Chapter 12 Jesus Rested

Summary

In this final episode of the Hero Worship podcast, Troy Kennedy reflects on the 12-week journey to become more like Jesus. He emphasizes the importance of rest and abiding in Jesus, highlighting the need to find one's identity and worth in Him. Troy encourages listeners to continue revisiting the practices and to share the journey with others. He concludes by expressing his excitement for the next season of the podcast, which will feature interviews with individuals who have had transformative experiences with Jesus.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

Resting and abiding in Jesus is essential for spiritual growth and finding true identity and worth.
Continually revisiting the practices and journeying with others can lead to deeper intimacy with Jesus.
The journey to become more like Jesus is not about trying harder, but about remaining faithful and open to what God is doing.
Sharing stories of God's work in our lives can inspire and encourage others in their own journeys.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Overview
03:13 Reflecting on the Journey
09:20 Advice for Others
11:26 The Importance of Rest
16:38 Closing Remarks

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Kennedy

Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Troy Kennedy (00:01.454)
Well, welcome everybody back to another episode of Hero Worship, a 12 week journey to become more like Jesus. I'm Troy Kennedy and believe it or not, we are on our 12th episode, correlating with the 12th chapter.

of the book and we are finishing up our first season of this podcast together and I'm so excited to one day kind of hear the stories of what God has been doing in your hearts and in your lives as you intentionally put yourself in the position to say I want to be like you. I'm coming close to you. I want to know you more.

and I want to walk in the imitation of Jesus. And so we have been going through chapter by chapter throughout this entire journey, and here we are, we're on the very last chapter, which for some people, believe it or not, is harder than some of the other ones. The journey was intentionally crafted to get a little bit more challenging as we go, but I wanted to last, or to land on this very last chapter, Jesus rested, to let that be sort of the final note we go out on.

thinking that this would be an easy one, but the feedback I get from some people is it's actually a little bit tough for some people just to rest, just to release. And so we're gonna talk about that in just a little bit. But first of all, once again, this podcast is meant to be a companion to the book, which you can find on amazon.com, christianbook.com, and it's meant to augment the experience of going through the book. Maybe you're doing it on your own, or with a family member,

You're doing it all together as a community. And so you could use these podcast episodes as a way of...

Troy Kennedy (01:44.854)
kind of spurring or catalyzing conversation, if you will. And just to expand a little bit on the material that's in the book. So, hopefully, and of course, maybe it's a little bit too late to tell you all that since this is our last episode. Maybe I should have told you that in the very first one. But before we move on here, once again, you can find me in all the typical social media platforms. You can find me at TroyMKennedy.com. You can find me on Instagram at TroyMarshallKennedy. You can find me on Facebook.

and on Twitter and I would love to connect with you. I'm always trying to collect stories from people of how God is moving in their lives and actually just to kind of give you a little bit of a heads up. I'm planning to do a second season of the Hero Worship podcast and the idea is to interview some people that I know who've had really an interesting journey with Jesus and what has that looked like for them? What were the practices? What were the postures?

and attitudes that were helpful for them in their growing, maturing, discipleship relationship with the Savior. So we'll do some of that. I'll do a little bit of a kind of teaching here and there, unpack some of the things, maybe telegraph to you some of the other things I'm working on, and it'd be exciting to share that journey with you just a little bit further down the road. So first of all we want to talk about this last chapter, right, and review

kind of what this journey was like for you. And my hope is that as you got the book here, right? Hero Worship, that the book got beat up.

that you wrote all over it, that you scratched some things out, that you tore out a page that you hated, that you captured some stories in your own relationships that were hard, difficult, challenging, enlightening, encouraging, all of the above, that as you went through this, that you marked this thing up on every page. That's what it was designed for. It's what it's made for. It's meant to be sort of like a traveling companion. As you go along the way, as you're walking with Jesus, as you're getting in and out of your car and going to work and going to school and going to the gym.

