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Welcome to the Hope Community Church! Hope is a multi-site church community with locations around the Triangle in Raleigh, Apex, Northwest Cary, Garner, and Fuquay-Varina. We are here to love you where you are and encourage you to grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ! We strive to speak the truth of the Bible in a way that is easy to understand, helpful in your current life circumstances, and encouraging. No matter who you are or where you come from, you are welcome here!
8: Alright, what's up? Hope we good. good. Hey,
I'm glad you're here. Hey, my name is Ben. I'm a friend from out in Colorado.
Um, I'm always very,
very excited when I get to spend a weekend with you here in North Carolina.
So thanks for having me back. Oh, thank you. Cool. Um,
hey and welcome back to this series that we've called the Jesus Way. Okay?
In case you've missed a few or you need, need a reminder or whatever,
here's what the series is all about.
It's all about the fact that you and I are not gonna grow spiritually on
accident. Okay? That, that's like never gonna happen.
That's what this series is about. Uh, don't, don't get me wrong.
If you've placed your faith in Jesus, you're going to heaven when you die,
you don't have to worry about that. You're rescued, you've been saved.
But if you want to enjoy the abundant life in the here and now,
that Jesus is always promising us, well that is gonna take work, right?
That takes what we call spiritual discipline. It's practices,
things that you can go do that lead to a more vibrant life and faith.
I'm excited about what we're talking about today.
'cause I think it's super applicable to all of us living in 2024.
That's because we're gonna talk about a promise that Jesus made us that I don't
think we really see very often in our day-to-day lives.
This promises in Matthew chapter 11, Jesus says this, he says,
come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you
rest. Okay? Weary burden.
Those aren't words that we use to describe ourselves very often weary just means
tired burden in this context.
It means like the feeling that you've got so much to do in so little time to do
it in. So that means busy. And so Jesus just promised us, he says,
come to me all you who are busy and tired and I will give you rest.
And of those three words, busy, tired, and rest,
which words describe your life better, right?
Because if you're anything like me,
your life can be described as busy and tired, right?
Low key exhaustion all of the time, right?
Every now and then there's intense exhaustion because work or school at the day,
the day at home with, with your spouse or with your kids was incredibly crazy.
But even on a chill day, most of us feel low key exhaustion.
We're always a little bit sleepy and a little bit drained and a little bit
preoccupied with all the things that we have to get done.
We're always a little bit busy and tired, right? And,
and a result is a lot of us we're just like,
we're barely making it through each day, right? Like for example, a lot of us,
we just look forward to the next vacation, right? We're we're,
we tell ourselves like, I just need to make it a a couple more weeks. You know?
And then I'm getting on a plane and I'm flying to Mexico and everything's gonna
be all right. Right? We tell, we tell ourselves like,
this vacation's gonna refuel me for another few months of work and being
a husband or being a wife or being a parent or whatever.
So we clock out on that last day of work, we go into vacation,
kind of like those people who finish Iron Man races.
I don't know if you've ever seen this,
but like their bodies literally give out on them.
So that's us going into vacation. We're like, you know, it's like our,
our legs quit and we've soiled ourselves, but we made it,
we made it to vacation. You know? And then what happens, right? You,
you get a week to yourself and then you go back home,
you go back to the office and a week later you're busy and tired again,
right?
So you circle the next vacation on the calendar and you tell yourself that.
You just gotta make it to that.
It's like we we're constantly just trying to make it to these little finish
lines that we set for ourselves. Just gotta make it to five o'clock.
I just gotta make it to the weekend or to vacation or to graduation or to
retirement. Like we're white knuckling every minute of our lives.
But then Jesus said that he came to give us rest. It's just that we,
we very rarely feel rested. So why is that?
Why do so many of us feel so busy and tired all the time?
Well, I think there's probably a million reasons for this, right?
Like one of them is like you gotta eat to live and you gotta make money to eat.
And so you've gotta work to make money.
And a lot of times work is just very exhausting or you know,
for a lot of us it's like we work at work, we also work when we're home, right?
Because the house needs cleaned and the yard needs mode and your daughter has to
get to volleyball practice and your son has his head stuck in the doggy door.
It's like all the normal tasks that you gotta do.
So work is exhausting and home is exhausting, right?
Like normal life trends towards being busy and tiring to begin with.
But then for the last 15 to 20 years, you and I get to enjoy a new,
like a historically new cherry on the top when it comes to exhaustion.
And the cherry on the top is our smartphones. Okay?
