I have a confession to make...

I love Christmas music. I love Christmas music all year long. Yeah, I'm one of those guys. But before
you go judging me, I just have one thing to say about it. Just as we sing songs to celebrate the Resurrection at any time of the year, I think the Incarnation of our Savior is also worth singing about at any time of the year. O Come, All Ye Faithful should be just as common as O Happy Day.

With this in mind, it was much to my delight that, as I was eating my breakfast this morning, three Christmas songs in a row came on my shuffled Spotify playlist. The normal reaction the typical person would make to this would be to instantly skip to the next track. But not me. I just sat back, and let the lyrical heralds song their carols of praise over me.

One of those songs, in particular, stood out to me. Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus by Folk Angel began playing and it just took me captive (see video below). "Come, thou long expected Jesus / Born to set thy people free / From our fears and sins release us / Let us find our rest in Thee." Wow! What a powerful paragraph! As I began to listen to this song, I started to remember that the Incarnation was all about my freedom. I am free because the Creator of Everything took on skin and bones in order that he could bear my sin. He became an insignificant, fragile, and dependent little cry-ball so he could rescue all of humanity from the incredibly oppressive power of sin and death. Every time I remember this, it blows my mind!

They went on to sing, "Let every heart / Prepare Him room / And heaven and nature sing / And heaven and nature sing." At this point, I felt the conviction hammering into me. Let every heart prepare Him room... Wow! How relevant this is for my life. So many things are going on in my life that I sometimes allow my heart to be filled up with a hundred different things, and it leaves little room for Jesus. One of the most spiritual things I can do is to take almost everything off my heart's plate and prepare room for the One who deserve my all. Sometimes this looks like saying no to a lot of things, but when I begin to be satisfied with Jesus and experience the unending joy that overflows from my heart, I realize that the more room I prepared for the "long expected Jesus," the more it was worth it.

So I wonder about you. How are you preparing Jesus room? And how are you finding your rest in Him? I encourage you to make this a priority just at He made you His priority when he came as a little baby two thousand years ago so he could set you free.

Is rest merely a state of motionlessness or inactivity?

“Our lives are occupied territory…

Occupied by a cacophony of voices,

And the din undoes us.

In the daytime we have no time to listen,

Beset as we are by anxiety and goals

And assignments and work…”

It is one commodity that everyone wants, but no one knows what to do with it. Rest is that great desire that is ever within the reach of this production-driven society, but it is rarely enjoyed by even the strongest. In a world where production and consumerism are what shape identity, we find ourselves weary from a standard that can never be met. The goal always seems to be on the horizon. There is never an end to the toil and striving. And at the end of the day, there is no rest. We are deficient even of a working understanding of this richly biblical concept. Some common definitions of rest seem helpful, but still lacking:

A bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities,

Freedom from activity or labor,

A state of motionlessness or inactivity, or

Peace of mind or spirit.

These modern definitions are helpful, but they fall short of the Old Testament biblical understanding of rest, or shabat. Throughout the Old Testament, the concept of rest is developed as not only an economic cessation from production, but also a theological act of trust in the sovereign Provider. For Israel, there was rich meaning infused in the halt of their production.

Shabat can be defined as “regular, disciplined, visible cessation of production.” This was a day for Israel to stop productive work and what could be considered “normal” activities. This Sabbath came to be for the Jews a visible, regular discipline that distinguished them from the general culture in which they were living their lives. Though there was some sort of shabat practiced in various nations around them, the shabat practiced by the Israelites was both economic – a refusal to define oneself by a sense of productivity – and theological – and active form of renouncing autonomy and self-sufficiency to the all-sufficient Creator, who himself rested as an example for us.

In Exodus 20, Moses delivers the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel. In verses 8-11, God spells out his rationale behind the institution of the Sabbath.

Remember the shabat, to keep it hold. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a shabat of YHWH your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day and made it holy.

Saints gathered to celebrate shabat.

The shabat, here, is authorized by the memory that on the seventh day of creation, God rested from his work.  Cessation and rest are thus grounded in the very structure of creation as ordered and blessed by God. In this statute, rest becomes even more richly theological. Rest is tied to the work and nature of the Creator. A connection is established between shabat and Creation. The meaning of shabat is more than just “rest” or “relaxation,” but that which gives completeness, usually by bringing a series to an end. Therefore, as an end to the exodus, reflection on the shabat suggests building the tabernacle. This was the visible, disciplined expression of enjoying rest in communion with the Creator for the Israelite people.

As the concept of rest was developing throughout the Hebrew canon, the prophets recognized and preached it as an act that was definitive for their faith. Amos noted that shabat carried economic significance, as well.

