Rest – Part 2

May 12

David Stockton
Series: The Other Hours

We’re going to be in a couple of different places. We’re going to be in Psalm 127 to start. This is going to be kind of a hybrid message today. Last week, I did half of a message on Rest. We’re in our series “Other Hours” where we’re focusing on the idea that God doesn’t want to make you good at church. He wants to make you good at life. We’ve broken up life into certain different sections that take up the most of our hours. We spent some weeks on relationships. We did work, like occupation or the work that we do, whether you get paid for it or not. There’s a lot of work that we have to do. Right now we’re on a section on rest because we spend a lot of hours resting. Actually, if you live to be 75 years old, you will have slept for 25 of those years; which is kind of depressing, but if you like sleep, you’re like, “Hey, that’s great.”

We’re trying to figure out what God’s idea for rest is. This word Sabbath obviously comes to mind as something that is from the Old Testament and it continues through the New Testament. It actually predates the law of God. God, himself, in the very beginning, Chapter 2, verse 1 of Genesis says that God worked for six days and then he rested. And he made that seventh day, this day of rest, something that was set apart and holy and blessed, because he wanted us to learn how to rest in that.

In our society today, rest seems like weakness. Rest seems like laziness. Rest seems like Netflix. Rest seems like Red Bull or coffee, caffeine. We have a lot of interesting ideas about rest. So we spent some time talking about it.

As we are going into Mother’s Day, I know that moms, one of the things that they need is rest because the work that they’re doing, taking care of husbands, children, whatever it might be, can be exhausting.

I’m actually going to finish up the next two points. We had four points on that and we’ll get to those in just a minute. But I wanted to say a couple of words about moms real quick.

When I think of my mom, the words that come to mind are comfort, conviction, teaching, and guidance. Those are some powerful words, but that’s definitely what I think of when I think of my mom. Though I recognize there are a million different ways people have experienced motherhood, some good and some not good at all, this definitely the way I experienced it. My mom was the wind at my back, she was the spur in my side, she was the one who opened up the world to me and was my tour guide through it all. We were very close and she was home for me. Some people say home is where your heart is. But for me, home was where my mom was.

That’s definitely my experience. And I think of my wife in the same way as I’ve watched her step into this role of motherhood, it’s so similar. The teaching, the guidance, the comfort and the conviction. Those are the things that my mom brought me and my wife brings to our daughters lives in such a beautiful way. It’s something I’m very thankful for. I did a weekly email this week and I talked about the mother’s blessing. We always hear in society about the role of the father and how important it is for this and that. But I was doing my own research about the role of the mother and the strength that can have or the void it can leave, depending on how it goes. Moms — it’s a big deal what you’re doing. My mom is not with me anymore and I feel the gap all the time. Just because I’m grown up doesn’t mean I don’t need my mom anymore.

The other thing that was so interesting about my mom was any time I felt stuck, or any time I felt unsure about a decision I had to make or what to do, I remember calling my mom a lot of times when I was driving home from something. I’d call her up and it was always interesting that she always had so many ideas for my life. It was like, “Mom I’m not sure what to do. I don’t know what’s next.”

And she was like, “Well, this is what you should do. And this is what should happen. And this is exactly the way I see it.”

That meant a couple of things. One was she was my mom and she felt like she could boss me around. And the second thing was that it meant she was praying for me. She was hearing from God. She prayed for my life more than I prayed for my life. No doubt about it. So when it came time for me to say, “Mom, I don’t know what to do.” She was saying, “Well, actually, I’ve been praying for you. I actually know what God wants you to do.”

And the other thing, though, was that she wasn’t always right. Sometimes she’d be saying these things and I’d be like “Well, that’s what I needed to hear. But that’s not the way that I need to go.” But just knowing that there was somebody who had so many ideas for my life was so helpful as I was trying to sort out my life.

And what I felt the Lord was saying this morning was that, if you feel stuck, if you feel unsure, he wants you to know that he has a lot of ideas for your life in your moment right now, your situation. Some of you might be here just because your mom wants you to be here. I need you to know that God has a lot of ideas for your life. He’s got ways that you can navigate what you’re going through right now that will bring lots of life. He doesn’t want to come and kill your joy. He wants to give you fullness of joy. But it does take trusting him. It does take some surrender and some humility. But if you’re stuck or you’r feeling like you need some fresh ideas for your life, Jesus has got tons and he’s very excited to share them with you.

