The Jesus Rhythm

I really have a timely message for you this morning, and I want you to turn to two places in your Bible, because I know Pastor Robert does that every weekend here, and turn to Matthew chapter 11, Matthew chapter 11, and then Luke chapter 5.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention Matthew 11 · chapter mention Luke 5 · chapter mention

We're going to read three scriptures there out of Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

And I want to speak to you about a topic that I think is uh appropriate because we're headed into 2015, a few days from now.

And obviously, when we start the new year, a lot of you are beginning to consider what's important in your life.

You know, we make New Year's resolutions trying to correct some things that are wrong, trying to set some things right.

And you know, they normally last for six or seven days at least.

You know, but uh um hopefully what I'm gonna share with you today can become a part of your life in a really substantial way.

And I want to speak to you about the Jesus rhythm.

And and the reason the title is like I entitled the message this way is because I believe that Jesus lived with a rhythm and a pace.

Uh Jesus was a hard-working person.

I mean, Jesus had three years to basically save the world, and I think he did a pretty good job with that.

Uh I mean, so he worked hard, he was fruitful, he was diligent.

But have you noticed when you read the stories of Jesus that he never really got in a hurry?

But he was very intentional with everything that he did.

And for me, this has been my desire for a long time to be more intentional.

I I have found myself on a perpetual roller coaster treadmill that I can't get off of, and that's true for most of us.

In fact, I don't think many of you walked in this morning uh under great conviction for the number of naps you've been taking, right?

I mean, most of us are just busy.

We're busy.

And going into 2015, we're trying to figure out how to make sense of things, to slow down a bit, to pay attention more to our spouse, pay attention more to our kids, to obviously you're about to have the first conference where that's a time to really focus on what is God saying to me, what is God doing in me.

That takes time.

All of these things take time.

In fact, I believe with absolute certainty that most of the problems we're facing right now is because we're going too fast for too long.

That's true.

I mean, in almost every part of our life, we can point to the pace in which we're living, and that it reveals a big problem.

Let me give you an example.

For marriage, for example.

I've been married 25 years.

I know it doesn't look that way.

We were, Pam and I were married in the seventh grade, we were 12 years old.

And it was a scandal of the seventh grade, by the way, but we've survived.

It's great.

Um, but we've been married 25 years, and one of the reasons we are still friends is because we take time to stay friends.

Most of the problems that I find among married couples is because they look up one day and they don't even like one another.

They're no longer friends because friendship, intimacy with one another takes time.

I mean, date nights, if we even have date nights, turn into more like management meetings than date nights.

I mean, you think about if you if you can even block off time to get alone with one another, find a babysitter, or just get alone, you know, they turn into uh, you know, both of you with your calendar out, trying to synchronize your calendars, trying to figure out how to make sense of the chaotic pace in which we're living.

And that causes problems in marriage.

You cannot have a great marriage if you don't spend time with one another, love one another.

Let me let me ask you this question, married couples.

When was the last time you had an unhurried conversation with one another?

You know, just a lingering conversation, just, you know, just with a cup of coffee, a cup of hot tea or something sitting on your back deck or somewhere and just listening and talking and not feeling rushed through the conversation.

Most of the problems we have with our money, if you were all honest, right?

Most of the problems we have with our money is because we got in a hurry.

We did something fast.

It was impulsive.

You know, you know what the number one hour in the day where people make impulsive buying decisions, you want to hear this?

Marketing experts have narrowed it down to one particular hour during the day where people are most prone.

I should have told you this a week ago, I know it'd have saved you a lot of money, right?

Thanks a lot, Pastor Reddy, for telling us a week late.

But I'm gonna save you some money in 2015.

You know what the hour is?

9 p.m.

to 10 p.m.

Marketing experts have discovered that if they can give you an opportunity to buy something quickly, you'll do it most likely between 9 p.m.

and 10 p.m.

when you're tired, when you get in a hurry, when you forgot you have to buy something, so you get in a hurry.

And time, the the impulse to buy is there because we didn't take time, we didn't sleep on it, we didn't ask for advice.

All right, let me talk to all the men in the room.

Every study, every pastor, every study that I've ever heard says that men, in order to be mature, to grow up, to be healthy, to be to be real, men uh need really three kinds of relationships in their lives.

