My 5 year old son loves this time and even enjoys coming home from school on Fridays to help daddy clean the house for mommy - because the Sabbath is coming!

I didn’t think my busy schedule would allow for this time but now I am more focused and directed each week!

My family and I study the Text together…play games together…go for walks…have friends over - we commune with the Father and those He’s surrounded us with…

Sorry for rambling!

Craig,

I feel your pain concerning the need for rest. I’m 49, I have 7 children, and the youngest is a 5 weeks old. The ‘rest’ you and I speak of here concerns rejuvenation as a result of exhaustion.

Three things come to mind:

First, ‘The Sabbath’ was not concerning a ‘rest’ as in ‘rejuvenation’ as if God had ever been exhausted from His work. It was a Sabbath rest of ‘completion’ like the period at the end of a sentence. Another way to understand it is, a rolling ball eventually comes to ‘rest’. The Hebrews wondering the wilderness (in motion) remained in motion under God’s wrath. They never entered “His Rest” (Hebrews 3 & 4). God ‘completed’ his work of creating. Jesus ‘completed’ the work on the cross – “It is finished”. Nowhere does entering “His Rest” imply we can now sleep.

Second, we don’t need Scripture to inform us we need physical rest. Our bodies are ‘programmed’ to tell us that. Since God built us and built that into us, He didn’t need to send special revelation to inform us of something so simple. Case in point, where in the Ten Commendments does it say, “Thou shalt eat”?

Using Scripture to motivate people to work for free is ludicrous and violates principles in Scripture. If I suggest you should work paycheck free, you will invoke “a worker is due his wages” or “don’t muzzle the ox that treads the grain”. I too agree with this principle.

Do as physicians, attorneys, and other professionals do, reach in your self-professed squeaky pocket and pay people to perform these tasks. They are “oxen” as well. If the church has grown to lob-sided then cut back. God is sovereign. The Father has given souls to the Son and the “Son will loose not one”. Not a single soul will lost if LifeChurch is required to cut back overhead or can’t expand by adding another campus for sake of “feeding the ox”. For God can raise up a friend or neighbor or a Gideon Bible to bring the Word that produces faith unto salvation.

Lastly, I can’t help but notice that maintaining “the Sabbath” as well as the “Tithe” were omitted from the Jerusalem Decree and that being good with the Holy Spirit.

“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.” Acts 15:28-29 ESV

Jesus himself, was doing his Father’s work on the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn’t about sleep, it’s about Holiness.

I’m looking forward to a sermon on abstaining from “eating rare steak”.

This pattern proves to be rewarding and very beneficial to me personally, my wife and our family, which would in turn do good to the church ministry as a whole.

Now, I have a day sat aside, but still have trouble taking it. I feel guilty that there is so much to do and I am resting. I lose this battle with myself more than I win.

I know it’s not healthy. I know I’ll crash and burn if I don’t start resting. But I keep justifying my actions to myself and continue to run myself into the ground.

It’s tough. On me, on my wife, on my friends, and on my family. And still I continue not to take a sabbath. I feel like it’s become a foothold for Satan, and from there he wages his own little fight against me.

It’s no wonder God talks about a sabbath in His Word so much! He knew we silly humans would be so adverse to taking it, and knew Satan could use it to deal real damage to God’s people!

I didn’t take intentional time off until a pastor-friend pointed out that I was disobeying the Word I taught. I now take Fridays off, and since it’s my wife’s day off work too, we spend the day together while the kids are in school.

Most of the time we’ll go to the gym together and go home for lunch. As far as what we can/can’t do: basically I understand it to mean that we can do anything that does not fall under our ordinary, provision-giving work.

One of God’s goals for the Sabbath was to teach his people to trust him to provide. For me, that means I don’t do my pastoral work on Fridays - answer phones, check church voice mail/email, schedule appointments, etc. With very few exceptions, there is no emergency so big that can’t wait the extra day. When it is that big, they’ll call twice, and I’ll know something it up.

BTW - I am very up-front about Friday. Now if someone even mentions Friday for something, my answer is an unashamed, “Nope!” I mention it in my teaching when it is appropriate. And I really believe my family is better because of it.

My congregation saw what happened to me as a result of having improper boundaries and have been very good at maintaining my new boundaries. I really liked Ben Rainey’s list and I have implemented many of those as well.

Consider downloading a video message from Open (http://open.lifechurch.tv/). It’s free and will give your pastor a Sunday free from preaching (including prep). If that goes well you might want to join One Prayer (http://2009.oneprayer.com/) and run videos the whole month of June giving the pastor a month free from preaching. If that goes well the church might want to consider the LifeChurch.tv Network (http://network.lifechurch.tv/), thereby freeing up the pastor from preaching indefinitely. Then when the church is able to pay him a full-time salary you can continue with Network or he can resume preaching.

God bless you as you wrestle with this issue.

It’s not an issue with me. God’s grace grows the church - not me. I take a day off, and could care less what’s going on during that day.

Remember the parable of the farmer (Matt 13) who scattered seed…THEN WHILE HE WAS SLEEPING THE HARVEST GREW! How arrogant of us to think that we make the world go around! Once I recognized this it was easy to take a step back. Pastors need to sleep more and let the harvest grow by grace! (In context of course - you’ll find no promoting laziness from me).

May you all receive GREAT GRACE to grow the church!

At Len, I get Monday and Saturday off. One of those is supposed to be a “work” day. Doing stuff that is required around the house or whatever. And one of those is supposed to be a “family” day. We’ll go out or just hang around and enjoy each other. It very rarely works out that way. This has been a great reminder to guard that more diligently.

So…I think we can glean quite a bit about the intentions of sabbath from Scripture, even if the specifics look different.