I often wonder why I am feeling worn out all the time. I guess it’s because I seldom rest. I think I will take your advice and just chill for at least a whole afternoon or day. Take care…Chris

Good post man. Finding rest is one of the biggest challenges for me. It seems I always have something going on. I think your post points out that we have to some down time. Good thoughts!

Tony

Joshua 1:8 (New Living Translation)
Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

But as you said, even God took time to rest, just as Nehemiah did before beginning his work on the walls of Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 2:11-12 (New Living Translation)
So I arrived in Jerusalem. Three days later, I slipped out during the night, taking only a few others with me…

As I am only in ministry part-time I have a definite distinction between my ‘day-job’, which I must do to make a living, and my spiritual life which I do by choice. Even so, within my spiritual life the lines between reading for pleasure and personal study, what I do for my own spiritual growth and my work with the praise band and audio ministry at church become blurred and it can feel like I’m never ‘off-duty.’ Gordon Macdonald was a great encouragement to me with his writings for Leadership (or maybe it was Christianity Today) a few years back when he would talk about quitting. He would talk about doing just one more Sunday and then telling them he was quitting. For about a year I took one week at a time and did ‘just one more Sunday’ until at some point God’s grace came upon me and took the stress away.

Also, Paul talked about the difficulty of being married:

1 Corinthians 7:33 (English Standard Version)
But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife,

But it was clearly God’s intent for us not to be alone but to be joined in marriage:

Genesis 2:18 (English Standard Version)
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Mark 10:6 (English Standard Version)
But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’

So when a man and his wife spend time as a family it is doing God’s will and we should enjoy that time as God intended. So the message is that we shouldn’t feel guilty when we take time away from what we think of as God’s work because it was not God’s intent for us to work continually.

Proverbs 19:23 (English Standard Version)
The fear of the LORD leads to life,
and whoever has it rests satisfied;
he will not be visited by harm.