This past week, I was talking with a friend about our lives and that both of us had just come through very busy seasons. This got us talking about what we were doing to rest and take Sabbath. He then shared with me something his pastor had said a while back and it was honestly one of those moments where everything kind of stopped and there was this intense moment of clarity and it hit me that I had been doing Sabbath all wrong.
My friend and I both do a lot of creative thinking and processing in our lives. We are crafting topics that will become messages or talks. We are reading both words to challenge us and individuals as we coach and guide them to their preferred outcomes. We do a lot that requires lots of mental stimulation and energy. And so when it came to Sabbath for me, I thought I needed to stop and not read books necessarily for my next talk but that was fun and recreational. I would often work on creative projects for myself but to be honest, at the end of my day of rest I would often feel rundown and in need of more rest. My mind was tired and I didn’t feel very rejuvenated.
I know the importance of rest and needing a day during the week. I get that there are seasons in our lives where we must stop and get away for times of extended rest and rejuvenation. Scripture calls this Sabbath and in the Old Testament, God lays out some pretty clear instructions on how we are to rest and why this time is so vital. We see in the creation story God modeling this idea of Sabbath rest for us. This was done not because God is in need of it but because we will be. However, if we don’t understand the role Sabbath plays in our lives or the kind of Sabbath that we need to be taking we end up missing out on the power of Sabbath that renews us.

Photo by Christopher Sardegna on Unsplash
Now I may be late to the party but this was made clear to me this past week and it has challenged me and maybe it will challenge you to make sure you are taking the right kind of Sabbath for your life. In our conversation, it became clear to me that there are two avenues of Sabbath rest. I think we need them both and so this to not pick a lane and never move out of it for rest of time. This is a call to understand your current season of life and the type of Sabbath you need to be taking for optimal rejuvenation. I hope that if you do an honest assessment of your life and you discover if you are taking the wrong kind of Sabbath for the season you are in you can figure out how to make the necessary shift.
Here are the two types of Sabbath that we need to consider taking. One requires physical exertion and output and the other requires mental stimulation and growth. You might be wondering why Sabbath would require you do work when we have understood Sabbath rest to be a break from work. Here’s the reason. If in your job, you do a lot of mental exertion through creative means; writing, reading, etc… then to stop and do nothing all day for Sabbath rest but read something for fun doesn’t always recharge you because you are continuing to do what you do the rest of the week. If you stare at a screen all day, sitting down and watching a bunch of television or playing video games, is probably not going to refresh you. Instead, you need to find something physical to do for at least part of the day. Give your mind, eyes and creative side a rest. Find a hobby that requires you to exert physical energy and requires a different kind of mental output.
If you are one who spends the majority of your week putting out physical energy then it highly likely you need to stimulate your mind and pick up a book. Do some sort of creative writing. You need to break from the normal and so to continue working on a project that takes high amounts of physical energy while fun may not be the best for your Sabbath rest that renews and refreshes the soul.
Now here comes the caveat, this doesn’t mean that you cannot read a book for fun if you do lots of mental stimulation during the week. This also doesn’t mean you can’t exert physical energy on something when you have put forth physical energy all week. It simply a call to really pay attention to what you need to do for at least part of your Sabbath that will give the areas that need rest the most at that moment. The truth is there will be seasons where you need to focus more on one and less on the other and then seasons where this might change. The challenge is to recognize where you are in your life, and what your soul needs in order to be and operate at its absolute best.
So have you been taking Sabbath wrong? How can you improve your Sabbath experience this next week?