This is the first in a 5-part series on the spirit of the sabbath. Through this journey we press beyond the shallow ideas of sabbath that are commonly taught today, and go deeper to discover the real meaning and power that we’ve been missing.
I first wrote an ebook on this subject last year, and since have been expanding this teaching and sharing it with teams and churches around the country. Each part in this series includes a video teaching segment and a short essay.
Something has gone wrong in our relationship with rest.
For some of us, rest has become the sedative we crave to escape the stress and toil of life. Some of us dismiss rest as an indulgence of the weak, priding ourselves on our ability to grind on without it. Some of us see rest as a luxury our responsibilities will not afford us.
Almost none of us truly feels rested. So we question if we know how to rest, or we convince ourselves that we do not need it, and over time we begin to accept weariness and restlessness as the default state of our souls.
And yet, rest is so fundamental to God that he set aside the seventh day of creation so that he could rest. Then he gave a rhythm of rest to his people that became embedded in Israel's religious code, national identity and way of life. This is the sabbath. And it was more than a simple ritual--it had transformative power.
So how did we get to this place where the Sabbath, a rest that God blessed and called "holy," seems to have so little power in our lives?
I believe the reason is that we have lost sight of its true purpose. We have forgotten what it means, what it is for and all that it is designed to unleash in our lives. We have settled for a surface-level understanding of the sabbath, reducing it to a mere religious ritual or a day off on our calendar. Or, we dismiss the sabbath altogether as an artifact from an antiquated law that no longer applies to us. As a result, we are becoming more and more burnt out, missing out on the deep renewal that sabbath rest offers us.
We are in need of a restoration of rest--a journey to rediscover and reclaim the original spirit of the sabbath.
