How you spend your days add up to how you spend your life. Your daily habits reveal where your hope is and enable you to live into the life God made possible for you through Jesus. ...So kinda a big deal. 🤷♀️
I'm going to tackle a habit that I want to grow in (🙋♀️) → REST 😴.
**Note: There's a spicy, ongoing debate about whether Christians on this side of Jesus need to hold to the Sabbath day in the way that pre-Jesus Jews did. You can hear Keith and Patrick argue opposite positions in a couple of throwback TMBT episodes. 🌶️
Both views agree that rest itself is crucial, so that's the language I'm using here.
Anyways...
When Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," he was speaking to people who thought too much of the Sabbath day. They focused more on the command to keep it holy than on the heart and purpose behind the command.
However, many of us today need to listen up to the other part of Jesus’s words: The Sabbath was made for man.
See, God doesn’t just order us to do things out of some arbitrary power trip. No, God created us. He loves us. And because he knows us better than we know ourselves, he knows precisely what we need to thrive.
The commands God gives us are for us. This means, in order to thrive the way God intends us to, we need to rest.
And when we live like we don’t... we're essentially saying we don’t believe God knows best. 😬
One simple way to establish a daily habit of rest:
Protect your sleep.
You're already sleeping daily. So tweak your routine to make sleeping more restful. This will probably mean replacing some thoughtless habits with more intentional ones, but it will be worth it.
Here are four places to start:
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. This consistency helps your body get on the same page with your intentions, learning when it's time to rest well.
- Put your devices (phones, computers, TVs) away at least an hour before you go to sleep to protect your brain from the blue light and stimulating visuals.
- Stop eating or drinking anything but water three hours before it's time for bed. This helps your digestive system settle down before sleep, letting your whole body rest better.
- Choose a restful activity to do right before bedtime and repeat it every night. This could be praying, reading a book, doing breathing exercises, taking a bath-- anything that gently signals to your mind and body that the time to rest is here.
By intentionally setting this time before sleep apart from the rest of your busy life, you’re actively choosing to prioritize the good gift of rest God offers.
