Changing Your Routine

We live in a world that celebrates ceaseless activity. Our phones and computers are always nearby. Busyness is worn as a badge of honor. We don’t know how to truly unplug. All the ceaseless activity of life results in one thing: stress. That’s the word we use to describe the overtaxing of our physical, emotional, and psychological reserves. Stress leads to burnout, and burnout causes followers of Jesus to wander from God.

So often, our ceaseless activity is a symptom of a deeper problem. Below the surface, most people attach their value to their performance. In other words, your worth is found in what you produce. With that mindset operating below the surface of our lives, it’s no wonder so many of us work ourselves into exhaustion!

The Bible offers a radical solution to a life of constant pushing, striving, and working. It’s found in the rhythm of Sabbath. In the book of Exodus, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt and, for four hundred years, never had a single day off. Each morning, God’s people would wake up, collect straw, and make bricks. Day after day, generation after generation. Through a series of miracles, God set his people free from slavery in Egypt. Now, they were a new nation not yet arrived at their homeland, and God gave them a gift.

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:9–11 NIV).

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word Shabbat. It literally means “to cease, to stop.” The word can also be translated as “to celebrate.” This is the dual essence of the Sabbath. God tells his people that, on one day out of seven, he wants them to stop completely. Don’t labor. Don’t push any of your goals forward. Just stop and celebrate.

The day of rest was given to God’s people as a physical reminder of a deeper spiritual truth: the greatest need of your life is rest for your soul, and that comes only from perfect acceptance before God. Because of sin, your conscience is never on sure footing before a holy God, and that’s why Jesus called himself the Lord of the Sabbath. Christ is your Sabbath rest, fully paying the debt of your sin on the cross.

So how do you find true inner rest? You find it by realizing that when God looks at you, he sees your life through the lens of his Son. And because of the cross, God sees you and is deeply satisfied with you. You don’t have to perform. In the eyes of the one whose opinion matters most, you are his beloved. This is the true Sabbath. No more posturing, no more proving. You are loved by God.

This leads us to habit 6: practice living by grace through a weekly Sabbath routine.

God uses the weekly routine of the Sabbath to write on your heart the truth of the gospel. Without this intentional time and space, the love of God will only be a theory in your life. A weekly practice of Sabbath is a twenty-four-hour block of time in which we stop work, enjoy rest, and delight in God.