How to Sabbath: Four Tips to a Day Off

In our culture, most of us feel we have to earn our presence in the workplace and among our friends and family. But unfortunately, that lifestyle can lead to a life of anxiety and the constant feeling that you need to be “doing.” That constant production mentality can make you feel like you’re not enough if you aren’t producing. It’s almost as if you need permission just to be yourself.

But for many of us, keeping a sabbath is not a regular rhythm of our life. Perhaps that’s because you grew up where the Sabbath was too legalistic, and you weren’t allowed to do anything. Or maybe you’re living at a pace of life that makes no room for it. Or, more simply, perhaps you don’t understand what it is.

What is a biblical vision of the Sabbath?

In his book, Christian therapist Dan Allender said the day is an invitation to delight. “The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives.” Sabbath is the holy time where we play, dance, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness.

It should be something you get as excited about as Christmas. You readily and willingly submit to the holiday’s rhythm and pace. Why? Because it is delightful. It’s a time for resting, gathering, feasting, and community. It’s a time for being restored and recreated.

However, few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it to make it holy. A day of delight and joy is more than many people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week. We don’t enter into it because of our feelings of shame and guilt or a tug that we have to do more. But it’s God’s invitation to say, come into light.

The most important thing we can say is that God’s will for your life is found in your limitations. American novelist Wendell Berry said the first task of healing is to be a creature. The great divide of our time will be between people who see themselves as creatures versus people who see themselves as machines.

The task of healing begins by recognizing what our limitations are and submitting to them, not transcending them. Our existence is finite, and the gap is there to make us realize our need for God. That infinite desire is an echo that goes all the back to Eden. It’s in our collective memory.

In his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer shares ten symptoms of hurry sickness, and sadly it describes most of us. See how many of these describe you.

The symptoms of hurry sickness:

Today it’s no wonder why people live such emotionally unfulfilling and drained lives. We’ve lost the vision of Sabbath to the gods of accumulation and accomplishment. Keeping Sabbath is a radical form of resistance to the idols of this world. It’s a way to say, “No, I’m not going back to being enslaved,” whether that’s by a nation, desires, technology, or the lies that transcend my limitations. Sabbath says, “No, I’m free when I rest in you.”

What are the temptations in our world that keep us from living into this Sabbath life?

What Prevents Us From Taking Sabbath?

1) Rest Is Not Valued

Our sinful and broken world is not built well for Sabbath and rest. We have to recognize that we’re already at a disadvantage because we’re in a world that does not emphasize these things. Our lives have been built for production over purpose. “We don’t care what your purpose is, we only care for what you can do for me.”

2) Rest Is Seen as Laziness

When it comes to thinking about the idea of rest, it often is collaborated with the idea of laziness. If you need rest, then you’re lazy. The scary thing about it is that’s never the case. There’s nowhere in Scripture where Jesus accumulates the idea of laziness with rest.

Now, I think we can be lazy when we rest, like when we mix those two ideas gratuitously. Sabbath is not meant to shut down entirely and only binge-watch Netflix or scroll through social media for hours. There’s nothing wrong with doing that for a period, but God designed and intended for us to do more with our Sabbath.

When we participate in activities that fill us up, we are being restored to God’s glory. Sometimes, there’s joy in just sitting on a bench or walking through the woods and listening to what God has to say.

3) A Constant Need for More & Faster

In Henry David Thoreau’s , he realized that he didn’t want to wake up on his deathbed and discover that he hadn’t lived deliberately. So he built a cabin in the woods and tried to be wholly sufficient living at the pace of nature. The story tells of him going back into town, and he says the people were running around for scraps.

We think that if we meet these certain goals or attain this job or that house, we’ll be satisfied. Those desires, while not bad by themselves, can lead us down a difficult path of constantly needing to push ourselves long after we’ve needed a break.

4) Thinking the World Depends on You

When we refuse to rest, we mentally frame our work as more important than it is. We are pretending that we are Atlas beneath the world. In reality, the world will continue and keep going without you. The famous phrase “Time is money” makes it seem like our time is our most valuable resource. Opportunity costs everything, and if you’re not working towards something more, you’re missing out. That’s the pressure that demand puts on us. When we submit to the discipline of a Sabbath, it’s saying, I can’t do everything, and that’s okay.

What does a healthy Sabbath look like?

1) Stopping and Ceasing

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Before we can recognize who God is, we must stop. We can’t do it while running, and taking a sabbath involves stopping from things that are not of God. It’s an opportunity to ask God to remove all the noise in our heads and lives so that He is all that’s left.

Sabbath is not just coming to a complete stop in life. At a base level, it’s a reprieve from working, worrying, and the constant desire that we have to work. That’s no easy task because excuses are a dime a dozen. It’s a lot like Whack-A-Mole. During Sabbath, any time those things come up, we need to stomp them out and say no, this is my time of rest.

This will require intentionality. You have to set this time aside for yourself. No one’s going to do it for you. If you’re thinking, “There’s no way in my life right now that I can set aside a whole day,” then start small. Set aside two hours or a half-day every week. No emails, no work, no distractions. Instead, do something that fills you up. Give yourself grace. It’s not going to happen overnight, but one step at a time.

2) Rest

What would it be like if you could have an entire day to do anything you wanted? Sleeping in, drinking coffee by the window, reading a good book, going on a walk, riding your bike, gathering with friends, and then watching a good movie. What are those things that genuinely recreate you and bring you to a place of wholeness?

Sabbath is a time for your mind, body, and spirit to rest. It doesn’t have to look like the traditional sense of sleeping or laying on the couch. Instead, Sabbath is about finding restoration away from the stressors and dailies of our life.

3) Delight

Sabbath allows us to delight in God and His beauty. That can look like many ways that you see and feel God’s presence.

People are afraid to walk through the Sabbath because they’re not fully in-tune with themselves to see and feel. To answer that questions takes introspection. When we disassociate with things like social media and streaming television, it’s a way for us to avoid looking within to see where we may be lacking or hurting.

What delights you? If you’ve never answered that question before, here are a few questions to get you started.

What fills you up: 4) Worship

Sabbath isn’t intended to be just a day off from work for you to run your errands and handle house projects. Those things end up making us feel dry and exhausted anyways. It’s a time for intentional restorative resting. If you enjoy handiwork, that may look like a house project, but it is a discipline, and we’re called to enter into that. We can find ways to worship God through more than just song and prayer. We can worship God through the beauty He’s delighted the world with.

Originally published at https://www.christchurchmemphis.org on March 17, 2022.