Rest

Welcome to Hillcrest Chapel audio.

We hope today's message will help you grow.

Good morning everybody.

How are you?

Delighted to see you.

If I haven't met you yet.

My name is Christian Lindbeck.

I am the very, very, very grateful lead pastor at Hillcrest with an outstanding team of pastors.

We're glad to have you here this summer.

Lots of people moving to the area and looking for a place to call home a faith family.

So if you've got any questions this summer, just look for anybody.

See up here, ushers, greeters at the door out at the info.

Stan.

Uh, we'd love to answer them and then come fall.

It gets a little bonkers.

Everybody comes back, all the students come back and we'd love to have you be a part of that.

It has been a really fun summer together.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

Uh, speaking of things that are coming to an end for the summer, we put this room into the round, which I've loved.

Not everybody but me a lot.

Um, but, uh, we'll put this thing.

Thank you.

We'll put this thing back together for fall so that we can host lots of people here, but it's just been an outstandingly community based summer.

Uh, the meals, this proximity, the ability to look across the cu has been really meaningful to me and I hope it's been good for you and that you've met or noticed or just awkwardly seeing people that you haven't seen before and, uh, that you have enjoyed it.

Uh, the series has been a lot of you guys love this outside series.

Yeah, this has been really neat.

Um, I just kind of all summer long unpacking our relationship to the creator through the creation and uh, it's been just a, just a perfect fit for us.

We've really liked it.

I wanted to remind you that each week we've kind of given you this verb, right?

An action for you to go do outside.

If you came in early and saw all the pictures, if you're on social media, you've seen all the people doing these things.

Um, at the beginning we gave you these sheets that have all of the action verbs on them.

If you didn't get one.

I want to make sure they were available.

One more time.

There'll be at the info stand there at that little table back there.

Snag One and then you can kinda, if you're like me and you love checking off a list, you can did it, did that one, did that one.

Uh, but whenever you can get to it, summer's not over and we really encourage all of these opportunities for you to be outside this week.

And only two left.

Like I said, this week we get to drift into another non traditional topic.

I think these are not topics like eat wouldn't be your typical church, but that was a good one by the way.

I enjoyed that one quite a bit.

Um, these wouldn't be your typical church topics, but again, today we drifted into another one that's unexpected and that would be to rest or to sleep or to nap.

Where does and in particular outside, where does sleeping, resting, napping fit into the creation and the way we're designed?

I was thinking, Tim's the mountain guy.

I'm the food guy.

I have to think on staff who should have been the automatic nap guy because it is not me.

Uh, I am a bad sleeper by the way.

This is like self preaching message.

I'm a, if you are getting to know me, I'm an atrocious sleeper.

Those of you that know me know I don't sleep on Saturday nights.

I don't even think about sleeping on Saturday nights.

Uh, I just, during the week, I'm that guy and I walk around my house at 2:30 sorta thing.

Once I'm awake, my mind is active.

I'm making lists.

I literally do that in the middle of the night.

Uh, so I have a hard time resting, but there is great purpose to rest and I think being up in the middle of the night gives me lots of opportunity to think about why God designed as this way.

Why did, why did he make us to need rest?

Why does he do this to us?

So that sounded bitter and I didn't mean it that way every day.

Why is this a mandated part of who we are?

And I was thinking like, why do it this way?

I want to suggest he certainly didn't have to.

He could have designed us anyway that he wanted to.

He didn't need to make it so that we regenerate, um, all night for eight hours of sleep that we take naps during the day.

He didn't need to mandate that there'd be one day of the week that we rest, that we focus on rest as a sabbath, but he wove into who we are, like into us physically, this need to regenerate, through resting.

And I was just thinking about that.

He doesn't rest right?

So before he made creation, that means he just imagined this thing up for us, right?

This is a part of the design.

We get the biologically we're designed that we need to rest, but we don't have to suggest that he couldn't have made us in a way that didn't require it, which means he had intent.

And that's what we've been saying all throughout this series.

What was the intent of doing it this way?

Why do you think he made us this way or designed it that way?

And this morning I want us to ask the question why rest?

Why Sleep?

Why naps?

Why are this, and I'll say it carefully, inherent sort of weakness, this thing that we must do to go on living and regenerating.

Why did he design us a this way that I was thinking too, that it's funny that he mandates rest of the Bible and he makes it so clear, but the Bible also goes out of its way to demonstrate how preciously short life is it.

