Times to rest

It is important that as disciples we leave Jesus but also return to Jesus at the end of the day of any ministerial journey. We have to go again and again and return to the trunk that is the Lord who gives us the power and grace to do all the things we do.

Mark 6: 30,31 says: "After they had shared with the Lord, He said to them: 'Come yourselves apart to a deserted place and rest a little', because there were many who came and went, so that not even they had time to eat and they went alone in a boat to a deserted place. "

Remember that these passages are designed to show us different aspects of the ministry of Jesus and also of the Christian life. How interesting that after the Lord dialogues with them after their ministerial journey, he tells them: come to a separate place. What He was saying there was, you know what guys, let's go on vacation. You guys have been working hard all these weeks and you need a break.

So let's get up from here. And that idea that we are going to a deserted place, in the original Greek the idea is not to go to the desert to fast or to seek the face of God in prayer, no, it was rather to go to a place where there were no people, a place of solitude, rest, silence where they could recharge their batteries and spend some time together, and perhaps have fun and be able to eat together, celebrate a time of rest, vacations in other words.

I think that is important because it shows the balance to which God calls us in life. Knows? Life is not just working, not even working for the Kingdom. God recognizes our humanity and we have to do the same. There are times in life when we have to know: we are tired and we need a break. There is time for everything, says the writer of Ecclesiastes: there is time to work but there is also time to rest and have fun, and spend with the family.

As a Pastor I have discovered that I definitely need time to rest, relax, be with my family, go to a nice place, sit in a restaurant and recognize that I also need and that I should not only be attached to the ministry. Many times we pastors get burned physically, mentally, emotionally and we discover that the source has dried up and we have nothing to teach our people. We no longer smell the lilies as we say around there, life goes from one service to another, one sermon to another and now we lose that sense of reverence, of how special it is to serve the Lord.

How important it is that we take time to rest the body, rest the mind and return to the load again. We are not merely spiritual beings, we are beings of flesh and blood. We have to pay attention to our marriages. Pastors, leaders, we can't just be in the ministry all the time. And that is also why churches should give their leaders time for family things. So many people burn out working for the ministry and pastors sometimes don't have the wisdom to pull out the donkey and take off the tackle so to speak to give it some rest.

That is a rule of life brothers. Sometimes as congregations we lack the integrity we need because we take advantage of our people, and we are so caught up in the Church growth agenda. There are growth systems that I think make a serious mistake, the sin of taking people out and putting them to work, work, work so that they bring people, take advantage of them, and we take them to the point that they burn out, destroy their marriage, they destroy themselves emotionally, and there comes a moment of crisis when they no longer want to know anything about the Gospel and the service.

We have seen entire congregations many times reach a point of crisis and destruction due to that feverish rhythm that they carry and we believe that if we are serving the Lord as the laws of nature will be broken, we will be endowed with a supernatural force all the time. That may take a while, but sooner or later there has to be a healthy balance where there are times of rest, times when the Church closes the doors for members to spend time with their family, the churches will have to learn to give it time. to their pastors so that they are in their homes at night and can be with their children, so that those children can grow up loving the Church instead of what happens so many times, they grow up with resentment against the Church that has taken their parents away from them.

I love that detail that the Lord says: we are going to a separate place, we are going to take time to rest. The Lord Jesus Himself did that, if He did it why not us too? Let's live our lives at an adequate pace. There is time to serve the Lord and give him everything, but there is also time to look for moments of rest and that has to be given every day, every week, throughout the year, a balanced rhythm that allows us to always be renewing ourselves and have more to give more to the Mister.

I hope this is a blessing for your life. Let us not be like Martha, eager, if we are not like Mary, sitting at the feet of the Lord and simply drinking from His renewing Voice. God bless you and we will continue our meditations later.