“Self, Stop Striving and Enter His Rest!”

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Creativity, Creator, discerning the spirits, entering his rest, experience, following Jesus, James A. Fowler, peace, prayer, quietness of heart, restlessness, stress

Star Trails August 2017 (Photo by Paul Schuberth)

This title seems to be a short formula which somehow sprang out on me as I had just re-read part of the excerpt of James A. Fowler’s writing “Spirit-union Allows for Soul-rest” (see link below). Thanks to Kenneth Dawson who would point to this website which was new to me until yesterday. I found a helpful description there of how we as modern Christian people today more and more fail to enter His rest due to our busy, hurried, and burdened lives.

The world of fallen humanity runs to and fro at a hectic pace, seeking “rest” on the weekends, in church services, and on vacations and holidays. The humanistic work ethic that drives men to succeed and be significant leaves little time for “rest” and quietude. When identity is determined by performance – who we are based on what we do – then contemporary society thinks those who take time to “rest” will be left on the side of the road as excess baggage or “nobodies.” “Rest” is regarded as but a utopian goal at the end of the rainbow of success. Thinking they can generate their own future of “rest” by their self-sufficient performance, fallen man runs on the treadmill that goes nowhere.

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Within the Stillness of our Being… (updated November 14, 2016)

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city, desert, discerning the spirits, ears of the heart, God's voice, Michael Clark, Michael Fishbane, Mother Theresa, peace, Philo of Alexandria, quietness of heart, Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel, seek and find, wilderness

Fresh Cucumber Leaf
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

November 14, 2016

I thought I could repost this article from 2015 as a featured post in front of all others because I hope that others might be helped, too, when they are reminded of how we can more clearly perceive God’s still and small voice in our restless and noisy times. May God bless you all who still drop by on here!  

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I think it got more and more obvious to some lately that I spend less time on the internet, both on my blogs, on other blogs and on social media. Not that it had been my initial intention to do so, yet there were some incidents in my family that were like a real “wake-up call” for me. Writing blog posts and comments should not be a burden, right? If I was all alone and had no widely ramified kinship and other tasks apart from the net, I would perhaps go on with writing and reading other blogs as I did before. Although I tried several times during the last year (yes, my blogs will have their first anniversary in June) to step back a bit, I needed to be freed by God recently to really do so, finally. As a dear brother, Michael Clark, often says, “In Him we live and move and have our being, NOT our doing.” I truly love the wisdom of these few words. As long as I cannot rest in Him, I cannot really do a “good” thing for God, either. That’s for sure, since disturbance and a peaceful loving heart rarely go together.

Where our real strength comes from

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abiding in Christ, God's love, Jesus Christ, joy, peace, quietness of heart, rest, spiritual strength, trust, weakness, wisdom

I have always been a weak woman, though not necessarily outwardly, but the One who knows me better than anyone else has always known about my frail health, my indecisiveness, and my lack of assertiveness. Actually, it grieved me a lot that I was never as healthy as other people, yet I fought against it with sports and I had to try harder to do so than others who never felt fatigued or were never plagued by physical pains and sicknesses. Just recently I thought that it was a great gift from God to have me act that way, that is, to never give up, but to fight despite feeling bad most of the time. I know that God can heal and sometimes He truly did. Yet often times He decides to not heal us and only He knows why.

To put it more spiritually, I was wondering where our spiritual strength might come from. What is it that makes us strong when we are weak? What helps us to face circumstances that grieve us and of which we know that we cannot change them? We know that Paul lived that life of spiritual strength in light of many adverse circumstances. Even his flesh (body) was affected, yet God would not help him as Paul had wished. Instead, the Lord said,