You think about that, James Four, four.

He says, who are you?

Consider your life.

You're just a mist.

It comes and then it evaporates.

David cries out in the psalms a couple of times, Lord, I want to be wise.

Show me how short and precious are the number of my days.

So Jesus, God says, look, I've given you the small gift of life.

It's precious.

The days are preciously short.

Each moment and our is precious.

Consequently, I'm going to make you spend a third of them unconscious.

I had just bought, right?

See, now you're like, that is interesting.

Like how productive could we be if for one third of our life we weren't effectively a sack of sand?

Just think you could have like a secular job and a ministry job, or just think of all the missions work that you could do or all the productivity that you could have if you didn't need to rest, he could have made it that way.

He could have said, I only give you 90 precious years.

And so I want you to spend all of them awake, tuned into me praying and going about my work.

But he does not say that he's given us this intentionality.

I want you to rest.

In fact, in the middle of our productivity, there are several suggestions that you might rest.

You might take a nap in the middle of your productivity.

Um, I've read, and I'm sure you have too, that there's some people that have been rumored, like Davinci and Tesla, not the cool new tesla, but Tesla, the one, you know who power.

Okay, we got that right.

So, uh, that they would, they were so productive that they would only nap.

Have you heard this before?

Uh, they would nap like two hours and then go to work the nap two hours.

And we're supposed to marvel at that being a good thing.

Believe it or not, people have tried it like, I want to be as productive as Divinci.

Yeah, that's what's going to help you being exhausted.

It's going to make you dementia, uh, because that's what they're thinking.

The value of life must be this like what I'm doing, and it would appear from the very design of who we are and the way creation works that God does not value life the same way we do it would seem that he does not value what we have made it a rat race of accomplishment.

But being that it is precious, it seems to me that he is designed a precious preparatory school.

I have made this short window of your nearly infinite life where you're going to learn things about you and me and the way we work together in this beautiful gristmill, this classroom I call being alive and I want to teach you things about that can only teach you there, but it is preciously short.

So rest must be huge.

Like work must be huge.

One third, right?

Rest must be huge.

He intends, if life is school, then he intends to teach something significant of one third.

It is meant to be asleep and have one day a week is meant to be dedicated to it and if we're called out and encouraged to nap to rest in the middle of our productivity.

So if life has this great school and rest is a lesson this morning, I want to ask what is learned?

I mean, I don't know about you.

I don't do a ton of learning while I'm right.

What is learned that God has designed sleep and rest into who we are.

I think that was probably a ton of things that are learned, but because I'm a pastor this morning, I'm going to give you three because there's always three, right?

The number that works and I like to tell you it's trinitarian.

So just settle in with this biblical.

Uh, I was trying to think what are three primary lessons like, okay, you designed this asleep.

What is it you're trying to teach us in sleeping?

And I think the first thing that he is trying to teach us this sleeping is, this is for all of us.

And so when I say you, I mean me.

Maybe I'll just say we, we are not as important as we think we are.

Are you ready?

The world will go on without you and me that some of you who are like no sweat.

And there are some of you who are workaholics who won't leave.

Your office, won't leave your job, won't set it down because you think if I leave it will break.

Guess what?

It won't.

Here's the grand lesson.

It's like a ritual confessional humility.

Everyday you must die essentially, right?

I mean what a sleep except for uncontrolled descent into near death.

You are totally out of control.

Something about it is confessional.

Humility says I'm not in control and the world will go on without me.

I'm a couple of passages that I thought about was thinking that one is I want to read to you psalm three, five, and I'm going to come back to three, six and a minute, but I love this shortly and I'll be in the songs a couple of times a day because of David's context.

They've says, I lied down and I sleep right, but I wake again because it is the Lord who wakes me and sustains me.

I love this sort of.

I go to death.

I am out of control in the death and I am out of control, and the recovery like you have no ability to wake yourself up, right?

Just like you don't put yourself to sleep.

You don't wake yourself up and I love that God has woven into creation what I call ritual confessional humility.

If you think you're a big deal, going to sleep should help divest.

You have that idea.

Your first, like I said, for a third of your day, you become a sack of sand.

The world will carry on without us.

There's an acquiesce.

I was.

Do you remember that?

There's a creepy children's prayer.

Now I lay me down to sleep.

Pray the Lord my soul to keep love that we say this to kids.

If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take now, profoundly creepy, yet probably a truth we should wrestle with, Lord, it is out of my hands.

