Part 2 – True Rest (MIT)

Part 2 – True Rest
Chapter 29 from Major Ian Thomas' book "The Indwelling Life of Christ"

Christian rest is not inactivity. Christian rest is rest because He carries the load.

Some people imagine if you bow yourself out and bow Jesus in, if you die to self-effort and let god do it, that is passivity. Well, it is passivity only if you consider God to be passive, and only if you consider the Lord Jesus to be a weakling and incapable of running His own kingdom as King, and that of course is blasphemous.

If I think that by stepping aside and letting God handle it, nothing is going to happen, this only indicates that I do not really believe in God or in the competence of Jesus Christ. I am assuming that if it were not for folks like me doing the work and keeping God in business, He would be in bad shape. That is the only logical conclusion we can draw when anyone assumes, “If I let Jesus do it, nothing will happen.”

When you are truly relaxed in the Lord, stripped of self-effort, and experiencing His true rest, that rest will nearly always involve more activity than we would otherwise ever know. That is because Christ is in action, and you in your humanity are simply the clothes of His divine activity.

This is the rest of faith. You relax, almost like a spectator, except that it is your hands with which He is at work, your lips with which He is speaking, your eyes with which He sees the need, your ears with which He hears the cry, and your heart with which He loves the lost.

To “let go and let God” is not inactivity, although it may appear that way as you grow out of self-effort. It is Christ-activity – God in action accomplishing divine purposes through human personality. This never reduces our status or worth, but exalts us to the stature of a king: “Thos who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through One, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).

This is not some kind of automatic sinless perfection. For it is only your faith and your obedience (to the Holy Spirit promptings) which allow Christ to be in you now what He was then (perfect!), and you will be what He was then only to the degree in which you allow Him to be in you what He is now (perfect!)