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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Shelly Miller

Why We So Badly Need Sabbath Rest {and a book giveaway!}

October 4, 2016 By Michelle

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Rest typically comes last for me. Rest comes after the chores are done and the errands are run. Rest comes after every item on my to-do is checked off. I rest once my obligations and responsibilities are accomplished.

This approach to rest, however, is not God’s way. It’s not his way for himself, and it’s not the way he desires for us. Sure, God rested on the seventh day, after he’d created light and oceans, the stars in the sky and the land beneath our feet. But the fact is, God took that day of rest in the middle of his work. God is still working. He is still creating. He took a day of rest after six days of work, and then, he took up his work again.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot about this rhythm. I forgot that God desires that our work be punctuated with rest, even when our work is not finished.

Last week I picked up Shelly Miller’s new book Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World. I’d already read her book this past summer, when I received an advance copy in order to write an endorsement. I enjoyed Rhythms of Rest immensely the first time I read it, but truth be told, the reason I picked it up again last week was that I knew I was going to write this blog post to go along with a giveaway, and I wanted to refresh my memory.

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I didn’t expect to read Rhythms of Rest cover-to-cover again. I didn’t expect it to impact me so deeply. I didn’t expect it to change my weekend…and my life.

Here’s the truth: I was all in on Sabbath rest a couple of years ago. I believed in it and was committed to it. But somehow, as weeks passed into months and months passed into years, I chipped away at the edges of my Sabbath practice until finally, there was nothing left. Without even being aware of it, my Sundays became another day of chores, errands, social media and catching up on email.

These past few months, I’ve come to understand in a new and deeper way that what God desires most is relationship with us. He doesn’t care nearly as much about what we do and what we accomplish as he does about who we are, and, more specifically, about who we are in relationship with him. God wants us to know him; it’s really as simple as that.

What I’ve come to understand – and what Shelly’s book reiterated for me — is that in order to know God in the way he desires, we need to make space and time for him. And in order to make space and time for him, we have to quiet ourselves. We have to cease our constant busyness, our constant doing and accomplishing.

Practicing Sabbath rest makes time and space for us to be in relationship with God.

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Shelly puts it like this:

“How much of our faith journey is firsthand experience and not just what we know about him? Information helps us know about God, but Sabbath allows us to encounter him.”

Sabbath allows us to encounter God.

This past Sunday I intentionally practiced Sabbath rest for first time in a long, long time. I sat with my son Noah on the back patio and talked as we ate lunch. I leisurely walked the dog around a nearby lake and admired the changing leaves and the golden sunlight. I rested in my lounge chair on my back patio, Rhythms of Rest open in my lap. I kept my computer closed and my phone on my nightstand. I didn’t do a single dish for the day until 8:30 p.m.

And you know what? It was the best day I’ve had in a long, long time. It wasn’t special in any extraordinary way. But it was beautiful. It was replenishing and restful. It was Sabbath.

 

I am delighted to be able to give away TWO copies of Shelly Miller’s delightful book Rhythms of Rest. Enter the random drawing below for a chance to win {email readers: click here and scroll to the bottom of the post to enter the drawing}:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Filed Under: book reviews, rest, Sabbath Tagged With: practicing Sabbath, Rhythms of Rest, Shelly Miller

Weekend One Word: Close

October 1, 2016 By Michelle

How to Come Close to God

Do you realize that God wants nothing more than to be in relationship with you? It’s true. He doesn’t need you to be good or perfect or on your best behavior. He doesn’t even require that you confess your sins in order to be in relationship with him. He simply wants you to walk toward him and enter into his embrace. He makes the first move; he extends the invitation. But he leaves it up to us as to whether or not we will answer yes. He patiently waits for us to turn back toward him, where he is waiting with open arms.

So what gets in the way of our coming closer to him? What’s stopping us from being in a close, personal, intimate relationship with God?

Busyness.

Distraction.

An incessant drive to produce and accomplish.

An inability to rest.

We miss God’s invitation to come closer because we don’t make time amid our busy, noisy, go-go-go world to stop and listen for his voice. As Shelly Miller says in her beautiful book Rhythms of Rest (stay tuned next week for more about this book and a giveway!), “God is patiently waiting for you to slow down so he can express his love for you.”