I am not in control.

I'm absolutely fundamentally not in control of one of the most fundamental things of my life.

There's this built in confessional humility, a lesson built in to your day.

Uh, so if the first lesson is a, we're not a big deal, the world will go on without us.

I think the second lesson is theological.

I think the second lesson is we are not God and he is.

So the first one is the world will go on without you.

The second one I think, don't you notice that he designed and ontological difference between us.

He says that this is psalm 1:21.

It says, the one who watches over you will not sleep.

The one who cares for you and guard you, he will not slumber.

I think that the implication is so you go ahead and sleep.

I don't sleep.

This is like a.

This is a primary difference between us and God.

I am absolutely, unequivocally 100 percent all the time, sovereign and control, and you aren't.

Now what I say, you aren't that part say it sounds negative, but I think that the corollary to it is so you go ahead and relax.

You don't need to be right.

I give you the gift of not being God all stay, all aware, all stay, all observant, all.

Watch every heartache, all know everybody that's in trouble, all handle every pastoral concern.

I know what's going on at the building.

Don't worry.

I'm also watching an Africa, Indonesia, and at your home, why don't you go ahead and sleep.

I designed it that way as a gift for you.

Um, an interesting psalm, another psalm to read that I will connect with it.

Uh, it will be som for it.

I'll come back around to it.

But I was thinking about like what are illnesses?

Because I already defined our illness as being like this.

Somehow an idea that we have a sickness, a chronic tendency to think that we are in control and that our work is indispensable and if that's our sickness.

Jack Packer said it this way.

I loved it.

I was reading an article of his sleep and he said, if that's our sickness, here is the cure, so to cure us of this disease of thinking we're in control of our work is indispensable.

God turns us into a helpless sack of sand once a day.

How humiliating to the self made corporate executive that he asked to give up all control and become as limp as a suckling infant every day.

See now how God has designed a parable of the limitations of humanity and how he has made it clear that he is.

I think this is by the way, both corrective.

I said again and encouraging since he is God, we can go ahead and laid down the burden.

Our work isn't as big of deal as we thought it is and we have the freedom of letting him be God.

This confessional rest in him that declares his sovereignty, and for me, that is the one that leads straight into the third thing that I think is the gift part.

If the first our little corrective, then the third should be the most encouraging is that sleep is a daily unnecessary reminder that we can trust God and rest.

If the second point was that he is sovereign and the first point was that we're not as big of a deal without accomplishing as much as we might think that I think the third outcome of that is that we can enjoy rest even in the most difficult or stressful of circumstances.

Um, but I think of that, I think of people saying to me, and I will, I'll try not to name any workaholics here because Arwen, um, but they say, but you don't understand.

If I don't go in today, this project will not get finished.

You, you don't understand Christian, this is a very important investment.

If I take a sabbath rest, this investment won't get finished and, and millions of dollars will be lost.

Uh, if you, if I take this vacation, I will lose my position at my company.

This is the kind of place where you have to keep your hand on the steering wheel all the time.

I can't possibly take a vacation.

You don't get it.

You're a pastor.

You don't live under those kinds of stresses.

I, I'm, I hear those sorts of things.

And so this is why instead of comparing your worries to mind, I'm going to compare them to David's.

And so I pick up again and psalm four, and I'll refer back to psalm three, but let's begin in psalm four, verse eight, Psalm Four, verse eight says this, he says, in peace, I will lie down and sleep for you alone.

Lord are the one that makes me dwell in safety.

My only safety comes from you.

Now in that line taken alone just sounds like he's declaring, oh, it's in you, Lord are my safety and my provision comes from.

But the context of Psalm three and four is that he is surrounded by his enemies who are seeking his life.

He is running for his life everywhere he looks.

Somebody is trying to kill him, so if I go back to context and I read verse six of three, it says, you just lives.

I wake because loads stages.

I will not be afraid though.

Tens of thousands of sale me on every side, so let me paraphrase.

Even though somebody is hunting me to kill me right now, I'm going to lay down and go to sleep.

I'm going to sleep like a baby.

I'm going to take a nap.

And you might say, David, are you crazy?

Like people are hunting you to kill you?

And David says, I don't make my own safety.

The my provision does not come from my much labor, but it comes from the fact that God is my safety.

Now is this saying David didn't do anything?

No.

When it was time to work, he worked, but it was time to rest.

It says, I laid down to rest.

How can I rest?

