So that we will not be a burden to others.
So that we may win respect.
So that we can live a productive life.
So that we can provide for our families.
So that we can share with those in need.
So that our generosity and lives will result in thanksgiving to God.

This week we are going to talk about God’s creating rest from our work – not just so we can recharge for more work by having a day off or vacation but so that our rest will result in thanksgiving to God – just like our work.

There is a particular kind of rest in Scripture called Sabbath that we are going to look at this morning. We hear about vacations with a purpose. This is rest with a purpose.

I would be a complete hypocrite if I were to teach on the importance of Sabbath and the value of a complete rest from work! For reasons shared by some of you, I have never mastered the ability to bring balance to work. I’ve read the ten signs of workaholism and I don’t think I am quite there but I do know my work has a disproportionate place in my life – even though it may be better now than in the past. Years ago, Peter Drucker said that “knowledge work” (which is different from physical labor) is addictive. The more you do it the more you want to do. In some ways you don’t wear out from it. You just get better at it over time…and that makes it hard to stop. You can do it anytime and anywhere. You don’t have to go somewhere to work because you carry the work with you all the time. Perhaps the challenge and importance of Sabbath for knowledge workers is even more intense for these.

So, I am going to use the writings of a friend – Eugene Peterson – to work us through the lesson today. Yes, he has been a pastor for his whole life and there are some who would say it’s easy for pastors to understand the Sabbath but they would be wrong. The life of a pastor – especially in a church like ours – is just as intense and filled with work commitments as ours. As well, they have all of us watching them to make sure they are “at work” and not sleeping in except on Sunday. Again, taking the Sabbath is not the same as taking a vacation or days off for us or for them. Sabbath has a unique purpose and it is just as difficult – if not more so – for religious professionals to do it.

Oswald Chambers says, “Beware of any work for God which enables you to evade concentration on Him. A great many Christian workers worship their work. A worker without this solemn dominant note of concentration on God is apt to get his work on his neck; there is no margin of body, mind and spirit free, consequently he becomes spent out and crushed. There is no freedom, no delight in life; nerves, mind and heart are so crushingly burdened that God’s blessing cannot rest.” When pastors greet each other, especially older Baptist pastors, they will ask each other, “So, how many are you runnin’ in Sunday School?” That’s quite an image, isn’t it? In some regrettable ways the work has turned from being a shepherd to being a cattle driver and a program manager. For many, that has turned the work of being a pastor into that of being a manager or CEO. That’s why the work can be crushing and make it virtually impossible to rest in the way God intends.

It was years before Eugene understood the distinction of a Sabbath from a day off. I suppose he had been raised, like many of us, to think of strict observance of the Sabbath as going to church instead of showing up at the office. Sabbath is what we do on Sunday. Perhaps he, like many of us, thought of the Sabbath as an Old Testament law we need not observe any longer. We are under Grace now. There are no more special days or feasts or observances. Perhaps he, like some of us, had been raised under a strict definition of Sabbath that meant “Blue Laws”, no movies, shopping, or worldly activities. It meant going to church twice a day on Sunday with Sunday School in the morning and Training Union at night. Even today, many of us would define Sabbath as going to church but for many that is not really restful, is it? It’s a day of rushing around, being late, disagreements in the car on the way, finding a parking place, getting out of the parking lot and standing in line for lunch. That’s not restful and it’s not Sabbath.

Our definition of Sabbath as attending church and listening to sermons can be traced back to the history of the Puritans in England when Sunday was not devoted to church but to sports, drinking, bear-baiting and general chaos. I read about it this week.

“Puritan views on the Sabbath were partly shaped by their understanding of the role sermons played in salvation. As John Primus observed, Puritans believed sermons to be the primary means by which God extends his grace to man.3 They probably came to this conclusion based on their understanding of Romans 10:14: “How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (KJV). Because of this, they agreed with the general Protestant view that the sermon should be the focus of Sunday services. Consequently, Puritans were concerned about the conditions under which sermons were delivered.

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, large segments of the English people ignored worship services. Contemporary reports complain how those who did attend would come and go as they pleased, interrupting the service as they did so. Entertainments, such as the blood sport of bearbaiting, athletic competitions, dancing, gambling, church-ales and fairs were more widely attended than worship services. Often, those who did attend services could not wait for them to be over so they could participate in some form of secular entertainment. This is not surprising, since the English working person labored long hours for six days each week, with little chance for diversion. Sunday was their only time off.”

Well, if going to church on Sunday is not Sabbath then what is it? For that I am going to turn to Eugene to describe what Sabbath has become in his life for the last forty years.

