"Finding Rest in the War" RESCUE RADIO with Marjorie Cole

0:00 I have an emergency, what is your location? Rescue radio, cause there's a war for your soul. Yes, Father God, indeed, the war goes on, but so does your victory. We praise you and thank you, Lord God, that your kingdom come, your will be done, O God on earth, in and through us, as it's being done and declared in heaven.

0:41 We thank you, Father, for the people that you're waking up, Lord God, are coming alive, that are understanding there's something more to this life than what they've been told. And I thank you, Jesus, that you settled and secured our salvation by taking the death sentence on yourself, paying in full the penalty that Satan demanded of us, death, sin, and Satan demanded of us. Lord, thank you for not only sparing us and saving us, but also preparing us and using us and appointing us to do things for you and in regard to your kingdom as it's being brought to this earth. I thank you, Lord, for giving us power over all, the power of the enemy, to bind the spirits of discouragement and despair and defeat and disease and all the rest of the things Satan is trying to do to kill us.

1:28 I thank you, Lord God, you said whoever sins you forgive, they're forgiven. Whatever you bind is bound. And Lord, we thank you, Jesus, that we do take authority over the powers of darkness that have tried to crush our spirits, crush our lives, crush the listeners. We bind and forbid these enemies that have attached themselves to their lives forever to be now exposed and removed by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and the truth of your gospel, Lord God. And we thank you for giving us now eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to rejoice and receive the revelation of hope and peace and freedom. And we also bind the powers of darkness. You said no weapon formed against us will prosper. That no word said, deed done, or action taken will be able to be used by the enemy to bring forth any shame, trouble, or reproach.

2:12 So cover us, keep us, and instruct us now, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. So, you know, there's a lot of people who are struggling with feelings of loneliness and anxiety, all kinds of heavy burdens, all kinds of things that have overtaken our lives, Stephen. And when things seem to even be going okay, there's still so many things that can overtake us. And the word of God is really clear in what that burden of life looks like in Lamentations. You know, in the book of Lamentations, chapter 5, beginning with verse 1, remember, O Lord, what has come upon us. Behold our reproach, or our shame. Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, you know, foreigners.

2:56 Stuff that really belongs to us has now been taken by other entities. And our house to foreigners. We have become orphans and waifs. Our mothers are like widows. Orphan and waif is like just a poor servant. Homeless child. Yeah, basically. Verse 4, we pay for the water we drink, and our wood comes at a price. They pursue at our heels. We labor and have no rest. We labor and have no rest. That's really a picture of what many people are facing these days. Yeah, Jesus in Matthew chapter 11, verse 29, 28, 29, and 30 says, gives us an invitation.

3:40 He says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This concept of rest, freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety, is so foreign to most people, and even most believers. We're anxious, worried, worried about either maybe we've not done it right, not done enough, made God upset, you know. Whatever all it is, we just don't seem to be ever in that place of abiding in his peace. And so we're going to look at that today.

4:20 He said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. In Hebrews chapter 3, he talks to us, he goes back, takes us back to our identity. And he says in verse 4 of 3, for every house is built by someone, but he who built all things is God. And so he's talking about the Lord building us as a house, as a fit habitation for us to dwell in with him, a place for the two of us to dwell. But he says this is contingent, dependent upon if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of this hope firm to the end. So there is going to be a battle over your hope. Despair, defeat, discouragement, setbacks, wilderness journeys, all these things are going to be used by the enemy to test your faith, your endurance, your ability to continue to believe what God says.

5:16 He uses the example of Israel in the wilderness when they'd come out of Egypt and were wandering around. And it says, verse 17 of Hebrews chapter 3, now with whom was he angry 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter into his rest, but those that did not obey? So we say that they could not enter in because of unbelief. So there was a resistance to God, which God was promising them rest, a place of a life of refreshing and peace, but they didn't have it because they were in almost a constant fear, unbelief.

6:08 So the unbelief became the barrier to entering into the rest of God. The fear, the unbelief, the what ifs, the oh noes. And then he goes on to say in verse 12 of Hebrews 3, he says, beware, brethren. So be aware. There's something to be concerned about here. Lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departure So there's a tendency, there's a fear, there's a danger of departing from the faith of God. Departing from the promises of God. Whose report are you going to believe? Are you going to believe what God says or what the devil says?

