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Step 8: Rest

  • Rev. Dr. Sheila McKeithen
  • Who's Ready to Live A Better Life?
  • Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message Bible)
Watch The Service

Scripture Reading

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message Bible)

Introductory Remarks: 

Embedded within each season of work is an often ignored time of REST or Sabbath. 

In Exodus 20:8-11 (NRSVUE) God commands us saying: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”

Keeping the Sabbath allows you, as the worker, to remember that although you work, it is God who is central to all that is accomplished. 

Major Points of the Lesson:

  1. God the Good is the Power and Presence that accomplishes the work that is assigned for you to do. Moments of rest remind you that:
    1. Your desires originate from God. 
    2. Your job is to turn, again and again to God for instructions on the role you are asked to play in ‘giving birth’ to God’s desires entrusted to you. 
  1. Rest will:
    1. Relax you. (Exodus 23:12)
    2. Restore you. (Psalm 23:3)
    3. Strengthen you. (Isaiah 30:15)
    4. Increase your capacity to receive & give.. (Mark 6:31)
    5. Keep you obedient to what God is doing and not to what others are saying or even to what you are thinking. (Hebrews 4:9-11)

Quote:

“God calls us to take a break from work. The Sabbath is a day of rest…[Taking a Sabbath] helps us to experience life more fully by setting apart time to reflect on God as the center of our life.”

See biblelyfe.com