Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:1-2 NAS
As we turn the calendar to September our prayer focus turns to the Workplace. Our prayer calendar builds our prayer life so you probably already know that we continue to pray for every area that influences our lives, neighbors and nation but our monthly focus takes us into a deeper time of prayer for the businesses in our community and country, their owners, boards, clients, employees, and products as well as our own workplace and co-workers.
How wonderful that September begins with a long holiday weekend, a sabbath of sorts that celebrates our labor and yet gives us time to rest from our work. Did you rest? Are you rested? For many of us, we have developed a lifestyle of work, work, work and forgetting or ignoring that God also calls us to rest. God did not create you to wear you out, His plans for us call us to be diligent and excellent, never lazy, but never believing that the world will stop spinning if we pause from working even for a moment.
We can’t just hope we’ll find time to rest. God actually uses rest to restore hope in Him. In times of rest we are filled by God, our source and strength and express faith in Him and obedience to Him. When we cease striving and barely surviving, to intentionally spend a day fully focused on Him, resting in Him, being filled by Him we express faith that knows He has prepared the work ahead for that week and we must submit for Him to prepare us for the week.
Pride says, “It’s all up to me.” Faith says, “It’s all up to God.” We need a full day once a week, a daily appointment with Him in the Word and prayer, and moments throughout the day to seek Him. To clarify, our best only comes with spiritually motivated rest, not laziness.
Rest fixed on God’s faithfulness and our obedience delights His heart as He strengthens ours. It is not just a day off, a night out, kicking back. Fun that only feeds the flesh is dangerous. Counterfeit rest is counterproductive; it steals our energy, kills our clarity, ability, resources, and can destroy our reputation and relationships. A sabbath-less weekend sends you to work on Monday worse off than you left on Friday.
Think of a sabbath as a day of strength, your greatest day of success.
Lord, Your love calls us to rest in You. You are the Author of our days and destiny and You will complete the good work You began in us. Help our work-driven mind to worship you in all we do and all You call us to. Help us to submit every area of life to be wholly and holy healthy; physically and fiscally, mentally and missionally, our heart, soul, mind, actions, attitudes, desires, decisions- all of life - all of ourselves- set in Your hands because You are Lord of all. Thank you for this time to remember Your faithfulness and promises not stressing over what we are doing or need to do. Reposition us under Your yoke and help us to offload the “heavy laden” burdens they got stacked on us throughout the week as we sit still and submit to You. Thank you that we receive Your care even as we sleep so we are ready to sail through another week. In the Mighty, Wonder-working name of Jesus we pray, Amen!
Serving Him with gladness,
Kathy Branzell
President