Skip to content A Sabbath Day is Life Giving with Erin Lynum Jan 30 · 23 min ...more
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Reclaiming Margin in a Hustle-Driven World 0:04 We have so whittled time down to be like, how can we how can we pack every moment?0:09 Yeah.0:10 But what if we were to carve out some more margin and actually leave time for rest in our lives?0:22 Erin, welcome back to Focus on the Family.0:25 Thank you. Thank you for having me back.0:27 This is quite a trend now. I know several friends of mine who are embracing the Sabbath, kind of reorienting themselves and their families around the Sabbath. So0:38 generally, is there kind of a movement within the Christian community to reawaken to God's Sabbath day and what it means?0:45 I believe there is, and I I believe it goes much further than just the Christian realm because we're also seeing it in the secular realm. Like, 1 thing I've been blown away by as I've dove into Sabbath with my family and0:57 in my work is I'm now having opportunities to go speak to corporate and business groups1:03 Wow.1:03 About Sabbath because they see the power of rest to really unlock their potential as leaders that we really know is just by God's design.1:14 Yeah. When you look at that, I mean, you know, the load, think of laundry. Mhmm. I mean, the way they did it 100 years ago, that took you probably 8 hours right there. 1 day a week, you'd have to do the laundry. So1:24 things have had innovation where we could throw it in a machine, and we just have to move it, pull it out, hang it, fold it, whatever. But there's 1400 things that we've been able to fill that space with now.1:36 Mhmm. So that pace that we're going at, how do we get a hold of it, do an inventory, say, okay. How do I spend my time?1:45 That's a really good point about innovation. And, you know, we have all these technologies and things that we can do now that can help save time, but that can also1:57 be a bad thing. Because it means that, you know, when you think about when we harness electricity, we've really changed our ideas around time. We can work at any hour. So when you think about God2:09 engineered into us a circadian rhythm, that natural wake, sleep, rest, work cycle. When we harnessed time, we kind of did away with that. Circadian means2:21 around a day. We kind of like ballooned that around what what can around a day mean. How can we pack it full? And so, I think the first thing is just not packing our2:32 schedules so full that they're like a game of Tetris.2:36 Mhmm.2:36 You know, we've whittled down time. When you look at the biblical times and they view time in these big chunks, we've whittled that down to a 60 minute hour, 24 hour day, nanosecond, down2:48 to the smallest measurement of time is called a zeptosecond. Mhmm. It's unthinkably small. Zeptosecond. I've never heard of yet. I think only scientists use it to, like, measure the speed of light.2:59 I like it, though.3:00 Yeah. Sounds fun. But but to that point, we have so whittled time down to be like, how can we how can we pack every moment?3:07 Yeah.3:08 But what if we were to carve out some more margin and actually leave time for rest in our lives? And that's3:14 teach us from that. I mean, we really it sounds so right, but why do we not do it?3:20 A lot of hustle and hurry boils down to the fear of missing out.3:24 Okay.3:25 We have every opportunity in this society to pursue so many different ventures and build so much, and God put that into us. Work came before the curse, before the3:37 fall. God designed us with this purposeful desire to create and to build and to progress, but we really let that get out of hand, and we start pursuing it for our own means. It's3:49 it's really another way of worshiping creation rather than the creator, only we're worshiping ourselves as the creator. And so we're trying to pack everything full and we say, oh, if there's 5 minutes there, I have to4:00 fill it if I'm going to get ahead, if I'm going to get that opportunity, or if I don't know what to fill it with, well, I'm gonna pick up my phone and look busy because we're so uncomfortable with4:12 leaving time empty.4:13 Yeah. I think some of this too is rooted in how we have devalued rest, that it's anti Western culture, that if you rest, you're sinning. I knew a pastor, H. B. London, who4:25 worked here at Focus, and he was older at this point, still working, but probably 70, but he still wanted to work, And he ended up with pneumonia and was in the hospital. And I remember going to see4:37 him out in California, and he said, you know, Jim, I just, you know, I prayed to the Lord and said, Lord, if you get me out of this and heal me, I will4:49 work harder for you. And I was like, h, I don't think HB is what we we called him h. I said, h, I don't think that's the the equation the Lord wants from you right now. Have you thought about if you heal me from this,5:00 I'll take more time to take care of your temple and take care of your body, meaning His body. But speak to that, thing that we buy that, you know, there's so much time a day, and we gotta get so much done.5:12 Even in a secular context, a sales guy, you know, I've got to work 12 hours a day to outdo the competition, or 14 hours a day. Meanwhile, his marriage, his family's crumbling. And how do you how do you5:24 assess this in a healthier way?5:26 It really goes back to changing our mindset and seeing this as God's design for our