Work, Rest, Worship, And Play; The Rhythm Of Life

We talk about why Kingdom leadership flips the usual top-down model and calls us to serve from underneath as we lift people up. We also get practical about spiritual rhythm, showing how rest and play protect leaders from burnout and bring our relationship with God back to life. 

• servant leadership as the culture of the Kingdom of God 
• a balanced rhythm of work rest worship and play 
• how “the shoulds” turn worship into a checklist 
• Sabbath as a gift and rest as worship based on Mark 2:27 
• learning to rest with God in a replenishing relationship 
• why staying guarded in relationships drains us over time 
• trusting God as our shield instead of self-defense 
• play as a way to release creativity and renew imagination 
• balancing privilege with responsibility to avoid entitlement or harshness 
• integrity through obedience in small things and keeping our word 

If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, please feel free to drop us a line at life around the fire at gmail.com, or you can type in Life Around the Fire and look us up on the web. We'd love to hear from you. 

Transcript

Rhythm And Kingdom Values

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I was recently reflecting on the fact that in life there is both a rhythm to it and a balance that goes along with life, and specifically life in the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God has values, practices, and priorities in it that sometimes seem like they're just the opposite of the way things really in life outside of the kingdom of God would go. Like, for example, being a leader. In the world that I live in, leadership is most often modeled from a top-down approach, meaning the people at top on the top tier give to the people beneath them things to do, and then people do them. And if they don't do them, they suffer the consequences of not doing them, like getting fired.

Servant Leadership Over Top Down

SPEAKER_00 1:02

And the top-down approach is something that is most common in the world, like I said, the world that I live in. But the kingdom of God, the culture in the kingdom of God is we lift people up from the bottom. It's an approach where those who want to lead become the servant of all. We are the ones who are underneath others to lift them up to a higher place. And in so doing, we find that things take place that are more powerful than they are if we were to just follow the suit in the culture that we live in outside of the kingdom of God. And so the aspect of us entering into a relationship with the Lord, a real living relationship, not religion, a real living relationship with the Lord involves us entering into a relationship that has with it some things that balance out our life as well as bring about a certain order to things, that there's a balancing order to the way that things go. For example, work, rest, worship, and play are very important things in life pertaining to us having a balanced way of doing things. Work, rest, worship, and play. And one of the things that I've been realizing recently, again, is that I tend to

Work Rest Worship And Play

SPEAKER_00 2:45

do a couple of those things to an extreme at times. Like work and worship, to the neglect of play and rest. And you know, folks, it's just as important for us to learn how to play with the Lord and with each other to really learn how to have fun. And as children, remember, as a child, most of us in our childhood years were surrounded by things that we were just full of adventure, and that life had a lot of fun to it, and we could do just about anything for just a little bit. And we could throw in a bunch of fun. Man, it seemed like time would just fly. Where as I got older, play kind of took a secondary role. Like, that's not something that we really do that much of because you know, we got to get serious and we need to really be working at life now. It was good to play then, but now it's time to buckle down and get, you know, get down dirty with it. And the same goes with sometimes with worship, because we get a case of the shoulds. We should be doing this, and it can kind of guilt us into a checklist lifestyle when it comes to worship, because the other things in our life aren't necessarily in balance, like rest, taking time to rest. And one of the things that I want to emphasize today in this particular podcast episode is for you as a leader, and I'm specifically speaking to leaders, it's important for you to have time where you can play and you can rest. It was in Mark, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 2, when Jesus was being confronted by some Pharisees concerning how he and his disciples were handling the Sabbath, and they weren't handling it the way that the Pharisees were, and so they were kind of coming under some pretty heavy ridicule. And Jesus set the record straight in saying to them, as

Sabbath Rest As Worship

SPEAKER_00 5:29

recorded in Mark chapter 2, verse 27, he said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. The emphasis and the value being placed upon rest is hit right between the eyes, right here. Jesus gave high value to us experiencing rest. Because we were designed to be able to rest. And rest to God is actually a form of worship. Because we are resting with Him. We're taking time and we are resting with our Heavenly Father. It's like dad's day off, and we get to spend time with Him. And we get to resting, resting, the rest that we're talking about is resting with God in a way that is replenishing. A relationship that replenishes you is a very wonderful relationship. And we can experience that with God. Where as we spend time with Him just resting, we can experience that replenishing that comes with us just being loved by God and loving Him without saying much or doing much. We're just resting. Resting together. You know when you can rest with someone, you have something special. When you can rest with someone, just without saying a word, but you can be together and you can just rest. That's a solid relationship, man. And that's the relationship that God is calling us into with Him, but also with each other as people, where we can actually learn to rest in each other's presence and not be on guard. Because it's easy for us to get jaded over the course of time because life has in it certain things when we encounter them that produce problems for us. And we get defensive as a result of it because nobody really enjoys experiencing pain. And sometimes when there are relational conflicts and the pain that ensues, it's very disruptive to one's life. It can be very time-consuming to have relationship problems.

