Rest & Sabbath

Sometimes Monday is so hard. Monday could help to be a bit more subtle and lot more gentle in its approach. It just smokes you directly in the face sometimes. As a pastor, I have chosen Thursday as my day off, therefore making Monday the middle of my week in a way. But, yet it's still Monday.

Okay, enough banter. The stage is set. Monday's are set, but here's the bigger issue: Rest. What is rest and how do we do it?

I lasted through a few seminars once on rest and how sleeping and lying around actually is not necessarily rest. Leisure activities are actually sometimes more rest than sleeping. For example, for me I love hiking. When I hike I get energized and can do anything. Literally. I am like superman at this point.

After this type of rest there is different rest. Its called Sabbath rest. It is sometimes difficult to enter into this rest and I don't really understand it fully yet. So, in this case I give you the scripture to let it speak:

"It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of disobedience. Therefore God sent again a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.' For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience" (Hebrews 4:6-13)

There it is: there remains a rest and we must make every effort to enter it. That rest seems to be when we enter eternity. My question is this: Since we become saved now, can we also begin to enter His rest now? I am not sure about you but I am tired and I get tired of running a race.

For people like me, this rest is my hope to press on. This is my hope for life. Like hiking energizes, I pray so will the hope of rest. God grant us peace in the mundane and encouragement in this race.

It's funny. I took a break from this blog post and just came back. I had a sweet chat with a spiritual mentor and bam, rest. Sometimes it takes someone, filled with the Spirit, to show you the hope that you already have. Thanks God, today you gave me sabbath rest in some strange way.