Finding Renewal amid Life’s Demands

All right. Welcome again everybody and thank you for tuning in to today’s webinar. I’m here with Matt Kaufmann, and I’m Isaac Funk. And today we’re going to be talking about finding renewal amid life’s demands. Matt and I are just going to have a conversation around this, and like I said, at the end, if you have questions that you’d like to share, we will welcome those as we consider what this looks like in real practical ways. 

So, one of the questions that already did come in with registration that I thought really captured where we want to begin with is how do we make room for rest when our calendar is already full of really good things that are worth doing? And so, today we’re going to consider making room to receive the rest from God and receiving the care of God within those demands of life that just keep on going it seems. 

Matt, was there anything that stood out to you in the questions that people sent in beforehand? Not a specific question, but the feeling stood out to me, and that was a feeling of exhaustion and desperation maybe. A little bit of something’s got to give here, and I’m not quite sure what this looks like and which I think really speaks to the pointed nature of this particular topic. 

So, that did stand out. Yeah. Just a really deep-felt need here, and some requests for real practical help too with the limits that we face as people and some extraordinary pressures, right? Absolutely. I would not want this presentation to pass over as if these pressures were not really important. 

Financial pressures, for example. That’s a huge pressure, and it’s not something that you can ignore. And so, we have these basic needs that sometimes are at crisis. So, anyway, that is just an example of many others. Yeah. And I appreciate you bringing that out here at the get-go, because I think it’s probably important to recognize here that a lot of this does become very specific and, I think a lot of what we’re probably going to talk about is more in the ordinary fullness of life. 

But also understanding that there are crisis moments and crisis needs that exist as well. Maybe we’ll have a chance to touch on those as we go. I don’t know how that’ll turn out exactly, but it’s not a formula, right? Finding renewal amidst life’s demands is not a formula. It’s not a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. 

So, as we dive into this discussion, we’re going to try to come at it from different angles as we go, but we’re going to also try to keep it at a level that it can impact the most. The common denominator of just ordinary life and busyness and things that we’re facing. 

So, a lot of questions out there, and we’re going to hold those questions that we all have around this beside the invitation from Jesus. So, I’d like to just start there with the words of Christ in Matthew 11 well known to many of us. But I’m just going to read through this rather slowly to give us a chance to let the familiar become new to us again, a new invitation from Christ to the weary ones. 

Matthew 11:28 through 30 says this, “Come unto me All ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

Matt, what stands out to you about how Jesus is addressing someone who’s already weary? A lot stands out. I find it a bit comforting given all of the questions, and we just placed our finger on weary would probably be a good description of the posture of the questions. And to know that Christ spoke ex- expressly to that group. In fact, the group that found Christ compelling and worth traveling many miles for was this weary labored group. 

And so, maybe at the outset, if we find ourselves in that crowd, we’re actually in good company because we are those that seek Christ out, and in fact he invites us to. I think we start on the right base just by being those who are self-acknowledged as weary. Yeah, so he’s giving us an invitation just to be honest about where we’re at. 

We can be weary. And it’s not like we have to arrange our life in some successful way before we come to Jesus, before we come to God. And I think the character of the one who’s inviting us is important here too, where he says meek and lowly in heart. He says, “this is what I’m like.” 

And I need to know that. I need to know that the teacher, the one who I’m coming to, is not going to be annoyed by my weariness. But he is someone who can receive that and absorb that into himself and give me the balm and the remedy for that. And that learning is a part of the resting. 

Ah, learning of Christ is part of the recipe. I think you said there’s no formula, but if there was a formula, maybe that formula would be learning of Christ. Which I think is very compelling to recognize that perhaps this is a space that I can learn to do. 

Now that’s an optimistic thought. So absolutely, yeah. So, learn of me. We get to bring him choices. We get to bring him our commitments. We get to bring him not only a request for strength to just keep everything unchanged in our life, but we’re actually going to say, “Lord, would you change me? 

Would you take me from where I am to where you would have me be?” And so, I love that invitation from Jesus, and I think it’s good to slow down with that from time to time. To know that you’re not only somebody who has been given responsibilities to carry in life, and sometimes that’s just what it feels like. 

