Bailey Newbern is a Ministry Assistant in Student Ministry at Liberty Live Church in Hampton Roads, VA. She is passionate about discipleship and leading up the next generation of girls, especially girls in middle and high school. She also specifically loves helping young girls and women navigate through depression, anxiety, and other mental health needs through scripture and prayer.
Yesterday morning in church our pastor preached about the spiritual discipline of taking a sabbath. This one always seems to strike me with conviction. It’s so easy to think that we are too busy to take a sabbath or that we are excused from it for some reason or another.
As a new wife, a soon to be mother, and a full-time employee, I find taking a sabbath to be challenging. It feels like all of my time is spent working, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, preparing the nursery, and the list goes on and on. When will all of these tasks get done if I spend an entire day resting? Let me shift my perspective. How will I be the wife, mother, and worker God has called me to be if I’m not allowing Him to revive me each week? He is my heavenly Father. He desires for me to be replenished in Him. No one can replenish us like the Holy Spirit. “The problem isn’t that we are overworked, but that we are under replenished” (Dr. Grant Ethridge).
After hearing Pastor say this, I had to ask myself, “What replenishes me?”
“What replenishes my marriage?”
In the past six months of marriage, I admit that I have not been the wife God has called me to be, and perhaps it has much to do with my lack of allowing Him to replenish my depleted spirit. It is my holy responsibility to create space where the Lord can replenish my thirsty soul. It is my responsibility to make sure the Sabbath happens, even when it feels like schedules and other obligations seem to control my life.
My husband and I have been brainstorming ways in which we can be replenished in our personal walks with the Lord as well as in our marriage with each other. Something both of us have felt convicted in is the time spent on our phones. God has opened my eyes to the brick wall that our phones can create in our marriage. To us, time away from our phones needs to be incorporated into our Sabbath. With this, time in prayer together is also an important, replenishing, crucial addition to our Sabbath as well. For us, this breaks down barriers, aligns our hearts with the Lord, and sets our focus on our heavenly mission as a family.
Taking a sabbath is our responsibility. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:8-10a).
God commands us to make this day set apart.
Are we working our hardest during the week? Are we giving to God the Sabbath day that we owe Him? No matter who we are, no matter what our position is in the church, or what our private walk with the Lord looks like, Sabbath is an absolute necessity. I pray that you give God this holy Sabbath to refill your cup! His living water is patiently awaiting you.
