Sabbath

The PCA Transformed Conference was this past weekend, and my dear sister Ivy paid for me to go and she paid for a hotel room so I could have an uninterrupted night of sleep for my birthday in a beautiful locale. Oh, she loves me!!  <3

At the conference, I learned so many wonderful things and my soul was encouraged to love Jesus ever deeply. One of the sessions I attended was Redemptive Rhythms of Life: An Invitation to Sabbath. How did I never know before what Sabbath was and WHY celebrating the Sabbath is so important?

There are 10 Commandments and mainstream Christianity tries to observe them all with the except of the 4th... Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. Why? Why have we neglected the blessings that come from Sabbath?

Yes, there are blessings that come from celebrating the Sabbath, and I'll get into that after I describe what I learned.

First, it doesn't matter what day you Sabbath, but it must be in this rhythm, six days of work, one day of Sabbath.

Sabbath is ceasing, enjoying, and feasting. We cease from the need to feel productive or be productive and we remember that God is our provider. God rested on the seventh day and saw that what he had made was very good; so we should rest on the seventh day and feel satisfaction in what we have accomplished and remember that God provided everything we have, even the ability to work.  We remember that work should not be our idol and that we should not measure people's worth based on their accomplishments, but rather on the fact that they are people made in the image of God.

We enjoy things that bring us joy and we enjoy Jesus and friends.

We feast on good food and fellowship, remembering that Jesus gave us our food and our friends.

We don't work, but instead keep a mindset of quiet and restful PEACE.

When I heard the command to Sabbath and the benefits, I thought to myself, MY WORD! I need rest. It is my never ending refrain these days! I'm exhausted! I'm tired! I am stressed. I need peace!

And when we keep the Sabbath, the rest from that day bleeds into the other days of the week, the days in which we must work.

Yesterday we went to church in the morning early. We got there 30 minutes before church started because we had prepared for our Sabbath by going to bed restfully early on Saturday. We got Starbucks on the way and praised God for food and each other. We visited with friends at church, got lunch, went to a park, read good Christian books, and prayed and talked.

In the afternoon I took a leisurely nap, then Tim went to visit his brothers. I did one load of laundry (because a child had ZERO CLOTHES) and then took my shower and went to bed around 10pm. I read some of my book "Keeping the Sabbath Wholly" and then fell asleep feeling more peaceful than I ever have.

Today when I woke up, I was rejuvenated, had a good attitude, and I've been able to accomplish my work today without feeling like the world was collapsing around me. That is a huge blessing to me!

We don't want to be legalistic about keeping the Sabbath, but we want to put Jesus first and truly REST.