The importance of resting from your labors
By Apostle Frederick K.C. Price

Hebrews 4:10 says, For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.  In other words, stop laboring by your own effort, and let God work on it through you. 

It is sometimes difficult for people to do that, to cease from their own works.  Because they think they are so important that if they don’t do them, they won’t get done.  But people end up killing themselves with that kind of thinking. 

I do not fool myself into thinking I can do it all.  I have my place, my call, and my anointing, but I let the Greater One do the work.  I am always at rest.  I refuse to be stressed out.  I delegated authority to others, and they did the work they were assigned to do. 

Some may remember the old Greyhound Bus television commercial that said, “Ride the bus, and leave the driving to us.”  Well, that in essence is what God has told His children.  Unfortunately, many Christians are still trying to drive the bus, instead of simply sitting and riding.  As a result, they are laboring in vain. 

I know some ministers, bless their hearts, who are trying to carry their entire congregations.  That is impossible, and God did not tell them to do that.  Nobody’s shoulders are big enough to do that.  A minister’s job is to give you the Word, to pray for you, and then let you carry yourself. 

As a pastor, I gave my congregation the best revelation that God had given me, and then I left it there.  I could not carry an entire congregation of people.  I would have been dead in six months if I had tried to do that.  I prayed for them and turned them over to the Lord.  They were in God’s hands. 

Then there are those who rarely go on vacations.  And, when they finally do go, they work through the whole vacation.  That is the epitome of stupidity.  Then they wonder why they are tired and all stressed out. 

You need to take a vacation!  If you do not have money to go anywhere, fine, just take a walk on the beach.  Sit on the sand and watch the water and it will relax you.  You don’t need a lot of money to take a vacation. 

My oldest daughter is president of Crenshaw Christian Center.  She took work home, on vacation, on the airplane, to the toilet, to the hairdresser, to the grocery store, and to the bank.  She had a briefcase so heavy, so big, that she needed a mule team to carry the thing.  She brought undue stress on herself. 

I often had things that needed to be done within a certain time, but the worst-case scenario was if it did not get done, it did not get done.  I didn’t let it burden me.  When the time came for me to go home, I left that work there. 

When I got home, I was off, and that meant I was not going to do any more work.  My philosophy was this:  If I had been dead and gone, what would have happened to all the work?  Someone else would come along and do it.  God gave me a brain so that I could use wisdom; if I didn’t preserve me, I would have been dead.  I was not going to die from stress and overwork.  I was going to rest. 

The real secret is to learn how to vacate with your mind.  You can physically remove your body and still have all the work in your mind.  In short, you have not vacated. 

There are times I have been on vacation in the Bahamas, floating around in the crystal-clear water, when suddenly it would dawn on me, “I’m the pastor of Crenshaw Christian Center.”  Or I’d be sitting in a fine restaurant being waited on, and suddenly on the inside of me, a thought would come, “What’s happening with the church?”  And then I’d say, “What church? Oh, yeah, Crenshaw.”  I would cast those thoughts out.  I had learned to detach myself. 

Many years ago, I started resting.  I labored to enter into the rest by faith. I had more to do than I had ever dreamed of doing in seven lifetimes.  My wife and I would sit and wonder sometimes why we had so much to do.  It was because God knew we could handle it.  God knew it was not going to hurt us or kill us, because we had learned how to rest. 

I absolutely loved my job, and I would have paid God to let me do it.  That was because I had learned to do my work in His strength.  I had learned how to rest, not to look at circumstances, not to walk by sight, but to walk by faith.
     
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