Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Awakened to Grace :: Sabbath" | Sunday Service | February 15, 2026

Transcript

"Awakened to Grace :: Sabbath" | Sunday Service | February 15, 2026 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, it's Bryant from the Future, and I just wanted to give you a heads up before we hear this sermon for a second.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: It cuts off in the middle, and frankly, you're gonna hear just a lot of chaos in this sermon because we had a huge storm that came through and it cut off all audio and video.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a portion of the sermon that is just missing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just wanted to tell you that because we couldn't get it from anything.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have two backups that run it every time, and none of it worked.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the story that you're gonna miss is a piece uh of the story of Meribah, where the Israelites are in survival mode and they are thirsty, they're afraid, they're frankly convinced they're gonna die.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so they turned to Moses and they questioned whether God had brought them out of Egypt to abandon them.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that reveals this like problem with trust that they have with God.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Moses reacts in anger instead of obedience to God.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so he he strikes the rock rather than talking to it, and the water does come out, but God's very frustrated in that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's just a way in which we we talked about uh being in survival mode often makes it hard for us to Sabbath and rest in the trust of God when we're constantly convinced it's on us.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the message.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna continue our message series called Awakened to Grace.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said earlier, we're gonna talk this morning about Sabbath.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sabbath.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, for the sermon, we're all just gonna take a nap.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that would have worked with a like a like any other generation than you.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: It would have worked so well.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys are like, oh, I'm so millennial.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna talk about Sabbath.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is, I am the opposite of a master at this topic.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Facts.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: On my calendar on Fridays, is literally an all-day event in all capital letters that says Sabbath.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go on that little website to schedule a time with me, it will not let you schedule on a Friday.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Praise God for technology.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, is that I use that time for mostly anything other than Sabbath.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so this week, I felt real convicted as I was trying to preach this.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you preach out of things, you're like, I just want to deliver this information, and sometimes you preach out of need.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And let me just tell you, I'm probably most in need in this room of this here this morning.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think our world teaches us the opposite of Sabbath, it rewards work, success, energy, all of those things, and it almost never rewards rest.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this morning I want to take a look at what rest looks like.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna uh look at the book of Hebrews, which is not something we not a book we go to very often, um, but it's just from Hebrews, the fourth chapter.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Here now, the reading of God's Word.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, since the promise that we can enter into rest is still open, let's be careful so that none of you will appear to miss it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: We also had the good news preached to us, just as the Israelites did.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: However, the message they heard didn't help them, because they weren't united in faith with the ones who listened to it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: We who have faith are entering the rest, as God said.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And because of my anger I swore, this is God speaking, they will never enter into my rest.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And yet God's works were completed at the foundation of the world.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Then somewhere he said, This is about the seventh day of creation.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: God rested on the seventh day from all of his works.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But again in the passage above, God said, They will never enter my rest.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore it's left open for some to enter it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the ones who had the good news preached to them before didn't enter because of disobedience.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just as it says in the passage above, God designates a certain day as today, when he says through David much later, today, if you hear his voice, don't have stubborn hearts.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: If Joshua gave the Israelites rest, God wouldn't have spoken about another day later on.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you see that a Sabbath rest is left open for God's people.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: The one who entered God's rest also rested from his works, just as God rested from his own.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let's make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following the same example of disobedience.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray for the preaching of God's word.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet, and it's a light into our path.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: May it speak to us and speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And O God, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, O God.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: You are our rock and you are our redeemer, and we love you because you first loved us.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: We give you all praise and glory, God.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Back in 2017, my wife Allison was nine months pregnant with our first child, Collins, who's now eight years old.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to believe.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she was, when you're nine months pregnant, um it's an experience.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's very little else you do in the world other than be pregnant, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh you are carrying a seven, eight, nine-pound baby inside of you.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just that, they're also feeding off of you.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so you are constantly exhausted, constantly doing basically just raising the child at nine months.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, basically the husband uh becomes like the person who's going to take care of them in this moment, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: The there, you become the person who's gonna go get the food and you're gonna prepare the food and you're gonna clean the house and all of the things, like you're just gonna take care of those things.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of where I was at.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I had a friend who had just moved to Tennessee, and he had he and his wife had bought this house and they were about to renovate it, and they were in the process of it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he was so excited about it, he wanted me to come see it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I had been talking to him about how I just felt run down and I felt like I was just doing so many things.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, dude, just come to Tennessee.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just come to Tennessee and you can take a break.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can just come and have a have a rest, it'll be fine.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can just come up.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that long of a drive, and you can stay with us for a few days, it'll be awesome.