Every man in this room, every man watching online, we all need three kinds of relationships.

We need men who are older than us.

In other words, we need mentors, coaches, uh people that we can go to and ask for advice.

Pastor Tom Lane, Pastor Robert are both people in my lives that I go to.

They're older, they're further along.

And I ask them for advice all the time.

I have those relationships in my life, and I'm grateful.

We also need peers.

We need brothers, in other words, we need men who are in similar age, similar place in life with us, who we can cheer one another on, we can help one another, we can come alongside one another.

But there's a third relationship every man needs.

We need younger men that we're encouraging and cheering on and helping and giving them a hand up and a head start, all those things.

All three relationships are critical for every man in this room.

If you're going to be healthy and grow up and do anything significant for God, you need all those relationships.

You know what all that requires?

Time.

I mean, who has time for all those relationships when we're busy working, we're busy being married, raising kids, doing all the other things, hobbies, and then we have to make space and time for these relationships.

And that's the problem for most of us.

We simply don't have margin, space, and time.

And so we look up one day and we're lonely and exhausted and we're frustrated and we wonder, how did we end up here?

Well, let me look at go to Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Because I feel like that there's this amazing promise in Matthew chapter 11 that most of us overlook.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

You know, Jesus made us a lot of promises, right?

He made a lot of promises to us.

He promised that if we would believe in him and call upon the name of the Lord, we would be saved.

He promises that if we would pray the prayer of faith, that we it's possible for us to receive healing in our bodies.

That's a big promise, right?

He also promised that he would not leave us as orphans, but instead would send us the Holy Spirit.

If we would open up and make room in our lives, the Holy Spirit would come and not leave us alone and as orphans on the planet.

That's a gigantic promise.

Salvation, healing, the Holy Spirit.

Those are gigantic promises that if you would believe those, all those are free things that Jesus wants to give all of us.

All right, here's another big promise, though, that most people read over.

And I find that this might be the most underutilized thing that Jesus promised to give us.

Jesus promises us something really big right now in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Look at verse 28.

He says, Come to me.

In other words, make sure that Jesus is your first source.

Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Let's stop here, let's take off our church mask, let's get, let's put on our humanity.

How many of you today, if you were honest, are a bit weary and a bit burdened?

Can we just raise your hand?

Not that you didn't sleep good last time.

I'm talking about overall, life itself is kind of taking more out of you than putting back in.

So you're kind of running on empty right now.

Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

That sounds pretty good.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I need rest.

In order to do what we're called to do, we need rest.

Now I know right away, right off the bat, when I'm talking talking about rest, I pastor in Colorado, and I pastored in the great state, the Republic of Texas, for a long time.

And I know you think you're a Republic, and you are probably.

Um, and I'm in Colorado, so understand the Wild West, the independent lifestyle.

You know, our state motto in Colorado is leave me alone.

You know, we're very independent.

And and right next to Texas only in independence.

So there's this there's this thing in our culture that tells us that we have to work harder and we should be hardworking.

I'm not against hard work.

I am a hardworking person.

I'm very, I think I'm very uh productive.

I work hard, I put my hours in, I love what I get to do.

Uh but there's this sense about us that we can do this on our own.

That taking a day off is a bit of being a slacker, right?

It's almost like akin to being a slacker.

And I want you to listen very carefully.

I've come really to tell you a couple of things, and this is one of them.

We are not forsaking our responsibilities when we rest.

It is for the sake of our responsibilities that we learn to rest.

If you want to be a better husband, a better wife, a better father, a better mother, a better work, whatever you're called to do, we cannot forsake this promise of rest.

We cannot, we can't give up on this.

Jesus promises us rest so that we can be more productive, so that we can work well and learn to rest well, so that we can work well and still learn to rest well, so that at the end of our lives we don't ex, we don't, we're not exhausted, we don't stumble across the finish line, we're sprinting across the finish line.

Jesus models this rhythm for us.

And I want to share this to you in Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Go to Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 5, verses, we're gonna read verses 15, 16, and 17.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Matthew 11 gives us this promise of rest, but let me ask you a question.

Did Jesus really practice what he preached?

Did Jesus do this?

I mean, he only had three years.

And think about the life of Jesus, okay?

When we go to Luke chapter 5, Jesus's public ministry is just being launched.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

I mean, Jesus has just now come out of the shadows after really 30 years of anonymity.

