On today's episode, Cease Striving Four Reasons to Rest on the Sabbath. Welcome back to the Theology of Business podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shearer, author of the book Marketing Like Jesus, and the forthcoming book, The Marketplace Christian, a practical guide to using your spiritual gifts in business, which releases on October the 21st. And this is a show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with God in business to transform the marketplace and make an impact in eternity. And just a little teaser for you. Right now I'm having a special bonus gift manufactured for the first 75 buyers of my forthcoming book, The Marketplace Christian. So you're gonna want to make sure that you're signed up on the email list at theologyofbusiness.com. If you're not already, I'll tell you a little bit more about the this special bonus gift that I'm having manufactured. I'll tell you a little bit more about that in just a couple of weeks. But again, make sure that you go ahead and get signed up on the email list so you're the first to know when the book is released. And now on to the episode. In twelve years of serving the Lord, I've heard countless sermons about tithing, but I've only heard one sermon about taking one Sabbath day of rest each week. And yet observing the Sabbath is at least as important and beneficial as the practice of tithing. The Sabbath causes a blessing on our time in the way that tithing causes a blessing on our money and possessions. So what the Sabbath is for our time, tithing is for our money and possessions. And unlike tithing, though, observing a Sabbath day of rest is one of the Ten Commandments. It's right up there with do not murder, honor your father and mother, and do not commit adultery. And as far as I know, God has not abolished any of these Ten Commandments. You know, Jesus said that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. That's in Matthew chapter 5, verse 17. But hear me, certainly we are under grace and not under the law. Jesus set us free, we are not under the law. The sacrifice of Jesus has pardoned us from the penalty of our sins, but also empowered us to live holy lives. And yes, before I get emails about this, yes, Jesus has called us to live in a state of perpetual and eternal Sabbath rest, not only on one day of each week. You can read about that in the book of Hebrews. But at the same time, Jesus did not abolish the fourth commandment that calls us to abstain from working for a 24-hour period each week. He knew that the practical benefits for honoring the Sabbath are just too great for us to miss out on. I mean, something so good, why would he just abolish that and not encourage us to do it? He said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man because it's good for us. It's not about proving something to God or earning something from God. Taking a Sabbath day of rest is simply good for us and for our organizations, for our businesses. So I want to share with you four benefits for observing the Sabbath, both in a spiritual sense. Of course, it's that perpetual eternal sense that we are in Christ, that we are in rest. There's no more striving, there's no more works and trying to earn our way into heaven, but also in a practical sense. And by practical, I'm referring to in the Old Testament sense of a 24-hour period where no work was to be done. It was just to be a time of rest and reflection. The first benefit that I want to share is that the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath day, it restores us. During a time of personal prayer and Bible study, one day back when I was attending graduate school, at that same time, I was working full-time, I was writing my first book and serving in various uh volunteer roles. At that time, I realized that I was on the path of burnout and endless striving because I was just so incredibly busy. I realized that something had to change. I did things like decide that you know what, busy, when somebody asks me how I'm doing, I'm not going to say I'm busy ever again. And literally for the last, let's see, this has probably been about uh six or seven years since I made this decision. I when somebody asks me, you will not hear me say that that I'm busy. Because there's like a spirit of busyness that can just come on us if we just decide that we're going to identify ourselves in that way, almost like a badge of achievement or something like that. It's in our culture today, that when people say that they're busy, it's like they feel like that means they're being productive, and that's certainly not the case. And and the Sabbath uh shows us that. But something had to change in that season of realizing that I'm on the path to burnout and and I'm on a path of endless striving and doing all these different things. And the Holy Spirit drew my attention to this verse in Psalm chapter 46, verse 10. It says, Cease striving and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. So as we be as we view our businesses as ministry, we have a sense in which we are called to do the ministry. We have a sense in which we're called to uh to make disciples of all nations, to disciple the marketplace, to reveal the glory of God, but not at the expense of violating the word of God, which is to cease striving and know that I am God. He says that he will do the exalting, he will exalt himself among the nations, and and we can do our part in six days a week, of course, seven days, and but we shouldn't feel like we have to work that extra day so that we can accomplish something for God. It was at that time that I decided to start taking one day of rest each week. And for me, that day happened to be on Sunday, depending on what your weekly work schedule is. That might be a Saturday or it might be a Monday. Certainly, your pastor works on Sundays typically, so they're gonna need to take off uh typically on uh Monday is what I hear a lot of pastors taking off. So, so whatever that day is for you, make it consistent. But if if something felt like work to me, I just avoided it. And given my task-oriented personality and all of these time commitments that I had on my schedule during that season of my life, setting aside this day of rest each week was a very difficult habit to get into, at least at first. And as I began to make and keep these Sunday appointments with God to just relax and to reflect, I began to