Why You’re Still Exhausted and the Lie We Believe About Rest

What if most of us have rest backwards?

What if most of us continue to think that we have to get everything done before we can rest, before we can be renewed?

Well, today I'm going to talk about why that's exactly the opposite of what the Bible wants for us, and it's the opposite of how we should be living our lives.

So many of us get caught up in that to do mentality, that there's so much to do and not enough day to do it.

But the problem is, is we think that we have to do more to justify rest.

But God designed rest and the Sabbath into creation.

He's woven it into creation.

And so we need to understand this so that we can live a life at a pace that is maintainable, a pace that gives us peace.

And so today we're going to dig into this, and I can't wait to share with you a bit about rest, and then also about the Sabbath and what that really is and how it's actually a gift and a blessing for us.

Welcome to Faith Fueled Living, the podcast that equips you to live well spiritually, emotionally, physically, and purposefully.

Each week, we'll dive into conversations and biblical truths to help you strengthen your faith, pursue meaningful work, care for your whole self, and live in line with what matters most.

So many of us have grown up right or lived for decades being surrounded by a hustle culture, right?

Or work.

If you work hard enough, if you just work more right, you'll get the things you want.

But that obviously doesn't align biblically at all.

But it's just a message.

We hear so much that sometimes it's hard to remember.

The pace of culture, the pace of the world, but not from a Christian perspective, tells us to do more, to fit it all in.

We don't want to have fomo you.

But the problem is, it's not.

We can't keep that pace.

And it also doesn't fulfill us, because the only thing that's really going to fulfill us is time with God and time with the things that he created for us, like relationships and nature.

So the first thing that I want to mention to you that you may or may not know is this.

In the Jewish tradition, the day starts at dusk, not dawn.

So, all right, so in Genesis, the day started at dusk, not in the morning.

Like we think of our day starting in the morning, because in Genesis, the account of Creation says, and there was evening and there was morning one day.

And so what's amazing about that is, is it actually says in Genesis, the.

The Night came first.

So that is when we rest.

In other words, we rest before we go and do our work, before we go and live out our next day.

But so many of us think we have to fit it all in during the day.

And then if we have time left over, if there's a, you know, an extra half an hour, hour, even five minutes, maybe then we can rest.

Or maybe we'll just keep working hard until, you know, a week from now or our vacation before we'll rest.

And then we wonder why we're weary, we're burdened, we're exhausted, we're burned out when Friday comes or whatever day of the week.

And we just have to remember, rest in the Bible comes first.

The day starts at dusk.

And so this is actually really important because too many, many of us live in such a state of busyness that we don't allow ourselves to have rest and be renewed.

And so the first thing that I just wanted to share about that is, are you allowing yourself time to have a rest every day?

And so part of that is, are we making sure we are making.

Are we making time for God?

Right?

Are we making time to be with God?

Are we allowing ourselves to have a time of quiet, right?

Of silence or solitude so that we can hear the voice of God?

Right?

Or we can feel him move within us, or we can feel him nudging or prompting us?

Because it's so easy nowadays, we're bombarded by messages all day long.

But with our devices in our hands and devices all around our houses, at least for so many of us, it's so easy to never have quiet, to never have silence, to never take a break from all of the content that's at our fingertips, to never take a break from messages that are bombarding us or to never take a break from the news cycles.

Whether it's about weather or political, you know, upheaval or it's about scandal, there's always something to pull our attention away from being focused on God and the way he actually designed us to live.

And he designed us to live in a certain way so that it'll be a blessing to us, it'll be maintainable, and so that we can partner with him and do even more good things.

But I. I do want to dig in mostly today about the Sabbath, and here's the reason.

I don't know if you're like me, but it feels like so much, at least in the US of Christian churches, whatever denomination or whatnot you were, we don't always talk about Sabbathing.

In other words, I'm not talking about just going to church on Sunday, but that the concept behind Sabbath and how it's actually a gift from God.

It's not supposed to be like when we're young.

