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Are you afraid of losing control or fear the job won't get done without you? Or maybe you think you're resting, but you fill your time with TV, reading or shopping and at the end of the day, you're still tired? Take a second and think of your own reasons.
For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Meredith: Hello friends. Welcome back to the Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Meredith Brock, and I am here with my cohost, Kaley Olson.
Kaley: Hey Meredith, thank you for that intro. That was nice.
Meredith: I felt like maybe we were going to do like a little WWF. Did you ever watch WWF or are you too young for that?
Kaley: I think I didn't watch it, but I know what you're talking about.
Meredith: Okay. They always did those intros.
Kaley: Should I get a belt?
Meredith: Yeah, let's do that next time. Okay. All right, folks, can you believe we are at the very end of 2019? This year has flown by, and this is our last podcast episode of the year, and I'm just so thankful for all that we got to do. We released 27 episodes.
Kaley: That's a lot.
Meredith: That's a lot of episodes for us, and the most popular by far being the therapy and theology series, which I loved. Gosh, were they so helpful to me and so helpful to so many people all over the world. It was awesome. We heard tons of great feedback from you guys. And so I think ... I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but there may be more coming in 2020.
Kaley: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Definitely more coming.
Meredith: It's on the horizon friends, so hang in there. Here comes more. But what I love most about what we do here at Proverbs 31 is not just the podcast. I mean, it is what Kaley and I get the privilege of hosting, but what we really do at Proverbs is we connect women with God's Word every day. We have a saying around here that we share biblical truth for any girl in any season, but I'd say that's the case for what we do in our First 5 app, in our online Bible studies, our daily devotions and on social media.
So for those of you listening right now, I want you to pause real quick. I want you to think back about a podcast that the Lord used to really speak into your life. Maybe you have hundreds of screenshots of the encouragement we share on social media, or maybe you forwarded a daily devotion to a friend who desperately needs encouragement in a really dark season. Friends, we couldn't provide any of these things if it weren't for the generosity of our donors.
And right now, as we close out 2019, we're asking you to come alongside us and partner with us financially. Maybe it's just $10 or maybe it's more, but would you consider making a donation to the ministry? When you give, you're not only helping fund part of our ministry you enjoy, you're also helping us connect with other women around the world, helping them know and live the truth of God's Word every single day. So to make a donation, if the Lord leads you, just go visit Proverbs31.org and click that donate button.
All right, here we go. Let's jump into today's content. We know you're all waiting for it. Kaley, tell us a little bit about where we're going today.
Kaley: Oh my gosh. Well, I couldn't think of anything better to end this year with and to talk about rest, because I think it's something that happens so naturally between Christmas and New Year. You kind of have a down season, and you kind of don't know what to do with it because we're all so busy, right? I mean, so busy. And so in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I know I need to rethink about how I think about rest. And the thing is, in that in-between time, I don't always know how to fit it in or what to really do.
Meredith: Right. You fill it up with shopping. You fill it up with going to different holiday parties or whatever. But how do you really rest?
Kaley: Yes. Yes. I'm excited about that. And so today on the podcast, we're just going to talk about that exactly. And we're going to have our friend, Kristen White, on to give us a Bible teaching about what the Lord has taught her about rest, and I'm really excited for you guys to hear it. So welcome, Kristen.
Kristen: Hi, you guys. I'm so grateful to be here. Y'all are so kind to invite me to come on the podcast. I'm pumped about it.
Meredith: Well, we are super-hyped to have you here because y'all don't know this, but Kristen is genuinely one of my very favorite people on the entire planet. You're going to hear, for all of our friends who are not from the south, at least the Southeastern United States, you're going to hear some good old Southern vernacular from my friend Kristen. She lives in the deep South. Kristen, tell them where you live.
Kristen: Guys, Piedmont, South Carolina. Come on.
Meredith: She wears orange Crocs, orange and yellow. You wear Crocs, though, and you love them.
Kristen: Do not hate on the Crocs. Do not hate on the Crocs. They are just practical.
Meredith: I know, and you love them. Your husband loves them. Tell them a little bit about what your husband does.
Kristen: Yes, so I get the joy of serving on Lysa's team at Proverbs. I love what I get to do and who I get to do it with. But we are actually a ministry family. So my husband, he is a pastor in South Carolina. We have two boys, Levi and Isaac, who are crazy, but they are so much fun. We are very much in the thick of the little years, but we are loving life.
