rest is a good thing.

Do you ever get caught up in the craziness + busyness of life and find yourself having the hardest time to slow down for even the quickest second to take a deep breath???

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the word rest & what God intends for us with this word. Over and over in the Old Testament, God highlights the importance of the Sabbath and it being a day of rest. Reading this, I’ve found myself questioning where in history we lost the importance and meaning behind this intended holy day the Lord created. We live in a world full of constant motion and sometimes it’s quite difficult to break away from this whirlwind of busyness to stop and simply rest.

First semester isn’t even over yet, but guess what!? this is already something I’m struggling with again. As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, the difficulty I find in slowing down and allowing myself to rest is something I am still working on!! The Lord always does this sweet thing for me where whenever I push myself too hard and don’t rest He says “okay blake really...ya know better than that...I’m trying to help you learn here” & next thing you know, I find myself sick to the point where I have to force myself to slow down, rest, and allow my body to recover.

Why is it that I have such a hard time doing this on my own? Something I’ve felt convicted of lately is that the Lord desires rest for us & that is something I don’t prioritize for myself.

The Ten Commandments made resting on the Sabbath a requirement of the Law. God said “remember the Sabbath day” and “on it you shall not do any work” (Exodus 20:8-10). It is written in God’s commandments that we are to rest, relax, and take a break from the craziness we experience in our typical day to day life.

So what is the Sabbath? How can we practice it? And what does Sabbath specifically look like to you?

This topic of rest, Sabbath, and the questions above are all reoccurring things I have found myself stumbling upon in conversations with others recently. For real though...almost every person I have talked to lately, the idea of rest and Sabbath somehow always seems to come up! I think the Lord has been allowing these conversations to arise, giving me a chance to truly consider what rest looks like in my own life. It’s also been a really cool thing to hear how my friends and people around me rest and practice the Sabbath in their own ways.

At the beginning of this school year, I was at a club meeting one night when a freshman asked a senior how she finds rest in the busyness of classes, clubs, studying, socializing, and the other things that we find ourselves trying to balance as everyday college students. What she responded with was something that stuck with me and truly impacted my view of the Sabbath. She told her that rest is something that, even as a senior, she still struggles to find. She said she’s the type of person that likes to always be doing something and she will therefore constantly make plans for herself. She went on to tell us how the idea of Sabbath was something she had struggled with for the past few years because she thought practicing Sabbath meant taking your entire Sunday or another day of your week to sit and do nothing. She shared how in the past few years of college; however, she found this to not necessarily be the case.

Sabbath is defined as “Sunday observed among Christians as a day of rest and worship”, but it’s also simply defined as “a time of rest”. Yes, God did create the Sabbath on the seventh day of creation to represent a day of rest, but the Sabbath can be practiced differently among different people. I believe God intends for the focus to be rest.

Resting in Him.

Back to the girl at that meeting, she said the reason she had always struggled with the idea of the Sabbath was because she couldn’t imagine spending an entire Sunday doing absolutely nothing, especially being in school and knowing you have things you could get done for the upcoming week. However, she finally reached the point where she felt so burnt out and tired, that she craved some type of rest. Someone suggested to her that she start with just one hour of her week. One hour “planned” and “scheduled” into her calendar every week, at the same time, and on the same day. By doing this, she would be intentionally setting aside time every week to make sure she was at least giving herself an hour of intentional rest. She shared how she also came to learn that this one hour doesn't have to be spent sitting in silence with Jesus. Yes, this is a great option and rest can be done in this way, but she found that this hour could be spent doing anything she desired to do, if it would bring her rest. She told us that this hour of time she set aside for herself every week became a time she so desperately looked forward to because not only did it fill her with energy and give her a chance to slow down, but it also provided her with a time to do something she wanted to do, out of the ordinary. Whether it was journal, paint, read a book, spend time in God’s word, she found this quiet time, where she separated herself from the busyness of the world, others, and her typical day to day schedule to be such a special time to do something out of the norm.

After hearing this, I thought this was the perfect place to start with my journey of truly beginning to intentionally practice rest and the idea of the Sabbath. If you’re like me and find it hard to find time to rest, this first step of dedicating just an hour of your week is the best way to start. I started doing this this semester and it has been the most beautiful opportunity to do something that is outside the norm of my ordinary schedule. I have found that being intentional about spending this time with Jesus, in whatever way I feel like it each week, is becoming such a sweet, sweet time. And as I expected, getting just a glimpse of what it feels like to truly experience some rest, is making me crave even more of this time!!! Now the idea of devoting even more than an hour of my week to spend time resting with God sounds so refreshing!

So for those of you that struggle to find time to rest or those of you that couldn’t even begin to imagine dedicating an entire day to Sabbath, I encourage you to start here. Start with an hour of your week. And don’t just say you’re going to do it. Pull out your calendar and schedule right now. Find a time, every week, where you have nothing going on. You may have just read that and thought “but I always have something going on”. Well, I thought that too, but an hour is an hour and I can almost guarantee that you can find that time whether it’s in between classes, in the afternoon, or before bed one night. We all have one hour in our entire week.

And like I said, once you start practicing Sabbath and resting in this way, you’ll suddenly begin to desire even more rest, beyond this hour!!! You’ll find that this time, where you are escaping somewhere to spend quiet time with just you & Jesus is such an incredible gift. It is here that the Lord will meet you in the unordinary and fill you with his overwhelming sense of strength, peace, motivation, and energy. He is the only one that can constantly refuel us and when we find ourselves out of breath, running from one thing to the next, our God is always there to grab hold of us & breathe life back into us

to give us the strength we need to keep going.

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint”

Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest”

Practicing and acknowledging the Sabbath is a beautiful thing because it is a form of worship and a reflection of our understanding that our lives are not defined by work and busyness. Partaking in Sabbath and resting is a visible testimony of us placing God at the center of our life. It is a statement to ourselves that there is more to life than simply producing and consuming. There is more to our identity than simply who we are because of what we do or produce. Sabbath is a reminder that we should depend on God for all things and He will bring provision. For me, the Sabbath is humbling because it reminds me that works and doing are never more important than serving and relying on our God.

So what I’ve been learning recently is that rest is a good thing. We need it. Our minds need it. Our bodies need it. It’s such a comforting thing to know that the Lord offers us rest and wants us to escape the busyness of the world to find this peace in Him.

Here’s another crazy thing to think about. Looking at Genesis 2:2-3 it says, “by the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done”. Y’all!!!! GOD RESTED. He needed rest too. Realizing this blows my mind because it reminds me of just how important rest truly is! Even our Father, the Creator of Heaven & Earth, the One who has an everlasting abundance of strength and power….even He needed rest.

Sabbath and resting with Jesus brings real refreshment. Try it. You won’t be disappointed.

Love y’all & as always thanks for reading!!!

xoxo,

b.