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Stop to Breathe

Leadership demands we make a commitment to rest

Busy leader, do yourself a favor. Stop to breathe.

Before reading past this paragraph, take three slow, deep breaths. Notice the sensation in your body each time you inhale, then exhale. Notice what happens in your inner being as you pause to take those breaths. Now…breathe.

Busy leader, did something within you resist stopping to breathe? Even if you did it, did something in you fight against it? Did something insist, "I don't have time"?

Value

In our culture, busyness is considered a status symbol, a mark of a true leader. We highly value it.

We do not value rest. We treat "downtime" as a necessary evil. If we absolutely cannot go a step further, we "crash" for a few moments—and feel guilty for the duration. To our way of thinking, rest equals laziness. In our psyche, rest is sin.

Yet it's hard to dismiss the compelling testimony within us: Nonstop busyness kills. It reduces our minds to mush. It opens our bodies to disease. It replaces vitality with stupor and a crazed, mechanical running to keep up.

It's harder still to dismiss the testimony of the God who created us and breathed life into us. He established rest as a blessing and a sign of right relationship with him. He named it Sabbath (see Exodus 31:13; Ezekiel 20:12,20; Isaiah 56:2; 58:13). From the beginning, he designated significantly more time for work than for Sabbath rest. Ah, but he taught rest first.

Creating people on the sixth day, the Lord God gave man and woman a huge, seemingly impossible assignment: "Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it" (Genesis 1:28).

Then "on the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work" (Genesis 2:2). He stopped and breathed. He inaugurated and modeled Sabbath.

You think you have way too much to do to take time out? Adam and Eve had an entire world to subdue. The God who gave them the assignment knew it would seem they'd have to work till they dropped to make any progress at all. So from the start, he showed them the rhythm they would need to establish in order to do the task, a rhythm of work punctuated by pauses to stop and breathe. He created Adam and Eve one day, taught them rest the next day—and then set them to work.

Centuries later, God included the charge to keep Sabbath when he gave the Ten Commandments—words that he declared "are your life" (Deuteronomy 32:47).

Lest we think Sabbath strictly an Old Testament proposition, Hebrews 4:9, 11 declares, "There still remains for God's people a rest like God's resting on the seventh day…Let us, then, do our best to receive that rest" (GNT).

Under the Old Covenant, people entered Sabbath rest by heeding God's command for everyone to stop and breathe on the same day each week. Under the New Covenant, we keep Sabbath as we enter and live from the place of rest Jesus purchased for us with his own blood. Positionally, we enter rest by refusing to work for salvation but rather trusting in the finished work of Christ's death and resurrection. Experientially, we enjoy the rhythm of rest God has established for us as we heed the voice of the Spirit of Christ within: "Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts" (Hebrews 3:7-8).

Reorient

In a culture that values busyness so highly, actively seeking rest hinges on our embracing two verses of Scripture—one we often misunderstand and one we don't believe.

The verse we don't believe is Matthew 11:28: "Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.'"

We'd say we believe these words. Yet we're not experiencing what Jesus promised. As Christian leaders, we try to model the act and practice of coming to Jesus. Yet we're not rested at all.

Something's very wrong. But what?

If what you're getting isn't rest, where you're going isn't to Jesus.

If in seeking to serve Christ, you're exhausted and overloaded, dare to ask him what it is you're confusing with coming to him. Give him permission and time to show you. Respond with a contrite heart when he does.

The verse we misunderstand is Ephesians 5:16, which urges us to make "the most of your time" (NAS). How many of us take such an admonition to mean "Do the most things in the least time"?

It's what our culture urges. It's what our time-management courses teach. It's what we've been told brings promotion and success.

But kairos, the Greek word translated "opportunity" or "time" in Ephesians 5:16, means "the appointed time." God says: "Do the right thing at the right time." Any moment we're not doing what our Lord appointed to be done in that moment, we're not making the most of our time.

In particular, it's crucial to honor and delight in the moments God has appointed for you to rest, for his Word promises: "Then the Lord will be your delight. I will give you great honor" (Isaiah 58:13-14).

How do you recognize those moments? How do you know what to do in them? How do you delight in rest?

Ah, busy leader, you come to Jesus. As you keep coming to him, Spirit-to-spirit, he teaches you to stop and breathe.

Trust

If that sounds easy, it's not. Entering rest requires pressing in to go where you haven't believed it possible to go. By grace, you learn to reject the lie "I just can't stop." Intentionally, regularly, you punctuate periods of purposeful labor with a short pause, an interval of silence, a real rest.

If that sounds counterproductive, it's not. Sabbath rest is crucial for health, for stamina, for sanity and clarity, for overcoming setbacks, for relating deeply and well and for fully living life.

For us who follow Christ, Sabbath rest is crucial for another reason. It declares to a frantic, exhausted world that the Lord we serve is a God of love, who has our best interests at heart. It attests to our confidence that his ways truly are the ways of life. Far more loudly than words, keeping Sabbath reveals our faith in him.

Recognizing our human frailty and limitations, we know the tasks God has given us are way too big for us. Tuning out the clamor of urgency, we hear God's voice when he says to pause. Trusting our Lord to accomplish in our behalf while we rest in him, we stop to breathe.

Deborah Brunt has discovered the priceless treasure of recognizing and delighting in God's rhythm of rest. Her newest e-book, Return to Your Rest: A Spirit-to-Spirit Journey, will be released in early 2014. More at http://www.keytruths.com/.

January27, 2014 at 8:00 AM

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