The Sabbath

This is my first post on this blog. After setting up the blog, I had to decide what I wanted to start off talking about. What would make a great first post? When I reached this topic, it wasn’t an extraordinary moment. Simply put, today is the Sabbath.  I’ve created this blog during the Sabbath during my day of resting, worshiping and in The Word. This entire idea came from me praying for a solution to reach people and for people to reach back. We are living in the last days and we keep hearing and saying that, but we are! Body of Christ, we have to do better! We have to do more! More needs to be said! More needs to be explained! So this idea of blogging to reach people came about during my prayer and meditation while observing the Sabbath.

Let’s talk about the Sabbath now. We all mention the Sabbath when we say “Even God rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:1-3), but there are several other references to the Sabbath throughout the Bible. It is even one of the Ten Commandments. My question is why? Why is it so important? My husband and I began observing the Sabbath day and felt more like we were in bondage. We were like, “We can’t do this, and we can’t do that. We can’t do this either!” So, we had to seek God and understand what exactly his purpose is for the Sabbath. My husband and I began to reach that understanding at about the same time but in different ways. I was reading through Exodus and reached the part where God was explaining that they (Israel) need to observe the Sabbath.

Exodus 16:22-30 (ESV) On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: “Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till morning.’” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you will gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day.

This is where it all made sense to me. God gave us the Sabbath day. A gift. It is good for us. It is a day of rest. He wants us to REST! I messed up because we can be so career driven, work driven and don’t want to just sit down because we “have too much to do.” That was my mistake. I was thinking from the perspective of “I can’t do anything!” when it should have been “I need to get everything done, so I can relax tomorrow!” God had Israel gather double on the sixth day in order to be prepared and comfortable on the seventh day. I thought, “That’s it! I need to make sure everything is done during the week, then on the seventh day I can rest with no worries, no still wondering what needs to be done. But this is why we have the Sabbath because if it were not for it, we would never stop and smell the roses, as they say! I thank God for the Sabbath day, a day of rest, prayer, worship, study, and just spending that time with God. We are still learning the proper way to observe the day and getting out of the habit of what was normal routine. Here are some links to help in your studies on the Sabbath that I have found helpful:
http://www.openbible.info/topics/the_sabbath_day

 http://yrm.org/Honorthesabbathday.htm

Feel free to add your thoughts!