3 EXERCISES THAT WILL MAKE YOU HEALTHIER, FITTER, AND STRONGER, PART 3 - RESTING, THE ART of SABBATHING

Part 3, Resting – The Art of Sabbathing

In my past two editions of my weekly Pastor’s Desks I have drawn parallels between caring for our physical health and how we should care for our souls (our spiritual, emotional, and mental health). In Part 1, I discussed the benefits of aerobic exercise for our physical health (which increases the demand for oxygen intake) and how this was similar to the spiritual discipline of praying. In Part 2, I had compared the need to maintain a healthy balanced diet for good physical health and how this related to the need for the believer to maintain a healthy spiritual diet from reading, studying, and meditating on God’s Word, the Bible. Now I turn my attention to an oft neglected aspect of our spiritual well-being: resting. As a disclaimer, I am one of the least qualified to discuss this topic—but, embarrassing, any lessons I have learned about the value of rest have come negatively from not resting as I should have and then enduring the inevitable consequences.

It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Psalm 127:2

 

“HAVE YOU BEEN BUSY?”

Being busy is like a badge of honour for many people. It’s not enough to be a mother looking after young children. This mother is expected to be a busy mother looking after young children! Men are trained to regard being busy as a condition of manhood. It becomes their excuse for not getting things done – “I’ve been busy”; and their routine introductory conversation starter, “Been busy?” In fact, it is almost a shameful thing for a man to confess that he hasn’t been busy and almost unthinkable for him to say that he has spent the whole day doing nothing! But perhaps it is because people do not make rest a routine part of their regular week that they are so prone to burn-out? Before we consider the enormous spiritual benefits to resting, I want to overview some of the largely unappreciated benefits of rest, particularly sleep. 

If you lie down, you will not be afraid;
when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.
Proverbs 3:24

 

THE BENEFITS OF RESTING/SLEEP

Several years ago I collapsed in my office in excruciating pain unable to move my legs. It turned out that a motor-cycle accident that I had had twenty-five years earlier (after a Nissan Patrol had side-swiped me and put me into a coma with a broken shoulder) but had apparently also broken my back – yet had not been diagnosed at that time. After I was eventually able to re-use my legs I went for scans which revealed the true nature of the damage that had caused my collapse. The neurosurgeon said my back was now too far gone to operate, but there were two things I could do to help manage my back health from this point: (i) drink more water and (ii) get more sleep (he also said get more active, take pain killers and rest when it hurts too much). Since then I have tried to do just that. I have also done a bit of research into why sleep is so important to our health — and not just our physical health too! Here are some of the benefits of getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night:

• BOOSTS IMMUNE SYSTEM: Sleep is necessary to boost our immune systems to be able to fight off diseases.
• PREVENTS WEIGHT GAIN: Insufficient sleep causes our bodies to produce an appetite increasing hormone (ghrelin) that leads can lead to weight gain.
• DECREASED RISK OF HEART ATTACK: Proper sleep is necessary to reduce the risk of heart attack because our hearts need to rest through sleep and decrease our blood pressure and the amount of cortisol in our blood which places our hearts under stress.
• PRODUCTIVITY INCREASES: A well rested person is a much more productive person.
• IMPROVED MOOD:  A good sleep pattern has a dramatic impact on our emotional well-being.
• INCREASES HEIGHT: When we sleep our spinal discs re-hydrate (if we have actually drunk enough water throughout the day) and we actually wake up a millimetre or two taller at the start of our day.
• DECREASED TRAFFIC RISK: Lack of sleep dramatically increases your risk of a road motor vehicle accident. The person who only gets five hours sleep a night quadruples their chance of crashing!
• SLEEP IMPROVES MEMORY: When we are asleep it is an opportunity for our minds to sort and file information away in the long-term memory of our brains.

We sometimes hear of national Prime Ministers or Presidents that “get by on four hours of sleep a night” and wonder how on earth they could do it. The truth is. They can’t. Not in the long term at least. God has designed us to sleep. Busy people often view sleep as “time wasted”, but the data clearly tells another story. And when we add in the number of times that God spoke to people while they slept (Gen. 15:12-21; 20:3-6; 28:12-15; 31:24; 37:5, 9) we begin to realise that there may be more happening to us while we sleep than we might realise (or happening to other when we pray for them!). 

JESUS SAID TO HER, YOU ARE ANXIOUS AND
TROUBLED ABOUT MANY THINGS

The sisters, Mary and Martha appear in two different stories in two different Gospels. In Luke’s Gospel, Dr. Luke tells of when Mary and Martha hosted Jesus for a meal. Mary rested at the feet of Jesus as He sat teaching her while her sister Martha was left carrying the load of hospitality in the kitchen. The problem wasn’t that Martha was serving and Mary wasn’t – the problem was that Martha was distracted by her serving because she had become resentful of her sister Mary who wasn’t serving. Pastor Phil Hills would say over and over again, “We don’t rest from work, we work from rest!” Before we had our larger auditorium we used to hold our pre-service prayer meeting in my office. On my white-board I had “Our service is our worship. Our service enables others to worship.” Martha’s problem was that she did not see her serving as worship of Christ which enabled Mary to worship at the feet of Christ! Jesus saw right into the heart of Martha and exposed her needless anxiety and resentment. Naturally as a Pastor I want people to serve gladly in our church and to do without any sense of resentment that others should be serving more – but I especially want people to serve from rest so that others can rest in worship at the feet of Jesus just like Mary did!

