Thursday, July 17, 2025
Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! Psalm 46:10
Be Still and Be Restored
In our society people are praised and elevated for how hard they work and how high up the ladder they climb. Work is good but it can quickly become an idol if we make it more important than God in our lives. Work can be the idol that people don’t really even see as an idol. After all, working hard is a sign of good character. Sadly, a good work ethic seems to be a dying ethic in our younger generations today.
We can even make an idol out of “church work.” We can be more consumed with all the ways we can serve than we are with the God we are serving. He loves for us to serve, but he wants a relationship with us more than he wants us to do things for him.
God has commanded us to rest: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work… (Exodus 20:8-10) When you are working hard to get ahead, to get promoted, or to make more money, the temptation is there to skip the Sabbath and to not rest but to push on ahead. I think God knew this would be a struggle for us. And because he made us he knows that we need rest, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Whether we like to admit it or not, we will fall apart if we don’t rest. We are not meant to work nonstop without resting. We won’t work well and as we task our body and push it to the limits our behavior might not be so Christ like.
One thing is certain, if we rest and take a sabbath, we are far less likely to make an idol out of work or anything else in our lives. We will be restored and replenished by God, who is the only one/thing that can ever satisfy and bring fulfillment to our hearts. When we go to him instead of an idol we find true rest. We find strength to go on. We find comfort for pain. We find clarity and guidance. In him we find everything we need.
God gives us other blessings in our lives too like family and friends, nature, and any number of things that we can also find rest in. It may be very rejuvenating for you to spend a day with your kids just playing and reading and being together. You may be replenished by a long walk outside. Those things are great as long as they also do not take the place of God in your heart. It is good to find rest in those things as well, but we always need to rest and be restored in the presence of our Heavenly Father. Nothing else can ever substitute his power and comfort and wisdom in our lives. Nothing else will bring restfulness.
The word "Sabbath" originates from the Hebrew word "shabbat", meaning "rest" or "cessation of work". It came from Exodus 20:8–11, which says the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, when the children of Israel were to rest, in remembrance that God created the universe in six days and then “rested” on the seventh day. It literally means to stop. Again we are being urged to stop and focus on God, just as in Psalm 46:10. If we don't stop what we are doing and focus on God, we won't ever have true Sabbath. True Sabbath comes when we stop listening to the world, watching our show, scrolling on our phones, or doing the many other things we do to distract ourselves from our lives. We can find rest in many ways, but true Sabbath begins with a holy God and a still, surrendered heart.
This Sabbath renews, restores, and replenishes us because can we really love others well at all when we are exhausted? It is difficult to love and obey God when we are tired. It is difficult to love others when we are tired. We have less self-discipline and are more likely to sin when we are exhausted. When we are exhausted we cannot live and love like Jesus did.
Where do you find rest? Are you overworking, overconsuming, and overactive in your life leaving no room for rest and sabbath? It doesn’t require you to have anything, just stop.
Is sabbath a part of your life right now?
What gets in the way of you practicing this rhythm?
Take time today to be still and know that he is God. You can trust him. You can rest in him.