I mean, we we we just celebrated the birth of Jesus, like Luke 1, Luke 2 talks about.

And then Jesus really goes silent for 30 years.

I mean, there's this one story of Jesus as a 12-year-old getting lost, his parents looking for him, but other than that, we don't really know anything really about the life of Jesus.

We know he lived in Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem, he fled to Egypt.

Uh, you know, we probably can assume that he was helping his father in his carpentry business.

We uh historians believe that somewhere along the way, Joseph, his father, died, and he, so j uh, so now Jesus is uh is the son of a single mom.

So we can assume all those things, but in Luke chapter 4, we get this picture of Jesus bursting onto the scenes, coming out of nowhere, and becoming quite a big deal.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 5, look at verse 15.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Now he has just laid hands on a man with leprosy, and a miracle has happened.

This man's leprosy falls off his body.

He goes to the temple.

Jesus tells him, don't tell anyone what happened.

Well, the guy goes and tells everyone, and goes to the temple for the cleansing ritual.

Now Jesus, the name of Jesus, who is this Jesus from Galilee?

Who is this young man from Galilee whose prophet who is speaking with such authority?

And in verse 15 it says, Yet the news about him spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.

That's an amazing scripture right there.

Crowds of people are coming to Jesus after 30 years of being in the shadows, 30 years of waiting, waiting for his chance, waiting for one sniff of success, and suddenly crowds of people are coming to Jesus.

Crowds of people, and they have healing, they need healing, they're desperate, they want him to lay hands on them the way he laid hands on the leper.

Please, Jesus, please, Jesus, please.

You can hear them crying out to him.

The demands are overwhelming.

Let's put this in your world, my world, your world, okay?

For a lot of you are a part of a company, maybe you started a business, maybe you're part of a very successful business.

And I and I'm grateful for the economy coming back.

I'm grateful for that businesses are prospering again, that we're seeing opportunities come back.

I'm grateful for all those things.

The challenges are still there for sure for a lot of people, but there's also a lot of opportunity out there.

And so the pressure that all of us feel is that we can't squander opportunities.

Once opportunities present themselves to us, we have to take advantage of them.

And I've heard this from businessmen and businesswomen.

I came out of the business world before I was a pastor.

So I understand meeting goals and hiring and firing and buying and selling.

I understand all of those things.

And I understand that when opportunities are in front of you, like it was for Jesus, the temptation for us, especially as Americans, and especially as Texans and Coloradans, is to work hard, go fast, go furious, work while the sun is up, make hay when hay is available, right?

I mean, this is what we do.

This is what we're told that is we should do.

And we look up one day and we've made a lot of money.

We have been somewhat successful, yet we don't have anybody around us that loves us, and we end up with the wrong things at the end of our lives.

Jesus has the exact same demands, overwhelming him.

People are coming to him with opportunities, crowds of people, all needing healing.

This was not a time to take a day off.

This is not a time to rest.

And yet there's verse 16 that's very troubling for all of us.

Verse 16.

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Does that sound countercultural to you right now?

I mean, think about this.

We're going into 2015.

Do you have it on your schedule for 2015 to rest?

What about next week?

What about in the month of January?

Is there any space and time in your calendar coming up?

Because this is the time, listen, this is the week, honestly, that you should be sitting down planning out 2015.

That should have already been done, but if it's not, this is a great week to do that.

You probably have some time off.

You have some space between now and New Year's.

Have you purposely planned time off withdrawing?

Because Jesus often withdrew.

That's the first thing we see here is that Jesus often withdrew.

In other words, this was a part of the rhythms of living in Jesus' life.

It was not uncommon, in other words, for his disciples to look up and say, Where's Jesus?

So the people you work with, is it uncommon for you to be gone?

Do you feel like that if you're not there, it's not going to happen?

Because if that's the case, then you will come up with excuses to stay connected all the time.

It says that Jesus often withdrew.

So as you're looking ahead to 2015, let me give you two things, or two rhythms to consider for your own lives in 2015.

Two things that if you don't plan them, they won't happen.

And I really believe this is a timely word for some of you because some of you walked in here this morning wondering what you could say no to.

And I'm about to give you an excuse to say no to some stuff.

Because Jesus said no to great opportunities.

Jesus embraced the rhythm that I'm about to describe to you.