¶ Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village.
And a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching.
But Martha was distracted with much serving.
And she went up to Him and said,
“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-41

 

SABBATH – A DAY OF REST, WORSHIP & THE WORD

It seems that from creation, God established that mankind should rest from his usual labours each seventh day (Gen. 2:3) and reflect on his relationship with God with thanksgiving. In much the same that sleep is seems counter-intuitive to the busy person, the idea of a sabbath (resting each seventh day) also seems counter-intuitive to a busyness person. It may also seem odd that God would even have to incorporate such a thing as a sabbath day into a set of ten primary laws for all former Hebrew slaves who had never previously got any time off before being delivered Egypt! But God actually made it the fourth commandment after:

(i) Have no other gods (Exo. 20:3),

(ii) Do not make or bow down to any carved imaged or anything in the sky above or on the earth or in the sea (Exo. 20:4-5),

(iii) You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain (Exo. 20:7), and

(iv) Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy (Exo. 20:8-11).   

After Israel settled into the Promised Land they soon neglected to keep the Sabbath and God raised up the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel to call them to repentance to re-establish their obedience in honouring God by observing it. After the Jews returned from their Exile in Babylon and Persia they actually became very legalistic about keeping the Sabbath and even developed some 600 additional sub-laws on how it was to be kept properly! Interestingly, each of the Ten Commandments is repeated in the New Testament as applicable for Christians, except keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. This is because the Old Testament Sabbath not only provided a principle of weekly rest from usual labours and a time to reflect with thanksgiving upon the Creator, it also prophetically pointed to the coming of the Messiah who would redeem lost mankind on cross and bring an end to the “works of the law” (Gal. 2:16; 3:13). The writer to the Hebrews said that to turn to Christ in repentance and faith was to permanently enter into God’s rest and warns those tempted by false teachers to try to earn their salvation by keeping certain rules, such as seventh-day-Sabbaths not to be fooled:

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 
for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from His works as God did from His.
¶ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:9-11

When Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday morning, and then fifty-days later sent the baptising Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost Sunday of the Christian Calendar, tens of thousands of formerly seventh-day Sabbath keeping law-abiding Jews were converted to Christianity and were baptised and switched their Sabbath observance to Sunday not just as a day of rest — but as a weekly day to celebrate their newfound eternal rest!

In our day we too meet each Sunday to do the same! It is an exercise that is good for our physical health, our mental health, our emotional health, and especially our spiritual health!

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

BRUISED REEDS BEWILDERED

The prophets foretold of the Messiah being both powerful and yet gentle. He would vanquish his enemies, yet gather his people as a shepherd gathers lambs. He would punish rebellious nations with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9) yet be attentive to the distressed and destitute (Psalm 22:5). He would treat the broken with dignity and respect, yet mete out justice to those responsible for their plight (Isa. 42:3). We are presented with a powerful portrait of the strength and compassion of the Messiah in the prophetic psalms and poems of the prophets while being told that despite this, He would be misunderstood, slandered, and maligned.

a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
Isaiah 42:3

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Isaiah 53:3

Despite Christ showing unequalled compassion for people, unprecedented care for those close to Him (including His mother and brothers and sisters, and His disciples), His need to, at times, be alone was misunderstood by these people in particular. As unimaginable as it may seem, His mother and siblings at times felt neglected by Him –

¶ And His mother and His brothers came, and standing outside they sent to Him and called Him. And a crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” And He answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
Mark 3:31-33

His disciples experienced times when they felt He didn’t care for them – 

But He was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Mark 4:38

And one can only wonder how the portico full of ill people felt when He walked over some of them and past others of them to restore a man who had been lame for 38 years while seemingly ignoring their plight!

In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”  The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”  Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. ¶ Now that day was the Sabbath.”
John 5:3-9

WHEN ALONE DOESN’T MEAN BY MYSELF

But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.
Luke 5:16

Jesus often withdrew from people. The One who loved people the most needed to have times of space and distance from them.  Pastors, the most visible representatives of Christ, in days gone by, were almost universally trained that the best day to take off in a week was Monday. Unless someone has ever experienced what it is like to be needed and wanted by so many people so intensely over the course of a day, it is difficult for them to imagine how wearing this can. I imagine that it is also difficult for people to understand that even the most caring people need quiet time alone to recharge and restore – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Christ’s disciples certainly found it difficult. Mary and Martha found it difficult. Christ’s mother and siblings also had reason to struggle with it. Seasoned pastors turned professors of theology and ministry would instruct their protégés that an intense day of ministry, where preaching just one sermon is equivalent to the expenditure of emotional and even physical energy of labouring 8 hours (let alone preaching twicea Sunday), leading a training meeting, being available for counselling and comfort, showing hospitality over lunch in between services, takes a toll on a pastor. Monday, they would counsel, is the day you need to withdraw and restore. All of these regular Sunday activities for a pastor would only be a fraction of the drain that Christ must have felt nearly every day of His incarnate ministry. Little wonder then, that Immanuel needed to often withdraw from people to be of most value to people. And while it appeared He was alone we know that He was never by Himself. 

