Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy…Exodus 20:8-11
As Pete talked last week regarding the fourth commandment…the TEAM TALK around the table was great conversation. Afterwards, I decided to spend a little more time around the question, “How could I use Sunday in a way that would help me and my family to grow spiritually?” So I ask God to help me answer this question and over the last few weeks He has been faithful to give me more clarity. As I thought about the sabbath, the two big ideas I have been considering are…the Sabbath Day is WORSHIP and the Sabbath is REST.
John Mark Comer in his book, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,” says…Sabbath is more than just a day; it’s a way of being in the world. It’s a spirit of restfulness that comes from abiding, from living in the Fathers loving presence all week long. To really enjoy the seventh day we have to slow down the other six.
This quote stopped me in my tracks. If I am going to have Sunday be a day that helps me and my family grow spiritually, I have to begin to look at how I live the other six days of the week. I’m sure of this…we are just too busy during the week. We live in a culture of busyness, hurry, and overload. This makes it much more difficult to live emotionally healthy and spiritually rich and vibrant lives. This way of living cuts off our connection To God…To other people…To our own soul.
We live more restless than restful fueled by a culture of accumulation and accomplishment and this restlessness then fuels hurry…and
-Hurry tends to impede and spoil our work, but rarely makes it better.
-Hurry leads Christians to become more influenced by secular ways of thinking about how to live…which leads to more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry, and overload.
Because these things are true, we must be intentional and energized by Grace to build restfulness into the rhythm of our daily lives. I believe the only way we will really experience the worship of God and the rest He desires for us on the Sabbath is to recognize the reality of hurry in our daily lives and ask God to give us wisdom for what it looks like to build rest into each day.
REST, experiencing Sabbath…IN A DAY and AS A WAY of living is preventative medicine…To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slower, less hurried pace.
Boldly Walking with Forge Men…Kelley
