Find Rest

Ex.20: ¹¹ “For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested.”

Find time to rest! This is not a suggestion, it is an instruction. Rest is not the exclusive preserve for a privileged few. If you are a student, resting would mean taking a break from studying and just playing.

If your work is heavy on physical activity, you rest by engaging your mind in mentally stimulating exercises. Play a game of chess or watch a movie. If you are an executive that sits for most of the day in long strategy sessions, you should rest with physical activities – go play golf or play soccer. God wants us to enjoy our rest.

What I am about to share next will really help you if you can understand and practice it. –Here we go: “We do not rest so that we will be able to work, we work so that we will be able to rest!” A lot us are accustomed to thinking that we need to rest so that we can work. That is actually a wrong mindset. You do not rest so that you can work, you work so that you can rest and enjoy your family and, the reason many of us cannot rest is because we have not worked. We are toiling but we have not worked. When we work, rest naturally comes next.

A Jewish writer, Abraham Herschel says, “Sabbath is the climax of living.” You need to find your work in order to find your rest. The reason you cannot find rest even though you are inactive, is because you have not found work. Inactivity is not rest. You can be inactive and be unable to rest. You can be idle and be in the house all day but not rest. You get up even more drained than the person that has been working. The reason is because you need to find your work before you can find your rest. God shares a pattern with us from Scripture.

God does not only want us to rest and enjoy our rest, God wants us to share our rest. Ex.20:¹⁰ “This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you.” God has called us to share the blessing of rest with everyone in our sphere of influence. As an employer, it is your responsibility to make sure your people rest. There are people around you that need rest; help them find rest and God will be glorified. Helping another person find rest, actually glorifies God.

Prayer: Father, thank You for the grace to find work and to find rest, help me identify people around me that I can share this gift of rest with, in Jesus Name. Amen!