How can I take a break?

Can't possibly walk away from this project right now because that is the Lord who sustains me.

He's the one who gave me safety in the first place.

The ability to even do this job or he came from his hand and so I will rest safe and secure real world, immensely practical.

Rest.

So again, we've said all of this series.

What could it be that God was thinking when he designed it this way?

What did he have in mind?

That he made food delicious or mountains terrifying, or they didn't made spiders and kittens at the same time like what was it?

He was thinking, what was he trying to teach us?

I think we learned something profound in this very baseline thing that we do to rest to nap.

We learn.

The world goes on without us.

Take a break.

We learned that God is God and we're not so we can let ourselves off the hook and we learned that rest is a gift given from him, meant to be enjoyed.

Even in what you think the most responsible thing to do would be for you to go back to work and I want to tell you the most responsible thing for you to do would be to rest and give it a break.

It would be a theological confession that would be good for your body.

Well, what about it being outside?

It seems like the whole series that have been some like when we say walk outside, that's pretty easy.

Tim Got Walk and climb, which I think is unfair.

I got taste and rest, right?

A taste.

I had to scratch that one.

Right.

So what about rest outside what?

I thought all, all research, if there's anything to resting outside and I thought well that will be a dead end, but I'll make something up.

I'm shockingly not a dead end.

It turns out there is piles and piles.

This growing bed of research.

Yeah, I did that.

You didn't notice.

I said drifting to sleep before.

Come on, stick with me until he, uh, yeah.

That demonstrates that rest outside is profoundly beneficial.

That sleep outside is better than sleep inside out.

By the way, a quick little aside here, hasn't it been fun during this short series to see that we're designed to be outside?

Everything we've looked at has been scientifically empirically demonstrated to be better outside.

It turns out that the creator made us to be part of the creation and not sequestered from it.

We have found in every category, walk, climb, cultivate, think, uh, and even rest that do.

Being outside in that moment makes it better.

Timid.

I had been cracking up.

We wish we could share with you all the research, but we'll walk down to each other's office and be like, did you know this about being outside?

Last week we were cracking up dirt.

It turns out, you know who have all been at you, wash dirt off you all the time.

Turns out dirt can be largely beneficial to.

We are.

We're clean except obsessed culture and it turns out dirt.

There's actually things now.

There's bad dirt too, but there are things in dirt that can be highly beneficial to you.

Tim and I have been trying to write all of these messages outside and we're like, do you feel way more creative when you're outside?

Like, ideas come to be faster.

We both agreed.

We're like, great, what do we do in February?

Like know all these benefit after benefit after benefit of being outside.

Because we're designed to be outside, so I thought what could there be to being resting or napping or sleeping outside and like I said, just an immense amount of research.

First thing I was fascinated, you know that in most Scandinavian countries it's still tradition to nap your babies outside all year.

[inaudible] I don't live there, but I'm assuming it gets cold in the winter.

This seems counterintuitive to me.

They're like, oh, to bundle the kids sleeping outside.

It's better for them to nap outside there and then people thought they were nuts until they studied it and turned out that it was a healthy and beneficial for these children to Napa side.

Well then I started googling around what other kind of benefits are there for napping outside and I'll post a couple of the articles.

I can't say everything, but let me just rattle off a couple that I found interesting about and this goes for taking a nap or sleeping outside and in fact there's a couple of websites that are like change your life, sleep outside for one week.

Like how you can change your entire life.

I want to say again, I think these are particularly fascinating for a younger generation, and this doesn't play as much in Bellingham because we're outdoors-y uh, but 93, I just read the statistic, brand new, 93 percent of the average Americans time is spent indoors.

Ninety three percent by 20, 50, more than 64 percent of people will live in cities with no access to nature.

They have to leave the city.

So if we're designed to be in creation and it's a benefit, isn't it fascinating that 93 percent of our time is spent out of it and that more than 64 percent of us will live away from it.

So I think these are interesting questions.

So let me just rattle off a couple.

Number one, it turns out sleeping outside.

Again, I'm not this, I'm not making these up.

This is empirical.

This is not coming off a Christian website that wants to prove something.

Uh, this is just sleep research.

Number one is sleeping outside resets your circadian rhythm.

You know that because I didn't, uh, literally like the, you're awake and sleep cycles get set not just by light exposure, but something about sleeping outside, reset circadian rhythm in human beings.