Meredith: You sure are in the thick of the little years. I think just yesterday I got a good laugh out of something you posted because it was a picture of you on a conference call, because you could see it was like a video conference call, and your kids were under the table you were working on, and I was like, "Yeah girl, I feel you. I feel you so hard right now because that is my life." I love following you on social media because it's like I have a partner in crime, but we're just in different states. Y'all don't know the treat that we have in store for you because not only is Kristen super fun, but she is a woman of depth and character and true biblical knowledge. I know she studies the Bible for herself, so we're really excited to have you here, Kristen. You can take it away.
Kristen: Awesome. Well, thank you, guys. That is super kind words. So like you mentioned, Kaley, today I wanted to share about rest. And I don't know about y'all, but when I hear that word, I tend to squirm a little bit because this idea of rest and Sabbath is so counter-cultural to the message that we just hear everywhere today in the world. We just hear, "Work harder, do more," and all of those kinds of things, and I think one of the issues that we're seeing today, and I get wrapped up in this so much, is trying to live in our culture's expectation to just do more than we've ever done. But the fact of the matter that will never change is we still only have 24 hours in a day, right?
So for most of us, rest sounds nice, and I think we'd all agree that we want to do that, but when do we do that? How do we do that? So today I just wanted to share a little bit about the journey that God has taken our family on, and quite honestly, it's still a constant idea that we have to fight to keep at the forefront of our priorities. And so I am no expert in this, but hopefully what God has taught us as we've been leaning into this and learning about this will be helpful, whether this is a challenge or a reminder or an encouragement, just wherever you're at as well.
This concept was really stirred in me when one of the pastors at our church last year, he shared something, and it was almost just this quick little blurb that he shared in passing from the stage. It wasn't like a main point or a main thing, but I just couldn't get it out of my head. And so I kept digging a little bit deeper. And then I also kept seeing this message more and more around me. I think people are talking about this more because of what I mentioned above — just how prevalent of an issue our hustle culture has become.
So today I wanted to take us to Genesis, and if you're learning where the books in the Bible are, I've tried to make this easy for you. We are going to the first chapter in the first book of the Bible, so just flipped to the very front. And in Genesis 1, we see the order of creation. When I just try to wrap my mind around that, can you imagine just absolute nothingness? Everything that exists was created. And so today I wanted to specifically highlight that in God's design of all things, He seemed to have a pattern. He first formed things, and then He filled them. So I wanted to do a quick recap for us, and stick with me here. This is kind of going to be some back-to-back Scripture, but I think this is really important, so stick with me.
In Genesis Chapter 1 verse two, it says that earth was formless. Again, I talked about there's this pattern of God forming things and then filling them. So the earth was formless, and empty darkness was over the surface. So I wanted to recap those one to six. In Days One to Three, over and over we see that as God is forming creation, He says, "Let there be blank," so Day one, Chapter 1 verse three, "Let there be light." And so on Day One there is light and dark, day and night. And on Day Two, verse six, "Let there be space between the waters to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth." So on Day Two, we now have sea and sky. And then on Day Three, verse nine, "Let the waters beneath the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear. Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit." So now on Day Three, we have land and plants.
That was Days One to Three, but interestingly enough, have you ever noticed that next three days, God fills the very same things that He formed? So Day Four, remember back on Day One, He formed the light of day and the dark of night. So now on Day Four, verse 14, "Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days and years." And so on Day Four, God fills the expanse that He created with the sun, the moon, and the stars. Day Five ... We're almost there. Hang with me, you guys. Day Five. So remember on Day Two, He forms the sea and the sky. Verse 20, "Let the water swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind." So God fills the sea and the sky with fish and birds.
I want to give a quick side note here. So up to this point, God saw that His creation was good, but this time, for the first time when He created living things, He blessed them, verse 22, which I think that is pretty significant, and watch for this continued pattern, too. So Day Six ... Remember that Day Three, He formed the land and plants. Verse 24, "Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground and wild animals." And then verse 26, "Let us make man in our image." And so God fills the land and animals with people. And again, in verse 28 He blessed them.
I know that was a lot. Why am I sharing this, and what does this have to do with rest? Well, I want us to keep reading and to see a few things. So on Day Six, God forms and fills us, humans, people, for several reasons, but one of them being the explicit purpose of Day Seven. And you can read in Genesis Chapter 2 verses two and three that on the seventh day, God establishes a seven-day rhythm. Verse two, "God had finished the work He had been doing so on the seventh day, He rested from all His work. Then God blessed it and made it holy."
So first of all, I don't know if you guys remember, do you remember what all God blesses? He blessed the animals. He blessed humans, and He blesses the Sabbath. God blessed a day. He blesses time. And so I think there was really some life-giving ability when we take time to rest with our heavenly Father. Sabbath and its origin literally means to stop or to cease primarily on the seventh day of the week.