Our smartphones are making us more busy and tired than we are to
begin with, as if you're not already busy and tired enough to begin with.
And it's mainly because these things are distracting, okay?
You have the infinite world of the internet in your pocket all of the time,
right? Endless entertainment and information and communication and,
and so it's constantly down. There's constantly going like, hey come, you know,
come on down, come into the endless world of the internet, right?
When you're at work it's like, hey,
just escape work for a little bit by scrolling through social media and then
like a crazy person, I do this, I get home. And then it's like, hey,
just escape home by getting a little bit of work done. You can do a few emails,
right?
It's constantly telling us to like just come escape into the endless world of
the internet. In fact,
some people are calling our historical era that we're living in right now.
They're calling it the age of distraction.
And I think that that's probably just accurate.
'cause what I've seen in my own life is that this constant distraction actually
erodes my ability to enjoy the kind of rest that Jesus promised me.
And one of the millions of of reasons for that is because the creation of the
cell phone actually created a new social expectation for
every single one of us.
And the new social expectation is that you are always available.
You should be available at work, you should be available at at home.
You available when you're eating dinner with your family.
You should be available while you're driving your car or while you're laying in
your bed and trying to go to sleep.
Like you and I are now always literally on call.
And this expectation that you're now always available,
it really exploded with the advent of text messaging. Okay? I'll never forget,
this is 20 years ago.
I'm sitting in a Taco Bueno in Texas where I grew up with my friend Jackie.
She had a Nokia brick phone.
She was the first person I'd ever known to own one of them.
And she was explaining SMS messaging to me.
This is before we even called it texting.
And she's explaining it to me and I'm laughing in her face the whole time.
'cause it sounds like a joke.
Like it to me it sounded like one of those word math problems that I always got
wrong on tests. 'cause she was like, it's so great.
Like all you have to do is hit the four twice and then you hit the three twice
and then you hit the five three times twice in a row.
And she like gives this complicated thing. And then she's like,
and then you can send the word hello to each other.
And I just like laughed in her face. So I'm like, this Jackie, that's stupid,
right? Like I'm never,
why would I ever write out a message to you when I could just call you?
You fast forward 20 years, I've completely flip flopped on that issue,
by the way. I'll text all the time and then when I get a phone call, I'm like,
is this an emergency? What's going on? Something on fire?
Why are you calling me? Um,
our phones have just created the idea that you and everyone, you know,
should be constantly available, right? I don't think twice. You don't either.
When we send texts, I don't think to myself like,
well they're at home and they're spending time with their family right now and
this can wait till tomorrow. It's like, no, I just text them.
It could be midnight, you know? And I'm like,
I need to know if my sister has seen this exact episode of Shark Tank and I need
to know right now. , you know, it's ridiculous.
I would never drive to her house at midnight,
knock on her door risk waking her family up to talk Shark Tank,
but I'll send a text, right? So that, that's how we live our lives,
our phones every 10 minutes. It's like
another person who needs something from you or someone else that you gotta text
back or email back.
It's making us feel busier than we truly are to begin with.
And then on top of that, the smartphones in the age of distraction,
it's making us more tired than we need to feel. And that's because we,
you know, we spend a long day at work or a long day at home or whatever.
And when it's all done, we want to unwind.
But the typical way that we unwind is through the same screen that has
distracted us all day long. And screens make for terrible unwinds,
okay? Just in terms of, of our brain chemistry.
Like scientists and doctors are practically begging us to spend less time
on screens 'cause it's too much. We get, we get home,
we just decide we wanna scroll social media or watch some Netflix or play a
video game or whatever. And it's like,
it's creating a dopamine rush that our brains can't even keep up with.
And so we're looking to unwind after a long day of work,
but we're doing it in this way that's actually stimulating us.
So you're not even winding down your winding up. In fact,
the American Public Health Association is calling our use of screens a quote,
growing public health concern.
Their research found that the average American spends 5.4 hours on their phone
every day.
That doesn't include your computer screen at work or your TV or your tablet.
They found that the average American checks their phone 86 times a day.
The math there is that you check it every 11 minutes of your waking life.
And then they also did research on what they call heavy phone users.
And they found that 13% of millennials, that's my generation,
spend over 12 hours on their phone every single day. In short,
we're addicted. We're totally addicted.
Like even if you just go with the average that's one third of our lives spent
staring at a screen,
you could pick anything else and we would call that addiction,
but we reason it away with, with our phones.
Pick anything you could pick milkshakes. Okay?
