This week's post by Brandon Adent, a deacon at Redeemer Church. He loves words, music, and words about music. And napping.

I love and hate summer.

I love that it’s warm and not hot. I love that people seem to get social all of a sudden, making up for all the time we spent binging on Netflix in January.

But I hate that it’s only July, and I’m wiped out. Our calendar says we’ll be gone the next three weekends. That’s fine with me; I just want sleep, to completely unplug from life in my normal environment and dive into a mountain paper and words. Just for a little bit.

Rest and Community

There’s a time for that. God built the need for rest into the DNA of creation (Genesis 2.1-3, Exodus 20.8-11), and it’s important to recognize that we are finite beings with constraints on our energy and time. We need rest, in the form of days off, vacations, and free evenings. Sometimes, we see Sunday services and small midweek gatherings as impediments to rest. And sometimes they are.

But, at the same time, God has made us family. He knows that we also need one another and as a result places a high importance on meeting together (Hebrews 10.25, for example). However, we often forget our church families or the implications of our absence when we plan for time away.

I’m not at all saying we shouldn’t take vacations, or that we shouldn’t ever miss a Sunday gathering. Again, God knows we need periods of rest, and sometimes that looks like time away and unplugged.

Staying Connected

Even if we’re going to be away for awhile, it’s possible - and important - to stay connected with what’s going on in your church community. That takes a bunch of different forms:

• Pray for everyone serving on a Sunday, for visitors, and for the needs of members of the church.
• Listen to the sermons that you miss. You can find those on the website, or on iTunes.
• Keep in touch with other people in the church to make sure you are aware of how you can be praying for them, and how they can be praying for you. If you’re in town midweek, don’t skimp on meeting if you can help it. (I say this as one often guilty of the “prep skip”).
• Check your notification settings on the City to make sure you’re aware of what’s going on in the ministries you serve in, and contribute to the discussion if you can. (This is specific to Redeemer. If you are part of Redeemer, are not on the City, and want to be, send us an email at info@redeemernw.org, and we’ll get you squared away).

Again, by all means, if you need to unplug completely, do it. Personally, I love camping way outside cell phone range, or just turning my phone off altogether. It just gives my mind a break from all the noise.

Even without being connected by the web, we can still be connected to the life of the church by praying for services and the needs of the people we know.

Ultimately, Jesus struck this balance between rest and engagement flawlessly. We have perfect rest and community in Him, so we don’t have to be afraid or despair the repercussions of our failure.

This definitely is not a call to skip vacation, just a reminder to remember your church while you are vacationing.

This week’s post is by Brandon Adent, a deacon at Redeemer Church. He likes music, words, and words about music.

Easter morning I showed up for rehearsal feeling less than stellar, and left feeling even less so.

Exhausted, I lay on the couch, and hardly got up for a week.

I don’t get sick easily; it’d been probably seven years since I’d had the flu, and probably three since I’d had to take multiple days off from work. Maybe both of those numbers are normal, maybe they’re high, maybe they’re low. No matter, when Tuesday showed up, they both reset to zero, and the timing felt absolutely the worst.

Really, anytime is the worst, but this was bad. There wasn’t really anything of utmost importance I would miss, nothing that couldn’t be rescheduled, anyway.

But after several months of stalemate, I was at long last beginning to see progress in a couple of different areas, finally starting to feel productive, to see progress, to get back into a rhythm. I was exhausted from spinning my wheels in the sand, but at least I was moving again.

Yeah, no more. For the next week, I did nothing but toss and turn, whimper and puke. In all honestly, I didn’t probably have it that bad. But it felt bad. I felt bad.

And as I sat there wanting nothing but the Second Coming of Christ, I couldn’t help but ask God what I had done to deserve this.

Lay Down, Little Sheepy

Some time ago, someone pointed out to me the particular phrasing of the first couple verses of the well known Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul

He makes me lie down.

At least for my soul, that sounds a lot like this:

Okay, little sheepy, this is a good spot. Take a minute and lay down. No… stop here, don’t keep going. Stop. Okay, c’mon bud, get down. No, all the way… all the way; no, I said DOWN, not up.

