Fully Rested | Ps. Keith Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you so much for listening today.

We hope it encourages you and inspires you.

Here's today's message.

What's going on, Celebration Family?

I pray that you all are doing well.

And I want to thank you so much for joining us today here at Celebration Orlando.

If you're here listening to this on our podcast, you may hear some elements outside.

That means that we're right out here in the streets.

Everything is good, but we really wanted to get outside as we share and participate in this moment together as a community.

For those who are joining us on our YouTube page, thank you so much.

And maybe you're part of our global family.

If you're ever in the Orlando area, we would love to invite you to join us for one of our in-person services where I think um you'll have an amazing encounter with God, but also a great experience with the rest of our community.

I'm excited for today's word.

So if you have your Bibles, I would love to invite you to join me in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

While you're turning there, if you are joining us in real time, maybe you're watching this on this Memorial Day weekend at the time when we record this, please consider taking a picture with you, your family, your community, and tagging us in the post.

We would love to share in what God is doing in and through our community together as a family.

But here looking at the text that I feel that God has kind of placed on my heart for us to dig into today.

Looking at Genesis chapter number two, we're going to start here at verse number one.

It says this it says, So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed.

On the seventh day, God had completed his work and everything he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done.

God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for he rested on it from all the creation of his work.

A lot of references to rest in this particular passage.

So, spoiler alert, that's what we're going to be talking about today.

If you're if you're taking notes, and of course at Celebration Orlando, we take notes.

I want you to write this message title down, Fully Rested.

Let's pray and let's let's jump into it.

Lord, we thank you so much for every opportunity that we get a chance to come together in your midst.

Whether we're joining you um in home in our living room, maybe we're listening to this on a podcast, guys.

We count it as an honor that you would allow us to have access to your word and community.

So Lord, I just pray over the next few moments that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear you, and open hearts to receive what it is that you want to deposit into us today.

Holy Spirit, you're welcome.

Inspire us, change us, challenge us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, for those who are part of our regular community, you know how much I really enjoy cooking.

So, yes, brace yourself.

Here's another quick cooking story, but but I promise you it's gonna it's gonna go somewhere with it.

Well, one of the things that I've loved so far about um this journey and me learning how to to cook and really explore this more, because I'm only like two, maybe three years into my whole process of learning how to cook is just learning how to pair certain things with it.

Like I'm at a point now where I'm trying to pair the the barbecue sauce with the with the pellets from my grill, and and and that's a key thing because I have one of those pellet grills, and the group the pellets themselves have their own unique flavors that then that smoke attaches to the food, which then adds a whole other dynamic to whatever it is you're cooking.

So I'm I'm really beginning to mix and match different pellets with different sauces and and just kind of allowing my palate to explore the goodness of what God has presented for me and my family.

Um I remember this one time though, um, as I'm still learning to kind of really like zero in a couple of recipes, and one of those is for my rib recipe.

It's one that I'm really trying to like zero in.

Like I got a couple things that I feel like I'm dialed in on.

That's one that I'm still exploring a little bit.

And so I remember seeing this one cool recipe.

I got all the ingredients together, I got everything situated, I got it all set up, and and the method that I use is something that's called 321.

Those in the the grilling and smoking game know what I mean.

It's three hours on.

Um you take it off, you you wrap it up, you do another two hours, you take it off, you take it out of the wrap, and then you put it in for one more hour.

So it's typically like a six-hour journey.

It's a process.

So for me, it allows me an opportunity to season everything up, put it on a grill, and then I can walk away for three whole hours and don't even have to look at it again, and then I come back and then repeat the cycle.

Well, on this particular day, I I did everything on the front end, I got my smokers started, um, I put the ribs on the smoker, and then I left.

I said I have three hours to kind of go and do what I want to do.

I left, went and ran some errands.

And then when I got back, I was like, okay, I got like about 40 minutes left, relaxed a little bit more, and then when my timer went off, I went out to my grill to retrieve the ribs so I could do the the next level of what was going to be required for the cook.

I was so disappointed to find that the ribs made absolutely zero progress.

