Keeping the Sabbath

Peace family, how well are you resting? Are you honoring God with a Sabbath?

I’ve been struggling with this lately. Our culture is all business, all the time, but God told us to have at least one day a week in which we rest. Not only does it reflect his own wisdom and example, as he rested on the seventh day after creation, but we have to trust him in order for us to truly rest. Sabbaths are a struggle for me, but they are still one of the Ten Commandments, and we should take them seriously!

So much of our identities come from how we perform, what we do, and what we accomplish on a daily basis. We often even compare and rank our spiritual lives according to all that we do or accomplish, instead of focusing on what God has accomplished for us! We think that the more we do for God, the more he will love us. How sad! This makes it all about us and takes God out of the equation, which is definitely not honoring to him. Many times, we are driven by guilt, fear, or pride, and it can be especially difficult to tell why we are really doing things.

Our bodies need rest. Rest is when our memories are stored, our bodies heal, and our emotions are refreshed. We have to rest and trust that God can keep the world going, that he is still sovereign, and that life will go on, even if we take the time to rest! Hard work is so important, but let’s stop resting when we should be working, and working when we should be resting.

What are some ways that you can make sure you have at least one day this week in which you can focus on God, rest, and just enjoy being alive? What extra work can you fit into the other days, so that you can have at least one day of restoration, refocusing, and relaxation?

No one is perfect, and no one’s “Sabbath” is going to look exactly the same as someone else’s, but let’s keep trying to draw closer to God and obey his commands.