First, it is taking a day and devoting it to what he calls “pray and play”. It is not doing anything you have to do or get done. It is not waking up to a list of chores to get done. It is setting aside the time to “shut up and show up” with God. Dallas Willard says, “Do nothing. Don’t try to make anything happen.” It is a day spent being mindful of God and paying attention to Him. Again, it is not a “day off”. That is what Peterson calls a “bastard Sabbath” because that is something we do for ourselves alone – and often to get other things done or to re-charge for more work. Sabbath is not a time to get things done. It is a day of rest. It does not mean sitting in a chair the whole day or praying the whole day. It means taking our minds off our work and focusing on “puttering around doing things that we enjoy” and special attention to God. It means, literally, a day devoted to God in our lives.

“If there is no Sabbath- no regular and commanded not-working, not-talking — we soon become totally absorbed in what we are doing and saying, and God’s work is either forgotten or marginalized. When we work we are most god-like, which means that it is in our work that it is easier to develop god-pretensions. Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “this is my fathers world” and end up chirping little self-centred ditties about what we are doing and feeling.”

Second, it is not simply a cessation of work and trying to make your mind empty but a time to focus on the work of God in your life and in the world. “The Sabbath is a day to let go, to stop trying to control people and situations. It’s a day to unhook from performing for people or pleasing people. It’s a day to focus on what God is graciously doing all around you and respond to him rather than depending on your own abilities to make things happen. Keeping the Sabbath teaches us to trust God and enjoy Him. It helps us to be governed by our good God in what we do and in how we do it. It’s God’s way to set us free from worry and anxiety, ambition and adrenaline, self-importance and anger, even loneliness. Because in the green pastures of Good Shepherd’s grace and beside his still waters we discover that it’s really true: “He restores my soul!” (Psalm 23:3)”

Wendell Berry wrote a poem titled Sabbath that includes these lines:

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.
Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Because we live in a world that is ignorant of the work of God, we overestimate the importance of the work of man. We have forgotten that God is working instead of everything being up to us. It is a day to remember the work of God that goes on all the time – not just when we are working. In some ways we have made God’s work either so grand we cannot understand it – like the creation of all that is – or so trivial – like praying for a parking space – that it’s meaningless. Instead, understanding the work of God requires “Uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing. If we do not regularly quit work for one day a week we take ourselves far too seriously. The moral sweat pouring off our brows blinds us to the primal action of God in and around us.”

I like the way Old Testament days were defined. The next day began when the sun set and ended when the sun set 24 hours later. While they slept God was already at work preparing the world for the next day and when they woke up He had been working all night. Do you remember the fairy tale of The Elves and the Shoemaker? I’m not saying the way God works is a fairy tale but God works even when – maybe especially when – we are not.

“There was once a shoemaker, who worked very hard and was very honest: but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.

Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was clear and his heart light amidst all his troubles; so he went peaceably to bed, left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep. In the morning after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work; when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes all ready made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece.

The same day a customer came in, and the shoes suited him so well that he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them; and the poor shoemaker, with the money, bought leather enough to make two pairs more. In the evening he cut out the work, and went to bed early, that he might get up and begin betimes next day; but he was saved all the trouble, for when he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand. Soon in came buyers, who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought leather enough for four pair more. He cut out the work again overnight and found it done in the morning, as before; and so it went on for some time: what was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak, and the good man soon became thriving and well off again.”

Third, it is done out of obedience and not fear. We don’t observe the Sabbath because we believe God will punish us or make bad things happen in our lives. We don’t do it because we think it will make us more productive the next day. The Wall Street Journal had an article this week on how our brains are wired up to do things either out of obedience because they are the right things to do or out of fear of punishment. The researchers have discovered “It turns out that doing the right thing voluntarily is very different from doing it to avoid punishment.” The things we do out of fear of punishment make us want to do only as much as we need to do to avoid pain. The things we do voluntarily or out of willing obedience become good habits. Observing the Sabbath is a way of creating a lifestyle and not just adhering to a law. It is building a life around genuine trust in God and not dreading God.

