If you’re truly a Christian, God has no reservations about you whatsoever. None. Whatsoever.

This is a truth I learned — or rather, began to learn — from Jack Miller.

It happened in the fall of 2010, during my first sabbatical after 15 years in the pastorate. The wheels had really begun to come off my life and ministry. I had worked eighty-hour weeks for more than a decade. And the cumulative impact of such a schedule had finally begun to take its toll.

But more than that, a long-held belief that I had carried with me had made such headway in my life that it, perhaps more than anything, was the deeper impetus for my sabbatical.

Black Cloud Looming

More and more I was becoming convinced …

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The New Testament is full of commands for us to obey. Full of them. The Sermon on the Mount is no exception. Something like sixty-six commands sound from Jesus’s mouth as he calls us as his people to live a life in step with the gospel.

The Beatitudes, Jesus’s introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, are a different story. There you’ll not find a single imperative. Not one.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive m…

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It is all too common for Christians to think that service to God is something that takes place either in the context of the local church — teaching Sunday school, shoveling the church sidewalks, leading a small group — or something that brings explicitly Christian teaching into the world by using your job as a platform for sharing your faith with your friends and colleagues who aren’t yet Christians.

But it's here where the gospel rescues us. Check out this word from the Apostle Paul: “But we urge you, brothers… to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no on…

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Last fall, I took my first sabbatical in 15 years of ministry. Initially, I had no idea what to do. So I called a pastor friend and asked how I could be productive during the time off.

Ironic. A productive sabbatical! Obviously, if I was trying to make rest productive, I had a very practical problem with the whole idea of sabbatical.

I had spent my entire pastorate working six-day, eighty-hour weeks. I had no category for rest. . . until the Lord led me to Hebrews 4:10—

For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did.

As I read this familiar passage, I thought, “Christianity is more like a day off than a day at the office.”

Then came another insight—f…

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