The following videos were not created or produced by The Collective Church NWA. They are solely a product of Bridgetown Church and John Mark Comer. They have put it out on Vimeo for download and then we as a church have added them as our main teaching for our Sabbath series.
T!C Sabbath Week 1
We live in a cultural moment of restlessness. The unsatisfied desires of our human condition are exacerbated by the barrage of digital marketing from a consumption-oriented, consumer-driven economy. We have multi-billion dollar, multi-national industries hovering over our minds – via our devices – in an attempt to monetize our restlessness. But rest doesn’t come from buying a product; it comes from Sabbath. A word that literally means stopping. The Sabbath is an entire day set aside to stop - stop working, stop wanting, stop worrying, etc.—and to simply rest in God’s presence.
T!C Sabbath Week 2
Similarly—like many other Practices of Jesus—Sabbath takes preparation in order to be enjoyed fully. In fact, in the ancient near east, the day before the Sabbath was called the “Preparation Day” (John19v31). While Sabbath is about rest, it’s best enjoyed with some prep behind you. Much like a road trip, if we fail to prepare, it can be difficult to be fully present to Sabbath, and to enjoy it as the gift it is. Without preparation, it’s easy to let the day get lost in things we “should” have done, or what we “could” be doing in the present.
T!C Sabbath Week 3
Gratitude is unnatural. The disposition out of which most modern humans operate is entitlement and discontent. What we don’t have is ever before us or tucked temporarily in the shadow of our subconsciousness. The hunger for more cripples gratitude and drains restfulness—the hamster who can never stop the wheel. With every rotation, he wants another, doomed to pursue a destination that cannot be reached, for it does not exist. Gratitude is a deliberate act of mindful contentment. Though it isn’t natural to the modern sensibility, we can yet discover methods of gratitude, practices of thanksgiving, and from them grow into a lifestyle of rest.
T!C Sabbath Week 4
In the Practice of Sabbath we are welcomed into the space where human nature meets our God-given desire for more. We wade into the tender places of our soul where both our limitations and our potentials are revealed. If we’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it is that Sabbath, by its very nature, demands a return – to our humanity and its limitations and to the God who created us. And it’s here that we are tempted to believe that these emotions, thoughts, and aches that we experience are simply hurdles to jump over or a mountain to summit before we can actually “enter into Sabbath.” But, in reality, it is only through this facing of ourselves and of God that we find the gateway to the intimacy and freedom we long to experience so deeply.
T!C Sabbath Week 5
There is no use sugarcoating it: whether mild or severe, almost all of us suffer from some degree of digital dependence. For you, it might be a feeling of anxiety when your phone dies and a loved one can’t reach you, or a deep sense of “fomo” (fear of missing out) when you see a friend’s Instagram story (are they having fun without me?), or the obvious dents that Netflix or reddit make in your productivity. The demands of our phones are non-stop: another text, another email, another task, another post, another tweet, another invite, another buzz. And yet, Sabbath is a a day set aside to stop, a day to say “no” to the demands of our world and to say “yes” to rest in God and his good world.
T!C Sabbath Week 6
How do you grow in intimacy with your close friends and family? Likely, you spend time (probably hours!) listening to them and talking with them, in deep conversation; you think of them when you’re not together; you do things with them that you know they’ll love. Really, it boils down to presence; intimacy cannot be built without presence. So how do we cultivate intimacy with God? We spend time with him. We practice listening to his voice—learning what he sounds like—by reading scripture and listening to him in prayer. We do things with God that we know we will enjoy as much as he does: things like walks in his creation, listening to music, journaling, taking in and appreciating beauty in the world. We show up, time and time again.
T!C Sabbath Week 7
Four ways the Hebrew word ‘shabbat’ can be translated are: STOP, REST, DELIGHT and WORSHIP. On Sabbath, we STOP. We stop working. We stop worrying. We stop wanting. We stop and we choose to trust that God is in control. On Sabbath, we REST. We rest physically. We rest mentally. We rest emotionally. We rest spiritually. On Sabbath, we DELIGHT. We delight in the world that God has made. We delight in the blessings of family and community. We delight in the things that bring us joy, such as reading or cooking or playing or spending time outside. On Sabbath, we WORSHIP. We connect to God and allow our souls to catch up with our bodies. We connect to God and we make space talk to him and to hear from him. We connect to God and open ourselves up to experience the healing that he offers.
T!C Sabbath Week 8
You are not going to master this Practice in eight weeks. This Practice is only designed to get you moving on a lifelong journey. It’s meant to be integrated into your Rule of Life for you to come back to over and over. It takes most people years, if not decades, to really learn to Sabbath as God intended.
Where you go from here is entirely up to you, but if you decide to integrate Sabbath into your weekly rhythm, here’s a list of next steps to continue your Practice. Week 8 is an opportunity to look back and evaluate what this practice has been like and where you can go from here.
KIDS T!C Sabbath Weeks 1 through 6
We are starting a new series to learn about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a special day that God gave us. Every week we can have a special day where we stop working and instead we get to rest and spend special time with God. We like to say that Sabbath is a day when we rest, we play, no work, God loves us.