“The promise of ‘arrival’ and ‘rest’ is still there for God’s people. God himself is at rest. And at the end of the journey, we’ll surely rest with God. So let’s keep at it and eventually arrive at the place of rest, not drop out through some sort of disobedience.” – Hebrews 4:9-11 (MSG)

“God wants you to depend on him from moment to moment. The darkness and uncertainty of your life’s path must bring you to rest peacefully in Him. To trust Him even when you do not see where He is taking you is a true death. It’s a silent death that happens without fanfare.” – Fenelon “The Seeking Heart”

In my teen years, my family lived about four miles outside of town on this road that was actually called a “trail.” Like most trails, this road winded and meandered throughout the countryside, circumventing ponds, very old trees, and cornfields. Some of the turns were pretty aggressive. One nearly 90-degree turn in particular was deemed “Dead Man’s Curve” by…someone. Maybe a pioneer who took his wagon over the edge into the creek below after he turned around to yell at his kids in the back seat and didn’t see it coming.

Of all the roads to learn to operate a vehicle, turns out that this thoroughfare would be mine. Like most 15 year-old boys, I completed four (4) weeks of driver’s education over the summer. Thus, with a driver’s permit I knew exactly what to do behind the wheel and was henceforth unteachable to my parents, who’d take it from there ’til I was old enough to drive solo.

With dad in the passenger seat of our 1988 Ford Aerostar one late-summer day, I crept out of our driveway and turned right onto the empty road to do a practice drive into town. Hands at 10 and 2 in the family minivan, I remember thinking “45’s a good speed. Why would anyone ever need to drive faster than 45?” Which seems like great discernment for a teenage boy driver–until he’s two miles down the road and about 50 yards from “Dead Man’s Curve”–and still driving 45 mph.

Granted, I think Dad gave me too much credit on the front-end and assumed I’d know what to do right before entering into a corner-angle turn (the answer would be: “gently apply the brakes”). “You’re going to need to slow down here,” Dad asserted, sitting up and reaching for anything attached to the car. “Brake. ….BRAKE…”

I braked, but by this point, we’d already entered into Curve-land and, even going 30 mph, it was way too fast for this turn. In a top-heavy six-seater. Surely, the two left-side wheels lifted off the ground as I maneuvered the vehicle around the blind corner–even getting into the other lane–to land this thing on the other side.

But that’s not all.

Dad, in his shock, managed to direct me to pull the car over. So I did. But not in the traditional right-side-of-the-road way. Immediately after clearing the right-hand turn, I swiftly swung the ENTIRE minivan across the lane, over onto a perpendicular road on the LEFT side. Missing an oncoming vehicle by all of maybe three seconds.

“Pull the car over,” my Dad gasped. “Pull. The car. Over.” He didn’t look at me. He just put his hand over his heart. Properly hyperventilated (which, in hindsight, his dramatics here–though warranted–were actually pretty funny). Took an inventory of all his faculties. In a five-second event, his driver’s permit-carrying son almost killed them both, like, three different ways.

He drove home.

Before my dad allowed me to chauffeur him into town, I never feared the country road on which we lived. “Dead Man’s Curve” was a clever nickname for a sharp turn, but I wasn’t scared of it. I’d ridden on this road and all it’s angles hundreds of times. But until that day as a 15 year-old driver, I’d never experienced the dangers of that road, either.

After nearly turning my family’s minivan on its side, I took that turn way slower the 500 times I drove it afterward. It turns out, the curve never injured or killed me.  The fear kept me driving responsibly. And when I drove responsibly, I didn’t feel fear that I was going to tip my car over at all. Which is why I still enjoy driving. Which is why I can emotionally be at rest when I’m driving…responsibly.

And I think there’s a pretty decent tie-in between that moment and what the author of Hebrews writes about in Chapter 4. “Now we who believed enter that rest (v. 3).” It’s daily trusting in God’s provision and promises over us–but it’s not an automatic trust. It’s the result of daily diligence (continuing to drive, because I need to get things done) and the result of proper fear (continuing to drive responsibly, because I need to stay alive and keep others alive).

Unbelief will keep me from resting in God promises. And not entering that rest is going to have consequences. And that consequence will be borne out of my own folly and disobedience. My resolve is, the one (and only) thing to fear, then, is faithlessness. To fear unbelief, which will keep us from our promised rest.

Christ died to deliver us from slavish fear. He wants a fearless people. And fear only rises as faith starts to weaken. And it only rises long enough to get us back into what John Piper calls “the peaceful fearlessness of faith.” Ultimate rest. As long as we’re trusting His promises, we can be utterly fearless in the face of anything. Even death. Even God:

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” – Hebrews 4:16

 

“We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Hebrews 3:14

I remember as a kid, listening to the story of the Israelites wandering around the wilderness for 40 years, searching for the The Promised Land–a place only something like eight days away. I remember thinking how goofy and whiny and ignorant they were spend so much time and emotion attempting to get to a place that was so much closer than they realized.

The people of Israel led by Moses complained because things weren’t going the way they had expected. So they had a much easier time believing that the slave life they came out of was more palatable than the life of freedom and abundance that God had committed to them. The work to get there was laborious and what was promised to them wasn’t real enough. Not as real as the food, comfort and provisions that were provided to them…as slaves…without freedom. Provided to them (and certainly on occasion taken away) on someone else’s terms.