6:48 We're in a tremendous conflict because Satan has set everything up in this world to sustain his narrative. His narrative of it's up to you, it's up to you to take care of yourself. No one else really cares about you. You've got a dog eat dog kind of fight your way through everything. And he really kind of tries to silence the words of God's comfort and creating that barrier through unbelief and fear and departing from the living God. It's interesting. Doubt is more like, okay, I want to believe, but I'm not sure if I can. Like the man that had the son, the epileptic son, he says, I believe, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. He confessed his doubt. He says, I believe, but there's some doubt here. Unbelief is more like, I'm not going to believe. I refuse to believe. I will not believe.

7:44 Well, and it's, I think our faith is eroded away by the everyday circumstances of life. And we don't really rebuild our faith through the word of God or through meditating on the word of God or speaking it or in our own hearts or in our conversations. But he says, beware, lest an evil heart of unbelief bring forth the deceitfulness of sin. So the more we live in this place of sin or feeling alienated and separated from God, the more that creates a deceitfulness or deception that hardens us. He says, so what is this deceitfulness of sin?

8:28 What does it do to close off our hope, our freedom? What is this sin that separates us from the love of God? Well, anything really that separates us from the love of God and his blessing is sin. Sin produces that separation. It cuts us off. And when you're feeling cut off, then you're going to feel abandoned and alone and anxious. These are just absolute, that's going to be the byproduct of being cut off from God. And that's the devil's whole thing is to cut us off from God's peace and from his love. And so therefore we end up carrying these heavy burdens of life ourselves. Now, what are these burdens? Well, it can be a sickness. It can be infirmity. It can be someone else's sickness or infirmity. It can be the loss of a child. It can be financial hardships. It can be a breakup.

9:12 It can be a broken marriage. We carry the trying to do life by ourselves. This is the problem. We try to do life by ourselves to prove that we can do it. And this is what the world promotes. It's up to you. Take control. Make your decisions. All these kinds of things. They throw on us the impossible task of living our lives by ourselves. And then they shame us and scoff at us for trying to do it because it doesn't work. We end up then in their institutions, in their hospitals, in their recovery programs, whatever all that looks like. And it just becomes a vicious recycling program. So trying to do life by ourselves carries with it a certain heaviness. Jesus is talking about, come unto me. Come unto me. How do we do that?

10:00 Because otherwise that heaviness, that fear is going to open the door to trouble and sadness. But Jesus says rest and release comes from identifying the deceitfulness of sin. He says we have to recognize that before you can fix a problem, you have to realize you have a problem. Yeah. Well, sin promises what it doesn't pay. In other words, it promises you go this way, you live in anger or bitterness, you'll get revenge. You live in lust, you'll have pleasure. You'll have love.

10:40 And it goes on and on. But sin is deceitful. This is why people go for it. They think sin is the way to go. Because it's an immediate gratification of something. And it's very deceptive because you don't see that at the onset. You use that remedy, whatever Satan offers you, and you have this instant relief from the anxiety or the fear or the moment. It's like the lure for the fish. It looks good. You don't realize there's a hook in it. Instead of getting lunch, you end up in a frying pan for somebody's lunch.

11:24 Again, without guidance, without the word of God, we're trying to figure our life out on our own or with the advice of institutions and people that are not dedicated to God or interested in God. We're trying to figure out our life and so we become surrounded by all kinds of things that don't work. And we don't even realize there is One, the One, who gave us our life in the first place, who created us, who called us, invited us to come and follow Him. We miss the invitation because we're so busy, frantically trying to fix everything and do it ourselves and do it right.

12:04 And so what happens is that burden, that heavy burden of life and hopelessness and despair and abuse and entrapment and sorrow builds up. It builds up in our life and pretty soon we're just buried underneath all of this until we can hardly find a place to surrender because surrender is actually the key. Surrendering to God is not giving up to the devil and killing yourself, but surrendering to God is actually the key to release from trying to do it ourselves. Well, God established the Sabbath day. He says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

12:44 So He knows that we need physical rest. He knows that we need that time of refreshing. But the thing is, if you think of what the Jewish religion did back in the day, they made all kinds of rules about the Sabbath. They worked hard to produce a whole bunch of rules about what you're supposed to do when you're resting. And Jesus said, listen, you got it all backwards. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So when He came along, Jesus came along, He was there to straighten that whole thing out. And basically, we're not just saying, okay, you can just hang out and rest and be lazy and take naps one day a week, that sort of thing. But He's talking about something much deeper.