What are you doing here on Earth? You’re just going to be carrying these responsibilities for a while. But more than that, you are somebody who Jesus is inviting to come to him in those responsibilities. And man, I need that invitation. And then the second text on the screen here is Mark 6:31, which is Jesus again speaking to his disciples. 

He says this after a time of ministry that they were serving and out speaking about the kingdom of heaven and all of this and Mark 6:31 says, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while, for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.” 

So, here Jesus is recognizing the disciples’ need, their creature needs, their flesh needs for rest, and he invites them to withdraw. And I say their flesh needs, but even God rested, so he recognizes the need is there. Now, we know the rest of the story that Jesus recognized that. 

He’s like, “We should get away. Y’all need to just chill out for a bit.” And then they get in the boat. All the people that they’ve been ministering to are like, “Hey, there they go.” They race around the lake. They beat them to it. They’re there when they arrive. It’s like, okay, great, Jesus has compassion on them, because they’re like sheep without a shepherd. 

And he involves his disciples in caring for them and feeding them again. And so, in this story what’s important, I think, to our purpose is that it includes Jesus’ concern for the disciples’ rest, and the demands that follow that. This doesn’t tell us that the disciples were successful in having some uninterrupted retreat but it does show that Jesus cares about that, and that he can be with us in that even when things don’t go according to plan. I love the phrase coming and going. Here in the first century, coming and going made a lot of sense. Sorry to belabor this, but I was on a plane traveling this week, and I was coming into O’Hare, coming into Chicago. You know how you get closer and closer, and all of a sudden you see the lights, and then you see all the interstates. 

I could see six different interstates from my perspective lined up with cars. That’s a really good picture of coming and going, because every single person is coming or going. And I don’t know but anyway I read it now, coming and going, it is so contemporary, coming and going. 

Speaks to 2026. And yet for that phrase to be the right phrase for, I don’t know, 25 AD or whatever. It’s just interesting that’s human. Yeah. That’s really good. Yeah, we get it. So, the invitation is for us. And that invitation, I think, then draws us into two really practical questions. 

And we’re going to talk about those today, hopefully here. So, the first of them is this: how can we make room for rest when life is already full of the things that matter? Okay, how do we make room for that rest that God would give us, that Christ would give us? And then the other practical question that we want to deal with is, how can we receive Christ’s care within the responsibilities that continue? 

We have a definition that we’re using for renewal here too that I’ll just draw your attention to. “By renewal, we mean that it is God who is restoring and strengthening us for life with him and love of others.” So, what we’re not talking about here is, how do I make room to stop and pamper myself? Or how do I avoid as many responsibilities as I can so that I can feel happy in this life or something? That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about receiving the grace of God into our daily lives and into our regular rhythms of life so that we can love him and love others well. 

And just a couple points about this too, and then we’ll keep moving here, but these are complementary things. We don’t want to treat these as stages. Neither of these makes the other one unnecessary. If I have margin in my day, it doesn’t mean that I can, that I don’t have to have a prayerful life in which I’m communing with God throughout it. 

And it doesn’t mean also that just because I have a good prayer life or a consistent prayer life, that I don’t need regular times of withdrawing and carving out time to be still and to be at rest. So, several people, I think, in those registration questions asked about capacity and margin. So Matt, let’s just start there. 

Can I just make a comment? I think these fit each with the passages that we recited. So, the Mark 6, “Come and draw apart,” is that first one. Make room for rest. So, Christ was like, “You need to do a little bit of nothing. That’s what you need.” But the top one, “Come unto me, all ye that labor, and I’ve got a yoke for you.” 

That’s not exactly a nap. I don’t think the yoke to the ox is like, “Oh, good. I get to lay down.” It was actually quite the opposite. So, there is rest in the doing, in a sense, that Christ is like, “I’m going to teach you how to do rest fully.” And I think that is tremendously good news. 