Uh, interestingly though at will because of light exposure repair, Melatonin production, he has ever taught you ever taken like a Melatonin pill because you can't sleep?

No.

No.

Okay.

Just me crazy person.

So.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

A Melatonin, your body produces it naturally.

When you sleep outside, it fixes that cycle and goes back to reproducing the correct amounts of Melatonin.

Only from sleeping outside.

It look at helps depression.

It helps anxiety, it restores peace and mental balance.

And I know that sounds like I just said the most hippie thing ever, but it turns out like this is the fun thing is they found out just seeing a real tree lowers your blood pressure.

Did you know that just seeing a picture of a real tree lowers your blood pressure?

Well, as I've been looking at us, there are places where finding a real tree as hard.

There they are, right?

So we are surrounded.

Turns out.

So if you combine trying to rest near and insight of a tree, it actually lowers your blood pressure and increases the likelihood that you will nap and rest well again, helps with blood pressure and depression and boost your immunity system.

Now, stick with me, I might mispronounce this, but plants produce an error born l a, I guess it would be a chemical called fighting sides and some scientists can come correct me on this, but it turns out when you're outside and even sleeping, you breathe these in and that they have an immune impact on you that simply being outside now they would say resting outside when your body is recovering and breathing this in helps with your immune system.

Again, not making this stuff up.

These are true facts.

I'm number five.

It improves your brain function.

So again, who knew that a fresh air outside, when you are outside, you tend to process more oxygen, process more lactic acid and air quality is higher for you than processed air inside, which is detrimental to your sleep.

So just the very fact of sleeping outside in that air is more restorative and good for your brain.

It improves rest quality, those who are studying to sleep outside and then slept inside, slept considerably better outside, even if uncomfortably.

Um, I liked clay creases you can use our mind, increases the sense of all harmony and connection to the creation.

I read an article here about a Japanese practice called Shinran Yoku, which means to take a forest bath.

Now, this doesn't actually mean to take a bath in the forest like it sounds, but being in the forest you are bathing in the environment of the forest.

And so it's a long tradition to go out on the forest to take a nap, to rest or to sleep or to be present in the forest because the shouldn't run.

Yoku restores who you are.

So as it turns out, there's this, this, that's seven out of a few excellent benefits for us to rest, sleep, to recover outside.

I say again, it's almost like we've been designed this way, right?

It's almost like somebody thought it out this way, that we're meant to have a connection with the creation that is fundamental to who we are and that each time we discovered this, the pace, the context, the food, the rest, each of these, we're discovering something about the fine detailing of the Creator who made it this way, and so this week we are trying to give you another very simple assignment and by that we don't mean that you have to go out and do it right away, but we're hoping that sometime this summer you will take the opportunity to go outside, take a nap, and to rest, and we start to think and each time we've tried to give things that anybody could do.

So let me just give you four simple ideas as soon as you can.

Why not go take a nap under the swaying trees, have a branch, maybe like an adapalene sunlight.

See if it restores you.

See if it's a good time to pray and talk to the creator.

See if that rest is restorative to you might set up a tent and sleep outside.

I'm not going to do that, but some of you would maybe love that.

I'm like a hammock and nap outside kind of guy.

I was thinking maybe both of those would be difficult for you.

You could just pull your car over, roll down the windows and let a fresh sea breeze blow through your car and just take a 20 minute nap in your car and smell the fresh air and thank God for the creation and be glad that you live next to the ocean and let it be restorative to you.

The last thing I was thinking, I think I just struck me that a few people needed to hear this today.

Make sure you take a sabbath rest.

Now, it's ironic because I say this, those who struggle with Sabbath rest may not be here, so if you know and love them and you were here without them, encourage them that it is not lazy to rest.

It's designed.

It is a lesson that is good for your body and your soul, and it is a theological declaration that the thing that you feel is most important is something that God can be involved into.

How leave you a psalm 27, two, and that says in vain, do you rise up early and stay up late toiling for food to eat, for the Lord has granted sleep to those he loves, and so it seems to me that God may be less impressed with early mornings and late nights and never ending toil.

Then he would be with us learning to cast all our fear and anxiety on him to take a deep breath to rest outside and the thing that he made for his sake.

Amen.

This next song gives you a chance to rest yourself to consider the message and the good gift.

Hmm.

Thanks for connecting with no question.

For more info on this and other services, go online, do you go chapel.com or visit us in 1900?

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Any Sunday morning, nine or 11:00 AM.