13:40 A deeper rest, abiding rest. Jesus says, I'm the vine, abide in me. And this is where our strength comes, our nourishment, our energy, our vision, our anointing, our direction. It all comes from the vine. But if you're not connected to the vine, then you're still on your own. So surrendering to God's will means we have to surrender to lay down our own will, our own ideas, the things we were born to believe or taught to believe. And so surrendering to God's will is not defeat. It is victory. Continuing to go on in rebellion and distrust and unbelief and doing it myself and concerned about what others are going to think and all of this that God is not for us. When life gets hard to begin, when it begins to collapse around us, our temptation is to prove I'm right and try harder or completely give up. But Matthew 11, 29 says Jesus says, don't do that. He says, come to me.

14:40 Come unto me. So the first step to freedom and rest is to step down from what we're trying to do ourselves and step into God's divine destiny and purpose for our lives for which you were created. So finding your identity and your purpose and to stop taking your direction from all kinds of spirits of fear that dwelt within us and all around us. Those demons are not only around us, they are actually orchestrating their plots to take us down from within us. The spirit of fear, the spirit of the programming, the unbelief, the bitterness, the injustices. All of these things that we've experienced are all Satan's plan to build his case against our hope and take us down and cause us to go into that place of despair and defeat.

15:28 Yeah, and really rest. You want to get a lot done, rest. Some people, you know, we get so hyped up about certain things. And the thing is, with this rest that the Lord's talking about, it's talking about unabiding, hanging out. Paul recognized that. He said, I was more labored more abundantly than all the others. And first Corinthians 1510, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all yet. Not I, but the grace of God, which was with me. So he's saying we have to work harder than anybody else. But we have to choose. It was grace that was there. There was a rest thing.

16:16 Sometimes we're so used to you have to get all hyped up to certain things. The way to accomplish great things in the kingdom of God is to rest. That doesn't mean you're lazy. It just means you let go. And it also might mean to defeat or cast out that spirit of drivenness, that spirit of fear, that spirit of condemnation, guilt, shame, that's always pressing you to prove your worth, to prove you know what you're doing. So that evil heart of unbelief is trying to take over your spirit. So our heart is full of fear. The Bible says, Jeremiah, the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So what many people are living by, following their heart, trying to be true to their heart, trying to hear what their heart is wanting.

17:04 But we really can't go there because the heart is deceitful. It's going to pull you into that place of torment and feelings like you're failing or like you have to try harder. And so ultimately, the evil heart of unbelief is really trying to suffocate us with defeat and death. So we must recognize that as a spirit and cast it out because otherwise it's going to be, it's me. I should do something. It's me. We're putting all this blame, all of this expectation on me and me is not I am. I am a little I am of the great I am. But Satan reinterprets the failure, the anxiety, the loneliness to being my responsibility. And so therefore he gives me lots of jobs to do to make it fix it and make it go away. And what it really does is it just keeps that vicious cycle going round and round. Yeah. And God never called us to be purpose driven. He called us to be spirit led, to hang out, to abide in Jesus and to be led by his spirit. And the thing is, too, is you know, on the cross, it was finished. Jesus said it is finished. The price has been paid. We're coming to believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ. That's the process, too. You know, I mean, it's a revelation, but it's also a process of laying down your own life and letting Jesus Christ finish the work in us. That's part of the rest. There it is

18:36 because we're not striving to earn salvation or make our salvation better. Jesus. And sometimes this is just very, this is very close quarters here. You can be saying, you know, I want to grow in, Lyle says to grow in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We're growing, we're moving, we're developing. God's enlarging our capacity for him and for service. At the same time we're resting. At the same time. It's like a little child who is growing. He's growing bigger and stronger and eating his yummy food and having birthdays. But he's in the process of growing stronger. He's also being.

19:20 He's breathing. He's believing. He's not striving to grow. He is just being. And through that being, the process of growth happens. I think the same is true of us. We need to, we want to understand that the coming to that place of surrender often comes, there's a hard place that we come to before we surrender. It may have been a very difficult journey, a crisis, a calamity, whatever it might be. And that can turn you, that calamity can turn you bitter against God or it can bring you closer to God. So it just depends on how you're going to respond to this thing. Is it going to bring you closer to God or destroy you?