If some lady at work every 11 minutes was like, I could go for a milkshake,
you'd be like, Peggy, cool it , you're an addict, right?
We're addicted and we're addicted to something that's making us more busy
and making us more tired because our world says that rest is found
in escape, right?
Just escape into a good TV show or social media or the news cycle or Candy Crush
or whatever just escape.
Our culture is telling us that real rest is found in escape
and it's not working right?
Because in reality it's just turning us into addicts and we're addicted to
things that are making us more busy and more tired.
And so what do we do about this? Right? Like where can you,
and if I find real rest real, like physical, emotional, spiritual,
rest, as as we're living in the age of distraction,
where are we supposed to find that? Well,
one of the most ancient spiritual practices of God's people is
something called Sabbath. Okay? Sabbath means a a weekly day of rest,
A weekly day where there's no work and there's no distractions.
And you just take a load off in order to enjoy God and enjoy his creation and
enjoy the people that you love. Sabbath.
We first see the concept of Sabbath at the very beginning of the Bible.
This is Genesis chapter two.
This is actually when humans are still living in the garden of Eden.
And so even in a state of total perfection,
God tells his people to take a Sabbath to take a load off,
take a rest one day out of every single week after Genesis,
humanity ends up living in the broken and sinful condition that you and I live
in today. And when sin enters the world,
God actually makes it now a literal commandment to his people.
He commands that they rest one day out of every single week.
You see this in Exodus chapter 20, okay? God is preparing his people,
the Israelites,
to enter the land that he promised to them by giving them 10 commandments.
These 10 overarching rules for how the people of God are supposed to live the
good life. And most of us have heard about the 10 Commandments.
Some of us might even be familiar with some of them.
But here's something interesting to me,
which commandment gets the most explanation.
Is it the commandment on not stealing or not lying or not murdering or not
committing adultery? Like that one's really important, right? It's like,
well no, interestingly, the,
the commandment for Sabbath gets the most real estate in the 10
Commandments. Look at this, we're just gonna read it together.
It's the fourth commandment. God says this. He goes,
remember the Sabbath day By keeping it holy,
that means unique and special and set apart. He goes,
six days you're gonna work, you're gonna labor, you'll do all your work.
But then the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
And on the on the Sabbath,
you shall not do any work neither you nor your son or daughter nor your
mans servant or maid, servant nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
Why would we ever do that? Well, four,
because in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all
that's in them. And even he rested on the seventh day.
And therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and he made it holy.
He set it apart, set it apart as unique and special.
You and I are commanded.
He doesn't ask us to kings don't ask kings command.
And so he commands us to work really hard for six days a week and then rest
really hard on the seventh day we're we're told that no one under our
responsibility is to work on that day. So we're not supposed to work, we're,
we're not supposed to let our kids work or our families or our employees or even
our animals or the guests that we have over to our house for the weekend.
Like no one is supposed to work.
And we're told to do that because God says that resting one day out of every
single week is a good, perfect and holy thing to do.
And we get so much explanation around that commandment in the 10 Commandments.
Like just for point of comparison,
the commandment on murder is four words. He's like,
you shall not murder god's. Like don't kill people. Good talk.
Now let's talk about the Sabbath, right?
And one of the reasons I think he gives us so much like context around the
Sabbath is because I think God knew that this would be the commandment we would
be most tempted to break all of the time, right? Like,
okay, murder, stealing, adultery, lying. It's like, yeah,
we know we shouldn't do those things. Whenever we break those things,
we know we gotta do better. But at the same time, it's like a day of purposeful,
intentional rest where we do nothing but enjoy God and
enjoy each other. That's when we start saying to ourselves like,
who can live a life like this? Right? We start telling ourselves like,
who has time for this? There's things to do, right? There's,
there's money to make and places to go and there's stuff to buy and shows to
watch and emails to send. Like who has time for Sabbath? And the result is,
it becomes the one commandment out of 10 that you and I break all of the time.
We don't even feel bad about it. Like we don't even realize that we're doing it.
We don't think twice. You fast forward from Exodus when,
when God gives those 10 commandments,
you fast forward to when Jesus is physically walking around this planet.
2000 years ago, okay,
by that time the Jewish people had taken the Sabbath and they turned it into a
legalistic thing, right? They, they made long like laundry lists of,
of rules and regulations for what you can and can't do on a Sabbath.
There's actually like an literally an old rule for which kinds of bushes you can
and cannot trim. like they created all these rules,
they made it legalistic.
And so Sabbath became less about a holy perfect day of
rest.
