up and admit our ignorances and inabilities to produce our proofs. But we don’t live in the reasonings of our souls. We move back to where we really are – in our spirits. There is the place where eternal directions come from. We affirm what we know and are – by faith. Where reason has helped to clarify and confirm, we are strengthened and thankful, and are more ready to share those reasons with others. Where reason raises questions, we are always willing to consider and learn and adjust; but we never permit it to cross the bridge which is forbidden to it, the bridge of revelation from God which has become the bridge of faith, the bridge which has nothing to do with rational concepts, but is a Living Person, Jesus Christ.
So how can we be a RESTaurant and a WORKaurant at the same time? By resting in Christ within our spirit from attempting to do things in our own strength AND doing the work out to others in the strength of Christ.

[Back to Home]