20:00 And so a lot of people don't realize that there is an innate rebellion and resistance and we could call it fear or a desire to become afraid, turn back, to become, you know, to the weak, go back to the weak and beggarly elements of the world and its solutions instead of going forward and moving forward in God. So coming to the end of ourselves is actually a good thing if we surrender. We can be trapped with no money to make it, no one left to help us. We're in a corner, backed up against a wall. But at some point, at any point along that process or that downward spiral, at any point, if you ask God for help, he will help you in the most remarkable and tremendous ways.

20:56 And basically rest, this rest, it's a peace that comes when we just surrender our fears to the Lord. Because this is what it is, surrendering our fear of failure, surrendering our fear of what's not working. And what happens is that when we surrender our fears to him and he delivers us, the Bible says, the psalmist said, I sought the Lord and he heard me and he delivered me from all my fears. And what comes there once you do that is the peace of God. Well, you know, it's really interesting that we all start out in very different places in the snake pit. Some people have advantage, it would appear. And some people are born on the deep end of the snake pit where it's abandoned, no parents in the whole nine yards. But, you know, it doesn't matter in a way how you got to that place where you are.

21:52 Whether it's through family of origin or placement in the snake pit, it's the same invitation for all of us. There's, you know, come unto me. Come, believe, know the truth, know that God has never left us, that he's all about bringing us back to the place of crossing over. We are crossing over from Egypt into the promised land. That's what this whole life is. It's about crossing over and leaving behind the things that Satan says are going to be your friend and help you and believing what God says, even though at the time we're making those decisions, there may be no apparent blessing or fruit in what we're doing except simply that we're obeying God and obedience to God brings blessing. So if we're caught in the wilderness of bitterness, I think that's a big one. Bitterness. Bitter against God. Where was God? How come God didn't help me? Why did God let all this happen? When we don't understand the chasing of the Lord, it becomes a bitterness that Satan uses then to tempt us to go into a place of double-mindedness and go back to doing it on our own. And so we look for all the false comforts and the enchantments.

23:04 There's a lot of places Satan has provided for us to escape and hang out until he gets around to offering us the suicide pill or whatever it is. There's a world full of false promises and fake reality out there that Satan is just waiting to introduce you to. The only way, what do we do? We go back to the Word of God. We go back to the promises. Lay hold of the promises of God. God wants the promises to enter into His rest and never leave us or forsake us. This brings glory to God. In a lot of ways, it's like dying.

23:44 I've got to die to this world, give up my struggle and then enter into the rest of God. Yeah, he says in Matthew 11, 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Take my yoke upon you. We pretty much all know what a yoke is, like a yoke of oxen. It's this wooden thing. They're hooked together where they used to plow and still do in a lot of countries. When you said take my yoke upon you, he's talking about like teachers did. In other words, if you were going to be the follower of a particular teacher, it was described as taking their yoke upon you. In other words, you're committing yourself to learn from them. That's what he's saying. You're becoming my student. What we're called to be students of Jesus. And Jesus said that's not hard.

24:48 It's actually easier to follow Jesus and do what he said and let him do the heavy lifting than to make it all happen yourself because we're not going to make it happen. We're going to fall apart. But one of the bigger things, though, is to let go of the pride, the fear, the lies, let go of the influences of the evil one, let go of the expectations of other people and the bondages that we've been brought into because of those expectations. And somehow we're used to doing what we do and we're defending what we do because we think it's us when in fact it's just the enemy deceiving us. And we've been programmed. And that programming has been running almost every aspect of our life since our first breath. And we do not understand that. We do not understand that this spiritual war between God and Satan is for everything. It's fought on every level for what? For you. For you to become either the victim of Satan or the son of God.

25:48 And so when we enter into the promise of his rest, his revelation, his peace, his embrace, we need to know that God is good all the time and we must come back to our own true identity as sons and daughters of God made in the image of God from the beginning of our creation, that he has known us and has chosen us for himself. But he had to let go of us. He made us and then he had to give us a free will to reject him if we so choose because he's not going to force us or anyone else just like he gave Lucifer the option of whether he wanted to be Lucifer the morning star or if he wanted to be whatever. And Lucifer said, I want to be God. And so every angel, every star, every son and daughter of God gets to choose whether they want to be who God has created them to be. And many, when you reject your own identity, you reject your origin, you reject your destiny, then you're living in a no man's land of fear, stress, anxiety, and all you can do at that point is hope you can find some demonic false comfort to get you to the next day. But it's not going to work for long. And so, again, knowing the love of God is how we can take that yoke. Because Jesus said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. So if you're carrying a heavy backpack, whether it's condemnation or guilt or shame or not knowing you're loved or whatever it is, that backpack doesn't belong to you. It belongs to Jesus. He said, my yoke is easy.