For those of us called to care and shepherd others where we are continually attempting to repair bruised reeds and not snuff out struggling candles, we run the certain risk of being misunderstood when these precious lambs confuse our absence for indifference or our silence for rejection. Christ ran that risk and was the subject of such misunderstanding. They challenge for Christian carers, especially those called to shepherd, is to recognise that our needed times of isolation and quiet are not times by ourself but with the Enthroned Father who has no need to slumber or sleep (Psalm 121:4) who gives restoration and strength to all those who wait on Him (Isa. 40:31).

Pastor Andrew

The Beautiful Re-Prefix Of Christianity

While it’s true that Christianity is best spelt – D O N E, it is best described with words which use its beautiful prefix: re. These re-words are both a powerful set of descriptions and a set of glorious reminders about what Christ has done for us.

The Gospel has given the world a graphic and richer meaning to its uniquely used words: grace, love, eternal, mercy. But the Gospel is captured with re-prefixed words.

We should never take for granted just how beautiful the Gospel is. For those who have failed, it is the hope of a fresh start. For those who have lost their way, it is a light, a map, and a compass, to get them back on the strait and narrow path. For those who have been broken, hurt and damaged, by a world that treats people as things, it is the Owner’s Manual description of a person of infinite value to a God who loves them infinitely. For those who have lived their life without regard to God, His Word, His ways, or His will, it is the guarantee of His forgiveness and debt cancellation. For those who feel abandoned, alone, and rejected, it is the legal document informing them that the wealthiest Person in the Universe has personally sought them out and begun legal proceedings to adopt them and make them His heir! 

Each of these aspects of the Father’s love revealed through His Son, Jesus The Christ, might be told with re-prefixed words.

For a person to receive God’s offer of forgiveness from their sins and eternal life with Him in Paradise, they must have the Holy Spirit help them to realise their true condition of guilt and shame before God. They must have the Holy Spirit enable them to repent of their sins. They must return to the Lord. In doing what the Holy Spirit empowers them to do they are regenerated (born-again). They are simultaneously reconciled to God the Father by Christ. They are also redeemed by Christ and adopted by the Father. 

This is what makes Christianity unique from all other ‘religions’. It offers people the hope of not only a fresh start, but the power to change, and become a new person. I am not who I was a few years ago. I will not be who I am in a few years. The Gospel is changing me. It is enabling me to become who I long to be and who Christ is wanting me to be. Because, in it I am enabled to behold Christ. And as I do, I am changed, transformed. This is why God has ordained for the Gospel to be preached each Sunday to His people so that they can behold Christ and undergo its transforming grace. 

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Second Corinthians 3:18

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or what’s been to you, you can be reconciled to the Father, redeemed by Christ, and regenerated by the Holy Spirit. By beholding Christ in the Sixty-Six Books of the Gospel you are given a new start, a new beginning, a chance to start over, but more than that: you begin to become a new person.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Second Corinthians 5:17

You are never “a million miles” from God. You are always just one prayer away. 

Pastor Andrew

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THE THREE KEY Re WORDS OF THE GOSPEL TABLED

RECONCILED	For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Romans 5:10	The Gospel reveals the truth about our standing before an infinitely holy God: enemies. In John 3:19 Jesus declared this truth by stating that without being reconciled to God, we all hate God and love the darkness (deeds of rebellion toward God). We need to be reconciled by a Mediator. and through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. Colossians 1:20 Jesus Christ has reconciled those who put their trust in Him by paying our debt to God on the Cross with His own blood!
REDEEMED	In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Galatians 4:3-5	In the days of slave markets, when family members were sold off to pay a family debt, another family member could attend the slave auction and ‘redeem’ the auctioned family member by ‘purchasing’ them to cancel the debt. This is the imagery behind the Apostle Paul’s language in Galatians 4 when he describes us as being enslaved with Christ coming to redeem us and then adopting us God’s children.  Becoming a Christian doesn’t just save us from an eternity in Hell, it changes our status from orphan to adopted heir with Christ! (Rom. 8:17)
REGENERATED	He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5	Biblically, “death” is not the end. Neither is it ceasing to exist. Rather, it means separation. James tells us that the body without the spirit is dead. When a soul is separated from God because of sin, it is dead. “We who were dead in trespasses and sins have now been made alive in Christ” writes Paul to the Ephesians in chapter 2. When a dead soul is brought to faith in Christ by being reconciled by Christ when they are redeemed by Christ, they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Jesus told Nicodemus that this was like being born again (John 3:3).