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     1. Entering into Rest   (15:41)
     2. The Haven of Rest   (3:19)
     3. Have Thine Own Way, Lord   (2:57)

Hebrews 4:11.  Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

John 15:4-5.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

When the early apostles said, “We will give ourselves continually to prayer,” they simply meant to express that without Him they could do nothing.  Their job was very, very clear.  Jesus Christ had said, “You’ve not chosen me, but I have chosen you.”  Now raised from the dead, now entered into His glory—He entered into His glory for us. 

Like he expressed it to those two disciples on the way to Emmaus—He said, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?”  The entire Old Testament is full of that witness that the Son of God should come as the son of Abraham, and bring about the great change in the world, and open the door of salvation.  They should have known that.  “The scriptures,” He says, “they testify of Me.  Moses wrote of Me.”  And all the Old Testament prophesies point to that great victory which man was not able to accomplish, but God had to accomplish by sending His only begotten Son into the world.

Why was it that they were such fools and slow of heart to believe?

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We have experienced it again and again that as soon as we make a little effort to draw nigh to God, He draws nigh to us.  What would happen if we really gave ourselves continually to prayer… if we “prayed without ceasing,” if we labored to enter into an inward life, like God has said every Christian is called to live?

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A paper that is to be used to write upon—all the paper has to do is to be still and to be clean.  And all we have to do is to present ourselves to God in that stillness of soul, that absolute surrender: “Now have Thine own way.”   …Jesus Christ cannot help Himself but live out His own life within a soul like that.  Now, why is it that we don’t get there?  It’s because perhaps we don’t believe God, or we don’t understand God’s way, and because we still try to help ourselves.  We’re so conceited we think that we can do something.  But to really get down, and to really believe that we can do nothing is a hard job… Those things have been implanted into us...  We cannot escape it until we really love Jesus Christ and “crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts.”  But that’s what happens when we really become desperate and seek the Lord with all our hearts.

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When you labor you don’t rest, and when you rest you don’t labor, and yet God commands us to “labor to enter into rest”.  And what does He mean?  Well, He uses that same contradiction in Philippians 2, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling because it is God that worketh in you.”  In other words, that’s my work—to let God work.

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Nothing that we do is acceptable in the sight of God.  Whether it be secular labor, or spiritual labor, everything must be under the control of the Holy Ghost…  And I discovered that in a short while, Jesus Christ accomplishes infinitely more than we could even think of accomplishing.  When we do things by ourselves maybe we reflect credit on our own intelligence or intuition, but nothing is accomplished.  Jesus Christ says, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall bear much fruit, and your fruit shall remain.”  It’s because Jesus Christ has produced it—He does it.

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The Son said, “the Son can do nothing of Himself.”  “Nothing.”  Isn’t that strange?  What humility!  That alone is true humility—that submission to God—to the Spirit of God that makes you know between yourself and God that you can do nothing decently, and you don’t have to do anything yourself, that God dwells within you, and God is the driving force of your mind, of your mentality, of your body, soul, and spirit.  And God really takes over.

Now, I tell you, we have discussed these thing many, many times, and we always assent to it, and we always realize that this is true, and this is the way…  [But,] “The great imperfection of souls is not to wait enough upon God.  The active nature, unsubdued, seizes on fair pretexts to intermeddle and thinks it is doing wonders, yet this is what disturbs the purity of the soul, troubles its silence, whence it results that the Father of Light does not produce in us that Word of Life… The real secret is to do nothing of ourselves, but to act as we receive.”  Why, that would make you enter into rest!

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If we don’t fulfill, as sure as we’re sitting here, God is finding a people that will.

Moment by Moment, a hymn by Daniel W. Whittle.

Moment by moment I’m kept in His love;
Moment by moment I’ve life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

A Bread of Life article, quoting Miguel de Molinos.

The Power of Stillness, a tract by A. B. Simpson.

Saints who found this secret: Madame Guyon, Gerhard Tersteegen, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Catherine of Siena, Martin Luther, Girolamo Savonarola, George Fox.

Pastor Blumhardt: Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880).  An account of his two year fight is available here.  HRW describes this incident more fully in message 25A.

Audio Quality: Fair