LITTLE BUDDY: LAY. DOWN.

DOWN. NOW.

*sickness or injury ensue*

At first glance, this sort of thing seems a bit vindictive or something, but it's actually the opposite.

While Psalm 23 may or may not be a direct reference to the biblical concept of Sabbath rest, I can’t help but see the parallels.

Needing Rest

We need rest; it’s hardwired into creation; even before the Fall, there was rest. In fact, God Himself rested and set that day apart (Gen 2.1-3), not because He needed it, but because He knew we needed it.

Our bodies need to physically recover from the things that we do, but rest is more than sleep or lying around. It’s also allowing oneself the time to just “be”, to reflect on God’s greatness and be astounded that He somehow is mindful of us (Psalm 8).

Rest reminds us who we are, that we can’t do it all. It gives us a chance to unwind and charge up for the week or the day or the hour ahead, mindful of God’s power and our weakness apart from Him.

As Christians, we can take a break from our labor in the full knowledge that Jesus has worked tirelessly and rested perfectly, died and risen so that we can rest in His record and not our own.

Hating Rest

Regardless of any benefit, we don’t like rest. At least I don’t. When I go hiking, I am all about how much ground we cover, how many miles we need to make in a day, how far to the next camp. Don’t stop for water or take pictures in the middle of a hill, keep up the momentum. Actually, my tendency is to speed up while ascending.

I’ll rest when I’m dead, thank you very much. Right now, I’ve got somewhere to be.

I mean, I like the idea of taking a second to look around. But it takes much more effort than it should to just pick my head up for a quick breather; I really like the idea that I don’t need it.

That somehow God made me wrong, that I know what I’m capable of more than He does. I’d rather spend the night nauseous than admit I can’t do it, and it’s happened often enough.

Just Lay Down

There’s a lot of different ways to rest, or "sabbath", and the best way to rest varies so much from person-to-person.

The Sabbath was a day of rest, built into the week. God Himself “sabbathed” after He populated the earth, and written into the Ten Commandments was a weekly “rest day”, which was to be spent differently than the other days of the week, to spend time with God and His people, do good and rest from the labors of the week. Keeping the Sabbath was a big deal, and with the Jewish people today, it still is.

There’s a million ways to take a Sabbath. Take a nap, take a walk, hang out with friends, take your family to the park, play an instrument, work on a project, read a book (or three...), write a letter to your grandmother, and so on and so forth. Just take time to reflect on what God has done for you in Christ and enjoy all the good gifts He’s given you. Take some time to just “be”.

Maybe it’s just me. But I’ve found that when I am not obedient in regular rest, I get made to lay down.

Thankfully, whether we’re smart enough to see it or not, wherever we’re laid down is green pasture where, whether we want Him to or not, He restores our soul.

During the busy summer season, we’re taking some time to look at some ways we can strive to use our summers intentionally, for the glory of God and the good of others.

Here’s what we’ve covered thus far:

• Don’t Waste Your Summer
• Plan Your Seasons
• 4 Ways To Vacation Well
• Snapshot
• Rest Rightly, Rest Well
• Reliving And Living

__________________

Supposedly, one of the things about summer that is so enjoyable is the concept of sabbath, a day to recharge with God through worship and rest. 

As I write this, I’m absolutely exhausted. For one, it’s hot. And muggy. I don’t do hot and muggy. I’ve been blessed to travel to, serve in, and attend numerous weddings, with more on the way. Work is busy and getting busier. And in the midst of the busy-ness, I often forget the sabbath, which God instituted for my good.

The sabbath has its origins in the creation narrative in Genesis 1. God created the heavens and the earth, gave the world form and the means to sustain life, and populated it with animals and the first humans. After this, God rested from His labors, to show that the work was done, and that humanity was His crowning achievement – there was no creature to left to create, and He stopped to enjoy it.