When when I looked and I saw that there had not been any cooking that took place at all, I was a little bit confused.

Everything was turned on.

But when I looked at the little screen on my grill, it said it said that the grill has flamed out.

Now, now for my grill, what that means is is that the fire couldn't be sustained.

It had burned out.

So when I began to ask the question of like how does this happen, I realized that right next to my smoker, there is like this this area where I put all of my pellets in.

I saw that it was empty.

Like somehow I completely forgot that the last time that I had cooked, that I didn't fill my pellet dispenser up.

See, the pellets are the thing that allows the fire to continue to go.

I I made all this preparation, but because I ran out of pellets, none of it mattered.

All the preparation, all that time, all the dreaming, all the things that I really had anticipated, none of it worked because I didn't have any more pellets.

It's so interesting to me that I have this a massive, amazing grill that requires such a small thing in order for it to function.

I think it's quite interesting how that flaming out, so to speak, that uh that that moment where the grill can no longer sustain the heat because it didn't have the things necessary for it to function, it could sometimes be a little bit of a reflection of us.

Isn't it interesting how sometimes in life we can have a lot of plans, we can have a lot of recipes, so to speak, a lot of things that we want to accomplish and do.

We get all of our ingredients, we we go to school, we we check all the boxes of what is necessary, but then there's that one small thing that's missing that seems to fuel all the effort that we are putting out.

And because we don't have that, we can begin to experience that moment where we flame out, or I'll say it this way, that moment where we begin to feel burnout.

Burnout is a phrase that is very popular and it's it's not anything new, and there's actually a clinical definition for it.

What burnout is, is a physical or emotional exhaustive state that involves reduced accomplishments and loss of personal identity.

It's when we lose our interest, it's like we're we're losing momentum, we're losing focus.

Imagine that for a moment, that you have all these plans in your life, and we are finding ourselves just kind of going through the rhythm rhythms of life, and then we find ourselves experiencing burnout.

That fire isn't there anymore.

It seems as if we have flamed out altogether, and unfortunately, we can find ourselves feeling exhausted.

We could find ourselves experiencing uh a lack of effectiveness and accomplishments, and even in many instances begin to experience a loss of personal identity and interest.

Some of the signs and symptoms of burnout can be defined as this being overly critical or cynical.

It could be being incredibly critical of things.

It can also include being very irritable about things, lack of energy.

These are all symptoms that are often there when we go through prolonged seasons where we have these things and nothing seems to remedy it.

You see, I I recognize that we live in a world right now where multitasking seems to be the doctrine of the day.

Our ability to juggle and manage multiple things at the same time, it seems to sometimes be applauded.

And as much as I'm a person who loves, I love all of the technological devices that are available to us.

I I love that I have my phone and I'm able to read my Bible lab, I can check my bank account, I can, I can, I can see what's going on with work, I could check emails, I could be dialed in to text messages and communicating with family and friends.

I love that I have everything in the palm of my hand.

But but the challenge can be, but there's no relief.

There's there's not a moment where I can actually say that I'm disconnected from these things.

So in essence, we are like on the clock 24 hours a day.

Even if I'm checking social media, at some point, if I'm looking at friends and family, it weaves right into work.

If I'm if I'm trying my best to just find information, I might be looking for a coupon for me to go to a store and save a little bit of money on my next pair of Jordans, but as I'm sorting through it, I'm seeing emails and things that are related to work in a time when I'm supposed to be off.

It seems as if we're dialed in 24 hours a day and then we're wondering why we feel exhausted.

What if I were to tell you that the that small pellet and what that is to the grill is what rest is for our souls?

That it may seem like such a small thing, but if we can truly have a rhythm and experience rest, that that becomes the pellet to our souls the same way that the pellet is for the grill.

I believe that that is a significant deficit that many of us are experiencing.

I want you to hear me, family, that a regular rhythm of rest, it is found throughout the entirety of scriptures.

Like before, before human beings had turned away from God, before God had established covenant with Israel, God had already established a rhythm of rest.

