The 7th Day

We read in the book of Genesis that after spending six days to create the universe, on the 7th day He rested. Further along in the Bible in the book of Exodus, God tells the children of Israel to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, on that day no one should do any work. God was instituting rest. Rest is important. In fact, we were made for rest. The average person needs 7-8 hours of sleep a night. In fact sleep deprivation is considered torture to some people. We need rest.

When it comes to me getting healthy, I've come to realize that I need rest. About a year ago, I came across a book on weightlifting by Ellington Darden, PhD. In his book he emphasized rest. He said that in weightlifting, you should push hard with the weights, but then make sure you take time off to rest. I found this interesting. He suggested that after about 6 months of working out three days a week, one should take 9 days off to rest. I did things a bit different. Every 6 weeks, I took the 7th week off to rest. I found that during that time, my gut got smaller and I lost more weight by not exercising. Weird, I know.

It shows to me that our bodies need rest. So do our minds. And so does our spirit. I have come to realize that the best times I have had in reading the Bible have been times when I can rest and relax with God's Word in front of me. When we have rest, we can recharge. We can keep going forward. Sometimes when we push real hard, we burn out. We we toss in some rest from time to time, we can have the strength to keep going on.

During this next week I will be taking some time to rest from work, from exercsiign and maybe even my diet and will be going down to Billoxi, Mississippi, to do some releif work. It is a time for me to rest from what I have been doing and help others. I will be doing some short blogs while I'm there.

Take time this week to rest--to rest form your work out, to rest from the daily grind and relax in God's Word and allow yourself to recharge.

Fitness, food, faith--Rest.

Fitness--as I said above, take time off and rest from your workouts, especially if you work out every day. Take a week off and rest. Trust in God to do what he needs to do during this time.

Food--every so often, rest from your diet. A lot of us push real hard in dietign and trying to lose weight. And then we cheat and binge on junk food. Instead, take a short rest. Don't go hog wild, but indulge once in a while.

Faith--take time to rest and listen to God. A lot of time we're working hard to serve Him and don't take the time to rest and listen to Him.