One of those ideas that he has for our lives is rest. Let’s read a couple of verses. We’ll start in Psalm 127

1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
    the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
    the guards stand watch in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
    and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
    for he grants sleep to those he loves.
3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,
    offspring a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
    are children born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
    whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
    when they contend with their opponents in court.

I think it’s so interesting when it’s talking about if you want to build your house, which moms often want to, you‘ve to remember that those who labor labor in vain without the Lord. If you want to keep making sure everybody’s safe, everybody’s taken care of, it’s in vain if you’re doing it without the Lord.

It’s so interesting. He says you might work hard, you might do all these things, but what you really need to know is that God wants to give you rest. God wants to give those he loves sleep. Which is so interesting because, again I think, “Lord give me strength to keep working hard.”

He’s like, “No, you need to just get some rest. You need to recharge.”

And then it goes on right after talking about sleep and rest and how God can help you with that, it talks about children in the next verse. Because we all know children are sleep killers. They are rest stealers. They just suck all the energy out of you. And the writer knew that, so he’s kind of putting the two together.

Let’s go to the next passage. Matthew 11:28

28-30 “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.” (MSG)

This is what Jesus taught his disciples. As he was trying to teach them the way of life, how to enter into the fullness of life. And again, it’s such an amazing thing to me that the God of the Universe is really interested in you and me every once in a while taking it easy. He wants you to rest. And we talked about what that rest is.

In the Old Testament, in that rhythm that God set for his people, there were six days of work and we joked last week that some of you need to hear more about six days of work and one day of rest because you’re resting seven and not working at all. But there are six days where we are supposed to work. We are supposed to venture into this world. We are supposed to harness the resources of this world and cultivate good, garden-like stuff. We talked about that in our work series.

We’re supposed to look into our world and find all the things that are undone—find all the things that are wrong—find all the things that are unjust. And we are to work to correct those things, to make all the wrongs right. That’s what righteousness is about. Not me being right and condemning all the wrong things. But me, actually being right before God and going into the world and taking some of those wrongs and making them right. God loves to see injustice become justice.

And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing six days a week. You can work as much as you want to some extent. But then one day, one day in that cycle, you’re supposed to quit. And it’s so interesting to me that God would say one day a week he wants us to stop fixing things. He wants us to stop making wrongs right, to some extent. He wants us to quit our battle with entropy and just be. Just let all of that mess be okay for one day.

We talked about why that might be. We said Sabbath, first of all, there were four things we brought up and we talked about two of them. Sabbath is for resisting. Sabbath is for rejoicing. Sabbath is for recharging. And lastly, Sabbath is for reuniting or realigning.

These are the four things that we’re focusing on to try to understand why God would ask us to do this. We talked bout resisting, how we have to resist that urge to work, to fix, to make things better, for one day a week. And it is hard. Especially in our society, when someone asks you how you’re doing and you don’t say, “I’m busy,” there’s something wrong with you. You’re not important—you’re not valuable.

And there’s this gravity in Phoenix that is constantly pulling us into superficial and artificial busyness, that, if we don’t actually set a day to kind of resist it and fight it, we’re just going to be swept up in the flood and flow of busyness. Busyness. Constant comparison, incessant accumulation and mind-numbing activities that are at our disposal like they never have been before.

Just think about those people who, when it got dark, it was dark. And sometimes I think, man, I would have been good at that time of life. I would have been good in those societies, because there was no electricity back then. When it was dark, you were done. What are you going to do? Stumble around? But now we can burn the candle at all ends. We don’t even need candles anymore.

We have to resist that tendency, that society that’s pulling us, our own deficiencies that we’re trying to compensate by so many different things—and honor God and surrender to God.

When faced with the reality of depravity, injustice and entropy in our world and in ourselves, we’re supposed to work for six days and rest for one. It’s hard to believe, but more good will get done if we do this rest. Less wrongs will be done because we won’t be so strung out and wound up. And more wrongs will be made right because we will know the difference between what is urgent and is important. One day a week resist the urge to get ahead.

