Why Rest?

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts.  And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.   Genesis 2:1-2

We fight rest.  Battle against it.  Many wear their tiredness as a medal of honor, proof of their significance. We subtly war against one another for the title of “Least Rested” with our proclamations of late nights with children, time spent serving, hours put in at work, and list of tasks accomplished placed in Facebook status updates.

Like many battles we wage, though, we misplace our focus. We compete with one another and race against the clock trying to do more and more … our only measure is temporal.   We set our sights too low and let our guard down, forgetting that our battle is “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” {Ephesians 6:12}.

Rest is not merely a physical issue … it’s a spiritual command.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to 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. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”  Deuteronomy 20:8 – 11, emphasis added

Why rest?

• We are called to remember. I don’t know about you but in the midst of the chaos of day-to-day living, I often fail to remember the blessing of God, the sacrifice of Christ, the gift of salvation.  It is through slowing, stilling, resting, that we train our hearts to remember.

• We are blessed with rest. Rest restores us.  Mark Buchanon in his book. The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath, states:

Get this straight:  The rest of God – the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover the part of God we’re missing – is not a reward for finishing.  It’s not a bonus for work well done.  It’s sheer gift.  It’s a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished.   Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of our obligations.  It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could. {93}

• Rest is holy. Do we really ever think of rest that way?  That God intended our rest to be part of that purification process in our lives?  Purposed that through rest we are set apart?  Planned that rest would sanctify us?    In a world that rages with unrest politically, socially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we must remember that we are “aliens and strangers” {1 Peter 2:11} and it is often our understanding and practice of rest that best sets us apart from the things and priorities of this world in order to align us with the purposes and plans of eternity.

From the beginning, God intended for us to rest.  He gave us His example of resting in Genesis, His commandment to rest in Exodus, and throughout Scripture we are called time and again to experience true rest in Him.    The call to rest  is a call to slow, and learning to heed that beckoning grows us closer to Him.

Why do you fight rest?  What are issues you allow to pull you from resting?