experience the peace and clarity that I'd been missing in my life. On those days, I felt literally like an eagle effortlessly soaring above the clouds and and preparing to make my descent back into my weekly routine, but with a fresh perspective of just being out of the grind and being out of the day-to-day and just out of the cares of life for that 24-hour period to just get restored, to get to get recharged. And now that I'm married and have a toddler, my Sundays still consist of relaxation and reflection. That's the way it is around our house. And yes, it still requires a bit of work to change my 19-month-old son's diapers on Sundays. And so certainly diapers still have to get changed even on the Sabbath, but it's not about legalism, it's a matter of the heart. And when I go to bed on Sunday nights, my my body, my mind, and my spirit, they will tell me, they'll let me know whether or not they got recharged for the upcoming week. And if I spent the day on Sunday just busily doing volunteer work or doing chores around the house or playing catch-up on household duties, it wasn't truly a day of rest for me. So that's the first benefit, is that it restores us. The second benefit is that it improves us. What do I mean by that? Knowing that I have a full day of rest and relaxation ahead on Sundays, it helps me to be more productive during the week. I mean, no matter how much I have going on during the week, I know that I've got that day coming up on Sunday where I can just relax and rest. And it motivates me to avoid time draining, time-wasting activities like excessive social media checking or excessive news reading. And as a result, I'm more productive and effective working six days of the week than if I was to have worked seven days lacking a proper focus on the work that I needed to be doing. And choosing to work only six days per week instead of seven is a practical way I found to invite God to, as it says in Psalm 90 verse 12, to teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Because, and that's one of the reasons why God has invited us to take that Sabbath day of rest, because it's going to help us to number our days deliberately. And as boundaries help an artist to create great art, choosing to observe the Sabbath weekly will help us to focus more on the quality of our work instead of the quantity of our work. And just feeling like, oh, of course, I can't take off that that seventh day of the week because I've got all these other things that I need to be doing. And so the emphasis is on quantity instead of on the quality of the work that we can get done within those six days of the week. The third benefit is that it calms us. And if you're like me, you've worked with people who seem to be constantly overwhelmed, angry, and anxious. And at times that person may have been us. It may have been the one looking back at us in the mirror. Taking a Sabbath day of rest is a practical way to experience the peace and strength that comes from resting in God. God said to Moses in Exodus 33, 14, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. And when God's presence is with us, we will find rest. And that becomes evident to the people that we come in contact with in the marketplace. And certainly it affects the people that we live with and our family. And to be sure, rest is something that we must find. It's not going to happen unless we make it a top priority. And observing the Sabbath is a practical and measurable place to start. The fourth and final benefit I want to share with you about what the Sabbath can do for you on a both a personal and professional level is that the Sabbath it helps it centers us. The Sabbath is a day to focus on what matters most and to really refresh our priorities. This day of rest reminds us that nothing at all, nothing in the world is more important than God. Not that task, not that extra project that has just absolutely has to get done. You know what? It can wait till next week. The founder of Chick-fil-A, the late Truett Cathy, credited the tradition of staying closed on Sundays as one of the top five reasons for the success of the Chick-fil-A restaurants. He said, and I quote, I was not so committed to financial success that I was willing to abandon my principles and priorities. One of the most visible examples of this is our decision to close on Sunday. Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and of directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business. Chick-fil-A has had more than forty-seven consecutive years of sales increases. God made the Sabbath for you. Again, it's not about proving something or proving spirituality or trying to earn something from God. The Sabbath was made for you. So don't miss out. And it doesn't matter which day I wouldn't get hung up on. Is it Sunday or Saturday? Just make it consistent and make it sacred. You can comment on this episode. I've got a discussion and uh application here I'd like you to wrestle with. And the question is personally and professionally, what are the benefits of observing the Sabbath day for you? And what is your Sabbath day of rest? That's all for this week. I hope you've enjoyed this episode, and I hope to hear your feedback at theology of business.com where you can get more information about marketplace ministry, spiritual gifts in the marketplace, marketing like Jesus, and Christ-centered leadership and entrepreneurship. And as a reminder, the book, my forthcoming book, is going to release on October the 21st that is titled The Marketplace Christian: a practical guide to using your spiritual gifts in business, which will include a spiritual gifts assessment that's going to help you identify what your gifts are, and then 23 examples of how each of those gifts are being used by somebody specific in the marketplace, how those spiritual gifts are being used in a business setting. And right now I'm having a special bonus gift manufactured for the first 75 buyers, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a few weeks. Make sure you get signed up on the email list at theology of business.com if you're not already. And at any time, feel free to email me at Darren at hybridgebooks.com. If you have any questions or comments related to the theology of business, or if you want to get involved with the book launch of the Marketplace Christian, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.