The Sabbath

And I'm so excited about break coming up here. And you know, you can turn in your Bibles to Genesis 2. You can turn there together. But my hope is that these next two weeks actually provoke something within us as a whole community.

And that as we're taking a break as a staff and as owners, that as a whole community, it would actually move something in our souls towards this topic of rest and Sabbath. That there would be a revelation that would actually begin to transform our everyday lives called Sabbath. And so that's our hope is that we would take these two weeks off and that it would actually, as we're consciously, as a pastoral team and as a staff and as a board, as we are making this decision that really doesn't make sense. And I think that's what I've learned over time is Sabbath rest and taking a break and resting.

Most of the time, it doesn't make sense. It's not convenient. It doesn't seem like it's the right time to stop, right? When you look at what we're doing right now, we've got a new building, a new space, and every church blog on the planet would say, wait, you're gonna take two weeks off when you just moved into a space.

Don't you know you've got to ride out the momentum, brother? You see that? Yeah, brother, yeah. You know, you got to really leverage this time for the goal of more butts and seats.

And the reality is it doesn't really mean much to us that you're here. I want you to be empowered out there in everyday life. So it doesn't really matter to me if your butt is in the seat. You know, as a pastor, I'm going, I want to get you out of the seat and into the game of the everyday life, right?

With Jesus that your everyday life, Jesus is worthy of the everyday, not just on Sundays, right? That's beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't really make sense for us to take a two-week break right now. As a team, it honestly feels foolish because there's way too much work.

We're gonna launch a childcare center in like T-minus, I don't know, two months? Is that probably less than that? I don't know. Two months, we've got, we're still working on leases for the gym, we haven't even started the professional suites over there.

The Happy Monday Cafe is not over the finish line and we're still in construction. Then it's like there's the financial pressure of now you have a new space and you're gonna take a break for two weeks. There's enough financial suicide and then the board's like, no, this is God and we're gonna do it and we need a break. Then there's these things that goes, there's too much to do.

We don't have capacity. There's not enough time. And just like last week when we said there's not enough time for you not to pray, what we're feeling and I believe what God is speaking, is that there's not enough time to not rest. That we actually have to begin to learn how to settle in to rhythms of rest.

I remember Arsebatical in 2020. And I remember this irritating, like unnerving thing that we knew that the sabbatical wasn't, sorry Ben, you know, as you're going out right now from the sunset, we knew it wasn't actually going to help us rest and get rested from how hard we were running. And we knew that we were gonna probably be just as tired as we were the two months before we left. When we went on vacation and we took five weeks in Florida and it was great, it was amazing.

And at the same time we actually had this knowing of this isn't going to be enough. We have to get healthy rhythms consistently in our lives or there's gonna be problems. When I look at this last year, I'm right as we're, they're the most encouraging conversations with pastors that have gone before us because they're basically telling me their horror stories of how when they bought a building. And there's like multiple stories of like, yeah, I had to go to the ER, yeah, I got hospitalized because of the stress and how much it was.

And I'm like, yeah, what we should do is not just build a church, but we should build a childcare center. You know, let's launch that. You know what, we should do a cafe too, full-time cafe. It's own business hours.

And then, you know what we should do? We should have a gym and then lease out the gym and then we should rent pro suites and then we should build retreat rooms. We should establish a prayer room in the Twin Cities that people have been laboring for two decades going through spiritual warfare to try to establish. Let's do all that at the same time.

And then we don't have enough money. And they're like, yeah, I got hospitalized. We remodeled our childcare center. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what are we doing?

Are you hearing me? And so for us, we knew that if we were actually gonna come out on the other end, healthy, loving each other, not being hospitalized, that we were actually, it was a must and we were already doing it. But it was like a non-negotiable. We are going to practice one day a week where we're gonna stop working.

One day a week where we're going to rest, we're gonna look at each other in the eyes, we're gonna spend time with each other, we're gonna do things that we enjoy that are going to add refreshment to our souls. And I can honestly say, I didn't get hospitalized. Great gun. Uh-huh.