And going back to that, I think it's amazing that so many things He formed or created and He waited to fill them, but God didn't do that with us. He didn't wait to fill us. He saved us until last so that our immediate role was to rest with Him. We didn't have to wait while He kept working. He made us, and then He rested. And I think that is such a beautiful parallel of our relationship with God in that once we accept that He has formed us and called us His, we received an immediate filling from Him with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We had this picture of the first Adam ... Hang with me here. This is some theology here ... but the first Adam, this representation of humanity being formed and filled. But then we also have the second Adam, Jesus. If you're like, "What is she talking about?" You can go do a little deep dive. Go check out First Corinthians Chapter 15.
But Jesus, who mirrors this forming and filling in Matthew 3 verses 16 and 17, it says, "And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.'" Jesus Himself was formed and filled. I also love that this was before Jesus had quote unquote "done anything,” any miracles or anything. God formed His Son. God filled His Son. God identified Him and loved Him before He did anything. And like Lysa TerKeurst says, "God's love isn't based on me. It's placed on me." And I think Jesus is a beautiful picture of that too. And so then it is out of that rest and relationship with God that we get to do the good and holy and hard work that He has designed for us to do.
And so I know that's a lot, but I want it to leave us like, "Okay, that's great. What do we do with all that?" And I want it to leave us with some encouragement, and this is every bit for me reminders that I need, but what do we do with this? How do we do this resting? So just a couple more practical ... I wanted to break it down a little bit with this idea of rest. One, remembering that we work from rest, not that we rest from work, not that we hustle so hard that we need this day of rest to just catch up and get our breath, but that we rest so well that we get to work out of that. And I think there really is a difference there when we intentionally think about rest and we get to work from the overflow of our rest and our time with God. Even when you think about the beginning of creation, on the first day it says there was evening and there was morning. Evening came first. God prioritizes rest.
And as I'm talking, I'm thinking through what people might be thinking, and I wanted to clarify, I'm not necessarily saying go bumming around on the couch for a whole day and be lazy, although certainly, there may be times for that, but resting usually requires active participation, and just a helpful practical gauge for me that someone shared is if you typically work with your hands, then rest with your mind, and if you work with your mind, rest with your hands, and I feel like that makes it a lot more sustainable.
My husband and I, we rest very differently. He works with his mind a lot of the week, and so he loves to rest with his hands in the yard or building something or whatever. My week, Meredith, as you mentioned, is generally much more physically taxing as a mama of two little humans, and so I love to rest when and as much as I can with my mind, reading a book or taking a slow walk and listening to worship music. It looks different for everyone.
The other thing I wanted to just remind us all of is we have to remember that creating a rhythm of rest in our lives and honoring the Sabbath isn't about creating rules to follow. Jesus really rubbed up against the religious leaders of His day because of what He did on the Sabbath. Example, healing people, a really good thing, but laws and rules are good and helpful when we remember that their intention is just to help us love God and others more. And so God didn't create people just so that He would have someone to fulfill this idea of the Sabbath that He had. God gave the gift of the Sabbath to the people He had already created, a rhythm to lead to more life in relationship with Him and freedom, not to keep us from it.
If you think about many of the idols in today's culture — work and productivity and hustle — this idea of resting can really step on the toes of some of those idols in our lives. Again, it's very countercultural, but when I think about Jesus, He was oftentimes doing the opposite thing of other people. He was sleeping when the disciples were on a boat in a storm. He was awake in the Garden of Gethsemane praying when the disciples were sleeping. And so we just have to keep in mind that this isn't about resting in a specific way but ultimately to grow us in our intimacy with God.
So let me ask you, ask us, me included, when is the last time that you rested with your heavenly Father? Or quite honestly, maybe you haven't ever thought to do this, and that's okay. We are all growing in our walk with Jesus and learning more every day. I just want to remind us, as we continually prioritize spending time with God, actively resting with Him, let's remember, this has been a really great reminder for me that the hardest work we will ever have to do has already been accomplished for us. Jesus has already done the work on the cross to make a way for us to have access to a very real and personal relationship with God.
And so there will always be a reason and an excuse for us to not do this, but I was reminded as long as there's an excuse in your mouth, there will be a cycle in your heart, and we cannot let a more full and free relationship with God be sacrificed because we excused the importance of rest in our lives. So whatever it takes, let's commit together to take one step, just one, just one ... we'll start with just one ... towards prioritizing rest and being with God. After this, go pick a day, and if you need to start smaller, pick a time, pick an hour just to disconnect from all that the world says we need to do so that we can be, because God has formed us and filled us to be with Him first, not to try to do for Him first.