And the first thing is that we have to get back to honoring the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is not a suggestion.

You cannot afford to miss the Sabbath.

And Sabbaths are so critical for us as followers of Jesus.

Sabbaths have been, Sabbaths are a gift from God to us for rest.

Rest comes when we regularly honor the Sabbath, when we create a space of time that requires faith to stand in.

In other words, what part of your week have you set aside a time, a stretch?

It's great if it would be 24 hours, but let's imagine that it's only a few hours, okay?

But what kind of space and time have you created this week and set it aside as this is where I am going to focus my attention on God?

This is where I'm going to receive rest from God.

It doesn't mean that you sit in a room with the lights off.

It doesn't mean you can't be active.

It just means that it's a space of time that belongs to God.

And in that space of time that I'm giving to God is where I'm going to come to God.

He is my focus, and this is where I'm going to receive this promise of rest that Jesus offered us in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Let me tell you another thing about Sabbath, okay?

For the rebels among you.

By choosing Sabbath, we are protesting and rebelling against our innate desire to be self-sufficient.

Sabbath is a protest for me.

Sabbath is where I feel like, listen, I know I am capable, I am hardworking, I am ambitious, but God is greater than any of those things.

And by choosing the Sabbath, I'm saying, Lord, you are God and I am not.

You are greater.

Your thoughts are better than my thoughts, your ways are better than my ways, and by choosing to withdraw, when it makes no sense to people around me, it would make no sense for the people watching Jesus for him to often withdraw to a lonely place and pray.

But Jesus was saying, listen, I know this, I don't do anything unless the Father tells me.

And by choosing and honoring the Sabbath, I am putting a stake in the ground.

God, Jesus is Lord of my life.

Mammon is not Lord of my life.

My work is not my God.

Money is not my God.

Christ is King.

Christ is Lord.

And by choosing the Sabbath, I'm saying, all those things will go away one day.

But God and Jesus, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father right now, and I am his and he is mine.

And Sabbath is when I withdraw to prove my point.

Sabbath is when I choose to worship something other than myself.

Sabbath.

And Sabbaths are for rest.

That's one thing we have to plan out a Sabbath.

Hours during the week.

Hours.

And I write about it in the book.

I'm not a legalist, okay?

I'm not talking about legalism.

I'm talking about revelation that you get on the Sabbath.

Here's a second thing.

Vacations are not for rest necessarily.

And most people violate the Sabbath and then they go on a vacation with their family, hoping to make up all those Sabbaths that they've missed.

But vacations are not necessarily restful.

Vacations are for recreation, for fun.

And we need to plan some fun.

Let me ask you a question.

If I were to interview the ten people who know you the best.

Alright?

Think about those ten people that know you the best.

Would they say that you're a fun person?

Come on.

You're fun, right?

Smile if you're fun.

Alright, because vacations are when we pull away and have fun with our family.

You know what?

Right now in America, though, by the end of this year in just three or four days, there's gonna be over 300 million unused paid vacation days in America.

300 million unused paid vacation.

I mean, your company is paying for you to go away and have fun.

300 million days in America that will go unused this year.

And therapists now are discovering what they call the work martyr complex, where people are literally using this like as a badge of honor.

I shared this with a group of business owners not long ago in my city, talking to them about giving rest and Sabbath and rhythms to their employees.

And this this guy walked up to me and said, just yesterday, just last week actually, he said, one of my salespeople walked in and sat down in front of me and bragged to me.

He said, I haven't had a vacation day in two years, and he was bragging about it.

I mean, I'm sure his family is really, maybe they're glad that he's not going on vacation with them.

Maybe, I don't know.

Maybe, maybe it's better for you not to go.

Maybe it's more fun when dad's away, but I doubt it.

Listen, I've I have sat at the deathbeds of scores of people in 20 years of pastoral ministry.

And I've never heard one man or woman say to me, I wish I had not spent so much time with my family.

I just feel like I just spent so much time with my kids.

I've never heard them say that.

They've all the same, they all have the same regret.

I wish I'd spent more time with the people that I love.

And yet we have this work martyr complex, you know, that, you know, that somehow working hard is this badge of honor.

And I do believe in working hard.

Just not at the expense of my at the expense of my family, my kids, my wife, my children.

My children are teenagers.