thriving. This is actually a gift from God. When you look back at creation, God gave us this beautiful pattern5:39 because God created for 6 days and then he rested, not because he needed to. Isaiah tells us God does not grow tired or weary, but I believe it was for 2 reasons. The first was to stop and5:51 delight. The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew Shabbat, which can mean to stop or to delight. So God just simply wanted to take in everything5:59 that6:00 he had just made, and then to give us a pattern because while God does not need to rest, we do. And so we see that God created and then rested, but Adam was created on6:11 the sixth day, so Adam's first full day was a day dedicated to rest. We were always meant to start from rest, and from there, that rest truly fuels every6:23 endeavor, And what my family saw when we began resting just over 3 years ago, it felt like such a risk. I had major doubts. How are we going to get everything done in6:35 just 6 days? We became more productive, more effective, more creative. Like, I'll give you a case study with my husband. He runs a contracting company.6:47 And before we began resting, he was exhausted. He was a 1 man show. We were hardly paying the bills. He had been at this for, I believe, 6 years at the time, and then we take this big risk on6:59 rest. And 3 years later, he's grown to a team of 10. He's an incredible leader. He has built all these strategies and systems and grown his revenue by 500 percent. All7:11 while taking a day of rest every single week with his family. Mhmm. And it's not a prosperity gospel. It's not do this and God will do this, but it shows God's plan, his design for rest is not lazy. It7:23 is not idle. It's fruitful.7:26 Well, and it it's helpful.7:28 Yeah.7:28 And we sometimes don't recognize that. What are some of the obstacles that keep us from rest and then connect that to declutter? Oh. Yeah. Just as an example. Well,God's Gift of Sabbath: Pattern and Promise 7:38 you just said it. Clutter is certainly an obstacle. Clutter in our homes, clutter in our minds, clutter in our hearts.7:44 Schedules?7:45 Schedules. Absolutely.7:46 Clutter there.7:47 Yeah. Let's talk to the mind. We live in a world where we have, at our disposal, whatever information we want. We have media coming at us all day long. And so if we7:59 are going to rest, we have to start filtering that information. And in the book, I use the example of a bird with a crazy name, the great frigate bird, and this bird can fly for up to 28:11 months at a time without landing.8:12 2 months?8:13 2 months.8:13 I've never heard of this.8:14 Yeah. It's a crazy bird. It can stay in flight that long because it does something called unihemispheric sleep. It turns off part of its brain, so that it is alert enough to8:26 stay safe, to avoid obstacles and predators, but it is filtering out any unnecessary information, so that it can take power naps while flying. We need to be like the great8:38 forget bird. We need to learn how to filter out unnecessary information, choose wisely about what emails we subscribe to, what social media platforms we use and follow, the people that we follow and what they're8:50 saying, really All this media, looking specifically at them and asking ourselves, is this life giving? Does this lead my thoughts to the Lord? Does it bring9:02 joy and delight? Or when I'm done using this media outlet, is this just adding stress, anxiety, overwhelm, sin? Like truly filtering out all the9:14 information so that we can declutter our minds Yeah. To be in a space where we can rest.9:19 Addison's disease is part of your story. Maybe you can describe what that is and how you have managed that and the fact that you had to manage it.9:28 Mhmm. Yeah. I often say that my family's journey into rest began about 3 years ago when we began sabbathing. But, truly, mine started over 20 years ago, and I9:40 was 13 years old and I sorry. I just turned 14 years old, and I was preparing to go overseas for the first time. And before you go on a trip like that, it was a missions trip with a team and adult9:52 leaders. You have to get a regular checkup and vaccines for travel recommendations. And so my parents took me into the doctor, and I had no strange health history. We had no10:04 reason to believe that anything was off or wrong. But when the nurse took my blood pressure that day, it was 56 over 48.10:12 Okay.10:13 Extremely low. Yeah. And when a vital like that is off, you know that something is very wrong. And it was in my case. And so they start doing more testing, and it soon led to a diagnosis of Addison's10:24 disease or adrenal insufficiency, and what that is is your adrenal glands, Addison's disease is where your adrenal glands no longer function at all, and your adrenal glands produce, of course, adrenaline10:36 Right.10:37 But also other important hormones including cortisol, your stress hormone. So if you are encountering any kind of stress, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, any10:49 stress, your body is going to produce more cortisol to cope with that. Mine does not. And so, at that young age, stress became deadly to me. The worst case scenario is11:00 that, someone with Addison's disease encounters so much stress that their body is trying to cope with it and can't through so I take a regular daily hormone replacement for it.11:12 But encountering so much stress that your body can't cope with it, it leads to a