And it became more about a legalistic rule to follow so that you could earn your
way into heaven.
So now Jesus is walking around planet earth and he's making the Pharisees,
the people who taught laws like the law of Sabbath.
He's making these Pharisees mad all of the time.
'cause he's constantly breaking their Sabbath rules. To be clear,
he never breaks any of God's rules around Sabbath. Okay? He's not working,
he's not out earning a paycheck. Instead on the Sabbath, he's healing people.
And this makes the Pharisees mad 'cause he's doing these healing miracles and
and they look at him, they're like, Jesus, that's work.
And so how can you be the son of God like you claim to be if you break your own
rules like they thought they caught him in a contradiction.
But what I think is so cool is I think Jesus is trying to teach us something by
the kinds of miracles that he performed on Sabbath.
Because you go read all four of hi his biographies in the Bible,
and Jesus performs seven miracles on a Sabbath and
all seven of them are healings, okay? He's not walking on water,
he's not multiplying loaves of bread and fishes. He's healing people.
He heals a crippled man and a possessed man, Peter's mother-in-law,
a man with a deformed hand, a blind man, a crippled woman,
and a man with a chronic disease.
100% of Jesus's Sabbath miracles are healings.
And here's what I think he's trying to teach us through his actions.
He's saying that the Sabbath,
a weekly day of rest isn't about rule following or earning God's favor by
jumping through hoops. Instead, Sabbath is about healing.
Like the,
the thing about Sabbath that is good and perfect and holy is that God somehow
uses this one day a week to heal us,
to heal us from the constant distraction,
the constant demand of your time and your attention and your ability,
the constant sense of hurry and busyness and all the exhaustion that comes with
it.
Like Sabbath is about healing from those things one day out of every single
week. In fact, one time the Pharisees, they,
they get mad at Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath.
And Jesus finally turns to him and he goes, guys, the Sabbath was made for you,
not the other way around. He goes, listen,
God didn't create you to see if you could, you know, keep Sabbath.
It's not about rule following God made Sabbath for you.
It's a gift for you to have one day out of every single week that's about
healing because Sabbath is about healing.
And so then the question becomes, for me at least, well how, okay,
how might Sabbath be a healing thing in my life?
Well, for us, living in the age of distraction,
for those of us who always feel at least low key, busy and tired,
Sabbath helps us to get our priorities back in order.
And here's what I mean by that. Okay? The first question and answer,
the very first question and answer in the Westminster shorter catechism,
that's like a, it's like a handbook on all things theology.
The first q and a I love it so much, goes like this question,
what is the chief end of man? In other words,
what is the ultimate purpose of being a human being?
And the answer is to glorify God and to enjoy him
forever. What is the chief end of man?
What is the ultimate purpose of you being a human being?
Is it to get a lot of work done?
Is your purpose to become the most def like efficient and disciplined person?
You know, I,
i is is your job to make a name for yourself to,
to go and earn the next paycheck and,
and climb the next rung on the corporate ladder so that you can be a person
who's important? Is your job to be respected by respectable people?
Or you could go down the list. No, what, what is your job?
What is the ultimate purpose of being a human being?
It's to glorify God and to enjoy him.
To enjoy him forever. And Sabbath,
a weekly day of rest is all about enjoying God.
By enjoying his creation.
Sabbath is is like one day a week,
once a week to just try to make the number one thing,
the number one thing again.
Because the number one thing is that you glorify God and
enjoy him forever. There's that,
that phrase for the love of God that's like in our cultural vocabulary,
right? Almost always followed by something passive aggressive, right?
For the love of God, would you do the dishes or something like that?
And that's wrong and manipulative. I know that.
I think it's totally theological to say for the love of God,
enjoy your life.
What I mean is enjoy your life and make your enjoyment of life
one of the ways that you show love to and worship your God for
the love of God, for the sake of loving God. Enjoy your life.
Even if,
especially if you would say that your life is nothing but busy and tiring
right now. I mean Sabbath,
it's about having one day out of every single week to enjoy what God has given
you. It's about cultivating an attitude in your heart and your mind of
gratitude towards God and what he's given you. He gave this to you as a gift.
That's what Jesus said. This was made for you. Why? Because God's not dumb.
And he knows that real life gets really hard and he knows that we would get
burned out and we would spin out.
And so at the very beginning of time in Genesis chapter two,
the very first spiritual discipline that God gave us is Sabbath
a weekly opportunity to do nothing but enjoy him by enjoying
his creation. And so for the love of God,
enjoy your life. What do I mean by that? For the love of God,
once a week, stop. Stop it.