So, I think these do complement both the Scripture, but also give us a more holistic or composite view of renewal. So, you’ve said it. I just had to say it my own way. It’s good. No, that’s excellent. Regarding that first area of margin and creating space or withdrawing to get away with God perhaps one person had said in their registration question, one person wants to contribute but says that the pace of that life of contributing is crowding out ordinary family life and is leaving them drained. 

And my question before we get into this specific graphic is how would you begin helping someone to recognize their own limits? How do you help someone like that recognize the capacity that they actually have? Do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, that’s a question I’m not sure I have a great answer for except for wanting to sanction that knowing yourself is really a critical part of it. 

And one question that I do ask myself in terms of what am I doing and what am I about, is who am I? That really is a critical question. Who am I? And if I don’t do this thing, who else will? And I’m actually quite surprised that a lot of people will do what it is that I think I have to do. 

Let me give you an example. I’m a minister. If I don’t do this teaching or answer that assignment, who will? Actually, quite a few people. There are quite a few people that will step into that. That’s not all left to me. Who’s going to be a father to my children? Oh, ha, guess that’s me. Nope, nobody else will. And that is critical. I’m a math teacher, and I find myself confronted with these things, especially when I was teaching the public school, all the time. Because there were all kinds of ideals and things that we needed to do with students to make them better people. 

But I always had to go back to if I didn’t teach them mathematics, I don’t think they’ve got anybody else in their life that will do it. So, I guess that’s what I do. And so, as I think about doing good things and what is the good thing that I should be about, I would start to ask those types of questions. 

Who else is in their life to do that other good thing? They’ve got a Boy Scout leader. They’ve got a pastor. They’ve got a mom and a dad. They’ve got an aunt and an uncle and a grandpa. Oh, okay. That takes some pressure off here. I really am not that unique. Where’s my uniqueness? They’re not going to learn their algebra unless I do that. I don’t know if that’s helpful and even is an attempt to your question. Absolutely. Yeah. I absolutely think that’s helpful, and something that I feel like I can’t decide once and for all for my life necessarily, but through different seasons of life, that identity maybe shifts as well. 

And so, there’s some sort of hygiene that needs to come with it of going back and checking, what am I about? What has God gifted me with or asked me to do, and what am I choosing just for myself perhaps? And am I settling into a way of life or am I in a certain season of life, I think are two lenses to look at, right? Absolutely. A person going through med school, that’s a season. You know what that’s going to be, and there’s just really no way out of that. And so that defines, right? Somebody’s doing specific training maybe for the mission field, for example, and they’ve got two years of intense training. 

That is a thing. But I don’t think we would say that’s going to be their way of life or that’s their pattern. It is, and then we have those patterns and seasons in our life, depending on our occupations or our careers or life stages or family makeup and that type of thing. Another lens I think to think through. So, here’s an example that we want to walk through, and this is somebody who is in a season where someone’s asked them to be on a committee. This is an option that they’ve been given. You can see on the screen here, what’s on the calendar for this committee, “Hey, would you join this committee? We’re meeting 7:00 to 8:00.” Sure, I can slot out an hour piece of my calendar. But also recognizing what that one commitment might make means a lot more than what is actually identified on the calendar. Just as saying, “Yeah, I’m going to go become a doctor or something,” has all sorts of hidden costs that you don’t recognize regarding med school or whatever. 

It doesn’t necessarily hit the calendar until you go through it. So anyway, the committee meeting, what does this really require? These are just discernment prompts that you might walk through as you’re given an opportunity for responsibility. 

So, what does it really require to do that? How much time is that really going to take? How much energy is that going to take? Is there preparation involved? What would recovery from that look like? What is it actually requiring beyond just the one-hour time slot? The hidden costs are something to consider. 

And then also, if I said yes to this committee, what is that displacing? You may have heard it said, every yes is a no to something else. And so, one of the nos that tend to come out of a yes is oftentimes just going to be that place for rest. 

Because rest doesn’t have any other advocates other than itself. Nobody is out there getting anything out of your rest it would seem, right? And so, no one’s going to encourage you in that direction. So, I’m just naming that honestly, as what oftentimes would happen when we say yes to one thing, rest is definitely going to be one of those things, or oftentimes one of those things that’s going to be pushed out then. 