Resting In Relationships Without Guard

SPEAKER_00 8:15

And so when we experience frustrations because we're going about life and we're burning out, oftentimes because we have not been resting in relationship or we have been with each other, we've been too much on guard. You see, if the Lord is our shield, we don't have to work hard at becoming our own defense. When God is our shield, we learn how to trust in him, and in so doing, we can rest in him because he is the one who will protect us from our enemies. And when we rest in him, we're showing him also that we trust him. And so doing with each other, when I can rest with you, I can just relax with you. Without having to do something or say something, I can just be together with you and relax. There's something really intimate about that. You know, two people in a boat fishing with a rod and reel without having to cast nets, but really just kind of the relaxed fishing. My dad and I would go fishing in a canoe on a lake in Minnesota, had this favorite, favorite, favorite lake that we'd go to. So we'd go early in the morning, we'd jump into the canoe and get on the water, and you know, we would spend hours without saying a word to each other, but we were resting each other's presence by doing things together or just by simply snoozing. Some of the best times I can remember are times where I was just resting with my dad in the canoe. So the rhythm of life and the balance of life, those are important things. The rhythm of life being work, rest, worship, and play. I think for leaders, the rest and play are important things because play also, being able to play, releases creative elements within our imaginations. And God wants to sanctify our imaginations so we can have imaginations that are alive and trustworthy, and we can be creative in what we do with our lives and in how we go about playing with God

Play Unlocks Creativity For Leaders

SPEAKER_00 11:06

and with one another. Hallelujah. To have fun together. And you and I, if you and I, when you and I also have fun together, there's something that takes place with that because there's a connection that can only happen when you're playing together. Certain things can only happen when we engage ourselves in certain activities. And playing together releases creativity within us so we can go about doing things that previously we might have been stuck on, we just couldn't quite think about the solution clear enough. And lo and behold, we go and have a nice good time of fishing or playing and just enjoying some recreation. And that thought that we couldn't think about before, lo and behold, it becomes something we can think about now. Because our creative thought processes were released, and play is one of the ways that we can see those things released. And so the rhythm of life, but also this aspect of the balance of life, because I'm real so I'm realizing also that with privilege comes responsibility. It's a balancing thing. With too much privilege, we get people that are entitled. The entitled generation, where you owe me seems to be the predominant theme.

Privilege Responsibility And Small Obedience

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Instead of how can I serve? It's you owe me because I'm entitled. Too much privilege. Spoiled. Too much responsibility, you become legalistic and harsh. Kind of like, you know, well, if I can't have it, you can't have it either. Well, the attitude of being overloaded with work becomes a negative attitude. And that negativity is harder to live with. And so it's important to have a balance of privilege and responsibility. Just like it's important to have a rhythm in our life of work, rest, worship, and play. And the greater we see things take place, the more we see things take place, the greater things that we see take place as a leader, the easier it is for us to begin to lose sight of being obedient in the small areas. Another very important thing for us is to remember to be obedient in the small things, obedient to God, but also obedient to one another. When we give our word to someone, let's be clear with it and follow through with it, not just say something and then, well, hope that people are going to forget what we said and not follow through with it ourselves. We are people that are called to a place of integrity, and part of that is for us to be able to communicate in ways in which what we say we deliver on. And we're obedient in the small things to the Lord. Because it's easy to get caught up in neglecting those things because we need to tend to something that seems to be more important, but we must remember that it's those small points of obedience that we did that got us to the place where we're at with greater responsibility. So let's not neglect being obedient in the small areas. Prophet Samuel told King Saul that it was better to obey than to sacrifice. It's better to obey than to sacrifice animals to God. You see, God wants us to obey because it's in the obedience that we express our trust and our loyalty. When we obey God, we're expressing to him that we love him, we trust him, and that we want to comply with what it is that he has going on concerning his kingdom and our involvement in it. And so work, rest, worship and play, privilege and responsibility, and remember to be obedient in the small areas. Hallelujah. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for once again who you are, and for what you're doing, God, and how you're doing it. Your ways are not our ways, they're much higher. And I thank you for that. Teach us your ways, Lord. Show us your paths. Lead us in the ways of your righteousness. It's for your kingdom, it's for your glory and your

Prayer And Closing Invitation

SPEAKER_00 16:37

power, your power, it's your power that we want to see demonstrated, both to us and through us, and we stand here in the name of Jesus, declaring that these things will be so that they're true in our lives. And we say, Amen, amen, amen. Hallelujah. Amen. Folks, we love you. And if you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, please feel free to drop us a line at life around the fire at gmail.com, or you can type in Life Around the Fire and look us up on the web. We'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, God bless you. Adios, amigos.