Remember the Sabbath

"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

- Genesis 2:1-3

God has instituted a pattern of work and rest for Christians. This pattern has been in place since the days of Old Testament Israel, where God commanded six days of work with one day of rest.

Although many today see this pattern as obsolete and impractical, it is my belief that if we can implement this in our lives on both a micro and macro scale, it will yield massive benefits for our own souls and bodies, our families, and the society around us.

My goal in this brief post is not to convince you, per se, of the biblical imperative, or command, for a Sabbath rest in your life. I am swinging my hammer at a particular nail, so I don't want to spend my time trying to persuade your conscience that you must take a time of rest in your life, thereby hanging guilt or a feeling of condemnation upon your neck. Instead I want to be exceedingly practical and honest, looking at my own personal life and using some good old fashioned common sense to, prayerfully, give you a sense of freedom and peace in regards to resting from the day-to-day struggles and trials of life.

First, a word about my own life. While I admit that I have not been on as many trips around the sun as some, I have had a front row seat to my own, albeit narrow and limited, reality of burnout and exhaustion, misplaced priorities, and overall lack of biblical rest. From the time I graduated high school, I was in the workforce, laboring day in and day out to provide for both myself and an infant son. Now before you go and think that I am some kind of white knight, a paragon of virtue and sacrifice, much of this was done from a place of selfishness and self-preservation. I also had much in the way of help from friends and family. Additionally, I was, and still am, in a joint custody arrangement with my son's mother, so it wasn't like I was some sitcom single dad. Things were not all gloom and doom and struggle. I did however begin to arrange my life in such a way that was focused on doing rather than being (more on that later) and that attitude was brought into my marriage, which led to more kids and more doing, which culminated in a big crash and burn of exhaustion, sin, and general foolishness. Now, I recognize that my issues were not solvable by simply resting more; no, in many ways, and in many areas, I needed to do much more.

Enter Sabbath rest.

You see for me, as a Western self-proclaimed Christian, I couldn't conceive of a life-style that had intentional times of rest embedded into it, much less a constant and habitual attitude of rest 24/7, 365. These are two important sides of the coin of resting that many of us miss. What I had to learn was that at all times, in every moment, I could rest in the full and final work of Christ on my behalf, the work of reconciling me to God and making me righteous in his sight. I could rest every morning, afternoon, evening, and every moment in between because I knew that I wasn't climbing some stairway to heaven, but that I was already seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). That realization helped give a peace and tranquility to my very soul, something that I had been searching for my whole life. But that wasn't the end of my little work-life reformation. What came next was the necessity for intentional times of rest carved out of my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule.

This is where it gets really practical. What I realized was that with moment by moment resting in Christ, there was a need for larger and more physical periods of rest from the labors of my hands and mind. What I began to do was look for little pockets of time in my life where I could shut off my body and brain, think about God's goodness and love, and just rest for a minute. This may sound silly, but I'm talking showers, dishwashing, dog walking, and daily commutes to work. All throughout our days we have moments of God-given rest that we don't take, largely because our 'do more' culture pressures us to fill all of those little moments with podcasts, emails, texts, phone calls, and general anxieties. But that is precisely where we need to learn how to be, instead of following our natural bent to do. Hear me when I say, God can do more with you, in you, and through you while you rest than he can when you are doing more with no room to rest with him. That is key; those pockets of rest must be rest with him, not zoning out into the mental abyss. As I mentioned before, though, we must also seek out, even plan out, these times of rest in our weekly, monthly, and yearly schedules. Maybe that means taking Sunday seriously. Maybe you tell the kids no sports on Sunday. Maybe you rearrange the commitments you have on one particular day of the week so that you can dedicate that day to doing less and being more, with God and with your family. This probably means preparing, saving, and planning for a yearly vacation. Now I don't mean draining your savings account to go to Bora Bora, because that would be poor stewardship, but it does mean finding somewhere that is fiscally responsible and spiritually enriching to go and rest.

Again, these are not rules, but merely suggestions to help illustrate what I mean by rest. But this is God's idea; he is the one that made it a point to tell us in Genesis 2 that after 6 days of labor, he rested and enjoyed his work. We should take a cue from the Lord and rest as well.

Try this little thought experiment with me before we wrap things up. I want you to sit back, close your eyes, and imagine what a life filled with pockets of God-honoring and God-directed rest would look like. I would be willing to bet that the first things that would come to mind would be all the various things that would cost too much to give up. Then would come the things we call necessity but are actually frivolity. But if you keepp following this line of thought, asking God to help you jettison the unnecessary cargo from the ship, you will start to see things change. Grumpy old dad becomes peaceful and joyous dad. Burnt out and frazzled mom becomes the Proverbs 31 woman she longs to be. Over-stimulated and over-medicated kids become thoughtful and imaginative young men and women. And slowly but surely, this starts to affect the world around you. Your friends and family notice the difference, your church notices the difference, the usual cashier at the grocery store notices the difference, the school teachers notice the difference. All of a sudden you can get a glimpse of how God works through our rest.

Now, with much prayer and wisdom, go do it. Do it for God. Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Do it for the world. That's what we are doing at Kavod Family Ministries. For the entire month of January, we are hitting pause on all of our content production to take an intentional time of rest and rejuvenation as we gear up to give you all so much more in 2025. We love you all, and we want to see families and communities transformed by the Gospel, but for many of us, that transformation begins with a return to godly rest.

“Be still, and know that I am God." - Psalm 46:10