10 Practical Blessings of Taking a Weekly Sabbath for our Family
For the past 7 years, we’ve been immensely blessed by the Lord’s command to rest on Sundays – the Christian sabbath – in obedience to His Word. When we were first convicted to set aside one day each week to rest, it felt more like a burden than a blessing. After all, there’s work to do!
But over time, I began to understand the rich blessing that a day of rest and worship is for the Christian. (And figuring out how to actually do it with little kids helped a lot, too – more on that below.)
I don’t think it’s an exaggerating to say that setting aside the Lord’s Day to rest and worship has truly transformed our lives. Still, I wanted to take a few minutes to think about the specific ways that the Lord has blessed us in this practice. Crazy how obeying Him results in more blessing, isn’t it? His ways are always best.
First, What is the Christian Sabbath For?
I think it’s important to note that the Lord’s command to rest on the Sabbath is not a command to be lazy, to sit around on our pajamas watching tv, or to spend the day on our own pleasure, attending football games, shopping, or pursing hobbies that we didn’t have time for during the week.
The Westminster Confession of Faith section 21.8 defines the Christian Sabbath this way:
“This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations; but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.”
The Sabbath day is a day of rest for our souls and bodies, and it’s arranged around worship. We’re so thankful that our church has morning and evening service so that we can both begin and end the Lord’s Day in corporate worship.
I wrote more about what our Sundays are like in this blog post: What Does A Weekly Sabbath Look Like? Lord’s Day Practices for A Christian Family
“Sabbath observance is not to be a cold, ritualistic action we perform. Sometimes we think, ‘Oh my, it is the Sabbath, I cannot do this’ or, ‘Oh, when will tomorrow come.’ If you begin to grasp the privileges of the Sabbath as the market day of the soul, it will be your favourite day, better anticipated than Saturday, more joyful than your birthday, more restful than a vacation.”
-Joseph A. Pipa, The Lord’s Day
10 Practical Blessings of Taking a Weekly Sabbath for our Family
Here are 10 of the top benefits I jotted down in considering the blessing that the Lord’s Day has been to our family.
1. Energy.
Around the time we became convicted to rest on Sundays, we also bought our first home – a foreclosure – which came with weeks and weeks of work. We also found out around the same time that we were pregnant with our first child. So renovating the house became a race against the clock!
Sundays felt like a huge roadblock at first. Monday through Friday, we would come home from work at 5 or so, eat a quick dinner, and spend another 4-6 hours working on the house. Saturday we could work all day! It was the busiest season of our lives, and we enjoyed it. But Sunday felt like we were missing out on so much progress.
But over time, we saw that the Lord’s Day was the primary means that God used to preserve us during that time and keep us from total burnout. Eventually, all the important things got done. Resting on Sundays kept us anchored and allowed us to put the first things first, even when we didn’t feel like it.
6 years later, running a business, homeschooling, and raising four kids under 6 has us only slightly less busy, yet full of peace rest. Our weeks are full of hard work – we wouldn’t want it any other way – but the weekly sabbath is a major factor in giving us the rest and refreshment we need to feel energized throughout the week.
2. Refreshment.
Not only are our bodies rested, but our souls are filled with focusing on the Lord for the whole day each Sunday. This is definitely not a “substitute” for daily time in the Word and in prayer! But it’s an extended time of resting in Christ and whole day for fellowship, worship, reading, and rest that we don’t get the other six days.
It’s also wonderful to know that if there’s some Biblical topic we want to study, extra prayer or memorization we want to do, new Psalms we want to sing, etc., we will have time on Sunday!
3. Time for Focused Attention on the Lord.
One big switch in becoming parents (and honestly, just adults maybe) is that we no longer have an hour or more each day to be in the Word. Weekdays are for work, but Sundays are for slowed down, focused time to be in the Word, pray, be in corporate worship, and fellowship with brothers and sisters. On Sundays, these things don’t have to compete with work, homeschooling, or household duties.
4. Time to Fellowship with Family and Friends.
Sunday provides a time to fellowship with the saints, even in situation where fellowship is limited during other parts of the week. In some seasons, Sunday lunch or dinner has been a wonderful time for us to host or visit with other Christian families, especially during some of the busiest seasons we’ve had when fellowship feels really tough to schedule during the week.
(I wrote about some ways we make hosting easier with littles here: How to Make Hospitality Easy When You Have Littles)
5. Nothing Competes with Lord’s Day Worship.
Choosing to obey the Lord and set his sabbath day apart means that we don’t have to stress or wonder what to do on Sundays. No sporting events, birthday parties, or work activities come before congregational worship and setting the day apart for the Lord. This has honestly made a lot of decisions easier for us and blessed us so much along the way.
6. Time to Simply Enjoy what the Lord Has Given Us
The house just looks different on Sundays. When I look around, I don’t so much see the grease that needs to be cleaned above the stove, the dirty rug, or the smudged windows, because I know I’m not going to be putting those things on my to-do list for the day. Instead, I more just see a warm, inviting, safe space where we can rest and welcome people in and enjoy each other.
Sunday provides time to simply enjoy the things that the Lord has given us instead of working to make them better or make some sort of progress.
(Sometimes it can be a struggle to see a dirty sink and not clean it, but it’s also restful to know that we’ve worked hard all week and that thing can wait until tomorrow.)
7. Joy.
There is joy in walking in God’s ways, even if they don’t make sense to us at first.
“Our whole being is then cheered by the brightness of God’s smile, the delightfulness of His praises, the rich love of His house, His people, His kingdom. Those who form the habit of keeping one day in seven holy find that the day returns to them a joy in the Lord.”
-Walter Chantry, Call the Sabbath a Delight
8. Encouragement in Obedience.
For me personally, the joy and blessings I’ve found from keeping the sabbath make it easier to obey the Lord in other things. Probably, most Christians have had this experience in some capacity. The more we obey and see that God’s ways are best, the more we want to obey Him.
9. A Weekly Celebration.
In His kindness to us, in the New Testament, the Lord implements not a handful of holidays each year, but a weekly celebration of His rest and goodness to us in Christ.
This day anchors our weeks and delights our bodies and souls. Every week, we get to look forward to a day when Garrett doesn’t work at all, there’s no housework on the to-do list, and there’s good food, drinks, and time to fellowship with the saints.
10. A Pause in the Work of the Week.
We love to work. It bring us joy. We love the things that the Lord has given each of us to do. And yet the work is made all the sweeter with a rest from it. Resting on the Lord’s Day gives us time to enjoy the fruit of our hands and new energy to start again on Monday.
Although the blessings of taking a weekly sabbath weren’t blatantly obvious at the beginning, and there have been challenges along the way, the Lord has truly transformed our lives and blessed our family more than we could imagine through this command in His Word.