That's where Genesis chapter 2 comes into place.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

See, so when we think about rest, we often hear this word Sabbath.

And sometimes we wrestle with it because we're asking ourselves, well, what does that mean for me today?

Because a lot of times our our frame of reference for it is, oh, that is that something that's in the law?

Wasn't that in the Ten Commandments?

And is that really relevant to my life today?

Does it does it even matter?

But I I want to pose a couple more questions.

Should a practicing Christian observe Sabbath?

And if we are, then why don't we observe other things that are connected to maybe the commandments or some of the laws that are written out there?

But but as I stated, these are things that were established pre-law, these were things that were established prior to God's covenant um with the children of Israel.

So I believe that there's something that God understood about his nature and what he wanted us to experience as it relates to rest.

So so before I answer that question, I want to give you uh a little bit of a biblical understanding of what we mean when we talk about this idea of rest.

See, in in the Old Testament, which is considered the Hebrew scriptures, there's two main words that are used to describe rest.

The first one is sabat, where we get the word Sabbath from.

Here's what this word means.

This word simply means to stop working.

Sabbath means to stop working.

I I want you to think of having an hourly job where you clock in and you clock out.

When you clock out, you physically stop working.

That's what Sabbath is really meant to communicate.

It's when you stop working.

But then there's another word that is often associated with this concept of rest.

And it's this word ruach or nuach, rather.

And what that word nuach mean is it means dwell or to settle.

It means to dwell or to settle.

This is a little bit different than checking a clock and checking out.

This is actually a type of rest that is more so like relaxing, being fully present.

Here's the image I want you to get.

I want you to visualize um sitting in an environment where you're fully relaxed.

It's almost like going on vacation and fully unpacking.

I I know one of the things that we often do when Megan and I travel is that if we're there for more than a day or two, Megan fully unpacks.

Like she'll get all of her stuff out, she'll put stuff in the drawers, she'll put everything up inside of um, inside of the of the bathroom.

She has all of her stuff laid out.

She fully, she fully unpacks.

And there are there are moments where I'm like, hey, we're only here for a couple of days, but in her mind, it is hard for her to fully relax, to fully be present if she doesn't have that moment where she unpacks it all.

That that is the definition in what we are describing here today.

What we're describing here today is this idea of us not only ceasing from work, but also in addition to ceasing from work, that we are fully unpacked, fully present in the presence of God.

What Sabbath is meant to really communicate to us, it is when we are able to sit still and to unpack and be absolutely present and undistracted in God's presence.

See, God set up these two concepts of rest in the beginning with the book of Genesis.

When he talks about Sabbath and when he talks about Shabbat and He talks about Nuwah, they're all connected together because God wanted us to experience this ultimate divine rest that he's speaking about.

I want you to see for a moment that after six days of bringing order out of chaos, God begins to bring man into the order that he created.

And now that all of these components are together, we see this intertwining statement of God rests and then he invites us to rest.

He invites us to settle with him himself in the Garden of Eden.

It's this powerful imagery that God has established for us that is meant to be so powerful and experiential that it literally transforms our lives.

It seems to me that this idea of resting, to ceasing from working and unpacking, being fully present in the presence of God, they seem to be things that God has woven together, and God demonstrates this for us when it says, On the seventh day he rested.

When we read Leviticus chapter 25, what we get is a glimpse in even greater detail of this image that God had for his creation.

Leviticus 25 · chapter mention

We have to remember that when man rebelled and went into sin and removed himself from the Garden of Eden, so to speak, it kind of kicked off this process of working.

In fact, one of the consequences of it is when God says to Adam, hey, one of the consequences of this is that you're gonna have to work and you're gonna have to work really hard, but even in that, there was this redemptive idea that on the seventh day I still want you to rest.

It's beautiful how even in the consequence of us rebelling against God, he still gives us this profound gift of rest, which is supposed to remind us of what Eden was supposed to look like.

Even if we take it a step further, and if we examine this idea of Jubilee, this is like the seventh year where the entire year they rested, all debts were wiped out, that everybody in bondage was set free.

