Learn to Exhale

Based on Unglued by Lysa Terkurst

      I have a friend that I don't think has ever gotten mad in her life. I've never seen her let her emotions get the best of her or allowed herself to become unglued in the midst of irritating or annoying or just plain insane situations. Every time I see her she is radiating a sense of peace, calm, and gentleness. I never understood why next to her, I seemed like a hot mess. How is it that this girl could be so relaxed in this stressful thing we call life? Until I realized her secret: rest.

   I'm not talking about physical rest, such as taking a nap on Sunday afternoons, though this rest is somewhat physical. I'm talking about a routine rest, or the Sabbath as we usually hear it. Now I know we always label Sundays as the "Sabbath" or "day of rest", but have we ever taken the time to realize what that means or is suppose to look like?

   The Sabbath was a day created by God that was "set aside for rest and worship". God actually set aside a whole 24 hour day just for us to rest. I mean how great is that? The Bible even says as one of the Ten Commandments we are to "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy", so it must be pretty important. God wants us to grasp onto this uninterrupted time with Him that we are too have weekly. To grasp onto this time even if our schedule begs to differ.

   In my life, and most others, when there is "a lack of rest, there is an abundance of stress". The times I have felt most stressed out or felt like my head was going to explode with emotions are when I've been going, going, going and never stopping to just sit with God and breathe Him in. Whenever we aren't resting, we feel a lack of happiness and joy. We feel drained and worn, but this sacred time spent in God's presence refreshes our dreary spirits and lifts our tired heads as we march on into the week ahead.

  Now that we know the importance of the Sabbath, what does is look like? How it looks might be different for everyone. God is "more concerned with the attitude of our hearts than the actual activities of our bodies".We can sometimes get caught in a mind of legalism thinking it has to be a restraint from doing anything at all, but the Sabbath is simply a call to rest from "...going [our] own way and ...doing as [we] please [and] speaking idle words" (Isaiah 58:13).

   It's asking ourselves "Where am I going my own way in my life recently?" To reflect and see where your life is based on your own selfish motive and not based on obedience to God. Then "What areas of my life are based on doing as I please rather than what God wants me to do?" Re-evaluating our mindsets and aligning these areas of life up to what God wants for us rather than what we want. And lastly "What idle words do I need to learn to control or keep to myself rather than letting them run free?" It's easy to let our words slip so easily from our mouths, but the Sabbath is also a day to go over the words we say and see whether they were beneficial to showing God's love or detrimental to your witness and how you can better reign those words in next time.

   That's it, the Sabbath in a nutshell, but many times we try and put this time off with excuses of "I'm just too busy" or "I don't have enough time", but God even says how "The sabbath was made for man, not the man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). The sabbath was created by God for us as a privilege and a benefit of life, to give us rest from the crazy world around us. It shouldn't be seen as a burden or a religious requirement. Instead as Christians we are using the Sabbath to give worship and praise back to God for giving it to us in the first place. God didn't have to give us anytime to escape from this world, He could of just made us run and run and run until we collapsed. But instead because of His gracious love for us, He allowed us to spend a whole day to be renewed and refreshed by His peace and love.

  Going back to my friend who has the most gentle temperament of any human being it seems, I realized she knew how to rest. She knew how to take the Sabbath, the day of pure uninterrupted time with God and just rest and reflect on her life. And because of this discipline she had learned, she was better prepared and ready for the week ahead. She knew how to handle difficult situations more peacefully, she knew how to reign in her idle words and instead give out words of love, and how to point every area of her life back to Christ. 

  So here I am, in Michigan on a family trip sitting in the hotel room alone as everyone is out. Why? Because I woke up in a very cranky, stressed, and just full out unglued mood. Letting my words run off my tongue before thinking, having selfish motives in my actions... And this all came from not setting part a time of rest on the Sabbath. So I stayed back, I allowed myself a couple hours of solitude to rest and just reflect. To notice my hurtful words and my ungrateful heart. To realign my motives and my mind back to that of Christ, so that when my family walks back in I will be fully rested in the love of Christ. Rejuvenated and refreshed to face the week ahead. Allowing my soul to finally exhale.

- Rachel