…for what it's worth

hey daniel.

i personally think this is a very important thing. i’m hoping over this summer to finally put my notes up on sabbath, but it seems to me it takes a real trusting in God to do sabbath. that trust is both during the week, saying “i trust that God has given me the strength to work hard today, and has given me the work that i need to do”, as well as the trust that says on the sabbath, “i believe God has provided enough time to work on the other days of the week, and that He has set me free from my task-masters, and finding my worth in my work and my grades to find worth and rest in Him.”

i don’t think this is an easy thing to do. personally, intentionally setting time aside and saying no to any interruptions or unexpected needs, unless they are of an absolutely life-or-death dire kind of urgency, is very hard for me.

not slacking off during the week is also difficult, but sabbath-keeping requires preparing for rest beforehand, so that you’ve worked and set things in such a way that the work necessary for sabbath is done beforehand. i don’t think it’s to the point of saying, “you can’t cook at all on sabbath” or something like that, but i do think it means planning your homework so that you’ve got it done beforehand, even if that means saying no to other things during the week.

it’s a tough balance, and the Way is not easy. no one said it would be. but the Reward is worth it. and we are not alone.

I’m glad to see you’re writing again! I have to say, I’ve been waiting to read through your thoughts again for quite some time. And it’s great that I get to be engaged by them too!

This is something that I’ve been thinking about too actually! I love how God works these things together so that his people are working and learning in unison. He is indeed a grand orchestrator.

All these things happened quite unintentionally, but it just so happens that I’ve committed Tuesdays and Fridays to fasting, Saturdays to Sabbath, and Sundays to worship and fellowship with the saints. I’m not really sure what the difference between Saturday and Sunday are, but I know that it works against the indifference I feel come over me when it’s time to make that decision to go to church. It all started one Friday as I woke up late one day with just enough time to make it to work. I hadn’t eaten very well the day before, and I wasn’t going to be able to eat until much later that night. Since I was already functionally fasting, I figured I might as well make the most of it and use the echo of my physical hunger to point me back to the reality of my innermost hunger for God. The same thing happened the next Tuesday and I’ve been keeping it going ever since.

I’ve come to find that a particular character flaw of mine lies in my desire to know the outcome of something before I begin a task. I’ve had it since I was a little kid and it served to get me in all sorts of trouble so much so that my first grade teacher couldn’t put up with me. She had me transferred to the a different class with the rest of the hyperactive kids. That new teacher would come to find that I was just bored with my work. I wouldn’t see the purpose in it, so I wouldn’t do it. Ironically, the same was true of me 15 years later and it was always visible in exercising spiritual disciplines. I would lose purpose in a middle of a fast and break it. When I would lay in my bed at night, prodding myself to pray, I would resist the Spirit out of a hopeless outlook. When I would see my Bible the next morning and hear my heart cry out for nourishment, I would suffocate it with my unbelief. A point that I want to make is that there is definitely something to be said about waiting to know all of the details to a work in order to see something through. At it’s core, I see a type of idolatry that sets the mind’s grasp of “reality” as ultimate instead of God as ultimate. During that Friday, I saw God bring my “understanding” to shame and I was humbled before him. I finally saw that all the things that Adam said about waiting for the “feeling” to come were true. But that’s not what I’m standing on now.

What I don’t want to communicate is that we shouldn’t wait to do something until we “feel” it. Adam kept saying it all the time last semester and although I do agree with him, it was never sufficient enough for me to stand on. That is, I couldn’t use that as ground to propel me forward in the works that I desired to be apart of. What I do want to emphasize, however, is the man-centeredness that we display in doing so and how it is absolutely necessary to repent of that. Once God is back in the center, it’s much easier to go out and live obediently, even when the feelings don’t necessarily follow.

The reason I came by your website was because I wanted to go through your old blog post about how seriously God takes our sin. I saw the theme again as I was reading through today’s scriptures in Numbers 32:15. If the tribe of Reuben and Gad would have not taken up arms alongside the rest of Israel, God would’ve abandoned all of Israel in the wilderness and destroyed them. And what’s crazy about this? God didn’t need Reuben or Gad to go and drive out his enemies. It wasn’t as if God was up in the heavens saying, “If they leave, it’s hopeless!” I don’t know the full extent of God’s reasoning, but I do know there is something to be said about our joy in God and how that is directly tied to our obedience. Piper says it all the time. Living for God’s glory is only done and can only be done by God’s ways. Consequentially, our highest joys and fulfillments can only be found in obedience to God. Who was it that said “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.”

That being said, the Sabbath is not a suggestion, it’s a commandment. It’s part of how we are wired. We need it. Spurgeon was talking about prayer when he says this but I find that it rings true here as well.

“Yet so strange is the infatuation of man on the one hand, which makes him need a command to be merciful to his own soul, and so marvelous is the condescension of our gracious God on the other, that he issues a command of love without which not a man of Adam born would partake of the gospel feast, but would rather starve than come.”

Your question is ultimately “Will I feast or will I starve?” That doesn’t mean that you are not going to fail in your attempts to rest. Our warfare is very nuanced. I’ve often confused passivity with resting, but the resting the bible calls us to do is a strangely active one. I can’t say that I’ve got it all figured out yet, but each day as I strive, God continues to refine me and lead me in the correct way. My fastings are meager, my prayers are insufficient, and my desires and motives are far from what they should be. But every day, But God is showing his strength perfect in my weakness. Every day gets surprisingly better.

I love you hermano and I miss you terribly. I’m praying what I said will be used by the Spirit to bring about life in you.

jaja I remember when I wrote that I said, “Where’d that come from?” lol

It was great to share and rejoice in the truth with you : )