Living Sent: Rest

Discover biblical rest, overcome burnout, and grow spiritually through whole body theology. Learn to live with God without striving or exhaustion. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hi, friend, welcome back to Women Under Construction. I am your host, Katie Wood. This is a space for women who want to follow Jesus honestly and deeply, not just in the visible moments of ministry or leadership, but in the quiet, ordinary places where real discipleship happens. I want to start today a little different and with something super simple. Let's all take a breath. Not a rushed one, not one that's functional, but a real one. Take a big inhale. Really let the air fill up your lungs and your diaphragm. And slowly exhale. Get it all out. Because what we're talking about today, you can't receive in a hurry. Today we are talking about rest, but not the kind of rest the world talks about. Not like a rest from productivity or a recover so you can go hard later rest. We're talking about the kind of rest that feels a little uncomfortable because it asks you to stop proving yourself, to stop producing, and to stop managing outcomes, all so that you can just be with God. Let me open us with a prayer. Father God, thank you so much for today, Lord. Thank you for the reminder and the seasons of rest that you give us. As we enter and encounter you in this time, would you open our ears to hear from you? Would you soften our hearts to trust you? And would you give us the courage and the obedience to obey, not based on what we see, but on who you are and who you have divinely appointed and called us to be. In your sign, Jesus' holy name. Amen. All right, friend, grab your Bible, a journal, a good cup of coffee, and let's get started. I don't know about you, but there's a certain kind of tired that sleep just doesn't fix. And it's not just this physical tiredness that I'm talking about. I'm talking about like a deep soul exhaustion. This is the kind of tired that for me comes from when I'm carrying too much, when I'm trying really hard to fire in all areas of life, or when I feel like I've been holding everything together. And lately I've been sitting with this idea that sometimes we're not tired. We're just tired of being tired. Can I get an amen? Because that kind of exhaustion, it's not the kind of exhaustion that I've learned is solved with a nap and a snack. It's an invitation. An invitation to ask, why am I living in a way that keeps exhausting me? See, my friend, mentor, and fellow theologian Jess Connolly writes in her book, Tired of Being Tired. You don't have to live tired. Here's a shameless plug for this book. It is easily one of my top five books that has changed my life. If you haven't read it, you need to immediately. It is a book that I read in various seasons of life when I am tired, when I am stressed, when I'm feeling burnt out. And in each of those seasons, the Lord uses just to minister to my soul and to remind me of the power of rest. I think the thing is for a lot of us, we feel like not being tired feels almost too good to be true. We've normalized exhaustion. Our culture, our society has normalized exhaustion. We've spiritualized, we've spiritualized hustle culture. We're convincing ourselves constantly that being depleted is just part of being faithful. But what if it's not? See, we have been taught to treat rest like a reward, like a treat yourself moment. We work hard to rest, we push through to rest, we finish everything to rest. But what if that's not how God designed it? What if rest isn't something you earn, but something you trust? Because I think at the core, our resistance to rest, it isn't this idea of laziness. It's the fact that we don't want to let go of control. We believe that if we stop, things will fall apart, that if we slow down, we will fall behind. And I think underneath of that, if we're really, truly and deeply honest with each other, the question is not either of those, but it's do I trust God to be God even when I'm not striving? I've been spending a lot of time this year studying the idea of whole body theology. The idea that like following Jesus, it's not just about tending to our souls, but it's about tending to our bodies too. And I've come to this realization that like we just don't have bodies. Bodies are not just something we have. We are embodied people. And I think somewhere along the way, humanity has separated the two. We have made faith this thing that happens in our quiet times, in our thoughts, in our hearts, and yet we live completely disjointed in our actual physical lives. And I don't know about you, but this year, as I've spent the last three months studying whole body theology, I've come to this realization, and even more impactful and powerfully is that scripture doesn't separate our souls from our bodies. See, our bodies, they matter to God, which means our pace matters, our rhythms matter, our limits matter. And what I'm learning in this season is that if our bodies are constantly overwhelmed, our souls will feel it too. If your body is always rushed, your spirit is going to struggle to be still. And if your body never rests, your heart will forget how to trust. One of my new favorite authors is Justin Whitmel Early. I read his book, The Common Rule, with one of my small groups. And when he released his newest book, When the Body Teaches the Soul, I absolutely devoured it. In it, he says, You are what you repeatedly do. Which means this, friends, that our habits, they're not just shaping our schedules and our to-do lists and our weak plans, they're shaping our souls too. That's a heavy thought. Because often we think, once I feel peace, I'll slow down. But what if it works the other way? What if your body is teaching your soul how to live? So if our bodies are constantly rushing or multitasking or overextending and pushing past limits, our souls start to believe this is what life is supposed to feel like. And I don't know about you, but I don't want my soul to feel that way. But what if when we slow down our body, when we breathe deeply, we get comfortable with sitting still, we take a walk and we stop reaching for our phones, we realize we're not just changing habits, but we're retraining our soul. Because we're reminding our whole being, our heart, our mind, our bodies, our spirits that God is here and I don't have to rush and I don't have to strive. A few months ago, something unthinkable happened in our neighborhood right before we moved in. A home exploded when lightning struck a propane tank and it was completely destroyed. And it wasn't just about that one house because nearly 20 homes surrounding it were damaged in the aftermath. Even now, when I walk past it on my favorite loop to the pond by my house, I can still see it. The rebuilding, the layers, the slow, careful work of restoration. And as I've tried to slow my body down with this idea of whole body theology, I've walked that route a lot lately. And recently something struck me, not just about the homes, but about the people