Again, it's God's way of trying to remind the people of God this is what life is supposed to be like.

A life that is unburdened, a life where you recognize that I am your Lord, that that I am amongst my people, and that you can experience rest, that you can experience this sense of peace, this sense of shalom.

I believe that the message that God wants to put deep into our hearts is that we are called to work from rest.

We work from rest.

I want you to get this image that after God created everything and then he creates man, the very first thing that God demonstrates to Adam is the seventh day, is a day of resting.

Now, Adam still had work to do.

We must remember that when God said that he created Adam in his own image to be an image bearer of him, the the precursor was we don't have anyone that can actually toil the land.

We don't have anyone that can work in this garden that can represent me in this environment.

So let us make man in our own image for that purpose.

It wasn't that man was never supposed to work, it was that man was never supposed to be burdened by work.

So when that concept is understood, God demonstrates the very first thing I want you to do, Adam, before you get to work, is I want you to experience my rest.

I want you all to hear this deep in your hearts, that we are called to work from a place of rest.

That when we are rested, it is from that place that we are able to work.

Here's what I think it's it's it's important for us to grab a hold of.

That we understand that we are called human beings.

Being.

But you know what I think we've taken on?

The identification of humans doing.

We love to do so much, but we haven't done a good job of just being, being in the presence of God, being still and allowing ourselves to stop from the things that distract us and being fully present in the presence of God.

This was God's will for mankind from the very beginning.

This is why Sabbath serves as a reminder for us that God is calling us to trust Him.

See, for people who were used to working about the sweat at our brow, as it's called in Scripture, that they understood that the more that I work, the more that I get.

But somehow that that seventh day was meant to say, can you just relax and trust that I am your provider?

Because unfortunately, if we keep living in that place of the more that I work, the more that I get, then I will begin to look at myself as my provider.

I will begin to look at everything I have, and if I'm not careful, I will believe that I'm responsible for my success and I'll stop acknowledging God in it.

This is why God continuously instituted varying things for the people of God to have moments that even in busy seasons, can you trust that I am God and cease from the work and be fully present in my presence?

Can can you trust that I am your provider and that on the seventh day I'm going to provide the manna for you?

God had these ways of trying to remind his people that yes, you're going to have to work, and yes, that work can be sometimes hard, but there are moments that we still need to pause and just detach from the work and be fully present to unpack and be with God.

This is the imagery that Jesus is referring to in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

I want to read it to us.

This is what Jesus says to us.

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

Take my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

See, Jesus is the ultimate expression of what Sabbath and Jubilee and rest is really supposed to be.

And he invites us to experience it with him.

What Jesus has just described is the life that all of us are supposed to experience.

It's not a life absent of work, but it's a life recognizing that God is our provider.

It's a life understanding that I can cease from the work, I can be fully unpacked and present in the presence of God and have moments where I can allow him to strengthen and nourish me.

We understand that looking at the ministry of Jesus, that he intentionally took moments where he rested.

He is a person who absolutely demonstrated Sabbath, but beyond that, even at the end of the day, he would pause and get alone with God.

He was continuously modeling and demonstrating to us this is what life is supposed to look like.

Even when we look at God, who was profoundly powerful, not only did he rest on that seventh day, but but have we ever considered for a moment that he's the one who created days?

He's the one who created how long days are.

But what I love about what we see with God is that it says that he designated moments where he worked and there were moments when he stopped.

And when he stopped, he said, it is good.

I I heard one scholar say that when God was working in creation, he could have finished everything in what we would define as one day.

He could have, he could have worked it all out.

He could have done anything he wanted.

But even in him stopping and saying, Okay, I'm going to mark this as one day.

This is good.

I heard it said, This is good enough.

This is good enough for today.

What if we took on that posture in our hearts where we have a lot of things going on, and instead of burning a candle at both ends, that we began to establish boundaries in our lives where we said, okay, this is good enough for today.

And then tomorrow we do what we need to do, and this is good enough for today.

And then the next day, this is good enough for today.

