"Promised Rest for God's People"

   "God's promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. For this good news - that God has prepared this rest - has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn't share the faith of those who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said, "In my anger I took an oath: 'They will never enter my place of rest,'" even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: "On the seventh day God rested from all his work." But in the other passage God said, "They will never enter my place of rest." 

  So God's rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard the good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: "Today, when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts." Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

  For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable." (Hebrews 4:1-13 NLT) 

"I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and me fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." (Psalms 18:1-2 KJV)

 As much as I think that I understand the big picture, the more I look, the more complex and difficult it is to understand everything there is to know. Just when you think that you have it all figured out, God will show us how little we actually know! 

 This is really not that hard to understand, because God has clearly already told us that we don't know the totality of His word, let alone His plans. So what do we do? We simply trust in Him no matter what, and we give Him all the glory and praise that He deserves...

"In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory." (Ephesians 1:11-14 KJV)