Gods Sabbath

T HE S OURCE OF E VERYTHING

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Him instead of ourselves and to place our confidence in His abil ity to continue to provide for us. Furthermore, He has ordained a special blessing for us on every seventh day. Each week, on this Sabbath day, God gives us an opportunity to stop our head long rush of activity, with its inherent danger of self-sufficiency, and to remember that He is our one and only Source. The Sab bath allows us to draw our breath, take stock of our situation, and give up any tendency to self-sufficiency, by focusing on the infinite Source and Provider of all our needs. Every seventh day has been given to us as a reminder that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Sustainer of all created things. In Exodus 20, where the Sabbath is the fourth commandment, teaching us how to love God, its observance is eternally linked with His creative work. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sab bath to the L ORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, nei ther you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the L ORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the L ORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8–11. When we keep the Sabbath in the way the L ORD gave it to us, then we will receive the special blessing God intended for us. As it renews our vision of God’s power, love, and wisdom from week to week, we will learn to trust in Him more fully and have less confidence in our own abilities to plan our lives, to provide for our needs and to solve our problems. By accepting God’s gift of the Sabbath and keeping that day holy, we have access to a mighty Source of power. As our hearts are filled with trust in His perfect ability as our Plan Maker and Problem Solver, we will learn to leave our plans and problems more fully in His hands for the following week. The next Sabbath, we can then come to Him again for a renewal of our vision and a refreshing of our trust and rest in Him. In this way we will be reminded never to trust in our own wisdom, but instead to depend upon God for all our plan making, problem solving and burden bearing. We will experience that abiding peace that passes all understanding.