And honestly, when it really comes down to it for me, this is a weekly act of trust for me to remember that I can stop doing and I can stop producing, that my identity is not in what I do but in who I am as a child of God. So here is the invitation, especially in light of this time of year with all that it has going on, just the hustle and bustle. Will you trust God with me in our surrendered choice to rest?
Meredith: Goodness, Kristen. Man, so much to digest from this, because I live, like we were talking earlier, in that space of I'm a working mom, I have two kids. My husband travels a lot, so my life can be so, so busy. And as you were talking, I was asking myself this question, and so I'm going to ask all three of us. We're all going to answer this question, okay? Question time with Meredith. But what are some of the reasons I don't rest? What makes me not rest? And so I'm going to ask you first, Kaley. Putting you on the spot. Why don't you rest sometimes?
Kaley: I feel like this is just part of who I am and that I like to have control over things. And so I feel like if I'm resting, something's not getting done. And I think for me, resting from things at home, like laundry or whatever is one thing, but resting from doing something that's a work assignment is hard for me because I'm like, "Don't stop until the job is done." And so it's hard for me to remember, I can only do so much.
And Kristen, I love what you said, the hardest work we'll have to do has already been done for us. This is not the hardest work I'll ever do. This is my assignment for now, but no one is expecting me to work all 24 hours. So I am learning. I think this year has been a year that I've learned a lot compared to last year. You could probably attest to that, but that's the hardest thing for me is just feeling like it's up to me, and I've got to get it done.
Meredith: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's right. This is what I wrote down was reasons I don't rest. I fear it won't all get done, and then I fear, and here's the big one where it's such an indication of my lack of trust in the Lord's care for me and care for my people and that He's in control is that I fear it all relies on me. Everything relies on me. And so I don't feel like I can sit down and just spend time. How many times have I sat down to read my Bible and spend time with the Lord?
As soon as I sit down I'm like, "Oh gosh, I forgot to feed the dog," and I get up and go feed the dog. And then I sit down and I'm like, "Oh, I forgot to move the laundry over into the dryer." And then it's like, "Oh man, I mean, I really should get going because I got a long day ahead of me," and what should have been an hour ends up being 15 minutes, and then by the time I get to Sunday, it's just I always have all these excuses of why I can't really rest when it comes down to the fact that really, it's a heart issue of I don't trust that the Lord will take care of the things that I don't get to.
And Kristen, the other thing I wrote down that I thought was so interesting ... I've never actually heard this before, and it's a real paradigm shift in my mind ... is the idea that God blesses time.
Kaley: I never heard that either.
Meredith: That's really significant because the reality is, is if He blessed time in Genesis, y'all, that means He will do that now for us. And so I can sit down and rest and believe that in the times that I am productive, He will bless that if I honor Him with my time. It's the same thing. It's almost the same. I want to be careful the way that I say this, but it's that same idea of when you give your firstfruits of your finances to the Lord, that's you surrendering to Him, your finances. My time ... Can y'all hear that I'm totally processing internally? I'm saying it all out loud because something's shifting inside of me that I think I hadn't really thought about before. So good. My goodness. What are you thinking,
Kaley? Tell me what's on your mind.
Kaley: Well, whenever Kristen first started talking, you talked about just the title of your talk and us talking about the need for rest and how you were challenged by that, I thought about two different groups of people. I thought about people who are in kind of a middle age season of life and how they view rest versus how somebody who is a 20-something in my generation is viewing rest and what we're being told on social media, and it's a combination of, "Work hard, work hard, work hard. You can do it. You're the boss. You run your life," and then there's also a conflicting message of self-care. Just stop and, you know, wear the sweatshirt, wear the lounge pants, and I'm thinking, right now, I feel like because I'm blessed to work at Proverbs and hear messages like this and I have wise counsel in my life, I'm being led to understand what rest is.
There's probably a girl listening right now who is on social media, and she sees one post about hustling and, "Don't stop until you can't go on," and then she sees another thing that's like, "Oh, it's okay to provide. It's okay to give an excuse to not show up and do this. Self-care is important." So I would love to hear your thoughts on if a young girl who's in college and is listening to this right now is trying to figure out what her life is going to look like, what would you tell her is a balance between both? How does she find how much to hustle versus how much to rest?
Meredith: That's a great question. Kristen, do you want to take a stab at it, or you want me to?
