The Spiritual Practice of Rest and Secrecy

There are many mysteries in the story of creation. One fascination is that after He had created all that He created, God looked around, considered all His work, and took a break.

Genesis 2:2 says, “He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.”

The account goes on to say that as God rested, and contemplated His resting, He determined that taking a break from His labors was so important that He should sanctify—declare holy—the practice. Verse 3: “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work.”

At first blush, it would appear that God was tired after working a six-day, work week. But that can’t be. God doesn’t get tired.

So what was so valuable, or important, about resting that it prompted God to call His day of rest holy? Why does the practice of rest rise to the level of being a spiritual discipline for us?

For us, there is the obvious benefit of taking a break because we are physically, mentally, emotionally tired from our labors. Like Stanley Kubrick observed, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

You can’t lift weights or work out seven days a week and get stronger. Trying this will break your body. You need rest to promote recovery.

You can’t burn the proverbial candle at both ends without either burning yourself or extinguishing your flame. Abusing your soul’s work ethic, and suffering the consequence, isn’t called burn-out without reason.

Work-a-holics may put in a lot of hours, but they do so by drawing down the reserves from elsewhere inside their souls. At some point, it will be time to pay the debt incurred. Further, a number of studies report that productivity falls if time is not taken to recharge, replenish, and restore.

Perhaps no group of laborers is more stressed, burned out, or unproductive than ministers. Just because a person works in the vineyard of the Lord doesn’t make them immune to fatigue. Stats indicate that 75% of ministers are extremely stressed. It’s estimated that 80% of ministers will leave the profession within their first decade of work.

But physical wellbeing can’t be the only benefit of Sabbath. Something more is at play or God, who doesn’t even need to sleep, would not have sanctified rest as important.

Another fascination with the creation story is that after each creation effort, God pronounced His work good. How could it not be? We’re talking about God, and as the guy said, “God don’t make junk.” But at the conclusion of His work week, upon reflection of all He had made, God said it was very good.

Good. Very good.

What’s fascinating is the qualitative analysis by God. All that He made is good, but upon closer examination, His evaluation improves to very good. The implication is that, a) His early work could have been better, b) His daily evaluation was inaccurate, or c) that in His rest God demonstrates something essential to His wellbeing, an essential He derived during His rest.

With each aspect of creation, God pronounces His work good. On the seventh day, the Sabbath day, His rest day, God evaluated His work and pronounced it very good. An aspect of practicing rest is taking time to reflect.

Reflection has an element of evaluation. I will write more about this later, but my mentor taught me to take an extended time away to evaluate my year of work and make plans for the upcoming year. The reflection and evaluation have proven invaluable to my productivity and the quality of my work.

But reflection also contains celebration—or should contain celebration; it certainly did for God, and we are created in His image.

I’m meeting with a group of men who are reading my book, Swagger. It was published about 15 months ago. Apart from brief preparation prior to interviews, I haven’t read the book since I published it. At the time of publication, I felt the book was good (or I wouldn’t have published it). But with a subsequent reading, two things are occurring: a) As is always the case, I’m finding miscellaneous edits, and b) I’m pleased with what I wrote. There are chapters that are very good.

Upon reflection, 15 months later, I celebrate my work. I could celebrate in hopes of shoring up a sagging self-esteem that I’m a good writer, but this would be an abuse of my work and a dismissal of the fact that my self-worth is not in what I write but in what God declares to be true of me because I’m His son.

Said another way, because I’m confident in who I am based upon God’s declaration of me, I’m free to approach my work without undue burden, i.e. asking my labor as a writer to define me. Rather, as a secure man I’m free to celebrate my work for my work’s sake.

But what if I review my work and realize I didn’t do my best work? This is a real possibility. In fact, when I read some of my older writings, I say, “Yikes. I wish I hadn’t written that like that.” What then?

Now we are back to motive, and here again, the rest of reflection reveals cause for celebration.

When I began writing this article, I worked my way through a standard routine getting started. One aspect of my start-up is that I open my document—blank in this case, but this routine also occurs when I’m editing my work—stare down at my keyboard, raise my hands into position but hovering five inches above the keys, and voice my determination. It goes like this, inside my head, in my thoughts: Father, I’m answering your call to write. Please write through me, grant me your thoughts, and bless me with your words. I’m looking to you. Help me access my heart’s desire.

Then, I place my hands on the keyboard and begin typing my thoughts into the words that you are reading.

First, in praying this prayer I’m expressing my determination to rely upon the power of God’s Spirit to write through me. This is what I believe it means to walk in the Spirit.

The alternative is to believe in my own skill, talent, and expertise as a writer. This is what I believe it means to walk after the flesh.

Second, I believe God honors and answers this prayer or I wouldn’t pray it.

Thus, my determination is voiced and God’s engaged in the process.

Now, back to whether what I write is good or not. I believe it’s good or I wouldn’t publish it. However, my critics disagree. They believe I’m a hack, some think me a heretic, and others consider me boring, simplistic, a waste of time, unhelpful, ignorant, and a litany of other less-than-uplifting qualities.

Maybe I’m a good writer. Maybe not. Whose to say? Sales numbers are fickle. Readers love you for the last thing they liked. Publishers only want you if you have a personal list that buys books.

So when I come to my rest, how will I assess whether my work for the week was good and worthy of celebration?

Return to the paragraph containing the italic print conveying my prayer before I write: Father, I’m looking to you. This is the key.

While God is interested in my performance, He doesn’t evaluate success or failure based upon production, publication, quantity, quality, sales, accolades, or criticism. God evaluates whether my work is good or not based upon the method I use to approach my work.

