Troublesome Topic: PRACTICING REST

What it Means to Be a Mature Christ-Follower

So where will we find the deeper truths of the Christian life? Where will we find the meat rather than the milk?

The New Testament doesn’t ever explain what the meat is. Do you find that puzzling? How are we to learn the deeper truths if they are never explained?

I believe God designed things so that growing deeper in Him is a personal, relational experience. The deeper things of the Christian life are not learned with the head but with the heart, therefore they cannot be taught with words. The deeper aspects of the Christian experience are things that the Holy Spirit will teach through obedience, faith and closeness. The Bible’s teaching on rest gets us started in the right direction, but the advanced learning will happen only as we practice rest. In the biblical pattern set by the Law, and continued in the New Covenant, we learn true spirituality through obedience, not through study and analysis.

Think about the heroes of faith who have had books written about them, William Wilberforce, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Hudson Taylor, William Carrey, George Muller, Jonathan Edwards, David Livingstone, John Newton, Francis Asbury, Sadhu Sundar Singh, John Huss, John Wycliffe, Menno Simons, Martin Luther, Billy Graham and many, many others. All of them were men of prayer; the degree to which they enjoyed time in closeness with God is the degree to which they were ministering from an overflow, not from an almost empty tank.

God has placed great potential in each of us, yet we limit that potential by not enjoying enough time with Him. It all starts with our connectedness to Him. Without a strong connection a believer is just trying to survive. Unfortunately, that is where many believers live—the survival mode.

Practice for Heaven

The Jewish rabbis considered rest a foretaste of heaven, and the passage in Hebrews 4 tells us there are greater and better things to come regarding rest.

I can prepare for heaven by focusing on God because it is all about Him and not about me.

I can also practice for heaven by bringing a helpful degree of order to my life. But you may say, “Wait a minute, organizing is hard work, so how does that fit with my day of rest?” Indeed, organizing is work; it is time-consuming, mentally taxing and sometimes dirty, and few of us enjoy doing it.

Here is my suggestion for how to bring order and organization to our lives without doing all that “work” on our day of rest. After you have connected with God, with family, and possibly taken a nap, I suggest you utilize some of your time on your day of rest to evaluate your life and identify the aspects of it that need either major changes, or some basic organizing. Then look at your available time and energy and make a plan you think is realistic. This mental (and spiritual) activity is appropriate on a day of rest. You will not get the organizing done on that day, but you will come up with a clear plan. Without a clear plan you are liable to waste much time running in all directions. Then act on that plan during other days of the week, even if it is doing a little bit each day. The important thing is to keep moving in the right direction.

While we should find ways to bring order to our lives, God does not require us to be neat freaks; going to heaven is not based on neatness or organization. An unhealthy degree of neatness is slavery. We are not to be enslaved by neatness, but God wants us to reflect Him in as many ways as possible, and He is characterized by order, not chaos. God’s creation demonstrates a high degree of order, just look around and you will see order everywhere in creation. Disorder usually comes from lack of attention, breakdown and decay. Heaven will be an orderly place, so start practicing for heaven now.

Conclusion

Because of resting makes connecting with God possible, rest is both the cause and the result, the doing and the receiving, the sowing and the reaping. Rest is both the end, and the means to that end.

It’s no wonder God punished the Israelites for violating the Sabbath! We think it was no big deal because we do it all the time! Such a calloused attitude toward rest is not warranted. Read the prophets and observe the emphasis they placed on Sabbath.

Joyful unity with God is the goal of redemption. Jesus did not suffer and die just so we could escape hell; He suffered, died, was buried, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit in His place so He could have intimate communion with His creation.

On earth we have to make opportunities for “rest,” in heaven it will all be rest, all communion with God, all time enjoyed with God.

We might as well start practicing now!

(The next section in this topical study is called Not Working Produces a Day that is Set Apart – Holy. You can go to the first lesson of that section by clicking on this link: Can I Work on Sunday?)