coma and is fatal.11:18 Wow. That's amazing.11:19 And so at 14, my parents had to coach me in biblical stress management and taking every anxiety, every thought to the Lord, stepping back in prayer, and that's truly where the Lord began to lead me into11:31 this deeply restful lifestyle. But, you know, Addison's disease is very rare. So many people nowadays have adrenal fatigue Yeah. Where they have11:43 encountered so much stress or they just go, go, go, go, that their adrenal glands are no longer functioning the way that God meant for them to. And so stress really is dangerous to all of us, and rest11:55 is 1 of the best designs that God has given us to help us combat that sickness.12:02 Yeah. You know, when I look at so much of nature, you see a rhythm that God has. The universe, there's a rhythm. There's a way that God has set things up, and it's not just the 412:14 seasons. There's so much rhythm to this life and to this universe that you know God is in this. And I think when it's gonna be interesting. If you get to heaven and there's just this secret12:26 little thing that God put in place, and it has to do with the rhythm of universe, the rhythm of the soul, I mean, all of it that God said, yep. That's the secret sauce that I created everything with. Yeah. How do we12:34 secret sauce that I created everything with. How do we change our lives in such a way to recognize it? We may not be diagnosed with Addison's disease, but how do we capture12:46 this craziness in our life and say, Okay, I wanna be more like Aaron.12:52 Mhmm. We have to be willing to do something very countercultural. Rest is very countercultural. We live in this hustle society, and so it starts with just identifying, okay. I'm13:04 gonna do that bold thing. My family's worth that. I want to claim this gift that God has given us, that he set up at creation13:16 for us to thrive through. So many of us, my own family for so long, just kept going without claiming that gift. And that was the thing was, you know, we often view rest as a burden.13:29 Sabbath can seem like a burden. Or we can't do it. Or that we can't do it. Exactly.13:33 You know, it's uncomfortable.13:35 Yeah. I, air quote, failed Sabbath so many times before we really figured it out. And the key to figuring it out was to view it not as this burdensome command,13:47 but as a gift. I call it celebrating Sabbath. So we need to switch our mindset, and whether you begin celebrating Sabbath or if it's through daily rhythms13:59 of rest, whatever rest you decide to adopt and practice, it takes that bold step of faith, and then look at your calendar. Do the things on your calendar,Overcoming Clutter and Embracing Restful Living 14:11 whether they're events, whether they're responsibilities, commitments, do they align with your family's values? You might need to answer that question first. What does my family value? What is the most important thing to14:22 us? We have seen in our family that rest acts just like faith because they're very intertwined. Rest acts as a foundation for all of our other values.14:35 Our family, our marriage, our children, our health, our work, everything benefits when we rest.14:41 And, Aaron, Jesus took time. He was so busy. I mean, I'm reading in the gospels right now, and the the crowds would come to him from from hither and yon they they just came great distances and there's a14:52 crush of activity but he also got away what do you suppose it looked like for him to get away and rest15:00 I've never heard her put that way a crush of activity That's so good, and it's so right. You look at Mark chapter 1, and it's this whirlwind of activity. So Jesus is starting his ministry,15:12 and he is calling his first disciples, so really starting a movement, the most successful and long standing movement that still continues to today, he experienced fatigue, and what upheld him was this practice15:24 of going away into a quiet place. The Greek word is eremos, and it means quiet, solitary. Most often, it's translated as wilderness, which I think is beautiful. He would go away into15:36 the quiet place to commune with the Father and that's what upheld him and he issued the same invitation to his disciples in Mark 6 31. Come away by yourselves to a quiet15:47 place and rest. Mhmm.15:49 Aaron, let let's turn this toward the viewer and the listener, the person that's going, I want that rest. Mhmm. But they don't know what to do. They don't they're stuck in this situation, this16:01 cycle that's unhealthy. What are some things that they could do to begin that Sabbath approach? What do you need to do? What did you do?16:11 A big obstacle I find for many people is this sense of I cannot give a full day to rest. It doesn't seem realistic or relevant in our society. I believe it is realistic and16:23 relevant, but 1 of the first things I tell people is if you can't find a full day, find 4 hours. If you can't find 4 hours, you need to prune your calendar. That's hard, but that's true.16:35 Find 4 hours, it might be a Wednesday evening. Set that time aside for rest. You don't have to commit to that for the next 12 months. Just start, and then16:47 write 2 lists. First, write a list of everything that's heavy, everything during your week that is stressful. That might be notifications, emails, text messages.17:01 Write a list of those things that are heavy, and that's what you wanna step away from during that time of rest. You can do that for 4 hours. And