Fourth, it never gets easier. The world conspires against us. “There’s another thing I need to say about the Sabbath: It never gets any easier. I wake up Sunday morning or Monday morning—I’ve been doing this for twenty-five to thirty years now—and I can think of something I want to write. I never write on the Sabbath. That’s hard work to me. I don’t even write notes. I say, “Lord, if you want me to remember that on Tuesday, okay!” But that’s it. It still doesn’t get any easier. I would have thought that the weekly habit of Sabbath would by this time just be a habit, but it’s not. I want to do things. I want to call people. It takes me two or three hours before I say, “Okay, Lord, I quit. It’s your day.” There’s so much I could do. This is where the whole world conspires against you. But the commandment is pretty clear. He said it twice, but He gave a different reason each time. In Genesis, you do it because God did it, which ought to be a good enough reason. The second reason, in Deuteronomy, is because nobody gave you a day off for four hundred years. If you work on the Sabbath, you make other people work—your spouse, your kids, your associates, your congregation. So it’s social justice.”

Fifth, we cannot do it by ourselves. We need others to agree to help us and encourage us. I like what Eugene did to make this possible and wonder what the response would be if we did the same.

“I wrote our congregation a letter every year “Why your pastor keeps a Sabbath” in order to invite them to help us keep it. You can’t keep the Sabbath alone. People took it seriously. And after 10 years or so, many of them began to keep one, too. And we helped each other. The most important thing we did was asking our congregation to help us keep it.”

“Back when I was a pastor, I told my church, “I will give you a Sabbath, and in turn, I need your help. I will give you Sunday with no meetings, no committees meeting. On Monday I will take a Sabbath. I want you to feel free to call me any time day or night if you need to. But if something can wait until Tuesday, please wait until then.” In thirty years, I think I had three phone calls on a Monday.”

And the purpose of the letters was not just to help him keep a Sabbath but to encourage them to do the same.

“From time to time—three or four times a year—I would write a congregational letter on topics such as “Why your pastor keeps a Sabbath,” “Why your pastor reads books,” “Why your pastor stays home with his family on Friday nights.” I wrote about these practices not to seek approval or to justify what I was doing with my time, but to invite [members] into the same kinds of practices—practices that should matter to all Christians. This kind of writing helped me remember why these practices were so important to my life as a pastor, our life as a family, and our life as a congregation.”

Who would we ask to help us keep a Sabbath? What would we say in such a letter? What might be the response? It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? What if we received a letter from a friend asking us for help in resting from work?

Observance of the Sabbath was one of the two or three distinct marks of Jewish identity – along with dietary laws and circumcision. In Ezekiel 20:13 God says, “I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them.” Sabbath was not merely an observance or one of many laws. It was part of the Ten Commandments. It was fundamental to being a Jew. It was a mark of a unique relationship with God and other people. These were people who had been commanded to rest and that made them different somehow.

In closing, let’s look at some of the “so that’s” for rest in the same way we looked at them for work. We rest so that:

So that we’ll see God’s work in the world and allow ourselves to not overestimate the importance of ours.
So that we will learn to trust and wait even when we find it hard to do.
So that we’ll live in obedience and not fear – either fear of punishment or fear of being judged as a slacker or unproductive.
So that we’ll not be slaves to work or make others slaves.
So that we will find our identity in rest – not just in work.

We have what is called the Protestant Work Ethic. It means we work hard out of a set of beliefs about God that influence us. We tend to look down on or simply tolerate cultures that don’t have the same value. I know I do. I’ve told people at work that the time between Thanksgiving and New Years feels to me like what it must be to live in Italy or Greece with so many holidays or mandated days off. Nothing gets done. That’s why the Protestant Work Ethic is so appealing to me.

But, what if there were a Protestant Rest Ethic? What if our identity for ourselves and to others was not just about how long and hard we work but how we take time to trust God and to focus on his work in the world? What difference might it make if genuine rest or “pray and play” became a part of the way we live. What if we truly saw rest as having a purpose and did not just think of it as a day off or a vacation? What if we did not fear our world of work coming to an end or our standing at work diminished if we withdrew from it for one day a week – not just going to church on Sunday? What if it was not a whole day at first but just two hours or an evening or morning? It’s not really an “all or nothing at all” proposition. What keeps us from trying?

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.

What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems
What’s the difference between goals and systems?

If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I’ve written this year. (You can see them all here.) In the last 12 months, I’ve written over 115,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have written enough to fill two books this year.

All of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn’t measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count goal for any particular article. I never said, “I want to write two books this year.”

What I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed the same (or perhaps better) results.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Each Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week provides a feedback loop that tells me if I’m doing things right. When that number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.

Fall In Love With Systems
None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I’ve found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

In fact, I think I’m going to officially declare 2014 the “Year of the Sloth” so that everyone will be forced to slow down and make consistent, methodical progress rather than chasing sexy goals for a few weeks and then flaming out.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.