10/31 - Exodus 20:10 - Are you working from your rest?

¹⁰ But the seventh day is a 

sabbath to the Lord your God;

you shall not do any work—

you, your son or your daughter,

your male or female slave,

your livestock, or the alien

resident in your towns.

Exodus 20

 

One of the most important questions anyone ever asked me is, “Are you resting from your work … or working from your rest?”

 

Think about it. This is much more than a clever turn of phrase.

 

In my mind, I illustrate this with a canteen. If I’m going on an adventure, it’s wise to fill up my canteen before I start my hike. With a full canteen, I have the sustenance to venture forth boldly, scaling tall mountains, crossing raging rivers, and escaping darkened forests.

 

But … if I start my journey with my canteen empty, all I do is spend my day searching for water.

 

Life is a lot like that. If our canteen is full – if we are rested and fresh – we can venture forth boldly. We will scale steep mountains. Leap tough obstacles. And praise God even in the storm.

 

But … if we start our days with an empty canteen, all we tend to do is whine! There’s never enough rest. There’s always a new deadline. “Life isn’t fair.” “If I could just catch a break ...” With no reserves, small inconveniences become tall mountains, little creeks to cross become raging rivers, cooling and refreshing shadows on a hot day become cold forests that envelop us in darkness.

 

And that’s where the question that started today comes in: “Are you resting from your work … or working from your rest?”

 

Now, we all like to occasionally work from our rest. But what happens when that’s our perpetual state? To rest from our work, we have to continually stop the journey to fill up a perpetually empty canteen. For example, at the end of a busy week of work, we come home and our canteen is empty. We’re all poured out. And we hope the weekend will refill and refresh us.

 

However, how many weekends are filled with all the errands and chores that we couldn’t get to during the week? We rest … a little … but we only fill up our canteen an inch or two. Then we head back to work, running on fumes.

 

But what if we turned that around? What if we worked from our rest? What if the Sabbath principle of rest filled us up before we ventured forth?

 

Now, here’s what I know. You’ve said two things in this devotional. First, you said that I want a full canteen before I go on life’s adventure. Second, you said that life is too busy and working from our rest is an impossible ideal in this crazy, modern world. (Am I right?)

 

I’m guilty of this too. Life is busy. There’s so much to do. And I can make all the excuses in the world, but when I rest first – when I abide in Christ as a priority ^{see John 15} – I can venture from Christ’s rest, I work from his strength, I can scale tall mountains, and fight big battles.

 

I am called to work … and so are you. But we don’t have to do it on our own. And we don’t have to do it from a place of exhaustion. We can do it from the strength of rich sustenance and power.

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who owns a canteen

(… but it’s pretty girly.

It was my wife’s when

she was a Brownie Scout!

But I guess the package

doesn’t matter, only the

living water … or not.)