This past summer, God opened the door for me to participate in a 12-week book proposal bootcamp. I learned the door opened a week before the bootcamp was to start and I was working on some other things.
Knowing this bootcamp would require much—if not all—of my attention, I decided to spend the weekend (including Friday) before the bootcamp finishing these things. These things weren’t due before the end of the bootcamp. I just thought I would focus better if I finished them first.
We have a lot of resting and growing to do before we can perform fully. Click To TweetHowever, when I woke up Friday morning, I sensed God calling me to spend an extended period of time with Him followed by a period of rest. So, I did. Instead of finishing the tasks I had started, I cleared my schedule. I spent the next few days with Him—and I rested.
And of course, He was right.
Any extra attention—and energy—I had last summer went into that bootcamp. I wouldn’t have had that extra energy—nor performed as well—had I not taken the time to rest.
Ordering My Steps in the Lord
As Christians, we often look at rest as something we do after work, not before. One source of this understanding comes from the verses on the Sabbath, where on the seventh day, God stopped working and rested (Genesis 2:2-3). From chapter 1, we know God worked on days 1-6 before stopping and resting. Here, God rested after He worked.
And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
~ Genesis 2:2-3
This caught my attention because order, specifically God bringing order out of chaos, is a major theme of the Creation Story. One of the ways we see order in the Creation Story is through sequence.
A sequence is a first thing followed by a second thing followed by a third thing, etc., ending with the last thing. In the Creation Story, God followed a sequence of events by doing different things on consecutive days—Day 1 through Day 7. He created different things on Days 1-6, and rested on Day 7—after finishing all His work.
Yet, God called me to rest before my bootcamp.
First Comes Rest
God’s call to rest first also caught my attention because, at first, it seemed out of order. That is until I went deeper into this passage. When I went deeper, I saw that what was the seventh day for God was the first day for man. You see, man was created on the sixth day. So, the seventh day for God was first day for man (see chart below).
| God’s Days | Man’s Days | Event |
| 1 | God created light (Genesis 1:3-5). | |
| 2 | God created the Heavens, better known as the atmosphere (v. 6-8). | |
| 3 | God created the Seas and Earth (v. 9-13). | |
| 4 | God created vegetation (v. 14-19). | |
| 5 | God created the birds and marine life (v. 20-23). | |
| 6 | God created animals and humanity (v. 24-31). | |
| 7 | 1 | God rested (Genesis 2:1-3). Man rested (Genesis 2:15). |
Furthermore, each of the days on which God created were comprised of an evening and a morning (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31). God, who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:4), starts His day in the evening when humanity sleeps and rests.
The more I thought about it; the more sense it made. Optimal performance begins with rest. It’s a lot like my laptop and other electronic devices. To use my laptop, I must charge it first—at least a little. And it works best and longest after a full charge.
That’s what I believe God was doing with Adam by giving him a full charge before he started his assignments. And when I think about it, that’s what God does with us.
We have a lot of resting and growing to do before we can perform fully. Click To TweetNone of us are born fully charged in the sense of fully developed and capable of performing our assignments. We have a lot of resting and growing to do before we can perform fully. Not only that, when infants are born, there is very little they can do other than rest.
Using the laptop analogy, infants have a little bit of a charge when they arrive, but need to be fully charged before beginning to perform their assignments. And from what I learned from this Scripture and God calling me to rest first, so do we.
Part 3
Today’s article is the third in a series of articles on decision-making when creating our new lives. This series is a deep dive into Genesis 2:15-17, the passage describing Adam’s first choice. Throughout this deep dive, I extracted guidelines we can use in choosing the activities that make up our lives from the directions God gave Adam on choosing the food that made up Adam’s diet.
In the first part of our discussion on the Garden of Eden, I shared that when God put Adam in the garden, God rested him there. You see, the word translated “put” in Genesis 2:15 comes from the Hebrew word meaning “to rest.” Therefore, God put Adam in the garden to rest.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." ~ Genesis 2:15-17
That brings me to my guidelines on decision-making for this post:
Guideline 9: Choose to complete activities in order.
Guideline 10: Choose to rest before beginning your assignments.
Questions:
- Do you usually rest before or after your assignments?
- In what ways has resting before rather than after impacted how you perform your assignments?
The “Choosing Wisely” Series:
- Part 1a – Choosing Wisely
- Part 1b – Getting to the Root
- Part 1c – Fueling Your New Life
- Part 2 – A Habitat for Humanity
- Part 3 – The Order of Rest
- Part 4 – The Right Conditions for Rest
- Part 5 – What’s the Best Decision-Making Process for Creating New Lives?
- Part 6 – Five Freedoms When Creating a New Life
- Part 7 – The Risks of Giving Into Temptation
- Part 8 – How Knowledge Plays in Decision Making
- Part 9 – How Morality Applies to Decision Making
- Part 10 – Biblical Concepts of Time When Making Decisions
- Part 11 – Some Certainties We Have in This Life
- Part 12 – How Will Your Relationship End?
COMPLETE LIST OF GUIDELINES
Guideline #1: Choose activities that align with our assignments.
Guideline #1a: The availability of activities that align with our new lives depends on the level of effort we put into completing our assignments.
Guideline #2: Choose activities that support our assignments.
Guideline #3: Choose activities that provide what our lives and assignments need to live, grow, and stay healthy so that we can produce the best fruit.
Guideline #3a: Choose activities that balance the things related to our assignments that we want to do with the things related to our assignments that we need to do.
Guideline #4: During seasons of plenty, choose activities that for seasons of scarcity by storing excess resources.
Guideline #5: Choose activities that are fueled or empowered by the Son.
Guideline #5a: Choose activities that are fueled by clean energy—energy that doesn’t pollute the environment and has a positive impact on the environment by counteracting the pollution produced by “dirty energy.”
Guideline #5b: We are to engage in activities that are fueled by renewable energy—energy that is never depleted or is constantly replenished.
Guideline #5c: Choose activities that are fueled by universal energy—energy that is accessible anywhere.
Guideline 6: Choose activities that worship and serve the Lord.
Guideline 7: Choose activities that obey the Lord’s commands.
Guideline 8: Choose activities that are enjoyable and satisfying.
Guideline 9: Choose to complete activities in order.
Guideline 10: Choose to rest before beginning your assignments.