But also, with that, to recognize that we do want to look at patterns, and not just necessarily we had a hard week or a really full week or something, and that’s not necessarily a marker or proof of overload. But one of the things that’s really nice about this to to lean on, is that other people who share your life are going to be good at seeing the costs that you don’t see with this. 

And it can even help to ask someone that you’re doing your life with, maybe a spouse, maybe a roommate, someone in your community that you trust, whatever, “When I accept this responsibility, what changes for you?” It moves the conversation, I think, away from can I squeeze this into the calendar, into what are we communally actually agreeing to for me to say yes to this? 

And I think that speaks, Matt, to what you were saying about your identity. Knowing who it is that you are, and what is uniquely yours to carry, and what could be carried or shouldered by others as well. If you say yes to a committee meeting or something, but it has an impact, a significant impact on your family that cannot be made up. 

That’s a real conversation for you to have with your wife, right? Or, with your kids. To think about how this impacts you if I was to say yes to this other role or this other commitment? So that’s another, and can I fold in something else? Yeah. I think it goes along with knowing ourselves is why am I saying yes to this? 

Somebody put on the question about recognizing the peer pressure of a busy world. Who wants to say, “Hey, how was your week?” And you couldn’t really say it was busy. It seems like a little bit of a slacker to say, “man, I was able to relax.” You know what I mean? That’s just doesn’t carry in our culture. And I think if the truth would be told, again, coming back to myself, why am I saying yes to this? Am I saying yes to this because I’m trying to get some personal value? Not that it’s not important, and it has its place, but am I doing this to stroke my own ideal as opposed to maybe I’m loving others or and do I need to do that, sometimes we do feel like if I don’t do the things that soothe me and make me feel like a man, a woman, a good person, a such and such nobody else is, so I better step into these things to make myself. And all of that stuff is subtle, but it’s really helpful, I think, to sort through yeah, why am I saying yes to this? 

And there are good motives and not so good motives perhaps or could be better. Yeah. Which I think, again, just to highlight the goodness of doing something like this with others in community, with those who are close to us because they can help us notice those things that we wouldn’t have noticed on our own for sure. Then just the last question on this slide is what could change in this season? So, it may not be leaving behind an opportunity or responsibility altogether. Maybe it’s just a shift in how you’re treating that. Maybe it’s a smaller contribution that you’re able to make for it. 

Maybe it’s sharing a load with somebody else, not just taking it on yourself. Maybe it’s less frequent, less often. Or maybe it’s a responsibility that you’re already carrying. Is that something that you’re able to renegotiate for particular seasons of life? Matt, I’m in a season of life, just had a newborn. There are some things that need to be renegotiated for this season of life where I am helping my wife care for our other kids while she’s keeping this little newborn alive, right? Like there’s renegotiating. Are there other things in this season that could change to allow for those responsibilities to be cared for? 

Another way you could think of that last point is how might I say yes to this? So, the second one is, if I say yes, what am I saying no to? I need to be aware of that. And that third one is a little bit, okay, if I say yes, how should I say yes to it? Is there a way that makes this yes really healthy? 

Exactly. Yeah. How does this remain sustainable if we do that? Yeah. Yeah. And just a point with the calendar there we’re not really making a point about an hour of preparation and an hour after. There’s no point in that beyond the point that our commitments are larger than the timestamp on the calendar. 

Exactly. Just the idea of hidden costs exists, and costs for you and costs for other people. Yeah. Okay. So, recognizing perhaps that something in your schedule, on your calendar might change or could change perhaps if you wanted to say yes to something, and knowing that there’s something that could change is one thing. But we have to then take another step and actually picture the arrangement that would make rest possible there. So, recognizing it is one thing, actually doing something about it is the other thing. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this next slide. And maybe Matt, I’ll have you walk through this table if you’re comfortable. Yeah. This is on your hypothetical Thursday, right? Yeah. Hypothetical Thursday. I think really what we’re offering here are four different practical things to think through in terms of, okay how do I say yes to this certain matter?  

