A restful Sabbath
Another way to help us keep our focus is to obey the 4th commandment, i. e. REST!
If your stomach is tied up in knots trying to figure out if you've offended God by doing too much "work" on the Sabbath-I assure you , you are not resting! Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Meaning...God wants us to truly rest, not follow a set of rules and get worked up in finger-pointing debates about what exactly "resting" means.
There was a young man at a church we attended years ago, who told us he never cooked on Sunday, because he didn't want to sin by doing too much work. We asked him if he fasted on Sunday, then? No, he said he usually went out to a restaurant or over to someone else's house for dinner. It really curled his ears when we asked him if he was not causing his brothers and sisters to stumble by making them cook for him on the Sabbath!
The point is we are to emulate our Father. He rested on the seventh day; not because He was tired, but because He knew that WE would need a day of rest in our week. So, in His sovereignty, He ordained that day to be a day of rest.
Enjoy your work week, and start making preparations now for next week's Sabbath! I'll have some ideas then of things you can do to make it a "set apart" time for your family.
posted by Jeff C @ 6:57 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Oh good - I'd like some ideas. :)
Oh, that sounds so wonderful, a day of actual rest for all of us. That is one thing that we've never been good at- not in my family as a child, and not in my family now that I am a wife and mother.
In previous years, it was a "we are not bound by the OT" kind of thing that kept those around me from really resting on the sabbath. Now, I find that I am just not really aware of what REST is. I wonder if that sounds odd? lol
Good point, Jenna. In our grab-it-now, consume-it-all, get-more-tomorrow society, I think there are very few of us who know what actual REST is.
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