Hear this, you who trample the needy

and do away with the poor of the land, saying,

“When will the New Moon be over

that we may sell grain,

and the Shabat be ended

that we may market wheat?”—

skimping the measure,

boosting the price

and cheating with dishonest scales,

buying the poor with silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals,

selling even the sweepings with the wheat. (8:4-6)

For the prophets, the practice of a regular, disciplined, visible cessation from production was “an act of resistance against having one’s life defied by one’s productivity” (also cf. Isaiah 56:3-7). Therefore, there was nothing strange or out of place with the conclusion that every seventh day God’s people were to renounce dominion over time, thereby renouncing autonomy, and recognize God’s dominion over time and thus over themselves. Keeping shabat  was an active acceptance of the sovereignty of God.

In the New Testament, the incarnate Maker of the Universe saw shabat as a blessing made for man. It was never meant to be a burden, but a blessing to be experienced He refused to allow his earthy life to be defined by the enormity of his production, but by his relationship with his heavenly Father. He took the blessing of shabat to a whole new level (cf. Matthew 12:1-12; Mark 2:23-27, 3:4, 6:2; Luke 4:16-31, 6:1-9, 13:14-16, 14:1-5; John 5:9-18, 7:22-23, 9:14-16).

Life is a consistent journey
to be lived corum deo.

For good reason, efforts are being made in the modern world to regain this sense of shabat. “In a consumer economy that is committed to endless growth and reducing everything to commodity, the competent can easily imagine that they are self-made, self-sufficient, and self-actualized, with no reference point beyond themselves.” Thus an effort that might be made to cease work for one day a week, must also be accompanied by an effort to curb consumption, the acknowledgement that life has not been handed over to us for our devouring. Just as rest is a gift, so God’s blessings are gifts. Like rest, they are meant to inspire us to worship, not idolatry. The mindset that feeds on society’s production and consumption says, “Without God, everything is possible.” But the intentional follower of the incarnate Maker, will rebel against the craze to get more and produce more. Life is not an endless pursuit of goods and accomplishments. It is a consistent journey to be lived corum deo – in the presence of God. Shabat provides a visible testimony that God is at the center of life. The one who consumes the most is not the most successful. He is just the fattest. The one who practices shabat in its fullest sense is the most successful. He is the one who communes with God and his people, and will experience great grace and provision.

I am often like this mouse.

   A few weeks ago, I was out in my backyard mowing the grass. I had to turn the mower off for a second in order to move something out of my way. And just before I was about to begin mowing again, a little field mouse scurried past my dirty shoes. It was odd that I would see a mouse in the first place. They are just not something you see everyday. But it was also odd because he was running in circles right past me. I don't think he eve knew I was there because he was blind. That is why he was running in circles. He was looking for some sort of point of reference. He was lost and looking for his way. I wanted to help him, so I bent down to pick him up and take him somewhere that he could find his way. But when I touched him, he jumped away from me. He was naturally scared of me, that I would hurt him. But eventually, after several tries, I finally picked him up and escorted him to the woods, where he would have many points of reference and could make his way despite his blindness. When I knew he was safe, I resumed my lawn mowing.


   While I was finishing the job, I was thinking about that mouse. I am often like that mouse. In this life, I have no point of reference. I can't know on my own what is right or wrong, true or false, safe or dangerous, healthy or cancerous. And when God sees me running in spiritual circles, He gently reaches down to pick me up and lift me to safety. I want to go one way, but he sees where it leads and corrects me or lifts me out of harm's way. And I fear his touch, thinking it will harm me. Little do I realize that it is the best thing that could possibly happen to me. The thing that seems like the worst possible idea at the time, is often God's loving hand protecting me from something really bad.


   God is lovingly sovereign. He does nothing for our harm. He loves us tenderly, and has the wisdom of an all-knowing Father. But sometimes he has to override our own will in order to bring us to safety. And often he has to wait for us to realign our will before he can use us greatly. On the one hand, when our will is contrary to God's, we are speeding toward danger. On the other hand, when our will is contrary to God's, He can't use us for His amazing purposes and we can't grasp His love. Our will must be submitted to Him before we can live a life that is worth living.


   But how must we can we submit our will to God, if it is our will that drives everything we do? It seems almost contradictory, like making a robot that recreate itself, or designing an engine to be its own mechanic. It is hard to grasp the concept of submitting your will, until you can understand that God is greater than you and that you desperately need Him. This is the essence of worship: declaring that God has infinite worth, not only to you, but also to all of creation because He is greater than all and needed by all to even exist (cf. Colossians 1:17). And when you begin to worship - not only with your words, but with your whole life - you have taken the first step to a life that matters. Worship wins the war for the will. And it is a lifestyle of worship that makes God proud.

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So how are you doing at submitting your will?

If you gave someone permission to be honest with you, would they recognize a pattern of worship in your life? or just selfishness?

Are you up for the challenge of submitting your will to the One who holds all things together?

How are you doing at submitting your will?

I dare you to be brave today: Tell God you are ready to submit your will to Him, and ask Him to show you specific way you can worship Him with your life. And DON'T back down from what He shows you.