Psalm 81: 6 & 10
I relieved his shoulder of the burden, his hands were freed from the basket. I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
I am always amused by people who say that the Old Testament does not speak to us today. Today’s verse is modern day theology. It is Jesus’ message about the Holy Spirit. This is the place, spiritually speaking, where we are all supposed to live.
God has relieved us from the labor of work. Am I saying that we no longer set our hands to the plow? No. What God is revealing is that He is the labor behind the work. He supplies the wisdom and the power. We are to abide in Him and rest in Him while He provides for us. Hebrews 4: 11 says, “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.” The King James version says that our labor is in entering into this rest. In other words, our job is to enter into the rest of God. We are to be diligent in our pursuit of a Sabbath relationship with the Father and Sabbath, by the way, is every day. Our labor, our task is to abide in Jesus every moment of every day. That is sometimes a challenge and that is why it requires diligence. It is quite easy for us to become stimulated by some “emergency” or even some “to do” and begin to operate in our own strength and wisdom. The calling upon our lives is to learn to let go of our ways and our strength and embrace Jesus’ ways and the strength of God. Our challenge is to live in His abiding grace where He does all the heavy lifting. This is the challenge of the New Covenant. Endeavor, labor even, to live in Jesus’ peace while the Holy Spirit provides the power.
Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things” (John 14: 26). He also promised us that the Holy Spirit will guide us in all truth (John 16: 13). So, the strength, power and wisdom are in the Divine Trinity. God has taken the kneading bowl from our hands and put it into the hands of the Holy Spirit. Our part is to abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us. We take the time to quiet ourselves down and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and follow him. It is harder than it sounds because we learned to do everything in our power: by our education, personality, charm, hard-work and all of the other worldly methods. God is trying to redeem us from all of that though. Just like a relief pitcher in the 9th inning, God has sent the Holy Spirit to win all of your games for you. Let’s be diligent to enter God’s rest and the peace Jesus left for us while the Holy Spirit does his job.