Louder than any sermon, our lives are shouting to the world that:
We don’t trust God.
We don’t know how to stop working.
We don’t know how to enjoy life.
Every year, more and more statistics are being released that show our children are busier than ever, our people are unhappier than ever, our churches are plateauing or dying faster than ever and our pastors are quitting more than ever.(1)
These statistics are not coincidental. We have lost the fundamentals of our faith.
Many of us were wooed by the Holy Spirit through Jesus’ promise found in Matthew 11. Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Yet instead of finding rest, most of us have found long to-do lists, lots of pressure and more stress than we know how to handle.
In short, we have settled for less than what has been purchased for us. We have settled for less than what we were made for.
We have settled into subhuman living.
We are not meant to live this way. This way of life fails to believe all God has done and all God promises to do.
We must find rest through discovering the parts of God we have been missing.[2] We must rest to become fully alive to our humanity and to our creator. God wants us to live like people who have been made new, who have been RE-created. The call is to enter into and experience re-creation through trusting, stopping and enjoying.
We are in a season here at Sojourn where the last Sunday of each month, we intentionally are “Taking Back Sunday” to celebrate, rest, enjoy God, enjoy one another and unplug.
Rest is a huge part of this and we invite you to continue following this blog series as we walk through what it means to rest biblically.