But it's like Katie and I, we love each other. Love my kids, they're the best kids ever, right? And I have a tender heart towards the Lord. And I'm not cold and I love you.

And I'm not hardening towards you and I don't have bitterness towards you. And as a man of God, I don't have any secrets. I'm not sitting on anything that's causing this turmoil inside of me of, I've got these secrets to hide because I really went through the pressure cooker and there's fire and it produced sin in me. And it's like, no, the fire produced more dependence.

The fire produced more dependence going, I know I can't do it. And that's what Sabbath did in my own story. I know I can't. I know that you can't, that's what I'm talking about it, right?

And so I want us to look at Genesis 2 and I want to get to the rocking chair with love on my heart. I don't want to have a cold heart. I want to have a healthy heart. I want to have a healthy marriage, healthy relationships, a healthy soul.

And so when we're talking about Sabbath, the word Sabbath means stop working. That's what it means in Hebrew. Really straightforward, just stop it. Stop working, cease working.

That's what Sabbath means or Shabbat in Hebrew means, okay? So let's look at Genesis 2 here. This is right after God has created everything. And in verse 2 we see, on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. So God is working for six days. And there's probably a lot of different opinions on how short or long those days were in the room.

But we're not gonna go there, okay? And he rests. And as he's resting, we have to ask the question, why is he resting? Because oftentimes we feel like we need rest, right?

You feel like you need rest. But then we're dealing with someone in this passage that has all power and has infinite strength. And he never gets tired. God never needs to rest.

He never needs to go to sleep. And yet the all powerful, see some of you guys are going, wait, we're talking about rest? This guy doesn't know who I am. This guy doesn't know how I'm built.

This guy doesn't know how I can hustle. I'm not tired, I'm just gonna keep on going. I'm the energizer bunny. Some of you are like, rest, he's funny.

No, it's time to work. And I'm going, yes, it's time to work. Yeah, you think you're strong, that's great. But even God, he didn't need it, but he chose rest.

He didn't need to rest, but he chose it anyways. Because God knows when enough is enough. Everybody say enough is enough. God knows when to tell the waters this far and no farther.

God knows when to say, hey, day, you're gonna extend this long and no longer. He knows when to say enough is enough. And that is literally what he gives to Adam and Eve. He's going, you can have all of this, but remember, enough is enough.

Don't eat of the street. And our human problem is, it's not enough. Constantly, in America, it's never enough, right? Because we live in the most wealthy culture, but it's also the most overworked culture on the planet.

Statistically, Americans work more than any other nation on the planet. And we are trained to work. And we are trained to perform so that we can be accepted. We are trained to work so we can get our identity set.

We are trained to accomplish so that we'll be loved. This is what we're trained to do. And the Lord is going, I am going to, at the very beginning, model something to dismantle the identities that the fall will create. Identities that the fall creates are you perform to be loved, okay?

That is one of the things that we are born believing is I perform and then I get what I need, which is love. And the Lord's going, I'm going to write, right after I created, immediately after, I'm going to rest, to model for you. Because you need it modeled for you. You need to be shown that your identity isn't based in all the six days and you just not stopping and just continuing and going and going and going and going and going and going.

And that's how everybody's gonna love you. And that's how you're gonna be seen. That's how you're gonna be known. That's how you're gonna be loved.

And that's what we do. And the Lord's going, I want you to know, stop and be a son. Stop and receive love. God in the beginning, He creates.

And we're talking about the most amazing days of work that you could ever imagine. It's like one of the days He creates all the marine animals. This is unbelievable. Can you believe that?

It's like I have a hard day, you know, if I have to call Comcast because internet's down. You know, it's like a full work day. Do you know how long I waited with Comcast? And literally the Lord on one of His work days creates over 240,000 marine species.

That's unbelievable. And He's not tired at all. He just is like, I'm ready for creating gorillas the next day, you know, like, He's ready. And but what I don't even know I'm saying that, but when He takes Sabbath and He goes, Hey, this is important this seventh day.