then write a second list of things that fill you up, things that delight17:12 you. Again, this whole idea of stop, stop those things, delight in these things. It's often those things that we think through the week, oh, I'd really like to do that, I'd really like to get to that, and we don't make17:22 time for it. It might be creating, painting, making music, walking outside, gardening. People ask me, Isn't gardening work? Do on Sabbath what delights your soul.17:34 Maybe throughout the week, you work with a computer and you're just sitting there and that's really taxing, you might wanna go outside into creation on the Sabbath. Do what delights your soul. Make a list of those things17:45 and start enjoying them and just watch how God begins to bring you full circle17:53 Yeah.17:53 Back into his gift of rest.17:56 Let me ask you, nowadays with modernity, screen time is, you know, every parent's nightmare. And the irony, it's our nightmare How do you manage18:08 with our kids who probably see that as filling up their time, looking at screens, you know, playing games or social media or whatever it might be, How do you as a18:20 parent manage that, help your child to better understand Sabbath in that context of screen time?18:25 Mhmm. I mean, we have to acknowledge that there's going to be pushback in many families. And with my family, what we found is that 3 years in, our kids long for Sabbath.18:37 They love it.18:39 So they've connected.18:40 They've connected. So in fact, there was a season in our family where we suffered a loss and for 3 weeks, we're traveling and grieving and memorial service and we missed 3 Sabbaths. And our 11 year old son came to us18:51 after the third missed Sabbath and he said, mom, can we please Sabbath this weekend? He feels it deep inside of him because it's God's design and so just that note of encouragement19:03 first that your children when you do this, they will, it might take time, but they will connect with that design, that gift of God and what I often encourage parents is try not to19:15 take away something your child really enjoys without giving them something better. Mhmm. So on Sabbath, we are playing board games together as a family. We're out playing in the yard. We're reading books. Your19:26 children long for that kind of connection, and Sabbath becomes this sweet space where we can be a family together around these shared activities, and then we'll19:38 often watch a family movie to wrap up Sabbath. So kind of this, hey, we're gonna step away from screens so we can do some other fun activities together. And then afterwards, we're gonna make some popcorn and enjoy a19:50 movie together. And that can help ease children into this.19:53 Yeah. I think it's excellent. Let's end here. I mean, this has been great, very illuminating, really, but you've come up with a key question that you found helpful in discovering whether you're truly20:05 abiding in Christ. Now, every Christian should be leaning in right now going, Okay, that's a pretty big statement. What's the question?20:14 Am I growing in truth and love?20:17 Yeah. And you can measure that and know that you are by how?20:24 By resting because what rest does is it opens up this space for truth to root down in our souls. You know, when we are go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle, hurry hurry hurry,20:36 we don't have time to truly process what the Lord is doing inside of us. When we rest, science proves us, when we rest, our minds operate to their fullest potential20:48 as God meant them to. When we rest, we grow in truth because his truth goes forth and does not return void, but like Isaiah 55, it brings forth the water and the rain, they bring21:00 forth life, and God's word brings forth life in our souls. We access that more fully through his gift of rest, and we grow in love because we're able to have these connections21:12 with our family, with our children, with our spouse. My relationship with my husband and with my children has grown in deep and profound ways because of our practices21:24 of rest.21:25 Boy, there's a promise right there. This is amazing, Aaron, and, you've really hit it, the nature of rest, the spiritual application of all that, and the benefits to us physically, emotionally,21:36 spiritually. I hope people say, yeah, we're not living in that space, and we need to. So get a hold of us, and start by reading this wonderful resource that Aaron has written, and the nature21:48 of rest, what the Bible and nature teach us about Sabbath living. I'm intrigued. I mean, I really am, and I hope you are as well. If you can make a gift of any amount, if you could do it monthly, that's great. A 122:00 time gift too. But we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for helping other families through your support of Focus on the Family. And, John, you can give them details how to get in touch22:12 with us. Mhmm.22:13 Yeah. Donate generously as you can, either a monthly pledge or a 1 time gift. We've got the details. The links are in the description below, or you can call us. 800, the letter a, and the word family. Thanks for22:24 joining us today for focus on the family with Jim Dailey. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.In this video 0:00 Reclaiming Margin in a Hustle-Driven World7:30 God's Gift of Sabbath: Pattern and Promise14:10 Overcoming Clutter and Embracing Restful Living
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