My parents said I can't do that.

It's Sunday, right?

It's prioritizing time with God and enjoying the day, not working.

Okay, so first, let's start with scripture about that.

Let's see.

So right around creation, right?

It says, remember the Sabbath day and 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.

You shall not do any work.

You, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

For in the six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, this sea and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

Now that also.

Sorry, let me get back to this.

It's also one of the Ten Commandments, Remember to keep holy the Lord's day.

But here's where it gets interesting and here's the part I think many of us haven't.

We haven't learned or it wasn't emphasized, maybe in the churches we've been in, or it just we may not be practicing the Sabbath.

Now, some of you may be.

May be doing this, but I definitely talk to more Christians that I feel like don't regularly, weekly take a Sabbath.

And so I'm going to share quite a few things from the book the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer, who's a pastor on the West Coast.

One thing he says is the Hebrew word for Shabbat means to stop, but it can also be translated to to delight.

It has this dual idea of stopping and also joying in God, in our lives.

So in other words, the Sabbath, or the Sabbath being the seventh day, right, to rest.

But Shabbat is the start at sundown, which would have been the dusk time, right?

So it's take that seventh day and to stop what we're doing during the week those other six days, and then to also delight, delight in the Lord, but delight in the things that bring us joy and that are good.

And so let's dig into that a little bit more.

So also Jesus instructs his, the disciples after a ministry assignment to come and rest a while.

That's what he commanded them.

So rest is talked about throughout the Bible and obviously the Sabbath, taking the Sabbath, keeping it holy, is also talked about.

And as I Said it's a commandment.

So John Mark Comer says, what is all the distraction, addiction and pace of life doing to our souls?

And he says some interesting things.

He says, if you're new to the Sabbath, the question that gives shape to your practice is this.

What could I do for 24 hours that would fill my soul with a deep, throbbing joy that would make me spontaneously combust with wonder, awe, gratitude and praise?

Now, who doesn't want that?

I mean, that sounds amazing.

Am I right?

So I think we have.

We have not so many of us realize that the Sabbath is.

Is that whole stopping or ceasing the work, right, the toil.

But it is also so that we can delight and it's to inspire us for the next week so that we're refreshed and renewed to do our best work in the world the next week.

Okay?

So he also says, well, actually he shares what Dan Allender says in his book Sabbath, which is this.

The Sabbath is.

Sabbath is an invitation to enter delight.

The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended to, is the best day of our lives.

Without question or thought.

It is the best day of the week.

It is the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and the day we remember on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

Sabbath is the holy time where we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk and watch creation in its fullness.

Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it, to make it holy, because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week.

How beautiful is that?

And I think that's the thing is when we start hearing more about what Sabbath, how it was designed for us and that God gave it to us because he knows we have to take that rest because otherwise we are going to get worn down or burned out.

And I actually remember reading it was either in the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry or another book I read, I think it was that one.

But they talk about a pastor who.

I forget how many weeks, but let's.

He basically hadn't been taking a Sabbath.

He was just so busy, he was working too much.

I don't remember if they had.

They were short staffed or what, but he eventually just got to a point where he couldn't work anymore.

He was physically and mentally exhausted.

He was starting to have health issues.

And so his church, you know, basically said, yeah, you need to go on a sabbatical, right?

You need to take a break.

It took him as many days of taking a break from his pastoral duties as he did not Sabbath.

In other words, if we don't Sabbath, it is detrimental to our health, it's detrimental to our souls.

And so yes, I'm not saying some people were never going to miss Sabbathing, but we don't want it to be where like a vacation.

You say, I'm never gonna enjoy myself or take a break until, you know, for, except for one week out of the whole year.

It, you'll never feel refreshed, renewed on your vacation.

If anything, you've come back and you're kind of worn out because you're trying to fit it all in instead of taking more days off or more vacations throughout the year.

Now, the Sabbath is not a vacation day.

It's a different kind of thing.

But I'm just explaining if we work and we never stop, right?