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: You can see what our plans are at the house, you can see all the stuff we've learned.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to our favorite coffee shops, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: We can just get some rest.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, dude, just just like just hear me out.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they do you have those friends that are just super persistent?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like they are just not gonna shut up no matter what you say.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they are just gonna continue on.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Man, that was him.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was just please, please, please.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, to this day, he has still always been that, hey Brian, come up to Tennessee, come and I just told him, I said, Hey, just let me get through this baby and then we can talk.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, I'll see you in 18 years then.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which hit me so freaking hard.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because then I realized after the baby comes diapers, and then preschool, and then elementary school, and then dance.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: My daughters go to dance twice a week, they go to after school on Wednesdays, they go to piano on Mondays.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: She's here, and Lisa's their teacher, that was saying, and they're constantly busy.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: We just went to the daddy daughter dance.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know exactly.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I should have put a picture up.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We went to the daddy daughter dance, and uh, when we walk into the daddy daughter dance, we see my friend Frank, who I have not seen in like a year.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: He used to go to a church in town and they don't go there anymore, so I hadn't seen him in a while.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But he's standing there, he's like, bro, let me get a picture of you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Why?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Because my wife Mandy has been trying to get together with you for lunch for three months, which is a total truth.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was like, oh no, she's gonna hate me.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I saw you before I got to hang out with her and Justin, her friend.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then after dance, father, father-daughter dances come middle school, middle school relationships.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know the ones my wife and I met in middle school.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know, thank you.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, some energy.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we met in sixth grade, and uh middle school, then comes high school and all the involvement of high school sports, dance, whatever.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Dance is a sport, by the way.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Zach.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then comes college choosing, college tuition, first job, marriage.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I know I gotta pay for that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would think I would think that most of your grandparents and my children's grandparents think the exact same thing.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: You never get past the baby.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: You never get past the baby.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I what I noticed in that moment is that I was saying what most of us say about choosing and finding a time for rest.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was saying this.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I will rest later.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us say that.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: What happens in college?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you come in, you're raring to go.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And by week three, you are overwhelmed, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And by week three, all the campus ministries are trying to get you to go on their retreat, right?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, please come, you know.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this organization needs me to do this thing, this, my professor needs me to do this thing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're starting to think, well, let me just get to midterms.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you get to midterms, you're like, okay, I can get through midterms.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, let me just get to finals.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just get through that paper, let me just get to break.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Once I get to break, I will go home and I will rot on my phone and I could just take a break.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: You ever said that to yourself?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just get through this next thing?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: All of us say this.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I will rest later.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Later.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about Hebrews for a second.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews is a uh a letter in the New Testament.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: We don't actually know who wrote it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they thought for a long time Paul wrote it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's now probably thought that Paul didn't write it.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's an unknown author, but it is a um, it's some people think it's a female.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you girls in the room might be the only one that's credited.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it is written to a group of people who are Jewish Christians, and they're persecuted because of their Christianity.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-oh.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're persecuted, it's gonna rain.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord is gonna open up, and that mud out there is gonna be very fun.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so don't worry, your cars are fine.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're persecuted because of their Christianity and they're and they're Jewish.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of them were thinking, you know, Judaism is an accepted religion by Rome.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I could just go back to being Jewish and Rome would protect me, but Christianity was not.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were facing a lot of things.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the things that they were facing was the social margin marginalization because they were caught between these two worlds.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: They were definitely facing the persecution economically because they were losing jobs and all that sort of thing.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: They were definitely losing social standing, like I said.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they were they were losing, they were having to deal with physical persecution.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um when Nero came into order in from 54 to 68, uh, there was a fire in Rome, and he blamed Christians on the fire.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so he tortured them and executed them very publicly.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And this is about the time Hebrews is written, anywhere between 60 and 70 AD.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: They were facing a lot of religious tension because of all that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they were thinking, because at the time the temple still existed, they were thinking we could just go back to being Jewish Christians, we could just go back to being Jews at the temple and just let aside that Christianity thing.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some exhaustion in their minds, in their brains.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're having to deal with the fact that they want to believe this thing and yet it is doing so much to them.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're having to keep on in the world, but also keep hidden from the Roman authorities.