And this has played out in my life recently because I’m an enneagram 3 person, it’s just like “accomplishment” and once I get something done I feel so much better about myself. Which is kind of sad. But anything that’s undone, I’ve got to fix it. I’ve got to get it done. And my whole life fell apart recently—even my washing machine.

I had just got my bumper fixed on my car so I could sell it. And two days later, the company that was dropping off our foster kids actually hit that exact bumper. And my brother-in-law’s car as well. I didn’t even know how this was possible. There was bright yellow taxi colors all over the car. And I was like, “I got ahead. And now I’m back.” It was so frustrating.

But this one example is, the Lord was just like, “Chill out.” And I was working so hard to get this fixed so we could sell it. And my mind was like spinning on it. “What am I going to do now? I’ve got to fight with the insurance company.”

So I just kind of said, “Oh, well. We’ll see what happens.” And I just called when I needed to and let it go. Mentally I was freaking out, but I was resisting that all the time. In the end, we’re going to get insurance money and the car, I can probably fix it for cheaper. I’m getting ahead of the whole thing. If I just would chill out, the Lord is working things out.

And I”m trying to do this side yard project and lay this sod down. I’ve been rushing to get it all done. We’ve got these interns coming over for dinner on Tuesday night. I’ want to look cool. Not have a big old bunch of dirt everywhere. But guess what? I’t’s not going to work out. I’m fighting all these things, trying to get this done The cost is going up.

I was actually taking a nap yesterday on my Sabbath. And a guy actually called me and he came over. He can actually do it cheaper and better than anything else. It’s just going to take a little longer. I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to rest in this. I’m going to take it easy.”

Because God is going to work on our behalf. It’s his promise. He says, “You stop working so I can start.”

And I’ve seen it a thousand times in my life. If I will find those unforced rhythms of his grace, if I will continue to walk in his grace, his grace is more than sufficient. But when I run ahead of the Lord, all of a sudden I’m outside of his grace and all I have is my own strength. And that’s not very impressive.

But, likewise, if I fall behind, and the Lord’s saying “It’s time move,” but I’m like, “I’ll just take it easy. Whatever.” I’m outside the grace and all of a sudden life starts to have trouble.

Mark Buckley, a famous guy, he always says, “Grace is the stuff that makes life work.” It’s like the oil in the engine. Once the grace is gone because we’re outside of the Lord’s plan for our lives, or we’re too far ahead or too far back, all of a sudden those gears can’t work as well. So we have to resist that tendency,

Second, we said the Sabbath is for rejoicing. This is so important to do. Sabbath is about noticing, focusing, acknowledging the good—not just the undone, broken things in our lives. The other days we’re to notice the wrong and what’s undone in our world and work hard to fix it. But Sabbath is about carving out some time to take a look and see what God has been doing in you and through you, what God has been cultivating by the work that you have done.

It’s so good to take time and just remember. Remember God, on that seventh day, it says that God looked at all that he had done and he said, “It is good.” God himself. God, who made the world and sat back for just one day and he was just like, “This is pretty good. This is awesome. You see that fish over there? That is cool. See that little bird swooping around. Oh, wow, watch. Bird, fish. Ok. That was a little wild but that was kind of fun.”

Like we said last week, he just sat back. He turned on National Geographic Channel and he said, “Check it out.” And if God is going to do that, that’s the thing he’s called us to. We’re made in his image. We’re supposed to walk in the same rhythm as him. So one day a week we should fight the urge to fix our children. And we’re supposed to find—even if we need a microscope—the good progress that has happened in them, in us, in our spouses, in our household. Whatever it might be. One day we’re supposed to really look for that and rejoice in it.

What kind of awesome God do we serve that it’s a command of his that we would stop and enjoy. And how sick are we that God has to command us to stop and enjoy, because we get so wound up and worked up and are striving so hard that we forget to even enjoy. Every movie is about those times. All those guys that work their whole life and then they get to the end of their life and their family’s all gone and they’re wishing they had the moments back.

God’s built it into the rhythm of our life. He says, “No. Don’t miss those moments. Every week make sure you’re catching all those moments.”