27:16 Follow me. So, again, some of us might need to sit down, lay down, let go of, let the Lord take those backpacks off of our lives so that we can walk in the rest and the peace and the love and the grace of knowing that it's going to be okay, I'm okay, I am loved, God is here. That kind of reason. Yeah, this rest comes about because we're trusting in his person and who he is. We're trusting in his power, we're trusting in his provision that he's going to provide for us. And it's a peace. This rest is a peace that comes to us when we surrender everything to him. And it's a security. This rest is like a security due to our awareness of his love for us, his presence with us, his protection over us, and his power to us and through us. It's knowing we're loved.

28:20 It's knowing we're not alone. God is with us. And all things, Romans 8, 28, work together for good to those who love God. Knowing those things gives you courage to enter into that place of rest in the midst of the storm. We see the storms are just brewing and raging and just on the horizon, just under the surface, just all around us, ready to close in on every level. But know this, that God also is in control of all of these things that are terrifying us. And we can let God be God. And we can thank him, be grateful, thank him, and walk in the place he's provided for us, which is a place of safety and rest while he does what he needs to do to deal with this world. So that is our recommendation and our advice to you.

29:08 And this is what the Lord says in Philippians. Philippians 4, 6, and 7, But in everything by prayer and supplication, supplication is specific requests. With thanksgiving, being thankful, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. In other words, there's peace that's beyond anything you can reason or figure out. You've got it. Well, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. The peace of God which surpasses all understanding. You're in the midst of a situation that's very difficult, very crazy, but you have a peace of God.

29:52 You have a surrender. You have a rest there. And it's a matter of just releasing. Sometimes it's so hard. We want to carry all this stuff, Margie. We want to carry bitterness, carry our fears, carry our anxieties, carry our problems. Well, he said, come to me. Drop your stuff off at me. Drop all your junk off at my doorstep, and he'll give us that rest. So, Lord, we ask that you would lift these heavy religious burdens, these relational burdens, these issues of health, confusions, conundrums, lack of finances, all these things that Satan is using to try to push us into the wall.

30:36 We just give them to you. We let you take them, Lord. We surrender them. We lay them down. We don't even try to pick them up and carry them anymore. We thank you, Father, for giving us that extra strength, that reassurance, the revelation of your love and truth that you are with us, that you will never leave us or forsake us, that it is well with my soul, Father, that you will pour that spirit of revelation and peace upon your people, even as you are preparing us, Lord God, for your return, that we will keep our eyes on you, our hearts fixed on you, and you will keep us, Lord, as the apple of your eye, that we will not be afraid and that we will know that we are loved by you, Father God, in Jesus' name, amen.

31:20 Amen. Amen. Well, you've got a lot of materials, a lot of books. Yeah, we do. You know, doing relationships God's way, so much of our stress and anxiety and lack of rest is because of strained relationships with ourselves, with God, and with other people. Yeah, difficult people, relationship with men, but the relationships all come out or spring out of your relationship with yourself. Do you love yourself? Do you like yourself? Have you followed Jesus or are you trying to do it yourself? The stress, the bitterness, the injustices, all of these things, health issues, they all come out of the peace or lack thereof that we have in our relationships with ourselves, with God and others. And so, yeah, you can get that book on Amazon.com or recovery.com. And we encourage you also to go to Life Recovery to our store.

32:16 There's a lot of things in the store that aren't on Amazon, like our MP3s that have to do with MP3s, like Why Can't I Concentrate?, which has to do with the deaf and dumb spirit or When Life's Not Fair or The Keys to the Kingdom. Or Why Do I Keep Singing? Yeah, and Why Do Bad Things Keep Happening to Me? All of these things are on our website as MP3s and they can be downloaded. You can put them on your phone and listen to them on the way to work. So we encourage you to check that out. LifeRecovery.com and those are very, very reasonably priced. I mean, it's like two, three bucks for an hour of teaching. And it's good stuff and you need good stuff. You need to keep pumping good stuff into you because everything around us is pretty much not good.

33:04 And so, blessings to you all and we will look forward to seeing you, speaking with you, sharing with you again next time. Because there's a war for your soul.