Taking those breaks in between and let that lead us up to a place where we can truly experience Sabbath, that place of rest.

Remember, we work from a place of rest because when we work from rest, we're working from a healthy place.

I want to ask you a couple of questions.

What is your current mindset when it comes to work?

We'll pause for a moment.

What do you think about?

Do you think about is it dreary?

Is it weighty?

Is it is it something that's exhausting?

Does it fit some of the description of the things that we talked about as we were mentioning this idea of burnout, this idea of flaming out?

Think about that for a moment because what I wrestle with from time to time is when I feel a little exhausted, when I feel a little bit weary, when I feel that I'm in that opposite space of what Jesus has just described, I say to myself, but Jesus says that his joke is easy and his burden is light.

I begin to then evaluate what am I not doing in my life that's preventing me, or what am I doing in my life that's preventing me from experiencing what Jesus has described in Matthew chapter number 11?

What are those things that I need to make adjustments in?

And I gotta be honest with you, friends, more often than not, when I'm experiencing the beginning symptoms of being exhausted, being tired, you know what it is?

It's often a lack of rest.

It's a lack of saying, This is good enough.

It's a lack of working from a place of rest and hoping I can work hard enough so I can eventually begin to rest.

That's not the way that God has established it for any of us.

We are called to live from a place of rest.

We are called to work from a place of rest.

Rest fuels our calling.

And if we're not adequately resting, it'll be virtually impossible for us to maintain any level of health.

Our medical professionals, and even just those of us who are used to navigating through the nuances of illness, we understand that that rest is important in order for us to heal.

That whenever you're sick, what do they say?

Make sure you get plenty of rest.

It puts our body in a state where it is able to begin to repair itself because we're not moving around and doing too much.

If if rest helps us to heal, then maybe the lack of rest keeps us from healing.

We also know that when we look at children, we know that when they rest is how they grow more, right?

So watch this.

When we don't rest, how can We grow.

So we understand that rest helps us to heal, that when we rest, it helps us to grow.

But then also when we are rested, it helps us to focus.

Have you ever like tried to have like honest conversations or or function at any level when you're not fully rested?

Our words are slurred, we stumble, we make mistakes because we're not fully focused.

But when we're rested, a lot of times we can see things a lot more clearly, we're a lot more sharp.

Quite honestly, even as I was preparing this message, I was working on it in the middle of the night, but I was super tired.

And I spent, it took me a lot longer to write one sentence with me being tired than it did if I would have just been fully rested.

I think many times we think that if I just work through it, then I can still accomplish it.

But what if we actually did it from a place of rest?

Maybe we could be a lot more effective.

You know, I think that rest is the gift from God that we tend to reject the most.

Because we live in a culture of pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work hard nonstop.

But that was not God's intent from the beginning.

Friends, I want you to hear me that this idea of rest is not something that's connected exclusively to a covenant.

This was a principle that God had established from the very beginning.

I want you to enter into my rest.

I want you to cease from the things that pull you away from me, and I want you to fully unpack all of it and be with me in my presence.

You know, Meganai, we do have a regular rhythm of rest, a regular rhythm of Sabbath.

And typically we do this like on like Friday afternoon, evening-ish into Saturday.

It's almost like a 24 hour.

We don't look at it from verbatim for the clock, but that's kind of the rhythm that we have.

And honestly, I don't know if we could have survived marriage and and and ministry without it.

It's something that's important for us to have moments where we can just kind of detach a little bit and to be fully unpacked in the presence of God.

Well, well, for us in our ministry journey for the past five years, man, it's been it's been an amazing journey with an amazing group of people that have been around us throughout the entire journey.

But in the past five years, we've lived in three different cities and raising a family and a lot of the different nuances that go with that, which we all understand that.

We're certainly not unique in saying that we go through seasons that have been interesting.

But I think the weight that goes with it, going up to DC for a time period and helping with the leadership transition for a church there, coming down here to Orlando, dealing with a leadership transition, and then getting hit with COVID, a lot of the other dynamics that can then begin to weigh on us just a little bit, it can it could begin to take a toll on us.