Stop working. Stop the madness. Stop the craziness.
Put away the to-do list. Don't check your email, don't coach the team.
Don't play the sport. Don't do the laundry, don't do the dishes.
Don't mow the yard. Those things can wait until tomorrow for the love of God,
as a way of showing love to God. Once a week, take a break, stop
for the love of God, go on a walk. You live in a beautiful place,
right?
And you'd be surprised how clearly you can hear from God when you're just alone
surrounded by the towering trees of North Carolina. For the love of God,
take a walk for the love of God.
Have a really good laugh with your kids, right? Like,
let's face it, when they, when they grow up,
they're not going to measure us by how hard we worked or how much money we made
or how respected we were by other people.
They're just gonna measure us by how much time we spent with them.
For the love of God, spend some good time with them.
Even dumb little stuff for the love of God, eat a donut.
They're delicious , that's like,
I mean that like this is one of the ways you can love and worship your God.
You eat a donut and then afterwards you say, God, thank you for Dunking Donuts.
You're amazing, right? This, that's just sab, that's what Sabbath is.
God wants you to enjoy your life. Why? Because he's good.
He's a really, really good father. Oh, but Ben, I thought he,
he wanted me to feel guilty and sorry all the time. Like, no,
I don't know where we got that, but a lot of us got that. No,
that's not at all the point of our life.
Jesus buried your guilt and shame and you can go check that big book called the
Bible. Not one verse in there asking you to dig that stuff back up.
You go, oh, oh.
But I thought he wanted me to change my life and obey him all the time. Yeah,
, yeah, absolutely,
but not because he is out to ruin your fun instead because he's good and he
wants you to enjoy your life. He made your life. He knows how it works best.
His rules and his laws and his commandments there, the map,
they are the highway toward a better, more fulfilling,
more abundant life. That's why he wants you to obey him.
God wants you to glorify him by enjoying him.
And Sabbath is a weekly chance to remember and prioritize that,
to try to make the ultimate thing ultimate again. And so for the love of God,
enjoy your life.
Let me give you like a real practical outline for how you could go try this.
Like starting this week, okay? And you're gonna have to tweak this for yourself.
I'm gonna kind of give an outline based on the most typical work schedule for
us.
But you'll probably have to tweak it like maybe Sunday would be a bad Sabbath
for you because you work on Sundays or something.
You might have to make yours random like Wednesday.
Or you might have to start canceling stuff,
some stuff outta your schedule to make a Sabbath work.
Like it's not one size fits all,
but I think it gets us pretty close to figuring out how you and I can practice
Sabbath. Here's what it looks like. So five days out of a week,
let's say Monday through Friday, these are days of work,
Monday through Friday, days of work, okay? If you have a job,
you're working really hard,
you're doing a really good job of your job,
you're out there earning your paycheck. If you're a student,
you're hitting the books, you're working really, really hard,
you're out there earning your degree, or if you're a stay at home parent,
like you're in full blown, stay at home mom or stay at home dad mode, right?
You're,
you're tackling and taking care of everything that needs taken care of around
the house. Like these five days of work,
these are the days where we join with God to make something great at this place,
to do something great with what he's given us responsibility over.
And so for five days a week, get to work.
And then six days Saturday becomes a day of prep.
Okay?
This is actually based on something called the day of preparation that you see
in the Bible. Uh,
the Jewish people would have these like massive celebratory feasts and festivals
all throughout the year. But the day before these feasts,
they would have what they called the day of preparation on this day.
They got everything ready, okay? They cooked all the food for tomorrow,
they put up all the decorations. They worked not for a paycheck,
but they worked really,
really hard so that tomorrow they can do nothing but party.
Here's what a day of prep might look like for some of us. Okay?
Saturday day of prep, we're doing all the laundry, okay?
And we're doing all the yard work and we're paying all the bills,
we're cleaning the house,
we're making the food for today and the food for tomorrow.
We're cleaning all the dishes. You're getting another five items checked off.
You're never ending to-do list.
You're taking the kids to dance class or the sports tournament or whatever.
You're not earning a paycheck,
but you're working really hard so that tomorrow you have
nothing to do but party. And then Sunday Sabbath,
Sunday is your day of rest. This is, the house is clean,
right? The yard is mowed, the bills are paid, your schedule is empty.
What do you enjoy the most? For the love of God, go and enjoy it.
If you're an introvert like me,
this is your day to just like read a good book and spend time with your family.