So now the next one: Sabbath is for recharging. Now, I hate cell phones with a passion. If you could see my screen, it’s all trashed up. Basically, I just get the hand-me-down phones from my brother all the time. Because I hate these things. I hate that people can get me anytime they want to get me. You know? It’s like, “Oh. There. I see it now. I can’t say I didn’t see it. Because it just popped right up there and it dinged at me.” And then there’s the little red bubble on everything. It’s like, “Would you like notifications?” “No! I don’t want notifications.” But some of them I can’t turn off. It’s always yelling at me. Buzzing in my pocket. Dinging in my face.

But I have to say, it’s one of the best technologies for Sabbath that there is; because a phone is only good as long as it’s charged. It can’t last forever. It doesn’t even last six days. And you can’t just set it down and say, “Okay, just rest, phone.” If you do that, it’s just going to stay dead. In order to get this thing back to full power, you have to plug something in that can actually power it. It’s very specific. You could try and put one of those other Android or Apple, whatever you might have, if you don’t plug the right thing in, it’s not going to do anything. And you can’t just plug something into it and there you go. You have to actually have something that has enough power to recharge it.

And so, a lot of times, people think that when we Sabbath, or we rest, we just “unplug.” No. I mean, that’s a start. You have to unplug from the things that are draining you. But true Sabbath is where we learn to plug into the infinite, eternal God, whose grace is sufficient. We have to figure out how to do that. We have to figure out how to plug into those things. I know when you’re tired, at the end of the day—I’m the same way—you just want to turn on the tv and be like, “Ah.” But guess what? Your mind is being stimulated all the time.That’s not rest. You can’t plug into Netflix and get better. You’ve go to find out how to plug into the Lord. And, to some extent, each one of us is a little bit different in that way.

Netflix does not recharge us. Red Bull does not recharge us. Instagram does not recharge you. It stresses you out. Mind-numbing activities do not recharge us. What does recharge us are the times we unplug from all the identities and responsibilities we have accumulated, and position our hearts, minds and bodies in the embrace of our heavenly Father, who says, “Not by might. Not by power. But by my Spirit,” says the Lord. In another place it says, “The battle belongs to the Lord.”

Some of you have heard of Sozo. It’s a Greek word for salvation. And it’s kind of helping to understand that salvation isn’t just getting your name in a book so you’re not going to hell, l you’re going to heaven. It’s much fuller than that. It’s fullness of life. We have a lady here, Colleen, who actually can kind of take you through this thing she calls Sozo, which is a prayer time. It’s a little bit like counseling. It’s a little bit like praying. It’s a little bit like figuring out where the Lord is and where you are and where you are in relation to him. I actually did it one time with this guy, Don. And he was so excited about it. And I was so not excited about it. And we went up in this room and I was like, “Okay, man, you’ve bothered me long enough. Here I am.”

And so, he’s like, “Okay. Well, we’re just going to kind of talk and pray simultaneously.”

And I was like, “That sounds weird. But okay.”

And so we did. And he just said, “Okay. Close your eyes and picture yourself. What do you see yourself?”

And it was funny because I was like, “I see a little kid. I see a little boy.”

And he’s like, “Okay. Describe the little boy. Is there anything about the little boy?”

And I was like, “Well, he looks tired.” And I wasn’t going in there tired, just so you know. But I said, “He looks exhausted. He looks tired—maybe a little unsure.”

And he said, “Okay. Just stop with the boy for a second and try to picture God. Where do you see God?”
And I said, “Oh, he’s over there on the throne.”

I’m playing along. I don’t know what’s happening. At this point, I’m just like, “Whatever. There’s God. He’s on the throne. He looks like a grandpa or something. He’s cool.”

And he said, “Okay. Well, what’s the look in his eyes?
I said, “Well, he’s looking at the little boy and he’s just kind of, you know, he’s a little sad for the little boy.”

And he said, “Well, what do you think he wants the little boy to do?”

I said, “He wants the little boy to come sit with him and just rest.”

It was so interesting, because, all of a sudden, in that moment, I just started saying, “And I think the reason…” and I just started crying. I said, “I think the little boy’s crying because he’s taken on a lot of things that God never asked him to take on.”

And I started thinking that, when my dad died, I felt some responsibility to be the man for my mom—me and my brothers. And, in my wife’s family, the dad hasn’t been a lot present, so I felt like I needed to be the man there. And even for her whole family, like I should be the man. All of sudden I started thinking about all these things I had taken on. When I was telling my wife this, she said, “I never asked you to take that on.”

