Saturday September 22, 2012

How can you change from wishing to hoping as a biblical concept?

 

Read Exodus 31:12-18, Matt 11:28-30

 

What do you hope for? What do you hope in? We tend to use the word “hope” as a synonym for “wish”. We teach our children to wish upon a star or to blow a flower and to make a wish or to blow out the candles on the cake and make a wish. We say that we wish/hope that things work out, hoping and wishing that we might gain some fortuitous stroke of luck or we hope/wish to win lotto, knowing it probably won’t happen.

The Sabbath rest functions as a source of hope. It serves as an eternal sign showing us or pointing us to the ideal which is just ahead.  The ideal rest (pictured by God in the unadulterated Garden of Eden) is the goal of God’s creation. All creation is headed towards that rest. Some will enter it and, unfortunately  some won’t!

 

Our Sabbath rest is a foretaste of that rest. If we enjoy God’s Sabbath and rest in Him weekly we will be more apt to know the hope to which we are called. If we give God one hour a week and are distracted and concerned by other things  throughout that hour then our hope will be whimsical and we’ll have nothing to hold onto.   Without the hope of God to hold onto, everything else becomes more attractive. Of course I’ll play Lotto each week if I have no hope in God. Of course I’ll drown my anxieties in alcohol or perverted sexuality if I’ve never tasted or experienced the hope of God on a regular basis.

 

Jesus, the Messiah is the fulfilment of the Sabbath rest. All who are weary can come to him for rest, for shalom. Are you weary from the world? Are you weary from fighting the world? Are you tired and worn out from carrying financial burdens, responsibilities and heartache? Come to Christ and find rest for your soul. Come to Christ and exchange your burden for his light and easy yoke. Come to Him and taste his eternal rest.

 

Prayer:

Spend time in adoration and confession and thanks.

 

Adoration:

 

Confession:

 

Thanks:

 

 

Supplication:

¨ Are you carrying some burden? Tell God about it. Pour your heart out to Him and let Him know about it. Spend time telling God about your  burden and take His yoke in exchange. Cry out to Him. He will never turn you away!

¨ Pray for our brothers and sisters in Mexico who carry a daily burden. In a country run by drug cartels and drug lords believers live a tenuous life. Pray that God would take their burdens and carry them, as on wings like eagles. Pray that they would soar and be able to rise up sin, temptation and the evil and wickedness around them. Ask God to powerfully use their testimony to bring many to Christ.