When God gave the law to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai (Deuteronomy 5), the third of ten commandments given was “remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy”, and it is contrasted with the days of slavery in Egypt, when rest was not an option for the Israelites.

The sabbath has historically been celebrated on a specific day. To the Israelites, it was a Saturday. The early church began celebrating on Sunday, because of the day of the week of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. 

Because the sabbath has been fulfilled in Christ (Colossians 2, Hebrews 4), the Law no longer binds us to celebrate the sabbath on a particular day. However, God gives us His law for our good, that we would live in such a way that we would prosper.

Here are four things to remember about Sabbath:

1. The Sabbath Points To Jesus

The sabbath is not just a day. Colossians 2 says that the point of the sabbath is not merely rest on a physical level, but points to rest on a spiritual level. Jesus has fulfilled the sabbath (Heb 4), and is the ultimate sabbath; through faith in Christ, we rest in His labor, and are credited as if we had done the work ourselves.

I myself am not much of a sports fan, so one of the strangest things to me is that people have adopted the use the pronoun “we” when discussing the outcome of a game. They aren’t part of the mechanics of the team, or how the game was played. They didn’t score a goal, touchdown, or home run. And yet, they speak, and celebrate, as if they had.

That’s a bit of how it works with Jesus. Even though we didn’t do anything, as far as our own salvation is concerned, God sees us as if we had lived the perfect life that Jesus had, and adopts us into His family as sons and daughters. He did all the work, and we get the benefit of resting and celebrating what He’s done.

2. Sabbath Was Made For You. (Mark 2.27)

When God created the heavens and the earth, He didn’t take a day off because He had to. He took a day off because He chose to.

Humans, on the other hand, were created with limits. Some have more energy than others, to be sure. But all of us suffer without sleep or food or a moment’s respite. When Adam rebelled against God in Genesis 3, he declared through his actions that he desired to be God himself.

The commandment to sabbath serves as a reminder that while we desire to be more than human, we are not. And we can’t be. We all have limitations, and rather than push ourselves to be more than human, we should embrace the way we were made, seeking to enjoy God and the work that he has done in us and for us.

3. The Sabbath Isn’t Necessarily A Day To Do Nothing.

If you read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry, you will find that He was traveling, preaching and teaching, performing miracles, and tending to people in general for the better part of four years. And yet, he kept the sabbath perfectly.

So while we celebrate, enjoy, and rest in what God has done, the sabbath rest is not “doing nothing.” Jesus regularly healed on the sabbath, even traveled long distances. The religious leaders confronted Him on this numerous times, and He continued to do good despite their opposition.

We should be willing to help people, to serve, and to give in light of how we’ve been served in Jesus. Do you have to say yes to everything? Certainly not. But it can be easy to pull the “resting” card when you have a friend that is moving and you’re the only one that can help, or your kitchen is dirty and needs to be cleaned, or someone is sick and needs help, but you’d rather go fishing or watch television.

4. The Sabbath Looks Different For Everyone

Figure out what works for you. How do you rest?

People are different, and rest differently. Some may like to spend seven hours reading 18th century English literature. Others may like to get together with 800 people and hang out at the park.

Now, it’s probably not a great idea to do something that is exhausting. Just as the sabbath is not an excuse to do nothing, it’s not an excuse to do whatever you want, either. For the Israelites (and for us, I would suggest), it was “do no work.” God even ordered that a man who was gathering sticks on the sabbath be put to death (Numbers 15.32).

But outside of the Law that Christ fulfilled, there aren’t a ton of rules about the Sabbath, and that’s intentional. The opposition that Jesus encountered over these issues was because He refused to obey the rules that the religious leaders had instituted over time. Whatever you decide to do in remembrance of God on the Sabbath day, spend it enjoying what Jesus has done.

Conclusion

As we enter the last few months of summer, remember to rest in the gospel, to say yes to some things and unafraid to say no to others. Remember the sabbath, and keep it holy.

If you’re interested in going deeper on this topic, check out the sermon "God Works, We Rest" from the Deuteronomy sermon series.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc