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“And on the Sabbath day, we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together.”

Acts 16:13

Definition: a day of rest.

I recently took a week off from work and traveled to spend a week with a close friend. We both needed some time away from daily duties, so we found a cabin instead of staying at her home. We grocery shopped, packed the car, and traveled to this cabin. It was away from towns, had spotty cell service, and was along a waterway filled with wildlife. 

We prepared, we planned, then we rested. 

We turned off alarms, ate when we wanted, and talked about everything and nothing. We read, watched movies, sat on the deck, and listened to the sounds of nature around us. 

God commands us in Exodus 20:8 to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

Taking an entire 24 hours to be unproductive can be difficult to get comfortable with. It can be challenging in times of constant connectivity and endless chores. So what can you do?

Start small!

Find an hour to disconnect for yourself (or 15 minutes or 5 minutes). Start where you can and find a quiet place to sit, and turn off the “to-do” list running through your head. 

I have a meditation app that I use. Find what works for you!

It will be uncomfortable at first, and you may feel some guilt. Keep doing it. Get the body going, and the mind will catch up. 

After a week, you’ll start to look forward to that time. 

After a month, you’ll likely start craving it. That’s when you know it’s time to expand your sabbath time. 

We live in a world that ties our worth to being productive. That is a lie! Your worth is in being a daughter of the King!

I have found that when I am intentional about sabbath time. When I observe it regularly, I am likelier to be the BEST version of myself (Mom, friend, employee, spouse, etc.) 

How are you doing observing the Sabbath?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
[Matthew 11:28]

     What do you think Jesus means when He says He will give us rest?  I was surprised recently to read that the Hebrew word for rest is nûaḥ or noach.  Does this name sound familiar?  Noah, anyone?  The idea of rest in the Bible can include the following wonderfully calming phrases: to settle down in a place and remain, to repose, to be quiet, to receive comfort, to be calmed, and to be allowed to let down, and to be granted rest. 

     God has been giving rest from the beginning of creation. A little bit of digging into a concordance can help us unpack the earliest origins of the word, “rest” or “noach.”  Genesis 3 tells us that the ideal rest for Adam and Eve was to remain where God had planted them in order to receive His wisdom as they matured. God offered them the unforced rhythms of working the garden, naming the animals, and partnering with Him to rule over His creation as they grew into the responsibilities God wanted them to assume.  What a wonderful plan!  God did the heavy lifting of defining good and evil, making the rules that ensured the goodness and beautiful working of life, while the man and woman had only to stay or rest within the spacious places of the garden and revel in the life God made for them.  But the moment Adam and Eve failed their test-after-rest, by defining good and evil for themselves, “rest” morphed into “stress.”  Those extra hissing “s’s” are courtesy of a crafty serpent who did not want to see the full potential of this beautifully cultivated place ripen or see Adam and Eve mature into magnificent bearers of God’s image.  Like these two gardeners, we face our own test of loyalty to our Creator.  We can easily be seduced into trying to make our own rules for life, defining good and evil for ourselves, and leaving God out of our personal equation.  Playing God like this is exhausting, leaving us no energy for bringing His good love into this wilderness place.

     The kind of rest God gives can be seen in the lives of Noah, David, Solomon, and Joshua, to name a few.  Each of these men were given a time of rest because they needed to repair and prepare for the test that lay ahead.  Noah rested in the ark before assuming the role of a new type of Adam in a new creation after the flood. David was given rest from His enemies so that he had time to think about building God a beautiful house.  Solomon was given rest before he took on the enormous task of raising up the Temple.  Joshua led the Israelites to a place of rest in the promised land before they faced the major battles that lay ahead.

    Are you tired? Weary?  Burned out?  Your Abba is offering you rest in His embrace.  In that space, He wants to remind you that He has already completed His plan to rescue you and someday bring you back to Eden.  You don’t need something novel; simply go back to His original design and let His life flow through you.  In His embrace, we can learn to rest as our definition of truth changes from a doctrine we chase to the simple reality of being with Jesus (Ephesians 4:21).  As you rest your head against God’s heartbeat of love for you, listen for His whisper.  He is reminding you that your permanent address is heaven, so you don’t have to dwell in your feelings, strivings, failures, misgivings, and unfulfilled hopes.  Abide in Him, for He has already secured your life for you and you can rest your faith there.  Rest and regroup with Jesus, for life’s tests will keep coming.  Just stop, breathe, and receive all that He has for you, for God knows what lies ahead and wants to prepare you to rise to the challenge.  Rest in His embrace; ask God for a discerning heart; then get up, go out, and take the overflowing love-gifts of your time with Him to others.

A Restful App: https://www.pauseapp.com/

Restful Verses:
Psalm 62:1
Psalm 103:1-6
Psalm 112:7
1 Kings 8:47-50
1 Kings 3:9
Deuteronomy 30

Written by Idella Zell

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.  He restores my soul.” Psalms 23:1-3

To restore means “to repair, renovate or return to a former condition.”

When I think about my soul, I think about the deepest part of my inner being.  I think that God wants me to go deeper with Him and give Him my all from the depths of my soul. I think about surrendering everything that would hinder me from a clear pathway to Him.  If my soul has wandered from Him, I pray that it will find its way back to Him. I pray that whatever damage has been done to it by the tragedies and trials of life will be repaired and restored to its original condition.  I desire to submit my heart and soul to God free and clear of any obstructions so that He can move in my life as He pleases!

As I reflect on His goodness, I am reminded of all the victories He has brought me through. One of my main sayings is that “can’t nobody do me like Jesus, can’t nobody do me like the Lord!” (this is actually part of a song) He always knows how to handle me and bring me in line with what He has planned.  If I get off track, He will bring me right back in line. My constant prayer is for His complete and perfect will to be done in every area of my life no matter what. I pray that He will not let anything happen in my life that He hasn’t planned.

This was the case when I attempted to go to trucking school years ago. I thought it was His will for me but discovered years later and a couple of thousand dollars later that this was not His will for me.  I was devastated and damaged! So today I would like to open my heart and soul completely to Him to restore me and bring me back to the center of His will. I pray that I will continue to submit to Him and not have a desire for things that are not a part of His plan and purpose for my life.

My challenge for you today is for you to submit your soul completely into His hands and allow Him to restore your soul from the damage that has occurred through hurt, abandonment, anger, unforgiveness, and anything else you have allowed into your spirit and soul.  He is the restorer of your soul.  He wants to give you back your life and bind up your wounds.  He wants to give you strength when you feel weak. He wants to heal your damaged emotions.  Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning (Ps. 30:5).  As the deer pants after the water, God wants our souls to pant after Him and Him only (Ps. 42:1)!  We can only do this through surrendering ourselves to Him and His word.  His word restores us so let us meditate, memorize, and speak it over our lives and our situations continuously.

Father God, we ask that You will give us a mind to surrender our souls to You. Forgive us for the times we tried to handle things on our own.  We surrender hurt, feelings of abandonment, anger, bitterness, and anything else that would keep us from total surrender. We release our emotions to You and ask that You will heal the damage from our pasts and from this moment forward by faith we receive your peace and restoration in our souls in Jesus’ Name!

Scriptures for further study:

**There are 432 verses with the word “soul” but these are just a few:

Psalm 25:1
Matthew 11:28-30
Psalm 31:7
Psalm 33:20
Psalm 34:2
Psalm 34:22
Psalm 35:9
Psalm 35:13

Written by Taylor Mendenhall

I feel like I have recently become a “baby Christian” again. 

Yes, I grew up in church. I knew how to “play the part” and I knew what mask you wear and when. I knew how to look like a good and healthy Christian, 

I feel like I never knew Jesus though…. Until recently. 

Now, this is no one’s fault but mine. I’m not here to blame my parents or the church I grew up in for this because it was my choice in the end. I’m the one that lied and said I was doing all the right things. I’m the one that played that part and wore the right masks. The truth is, church just became like school to me. I’d be going multiple times a week(as a deacon’s kid). I’d pray, listen, worship, take notes, see my “church friends” and make all of my usual social interactions, then go home and never apply or study what I learned or heard. And after a while, it became so normal that when I brought my school friends to church, they didn’t recognize me. And it had become so normal for me that I didn’t even notice how bad it was. 

But, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the true and real relationship with Jesus I have now, that I wish I’d had so long ago. 

For so long I believed that if I didn’t have some kind of emotional response, then I didn’t “get anything” from Jesus in a church service (Maybe that came from my Pentecostal background if you know you know). And it’s taken me YEARS to finally realize, that’s just NOT TRUE. Of course, sometimes we have emotional reactions to His presence and how He speaks to us. I just genuinely never heard of someone hearing from Jesus and not having an emotional and physical response. I never heard that until I was 20 years old and my now husband told me how he hears from Jesus. He is not an emotional man and is a very logical thinker, so Jesus speaks to him logically. I genuinely could not wrap my brain around that. He doesn’t cry and fall on his face every time he prays? But why?  This turned into some serious and interesting conversations with him where he quoted scripture and explained the facts to me. I was in genuine shock! I’d never even read these scriptures or heard these stories. I’d grown up hearing and memorizing all of the “buzz word” scriptures. But I never knew the scriptures around it or the context of anything I’d heard. 