There's only three things that He blesses in the very beginning. He blesses animals and He says be fruitful and multiply. He blesses humans and He says be fruitful and multiply, how dominion. And then He says to a day of the week, you're blessed and holy.

What? Why is He saying that? He said it to animals, He said it to humans, and now He's saying it to a time. Like a 24 hour period that it's sacred and that it's holy and that it's set apart.

So there's something significant. I think like we can all agree, there's something significant about that day, the seventh day. And what I want to do is I just want to align with Jesus on it. I want to align with Him.

And I can already hear all of you good Bible studiers that have been part of every day for a couple of years. I know what you're thinking. You're like, oh, wow, He's teaching old covenant stuff, isn't He? He's really doing the Old Testament thing.

So He's wanting us to come up under the law. Well Pastor, I've really studied the book of Romans and I'm free from the law. So I know what you're going to preach on, but this is not a good start, right? I hear you.

I know. I already know what you're, you've already got this like, I'm going to send an email, OK? We're going to get there, OK? OK.

What I want to articulate is as we get there, we're going to go there, I promise, is that the Sabbath is a gift and it's not a curse, OK? It's not a burden, it's a blessing. Let's turn to Exodus 16. That's the next stop in the story with the Sabbath.

So God rests and now He's going to tell His people to rest, OK? So now it's, rest isn't on the seventh day, isn't just for Him. Now He's saying, now anybody that's my people, this nation of Israel, they're going to rest, just like I rested, OK? So the nation of Israel comes out of slavery.

They just got set free of 400 years of slavery. They're in the wilderness. They're on their way to the Promised Land. They're on their way, listen, to rest, to like the land where they will dwell, the land where they will finally let down and rest, right?

And the Lord is teaching them, I want you to rest even before you've landed into the Promised Land, OK? And we're picking up in Exodus 16, verse 23. So Moses is talking for the Lord and he says, this is what the Lord has commanded. Tomorrow, so the Sabbath, the seventh day, is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.

Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil. And all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning. Now this is where it gets interesting. So they laid it aside till the morning as Moses commanded them and it did not stink.

And there were no worms in it. Moses said, eat it today for today as a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it.

But on the seventh day, which is Sabbath, there will be none. So God is miraculously providing for His people. So He sets them free from slavery. Now they're in the wilderness.

There's no food. What are they going to do? Well, they can't do anything. God provides for them.

He's Jehovah Jaira. And so He provides manna, which is like a flaky substance. And they go around and they collect manna every day. And they have to every single day collect the manna.

And if they go, I'm going to get smart. I don't feel like going tomorrow and getting the manna. I'm going to save the manna that I collected today. And I'm just going to try to preserve it for tomorrow.

What would happen every day is that the manna would go bad and start stinking and there'd be worms all over it. So they had to learn. They needed the Lord's daily bread that He would provide. The Lord was teaching them dependence.

Then on day six, God gives them special manna. And this manna lasts 48 hours instead of 24 hours. I don't know how he did that one, but he's already providing food just in the morning. They go and grab it for 1.2 million people.

So he's got away. And so what he's doing, I just want to pause, take a step back and go, this is a nation of slaves. They have not rested in 400 years. They have not had a day off in 400 years.

They are not their own. They were slaves. They were owned. They don't know what rest is.

They don't have it. And so God, because He's so kind, He's so loving. He's just incredible. He's going, you know what they need?

They need a whole day to not work and to rest. Knowing that their identity isn't based in work and what they can produce, but who they are. They're the children of Yahweh. They're the children of the Lord.

They're my kids. Now I wonder if all of you Americans can just look back into our story a couple hundred years ago and be reminded of what capitalism, when it went into a ditch, created. It created slavery in our land. Because it was this insatiable desire for it's not enough.

I need more. It's not enough. I need more. And then over time, we start taking people and they are objectified and they're used to get what we want.