Okay, so John Mark Comer also says the Sabbath is how we fill our souls back up with life.

And that's what I'm saying is when we take that day to rest, to stop, and to delight in the things that bring us joy, including obviously praise and worship to God.

It fills us back up, but it, it fills up our, our souls.

It renews us, but it also inspires us, right?

It's a time, it reconnects us to God, it reconnects us to our families.

It allows time for us to do things that we enjoy that will lift our souls.

And then he, in the book, he says that a doctor had done a survey and he was basically trying to figure out who the happiest people on earth are.

And near the top of the list was the Seventh Day Adventist Adventists, who are type of Christian.

And it says that they live 10 years longer and were happier than the average American.

And he explains in the book that the Adventists are very serious about Sabbath.

Like they take it every week.

And he says, I did the math.

If I Sabbath every seven days, it adds up.

Wait for it 10 years, over a lifetime.

Almost exactly the amount of time that they live longer than the average American.

In other words, when we rest and when we take Sabbath the way that God's designed us to rest, we often will live longer because we are stopping work.

We aren't going and running all the errands and doing all the things.

We are allowing ourselves to have a day, to fully slow down, to be refreshed and all those things.

I mean, how beautiful is that?

Okay, so he also explains, so there is a day that is blessed and holy, a rhythm in creation 6 and 1.

And when we Tap into this rhythm, we experience health in life.

And then he explains that the Sabbath is.

It's a day I feel.

I'm sorry, it's a day I expect joy.

The day that sets the tone for my entire week.

So what I wanted to say to you is, does this give you ideas about what it is you could be doing on your Sabbath?

How you could be enjoying this day?

How we could be both allowing ourselves to delight in the Lord, to spend time in prayer, but also loving on our families and all of these other things, because that is what is going to renew us.

And so I know I keep saying renew and refresh, but that's the truth.

Okay, here's two other things I wanted to share.

He's John Mark Comer says often people hear worship and assume that they.

That means singing Bethel songs all day while reading the Bible and practicing intercess or, I'm sorry, in prayer.

That's all great stuff, but I mean worship in the wide, holistic sense of the word.

Expand your list of the spiritual disciplines to include eating a burrito on a patio or drinking a bottle of wine with your friends over a long, lazy dinner, or walking on the beach with your lover or best friend, anything to index your heart towards grateful recognition of God's reality and goodness.

Do you see?

In other words, we can do so many things on that day, but we're just not supposed to be working or we're not supposed to just be buying things in the world, you know?

In other words, not.

We have all the other days to go and do Amazon purchases and everything else.

And I am guilty of this, too.

I. I don't often think, oh, it's Sabbath, right?

And so I shouldn't do XYZ so that I can fully enjoy the day and not get caught up in buying and doing chores and everything else.

So this has been a struggle for me, too, and it's a process, and I'm still kind of exploring Sabbath for my own self.

Okay.

And then he says the Sabbath is like a guerrilla warfare tactic.

If you want to break free from the oppressive yoke of Egypt's taskmaster and its restless, relentless lust for more, just take a day each week and stick it to the man.

Don't buy, don't sell, don't shop, don't surf the Web, don't read a magazine.

Ooh, that bathtub would be nice upstairs.

Just put all that away and enjoy.

Drink deeply from the well of ordinary life.

A meal with friends, time with family, a walk in the forest, afternoon tea.

Above all, Slow down long enough to enjoy life with God, who offers everything that materialism promises but can never deliver on, namely contentment.

So at the end of the day, that's what resting, right?

Daily, you know, getting our work done.

But we don't have to work before we rest, right?

We want to go to the Lord.

We want to make sure we have time in prayer.

And then we want to take time to slow our minds down, to rest our bodies and then show up and do the best work we can and to serve others.

But the Sabbath is an even more special thing, right?

That God commands, yes, but he also created for us so that we wouldn't have weary souls, so that we wouldn't have worn down spirits.

And I, I love that last thing.

He says, let me just repeat that.

