SELF INVENTORY FOR HURRY SICKNESS
Do you suffer from the following symptoms?
IRRITABILITY – Do you get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily? Do normal, little things irk you and you can’t shake them off?
HYPERSENTIVITY – Do the least little comments hurt your feelings, offend you or make you angry?
RESTLESSNESS – Are you not able to sit still? Focus on one thing or one screen at a time? Are you unable most of the time to turn your mind off and just relax or pray?
WORKAHOLISM / NONSTOP ACTIVITY – Do you struggle to stop doing something, even when you need to do something else or something more important? Are you unable to set boundaries and keep things in their proper place?
EMOTIONAL NUMBNESS – Do you struggle to feel another’s pain or put yourself in “their shoes?” Is empathy an emotion you rarely feel or express?
OUT-OF-ORDER PRIORITIES – Do you feel disconnected from your identity or who you feel you really are? Would you say most of the time you get sucked into the tyranny of the urgent rather than what you know to be most important?
LACK OF CARE FOR YOUR BODY – Do you prioritize getting enough sleep, eating healthy and exercising or do you let these slide thinking “one day I’ll get around to these?”
ESCAPIST BEHAVIORS – When you get tired mentally or physically, what do you escape to? How often do you do this? And for how long?
SLIPPAGE OF SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES – When you get busy, hurried or tired, what are the first things to go? Do you push aside things like worship, prayer, scripture, Sabbath, solitude to get other things done? How often do you exchange life-giving disciplines for cheap activities?
ISOLATION – How much do you feel disconnected from God, others and your own soul?
LIVING 24/6
By: Jack Guyler
Let me ask you, is your outward pace of life giving you life or sucking the life out of you? Would you describe yourself as more tired or energized?
We all have a desire for more - more stuff, more accomplishments, more accolades, clothes, more tools, almost more of everything. And this causes us to rush, hurry and live at a frantic pace that steals our inner joy and peace. The drive for more isn’t all bad – but when it becomes a chronic way of life to accumulate more things of this world, we begin to drift away from God, from others and our own soul.
Our drive for more leaves us never satisfied – it leaves us frustrated, incomplete and restless. It causes us to so focus on what it takes to get more or achieve more, and this hurts our own soul our and relationships with those who we love most. Some say this is the human condition.
It’s the frustration of not hearing the end of a favorite song. Having your favorite show cut off before the ending. It’s missing the end of the game. It’s not catching that last fish or not finishing that project. And more seriously, it’s not finishing a marriage, not finishing parenting a child or losing a loved one way too soon.
How do we deal with this frustration? How do we find rest for our frustrated souls? As followers of Jesus, it is to come to Him
In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest”
As a Jewish boy, Jesus learned the power of the Sabbath. And when He got older, he continued to observe it as a way of life – it became a rhythm in his life.
Now, what do you think of when you hear the word Sabbath?
Do you think that it was just a Jewish custom?
Do you think of it as just one of the Ten Commandments?
Do you think of it as another thing to add to your already busy schedule?
Do you think of it as a day to be in church all day? Or a no-fun day?
Let’s look at what Sabbath really means. If it was that important for God to do it (“on the seventh day God rested”) and for Jesus to observe it, we need to take another look at it and see what we might be missing.
What do we learn about Sabbath? First, the Jewish understanding of the Sabbath meant “telling the truth – that we are loved without doing anything.” The Sabbath was a reminder to the Jewish people that their value was in the truth that God created them.
Second, the Jewish word for Sabbath is Shabbat which means “to stop” – to stop working, worrying and wanting. It can also be translated to delight.
You see, we are busy trying to accomplish and accumulate things. We are busy trying to show our worth – at work, to our spouse, to our kids, to our families, to our friends, on social media. But Sabbath is the hitting of the pause button – it is a reminder and a time to rest from trying to prove ourselves or accomplish more and to “rest in God.” It is practicing letting go so we can spiritually feel God in our lives.
God called the Sabbath a holy day in Exodus 20:11
For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Our minds and emotions get tired and worn down and this leads to feeling numb, uncreative, irritable, distracted, restless, angry, and cynical. Our bodies get tired and fatigued – they get unhealthy, achy, and our immune systems get weak.
John Mark Comer talks about how he would use his Sabbath as a day off from work but would do other work such as pay bills and yard work. He talked about how life just continued to wear him down because he wasn’t making room for an intentional Sabbath. He says a Sabbath will come to us voluntarily or involuntarily. In other words, we can’t burn the candle at both ends forever. At some point, if we don’t heed God’s principle here of building rest and delight into our lives, we will find ourselves flat on our backs.
Most of us know people who this has happened to. Maybe this has even been you. People worry, they work, they want more, and then they work and worry more – and then one day they can’t stand up because they get sick, their immune system gets weak and they become susceptible to every virus or disease coming along.
Sabbath (Shabbat) means to stop or resist the culture’s pull for success, notoriety, and the drive for more. Observing the Sabbath will be difficult and uncomfortable for all of us because it isn’t part of our normal pattern or rhythm of life. We are more influenced by the American culture around us than by Jesus if we are being honest. The Sabbath when observed on a regular basis serves as a margin for us, a boundary to help us find rest and sanity from our driven world. The Jewish people were hard workers and so was Jesus and his followers. They weren’t lazy. But they also built the practice of Sabbath into their lives.
This is the only commandment that God says is holy as we looked at Exodus 20:11 above.
Why did God call it holy? Because it was time set apart to rest and delight in God – to worship God and give thanks for the beauty of creation, and the valuable people in our lives.
God gave the Sabbath as a gift – a gift to us to give us life. The intention of the Sabbath is to fill us with energy and passion for life and loving God. The Sabbath is a reminder to us, in the midst of our busy and distracting world, that we need God and that we can’t really live without His grace and love. It frees us from needing and doing more. It frees us from getting our identity fully from what we do or our work. It reminds us we are human. That we have limits. And that God loves us even when we accomplish nothing – even though the world may only applaud us when we are accomplishing and accumulating things.
The Sabbath serves as a tether. Farmers in the Midwest, because they have such powerful and blinding snowstorms that come out of nowhere, would tie a rope connecting from the barn where they were working to their home and when a blinding snowstorm would appear suddenly, they would grab onto the rope and it would guide them home. That rope served as a lifeline. The Sabbath serves us as a lifeline back to God.
So, how can we use the Sabbath in our day to keep us connected to God? Here are a few thoughts for you:
Remember, it is something God has provided for you to find freedom, rest, unconditional acceptance and joy in the Lord. It’s not to be a burden or another item on your to-do-list.
It will take time and practice to establish a rhythm of Sabbath in your life. Just like there is great benefit from working out, training and eating a healthy diet, so there is great benefit in practicing the Sabbath. But it will take time and will take effort to make it a habit in your life. So just like people who want to begin contributing to charities, they may not start off giving a lot of money, but over time, as they begin to feel more comfortable, they give more. This same principle applies here. You may want to start off by taking one hour a week for a Sabbath and go from there and build into the biblical idea of a full day.
You have to be intentional. You have to put it in your calendar. What you schedule get done. As Stephen Covey used to say, keeping appointments with yourself is the beginning of personal integrity.
I’m hoping we can all work toward practicing a regular observance of the Sabbath in our lives for our own good, for the good of those around us and to honor the God who has created us and loves us. Below is a summary sheet to help serve as a reminder to you the value of practicing Sabbath in your life.