Troy Kennedy (03:52.768)
going home that this is something that will live with you for a few months that's something that you can go back to that you can take a note here and there that you can write in the margins and I hope that it's real beat up after 12 weeks of doing that with you it was a lot of fun to put together I know we've gone through a couple what three or four different groups of people at my church

Troy Kennedy (04:22.088)
get and the questions that come up at this point as you've been through so many weeks of it are you know what part of this was easy what part was difficult as we've taken kind of a survey some of some of the people you'd be amazed at folks who thought the fasting was the hardest chapter in the book other people thought that

The rest was the hardest part, or slowing down was the hardest part. I talked with a young woman just yesterday who was, um, she's going back to college here today, going back to her university for her sophomore year. And she went through this with a group from her church this summer. And she said the most difficult thing was for her to learn how to slow down, learn how to rest and not constantly be pushing, not constantly be on the go as a young adult. That is you slow down to rest and you slow down to see the people.

your path and you're not just going from one task to the next to the next. For other people, service. For other people it's entering into the lives of those who are hurting. For some other folks it's just being alone, solitude, right? It's really challenging for some people who are more extroverted and more outgoing. For them to be alone for extended period of time just to be in the presence of the Spirit is a very, very difficult, very challenging. It takes

proportionate amount of effort than some of the other things. And some people might find it more challenging to sit down and just sort of study and to peruse the Bible and to kind of mine out nuggets. And for others of you, that's your favorite thing to do. So I'm hoping that you will have kind of figured out which of these things is more difficult, which of these things are more intuitive for you. And then here's the deal. Once you've finished all that and you come back and you evaluated the 11 practices that we've gone through in this book.

I want you to think about the ones that were more difficult for you and then think about how you want to revisit that practice to glean even more from it. You might want to spend another week on one of those practices. You might want to spend a month on one of those practices and just say, I'm going to stay in this space and let the tension and the difficulty of this practice do its work in my spirit. I need a little bit of rewiring, a little bit of recalibration.

Troy Kennedy (06:41.658)
And when a practice like that brings up the heat or the challenge in my spirit, what does that reveal about me? What does that say about my character? What does that say about what God is doing in my heart? And can I submit to that process? So my prayer for you is that this book, this experience is there for you to revisit over the course of many, many years.

that you would share it with a friend, you would share it with a family member, maybe it's with your child, maybe it's with your grandmother or grandfather, and that you would go through this journey with them yet again, because I promise you, it's not because the book is extraordinarily well written or there's any real new ideas here, but if you will walk through these practices, and if you especially do it in community.

God is always going to show up. He is always going to reveal himself. He is always going to inject himself into that scenario and show you more of who he is and what he desires to do in and through and beyond you in ways that you've never dreamt of.

So I'm excited to hear those stories of what God is gonna do in your heart. Another thing that we did a little bit of a survey this last week as I finished up a group here at my church is I asked them, what would your advice be to someone else who is going to take this journey? You've done this for the last 12 weeks and you gleaned whatever it is that you gleaned from it. And if you, a close friend, a relative, somebody was gonna go on this journey, what would you tell them? What would your advice be to them as they go on that journey?

What would that be for you as you've finished up this and the entirety of this thing? Well, how would you encourage someone else? How would you say, well, I wish I had known this when I started off, we got certain kind of patterns of answers. Some people were just saying, you know, apply yourself, make sure that you actually do the practices, make sure that you actually write them down. Um, if you skip something, don't get hung up, just move on and go on to the next thing. If, uh, some advice would say, Hey, stay open. Right.

Troy Kennedy (08:44.656)
have an open heart, have a teachable spirit as to what God would do in you.

And a lot of a lot of people were saying yeah, you know, this is it was kind of challenging, but it was rich So come in with an expectation That you're going to get close to him What will your advice be for someone else who is going to go through this? So maybe jot that down and maybe think about someone else you might encourage To take part in this 12 week journey Just to become more like the savior why because he's worthy of our imitation Because of his love because of his good

because of his, when he said in John chapter 15 to abide in him, to find your home in him, to remain another, the NIV translates that word, menos, and to remain in turn there, to stay close to him, to stay in that space. Jesus said, you know,

then you will bear much fruit. If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. Because why? Because his spirit is going to work in you and work on you and change you and shape you and recalibrate you and ignite you into the fruit-bearing life that you were born for. Jesus said, I came to give you life, a life more abundant. And I think that abundant life is a life that is meaningful. It's a life that is joyful. It's a life that's

more fulfilling, perhaps than successful. You know, success and fulfillment aren't mutually exclusive, but if you had to pick, you pick fulfillment over success. Jesus wants to do a work in you, but in order for him to do that, you must counter-intuitively abide in him. It's not about trying harder.