And it's sorry, let me find this.

Drink deeply from the well of ordinary life.

And then he says, okay, sorry, what really, what I really need is time to enjoy what I already have with God.

I love that.

And that's the thing.

The place we're going to find contentment, the place where we're going to delight in our lives is when we make space for our actual lives and all that we already have the richness that's already there, right?

So whether you're married and have children and you can delight in time with your family away from all the distractions, away from the schedules and the phones and the constant bombardment of all those things, and we can be together, right?

We can commune and take communion.

How beautiful is that?

And so I just want to encourage you because I read that book some years ago and I was reading something else that kind of stirred the idea of rest in me again.

And so I picked back up that book and kind of skimmed through it in the last day or two.

And actually there's one other thing I want to share with you.

That's from Awaken by Priscilla, Priscilla Shrier, which I shared, I think yesterday or the day before about.

That's a devotional I'm reading.

Okay.

So she says rest is becoming a lost, a lost art in our modern culture.

We've exchanged its old fashioned value for a hectic, fast paced, brightneck speed of life which has slowly disagree, disintegrated our fervor and passion while simultaneously elevating our blood pressure.

And she says, but rest doesn't seem like a viable option anymore.

Have you, I'm sorry, have we forever passed up any kind of reality that dares to include rest as part of a typical day or week or month?

And you Know, I think that's the thing.

We need to ask ourselves these questions and we need to be intentional with how we plan and schedule our time.

And then she says, what would.

What would a time of deliberate rest look like for you today?

Who are the people you can enlist to keep you accountable?

Now here's the thing.

I know some people say, well, I.

My schedule doesn't allow me to take a Sabbath, right?

Like when it's typically taken, which is.

Usually starts Friday night, would go into Saturday, into, you know, evening in 24 hours.

But yes, that's true.

Some people can't Sabbath that day.

Maybe even, like some pastors, they may have to work before, you know, if they have Sunday services.

So they might have Monday where they Sabbath.

In other words, it doesn't say it has to be that exact day.

I get that that's more traditionally.

So that's a question for your pastor.

But I think that there's some.

Some flexibility for that.

Like for instance, let's say you work in the medical field and you can't always be off, right, On a certain weekend that you have to work or you work in retail or whatever it might be, then you're going to have to do it on another day that you are available.

It's not going to be at that time.

The idea is having the weekly commitment.

Sorry, taking the idea and then actually having a weekly commitment and being intentional about Sabbathing.

And once again, as from those examples I shared with you about what John Mark Comer says he does in his own family and what Dan Allender said, this is a day that, yes, we remember the Lord, yes, we want to spend time, you know, just remembering everything he's created, all that we're thankful for him from him, but also to do the things that delight us.

And so in other words, it's turning our phones off or at least turning them on silent or putting them away from where we're at.

It's slowing down and actually reconnecting with God, with ourselves and each other.

So I hope this episode has at least brought about maybe a new perspective for you on rest and Sabbath and just getting honest with yourself about how does.

What does rest and Sabbath look like in your life now?

And is it something that you want to explore?

Because for a lot of us, this is a process, right?

If we didn't grow up taking a Sabbath or we're not a pastor's child, this may be a new concept, or at least new in the sense of like, I've not ever been able to master this yet, but it might be something just to try and explore.

I've done several episodes over the last couple years about Sabbath, about rest.

There's a good episode called Sabbath Soup that I did with an author.

That was a great episode.

I think that'll encourage you as well.

I'll put it in the show notes.

I also wanted to let you know I did create a free download for you about this episode so you can ask yourself a couple questions and just get a little more intentional about how you rest, your perspective on rest.

And if you're interested in starting to take the Sabbath day and what that might look like, how do you.

How do you start or how do you ease into that?

So go to kristenfitch.com and go under my workbooks and you can grab that completely free today if you enjoyed today's episode.

If you could leave a rating review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps the show get discovered by more people so that we can continue to uplift and encourage people in their faith journey as well as all of the other parts of their lives.