who are rebuilding them. See, many times when I pass by, there are crews working. And sometimes it's a large group that are replacing a roof, or other times it's just two people who are working on windows, collecting debris, um, or doing other small projects. But not once in my many, many, many walks around this pond have I ever seen just one person. Not once have I ever seen a single person rebuilding a home alone. And I couldn't shake that. Because if there was ever a situation where someone might try to just get it done, this would be it. There's an urgency, a sense of loss, the pressure to rebuild quickly. My husband and I have even spoken and said, if it were me and I had these three windows blown out, I would just replace them myself. I wouldn't wait. But this reminder came to me that no one builds alone. And as we're sitting and thinking about rest, it made me think about how often we try to build alone. How often do we approach our spiritual lives, our growth, even our callings as if it's something we're supposed to figure out by ourselves? We read alone, we process alone, we struggle alone, we try to rebuild what feels so broken alone. But that's not how God designed it. Scripture reminds us in Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 12 that two are better than one. If either of them falls down, no one can help the other up. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Look to First Corinthians 12, 14 and 21. The body is not made up of one part, but of many. The I cannot say to the hand, I don't need you. And finally, Matthew 18, 20, where there are two or three gathered in my name, there am I with them. See, friend, you were never meant to build alone. And honestly, I think, I believe, I am convicted that trying to do it alone is one of the fastest ways to burn out. Because isolation creates pressure, but community creates support. And you might be thinking, that's great, Katie. I totally agree, but how does this connect to rest? And let me tell you, when you believe it's all on you, you can't rest. But when you trust that God is at work and that you are not alone, you're able to exhale. You're able to stop striving to rebuild everything perfectly. And instead, you can join in on what God is already restoring. Let's connect this to the bigger series that we're in right now, living sent, because this is where it all starts to come together. We often think that living or being sent means that we need to do more, go harder, and say yes to everything. And I say that as someone who has nodded my head to all of those things. But I want to challenge you. What if being sent doesn't require striving? What if your calling isn't this thing that you chase, but instead it's something you carry? So when you step into your day, you're not empty. You are already arriving inhabited because God is already with you, right? And when you live from rest, we realize that we don't force impact. We don't manufacture purpose and we don't strive to prove anything. We simply show up with Him. And I think when you think about these things, it's easy to see how we resist rest. Because oftentimes it can feel unproductive or slow or like we're falling behind. But deeper than that, I think rest, it confronts our identity. Because if you're not producing, who are you? If you're not achieving what defines you, these are questions that our broken and fractured world asks. And I think this is exactly where God meets us, friend. Not with pressure, but with truth. I love what Jess says in Tired of Being Tired when she says, God is not asking you to prove your worth. You are already his. So, what does this look like? Not just spiritually, but physically. Sit with God without an agenda. Y'all know how I feel about a prayer walk with no agenda. Take a slow walk and hold your breath. Leave your phone behind. Put your hand on your chest and breathe. Or my favorite, a breath prayer. In the midst of your day, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. As you inhale, meditate on a verse of scripture. As you exhale, meditate on the verse of scripture. Just pause in the middle of your day. That one sounds wild, right? Just stop what I'm doing in the middle of the day, Katie. I think you've completely lost your mind. I haven't. It is one of those ways that when you press pause, I've had someone describe it to me this way. When everything is in chaos and in motion, it's really easy to get caught up in that chaos and in that motion. When you stand still, when you rest, when you pause, everything else falls into line because you have stopped the motion. And finally, one of my favorite character building activities, let something remain unfinished. Because you see, rest, it's not about escaping your life. It is about inhabiting your life with God in your actual body. So here's my invitation to you as we close out this series called Living Scent and this idea of rest. I don't want to send you out and say, now it's your time to master rest or to get it perfect. Because I think the beautiful thing and the wonderful thing about being humans is that we won't get it perfect. We won't master it. If we did, we wouldn't need Jesus. Amen. But I'm asking you to begin with one breath, one pause, one small act of trust. Because, friend, God is not waiting for you to get it right. He is inviting you to come closer to him. And maybe today for you, rest looks a lot like sitting with him and letting that be enough. As we close this conversation on rest, I want to let you in, pull back the curtain, and let you know what is coming next. Because I don't want us to feel like we're talking about slowing down for the sake of slowing down. I want us to be really intentional and see that we are making space for something deeper, something cultivated. Over the next series, we're stepping into an eight-week series called Cultivated. We're gonna explore what it looks like to live with intention, grow slowly and deeply, partner with God in the formation of our lives, not in a way that is rushed or reactive or striving, but rooted. Because I believe the truth is what you cultivate, you carry. And I don't want us just to be living busy lives. I want us to be living formed lives. And if you've been listening to this and thinking, I don't want to build alone anymore. I don't want to figure this out by myself. I want to be in a space where I can grow like this, but with others, that's exactly why I created the founding circle. Not as a stage, but as a table. This is a space for women who are ready to slow down, be formed, walk this out in real intentional community. Because just like those homes that are being rebuilt in my neighborhood, we were never meant to build alone. You can find out more information on the founding circle in the show notes. I'd love for you to stay connected with what we're building here at Women Under Construction. Make sure you follow or subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming episodes and conversations like this one. And I can't wait to see you back here next week.