Troy Kennedy (10:40.574)
It's about remaining more faithfully. It's about abiding more consistently. And so every one of these practices here is to say, I'm coming to you and I'm carving out space in my life to abide, to walk with you. Dallas Willard says that prayer is talking to God about what we're doing together. So as you prayerfully, relationally come close to Jesus and walk with him, let this journey do its work in you.

Jesus said this, come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

Troy Kennedy (11:26.606)
find rest for your soul. Anybody here needs soul restoration. Anybody here need to breathe and to rest for a bit. You know, Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He leads me beside the still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures, right? He restores my soul. He leads me along paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Why? Because you are with me. Abide, remain, rest. Find your home in him. And as we come to the

12th week of our journey we get to this practice that Jesus rested and we see this rhythm in his life You know, he goes to be solitary. We find him asleep in a boat while there's a storm He's got his head apparently on a cushion and they had to wake him up to let him know Don't you care that we're drowning and he just you know, gently rebukes him in the way that he does and then the wind And the waves stop Jesus rested and he's and he tells us that the Sabbath

right, which was this day where you do no work, was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, because the Pharisees, the legalistic religious leaders had gotten really good at making Sabbath a competition. Like, who does it better? They complicated it, and they made rest more of a burden than work.

And so Jesus is saying this was not the point. This is not what I had in mind when I gave you this commandment. See the Sabbath is where you recalibrate. It's the where you, um, rediscover who you are in him. It's about identity.

Troy Kennedy (13:21.118)
And as I unpack a little bit in the book, you have the children of Israel, they spent 400 years in slavery under Egypt and they determined after all of that time that their value, their worth, their ability to take up space on this earth was directly correlated with their productivity. Right? Egypt taught them that your worth was how many bricks you made, that your worth was what you built for Egypt, that your worth...

was resting solely on your capacity to produce. And if you can't produce anymore, you're not worth much to us. And then God delivers them from Egypt and they have to go for 40 years out in the wilderness to detox and he gives them a law and he says, on the seventh day, you're gonna rest. Why? Because you need to remind yourself that you were slaves in Egypt and you are no longer. That your identity,

is not a slave to Egyptians, your identity is a child of God. That you belong to me, that you are defined by your relationship with me and with nothing else and with no one else. And you and I, we so quickly forget that. We default to performance-ism so easily. We're always wanting to prove something. We're always wanting to...

Make a point to show people how important, how significant we are by what we do, by what we have to offer, by how we look, by our status, by our jobs, by our bank accounts, by we're by the way we feel even in what God is telling us is like, no, you are whom I say you are nothing else. You are my child and I love you.

And every seven days, you're going to push aside all of the self-validating activity and you're going to rest in me. You're going to abide in me and just remind your spirit one more time where your worth comes from, that you are of infinite value, that you are unconditionally loved, that you are accepted.

Troy Kennedy (15:34.914)
that you were brought into the family, that you were adopted by the one true King. Now you are a joint heir in Christ.

You are a peculiar people. You are not of this world. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world and you are of my kingdom. So come to me after all your labor and find your rest. Come beside the still waters and let me restore your soul. Let the good shepherd love you in this time of rest. Don't blow it off.

Don't think it's kind of a throwaway. This may be for you the most important part of this entire journey, as you learn how to rest for all the right reasons. That you learn how to rest because you are loved. You learn how to rest because of who you belong to. And you learn how to rest because that's a part of the abundant flourishing life that Jesus intends for you.

I'm so privileged that you spent a little bit of this journey with me and that you allowed me to just speak just a tiny bit into your lives. And above all things, I pray you walk away having cultivated intimacy with the Savior and grown in your love for other people in ways that you had never anticipated. And if you have any thoughts or questions or observations, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me, Troy at Troy M. Kennedy dot com.

not to be too mercenary about this, but if you think that this is a valuable experience, leave a review on Amazon, let some other people know that getting close to Jesus is worth it. And this book, this experience, this is just one way, not the only way, but it's just one way of intentionally heading into that space for a period of time. And I promise you, if you come into that prayerfully, honestly, and authentically,

Troy Kennedy (17:35.722)
you're going to change and Savior is going to work on your heart and your spirit and grow you to the more fruitful abiding life He intends for you. God bless you friend and I look forward to engaging with you on our next season of Hero Worship Podcast. Thanks for your time.