So, many of them–in their bitter uprising and refusal to let God do things His way in the process, never got there. Because they never believed (3:19)

“What stubborn and simpleminded boneheads,” my adolescent (and surely older) self thought. My present self, though? I look at what these Israelites went through. Then I look at my own story. And then I get very…sometimes VERY…anxious. Because I’ve been that Israelite. I’ve passed up rest and beauty for shackles and extra work and pain and time.

There’s one particular “Promised Land” in my life that I LONG to long for. Notice, I didn’t say I…long for. Because if I really desired it so much, it wouldn’t be such a battle for me to stay on the course to get there. I want to want it. No, this particular “land” was never exactly promised to me, but I do believe it’s a territory I could one day arrive to. I do believe it’s a place God desires incredibly for me to be. And certainly, whether I ever get to the tangible part of that land or not, there’s the intangible heart place of rest and peace and…softness…that I also long to long for that comes with holding fast to my confidence and hope in the living God.

At various levels of urgency, I’ve pursued this rest for many years. I’ve never stopped trusting the heart of God, but there have been countless instances where my unbelief has kept me from rest. Has my heart experienced seasons of less pliability through this? Surely. Has it ever been hardened? In His great mercy, I can say it hasn’t. At the truest gut-level that I’m able to contain, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt contempt toward God like the Israelites did. Contempt for myself? Daily. But I’ve never believed that God was holding out on me or treating me unfairly.

Dr. Jim Richards says “the deceitfulness of sin is hardness of hearts. A hard heart is incapable of hearing the voice of God because it’s become calloused and insensitive to him. A hard heart ultimately leads us into unbelief which prevents us from entering into His rest. Rest is the place where we have ceased from our own labors/strength and experience God’s grace (His ability). We don’t stop laboring, we just stop laboring in our own strength.”

And that, to me, is the essence of the rest Hebrews 3 reminds me that whole generation of Israelites never experienced. The rest that is so soft and sensitive to the Spirit’s voice that it hears the slightest sound, like a sleeping mother who hears her baby’s whimper 20 feet down the hall. The rest that makes me so secure because the connection is so evident–I can feel it. I can hear it. The rest that doesn’t have to strive for earning righteousness because I know it’s already there, and the strength that keeps me there is working. Because I trust God so much. And I trust Him so much because I know Him. And as long as I’ve known Him, He has always proven Himself faithful. Even in my sadness, loneliness, fear and hurt.

Please do it your way, Father. Without your promises, I have no assurance. Without your assurance, I have no reason to persevere. Without perseverance, I have no hope. Without hope, I have no rest.

 

As I floundered through the searing pain of a broken marriage–one spurred on largely due to personal failures of my own–I initially needed to share my pain. At least, at the time, I thought I did. The trauma of losing so much (family, job, reputation)–and gaining so much self-awareness of what I had become–so quickly–was just too overwhelming for me to handle internally.

So I’d talk about what happened to others. Somewhat liberally, even. Trying to hunt people down who could maybe help me by relating to what I’d just gone through. I didn’t want to be alone in my suffering. I didn’t want to be alone, period.

Refreshingly, there were several people who came alongside me on that particular stretch of the journey who could relate to my situation at least somehow: their marriage fell apart, or nearly did; they made horrible decisions that hurt other people, namely their spouse; they wrecked their life for a season. There were also many people who listened, but simply couldn’t relate to what I was enduring. They’d sit in the mud puddle with me for awhile, but because their own experience was so different, they didn’t stick around long. And, really, that was OK. Because in the midst of turmoil, any comfort is acceptable; but if the comforter just doesn’t (or can’t) relate–or even worse, thinks they can because of the time he got in a fight with his wife once for checking out another woman at the mall–it’s rarely helpful. They certainly may have suffered like I suffered, but their level of suffering didn’t connect for me. Not then, anyway.

So, as I read through Hebrews 2 this past week, the (re)affirmation that Jesus Christ walked the earth as a human being with flesh and bones.

Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

He was a human. God could have given Jesus all of the physical traits of myself or any other person, but made him entirely mechanical in his emotional state. Unaffected by others or by the elements. He could have not felt and been completely unmoved by the pressures and temptations of life. He could have been a numbed-out robot who was preprogrammed to be perfect, but completely inhuman.

But he was very human. The best example of this that I can think of is how he cried out to Abba in the Garden of Gethsemane the evening before His crucifixion. Jesus knew what heavy amounts of torture and abandonment was ahead. Had God preprogrammed him not to feel, he could have gone through the entire process up to Golgotha without a wince or ounce of sadness, fear, loneliness or even shame as he hung naked on a cross in front of his peers.

Even though Jesus knew exactly why He was brought to earth and was always zeroed in on what he needed to accomplish during his time upon it, as a human, he MUST have had a moment of temptation to get himself out of that situation in the Garden. He did have God’s power within him, after all. Surely he could have done what he did in the angry crowd earlier that year, and made himself “disappear.”

Then there’s the time satan temped Him at the end of his 40 day fast at the beginning of his ministry…

“For this reason he had to be like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” – Hebrews 2:17-18

The thing about Jesus is, in order to love him and to truly love what He did for us out of his own love, there has to be a connection. I have to know that he gets me. Not from a distance. Not a “I see you down there messing up, Matt. That must be rough. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never felt anything like you feel. Good thing I was perfect and never had to deal with hard things myself.”

I still feel disconnected from the idea of Jesus at times, but as I read through this scripture, I become more and more connected with the humanity of Jesus. Because he suffered like I do. And he could only do it by becoming like me. What a testimony of the greatest love. What a gift that Jesus is able to relate to me and convince me of his goodness–all while saving me from death.