By Rick Warren
Preface
It’s no secret that people in our culture like to do something all the time. Often we can feel guilty as we try to rest or take time off.
However, the Bible tells us that God considers rest as important as work. So why don’t we do it more often?
This sermon reveals 5 reasons why people work too much and rest too little. It gives us a valuable insight into its work habits and gives us 5 practical ways to rest.
We will discuss the first 5 reasons today. 5 practical ways to rest, next time.
…
We cannot rest
Surveys show that many of us actually prefer work to enjoying life. This creates a lot of workaholics. And the truth is that a lot of people can’t rest. We are addicted to adrenaline. We can’t slow down.
Studies have shown that the average American today is sleep deprived and sleeps two hours a day less than people 50 years ago.
We can’t rest. We like to work. Many Americans are like Job 20, verse 18. (translation Message) can’t rest and enjoy anything they’ve been working on. And the translation of B21 provides it as follows: He will not enjoy what he has gained. unabled So busy getting something else.
We’ll take a little quiz to find out if you’re a workaholic. Be honest, no cheating! Ask yourself these questions: Are you always in a hurry? Is your to-do list always unrealistically long? Do you use your free days to complete work assignments? Did more than one person tell you to slow down? Do you feel guilty when you rest? Do you have to get sick to take time off? You will know if you are a workaholic when … you leave your cell phone on in the church so that you can read and write text messages. You are a workaholic when you take materials related to work for the toilet. End of the quiz. How are you?
…
Gradually
I remember how many years ago a lady told me: You know, Pastor, I tried to call you all Monday. And I told her: ‘I’m sorry, but I’m free on Monday. It’s my Sabbath.’ And she said, ‘Well, the devil never takes time off.’ And I said: ‘If I hadn’t taken the time off, I would have acted like a devil too!’
I will never forget the first year we founded this church. Kay, my wife and I worked hard, 18 hours a day. And at the end of the first year, I stood up on the last Sunday of the year to start preaching, and I passed out. I was exhausted. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, simply in all areas. Throughout the following year, God taught me about balance in life. I’m actually learning it all the time, again and again. I think you will never learn these things completely and permanently.
But at the end of the first year in our church, Jesus gave me a verse. He is from Exodus 23, God told the Israelites when they were going to go to the promised land. He said: ‘I will not give you everything I promised you in a single year. Because you are not ready to handle so many blessings. And it would be too much for you. Instead, you will adopt what I want to give you gradually so that you can grow. Then you’ll be strong enough to handle it all. This verse changed my life.
That’s what I call growth at a certain pace. Rome was not built in a day, just like the church or anything else worthwhile. And God does not want us to achieve everything at once, he wants, To learn the growth rate. Gradually. While God develops your project, career etc. develops and grows you too. And he says: I want you to learn it gradually, through gradual growth.
the fact is that God considers rest as important as work.
Some people think that God only smiles at them when they are working, praying or doing spiritual things. Did you know that God smiles at you as you rest? If you’ve ever looked at your children as a parent, you know how happy it is.- Just watching them sleep. God makes you happy to look at you when you sleep.
God rests. God rests, are you more busy than God? The Bible tells us In Exodus 31:17. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, But on the seventh day he rested and rested.’ Why did God rest and relax on the seventh day? Well, he certainly wasn’t tired, because God never gets tired. He did it as a role model for us. To rest and relax, to keep one day off, to have this life balance and to rest in God’s goodness.
…
Psalm 23
Let’s look at Psalm 23. which actually shows us ten ways in which the good shepherd takes care of the sheep. – feeds them, guides them and meets their needs. Lots of your worries, lots of your haste, lots of your hustle and bustle, and a lot of your restlessness actually comes from the misunderstanding of God’s goodness in your life. When you understand what God has done for you and wants to do for you in the future, you can relax. You can learn to rest. You can let go of things. Can you live In God’s goodness.
God is my Shepherd
The Lord is my shepherd, I will not be in short supply.
In the green meadows me helps rest,
He leads me to quiet places by the waters,
it renews (refresh) my soul),
He guides me on the right path, for his name.
Even if I go through the ravine of the dark death, I will not be afraid of anything bad, for you are with me.
Your crutch and your staff keep me.
You set the table for me before the eyes of the opponents,
You rub my head with oil, (Anointing with oil in the Bible symbolizes the separation of something or someone for God, consecration to God’s service.)
You fill my chalice to the brim.
Goodness and love will accompany me throughout all the days of my life,
I will stay in the house of the Lord for a long, eternal time. (pin and B21)
In that Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, he gives us ten things that the shepherd does.
And one of them is that he cares that his sheep they had enough rest, to stay healthy. And that brings us to the first and second verse. The Lord is my shepherd, I will not be in short supply. In the green meadows me helps To rest, he leads me to quiet places by the waters.
These paintings are actually a metaphor, they represent rest and refreshment.
In the green meadows me helps rest. – That’s rest.
He leads me to quiet places by the waters. – That’s refreshing.
