In this day and age, taking a whole day off work each week seems ridiculous. And taking Saturday off instead of Sunday, for rest and worship?! Completely foreign. 

But when you truly know Jesus, The Sabbath isn’t foreign at all! You want to take off time to spend with Him. It isn’t just a day off work, it’s the very heart of God’s love for you. 

Obscured Truth

In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” On the surface, this sounds hostile, but what Jesus means is, “Because you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Without a true love for Jesus, the Sabbath is a burden. 

Many of us have been looking at Sabbath keeping all wrong. We see a list of dos and don’ts, because the devil has painted God as an impersonal entity with no connection to His followers. But the beautiful truth is that God is actually an individual whose heart is yearning for us to know Him. This wonderful fact is the whole point of the Sabbath. We are relational human beings because we have been created by a relational God. And God created our relationship with Him to be centered around one thing: trust.  

Brave Sabbath-Keeping

It takes a brave soul to worship on Saturday. The modern workplace isn’t always welcoming to Sabbath-keeping and you could lose your job. Your family and friends might disagree with you, causing a negative effect on your inner circle. For many, the possible ramifications of keeping Sabbath are too great. “Risk losing my job and maybe even my family? Risk losing everything? No way.” 

But to those whose hearts belongs to Jesus, it’s not. When we know the Lord, we know that His presence fills, heals and satisfies our soul. Honoring His day is worth the risks! He’s your best friend—you would do anything for Him! 

It takes humility to receive God’s love—especially on His Sabbath. He asks us to put away our work and focus on His love. It’s a complete reliance on the Heart of God; trusting in His love for you. “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. For our heart is glad in Him, because we trust in His holy Name” (Psalm 33:18, 19).

He Just Wants You

Being with the Father on the Sabbath will revive your soul. The more time we spend with the Lord, the more whole we become. God says, “…I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15). 

Above all, Jesus just wants you. You are His beloved. The Sabbath is proof of this love for you—why else would God take a whole day off work? He did it to spend time with His best friend. Adam could have been left to take care of Himself, but instead Jesus stayed and invested time and love into His son. 

The Sabbath is really very simple. Jesus wants personal and uninterrupted time with you. He said, “Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A whole day set aside for you and your best friend? It sounds almost too good to be true! 

My best friend from college lives across the country and I seldom get to spend time with her. It would be amazing to have a whole day with her each week! Imagine if this was our mindset with the Sabbath? Aching to spend twenty-four hours with your beloved best friend, never to leave His side.

This is what the Sabbath is for you! A time set apart for Jesus to invest time and love into your relationship with Him, making you holy. Because one thing is for certain, we were made to be loved by God. The Sabbath is the very essence of this love. 

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