I said, “I know. It was just me. I was messed up.”

I just started taking on all of these things. And in this moment I realized I had taken on so many responsibilities that God had never asked me to take on. So I was exhausted because I was doing so much that God didn’t even want me to do.

And whatever that was, we talked some more and we prayed a little bit more. But I go back to that all the time now when I go to my own prayer times. When I get my journal out and I say, “Okay, Lord. Let’s spend some time together.” I just start thinking, “Okay. Where’s the little boy? And what has he been overdoing? What responsibilities has he taken on that God hasn’t asked?”

And I just lay those things down again. To try to find, once again, who I’m supposed to be. It’s the way I’m plugging into the Lord. I’m finding out what he thinks, what he feels, and some Scriptures come to mind. But you can’t just unplug and go limp and go numb. I think that might be part of a day of rest, or part of that, it’s definitely the first step, unplugging. But at some point, you’ve got to plug in to the source that can supply power for your life. Just like your cell phone.

That’s recharging. You’ve go to get plugged in to the right thing.

And then, Sabbath is for reuniting and realigning. This is the fourth point. Sabbath is for resisting. Sabbath is for rejoicing. Sabbath is for recharging. And then Sabbath is for reuniting or realigning.

This is a very interesting thing. Reuniting is most often linked with Eastern meditation practices. You kind of think of this as centering. You sort of stare at our naval until something happens. Finding yourself. Trying to recognize all the false self you have accumulated and seek to remove it so you can once again be the true you. For Christians, this practice is called prayer. It’s basically prayer just like I described to you. It’s quiet time with God. It’s morning devotions. For me, it is journaling my conversations with God. Telling him what I feel, what I’m confused about, what is hurting me and what I’m thankful for

It is a centering thing. It is reuniting with the true self, like I just described. Sabbath is for the time when you say, “Okay, Lord, what am I really caught up in? What am I working really hard in that you’ve never even asked me to do? Or is not as big a deal to you as it is to me? Because I want to lay those things down.”

And again, I journal, because, for me, my mind, if I just try and pray, it doesn’t go that well. Basketball game. Tacos. Dog. It does not work. I get done and I’m like, “Whoa. I don’t know what that was about.” So I journal. I write things down because it keeps my mind engaged. My mind wanders and I can be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where I left off.” And I can get back on track.

Another thing I’ll do is to walk in the desert. And I’ll pick up ten stones. Not because my name is David or anything. But I’ll pick up these stones because usually there are about ten things I need to talk to the Lord about and lay down. Or “Is this what I’m dealing with?” But I’ll be walking walking and all of a sudden I’ll forget what’s going on and then I’ll be like, “Okay. I probably should go to the next one now.” And I keep going.

But it’s that time of trying to find who I am—reuniting with myself. I know that sounds weird to think in prayer, “No, I should reunite with God.” And we’ll get to that. That’s the realigning. But I think before you do that you really have to sort out who you are. Jesus said, “Come to me and cast your cares on me. YOUR cares. Cast them on me.”

And if you read the Psalms, David is so honest about where he’s at. The writers of the Psalms are always first talking about where they are, what they’re struggling with, what’s going on. That’s a good place to start. To reunite with your true self.

And then take the next step of realigning. Realigning happens as I converse with God, I find his thoughts begin to intermingle with my thoughts. I find my heart and mind becoming aligned with God’s heart and mind. I find clarity on what desires are to be resisted and what are to be embraced. I find ideas and thoughts coming to me that I know are not mine alone. As I write those down, I discover the difference between what is true, what is counterfeit, what is urgent, what is important and even what is good and what is best. Often, this happens best when I read some Scriptures or bring to mind some memorized Scriptures that speak to what I’m dealing with.

And that’s just a practice of kind of saying, “Okay. Here’s where I am. I now know what’s going on—what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking, what I’m dealing with.” And then I say, “Okay, God, now it’s your turn. Come and sort it out.”

And so, in that process with Scriptures or with different thoughts that might come, the Lord really does begin to realign. I have bad alignment, no doubt about it. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, like the hymn says. All of us have bad alignment. That’s why it doesn’t matter what political system we’re in. We’re going to mess it up. That’s why, no matter how much understanding, wisdom, knowledge, information the world has had, it still gets it wrong all the time. We have bad alignment. But we have a good mechanic. But you’d better check in often or you’re going to end up in the ditch, the ditch of life.