I want you to circle the word He helps me (‘he makes me’ in English kjv)
Did God ever have to make you lie down because of your health because you didn’t want to slow down? If you don’t want to slack off, God will force you to slack off. And sometimes God can make you look up, only by putting you on your back with some disease. And God will do it because he is a good shepherd and cares about your health. About your physical, emotional, spiritual, about every area of health.
I want you to write it down:
In order to give my best to God, I need rest.
If you don’t rest, you’ll be stressed. In fact, the difference between blessing and stress is often in rest. Isn’t it amazing how everything looks much better after a good night’s sleep?
The Lord is my shepherd, he puts me to sleep. Even if I don’t feel like it at all. Have you ever seen a little kid trying to stay awake tenaciously? You know what I mean? His eyes are closed, but is he trying to stay awake?
Resistance to rest is immaturity.
Now I have to admit something. I myself need to hear this message of rest in God’s goodness. I’ve had a few very frantic weeks. I’ve been too tense for the last few weeks, so I need this message myself.
Rest often determines whether we are blessed or stressed. And when we look into the Bible, we see that God is resting. We see that Jesus rested many times, many times. He made progress and then retreated into seclusion and again and again. In three and a half years of their work, there were seven of them. Jesus was resting. If you want to be like Jesus, you must learn to rest.
How to rest in God’s goodness?
Before we get into it, I want to mention why people overdo it with work so much. It is necessary to get to the source of our stress. Why are we reworking? Why don’t we get enough rest? The Bible gives us many, many examples and reasons. I would like to mention five of them here. Listen carefully to see if any of them cause you not to be able to rest as much as you need.
…
Reason #1 Why can’t we rest properly
Poorly set self value
The first reason the Bible says why people don’t rest is Poorly set self value. This means that
I base the value of myself on my work, on what I do and can do, on performance.
We are constantly subject to it.
One of the reasons people can’t relax is because they are confusing their work and their value. They evaluate their value based on how much they do. He thinks: ‘If I work really hard, I will be successful and then I will be quite important. If I do not work, do not produce, I am not productive, then I am useless.’ And that’s a complete lie. It’s an absolute myth. But in Western culture, our identity often revolves around our work.
So we are reworking in an effort to prove to ourselves that we are quite good. – If I achieve a lot, then I have a great price, then I am important. I have to be important, I have to be important.
But how important you are has nothing to do with your work, or with your career, or with your successes.
Ecclesiastes 10:15 Fools are tired of being tired. The snoring of fools is tiring, after all, they don’t even hit the city! -Only one who is too stupid to find his way home would be exhausted by work. That’s pretty honest. Maybe you should write it on a card and display it somewhere.
trying to say that life is more than work. Your life is much more than the work you are engaged in. It’s only part of your life. But when we have a poorly set identity and think that our value is based on what we do, then we put all our time, money, energy and effort into our work.
…
Reason #2 Why can’t we rest properly
Materialism
The second reason people don’t rest is materialism. What it means is obvious – I want more and more things. And if I have to have more things, I have to make more money. And to make more money, I have to work harder and longer.
And yet the Bible tells me not to. Proverbs 23:4-5 Don’t get mad at wealth, Have a sense and stop quickly. You just see them, the wealth is no longer here. He always gets his wings as the eagle flies to the sky. (pin) and (B21)
Don’t exhaust yourself trying to get rich. Be wise and show restraint. After all, your money can disappear in an instant, as if their wings grew and flew away like an eagle. After all, we know that we can lose our money at any time. It therefore makes no sense to spend most of your life trying to get something that can fly away as easily as an eagle.
I spoke and observed thousands of people and came to the conclusion that Most spend the first half of their lives sacrificing their health for wealth. And they sacrifice the second half of their lives to get their health back.
Have you ever thought about it? For the first half of your life, you will give up your health, you will overwork yourself to gain wealth. But in the second half of life you will spend all that wealth to be healthy again. It does not abound in wisdom! – To want more and more things.
In Luke’s Gospel 12:15 Jesus says this: He then said to everyone: Be careful, beware of all greed! After all, the meaning of life does not lie in the accumulation of property. Always beware of any greed. Because the meaning of your life is not how much you earn or how many things you own.
Thus materialism, as well poorly Set Self Value It causes us to overwork.
…
Reason #3 Why can’t we rest properly
Envy
the third cause that causes us to rework the Bible called envy. It is the desire to be or to have what other people do. – We are trying to keep up with the Nováks. We want what the neighbors, colleagues or what we see in the movies have. We try to keep up with everyone else. And that causes us to do things we don’t really have time for. Too trying to have what others have is envy.
Their children participate in these five extracurricular events, so our children must also participate, …I want all the good that other children have for their children, …I want to be able to play sports with dogs like others, …I want to be like this person, …I want a better phone or computer, virtual reality, etc.
Solomon noticed this envy problem literally thousands of years ago. In the book Ecclesiastes 4:4 is said to be: I also saw that All the desire and pursuit of success stem from human envy of one’s neighbor. This too is vanity and the pursuit of the wind! (B21 beginning of pin)
I want to be like them. I want to have what they have. I want to do what they do. I want to travel where they travel. In fact, they may be more stressed than you. Therefore, first make sure that you are copying the right pattern!