God’s love, his invitation, is there. It sits like an unopened envelope in a mailbox. “Come closer,” he invites. And he waits for us to slow, to listen, to say yes.

Filed Under: One Word, rest Tagged With: James 4:8, rest, Rhythms of Rest, Shelly Miller

How to Find Rest When Your Life is Anything but Restful

June 9, 2016 By Michelle

I know I’ve welcomed Shelly Miller as a guest here before, but I can’t help myself – she’s one of my favorite writers and favorite people. And can I tell you a secret? I’m reading an advance copy of her upcoming book, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World, and you are not going to want to miss this one, friends! {Pre-order your copy here!} It’s a delight to welcome Shelly to the blog today – be sure to visit her at her blog, Redemptions Beauty, for more of her fabulous writing and gorgeous photography.

 

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Text and photo by Shelly Miller

I’m lying in bed with the phone in my hand above my head, attempting to wake up by reading the BBC morning headlines. I scroll down to the features because the writer in me is always on the hunt for a good story, even when I’m sleepy. I click on The Teenagers Who Poison Themselves by Justin Parkinson. Why? I’m not sure, yet.

The more I read, I learn that self-poisoning is on the rise among young girls in the UK and Parkinson is attempting to answer the question, “What drives them to do it?”

“It’s like my brain has two bits: the happy bit and the bad bit,” says 18-year-old Jasmine. “The bad bit keeps pushing until it takes over. You feel like you’re losing control of yourself a little bit more and a little bit more. And then it happens.

“There’s something in my brain telling me to do it. It’s sort of like having a toddler who’s demanding things of you constantly. Eventually you just get so tired and the toddler is annoying you so much that you just give in.”

Jasmine’s words haunt me for hours.

This voice? It seems obvious who it is.

She’s describing the enemy of the soul; a repetitive accusatory voice on a mission to extinguish the flame God lights inside each one of us at birth. It is a voice that preys on weakness born in difficult circumstances, when darkness threatens peace and compromises the senses. A voice that whispers, “You are unlovable,” until we choose to believe it.

After I finish the article, I click over to the daily lectionary and I’m stunned by providence when I read these verses in Proverbs.

“Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord,  but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:34-36)

It’s as if God is answering the journalist’s question with simple, straight-forward language. What drives people to injure themselves?  A failure to find God.

How do we find God? Hearing, listening, watching and waiting, declares the writer of Proverbs.

Most of those who self-poison say they do it because physical illness is easier to handle than enduring emotional pain. Revelation 14:10 describes continual upheaval and a lack of rest as the ultimate separation from God. Striving and a lack of rest in body, soul and mind ultimately results in a tormented life.

I turn the screen off, lay the phone on my stomach, close my eyes, think and pray for Jasmine.

I can read her story with grief and assume she has made God absent in her inner turmoil. I can see the situational sawdust clouding her perspective and miss the log stuck in my eye.

I often struggle to believe God loves me for who I am, not what I produce. I listen to the voices of experience instead of the Truth. I numb uncertainty with a glass of wine, scrolling through social media feeds, and binge watching “Downton Abbey.” What causes me to do it?

It’s not that any of these things are bad in and of themselves, it’s that I forget the truth that is foundational in claiming a restful heart.

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103: 10-12)

Leave God out and quickly forget His love believes, hopes, endures and conquers everything. Whatever we do to numb pain and cope outside of love becomes an empty counterfeit for resurrection.

A heart at rest is a heart that knows it is loved.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103: 13-14)

Could your busyness and unrest be the result of a subversive message about being unlovable? How does knowing you are loved change perspective about your circumstances today?

 

MillerFamilyLondon2015-49-1Shelly Miller is a veteran ministry leader and sought-after mentor on Sabbath-keeping. She leads the Sabbath Society, an online community of people who want to make rest a priority, and her writing has been featured in multiple national publications. Her first book, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World, will release with Bethany House Publishers in the fall of 2016 with a second launching in 2017 with Lion Hudson. Find more of Shelly’s writing on her blog, Redemptions Beauty, and connect on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where she loves to share photos of the beautiful places she visits while living as a committed immigrant in London.

Filed Under: guest posts Tagged With: Shelly Miller

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

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