Kristen: Oh man. I mean, that is hard because that is real in our culture today. And obviously I think balance in general is just this myth in general. I think I've never once rested with the Lord and taking that time and thought that was a waste of my time. And again, like I keep saying, this is countercultural. If this is a discipline that you choose to ... which I hope you will ... Again, it's a discipline that I hope just leads to freedom. It is not to bind you in any way, but I think choosing this as a discipline, it is going to feel like you're going against the grain a little bit. And I think that's okay. I think that's good. And so it's probably not going to feel very celebrated to say, "Oh, I'm stepping back. I'm doing less. I'm pressing pause."
But I think in this life of following Jesus, choosing the hard against the grain thing, that's what we get to choose a lot of the time. It is for God's glory and our benefit. And again, that's where the trusting comes in, that when it doesn't make sense in our minds as we're playing it out, it is trusting the Lord. It is releasing control because ultimately, if I can't set aside what I'm doing for the sake of who I'm becoming and how I want an image where Jesus just shows an idol in my life, and so I feel like rest for me has really been this pruning of idols ultimately. It's hard. It is a choice. And so I feel like that self-care verse hustle, all of this balance ... Again, balance, I think that can be amiss sometimes ... It is a choice, and it is hard, and it is probably going to feel like you're going against the grain a little bit, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong or bad.
Meredith: Right. Well, and I would add too, I think it's really how you define rest versus self-care. So if rest really is, if you define rest as resting with your heavenly Father and connectedness in that relationship with Him, trusting Him to enable you to get done exactly what you were supposed to get done in a 24-hour period and in a six-day period so that you could rest on the seventh day, that looks very different than, "I'm going to get my nails done." Now, there is nothing wrong with getting your nails done. Please don't walk away from this thinking Meredith is anti-self-care. But there is a difference where sometimes, for me, I'm not a person that ... and like I said, I have no issue with getting your nails done. It's not a high priority to me. That's not restful to me. It actually feels like a task that has to get done.
But if you're defining rest as self-care, I think you can get really tripped up there because that's not necessarily the equivalent. Rest really is saying, "I cannot produce work right now because I trust my heavenly Father will provide for me in every way, shape and form." And so I think that's one way to kind of shift your whole lens on the self-care conversation. So if resting with your heavenly Father means you're going to go out and get a massage, then have at it, ladies. But if you're not spending time in God's Word, I might challenge that a little bit and say let's make sure we're connecting with our heavenly Father through His Word.
And so up next to the rest — right up next to the hustle thing — I mean, I think there's so many conversations out there right now around it. I think Jefferson Bethke just released a book about the whole idea of hustle. It's got a very challenging title so y'all can Google that on your own. But I think he addresses it really, really well that it really is a matter of trust in how much do you trust that the Lord will enable you to get done exactly what you're supposed to get done in a 24-hour period out of six days of the week so that you can trust Him to rest.
Like Kristen said, I don't know that you'll ever find the balance, but if you work from that place ... Kristen, this is one of my favorite quotes. I remember the first time I heard you do this teaching, and it now sits at the top of my Evernote list of to-dos, really and truly is, "Work from rest, not work to rest." And so it's such a different way. If you see rest as connection to the Lord, your Savior, your Creator, not just a way to escape work, you can work from that place. So man, what a valuable teaching. Kristen, thank you so much for being our last and final teaching of 2019 [crosstalk 00:29:12]. How fun is that? And such a perfect topic for the Christmas season.
Kaley: Yeah, absolutely. And well, Meredith, in-between Christmas and New Year, we know that you're going to be planning and thinking through goals and new things that you want to do in 2020, right?
Meredith: I hope so, right?
Kaley: So your goal [crosstalk 00:29:28].
Meredith: One of those will be rest.
Kaley: Perfect. Yes.
Meredith: Rest. Write it down now.
Kaley: Absolutely, absolutely. My word for 2020. Maybe one of them [inaudible 00:29:35] a lot. But as you plan, we want you to be in the know with all the exciting things coming up at Proverbs 31 Ministries. And one of the best things that you can do is give us a follow on social media. I'm talking Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Look us up at, at, the little at sign, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and follow along.
Meredith: Another great way to stay in the loop is to subscribe to our Encouragement for Today Devotions. Not only will it provide your weekday dose of biblical encouragement straight to your inbox, but it's a great way for you to find out about our Bible studies and all the really great resources we have to help you stay connected to God's Word. So subscribe today at proverbs31.org and provide us your email address, and it will land right there in your inbox.
All right, folks, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you again so much for listening, and we pray that this helps you know the truth of God's Word and live that truth out daily, because when you do, it will change everything.