Category Archives: Rest

By Faith Rawley

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. Genesis 2:2-3

Rest is something that God himself has designed for us and built into the very fabric of creation. Right from the beginning God modeled the need for rest making it clear that we also are to live out of rest. Creation needs rest – you don’t have to look far to see this demonstrated in certain parts of nature! As the seasons pass by we see plants, flowers and trees not dying but resting in their activity of producing. Even some animals go into long periods of hibernation in their yearly cycles as they preserve themselves and their store of resources for the next year ahead.

Rest is more than just an option for those who get tired or weary but it is part of God’s design for us. Often I have fallen into the trap of viewing rest as a reward for having completed a season of busyness. But God’s intention is that physical and spiritual rest would be a regular part of our lives – daily, weekly, yearly – not something we just fit in when we have finished all activity.

I spent many formative years of my life living in America and one thing I admire about Americans is how hard-working they generally are. I had a really good job working as an administrative assistant for an auditing company. I started out being the ‘copy-girl’ and the person who did everyone else’s shredding. Eventually I was organizing corporate retreats for the national branches, helping to set up a new database system for the company and other responsibilities. I was so blessed to have this job. I would have to get up to go to work at 5.30am to be in to start work at 7am – usually not finishing then till 5pm or later! Other colleagues got in earlier than I did and left later, after I had finished my day’s work. I then moved back to the UK and found that even though typically our working days don’t start as early as the Americans, we’re not that far behind in the amount of time we work. The expectation of hard work being part of the normal life exists in the UK also. I started working for the church I was a part of and the sense of responsibility to serve God and His people was now being added to the routine of hard work I had already become used to. With all of the ‘work’ I was doing I began to feel resentful for serving if I didn’t receive recognition and worse still I began to be judgmental about others who seemed to not work or serve as much as me.

My wonderful church leader spotted this and graciously pointed out that I was not a person at rest. He had the right to say that, as I was working for him at the time. Unknowingly, underneath the outward appearance of a diligent worker I was actually someone who felt my value came from what I did and achieved. I felt that the harder I worked, the more activities I was involved in, the more church areas I was seen to be serving in, the better I was doing as a ‘Christian’ and ultimately the more God would love me. But God’s love is not based on what we do….it’s unconditional! I believed that hard work and unrelenting service was what God wanted from me….I missed the fact that in the beginning he had planned for me to have rest. To be like Him, a person at rest! I see now that by not acknowledging the need for physical, emotional and spiritual rest I was actually trying to live against God’s design for my life. No wonder life was a struggle!

God gave the Sabbath to the Israelite people to encourage them to take time to refocus on God and to be refreshed in Him. The Sabbath was never designed to be a legalistic way of saying you can do no work but it was an encouragement to rest and be refreshed rather than stay in a constant state of ‘doing’. So I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work hard nor do I want to encourage laziness. But I do believe that God has given us rest as a necessity. It is not a sign of weakness or lack of reliance on God to take days off!

Hebrews 4:9-11 says,

 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

I believe the rest that the writer of Hebrews is talking about here is ultimately a spiritual rest, but I am also convinced that the amount of physical rest a person gets is an indication of how secure they are in knowing God’s approval of them. Physically we need rest to re-strengthen and re-energize. Taking time to rest can also help us to get priorities back in order – the priority of time with our spouses, time with family, time with God! As we physically make a decision to build rest time into our lives we also honor God by giving Him the space to bring rest to our souls. There is a rest that God has prepared for us – a rest from striving, a rest from trying to live up to expectations, a rest from thinking our works are good enough. We then find ourselves resting in His peace, resting in His acceptance and resting in His grace which is sufficient for us.

Each Friday at Completely Devoted, we consider a specific issue. This month we are focussing on what it means to rest.

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