- Poorly set self value
- Materialism
- Envy
…
Reason #4 Why can’t we rest properly
When success is more important to us than relationships
The fourth reason why people do not rest according to what is written in the Bible is, When success is more important to us than relationships. As men, we are more prone to it than women, but anyone can do it. It’s about giving priority to a career over everything else, including relationships.
We all know people for whom a career was more important than marriage and ended in divorce. Or people who give up the opportunity to be a good parent or a good friend every day, all at the expense of a career! Work is more important to them. A When our goals become more important than the people in our lives, we skate on thin ice.
Again, there’s what Solomon says. Ecclesiastes 4:7-8 When I looked around, I saw another vanity under the sun: Someone is alone and has no one, is without children and without relatives. But there is no end to his sneer, he is not satisfied with his wealth. ‘Who am I actually talking about, why am I denying myself all the comfort?” This too is vanity and poor effort.
The preacher tells us: Here is another thing I have seen on Earth that doesn’t make sense. Some people have no children or family, not even friends, in other words no relationships, yet they work obsessively and never take a break. Their hard work has no end and they are never satisfied with what they have done or earned. They never ask themselves a few very important questions.
If you belong to this category, you should probably put them yourself: Why am I still working? Why do I keep doing this? Why do I always want to do more? Why don’t I allow myself to enjoy life? And here is the main thing: Who am I doing it for? Who really cares? Who will get what I leave behind? I don’t have any proper relationships. So what good is the great career and the huge successes and the pile of money? Who cares? Who will get what is left behind? It’s a senseless and miserable way of life.
It is better to have someone to enjoy life with and to share the results of your work with. It is more important to have relationships than success. God didn’t put you on the ground to tick things off the to-do list. He put you here to learn to love.
This is repeated over and over in the Bible. unabled Learning to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and power. and learn to love one’s neighbors as one’s. It matters. Not on how much success I achieve in life. Not how many tasks I tick off a day. Not how many goals I will achieve in life.
When you come to heaven, God will not ask you, ‘Tell me what your work goals were and if you achieved them?’ He just won’t say that. When you come to heaven, God will tell you: ‘Tell me about your relationships. Did you know me? Did you know my Son Jesus Christ? Did you love me with all your heart, soul, mind, force? And what about other people? How did you do in your relations with others by people?
God might say, “I’m sorry, but you missed it. I didn’t put you on the ground just to achieve goals, earn a lot of money, do really great things. I put you on earth primarily to learn to love. And You can’t learn to love unless you have any deep relationships.
These are the reasons why we can’t relax and have a good rest: Poorly set self value – We base our values on our work, so we put all our energy into it. Or materialism, I always want more, so I have to have more money to have more. Or envy, I want to have what other people have, so I also copy their ridiculous lifestyle, where they are still under stress. Or I value success more than relationships. I wonder why I’m doing it? Why don’t I allow myself to enjoy life?
…
Reason #5 Why can’t we rest properly
insecurity and concern that I won’t have enough
There is a fifth reason why people don’t rest. it is Uncertainty and worry, Fear of it, that I won’t have enough.
Once I was sitting at a table with some fabulously rich people. They were people from the multimillionaires category. And I asked the person: ‘So how much do you still need to be secure?’ And the person looked me straight in the eye and said: ’20, 30 million more.’ I thought to myself, he has no idea that when he achieves it, it will not be enough for him. Because with such thinking and approach to life, it is never enough.
When I’m insecure and afraid I won’t have enough, then I’m still working and still working. The Bible says – Ecclesiastes 6:7 All sallows are to be fed by the human mouth, but the soul still remains hungry. Message translation provides it as follows: We work to feed our desires, but our souls are starving in the meantime. Our souls are starving. Sounds familiar to you? I am so afraid that I will not be physically and materially enough to give up my spiritual depth. I’ll work to see my desires, but I’m at the bottom spiritually.
Or how about this verse? Psalm 127:2 It is unnecessary for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night and They cared anxiously about food, for God gives rest to his loved ones. (NLT) Here is the reason why we do it – fear, uncertainty, fear that we won’t have enough. In fact, God wants his loved ones to rest properly. That’s why sometimes I take a nap. Sometimes that’s all you need to get a good night’s sleep.
Repeating 5 Causes that prevent us from resting
Poorly set self value – I base my self worth on my work, on what I do and can do, materialism, envy, success more important than relationships, uncertainty and concern, that I won’t have enough.
…
Prayer
Dear Jesus, please help me realize what I personally do, what prevents me from completely resting and enjoying life. Do I have the wrong value of myself? Am I trying to prove something to myself or someone, through what I do? How big a role does materialism, envy, insecurity and fear play in my life? Is success and doing something more important to me than relationships? help me change. Show me what to focus on first. Thanks for having you, I wouldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for loving me unconditionally, even if I make mistakes and don’t have the right priorities in my life. You’re just amazing! I love you so much!
Continuation
