Firewall Rules do not apply until after Firewall reboot

[dfadayomi]

Hello,

I am running PFSENSE 2.4.5 and just noticed that my firewall rules do not apply until after the firewall is rebooted. Is there a way to apply the rules without rebooting?

I searched and found mention that if I killed the firewall states, especially those that apply to the particular hosts I am trying to restrict or permit, The rule should then take effect when the clients try to communicate with each other again.

That hasn't worked for me.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you

Dan