God Made Sabbath an Equipping Tool for Suffering
I waved goodbye to my husband and one-year-old son as I pulled out of the driveway. I was looking forward to a retreat with my Bible study group and desperately hoping this weekend away would spark some change. God was beginning to use my exhaustion to get my attention.
I had tried literally everything to heal our marriage, and nothing was working. Counseling, dates, lingerie, books, sermons, white-knuckling, prayer, community, retreats, classes, conferences, therapy, Bible study, friends, guy time for him, girl time for me. Every road led to a dead end. To quote Mark Buchanan, “All our doing had turned to undoing” (Rhythms of Rest, 11).
I had been praying God would bring revival and change to our marriage. More specifically, I hoped he would change me into the kind of wife my husband wanted. Instead, God intended to change me into the kind of daughter he wanted.
On the second day of the retreat, the Bible study leader held up a book as a giveaway. I saw the title and somehow knew I would win. I’m not claiming to be psychic, but something in me, maybe the Holy Spirit prompting, knew that I needed this book and that God would give it to me. (If I was wrong, I decided I’d buy it regardless.) My name got pulled out of the hat, and a book titled Rhythms of Rest by Shelly Miller was placed in my hands.
I was eight years into a rocky marriage. I didn’t know it, but I was living the last months with my husband still sleeping in our home. By the end of that summer, he would be gone. One and a half years later, the divorce papers would be signed. As I sat waiting for the winner to be announced, God was planning to continue what he had started in me. He knew I would need him in the months and years ahead. He knew the way I was living was not sustainable, and he intended to change it. He was about to provide all the grace I needed for the suffering ahead, with the primary equipping tool being sabbath.
Keeping Up Appearances
I perfected going through the motions. I would yell with my husband, wake up with a weeping hang-over, and show up to a playdate the next morning. All smiles, and yes how are you, and yes my son loves this playground too.
I would barely be able to get out of bed in despair, but I’d roll out in time for an early lunch with a friend. It wasn’t that I was keeping my situation a secret. My family, closest friends, and pastors knew what was going on, and I was taking counsel from them often. Yet for some reason I thought I had to keep up appearances to acquaintances and had to keep living my life as if nothing was wrong—as if I wasn’t desperately broken and grieving.
The pain of having a deep wound and smiling through a weekday lunch was excruciating. I felt fake, like a hypocrite, like I was hiding. To cope, I worked myself busy. It was too hard to feel what was going on, to stare in the face of how my family was unraveling and be powerless to stop it.
How can you grieve when every minute of your time is spent doing? Whether you’re grieving a dissolved marriage, infertility, unmet expectations, or the death of a loved one, we’re all tempted to put on a brave face and press on. Yet the Lord kindly shares with us another way to heal from brokenness.
In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah is fleeing the evil and murderous Queen Jezebel. He comes to the wilderness discouraged, destitute, and afraid. How did God respond? Matthew Henry’s commentary outlines a beautiful picture of God’s care, not condemnation. Elijah is “met, in his banishment, by the favour of God, his covenant-friend.” God provides healing for his physical body with food, water, sleep and shelter. He delivers spiritual healing in the form of listening, encouragement, and community with the prophet Elisha.
God enables Elijah to obey the fourth commandment: sabbath rest. Not only does God allow rest; he commands it. Sabbath isn’t optional and it isn’t for when we’ve completed our task list.
God knows our frame and created our bodies (Ps. 103:14). He knows our capacity. If we can’t say no, can’t take a day off, or get enough sleep, we are saying we are the center of the universe. We are exampling a false belief that God cannot handle our particular situation, let alone the whole world, without us involved. We are saying that our control and productivity are ultimate.
Miller remarks about our idolizing hearts. We “replace the need for Jesus with the need for certainty” (Rhythms of Rest, 143). We control our environment, control our faith disciplines, control the people around us, all while forgetting “busyness in the wrong things ultimately leaves us completely unprepared for what is most important” (30).
Making Space for Rest
Over the next year, Miller’s words become my anthem: “With each passing week, I practice Sabbath, and peace replaces unrest” (60). God was loud in this season. His Holy Spirit prompted me to pray and process in a way that I had not previously experienced. I needed rest from daily toil but also from a works-based gospel, allowing God to reveal and heal what only he could.
Our Christian life is one of rhythms; Jesus exemplified this. There were times people felt let down when he sought solitude to be with the Father. Other times, people felt an opportunity for a miracle was missed because he needed time to rest and pray (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16). But he was not lazy or only all about self-care. He was following the pattern that God the Father laid out in creation (Gen. 2:3).
As Christians, we are to work hard in the areas God has charged us to be faithful. We ought not to be slothful in our jobs, family, church, or marriage. Yet the God that made us gave us an example in sabbath at creation. Our brains need space to process, pray, and create. We can’t do that if every day, dawn to dusk, is filled to the brim with tasks or even good things like spending time with people, the church, or mothering.
If you are in a season of grief or suffering, sabbath is a precious gift Jesus is beckoning you towards. He entreats us “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest . . . for your souls” (Matt. 11:28–30 NASB 1995). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this teaching comes on the heels of John the Baptist questioning his suffering in prison.
Over the years, I have found that sabbath can come in smaller and larger rhythms. For me, it initially took the form of completely clearing my calendar. If it wasn’t family, work, Bible Study, or therapy, I didn’t do it. At one point, it looked like lots of adventures to connect with my son in my single mom years.
We each will sabbath in unique ways. The way that I hear from God and find rest may not be the same as you. What feels restful to a mom with little kids might not feel restful to a single empty nester. How can we carve out time to connect with our Maker? Maybe it looks like waking up a few minutes before tiny toes tramp down the stairs or possibly setting aside time to connect with another believer or mentor. Perhaps therapy is an important component to what you’re experiencing, and you’ll need time to schedule a few hours to meet with your counselor, cry, pray, and process.
Go to the Lord on this. Pray and ask him where you can bend, change, and reduce your schedule or workload so that you can be faithful.
Humility Not Productivity
I began a season of resting in an effort to fix my marriage. I saw rest as a means to my own ends. However, I was challenged with this truth: “Sabbath isn’t about resting in order to be more productive. It isn’t about me at all” (Miller, Rhythms of Rest, 32). I’m still learning this.
God has redeemed so much in my life; I am remarried to a godly man who loves me deeply. However, discontent and selfishness still creep in. Relying on my independence and worries can trick me into thinking I don’t need God anymore. We all fall into the trap.
Though we long for quick and easy steps for rest from our exhaustion, unfortunately, like most of the Christian life, the Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way. God is more interested in a heart bent toward him than a checklist of correct and practical to-dos. Busyness can be mistyped as sacrifice at the expense of loving him and acknowledging our need for him (Hos. 6:6).
Are you weary and discouraged? Has the brokenness of this world crushed you? Have you been tempted to control the chaos you find yourself in? This precious fourth commandment is for all seasons. Let us daily repent of our striving and allowing task-lists to quiet the angst in our hearts. We won’t perfectly hold the line, and praise be to God, we don’t have to. His blood-stained arms are hedging us in, faithfully protecting us from ultimate failure. “If you listen carefully enough, even in the scariest, most howling moments, you can hear a Galilean voice saying, ‘Peace. Be still’” (Russell Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family).
Let’s allow God to cradle us, grasping his robes all the way home.
Kasey Moffett is a wife and mom of two sons. She lives in her home state of New York. She feels most comfortable during the Northeast autumn months and serves Grace Road Church as their Administrative Director. She has experienced the grief of divorce. You can find her writing at Fathom Mag, For the Church, She Reads Truth, and her own site at kaseyamoffett.com.