And the nation of Israel experienced slavery and the nation of America experienced slavery. And there's still slavery today. And it's called the sex slave. It's the sex slave trade that's happening today, right underneath the surface all over our land.

But what I'm wanting to communicate is capitalism is the best. It's amazing. It can create so much human flourishing and economic flourishing. But when it rides into a ditch, it rides into enslavement.

And I want us to be aware that the American dream might be the slave master for many of us today. It keeps on prodding us and it says work harder, work more. You can do better. You need to perform so that you can receive approval.

You need to actually do better, work more, work weekends, work Sundays, work every day so that you can receive the ache of love and affection that you really want. And the only way you can get it is if you just do. And so I just have a concern if, as I'm talking, there's an emergence where you're like, stop for 24 hours? What are you even talking about?

And you have this like, nope that comes up within you. And it's not based on theology. And it's actually based on like, no, I don't want to. Because if I stop, everything is not going to be OK.

There might be something contributing to that that's not of the Lord. And so just kind of go, OK, there might be something there. Are we good? He loves you so much that he would have me talk about this.

I'm just one step ahead of many of you that have never taken time to rest. Because we just started in the last year or two. So most of the time, that's what pastoring is. It's like, wow, I'm just half step.

And I'm just kind of like, hey, come on, let's go. OK, that was Exodus 16. Now, I want to address all of those good Bible students that thought we believed in the New Covenant and thought we weren't under the law. And why are you trying to make me do Old Testament stuff?

Hebrews 3 and 4 makes it very clear that Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. What that means is Jesus is your, you get to stop working. You get to stop working for what? For righteousness, for justification, for God's approval.

So you get to stop working. When it says that Jesus is our Sabbath, that doesn't mean, now you don't have to work and you never show up to work and you never clock in and you never go to your job. That's not what it means when it says Jesus is your end to work. He's saying, Jesus is the end to your working for your identity.

Jesus is saying, it's the end of you having to work to get right with God. It's the end of you having to wonder, am I good? Am I OK? Does God like me?

Does God love me? Am I righteous? I don't know. I just sin.

What does he think about me? That all gets to be done. All of that hard work gets to be done. You don't have to be second guessing yourself because Jesus did the work that you couldn't do.

That's the good news of the gospel. He did something that I couldn't do for myself. He did all the hard work. He died.

So I wouldn't have to. Amazing. So he has made us fully righteous. And now we're the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

Praise God. Jesus is our Sabbath. Rest in the spirit. Everybody say in the spirit.

But how many of you know you are spirit, soul, and body. And so what happens is the Lord gives us practices or tools to help connect the dots with our souls and our bodies, with what's a spiritual reality. OK, what am I talking about? What I'm talking about?

Like with prayer in the Word. How many of you know God is a manuel? He's with you all the time. And so you could say, wait, prayer?

I don't need to spend time set aside reading my Bible and praying because God's with me everywhere. So why would I set aside special time for something that's just a reality that Jesus purchased for me? Or it's like gathering together. Yeah, I'm, hey, we're the church.

I don't need to gather. Don't you know that we are the church. We don't need to gather in church buildings together. Come on, man.

So there's these spiritual realities. But then we gather together. And it produces a reminder. We are the church.

When we gather. And when we're separated. And we're spread out. It's like communion.

I know that the spiritual reality of I become one with God. And he's become one with me. And he's washed me clean. And he sacrificed his body to make me whole spiritually.

But then when I take the body and I take the juice, it helps my body connect the dots of the spiritual reality. It's like baptism. You guys, I'm trying to paint this picture. It's like baptism.

Your body and your soul haven't connected the dots. What's happened spiritually to you that you've died to sin. You've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer you who live but God in you.

And then you get raised to newness of life. And you get a new spirit that old nature dies. And it gets crucified and buried. And that new nature comes to life.

And you're a new creation. The old is gone. That's spiritual reality. And the Lord's like, man, I know they're frailty.

I know they can't get it. I know they're smart, but they're not that smart. They need help. They need help to connect the dots physically and emotionally.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give them something tactile that they can process. And I'm going to have them get dunked underwater. And then they're going to come up so they connect the dots of what's happened on the inside. A lot of these things are not commands requirements.

If you don't do this, you're going to hell. If you don't do this, you're not forgiven. Am I right? So you're trying to give us new law, though.

No, I'm not trying to make you do the Old Testament. I'm just saying, Sabbath, when I look at the New Testament, I don't see a command that you have to keep the Sabbath on the seventh day. I don't see that in the Testament. That's not what I'm preaching.

But what I am preaching is it is a gift and it's a tool to connect the dots that your life is not about you producing and providing and earning it. Your life and your identity is defined by the grace of Jesus, what you couldn't earn yourself. You are not the primary provider in your life. That when you stop working, the Lord is still going to provide for you because He loves you in your His kid.

Okay? And that the whole world doesn't evolve around you. There's all these good fruits that come from just practicing the Sabbath. It's like when we sit down and when we sit down at the dinner table on a Friday night and we go into our rest, we have worked our tails off to get to rest.

Sometimes you have to work harder to get to rest. It's like the nation of Israel on in Exodus 16. They are having to do double the work to gather the food for the next day. Sometimes you've got to go grocery shopping and you've got to buy groceries for two days rather than one day.

Sometimes you have to clean the house and you have to bust your tail to clean the house so that you can feel like I can rest now. Okay? But we'll sit at the table and we've been working so hard. We've been trying to clean the house so we can rest and then we'll sit at the table, make the lights dim and we have a candle and we put the candle in the middle of the table, one of our kids will and then Katie comes and takes a lighter and lights the candle and she says this.

She says, Jesus, we thank you that you finished the work and you are our provider and you are our sustainer and by faith we take the next 24 hours to intentionally enter into your rest. We remember what you've done and she says thank you and we all say thank you Lord. We enter into your rest. So there's this like moment where you go, I'm going to stop working and I'm going to choose to rest.

I'm going to choose to step into that place of rest. So you're going, well okay but Romans clearly states we're not under the law. Amen. It is not a requirement to earn God's approval or be justified.

You are right. We're on the same page. You don't have to. It's just like you don't have to spend time with every day or with the Lord every day.

You don't have to do devos every day. You don't have to spend an hour a day with God. I remember when I got married and I was super religious you guys. I was I was a mess.

Okay? And I thought I was really something special. Okay? And then I got and then Katie helped me, you know?

And so what would happen is I had made this commitment like I'm going to spend an hour a day with God every single day. And then if I didn't spend an hour with the Lord, I would be the worst. I'd be not okay. I'd be like a jerk.

Okay? It's like I didn't get my hour. And she pinpointed that right with all these people who always spirit was like, mm-hmm. That's not going to happen.

No, that's not what it was like. But she was like, I wonder. She just like offered it up like, I wonder if you should actually take a month where you just don't spend time with God so you can get free from that mindset of I'm not going to be okay if I don't get an hour with the Lord. And it actually broke me out of this religious mentality.

Some of you are religious already. I'm talking about Sabbath and you're like, wooo, Sabbath. And all these people are going to come around and then they're going to know that God is telling us to Sabbath. And if we don't, there's major problems.

And I'm like, I want to encourage you. You might be on the other ditch of religion and I want to encourage you to come a little into it's a tool that God has given us as a gift. Okay, Mark, too. That was for somebody.

I'm probably not the majority, but some of somebody needed to hear that. Okay. I want to look at Jesus' commentary about the Sabbath in Mark 2, verse 23. Mark 2, verse 23.

One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields. And they made their way as they made their way. His disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

And he said to them, have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry? And he and those who are with him. How we entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar, the high priest, and ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat. Also gave it to those who are with him.

Verse 27. And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the son of man is Lord, even of the Sabbath, the prince of peace, just giving commentary on the Sabbath and stopping the work. So as Jesus is addressing this, what he's addressing is these Pharisees that have been really religious about, we must keep the Sabbath and we can't break the rules of the law because that's how we're made righteous.

And so Jesus is introducing them to a new way. And he knows what they're talking about because what they're talking about is this thing called fence laws. So what they would do with fence laws is let's say this is the commandment of the Sabbath, this table. What religious leaders throughout the centuries would do for the nation of Israel is they would provide commentary for everyone.

It was kind of like a secondary law where we're going to put a fence of laws around the Sabbath so we don't break the Sabbath. So they're going, hey, Alex, if your donkey falls into a hole, don't say that donkey because that's work on the Sabbath. And they're going, hey, Sam, if you, man, Sam, we really got to make some more fence laws for this one. No, but they're going, Sam, if you walk too many miles, then you're going to break the Sabbath.

So we need to tell you, you can only walk a half mile. If you walk over a half mile, then you're probably going to break the Sabbath. And so they put all of these little laws around the Sabbath so nobody would break it. And one of the things that they're talking about is a fence law that says you can't pluck grains of wheat in the field.

And so they're offended. And they're like, who does this guy think he has? He's training his disciples to do evil things and break the Sabbath. And Jesus is going, you're missing the whole point of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is a gift to you. The Sabbath isn't, you're not made to just follow the commands. The commands are actually to bless you. I'm going to say that again.

The commands are there to bless you. Man, we do not like that. You mean you're going to tell me what to do and then you're going to say it's good for me? Don't tell me what's good for me.

That's what I write. I'm the God of my own life. Don't you say that, right? But the Lord is so good.

And he's going, I know exactly what's the best for you. I'm going to give you this command of Sabbath. But as Jesus is laying it out, he's going, it's just a gift. It's just a gift to my people that were slaves.

And it's a gift to the Americans that think that we don't stop working because our identity is based on what we provide and produce and accomplish. And he's going, it's not a requirement, but it's a blessing. You don't have to, but you can, and I think it's going to add value to your life. I think it's going to be good for you.

And so if it's not clear yet, what I'm talking about is taking a 24-hour period and setting it aside to pause and not work. Now I'm not talking about a day off. Oh, do you know what I experience? A day off means I get off work and I go work.

That's what a day off is. A day off is there's a lot of housework. I need to mow the lawn. I need to weed.

I need to pay bills. That's what our day off is. The Sabbath is different. It's not day off.

In the very beginning, do you remember it said that God ceased from all work, not just work that we get paychecks for. That's hard for me. Because at our house, there's been weeds that have been growing and every time I pull up, I'm like, oh my gosh. And then it's like, it's Sabbath and I'm like, and it's hard.

But then you make sacrifices to go, but I know what's good for me. And I know that it's going to be okay. And that on Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to weed and I'm going to work really hard so I can rest. You see that?

So if you know that rest, listen, everybody listen. If you know that rest is coming, it makes it okay when you have to work your tail off. Okay? Those six days, you feel like you have more permission to work really hard when you know.

It's out of this coming and we're going to eat ice cream. We're going to eat a lot of ice cream. And we're going to sleep in and we're going to get that puzzle out. How many of you are puzzlers?

I don't know. I can't believe I said that. I don't do it. I don't puzzle.

Gady puzzles. No, I'm just kidding. Listen, you get to be with those that you love. Be with those that you enjoy.

You get to be with the Lord. It's a sacred special time that you get to go. We're going to force ourselves to rest and we're going to know that he loves us even when we're not doing anything to earn it. It's really just a reminder for the gospel.

The Sabbath is a tool to go, oh, yeah, this was all free. Oh, yeah, I'm not the center of the universe. Oh, yeah, the world keeps on spending when I don't answer emails. Oh, yeah, what's urgent for them doesn't need to be urgent for me.

It's a big problem for them. Can wait and it will be a problem that I get to on Monday. Some of us need to hear that because we're constantly in a tyranny of the urgent. Listen, that's me.

I'm constantly like, oh, there's a fire and I'm constantly putting out fires because I need to improve as a planner and I just want to encourage you. Listen, I want to encourage you. Don't think about me. Think about you, okay?

Think about your weaknesses right now. Don't think about my weaknesses. All right. Go back to my notes.

Don't be that honest. No, sit down, sit outside, build fires, take walks. I don't know what it looks like for you, but you get to be. You get to stop working.

You get to relax and you get to be with him and know that he loves you. And it's a gift and it's a blessing. I want to stand. If there's a resistance to the Lord that you're feeling, you're going, man, I don't like this idea.

I can't. I'm not interested. I think this is bad. This is not a good idea or maybe it is a good idea, but I got to.

I can't. You're going, yeah, maybe it's it's a blessing, but I don't want to. I don't want to go there. I want to encourage you to pause and go.

Maybe there's something underneath the surface that's feeding that mentality or that idea, but the Lord's wanting to uproot and it might be around a fear of provision. It might be around the fear of what people will think and your manager or your boss will think when you stop working seven days a week and you take one day off. It might be for your pioneer and your small business owner and you're starting something and it's a startup and you're like, I don't have capacity to take any day off anytime off because I have to do it. And the Lord's like, Hey, what if, what if the most healthy thing that you could do is to just take a whole day off?

I want you to all get to the end of your stories and I want you to have love on your hearts for the Lord. I want you to get to the rocking chair with affection on your heart for God. I want you to actually have healthy hearts, healthy marriages, healthy rhythms. I want you to feel connected to people in your life.

And I don't want you to live a life of slavery to the American dream. I want you to be free. And there's practices that Jesus gives us like the Sabbath that can help us stay free. And these practices are not things that we feel shame or guilt around when we don't do them.

Are you hearing that? Some of us are like, I haven't practiced Sabbath and a long time. And it's like, no problem. I haven't spent time with the Lord.

I haven't fasted in years. And it's like, Hey, that's okay. We're going after God. You could start whenever you want to.

You could just jump in and go man, for the next six months, we're going to give ourselves to celebrating Sabbath and we're just going to do it. We're going to try it out. We're going to do it with a group of friends and don't do it alone. Do it with people.

It's like the singles in the community that are gathering with families or gathering with each other and they're starting on Friday night and they're eating together and it's so fruitful and it's so good and they like the candle, just like the creple family lights a candle and God is in it and he's in the middle of it. And so you get to do it with the people that you enjoy, get to do it the people that you love. Okay. And so these next two weeks, I want us to think next Sunday and this Wednesday when you're not at prayer room and you're not in this room and you didn't drop your kids off, I want you to be thinking.

Lord, teach me rest. Lord, I want to be provoked to know how can I have healthy rhythms of saying enough is enough. I want to be like you. I want to do really hard work.

I want to do fantastic work. Just like the Marine biologist God that just creates 240,000 like that's crazy. I want to do good work and I want to rest like you. What I want us to do is activate right away on this.

Okay. And what I want us to do is have a conversation around what does rest look like for you and how do you want that to shift? So what does it look like for you and how do you want it to shift? And I want us to just dialogue with people around us groups of three or four and I want us to talk about it.

And some of you are going to go, oh, no, no, no, no. I don't rest. I've never rested and I will not rest. And it's like, okay, you should talk about that and say that.

Okay. And then some of you are like, I'm retired and I rest all the time and I hate this message. And you can say that. Okay.

But remember, it's work. All types of work, not just work that you get paid for. Okay. And I want us to talk about how do you rest and or how do you not rest?

How do you want that to shift? And then I want us to just pray over each other. Okay. So I'm going to give you about five, ten minutes to get in groups of three or four with people around you.

Just welcome. Make sure that there's anybody that's a straggler around you. Just welcome them in and include them in your group and introduce yourselves. All right.

You guys ready? One, two, three, go. You're talking about how do you rest or how do you not? How do you want that to shift?

And then just pray over the next two weeks. You're going to pray over the next two weeks over people. Okay.