The Rest Days Count

Athletic rest days are critical to a player’s mental and physical development. If rest is skipped, a player’s muscles cannot build back up, and their brain has no time to switch off. Both of these are essential to a player having a balanced life.

If a player’s life is unbalanced, with no rest, burnout quickly settles in. Soon, they will be exhausted, with a higher chance of injury, and mentally unable to enjoy the game they were formerly passionate about. Rest is a requirement for elite athletes.

Spiritual rest is no different than physical rest. In Scripture, we are called to “Sabbath,’ the Hebrew word for rest. This rest is not just sleeping each night or laying on the couch watching TV. This is intentional, healing and focused rest. God has no weaknesses or needs for rest, but He modeled rest for us on the seventh day of creation. He did this to show the importance of stopping after working hard.

As an American society, we are really bad at rest. Our days are a constant run from one activity to the next. We live in a state of burnout and exhaustion; this is not how God intended us to live our days. He desires our days to have room enough to stop and see His movements around us, to enjoy His creation, and to spend time in it. He longs for us to sit and be with Him in His Word and talk to Him through prayer.

When we choose to not seek rest, we tend to miss the movements of God that are happening right in front of us because we are too busy moving at our own pace. What would it look like for you today to stop – to stop and breathe in God’s Word and sit, even for just five minutes, undistracted, and seek rest with our Father?