So now, 8 years later, why do I feel like I’m a “baby Christian” again? Well, because I’m stubborn. I went through a lot in the last 8 years, and in 2020 I hit a LOW rock bottom (tbh, we all kind of did right?). I didn’t want to believe Jesus anymore to the point where if a Christian radio came on in the car, I just shut it off. I was angry at God and everything His followers stood for, and that’s a bad place to be for anyone. Then, in 2021, a dark reality hit me. I had an experience only a few people really know about, but it made me really afraid of what will happen when I die. 

It was almost instantly, that I began to pray like I’d never prayed before. And, because I was alone, I didn’t feel the need to put my mask back on and put on a show like I used to. I genuinely felt His presence that night and craved Him in my life FOR REAL this time. And that Sunday I got my family up and we went to church for the first time in about a year. We joined Journey Groups, and Discipleship Groups, made true and real friendships that will last a lifetime, and it lit a fire in me I haven’t felt before. I found something I had been wanting for the last 8 years and didn’t even know it. The real, and true spirit of Jesus came into our lives and flipped them upside down. 

I have so many things I’m still overcoming and working on in myself, but the hope and peace I have in so many situations are unmatched. The need to read my Bible and pray every day is beautiful, and I feel weird if I don’t get that time with Jesus. And I’m doing it for real, not to prove a point to anyone around me. I’ve found myself in Him and seen him through fresh eyes. It’s been a beautiful year and I’m finally feeling excited for what is to come! 

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die? But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” ‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:6-8‬ ‭NIV

Written by: Danielle King

John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Gas prices. Grocery totals. The rise in the risk of offending, and the fall in the value of an honest day’s work. Can you feel your joy being strained as you are reminded of just a few hot topics of the day? Each day and each headline tries to cast a shadow over the words “that your joy may be full”.

On days like these, how do we live out each one full of joy? As Christians, we know that God created roses. We know He made them fragrant. But how often do we stop to smell them? Do we ask God for the ability to rejoice in that fragrance? How often do we ponder the idea that He created all He created, does all that He does, is all that He is for His glory, first and foremost, but that the ability to share in His joy is the most fortunate by-product of His glory.

Is it sometimes a challenge to think of God as a happy God? Is it counterintuitive to believe God truly cares about our happiness here on Earth? Do you feel like caring about your own happiness is selfish, and that it is sinful to care about that when you’re called to “carry your cross”? You wouldn’t be alone. Many of us can become caught up in the race that we are justly instructed to run, but forget that our Heavenly Father has also inspired many verses in scripture that instructs us to have a smile on our faces as we run.

John Piper provides an analogy to help usher in the idea that it is not wrong to ask God for true joy in our hearts, but that He is honored and glorified when we seek our joy in Him. That running parallel to our lifelong duty to serve Him, it is also so good to ask God for joy without feeling guilty or unworthy because He is honored when we do so. I shall borrow and paraphrase his illustration:

Suppose my husband secretly rang our doorbell on our anniversary. I open the door and he is standing outside with flowers in hand. He says “I’m here for our date.” I smile and cheer “You are so sweet. Why do I deserve such a thing?” What if he responded with “I want to take you out because it is my duty. I am your husband, and I am supposed to serve you. I don’t want you to be angry with me for not doing enough for you, so let’s go.” I would be hard pressed to feel any kind of honor from my husband, and in fact, I would feel invaluable and inadequate for his happiness. Now suppose, instead, he replies “I want to take you out because I can’t think of anyone else I would rather be with tonight. Being with you brings me so much joy, that my commitment to you is the easiest and most pleasurable thing I could do in life.”

That would be the way he would honor me and our relationship. And I believe that is the way we can honor God as well. So ask the Lord to share His joy with you. Ask Him to give you, by His Spirit, the kind of joy that will seem out of place in this fallen world. Tell Him, daily, that you know He is the only one good and glorious enough to keep you smiling as you continue the good fight during your time here on Earth. Then His joy may be in you, your joy may be full, and you can give glory to God for it.