I existed to perform, not to live. Sure, I rested at times, but my mind was working, 24/7. I never shut it down. There was simply too much to do. So, God choreographed a moment for me. In his severe mercy (read severe: it was hard; mercy: it was good), he orchestrated a season to teach me that I need sabbath, because I am not Him. If I am to thrive, I must live as my Creator designed me. Abiding must replace producing as the most important value in my life. I was redeemed to be a son, not a slave.
Sabbath is an orientation, one that destroys my idols. This sabbath has driven me to repentance over my selfish drivenness, my exhausted idolatry and my own kingdom-building and, involuntarily at first, into the Sabbath heart of God. God broke me to restore me. To bring me to a place where my being not just my work, was re-centered on His sufficiency. My identity and my work must flow out of his work. I echo the psalmist: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Ps. 119:71).
2. Two things will motivate our work: Grace or Hunger
Grace is the thing that can fuel our work and in the same day allow us to release our work back to God in its imperfect, unfinished state. If he is the Author and Sustainer of my faith, he is the Author and Sustainer of my work. Overwork is always fueled by wrong motivations, building the wrong kingdom and results in a reckless pace. If this isn’t rectified, work will be my taskmaster, dictating how I work rather than the cross and the deep grace of God motivating me to work and rest in rhythms because He is God and I am not. I work in response to his work, not to validate my own sense of self worth. Otherwise, I’m like the Hebrews set free from slavery, but choosing to go back to the taskmasters. A slave’s identity is reduced to their work, and only their work.
The opposite of slavery is liberty. Freedom.
Through my sabbatical, I realized my soul had been very hungry. Compulsively hungry. Hungry for satisfaction, affirmation, approval, pleasure and completion. Hungry to be whole. And it was out my hunger that I was working. A feeble attempt to fill my hunger with productivity and affirmation. I wanted to validate my existence with my productivity.
I was angry at God that this hunger existed and the thing I was using to fill it, at least subconsciously, has been removed—my work! Then the Father gave me these verses: “For he satisfies the thirsty soul, the hungry soul He fills with good things” (Ps. 107:9) and “…he who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:23b). Wow.
These verses fell on my aching soul like a two-ton brick, but comforted me like a warm embrace. The very thing my soul needed and ached for. The very thing I was running to other things to fill, God has promised to do. He promises to satisfy my soul, in its hunger and in its thirst, he fills me if I run to him. So much of my life was operating out my hunger, my brokenness. It drove me to overwork, to obsess over perfection and performance rather than serving out of grace. Resting in this reality, God’s promise to satisfy my deepest needs and his faithfulness to do so has given my restless soul, my identity, the rest, affirmation and acceptance in which I can work out of rather than work for.
3. It’s not my performance, it’s his promise.
The third morning of my sabbatical, I sat on the couch in our living room, early before everyone was awake, deep in the despair. I felt like I had let my team, my church and my God down. Not sure what to do with myself, this question compulsively flowed out of my soul: “Apart from my work, who am I?” I was voicing an existential crisis I was entering on this sabbatical—that I had subconsciously been trying to prove my worth, to validate my existence in this world with my work.
If I succeeded, I deserved another day. If I failed, I castigated myself, over-analyzing every area of my failure to ensure it didn’t happen again. As I audited my life over these past few weeks, I found that virtually everything I do, everything I put my hand to, is an effort to prove myself. This flowed out of my brokenness and personal insecurities, that I would let few into. Areas of brokenness that left deep holes in my soul that wouldn’t heal or go away as fast as I wanted. This left me constantly feeling like I was a fraud, that I was not the person who I projected myself to be. “If everyone knew ______, I’d never be looked at the same”, etc. This led me to overcompensate for my brokenness, rather than trusting the Father with my healing. If I couldn’t control the demons inside, I’d control the work and image outside. All in an effort to project a more idealized version of myself. Aaron, 2.0.
At first I thought this was just for the benefit of others. Let me project a better, cleaner, more sanctified version of myself that everyone would like. But this image-projection was also for me. I liked the projected version of me better than the real me. That’s why I liked being at work so much. I enjoyed playing the part of “high-capacity, driven, always get it done kind of leader.” This was a distraction for me as much as it was for anyone else. I didn’t really like who I was, and I was angry that God refused to remove my thorns in the flesh faster.
In this scenario, my idols of perfection and performance were my friends, my tools to reach the goal of curating a better and improved version of me. Limitations were to be dismissed.
I feared limitation…admitting I don’t have the bandwidth for something…because it ran the risk of rendering me unimportant.