What we’re going to do now is a little practice of reuniting and realigning. Now, you’re like, “It’s Mother’s Day, man. What’s going on?”

Well, your mom wants you to pray so we’re going to pray. And what we’re going to do is something called a Lectio Divina. It’s kind of an old-fashioned, Latin word; but it’s a type of reorienting Scripture-prayer process that has been going on in the church the world over, in different languages, for a long, long time. Some of you are familiar with this practice. Some of you aren’t. Maybe this will help as you sort out what Sabbath can mean for you. So we’re going to go ahead and do this. If you’re not comfortable with it, you could just sleep or just chill. I was going to say pull out your cell phone, but don’t do that because that will stress me out.

We’re going to bow our heads. It’s not going to take long. It’ll be about a minute and a half each section. I’ll spend thirty seconds describing what we’re going to do. You’ll do it in your heart and mind for a minute-thirty. Then we’ll get to the next one and the next one. There will be four of them. And we’ll have a little music because sometimes a little music helps.

Let’s bow our heads and take a deep breath. This is going to require a little bit of pushing out some of the thoughts that might be trying to come in. Some of the things that you’re supposed to do today. Some of you just found out it’s Mother’s Day and you’re in all kinds of panic. Just push that away for a second.

I’m going to read a passage. Just a short little passage. One that can kind of be chewed on. It’s bite-sized.

As I read it, I just want you to think, “What is the text saying? —Not what is it saying to you. We’ll get to that—But this is like, if you had to sum it up in one word, what is the person who’s writing this, or the person who’s speaking, is saying to the people they are talking to?

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered. “You are worried and upset about many things. But very few things are really needed. And, indeed, only one, and Mary has chosen what is best and it will not be taken away from her.”

Take a minute. What is the text saying?

What’s a phrase that stands out? I know there are a lot of different things. But just try to grab one and start to focus on that. What’s the one thing in here that stands out to you?

And now we’re going to move on to the next thing. So now, what is God saying to you ion this? See how that applies to you, your life situation. What is the text saying to you as you interact with it? As you take it and you apply it to your life situation?

And now, in this next section, just let your thoughts go a little bit. What is in this section that bothers you? Or what do you like? What question would you ask Jesus? What do you hate about this? What seems wrong, or unfair. Just talk to God about those things and let him begin to intermingle his thoughts with yours.

Maybe he’ll bring to mind a certain person that you’ve been comparing yourself to. Maybe he’ll bring to mind some things you’ve really been bothered about. Maybe he’ll bring to mind that you are like Mary. You do well with this.

He comes with a still, small voice. Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s your thoughts or his, but go ahead and grab onto his and you’re probably right.

Just for kicks, you guys can finish and look up, if you want to. For me, as I did this same thing you did, “bothered by many things,” I mean, I’ve read it a bunch of times, but that just jumped out to me—that I know exactly how that feels. And then I feel like the message, the text was saying that, when I’m bothered, I should run to sit at the feet of Jesus. I should try to learn to have that reaction instead of getting more bothered.

And then, when I kind of let my mind and the Lord’s mind, hopefully, intermingle a little bit, I felt like the Lord said, “You do bothered really well.” And I thought that was funny, but he said, “You do sit at my feet really well, too.” And that was comforting and kind of fun for me. Because the Lord really knows me.

And then, the last thing was, I think this week as I call these people to move these projects down the road, I should surprise them with kindness—be extra kind and joyful to them as a reflection of me saying, “Okay, I’m going to just rest and not be so bothered,” instead of yelling at them.

So, just a simple thing you can do. I’m going to go ahead and pray for us now.

Lord, Jesus, I thank you so much that you love us. I thank you that you speak to us, that you would be willing to let your thoughts intermingle with our thoughts. And, Lord, I pray that we would be awesome at rest, that we’d be great at work, but we’d also be great at rest. I pray for your people that that rest, that sleep, that peace that you want to give them, nothing would remove it from them, nothing would block it from them. I pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Rest – Part 2

Counterfeit Rest

Rest