So, I’m going to go all the way to the right-side column. Four words: simplification, shared, declined, and rescheduled. So, these are four different ways to protect a space for rest or build this margin or how I might protect rest. So, with those four categories, this chart simply plays out a hypothetical example of what that might be. 

So, on Thursday you might have your normal supper and you know what that should mean and you’ve got a full version of that. What does it look like to simplify supper when it’s appropriate? And maybe that’s soup for supper or something like that. So, this is simply giving an idea. Notice how we can simplify, and when we simplify, we can now make space for rest, which is what we’re wanting, which is really what a lot of these questions that came in was like, “How do I do this? I don’t see how it’s possible.”  

We’re offering four different practical things. Think simplification. Yep. The next one is, you’ve got free time, 6:30, which typically gets filled with anything unfinished. What does it look like to share, right? This would be the category of sharing. So, you might rest and someone else has agreed to take on those responsibilities, that unfinished business. And so, there’s now an opportunity where we share with one or help one another out. I think back to my early re- child-rearing days when we would share watching kids. Couples would go out, kids come over to our place, we share that duty. I think it was this kind of model where we shared the care to allow another person to rest knowing that we were going to be able to get that rest as well and do that. So, this cooperation with other people. What does it look like to take our schedules through the lens of what could I share? 

What load could somebody share with me and I another person to give each other the space for rest? The third one is declined. Some as it said there, the 7:00 normal Thursday, new coordinating role landed, oh, here it is. But maybe with a declined lens the new season, we decline an opportunity and that new role. 

So that is another tool in the toolbox that is declining, which really speaks to the previous slide about knowing what to say yes to and no to. And then there’s a part that could be really uncomfortable too, Matt, I would imagine. For some people, it’d be like they know they could decline it, it would just feel really uncomfortable to decline it. So, I don’t know if you have any insight or advice for that. The one thing I thought of is just in the actual conversation of the decline, “Hey, I really care about this, that you’ve asked me to be a part of or whatever. I really do care about it. But with what I’m already carrying, I just cannot take it on now.” 

Just somehow communicating that you believe it is a good thing, so it doesn’t feel like you’re just totally shutting the door in someone’s face. I don’t know. Do you have anything else? No, I totally agree. And here’s what I’m finding is that yes, they can find people for that. I am easily replaceable. 

And so again, if we have this mindset that I have to do it, we might be off on the wrong foot. Now, here’s where it becomes difficult when it gets to the last minute and you get the call that says, “Hey, we need this. Can you do it?” And I’m up against a wall, and now all of a sudden, it turns into a favor, and somebody else’s problem just became my problem. 

So those are really challenging. Those are really hard to say no to. I find it very easy to say no for this request way out in advance. And knowing that, you know what? They can find somebody else for that. It gets very difficult to say no when all of a sudden, it is urgent. Tyranny of the urgency is what they say. 

And that’s part of our lives too. So, I just want to acknowledge that’s challenging to do but not to get into a pattern of taking on other people’s problems, but it’s hard. Yeah. And that’s what I wanted to draw from that too, that I thought might be helpful, is just recognizing there are times when that’s going to happen. 

Yeah. And you’re going to be doing favors for people. It’s when that becomes a pattern, particularly a pattern from maybe an individual to you, that’s when it needs to be turned into a conversation maybe with that individual or creating some other arrangement. Yeah. And if I have this self-understanding that I save the day and I gravitate towards these types of things, taking on other people’s problems, then I need to take an honest look. 

That’s just a personal growth thing. I’m not doing it for the right reasons then. That’s a problem. So, I’ve made that point already. But these things are subtle but all parts of the story that’s going on in our head when they happen real time. Yeah. And I don’t want to just belabor this one point either, but I want to see if I can help ease people’s souls on this and their minds that there are times when you do decline something, and you made this point, but I just want to- emphasize that when you were able to decline something and allow somebody else to step into that, you have the opportunity to bless them. 

