God-Ordained Rest: Learning to Honor a Day of Rest

I am the type of person who will go seven days a week if no one stops me. Work, serve, do, repeat. I used to wear that like a badge. Now I know better.

A trainer I hired once told me something I never forgot. He said you cannot lift weights using the same muscles every day. The body needs recovery time. Without it, you are not building strength — you are tearing yourself down. The rest is not a break from the work. The rest is part of the work.

I see the same truth in the very first pages of Scripture.

"By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." — Genesis 2:2–3

God did not rest because He was tired. He rested because rest is holy. He built it into the rhythm of creation on purpose — and then He blessed it. Sanctified it. Set it apart.

If the God of the universe paused and called it good, what are we saying when we refuse to?

Rest is not the absence of devotion. For women who are always pouring out, it might be the deepest act of trust you can offer — the willingness to stop, be still, let your body, mind and soul rest.

Be still, and know that He is God. That is not a suggestion. That is an invitation.

Be honest — do you struggle to rest without feeling guilty? What would it look like for you to treat rest as God designed it: not as laziness, but as an act of trust?

My book, A God Chat: The Art of Praying Without Ceasing, includes a seventh-day rest practice built into the prayer journal because a sustainable prayer life has to have room to breathe.

I would love for you to experience that kind of holy pause.