Today Kristi took us through verse 2 of Psalm 23, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters”. In this verse, we find an invitation from God into a time of rest. A time where we relinquish striving and producing, achieving and consuming, and enter into a space where we are satiated and restored through nothing that comes of our effort. In our culture, this can seem an impossible task. There is a reluctance and for some even a fear of stopping. What is it that makes us reluctant? 

Kristi shared lies we may be telling ourselves that may be underneath this reluctance.

The lie - I hold all things together. The truth - God holds all things together.

The lie - My identity is in what I do. The truth - My identity is in Christ.

The lie - Stopping prevents me from functioning how I need to. The truth - Stopping allows me to function in health and wholeness.

When we buy into any of these lies, we trade the truth of God’s promised provision for the lies the enemy offers. God not only invites us to stop striving, He also offers us rest. The renewal and restoration we need, comes from something deeper than just stopping for a while. It’s not a day off that sustains our soul, it’s the type of rest God invites us into that does that, a true Sabbath rest.

To enter into a true Sabbath rest requires preparation. So what does it look like to prepare? Kristi shared four steps to help prepare.

1. Choose a day to begin and schedule in some periods of rest. Start with an amount of time you can commit to, even if it's just a couple of hours and work your way up from there. 
2. Once you know when you’re going to take a period of rest, schedule in a few smaller windows of time as you approach it, 10-15 minutes of time where you’re committed to eating and drinking from God and His word. 
3. Be honest with yourself on what's likely to derail you and create a plan to move past those things, keeping the mindset that you aren’t saying no to whatever comes up, but instead saying yes to being at rest with God.
4. Come up with some ideas on how you want to spend this time of rest. You can spend time in prayer and scripture of course, but that’s not all it has to be. There's room for things that bring you pleasure and delight, for physical rest, for enjoying the beauty of creation. 

The rest God invites us into is so much less about how we should or should not use the time, and so much more about the posture of our heart. Sabbath rest should be focused on God’s goodness, His provisions, His gifts and His grandeur. It’s a rest, in which we calibrate our minds to intentionally look for His goodness and glory in everything and as we do so, experience His grace and love.

We invite you to look at your calendar today and choose a day when you will begin the practice of sabbath rest.