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then the writer says this in four, therefore, since the promise that we can enter into rest is still open, let's be careful so that none of you will appear to miss it.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes on.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: He said, We also had the good news preached to us just as the Israelites did.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: However, with them, the message that they heard didn't help them because they weren't united in faith with the ones who listened to it.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying that the rest that their life can achieve through God was not being achieved because they were in a sense in a place of restlessness.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: You ever felt just super restless all the time?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: You ever go to bed and struggle to actually fall asleep?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: You ever struggle?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Your legs want to move all over the place, your mind is going a mile a minute.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: A mile, that's the Michael Scott, a mile a minute, that fast, huh?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's like miles per hour.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that, Zach.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred miles a minute.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't you can't just find any sort of like peace in that moment.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can see them in that, and he's saying the rest that was available to the Israelites is also available to us, but they didn't hear it.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because he says of disobedience, we talked about obedience last week, because of disobedience, that's one of the reasons.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: The other reason is that they were not, you when he says, united in the faith.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that I think in the center of accepting rest and Sabbath for us, we have to find trust in God.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Think about all the times that you've had to go from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, and you felt this responsibility to go here and do this and go here and do this and go here, and you feel pulled in 6,000 different directions.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So often, isn't it the case that we aren't able to trust the Lord to care for it in the moment?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: He says they were not united in that faith.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have that Friday on my calendar called Sabbath.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that Friday is supposed to be reserved for doing nothing.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem with it being Friday is that Sunday is coming.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it has this, Sunday just has this inevitable way about it, you know?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is gonna come whether you are ready for it or not.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you had a ton of time to write your sermon, cool.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's like looking over, like, okay, Holy Bible, master class, can't recommend that enough.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Prime video, where's the button?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow this is Eli's fault.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding, it is definitely not.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is definitely not.
• 17:01
  unknown: Always blind in the tech personal.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there you go.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Always blend the tech person.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have to look up there.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so the thing is with Friday, is that if I don't get through my work on Thursday, what do I do?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it Friday morning.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it Friday afternoon.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have to go sit in the car line because I pick my kids up on Friday.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the moments of the week that I look forward to the most.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, well, I could write it during that, or I can make that phone call during that because I'm just sitting there anyway.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like one light still.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's about to be a disco, so it's about to be fun.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's about to be a disco.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, just don't worry.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: The Lord will still be worshiped.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow these lights are on.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's the work of the Lord.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're not supposed to be, but that's fine.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens is, what happens is, hear me out.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: On Sabbath, on Sabbath, I want to do everything else possible.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Except for rest.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I love about this passage in Hebrews?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's I pointed to it like it's there.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: In Hebrews, he quotes Genesis 2.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: What happens in the creation story?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: He creates and he creates and he creates and he creates and he creates and he creates and he creates, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens on the seventh day, what does he do?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: He rests.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Which means that in the rhythm of all of scripture, in the in the rhythm of all of creation, is built in rest.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry about it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like an automated thing, it's fine.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's built into the entireness of creation.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let me suggest to you if you're in a place where you're not resting regularly, you're falling out of the rhythm of creation.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: You just are.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you find yourself doing that, you're falling out of the rhythm of creation.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I noticed when he was talking about this is he told the story of Meribah, or he quoted this story of Meribah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not from our notifications and all of that kind of run our lives.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we say the same thing that Israel said.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if I can just get water, then I'll trust in you, God, to take care of the rest of it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: We say things like once the semester ends, once this project is done, I said once the kids are older, once Wesley stabilizes, I'll be able to take a break.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've said that so many times.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Once I get through this baby, there's always going to be another reason for you not to take a break.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if Sabbath is waiting for your life to calm down, you will never Sabbath.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's talk about what we do when we rest.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of us, we don't rest, we rot.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to somebody the other day because I I think a lot oh there they go.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: They had their shot.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do any of the lights work?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Turn on?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try this.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it the old school way.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hey! Welcome.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can see everybody.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, here we are.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Intimate, friendly.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk of let's let's talk about the rot.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: All of us are guilty of it, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: We pick up our phone the first thing in the morning.