All the Days of My Life | Apr. 21, 2024

Today Kristi took us through verse 2 of Psalm 23, “He makes
me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters”.
In this verse, we find an invitation from God into a time of
rest. A time where we relinquish striving and producing,
achieving and consuming, and enter into a space where we are
satiated and restored through nothing that comes of our effort.
In our culture, this can seem an impossible task. There is a
reluctance and for some even a fear of stopping. What is it that
makes us reluctant? 


Kristi shared lies we may be telling ourselves that may be
underneath this reluctance.


The lie - I hold all things together. The truth - God holds all
things together.


The lie - My identity is in what I do. The truth - My identity is
in Christ.


The lie - Stopping prevents me from functioning how I need to.
The truth - Stopping allows me to function in health and
wholeness.


When we buy into any of these lies, we trade the truth of God’s
promised provision for the lies the enemy offers. God not only
invites us to stop striving, He also offers us rest. The renewal
and restoration we need, comes from something deeper than just
stopping for a while. It’s not a day off that sustains our soul,
it’s the type of rest God invites us into that does that, a true
Sabbath rest.


To enter into a true Sabbath rest requires preparation. So what
does it look like to prepare? Kristi shared four steps to help
prepare.
Choose a day to begin and schedule in some periods of rest.
Start with an amount of time you can commit to, even if it's just a
couple of hours and work your way up from there. Once you know
when you’re going to take a period of rest, schedule in a few
smaller windows of time as you approach it, 10-15 minutes of time
where you’re committed to eating and drinking from God and His
word. Be honest with yourself on what's likely to derail you
and create a plan to move past those things, keeping the mindset
that you aren’t saying no to whatever comes up, but instead saying
yes to being at rest with God.Come up with some ideas on how you
want to spend this time of rest. You can spend time in prayer and
scripture of course, but that’s not all it has to be. There's room
for things that bring you pleasure and delight, for physical rest,
for enjoying the beauty of creation. 

The rest God invites us into is so much less about how we should
or should not use the time, and so much more about the posture of
our heart. Sabbath rest should be focused on God’s goodness, His
provisions, His gifts and His grandeur. It’s a rest, in which we
calibrate our minds to intentionally look for His goodness and
glory in everything and as we do so, experience His grace and
love.


We invite you to look at your calendar today and choose a day
when you will begin the practice of sabbath rest.