Father's House Blog

I wonder if you’ve ever noticed the significance of the 7th day of creation before. I only saw it recently. Let me just remind you of the order of events in Genesis chapter 1.

On Day 1, the Father creates light and there is night and day.

On Day 2, he creates an expanse between the waters and there is sky.

On Day 3, he creates an expanse under the sky and there is land mass and oceans, with all manner of vegetation growing on the land.

On Day 4, he creates the sun, the moon and the stars.

On Day 5, he creates the creatures of the sea.

And on Day 6, he creates living creatures for the land and human beings in his own image.

Then we reach the climactic day which is Day 7. What happens on Day 7? The beginning of Genesis 2 gives us the answer:

"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."

On the seventh day, God takes a day off and sanctifies the seventh day of every week thereafter, making it a day of rest for human beings too.

Now here’s the point. The very first day that human beings spent on planet earth was a day off! There was a lot of work for them to do. The Father gave them their responsibilities in Genesis 1.28

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Adam and Eve were accordingly not destined for inactivity and idleness. They were created in love and they were created for a purpose. They were created for dominion, for rule, for oversight. Yet before they embark on this mission the very first thing they do is have a day off!

There is a great truth here. Right from the beginning of time and the foundation of the world, Abba Father has wanted every human being to work from a place of rest. In our world today, most people do the opposite. They live for the weekend or their holidays. In other words, they rest from work. But our Father never wanted it to be that way round. He always wanted us to work from rest more than rest from work. The signal is sent right at the beginning of history; Adam and Eve spend their first day on the earth as a day off. They were not created to go straight to work!

There is a secret here for all those looking for a healthy, balanced life but sadly our first human parents lost sight of it. When Adam and Eve sinned, they became driven and exhausted by work. This is the curse of the Fall. As God says to Adam in Genesis 3.17-19:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

Toiling for a living and resting from work are the toxic results of the Fall. They were not the Father’s original plan for human beings.

How then are we to get back to a place of rest? The answer is through Jesus. Thanks to what Jesus did on the Cross, the effects of the Fall have been reversed. The need to earn love through performance has been nailed to the Cross. Now we don’t have to strive to earn the Father’s love through works. We simply have to put our trust in the finished work of the Cross and rest and soak in the Father’s love and amazing grace. By the Spirit of God we can experience times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord and enjoy the precious gift of rest. We can dial down every day and work from rest, knowing that he loves us, he likes us and is especially fond of us because of who we are not because of what we do. We can renounce the performance mindset and rest in our position in Christ. We can, in short, live as sons and daughters rather than orphans and slaves.

As many of us begin to embark on a summer break during the month of August we can learn once again to embrace the Sabbath spirituality of the sons and daughters of God. We can learn to enjoy the rest that comes from the perfect Father’s love. We can realign our priorities once again.

Holidays are a great opportunity to unlearn some bad habits (resting from work) and to relearn some good habits (working from rest). We were not created to wrestle but to nestle. May our Father give us the great gift of rest this summer. So let all striving cease and let the spirit of slavery leave our lives and the Spirit of sonship take its place.

Mark’s next blog will be in September.