If you're an extrovert,
this is your day to invite everyone to a party that you planned and prepped the
day before. For the love of God, throw an awesome party, right?
If you're on a diet,
then and it won't risk derailing you like this is your off day, right?
Go eat a hot and spicy cheezit. They're fantastic. You've earned it, okay?
If you're a student, like if you took it seriously,
then six days you've been working really hard,
you're as studied up as you're ever gonna get. Get your nose out of the book,
go do something fun. Go spend time with your friends.
What do you enjoy the most? For the love of God? Go do it.
My family, we uh, we just have, we have seasons like everyone else.
We have seasons where we are really good and very intentional about Sabbath and
then seasons where we're not good and we're like,
we need to do that again when we're at our peak and doing our best.
My family has three rules for Sabbath. They're very simple. The first one is,
whatever we do, we must do it together. That's the first thing.
So this isn't the day for, for my daughter Emory to go to a slumber party.
Now she's, we gotta be together, right? The second rule is whatever we do,
it must be restful and bring us joy, right? So this,
if I remember something I forgot to do, I just write it on a notepad. I'll,
I'll get to it tomorrow, but not today.
And then the third rule is we put our phones down.
Got enough of that in our lives. So one day a week, don't even touch 'em.
I'm just not gonna reply to you. I'm sorry. We'll get back to you tomorrow.
And those three Sabbath rules, they're pretty simple,
but they've led to some pretty amazing days for me and my family.
It's like not, it's not ever gonna go perfectly of course, but the goal,
the goal is to,
at the end of Sunday night or whatever your day of rest ends up being,
the goal is that you get into bed and you pray and you go, God,
thank you for a really good day.
Thank you for what you've created for me.
Thank you for the people that you've given me.
Thank you for the blessings that you've given me.
Thank you for being really good. What is that ?
That's called glorifying God by enjoying him.
And it just so happens to be the ultimate purpose of you existing.
Yes, we're crazy busy and crazy tired and crazy distracted.
And so is it possible that God had a good idea
when he said once a week, stop it.
Stop the craziness. Stop the madness. And for the love of me in joy,
what I've created for you, enjoy what I've blessed you with.
And if we took it seriously,
like if we knew that that kind of Sabbath was coming every seven days,
every single week,
don't you think it would help temper some of the frustrations that we've got at
work?
Or give us an extra measure of grace and patience with our kids throughout
the week?
Or don't you think our friendships might grow deeper and our families might grow
closer and our joy might go up and our stress might go down most,
most importantly,
if we knew that that kind of Sabbath was coming every single seven days,
don't you think it would become more natural for our
weary and burdened souls to find rest in him?
Wouldn't it become more natural to glorify God by enjoying him
forever? I think so.
Jesus promised us rest for our weary souls.
He gave it to us. It's called Sabbath.
And so really the question is just,
are you willing to try this just total gift from your father?
Are you willing to try it?
Are you willing to love your God by enjoying your life?
Let me pray. God,
thank you for this moment and thank you for these people. And then God,
thank you just for who you are. Like the very,
very first spiritual discipline you gave us while we were still living in a
state of perfection was to spend one day out of every week doing nothing but
enjoying you by enjoying what you've blessed us with and the creation that
you've made all around us.
Like that was the very first way that you looked at us and said,
here's what it looks like to worship me.
And then we are the ones who we get it all confused.
We're we are the ones who are forgetful.
We are the ones who think that what you want out of us is workhorses.
We are the ones who think that we've just got to achieve and achieve and
achieve. We are the ones who think that what you want from us is a checklist,
a spiritual checklist of things that we just constantly have to be working
better on. And there's a time,
there's a right time and a right place for feeling convicted for looking at
ourselves in the mirror and saying, I've gotta change some stuff.
But there's one day a week every single week where you said,
just stop and enjoy me by enjoying what I've given you.
God that makes you just a really, really good dad.
You say that this is how we glorify you. And like I'm a father.
I've got three kids I love nothing more than one of one of my children at dinner
says, I wanna sit by you tonight, dad.
Like that's basically all you are asking of us one day out of every single week.
Come and enjoy me,
enjoy my presence by enjoying the blessings I've given you. God,
help us to practice this. I don't,
it blows my mind that I need challenged to practice this.
But please God,
help us to take you up on this gift that you made for us so that we can find
rest for our weary and burden souls. I love you so much.
I thank you for your truth. And what we've learned today,
and I pray this in your son's holy name, Jesus Christ, amen.