They're 16 and 14, they're gone in a few years.

My window of time is shutting with them very, very quickly, and I know that.

What are they gonna say about dad?

That dad had a mistress?

Name work.

Or was dad around?

Was dad available?

Was dad accessible?

Oh man, I want to be accessible.

I want to be available.

I understand.

Here's the trick for men and women.

You know, when your kids are teenagers, that's typically when you're in your highest income potential, also.

About the same time your kids arrive at 12, 13, 14, and 15 years old is when we as adults have our greatest opportunities to make money in our 30s and In our 40s and our early 50s.

That's our highest income potential at the same time when our kids need our most amount of time.

And this is the trick.

This is the balance that we all have to fight for.

But it's a fight worth fighting, it's a conversation worth having.

Vacations are for recreation, for remember when moments.

And listen, I believe that workaholics are killing as many families as alcoholics, yet we have demonized one and celebrated the other when they're both killing families.

Vacations are for fun.

Sabbaths are for rest.

Here's the second thing we see in this story about Jesus.

He often withdrew to lonely places.

He often withdrew to lonely places.

In other words, Jesus knew how to disconnect.

Do you know how difficult that is right now in our digital world?

Everywhere you go, there's free Wi-Fi.

They're putting free Wi-Fi now in your car, which I thought was an insane idea.

Now we got Wi-Fi in the car, wherever you go, we can't disconnect anywhere.

Let me ask you a question: where is there, do we have any sacred spaces left?

Is there any place that's sacred and quiet alone?

We can't find anywhere that we that we're disconnected anymore.

And I think that's a problem.

Do you know right now, and you can uh the studies have just come out, that one of the things that's causing teenagers, let me pick on teenagers for a minute and their parents, because I have them.

One of the things that's causing teenagers not to sleep well at night, losing, you know, REM sleep is rapid eye, rapid eye movement, REM sleep is where we find the healing, nurturing sleep that we need every night.

You know what's causing the number one cause for teenagers not getting REM sleep?

They're cell phones.

Because their brains are actively listening for alert signals, tones from their phone, text messages.

And it's it's keeping them up.

Their brains are wired to listen to it.

In fact, I believe we have taught our kids to listen for cell phones better than the voice of the Lord.

And so we don't allow cell phones in our bedrooms at our house.

And my kids sleep great.

They put their phones up.

Mom and dad do not have their cell phones, we don't have our cell phones in our bedroom either.

My kids are not allowed to have their cell phones in their bedrooms.

You know why?

Because it keeps you from sleeping right well.

Alert signals are going off, phones are going off all the time.

Midnight text messages, and they wake up.

You know why your kids are cranky in the morning?

Don't blame it on anything other than that.

Their brains are never getting to a place of sleep because their brains are actively listening for cell phone signals, alerts going off, cell phones.

It's true.

Google it.

So my question is, where are we?

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places.

Let me ask you, where's the lonely place for you?

Where do you have any sacred space in your life where nothing can bother you, nothing can disturb you, where the phone goes away, where there's this divine conversation with the Lord.

Because Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray.

And prayer is this divine conversation that happens in a disconnected place, in a place where you are disconnected, where you have withdrawn for the purpose of seeking God.

I have come away.

We sing these songs about coming away with you, getting away, withdrawing, often withdrawing to lonely places so that we can have divine conversations, not digital conversations, divine conversations.

And this is the rhythm 2,000 years ago that Jesus was living out in front of us.

And let me show you the effects of this, okay?

Go to verse 17, because I think there's something fascinating here in verse 17.

And I and I hear back from a lot of people who say, Pastor Brady, listen, I love that.

It's a great, it's a very sweet message about getting away, resting.

I had a single mom tell me this, you know, a single mom says, Pastor Brady, I'm working two jobs, I have three kids.

Um, that sounds really sweet to get away and have a Sabbath day.

She says, but the only time I have by myself is in the bathroom, and I have to leave the door open then because my kids are tearing up the kitchen.

I get it, I understand that.

There's seasons of time.

I had another mom, she was in her 60s, she's caring for her elderly mother who has Alzheimer's, and she says, I can't, I cannot get away for hours at the time.

I am the chief caregiver for my mom who has Alzheimer's.

So I understand, listen, there are pressures on us that are real, and I'm not trying to marginali or minimize at all some of the pressures that we're feeling, real pressures that we're feeling.

