Labour in the Word, Enter the Rest
Let us therefore labor to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:11
The rest of God is the best place to be in life. It is a dimension of life in which you cease from your own works and the Spirit of God takes over your life. Canaan was a shadow of the rest of God. Israel did not have to build or decorate their houses, plant their vineyards or dig their water channels; everything was already prepared. There was wealth and abundance, milk and honey in the land, and all they had to do was to be diligent and labour to enter. This is God's promise to every Christian who will labour rightly.
The Bible says that God worked for six days to recreate the earth, and on the seventh day He rested from all the work He had done. We know that this was the work of creation, but more specifically it was labouring in the Word. This means that God can restore and recreate any person's life in six days, if he understands the concept of labouring in the Word. In Exodus 31:17 Moses adds a detail to God's resting: "and was refreshed." The expression seems strange, but look deeper at the word and it means that God exhaled, that He breathed out. This is remarkable, because it explains why the Sabbath is so sacred a day to the Lord: after God had laboured in the Word to create, He released His Spirit. This is why Jesus could not begin His ministry without the Holy Spirit; He is the reason for the labour. The Lord wants all His children to understand that the secret to the release of the Spirit and of the miraculous is labouring in the Word. A Christian's greatest and most important work on earth is the work the Word has designated for him or her.
To labour in the Word means, first, to apply one's strength and effort to something. According to God, before the Spirit takes over a life, there must be a season of labour on the person's part in the area in which God has spoken to him. Adam, for instance, was commanded to tend and keep the garden; that was his labour in the Word, because God told him what to do. There was labour: he needed to plant seed, cultivate the land, name the animals, and tame and subdue the creatures. This required a release of energy and effort from Adam, but the more he laboured in what God had told him, the more the force of the Spirit was released. In Haggai 2 God tells Zerubbabel and the people to work, yet in Zechariah 4 the prophetic word was, "Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit." It was for that very reason that He told them to labour and build, because that is the only way the Spirit can be released. It is a spiritual principle: the supernatural will always be preceded by a season of labour in the Word.
The disciples toiled all night and caught nothing, because they were not labouring in the word; but when Jesus told them to labour again in the same place where they had failed, they had a great catch. The difference was the Word. You will struggle, and live at the mercy of unseen forces, for as long as you labour aimlessly for your own ambitions. If you want the best of God, learn to labour in the Word, and after six days, metaphorically speaking, the Spirit will be released. The Bible says, "the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs." Do you see it? Labouring in the Word is partnering with God for the release of the supernatural. You must be consistent in this, when it is convenient and when it is inconvenient; you stay with it in famine and in harvest. Observe Isaac: everyone was leaving the land because of the famine, but God told him, "Do not go; stay." That is labouring in the Word. He stayed, sowed and reaped a hundredfold. This is how you become the envy of nations. Stay with God, and labour in His Word.
The word God has spoken to you is your key to entering His rest. You must therefore remain with it: keep it, investigate it and meditate on it; war with it, pray with it and fast over it; obey it, act on it and do it. That is the labour of the Word, and without it you will never realise the promises of God or enter the rest. An entire generation refused to complete its labour, and did not enter; they died. There is no use deceiving you: unless you accomplish your "six days" of labour, you cannot enter the rest, and God cannot confirm His word in your life. Many of God's people have disqualified themselves from the rest, and from the fulfilment of the promises, because they failed to labour, in season and out of season, in what God had commanded them for the promises to be fulfilled.
The apostles said, "We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word." That is the duty of all servants of God. Never deviate from the labour of the Word. However unseemly it looks, do not be distracted. There will come a day when "the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed," and then the Spirit will have been released. Once He takes over, life will appear in a completely different light. There is a life prepared by God for His people in the rest of God, and the path to it is the "six days" of labour. So labour, and enter the rest.