Joel Singleton
Digital & Church Partnerships Coordinator
CBN Europe
Rest. How?
Over the past 4 days, we have explored the topic of rest and why we should practice this gift. Today, we’ll cover a few ways of how to rest.
The greatest commandments are to love God with our entire being, and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Luke 10:27). All these suggestions are with the view of helping us obey God in these two commandments.
1. Sabbath. We get to take a full 24 hours to rest, recharge, refocus, and be refreshed. What could be better!? Jesus said, “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). Sabbath was created for your rest. Enjoy God and enjoy His gifts in whatever way is restful and refreshing for you. It might be going for a walk in His creation or sitting to read a good book. God patterned a great way for us to Sabbath. Work for six days and rest for one.
2. Retreat. Retreat is pulling back. It means to pull away from the busyness of the world for a time, to be with God. Maybe it’s a day, a week, a month. You could book a B&B for a night. Go camping. Ask to stay in a friend’s guest room. Take your Bible, a journal, some music, an instrument. Retreat to simply be with Jesus without distraction.
Sabbath. Retreat. Switch off. Cultivate a life of abiding.
3. Switch off. We spoke about becoming aware when we stop and rest. Sometimes it’s easy to stop but distract ourselves with social media, tv series, games, books, music, etc… and this doesn’t help us find true inner rest. So, switch off. Get away from distraction. Maybe you could try 30 minutes a day where you rest and fill your mind with God and His Word. That’s like one short tv episode. You’ve got this!
4. Cultivate a life of abiding. All of us are at different stages in our lives. Different places in our walks with God. We receive true rest in the presence of Jesus. It’s because of Him we can even find rest. And it’s because of Him that we will enjoy the promise of eternal rest. So do whatever you can to abide in Jesus. Sometimes, we just can’t rest how we’d like to. But we can operate out of an inner contentment that comes from the assurance and peace of Jesus in our lives. Whatever the Spirit is calling you to do, to abide, do it!
Spend some time with the Holy Spirit, asking Him how He wants you to rest. Work out what this looks like for your life. Nothing is more important than abiding with Jesus. So, prioritise that over everything else. The Creator of the Universe is in a place of rest, so meet Him there.
We hope and pray that this devotional on rest has been a blessing to you and produces fruit in your life.
