Hello Friends, welcome to Sunday2Monday. The place where we say it again!
As my pastor says: Repetition brings revelation!

Springs of Life has been on a journey from the beginning of January 2018 to cultivate a Rhythm of Grace. This Sunday, I felt Pastor Lynn challenged us with this statement in the beginning of the message: Faith has life application. If that is true, then we ought to be living it out. Maybe we don’t know how apply faith to our lives. I find we especially don’t know how to apply rest. Being busy is so ingrained in our lives. We practically wear it like a badge of honor. Busy means not useless or worse, not worthless. The Lord is calling us to something more, something better.

God has given us a gift of rest called the Sabbath. Our Pastor showed us the origin of this gift, saying, “When we know the intent of a gift for us we appreciate what is given to us.“

Genesis 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

God created a day just for the purpose of rest. A blessed, holy, and sanctified day that is different from any other day. Mark 2:27 says, “And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Notice in that scripture the fact that God didn’t make the Sabbath for Himself. It’s for us!  I love how Pastor Lynn connected that the Lord made each of us unique, therefore each of us will have Sabbath rest that is different. It is not a one size fits all. It’s more like snowflakes. No two are alike. For instance, my husband’s day of rest would look a lot like spending the day on an iced over pond fishing. I would rather be hang out in my chair with a heated blanket and a good book. The experience of Sabbath rest is not supposed to be a legalistic thing. Sabbath is about relationship, not ritual. For some, they dismiss Sabbath as some Old Testament thing that is no longer relevant to them. They have never had a true, soul refreshing rest. For others, Sabbath has become ritual. They think it needs to be scheduled or the Lord will not be pleased with them. But that is not what this day of rest is about. It is the day that God has made for us to be renewed. It is a place of promise and provision that God has given to us for our daily life, so that, we have a place, space in our weekly timetabled lives to be reoriented to eternity.

“You were not born for time, you were born for eternity.”

So why is this Sabbath so important? Because we are not human doers. We are human beings! This world’s system and the enemy of our souls is dead set on us being brainwashed into believing that we are slaves and only have lives worth living if we perform and produce. But God, He gave us a promise of rest. Jesus Himself said “Come to Me, I will give you rest!” Do we believe it? It comes down to trust. Do we believe that we can enter rest? In theory we say yes. But we live no, becoming practical atheists. Our lives look like this: Punch a time clock. Get to the next task. Work harder. Do more. Be more efficient. Organize. Reorder. Hurry. How much can we do in a week? It’s exhausting! We are going to have to contend for this rest. We are in a grand wrestling match. We are going to have to confront all the ways we don’t trust God with our lives and why we think rest isn’t possible for us. We were called to be people of rest. If we believe that we are indispensable, thinking, “If I don’t get it done, no one will,” the closer we will come to breakdown in some form or another. We were not made to run without limits.

We will either intentionally pause or God will put us in time out!

– Pastor Lynn

Where do we start? What is the first step in finding a quality Sabbath? Its simple and incredibly hard.

1.    STOP

If we are to have true rest, we must stop! Learn to say no. Put boundaries in your life. Slow down. God wants us to be productive but not self-reliant. He is God and we are not. Slowing down allows us to begin to be a human who is made in the image of God. We will see and feel as He intended us to. Life becomes a delight as the beauty that is all around us comes alive. But first we must stop. Stop making lists. Stop spinning on a million subjects in your mind like you are a channel surfer. Stop pushing through the fatigue to finish a task. Stop. Pause. Learn to rest.

Meet me over at the Watering Hole on Wednesday as we dig a little deeper into what’s behind our fear of stopping Until then….

Thanks for Listening,
Starla

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