What I am saying to you is this God wants to be with all of us.

And I said to each of them, listen, look for the gift of space and time every day in your life.

The gift that God wants to give us.

If God so loved the world that he sent his son, God so loves us that he's going to send us time.

He will send us spaces, time.

It may be minutes, it may be hours, it may be minutes though, but there is a gift that God wants to give each of us every single day.

And it's the gift of separation, it's the gift of alone, it's the gift of withdrawing and being with him.

And let me show you the result of this in verse 17.

One day, okay, verse 15, crowds of people, a lot of them needed healing.

Verse 16, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Look at verse 17.

One day, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of Allah who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem were sitting there.

Back to the business owners, just for a moment.

Don't let the enemy talk you out of rest and Sabbath.

Don't use the excuse that if I withdraw from what I'm doing to connect with God, that when I come back, it's all going to be falling apart, it's all going to blow up, it won't be there.

They were back for Jesus.

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed, and guess what?

The crowds returned.

If God starts your business, God will grow your business.

Did he start it or not?

Did he give this to you or not?

Did he give you this job or not?

Did he put you in this position or not?

Jesus, by faith, withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

And in verse 17, when he came back from those lonely places of prayer, guess what was waiting on him?

Opportunities were still waiting for him.

But there was something remarkably different.

Look at the last part of verse 17.

And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick.

So I've come to tell you one thing, okay?

Here's the one thing I want you to hear.

When we allow God to be present in our rest, when we withdraw and allow God to come to us and be present in our rest, he will become more present in our work.

Listen, here we are on a Sunday morning.

You want God to be present with you this week?

You want to go to school with the power of God on you?

You want to go to your business with the power of God?

You want to go into your place of employment with the power of the Lord present with you?

We have to make him present in our rest.

And then he's present in our work.

You can't substitute one for the other.

You can't live out of an empty cup.

See, the Jewish people, they celebrate the Sabbath in such a beautiful way because they have, if you've ever seen a Shabbat meal, like a on sundown on Friday to sunset on Saturday is the Sabbath time in the Jewish week.

One of the things they do when they have their meal on Friday night is they have the Kiddish cup, the K-I-D-D-U-S-H Kiddish cup.

Okay, they put the cup with a saucer in the middle of the table and they pour wine into that cup until it overflows and spills out of the cup onto the saucer, and then the dad normally takes the saucer and drinks the wine from the saucer.

Saying to his family, This day is our day of Sabbath.

This is when God pours into our lives, and the spillover of our lives is what we're going to use now for ministry for life.

But we're not going to live our lives with an empty cup.

We're going to live now from the overflow of God.

And so they pour the wine into the cup, and the cup spills over into the saucer, and then they take the saucer and drink from the saucer as a sign of saying, This day, on this Sabbath, we are allowing God to fill us so full so that when we go out from here, we are drinking now and living out of the overflow of what God wants to do in our lives.

Also on the Sabbath, they say to one another, Shabbat Shalom.

I've been in Jerusalem, walking the streets of Jerusalem on Sabbath, and you'll hear the Jewish people speaking to one another, Shabbat Shalom.

It's the way they greet one another on the Sabbath.

And so I began to research, I heard it, and I just was so intrigued by that, Shabbat Shalom.

You know what Shabbat Shalom means?

It says, May God be present in your rest.

And may you find rest in God alone.

So my prayer for all of you this morning is this May God be present in your rest.

And may you find rest in God alone.

Shabbat Shalom as you go into 2015.

May God be so present in your rest.

May you find this Jesus rhythm of living.

And may God be so powerfully present in your work and the assignment that God gives you.

May there be a noticeable difference in the way you're living your lives.

Shabbat, shalom.

Can I pray for you right now?

Can we pray together?

We thank you for the gift of Sabbath.

We thank you for the gift of rest.

Father, I pray today across this room and for all of those at every campus and all of those watching online, I pray right now, Shabbat Shalom.

May God be present in their rest.

May you come now and fill their cup so full that it spills over into the saucer of their life.

May they live with an abundance of your presence in 2015.

And may you be more powerful and more present in their work than they've ever been.

Lord, may everyone know you and hear you and be aware of you more than ever in 2015.

Shabbat Shalom.

Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.