The Sabbath Rest in God’s Temple

We become the temple of God when the Spirit of God begins to dwell in us. Things happen, and after our initial conversion, we may not feel it sometimes. We might be going through a trial that tells our mind something that is against the truth of His word that said, You are the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, Yah’s dwelling place.

Speaking of trials—they are for the purification of our faith. Peter says that these “fiery trials” burn out the dross of our faith, which he likens to gold. It operates in a cycle. Revelatory truth comes flooding over us, and we exult in the thrill of getting a little closer to God. But then the thrill is gone for a while. It is like low tide and high tide—ebb and flow. And then the fog lifts, and our hunger for truth returns, and we seek and then find more truth once again. We love the flow, but not the ebb.

Many young Christians are unaware that God’s plan uses this technique for our growth in Him. So, “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you…” It is not strange at all. We should rejoice because we are “partakers of Christ’s sufferings.” These sufferings are prerequisite for ruling with Him (I Pet. 4: 12; Rom. 8: 17).

The Mind of Christ

We are the body of Christ. Why? Because He said we are. Any thought or action or word that supersedes this reality—that we now are God’s house, that He is living inside of us—is against the truth. For it is His thought that places us in Him and Him in us, not our own imagination. Christ thought it and then said it, and His apostles wrote it down. It is His word; we just believed it. And that last four words—that is the faith that He is looking for in us.

Once we believe that our old sinful heart is crucified with Christ, and once we believe that we have “been raised to walk in a newness of life” with our risen Savior, then we are agreeing with God’s thought straight from His mind. I mean straight from the glorious brain of our Creator! Such power! Such glory! And He wants to place this creative power fully in us. But to receive fully we must believe fully. There is a growth in all this.

His thoughts do not change or deviate from the Logos (Word) which comprises the Mind of God. How does God see us? He sees us not as the pathetic selfish sinners we once were, but as His dwelling place.

Through belief, we surrender to Him and His plan. When we do this, we find refuge and enter into His rest. When we believe Him and begin to live for Him and His plan and not for our little plans, then we do enter into His rest because we have ceased from our own labors for ourselves.

This rest is our Sabbath rest. Just by believing Him and walking in the Spirit, we enter into rest and keep His Sabbath. Scurrying around, wondering if we are breaking the Sabbath is not entering into His rest. To many “law keepers,” the Sabbath is treated like a petulant old rich man who demands reverence of his every whim. That is not it, folks.

When we realize that the Sabbath was “made for man and not man for the Sabbath,” then we will rest from our own old-man-Adam-works. I pondered upon these passages in Hebrews 4 for many years, and now they are being revealed. The Sabbath day is part of the Law, and the “Law is not made for a righteous man.” Besides, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes” (Rom. 10: 4).

Entering into His Rest

As we believe His word, we do enter into His rest. And His rest is His confidence and belief that the plan contained in the Seed/Word/Logos has come, is coming, and shall come to pass just like He created the “incorruptible seed, the word of God” in the beginning.

He believes in us more than we believe in Him. Or rather, He believes in His plan working itself out in our lives–even though we don’t even understand it fully as of yet.

He knows that His thoughts, which are formed into words, “will not return unto Him void, but will accomplish” what He sent them to do. And believing this solidly, God now rests and waits with great patience on us to finally believe the same thing.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock