Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Independence Podcast helps everyday people discover that true freedom isn’t found in self-reliance but in total dependence on Jesus Christ. Each episode blends honest conversation, biblical truth, and practical application to help listeners move beyond emotional devotion toward consistent, daily surrender. Whether you’re new in your faith or longing to grow deeper, you’ll find encouragement to trust God fully, live from His grace, and follow Christ with courage in a world that celebrates independence but neglects dependence on the One who truly sets us free.
Bryan Dunham (00:01)
If our work culture in America has a nightmare, it is something called Sabbath rest. In our current cultural context, this architecture of anxiety that we've created, we view rest as a luxury, like as a reward for a job well done, or perhaps even most dangerously as a tool for recharging. We treat rest as a battery saving mode so that we can return to our real work.
with more efficiency, more energy. But in the kingdom of God, rest is not a means to an end and it's not an optimization strategy. Rest is an act of resistance. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Independence Podcast where we are working toward living independence daily on God. I am your host, Brian Dunham. And today we have a bonus episode.
I'm in the process of writing my next book and was working on chapter six, which is titled The Resistance of Rest. And so often when I'm doing anything like this, whether that's writing or preaching or even recording a podcast, I'm actually working through the issue while I'm doing it. Like, I don't know if you guys recognize this, but almost every preacher when they're preaching a message, they're preaching to themselves.
Many times God is using situations in a communicator's life and a preacher's life to teach them about something that they're studying to teach you. And they learn through that and
then they're able to teach that message to you in a way that you can receive it because it's something that they have recently, typically just gone through. And it's really interesting because it very much feels like learning in public. Like I feel as though when I preach, when I teach, when I do this podcast, when I'm writing, at least in the moment that I'm writing, I'm learning the very things I'm talking about. And it gives just me the opportunity to learn in public.
And in so doing, hopefully that helps you in some way. And so this week in particular was a tough one for me. And I think it can be laid at the feet of inadequate rest, like the lack of real rest. And I just felt the need to share this one with you as a bonus episode, because it's Friday morning as I'm recording this and I'm going to release this ⁓ Friday midday, probably if I have time to go through the production piece of it.
and I was thinking as we head into the weekend, perhaps this might land with someone and speak to you and maybe even help you or save you from something that I've been enduring. So as I've been studying, and doing some research for the book, I've encountered the work of a sociologist named Harmot Rosa, who speaks of something he refers to as social acceleration.
So he argues that the modern life that you and I live is characterized by this frantic pace where we feel like we have to run just to maintain our place. Like the acceleration isn't about, you know, fast cars and high speed internet. It's a spiritual state. It's a feeling that if we stop the world, or at least the parts of it that we're attempting to manage are going to fall apart.
this is our achievement society at its most coercive. It tells us that our value is directly proportional to our velocity. And when we refuse to rest, we're essentially declaring that the world cannot survive without our constant input or supervision. And in effect, we're actually
trying to be God. I was on a webinar last night for artificial intelligence and this idea of how specifically it was about Claude Co-work and how that can create dramatic efficiencies and it talks about saving our clients two and a half hours a day if they institute these strategies. And so of course the pitches will what?
What more could you get done if you had two and a half hours freed up in your day? Like that would mean more business, that would mean all these advantages. And this is a cultural thing that we've been doing for a very long time. it wasn't that long ago, 50, 60 years ago when we talked about the computer and the advantages that someday the man would have a four hour workday or even a.
you know, 15 hour work week that we would offset so much of our labor with things that are automated. But the reality is that isn't what happened. You and I both know that now as we live and work in our world. When we have these tools that create efficiencies, we just find ourselves finding something else to do like, ⁓ this is actually going to make me more productive.
And so this idea of our value being found in how much we can produce, our value is now seemingly going to be found in how well we can utilize artificial intelligence to execute in our jobs. Because anymore you'll hear this in various industries, you know, it's not AI that's going to replace you. It's someone in your industry that's utilizing AI better than you that's going to replace you. And so,
we lean into this idea, and I'm not saying there's not going to be some value in AI, there isn't already, but we lean into this idea of, produce more, gotta be more, and that's where our value is found. But when it comes to our lives as Christians, peace cannot be found in a soul that refuses to stop. You cannot be led by streams of still waters, i.e. Psalm 23,
if you are always running at full tilt. And so going all the way back to the beginning of Sabbath rest, especially when God redeems the nation of Israel out of Egypt, takes them out of slavery, Sabbath was really about subversion of who they believed themselves to be.
In the ancient world, only free people could rest. Slaves were defined by their constant labor. And when God commanded the Israelites to keep the Sabbath, he wasn't giving them just another rule to try not to break. He was giving them a new identity. He was deconstructing, attempting to deconstruct their slave identity and replacing it with the identity of a son. Yet, they were constantly
complaining, especially initially and just wanting to go back to Egypt. Don't we do that same thing? Like how often do we just want to go back to the slavery that we were freed from before because we find our current circumstances uncomfortable or especially uncertain often because we don't know how to deal with the present reality, our present lack of peace. So we crave something that we already know, even if it's something that was
⁓ painful to us, we crave that thing that's at least a known versus this thing I might be in that is an unknown. Or we find something new to be enslaved to, something better, like a job or God help us our kids. I've had so many people
since recovering and still in the recovery process from alcoholism, I've had many people, I've explained to them, there's so many times I feel like I've just replaced that with something else, whether that's work or whether that's food or, you know, there's a number of things that could take the place of that. And people would say things to me like, well, at least that's better. You know, it's better than alcohol, you know, if you're going to be a workaholic or if you're going to, you know, power down a pizza and a
six pack of soda, that's better than, than an alcoholic. But, but is it, is it really better because I'm now just trying to become enslaved to something else and how many of us look for our identity and our purpose in our production and how much we can produce. And so for the modern day individual taking a Sabbath rest, like a day to do no
work at all is, like a bit of a controlled demolition of our self, of our ego, stopping the podcast, closing the Mac book, putting the iPhone on, do not disturb and watching the sun go down without our help. And by resting in that way, we're subverting the modern day kind of liturgy of the marketplace.
What I mean by liturgy of the marketplace, liturgy, sounds like a churchy word. It really just means the things that you do. So like if I wake up in the morning and I grab my phone and I check my work email, I check my texts. That's like the first thing that I do. And then I walk in, I sit down at my computer and I, I look at my email just to make sure that there's no other things in my personal life that are going on. need to tend to, nothing that needs my immediate response. Check my progress on the book. Look at the podcast stats.
This is the liturgy of the marketplace I'm participating in. And when we stop that, when we take a day a week to simply quit that type of behavior intentionally, and I'll talk about it in a minute, you have to decide this. It has to be a pre-decision. You're making a theological statement when you do that. You're saying the world is held together by the word of his power.
and not by the work of my hands. And so the reason I'm talking about that is because this week I had what I think is a physical shutdown in relation to the lack of rest I have been getting. So I've got a nine to five job that I'm pretty much at from eight until six or six 30 every day. I also work part time at my church, you know, eight to 10 hours a week.
⁓ as the men's discipleship pastor, and then I have a daughter that lives with me most of the time. And so. Trying to make her dinner, spend some time with her in the evenings. Then also this, this podcast, which is weekly, and promotion of the first book that I wrote and then writing another book, like, and I'm not complaining.
don't get me wrong, these are things I enjoy doing. These are not things that I look at and go, ⁓ I have to go do that now. It's something that I like to do, but I have been noticing. In fact, I articulated this last week to someone that the pace I feel like I'm running at is unsustainable. I don't feel like there's any margin in the day. And I don't feel like there's ever even really a day off
because there really isn't a day off. And every day of the week, seems as though something is going on for me to kind of keep all these plates spinning. so that can lead to any time that happens to be free. Like for me, that's Monday nights. Rachel is with her mother on that night. I typically don't have any other commitments.
that night and it's a night where I can attempt to cram rest into an evening and that usually winds up being some unhealthy level of eating and binge watching a TV show. And so this has been going on now for a number of months and I have been feeling it in my spirit. I have felt, I was telling this, my discipleship group of guys that meant some awesome guys.
⁓ that I have felt this low level of anger begin to creep in underneath the surface. And it's, it's just a generalized anger, not directed towards anybody or anything other than it feels like I don't have margin. And that is causing some emotional disruption, some spiritual disruption. And I'm not getting enough sleep to top it all off to fit some of these pieces into my life.
I have been getting up at 4 a.m. and I like, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I'm not saying, you know, listen to my poor life. I've been getting up early for most of my life. And between the early hours of say four and 5 45, I there's no other responsibility so I can get a lot of things done. This is also when I spend time with the Lord.
so this past week, as a result of all of these factors, and I believe the main culprit being just lack of sleep and then pushing myself beyond, you know, my physical capabilities, I woke up early Tuesday morning, like one, two a.m. with a very familiar flip-flopping in my chest.
And I have had paroxysmal atrial fibrillation for a while. And all that means is it's not constant. I've had a few episodes of atrial fibrillation, much of it stemming back to, I had heart surgery when I was 40 years old, there was a hole in my heart I didn't know about. And they went in and they put a wire mesh patch over that hole over time.
heart tissue has grown across it, but ever since then
I've had these occasional episodes of atrial fibrillation, which is really just the electrical signals telling your heart how to beat, get kind of screwed up and they start bouncing around and it feels like your heart is going to bounce right out of your chest. Most of the time, and this has happened to me, my heart rate would get up to 170, 180 sustained, sometimes higher than that, 220. And I would have to go to the hospital to get medical intervention.
this time when I woke up Tuesday morning, I started to feel that familiar flip-flop. And I know that it could easily lead to me needing to be at the hospital in a very short period of time. but it was not quite to that level yet. the heart rate was still, it was bouncing around a lot, but it was between 90 and 120. And so I took measures. I called in to work that day.
⁓ I tried to dial in electrolytes, potassium, magnesium. These are very important for your heart rate. I started to try to breathe slowly, calm myself down and essentially stayed in bed or on the couch all day, Tuesday and most of Wednesday. And, if you've ever gone through an episode like this, it's very uncomfortable on high alert the whole time for if my heart rate would, would rise to a level that would create a medical emergency. I would need to go.
And so that in itself creates a level of anxiety. I'm praying, I'm crying out to God, but essentially I did nothing but rest from Tuesday at about 4 a.m. until really Thursday morning is when my heart finally returned to normal sinus rhythm. And you know what? There's a reason that God commands real rest for ourselves. And it's not just that our souls need it. It's that our bodies do too.
I feel convinced that if we don't provide it, our bodies will actually take it. And I think that's what happened to me this week. And so two points here. If you feel like me, like, like you feel as though you look around your life and there's not much margin and you, even if your life is full, there's a lot going on. oftentimes we fill our lives with things that are good things, right? These aren't negative things or things we enjoy doing. And so we justify them because we feel like.
Sometimes we should be doing them. And that idea of should is one I've been wrestling with for a while. You know, I heard a spiritual mentor of mine actually tell me in person, should is just some idealized version of you that doesn't actually exist. Anytime you say, should do this or I should do that, there's this picture of you in your head. It's not actually who you are. It's some ideal out there that you're never actually going to reach. And so,
Whenever you say should, you need to pause and probably even not even do that activity. But the first point is we often fill our calendars with things that are good things. And then second, there is a difference between this concept of recharging and truly resting. And I think that's where my biggest problem lies. And so let's make a distinction between recharge and real rest.
Recharging is a management technique. You recharge so you can get back into the grind. It's still oriented towards productivity. That's what recharging is. It's only designed for you to get back into the game and be more productive. Whereas real rest, like real Sabbath rest is a state of being. Like you rest because you're already loved, because you're already secure.
because your identity doesn't come from your productivity. Your identity comes from who you are in Christ, who you are in God. And real rest is oriented towards the presence of God. And taking this time to rest is simply acknowledging that that is, that your identity doesn't come from what you do or what you produce. And so,
Let's reflect quickly on a concept that plagues me and perhaps you too. And I'm calling it the frustration of half rest. Even the Sundays, I look at my calendar and say, OK, it Sunday afternoons after church. That's where there's some time for me to rest. But guess what would happen on those Sundays? I would spend that Sunday very near my device, checking emails, thinking about the week.
planning ahead for work, all under the guise of relaxation. Like, okay, I'm just going to take this time, but I'm going to set things up for the week, and that's going to make me feel better about it. But that's not Sabbath. That is just like management light, if you want to think about it that way. There's these concepts called ego depletion and decision fatigue. Baumeister has done some excellent research that shows we as humans
have a finite amount of decision-making energy each day. And when you engage in this idea of half rest, not really resting, but also not really working, you're essentially completely wasting this limited supply of decision-making energy that you have. It's like leaving your lights on when you park your car overnight. It's the slow drain on a battery that has finite resources because you haven't fully committed
to doing nothing. You're somewhere on the fence between doing nothing and doing something. And that in and of itself burns down that resource. True rest requires a total yielding of your agenda. And it's why when God says you shall do no work on the Sabbath, one day a week, you're going to do no work. And it is a holy day. And it is set aside, not for God's purposes,
but for yours and for mine. And it requires us to enter what the writer of Hebrew calls the rest of God. It's a space where we cease from our labor just as he did his. And the clarity and the direction that is provided by saying, I'm going to take a day and make a decision to do no work. that, if you make that decision on the front end.
It takes away the psychological burden and then the stress response it's associated with this illusion of control. And when you fall into that pathway of not deciding to either do nothing or do something. And then the idea of Sabbath, it's a decision to do nothing. It's that, what's the, what does Mr. Miyagi say and karate kid man walk down right side of road. Okay. Left side of road. Okay. Walk right down the middle sooner or later, squish like a grape.
feel like I got squished like a grape this week. So the idea of Sabbath rest is you must pre decide this. Pre-decide to do nothing. So this is rest as resistance. So we have to learn the art of practical defiance. So, what I mean by that is defying our culture, which tells us.
The more productive you are, the more successful you are, the better you are, the better human being you are, the more valuable you are to the marketplace. Like it's all of this push and drive. And I have fallen under the guise at times of people I leaned into as teachers that would say, net no extra time. You shall have no extra time in your day. If you're on the treadmill, you're listening to, you know, something to, to, to enhance your skillset.
You know, anything that you're doing fine, don't, don't let yourself have any extra time. And we have to push back against that in practical defiance. And we have to build what I'm going to call Sabbath walls around our lives that this acceleration society can't penetrate. So the first one I'm going to try to practice myself. And I would recommend to you is the wall of disconnect intentionally.
severing the digital tethers that keep us locked in this place of distraction, of constantly keeping things running on the back burner of the things I need to do soon, later today, tomorrow, or next week, or who is waiting for me to take care of something, or what have I forgotten? Are there any balls that I haven't dropped? Like, if you're checking your notifications, you're still managing your world. So a full wall.
disconnect, disconnecting the digital tether. And then what I'm going to call the wall of play, engaging in activities that have no ROI, no return on investment. Play is the ultimate act of a non-slave. It's doing something purely for the joy of it rather than for the utility of it. And then the wall of worship, turning our gaze from our kingdom, from our achievements,
into what God has already done. And it's the move from the how-to of our work to the who is of our God.
Is there ever an end to work at your job? Is there ever an end to the work to do? If there is ever an end to your work, then you're about to be unemployed. You are not what you do. You are not what you produce. And what has value based off of only what it can produce? It's a slave. And we look back to Israelites and think of them being slaves in Egypt and God rescued them.
But are you and I not often slaves to productivity? And it feels like as our society increases in speed and technological advances continue to increase, that the tethers to that world making us slaves to it, slaves to our efficiency, slaves to our productivity is only.
much more dangerous and much more likely of increasing.
Sabbath is a weekly reminder that when we rest, we aren't just taking a break, we're taking a stand. We're declaring that we're no longer slaves to our own productivity. We are sons of a father who has done the work already so that we can rest. So the lesson I'm learning in public this week is for me.
Saturdays moving forward are going to be my Sabbath. No more work, no more writing, no more podcasting. It'll all be about disconnecting, play and worship. If you try to reach me on Saturday, now you'll know why you can't. If you found this episode helpful, please share with a friend and follow the show. Grace and peace, my friends.