The Art of Rest: Faith to hit pause in a world that never stops

by Adam Mabry

He loves the Lord because God hears, God listens, and God inclines himself toward David.

Our personal sense of accomplishment isn’t what we bring to God; it’s what we’re meant to get from him.

So here’s a question: do you really want to have a relationship with God, or do you just want to have business transactions with him? We were made for relationship with him, and everything he has done for us in Christ will one day bring us into such closeness with him that we see him face to face and never want to turn away. We will know him even as we are fully known by him (1 Corinthians 13 v 12).

First, ask yourself if you’re really interested in having a relationship with God. Don’t skip past that question—really think on it. Do you want to know God deeply, having his word and his Spirit penetrating the lowest parts of your soul?

Second, ask yourself where rushing is ruining your relationships with God and others. What decisions need to be made today in order to resist the rush, and rest in relationship with God?

Third, in what unhealthy ways have you tried to silence your own inner murmur of self-reproach? What

Fourth, will you stop waiting to rest? Go ahead and pull out your calendar and begin to consider where you can put in regular moments of rest with God—moments in a day, an hour in a morning, a day in the week, as you’re able

Christians can get all bent out of shape trying to figure out the will of God. But Scripture is pretty silent on God’s will in the specific situations of our particular lives. So, let me give you a more helpful concept: God’s disposition. God’s secret counsels are just that—secret. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11 v 34). But God’s disposition… that’s as plain as the book you’re reading. He really, really, really loves his people. And, he really, really, really loves to give us good gifts:

“Who are you?” I ask. “I am a man of God, dad,” say my sons. “I’m a woman of God,” say my daughters.

Starting a journey is not much use if you forget where you’re going and never make it to the destination. And so the writer encourages—and challenges—his readers: For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3 v 14)

Put simply, we came to share in Christ through past faith if we continue to be faithful till we reach the “end,” and the destination of eternity.

God wants to give you the reward of memory. And he is asking you, “Who are you?” Do you have time to slow down, reflect, and give him (and remind yourself of) the answer?

Working ceaselessly means you never have the chance to think deeply.

In the world, reflection is the privilege of the elite who don’t have to work so hard. Like the philosopher-kings of the great Greek thinker Plato, only the few get the chance to step back and think upon life, meaning, and the cosmos. But it was never meant to be this way in the kingdom of God.

“When, and how, will I need consciously to rely on God today?”

Slaves can’t rest. Slaves can’t take a day off to recuperate, reflect, and enjoy God. Slaves must work—either to pay off a debt, to please their master, or to simply stay alive. And most of us are slaves—because we enslave ourselves to the American Dream, the boss, our kids, or even (and worse) to earning God’s favor. We’re so often working to prove something, or to pay someone, or to get the promotion.

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Jesus had so much to do that he made sure he stopped to sit with his Father. Why? Because he understood that moments of holy rest offer the reward of endurance. If we want to keep going, we need to keep stopping.

Hard work that is regularly punctuated by deep rest is the way to achieve your purpose in the long term.

We don’t often consider an anticipation a reward, but a torment. Waiting for Christmas was the scourge of childhood. Waiting for the promotion, for the wedding day, for the bonus, for the child to arrive—waiting is a tough business. And yet, the waiting made the having special, didn’t it?

Tiring of the ragged way he would end up approaching his weekend, my friend made a decision that changed his life. He asked his assistant to build a five-minute space between each one of his meetings for him to pray—and his life changed. Between each counseling appointment, staff meeting, or visit, he would take five minutes to stop, pray, and rest. He would literally pause his day, multiple times per day, simply to rest. Little and often throughout the day, he feasted on the bread of God.

What might it look like for you to carve out intentional moments for personal, restful reflection? Setting aside evenings after kids are asleep? Scheduling a personal prayer retreat? Giving your spouse a day off? Here, creativity can abound and make room for rest. These patterns—daily, weekly, and yearly—form a good start to helping you think about when you might start to practice the art of rest yourself. But they also force us to ask another question: what on earth do we do in that time?

How long has it been since you read the Scriptures not to do the work of study but to enjoy the work of the divine author?

Reflection fosters gratitude for what God has done and trust for what God will do.

God invited us, heavy-laden as we are by religious rules and by rebellious running, to come to him for rest.

But there remains another option: to embrace the art of rest. To put into practice some of these small changes. To have a change of mind and heart, and see that God is inviting you toward him. You may just have to stop working for a bit to answer the invitation. It’s risky. It may mean less money, or a missed opportunity. It

if you spend a life over-working, you spend a retirement over-boating, over-eating, and overplaying golf. Perhaps it’s because the quiet murmur

What a monumental tragedy. We work 50-hour weeks for 50 years of our lives only find that at the end of all our efforts we have earned the right to… play golf? Vacation? Eat out more often? To suffer with overworked bodies and underdeveloped souls in the golden years of our lives seems like an irony and a tragedy the likes of which makes hell chuckle and heaven mourn.

Rest is faith—hitting pause in a world that never stops because we know this world is not the one we were made for.

All work and no rest makes Christians idiots—forgetful children who work like slaves, forgetting that their Father owns the world and they get to inherit

The same grace that saved us for God’s coming future is available now to save us from our anxious toil. And as with all grace, we can’t work for it, but we can receive it.