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Why do we need Sabbath rest?
Let’s face it. We all lead super busy lives. Between work hours, family responsibilities, extracurricular activities, and even church activities. Many of us are running on overdrive! It seems that we live in perpetual motion and never have time to just ‘be,’ let alone focus on hearing God’s voice in our lives. We think we’re too busy for sabbath rest!
Small Church Leaders & Volunteers Need Sabbath
That’s why making your Sabbath Rest is such a priority. God knows the importance of it. He created it, now we just need to follow His lead!
Don’t you just love how practical our God is? Right from the very start in the Garden of Eden, He modeled the example of sabbath rest. He worked/created for six days, and then He rested on the Sabbath. He took rest to show us three things:
- Rest is important for our bodies.
- Refreshment is important for our minds.
- Renewal of relationships is vital for our emotional well-being.
The Sabbath Is A Gift From God
The commands and outlines for holy living our Lord gives us are intended for our best. We are His created masterpieces, and He knows exactly what we need in all things, physical, mental, and emotional. He not only desires to give us life but that we may have that life to the full!
The commands we find in His Word were created for our good. God desires to help us live a godly and blessed life. He demonstrates His love for us in the way He shows us to live! The Bible assures us, “By His divine power, He has given us everything we need for living a godly life…” (2 Peter 1:3)
The Sabbath is a special gift from our Father. He included it in the Ten Commandments and encouraged the Israelites to make it part of their lives, to observe it, and to keep it holy. He asked them to hand it down from generation to generation. It was important. Jesus modeled it to His disciples in His time here on earth as well.
As I think about it, there is a certain sweetness of God’s Sabbath rest we all should appreciate, a true gift! It’s an important key to living a rich, godly life.
Include In Your Sabbath Times
- Special time set apart for your personal rest
- Time of refreshment and refocus for your mind
- Moments for renewing relationships, including those we have neglected or wronged
- Opportunity for connecting and renewing our relationship with our Lord.
Sabbath Gives Times For Physical Rest
Just as God the Father modeled rest right from the beginning, Jesus also modeled this for us during His earthly ministry. On numerous occasions, after Jesus spent time ministering to others, He went away by Himself to rest and pray.
Then when He returned, He was ready to pour more of Himself into people again. We can trace this pattern of behavior throughout the Gospels.
Jesus Knew This Was Necessary
- Rest for His human body to keep going physically
- Refreshing for His spiritual connection with His Father.
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” (Mark 1:35)
The Oxford Dictionary defines rest: To cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself, or recover strength.
Our Savior calls us to be His disciples and to learn from His ways. He desires many things for us and from us. Yet, He never wants us to be overcome with the weight of ministry or burnt out.
In fact, the Bible tells us in Matthew 11, “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (verses 28-29)
Don’t you just love that? Jesus doesn’t just offer us rest. He models for us exactly how to rest! It’s right there.
How To Find Rest For Your Soul
You will find rest for your souls. Find Rest By Coming To Jesus. Jesus said, “Come to me.” By keeping your times of Sabbath rest a priority and seeking Him, He, in turn, gives us what we need for our bodies: the ability to relax, refresh, and recover our strength so we can once again be about our Father’s business!!
Read the story of How a Reluctant Pastor’s Wife Found Real Sabbath! It was a lesson that saved their ministry.
Having A Sabbath Can Refresh Your Mind
Did you know constant stress can actually affect our physical health?
Stress can cause:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Digestive problems
- Headaches
- Muscle tension and pain
- Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, and stroke
- Sleep problems
- Weight gain
God Gives Us The Solution
Our bodies are not made to live in hyper-stress mode!! God knows this, and that’s why He provides us with the solution we need to refresh our minds. God created the Sabbath as a way for us to slow down, to draw our hearts and eyes to Him, and thus, be refreshed!
So how do we accomplish this? God gave us simple instructions–we can find the key to the gift of Sabbath refreshment in James 4:8a (NKJ) “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”
I think it’s possible to find moments of Sabbath rest every day when we intentionally seek Him out. As we take time to seek God’s face, focus on His Words, and quiet our souls before Him, we see He promises to draw near to us!
The Book of Isaiah (26:3) reminds us, “You (Lord) keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
Did you catch that? Our minds can be at perfect peace. There is no better refreshment! No worry, no anxiety, no rushing thoughts or panicked impulses. Just perfect peace! Only our awesome Creator can bring us that kind of mind refreshment!
Renewal Of Relationships
When we are running on ‘empty’ in our physical and spiritual gas tanks it’s easy to start to neglect things we need to thrive.
- Proper nutrition
- Rest
- Connections with family & friends
- Regular times of prayer & worship
God blesses us with so many gifts while we are on this journey on earth. These are all for our good and help us in our daily walk with Him and our service to Him. One of those gifts is the blessing of relationships, friends, and family to share this life with. People who support, inspire, and encourage us here on earth. God knows it is necessary for our emotional well-being! Jesus modeled that with His own inner circle of friends.
“The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.” (Proverbs 27:9)
However, if we are not making Sabbath rest a priority in our lives we can lose and neglect those connections. Part of the practice of the Sabbath is drawing from that well of relationship God has given us. Getting filled with His love and kindness so we, in turn, can give that to others.
God desires what is best for us, and He brings us special relationships in each season of life as we need them. As we are renewed emotionally in Sabbath rest, we can take that refreshing and renew those relationships with others whom we may have neglected.
Am I Too Busy For God?
You may have heard the comment, ”Sometimes I am so busy working for God, I’m not spending any time with God.”
It’s sad but true. Sometimes we get so busy in the ministry with church events, outreaches, teaching, attending, and doing all the ‘things’ at church, that we are not spending any quality time with God! It’s hard to imagine you can be in a church building for hours a week and never take a moment to just sit before your Lord. Jesus praised Mary for desiring to sit at his feet and to connect with Him as opposed to doing the busyness around Him.
The most important part of your Sabbath rest is spending time with God, listening to His heart, worshiping, praying, and just being with Him.
Leaders In Small Churches Need A Sabbath
The following question is great for self-examination before adding any new activity to your schedule.
Does this busyness or activity level deepen my relationship with Christ, feed my soul, and bring me into such intimacy with God I could weep, or will it just make me busier?
Read this testimony from someone who experienced the effects of ‘busyness for God.’
“I continued to get more involved at church, I was busier than ever. “However, I didn’t really feel that my relationship with God was going deeper. I was spending less and less time in the Word, and my prayer life was perfunctory “check-list” style…I wasn’t estranged from God, but I was relating with Him more as an acquaintance than my ABBA.”
These thoughts are from Small Church Ministry Specialist Amy Satterfield, as she went through a journey of discovering how much she needed to be resting in her Savior and participating in Sabbath rest to renew her relationship with Him. A Story of Unintended Sabbath tells the rest of her story.
Take The Gift & Prioritize Your Sabbath
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” God’s Rest was made for us, and as we make it a priority in our lives, we can then serve the Lord with passion. We can serve from what we receive in Sabbath, and not from how we work for it!
Robert Morris, the author of Take the Day Off, says, “Sabbath rest is a gift God has instructed you to give yourself so you can be His healthy, productive, long-lived representative to a broken world, and accomplish everything He put you on this earth to do.” Amen. Who’s ready to serve with that kind of refueling?
Make your Sabbath rest a priority. Take time to ‘be still’ and be reminded of who God is, the wonders of His creation, His goodness, comfort, and His amazing grace.” God’s delight is to provide rest if we choose to say, “Yes, I will.”
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