Rest is a Weapon
August 24, 2023
I have a deck of cards that sit on my desk. Each one has instructions for different 30-90 second therapist-developed mindfulness exercises meant to help users reset with tiny pockets of intentional deep rest.
By the dust that’s collected on top of them I’d say they’ve sat unused for, oh, at least 390 days or so.
But God’s recently been reminding me of my acute need for mental breaks and spiritual reconnections with Him throughout my day. I’ve been doing a book study with two dear friends that’s centered around the crucial connection of our physical and emotional health with our spiritual health. The author, Alisa Keaton, draws attention to these scriptures in Genesis.
"Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
-Genesis 1:26-27
"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."
-Genesis 2:2-3
God finished creating the entire world and capped it off with his pièce de resistance: humanity. There was certainly plenty for humans to do in this new world with animals to name and land to explore and gardens to tend to. But notice how immediately after creating people, the very next thing God chose to do with them was rest. This is what it means to work from a place of rest. We rest first and are renewed by God, and then we are sent out to work.
Rest prevents work from becoming an idol and is also an act of submission in trust. Our identity is in God, not in the work that we do. We are not God. We can’t do it all. And there’s always more that we could be doing, more we could accomplish, more we could achieve. When we proactively and intentionally rest, we are literally saying with our actions that we surrender our achievements to God and CHOOSE to get off the hamster wheel of self-sufficiency. We acknowledge our humanity when we rest. We work from a place of freedom when we rest. God is in control of our lives, not us, and we declare that when we rest.
But we have to prioritize and protect our rest time. Convicted by my book study friends, I finally pulled out one of my Mindfulness Mix cards the other day. This one was a breathing exercise: 4 seconds in, hold for 4 seconds, out for 6 seconds. Repeat 10 times for 90 seconds. I had to start over 4 times!– a phone call, a couple people stopped by the office, my son needed me. I couldn’t even carve out 90 seconds! …But had I really made time for that? Sure, I had stopped checking off my to-do list for a couple minutes to turn my attention to rest. But I certainly hadn’t set it up to succeed. I realized I can’t try to rest and just expect there to be opportunities for it. Our 2023 American lives are not designed for rest to organically happen. So I have to MAKE it happen. Go into the back room, shut the door, tell our office manager I’m going to be unavailable for 5 minutes, turn off my phone. If it’s important enough I need to ensure that it proactivelyhappens, not just passively. The work will still be there when I get back, and I’ll do a better job because I’ve checked in with God.
Maybe you’re feeling frazzled, ill-equipped to face the challenges in your life. I encourage you to think of little ways you can incorporate more times of rest with God into your day. Maybe it’s at a stoplight, or you set an alarm on your phone, or between meetings. There are many rest and meditation resources out there, but I highly recommend listening to this one as a great place to start:
I once worked with a pastor who used to say “rest is a weapon.” When we rest and commune with God He meets the deepest needs of our souls and bodies. I pray you can rest in Him this week!
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