@onevoice973: Sabbath. Rest. A whole day set aside by God for his people, so that their minds, souls, and bodies would find respite and restoration. As Jesus said, "The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Mark 2:27 What a gift of love and mercy our loving God has given us! So why does it so often feel like more work? Another thing to do? One more box to check and one more thing to get right? Is this really what God intended? Isaiah doesn’t seem to think so. “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." Isaiah 58:13–14 God’s words through his prophet are flush with the language of relief and redemption: Release for the captives. Comfort for the mourning. Garments of praise and salvation. A double portion of inheritance. He speaks of delight in the Lord and harvests of plenty, and a Savior who comes to proclaim rewards and recompense to the wretched, downcast, and brokenhearted. In other words, Isaiah preaches of the rest that God gives, not one that we must strive for. So, you and I should ask ourselves: do we fast, Sabbath, or worship God because we're hoping—or expecting—that he'll bless us in return? Do we turn our work, and even our rest, into tasks to fulfill before we can expect good from God? Doesn't sound like the release of captives to me. Jesus did not come to give a new set of rules or implement a new, required list of spiritual activities, and he certainly does not command us to build up as much spiritual power as we can before he can offer comfort to us. Instead, he proclaims release. A captive does not break their own chains by powering up on fasting or obedience; an external force of redemption—our Savior Jesus—breaks those chains because we never could have broken the chains of sin, iniquity, and trespass ourselves. The comfort of release is that we, who are helpless, bankrupt, and hopeless, don’t need to bank power to set ourselves free, but have been set free in spite of ourselves. Our Sabbath rest is not a checklist of human effort; our Sabbath is a person. On the cross, Jesus declared, “It is finished!” John 19:30 He met the standard of perfection on your behalf, paid your debt, and credits his own righteousness to your account as an unearned gift (2 Corinthians 5:21). "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21 You do not work toward rest or strive to make yourself acceptable before God; you live and rest in the completed victory that Christ has already won for you. In him, you are declared clean, blameless, and fully reconciled to the Father right now.#onevoice27 #AWR #onevoice27missionforall #seventhdayadventist #allthingsnew

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Monday 26 October 2026 01:17:16 GMT