More quotes from John Alexander's book:
"'Don't be anxious' isn't mostly a command. It's mostly a promise. A promise that God is taking care of us. That is at the heart of everything in the Bible. Not that you must gird yourself up to grind through some costly duty, but that God loves you so much that you're free to stop guarding your rights and to start loving extravagantly."
We fail to "grasp experientially the grace and love of God. Gene Edwards illustrates this beautifully. Imagine a man buying a horseless carriage when they first came out without grasping where the power came from. Suppose he knew he wasn't to use horses any more, but the person who sold him the car forgot to tell him about the ignition. So some days he sits in the carriage and goes nowhere, and other days he gets out and sweats and strains to pull the carriage himself. This is the Christian life if we don't grasp that we have died and Christ is the power, Christ the one who lives our life through us. We really can't do it. So we either sit around in our magnificent theology going nowhere, or we strive to be good Christians with tragic failure after tragic failure. We don't quite grasp that our power, the ignition switch, the driving force of our lives, is the love of God in Jesus. But that doesn't mean we do nothing, that we sit in the horseless carriage without moving. No, it means we zip around on the love of God."
"...Sabbath rest is little more than an embodiment of salvation by faith. At least, that's the way it seems to me."
"Sabbath is about God being in control of the whole universe and lovingly holding his people in the palm of his hand."
I think that's definitely a major part, at least, of what the Sabbath is about - trusting in God's love and his provision, trusting enough to stop, let go, stop rushing around as though we have to keep going all the time. There was that wonderful illustration with the Manna, when God provided enough each day and then when it came to the Sabbath he provided twice as much - teaching the people to trust him and have a rest.
ReplyDeleteand this reminds me of something a friend told me about a phase in her life when she was working much too hard (as a self-employed speech therapist, rushing around from one surgery to another), and a friend said to her: if you were to work 24 hours a day would you be able to help everyone? and she said no. his reply was: so why do you keep trying?