If I approach my work confident in my abilities as a writer, even if the critics love me and sales make me richer than the Queen, God will pronounce my work a failure because I produced it independently of His Spirit.

If I approach my work confident in the power of the Spirit to write through me, then whether my work is praised or panned, upon reflection I can celebrate that my work was successful because I approached it relying upon Father God to write through me.

God’s evaluation of work is based singularly upon whether I approached my duties in the power of the flesh—my ability, talent, expertise—or the power of the Spirit: Father, I’m looking to you as I begin.

Thus, when I rest after my labors and reflect, I am clear about what I’m celebrating and empowered to relinquish—to rest from—what is not part of success as defined by God. In this way, my rest is regenerative, restorative, replenishing, and fuels my recovery from a hard labor.

Of course, I must add that I’ve got an entire bookshelf dedicated to books on writing that I’ve read and studied. I utilize an outside editor for everything substantive. I study my craft continually. I practice my craft diligently.

In other words, praying the prayer above and then throwing haphazard, ill-conceived, and less-than-the-best words onto the page is an affront to Christ, an abuse of my craft, disregard of my talent, and a disservice to you. I trust Christ, but I work at my craft really, really hard.

Trusting Christ for my writing and doing the work is a dance. As they say, “It takes two to Tango.”

I can rest momentarily, and I do. But a day of rest is sanctified by God because it is of sufficient duration to restore me for what lies ahead.

Hand-in-hand with rest is the spiritual practice of secrecy. As I rest and reflect and celebrate success, I practice secrecy—not broadcasting, announcing, sharing with others—as a means to resist the temptation to be recognized for what I’ve done as opposed to who I am.

There isn’t anything wrong with being recognized. In fact, when we fail to recognize the people around us, we make them vulnerable to Satan’s accusation that they are not important and that their work doesn’t matter. So, recognition is important—but it is not essential.

Recognition and significance are often used synonymously, but they are distinctly different concepts. While recognition is important and desirable, significance is essential.

As with all essentials—true needs—these are so important that God pledges to meet these needs Himself versus trusting others to supply these needs for us. What Satan does in an effort to deceive is to seize upon a lack of recognition and condemn us as not being significant.

It is one thing for my work to not be recognized. It is quite another to not be significant as a person.

In secrecy, because the moment is so sacred, I reflect during my rest upon my significance as a child of God. In so doing, I disarm the probability of connecting what I do—and any recognition received or withheld—as integral, important, or related to my significance as a human being.

God establishes my significance. This status can neither be enhanced nor diminished. His valuation of me as significant is static, absolute, unimpeachable, unchangeable, and irrevocable because it is established by the completed, finished work of Christ and my position in Him.

Thus, in secrecy, I practice the spiritual discipline of resting to celebrate my labors as distinguished from my significance as a child of God. I rest in and I rest from—in my celebration and from the temptation to associate performance and recognition with personal significance.

During my rest, I celebrate my work. This is good. In secrecy, I celebrate that I’m significant because God has established it as so apart from what I do for a living. This is very good.

Obviously, this rest, this Sabbath rest and the secrecy contained within it, is important. What’s it look like in practice?

The image of rest is often something to do with a lounge chair, few responsibilities, and fewer demands. Yes, well. That image is even hard to produce during an all-inclusive, child care provided, vacation on a cruise ship.

Life is a busy endeavor. Work six days and you’ve got a one-day weekend, much of which is consumed with Sunday activities. Work five days, you’ve got Saturday to take up slack.

Work fifty-sixty hours a week, commute to and from, attend your kids’ activities, have friends for dinner; then, go to church for three hours Sunday morning, make it four-and-a-half if you go to lunch afterward, have small group Sunday evening and all but Saturday is blown out living life. But on Saturday you need to run errands, rake the yard, have family night, and on and on and on life spins.

You can see how important it is to properly define what you mean by rest. If rest is essential and rest means a lounge chair portside of a cruise ship, you are in trouble.

Rest can mean different than the norm. Rest can be something other than the thing you consider labor. Thus, mowing the grass can constitute rest (unless you run a lawn service). Same for doing the dishes, picking up the laundry, going to the grocery, and so forth. Rest can mean an altered pace

Personally, I define my labor as writing, as well as other keyboard demands like email and research. I’m also the chief cook, grocery shopper, and house manager. All of this, and the associated tasks, I labor to accomplish during my work week.

Then, I deliberately shift gears for the weekend. Unless I’m writing a book, which demands attention every day for seven months, I avoid my keyboard and only glance at email. I rarely go to the grocery on the weekend and take time to make special meals for Friday or Saturday evening. My rest may include time in the garage, a longer walk, a yard project, sitting on the patio, and so forth. I read a different type literature during my rest as reading during the week is an aspect of my labor.

While I’m moving and busy, I’m consciously thinking of the changed pace as rest. I am diligent to include time to reflect and to contrast my work week and my rest time.

Sabbath rest and secrecy overlap with other spiritual disciplines like silence, solitude, prayer, and friendship. More on these disciplines is upcoming.

Meanwhile, rest. You are in Christ and have His peace. You are secure in Him by the Holy Spirit. This is good. He has declared you to be significant. This is very good.

Thus, your labor matters to God. He wants to labor through you and wants to celebrate with you this collaboration. This is good.

You are significant. Rest in this confidence. Hold to it secretly in your heart as it will protect you when recognition is out of balance. This is very good.

Next up: The spiritual practice of silence.