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: We scroll the socials first thing in the morning.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: We uh let a 90-second clip determine our mood for the day, what we're mad about or we're happy about for the day.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: We there we go.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what a boy.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: That was Eli.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, baby.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and we consider that rest.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: I find myself doing it because if I'm at home and I've got the kids and I'm I'm doing stuff, I'm cleaning up, um, straightening up the house, whatever, I find myself being like, I'm gonna take a break.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what do I do when I take a break?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I put in an AirPod and I pull up my phone and I sit there and I scroll.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel any more rested after it.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't feel I don't feel that at all.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Walter Brugeman, who wrote this book, which uh I highly recommend, it's called Sabbath as Resistance.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're somebody being like, I need to hear this right now, I need to read this, it's very short.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's an old testament professor, but he writes in a very easy, easy way.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: You just have like I wrote in it, so you but you can come take this.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I would love for you to have that if that is something that's interesting to you.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: He says this.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: He says uh it's theoretically possible to keep Sabbath while scheming for commodities, but that's the epitome of multitasking.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Such practice yields a divided self with full attention given to nothing.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we practice the escapism of taking a break by grabbing our phone and just scrolling on the reels or whatever, we find that we're not focusing on anything.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, we're our minds are going to a million different places at once.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Neuroscientists have said that this is bad too, by the way.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: They call this cognitive overload.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: They said that our brain becomes exhausted from constant decision making and filtering.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Swipe up or stay, swipe left or right.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Scroll, react, scroll, react, scroll, react, double tap, scroll, react, scroll, react.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Constant decision making is not rest.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: So don't trick yourself into thinking that it is.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is rest?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's the complete and total surrender of control.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: If I feel like I'm gonna make decisions or I need to make decisions, or I feel like I've got to do this, I'm never gonna find rest.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: If I feel like I've got this thing on my mind, I'm never going to find rest.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my challenge to you.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times I'll say, uh, do something this week to give yourself some rest.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: And 99.9% of the time you're not gonna do it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know because I sat in your seats at one point, right?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I get it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my invitation.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: What if today you took an hour today, maybe in the rain, and you said today, not worrying about that test, I'm not worrying about that assignment, I'm not worrying about that thing, that connection I need to make with somebody.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to set it all aside by myself today.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: An hour.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: For some of you, that's taking a walk, maybe not great today.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: For some of you, it might be just spending some time quiet, alone, in your mind.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to actively say to the Lord, I'm surrendering all this to you for an hour.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it back up, I'll work hard, but for right now, I'm surrendering it all to you.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, your brain, your mind, is gonna continue to flow.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: The times in my life where I have found such ease and Sabbath have been remarkable for me.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: A few weeks ago, I was going through an important interview.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Many of you have heard about it, and um, I was sitting in the hotel room, I think I told you this, uh, and I was stressed in my suit, and I'm like doing this back and forth in the very tiny hotel room that's you know decorated from the 1970s.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um I'm like realizing that I'm just pacing back and forth, and I really didn't have a time to worry about.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had already reread over my stuff.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was pretty sure what I was gonna say to every question, although you never know what kind of questions you have, but I'm just doing this back and forth.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in my mind, I was telling myself that I wasn't studying anymore, I was just resting and I found myself pacing.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I did I literally prayed, God, I don't know if I can do this.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is all in your hands, I'm just gonna leave it there.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I walked outside.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: There was a thing we call a prayer labyrinth out there, which is uh just a concrete structure that kind of has a maze-like thing, except there's only one way in and one way out, and you just walk, you don't worry about where you're walking, not worry about anything else, you're just walking.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that practice to be remarkably peaceful when I was just able to surrender it all to the Lord and stop.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you wait for rest, it will never come.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you missed it on the screen that went away, but Hebrews.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hebrews said today, not next week, not when I get to it, not in 18 years when the baby's done with.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Today, take a break.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You will be remarkably surprised by the work that God will do in your life, inviting you into the rest He promised in the first place.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: This was God's promise to say, let it go.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Take a break.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's my prayer for you this week.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to do what we did at the beginning of the service.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Close your eyes.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that thing that you probably couldn't think about at the beginning of the service because I just threw it on you.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know what it is now.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Something you're carrying on you.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Something that's hard for you to understand or get.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I just want you to place it before the Lord.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Lay it at his feet.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's one simple sentence I'm gonna invite you to say.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus, I surrender this.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: The person next to you doesn't know what it is, but you and the Lord know what it is.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever's on your heart, Jesus, I surrender this.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Give me rest.