“It’s 1am, and I’m painting my hallway skirting boards.”
This self aware thought was on repeat in my head as my hands cut a clean line of white paint at far too late an hour. You probably don’t paint that late at night. And normally, neither do I, but it was a relentlessly busy season, and I was convinced that this was the best and only time to do it. I wasn’t happy to be that busy, of course — to have just bought a home which was built only a decade or two after the Civil War ended, to be refurbishing it, to have a baby that refused to sleep, and to have a demanding church job. In fact, I was downright angry.
I’d fallen into the busy trap. See, I’m an achiever. Some might say an overachiever. In my immature achieverliness, I didn’t stop. Ever. Stopping was a missed opportunity for accomplishment. “Rest is for the weak and the dead,” I would say. When your heart is postured that way, your hands won’t stop finding things to do. Things like painting your skirting boards at 1am. That’s the busy trap… the self-defeating spiral of non-stop action that feeds on the belief that restfulness is weakness.
But, rest is not weakness. Rest is an irreducible ingredient for the life that enjoys God.
Have you ever stopped to wonder why, exactly, God would get so upset when Israel forgot to practice the sabbath? In Ezekiel 20, the prophet is going after Israel for this very thing. But why? Simply put, by forgetting to stop we forget God. Restlessness — the refusal to lay down our work so we can open our arms to God — means that our busy hands are always full. This robs God of his glory — his weighty significance in our lives. Holy time given to a holy God makes us wholly aware that we are not gods — we neither create nor save ourselves. God does. If we won’t stop to experience the glory of God in rest, we’ll soon forget the glorious God of rest.
Forgetting God has deadly side effects. If we won’t worship God in rest than our work will soon metastasize into the worship of some idol — self importance, control, money, the list goes on. That’s exactly what Israel had done. By working without sabbath rest the work of their hands became the idols of their hearts. Tell me, if you imagine a regular day of rest, how does that panic you? Your fear of stopping might reveal what you’re really worshipping. For, anxiety is the emotion of unbelief.
You’re made for work that terminates in the exhale of rest based on God’s “it is done.”
One doesn’t actually need the Bible to see the effects of ceaseless labor. Oh sure, you may achieve some good goals. You’ll have money, career success, and your course may even chart ever upward, for a while. But, at what cost? Sleeplessness, anxiety, overwork, dissolved relationships, distant children. We work without rest to arrive at some future rest without work. But, that’s a bad deal on both sides. Humans weren’t made to work without rest. But, say you do this. Say you burn the midnight oil, the candle on both ends, and the candelabra too… then what? You arrive at your retirement — a rest with no work. And slowly you begin to realize that, too, is a nightmare. Humans weren’t made for that, either.
If it is true that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — and it is true — then what a sad irony to find so many of us Christians who refuse to pause long enough to enjoy him. Sure, you can love God in your work, and you should! But the God and Father of Jesus Christ is not the false god of Pharaoh. Only false gods — like Pharaoh’s pantheon … like financial independence … like control — demand ceaseless work to gain entry into their paltry heavens. The true God has actually done all the work necessary to invite us to rest in him. You can actually learn the art of rest if you’ll repent of your restlessness.
Your fear of stopping might reveal what you’re really worshipping
I’d love to tell you that I had a eureka moment that night — that I put down my paintbrush, rushed downstairs, shook off my silliness, and went to sleep having learned my lesson. But, my story had a darker few chapters still to go. Pages filled with more work, more church, more doing … and less and less God. Then, I hit a hard depression. I achieved the end of my will to achieve, and it almost killed me.
So, please believe me when I say, for the glory of God, rest.
You’re made for work, that is true. But, it’s not the whole truth. You’re made for work that terminates in the exhale of rest not based on the completion of your to-do list but on God’s “it is done.” If we’ll learn the art of rest together, then perhaps our lives will be peaceful enough to enjoy God and beckon others to enjoy him, too.
Adam Mabry's book, The Art of Rest is available to buy now.
This article first appeared on Desiring God.
Adam Mabry is Lead Pastor of Aletheia Church Boston, MA, a rapidly-growing downtown church. He is married to Hope and they have four children. Before planting Aletheia, they had planted two churches in Edinburgh, Scotland. Adam did his theological studies at Reformed Theological Seminary and is studying for a PhD at Aberdeen. Adam is author of Stop Taking Sides and The Art of Rest.
