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"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy."
—Exodus 2:8, NIV

An average day during my junior year in high school went something like this: Wake up, eight hours of school, four hours of practice, quick dinner, four hours of homework, hang out with friends (if I'm lucky), sleep, repeat.

Sound like your life? To keep from freaking out or getting sick, we gotta find time to rest. God thinks rest is so important he wrote it into the fourth commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" (Exodus 20:8, NIV).

A "Sabbath" is a time of rest. The words, "Remember the Sabbath day," point us back to the first Sabbath in history when, after he created everything in six days, God rested on the seventh day (see Genesis 1-2).

Now, let's be realistic: God's strength is unlimited. He created everything just by speaking. He's present everywhere. He's always available to talk to, and he doesn't get tired or worn out. So, why did God rest?

The Bible says that God "blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating he had done" (Genesis 2:3, NIV). I think God set an example for us when he rested, and we can see that example in a very important word: holy. This verse says that God made his day of rest holy. In the fourth commandment, we are told to keep the Sabbath holy. God wants us to follow his example. He wants us to take time to rest, and he wants that rest time to be holy.

Whenever the word holy appears in the Bible, it means set apart just for God. In other words, totally devoted to God. A holy Sabbath, then, isn't just any old time of rest, and it's not just rest for our physical bodies. God didn't give us the fourth commandment as encouragement to zone out while watching TV or spend an entire weekend playing Rock Band. Doing those things might help us recharge our batteries physically, but a Sabbath is more than a time of physical rest. It's also a time of spiritual rest—rest devoted totally to God.

Most of us know that nonstop busyness can wear us down and cause major physical problems or illnesses. What we so easily forget is that our spiritual lives work that way, too. As Christians, we're called to represent Christ wherever we go and to share his good news through our words and actions. That's not an easy thing to do, and if we're trying to live up to that calling every single day, it can get really tiring! If we are pouring out of our faith all the time, we need to eventually get filled back up. Taking a Sabbath and resting with God can revive us spiritually with the energy and encouragement we need to live each day as messengers of the good news. Even Jesus, our Lord and Savior, repeatedly devoted time to rest with God, far away from the busyness of his life. (See Matthew 14:22-24; Mark 1:35.)

As we try to keep a Sabbath, however, we need to remember something: It's not about just keeping another rule. When the Pharisees confronted Jesus about breaking the Sabbath, he made one thing clear: "The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27, NLT).

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