At its basic core, a sabbatical is a season of prolonged rest.
“We’re putting the words of Psalm 23 to the test. “The Lord is my shepherd,” we say with David. “I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”Ahh! There it is! He restores my soul. This soul restoration comes as we submit to the Lord as our Shepherd, lying down and being still in his presence.”- Soul Sheppharding
“Spending time away resting in God’s lovingkindness — “relaxing and rejoicing in the presence of the risen Christ.”
It means stepping away compltely from your work/ministry setting, to just BE.
“Those in Full time ministry need to be taken out of the circulation for a sufficiently long enough time to re-vision and re-structure their lives in communion with Jesus and his kingdom.”
“Of course, people in other jobs work extremely hard and have great stress too. But if doctors, attorneys, police officers, CPA’s, or teachers get divorced they usually don’t lose their jobs! If their spiritual life grows stale probably no one worries about it. If they struggle with pornography, alcohol abuse, marital issues, infertility or other emotional problems it’s usually no problem for their work life, or if it gets in the way then once they get help they can go right back to work.”
All “quotations areas” are taken from Soul Shepherding
As an accountant assistant, I was able to get my work done, no matter how my heart was doing. It didn’t matter if I was grieving infertility that day, I could go sit in my cubicle and type numbers into a spread sheet. If I hadn’t spent time with the Lord in a week, it did not interfere with my ability to crunch numbers. When I landscaped, I could cut grass just as easily if I had a big arguement with my room mate right beforehand, that left me fuming.
But when your job/task every day is leading people closer to Jesus our spiritual, mental, emotional, physical health affects our ability or inability to do so. I can’t go into meeting someone after having unresolved conflict with my spouse and anger lingering in my heart without it affecting that meeting. When grief cuts me deeply for 5yrs and wears me thin, I question Gods goodness and at times it feels impossible to tell others how Good and trustworthy He is, when I’m doubting it. It stunts my desire to tell people about Jesus, because I’m aware that I’m currently not believing what I’m hoping they will.
If you find yourself in full time ministry (pastor, full time missionionary,etc), are you filling every moment of your life with DOING’s? Being depleted? Or is your heart close to Jesus, walking in step with him and out of that overflow-you love,serve, help-those he shows you.
How close is your heart to the one you are doing things for?
RachelWall 