So what we began to recognize is that that we heard the voice of God beginning to call us to a season of extended Sabbath.

We we refer to that as sabbatical, a time of extended rest, an extended time of relaxing and being fully present in the presence of God.

And quite actually, I I never thought it was a good time.

When God began to probe us again two years ago, I was like, well, this isn't a good time, God, there's a lot of moving parts, this isn't the best time.

Then about a year ago, same thing.

This isn't the best time for it.

We got a lot of moving parts, we got a lot of amazing things happening at the church, this just isn't the good time.

But God began to really deal with me in my heart and says, Keith, you don't ever find the time you make it.

And because I'm calling you to it, you're not responding to it, I need you to make this a priority.

That was when I began to feel more challenged than ever, is I needed to begin to create the space where I can intentionally separate from the things that pull from me so I can unpack and be fully present in the presence of God.

We are called to be human beings before we are humans doing.

Sabbatical is something that we are called to.

It's not something that we should retreat to.

Now, what I understand is when some people hear sabbatical, they think that's code word for burnout, exhaustion, and everything's falling apart.

But when God calls you to it from a healthy posture, it is actually meant to be a place that is healthy.

It's a place of bringing restoration.

It helps you to stay ahead of anything that the enemy may try to throw at you.

What I recognize God wants to do in us in our season of us going on a sabbatical is he wants us to rest, he wants us to reflect, and he wants us to recharge.

I believe those same things should be available to every single one of us when we enter into times of Sabbath, is that we rest, is that we reflect, and that we take a little bit of time to recharge.

For for Megan and I, we're we're gonna be gone from June 6th until August 1st.

And when we come back, man, we're gonna be coming back with such an amazing vision for our church.

In fact, our first Sunday back is going to be Vision Sunday, and I can't wait to unpack the things that God is going to be doing in Celebration Orlando.

I believe it's gonna change our lives.

I believe it's gonna change the city.

You are in the hands of the most amazing, capable staff we could have ever wished and prayed for.

And you're gonna hear from all of our community in regards to our staff and declaring the word of God, caring for our church, and also caring and praying for us.

So here's a couple of things that I need from every single one of you.

Here's the first thing prayer.

I need you to continue to pray with us.

Pray with us, pray for us, our church for Megan and I.

Just pray and be a person of prayer.

The second thing I want is for you to participate.

Listen to me, family.

This church is not built on me, it's not built on Megan, it is not built on us.

This is Jesus' church, and we're simply stewards of it.

What that means is us not being here does not stop the mission and the message of the kingdom of God going forward.

So, what I want from you as your pastor, continue to participate.

Don't say, hey, because they're not there, I'm not going to be there.

Please continue to participate.

What we do is for you.

Everything we've talked about, everything we've prayed about, it is for you and your family.

And I genuinely want you to participate.

And the third thing is I want you to continue to partner with us.

Continue to partner with us by showing up to our outreaches.

We have an amazing survey that's coming up.

But I also want you to continue to partner with us financially.

Please continue to be generous.

Your generosity has allowed us to have significant impact in the past, but I'm dreaming for a future that I'm going to continue to need you to partner with us.

Pray with us, participate with us, and continue to partner with us.

I want you to establish these rhythms in your life for yourself.

Rhythms of recognizing that I want to rest, rhythms of recognizing that there's times for me to disconnect a little bit, even if that means for you, setting boundaries around when you engage social media, setting boundaries around when you check your email, keeping yourself from being on the clock 24 hours a day.

I don't want any of us to flame out.

I don't want any of us to burn out.

And when we recognize that God is calling us to a rest, it means that we don't have to retreat to it because we've burned out.

That's not the will of God for any of our lives.

Let's respond to God calling us to rest so that we can work from rest and not work so hard so that we can accomplish rest.

That's the way that God had intended for us to function.

Listen, church, I love you.

God bless you.

Enter into this season of rest with us, pray with us, and I can't wait to see what God does in our community in the next upcoming months.

Thanks again for listening.

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