Day: February 18, 2013

Jesus Says Take A Break

You need a break.      

I know you hate this idea, and so do I, but you really need to take a break.

Everyone around you is multi-tasking, phone-apping, book-cramming, reading or scheduling or building or flying – and you suspect they’re all more productive than you, so you’re pushing, sweating, clenching, bleeding to get this done. 

But you: you really need a break.

God commands rest.  How could He command rest?  I’d rather read my Bible and fight for the offering plate than REST.

Many of us have bought into the neurotic productivity of American Do-Ism, and it seems like everyone is inventing something, starting a grassroots nonprofit, going to the gym four times a day, cooking immaculate meals, hiking to Europe in their backyard; so no, I won’t take a break, I can’t take a break, I have to keep up or shut up.

But a funny thing happens when you refuse God’s commands. Those commands, by the way, are not demands, but a vision of how you work best. When they’re not followed, the very core of your humanity can break down. You can probably already feel it: the restlessness, the twitchiness, the constant checking of your phone. 

God knows how we’re made.  He knows that if I don’t take a break today, and tomorrow, and for a long time, that I’ll eventually consume more energy than I can create and my spirit will be crushed.  It won’t be any one thing on my schedule or any one exam or any one person: but the accumulated weight will be too much to bear, and I’ll either melt down or check out.

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Quote: Good Church Kid


When people ask, ‘You go to church? You’re a Christian?’ — what most people really mean is, ‘So you’re a good church kid? You don’t curse or smoke or drink or kick old ladies?’ And most of us answer, ‘Yeah, I’m trying.’ Except going to church doesn’t make us good, nor is church a special place for good people. The word Christian has become this loaded label that now means what we do instead of who we are. We’re adopted by a gracious good heavenly Father; we don’t ‘try’ to be His because He’s already called us to Him. The Real-Life Christian says, ‘I’m honestly just a broken mess who met Jesus and he is blowing me up.’ So when people ask about church, we can say, ‘I don’t know what you mean by that, but all I know is there’s nothing good in me except God in me, and everything bad in me, God is working on that.


Originally posted here.