There are oftentimes people waiting in the wings for an opportunity to do something that they’ve not been asked to do. And maybe you or somebody else is in the position where you’re like, “Oh, yeah, of course. They would think of Matt to do that.” And that’s good and right, and Matt maybe would be an excellent one to do that. But if you give somebody else a chance to step in where they otherwise wouldn’t have had that opportunity, it could be a huge blessing in their life where they can feel like they’re contributing in ways that they weren’t able to before or just didn’t know how. So anyway, that’s good to free up blessing for others. 

So, the fourth one there is rescheduled. All right? How does rescheduling look like? So, at 8:30, children’s bedtime, then you catch up on everything. What would it look like to do children’s bedtime, and then whatever that unfinished job was you slot it for Saturday, for example. You’ve rescheduled that. You haven’t let it go. You’ve still made room for it. You have found a place for it to go. There again, it’s just a category to think about. So, rescheduling, declining, sharing, simplifying I think are all tools in the toolbox for protecting space for rest. 

Now, when you just said the rescheduling one, some people just heard, “Man, did I just create a terrible Saturday for myself?” I would just pull out this, so that you would have to have some space designated. You would have to have arranged for your Saturday to have that free spot to catch the overflow of things like that. So, again, it’s not that you’re just reshuffling your overload into another day to deal with it later, but you’ve actually designated a day to catch it. Yeah. But I do think one of the things you can monopolize on rescheduling is rescheduling for optimizing or really good use of time. 

For example, I bought a fixer-upper 14 years ago. And so, I’d be out at the house working every moment I had. Until I realized that sometimes I would go out there and I would just kick the walls. I’d start one thing, drop it, start another thing, so distracted, and I would leave so frustrated, because I just spent my entire evening away from my home and my family and got zero done. 

Made actually the needle move nothing at all. And it was because I learned to detect when a good evening was. Like, oh, I am ready now to tackle this one thing. And so, I think with this rescheduling, sometimes it is like when do you really do well with that thing? Or when do you think you can really accomplish something, or otherwise, I could spend that 8:30 hour just kicking the walls, thinking I’m getting something done, but really not. It would’ve been better done at another time of my day. So anyway, just another thing everybody’s experienced at some level. I think that’s really practical and important to deal with. 

Maybe we’ll get some questions about that later, too. So, these are real practical ways for us to open up that space, to protect that space for rest. Then the question is, how do we actually receive that space, that margin, as restful, rather than allowing it to immediately fill with what other distractions abound? 

So, time has finally opened up. What’s going to help us actually stop instead of just filling it with other things? These bullets on the screen are just ideas. It’s not an exhaustive list. It’s not something you’d have to hit every time or anything like that. But some things that generally could find a place in your rest are things like prayer, reading the Word of God, Scripture intake. 

Could be sleeping which might sound extremely unspiritual to some people. God gives sleep or rest to those he loves, something like that. Sleep. It could be a meal that you can actually enjoy where you can chew it instead of just swallowing it. It could be a walk to just enjoy the beauty of God around you and soaking that in. 

It could be reading a book that you really enjoy reading, not because you’re gaining anything from it, but it just is pleasurable. Or it could be companionship with somebody who’s close to you, who’s life-giving to you, maybe a close friend or a spouse or something. And just general quiet. And what’s interesting about all of these is that these tend to be the things that get pushed out easily in our lives. 

And especially quiet and just having nothing, no input. Just allowing ourselves to be humble before a creator, God, and recognizing his goodness to us that’s reaching us in this very moment. So, we don’t want to fill every available minute with some prescribed devotional program. 

That’s not what we’re proposing for your free hour of rest, right? But what would it look like, and might I say the litmus test of it being rest is that you feel restful when you’re done. And that’s guiding because sometimes we engage in things we think ought to be what I do with my time of rest, and they then really became more task-oriented than restful. 

And so, I think this is a space to learn and grow in Isaac, which is actually quite an enjoyable conversation to have with people. There’s a beautiful field to plow and tend in a person’s life, and that is how they rest, which might look different to another person, but the outgrowth and the outcome’s the same. You feel rested, and everybody’s hand goes up. I like that part. So, there is that. And that’s fun. I think this slide is optimistic and just has a few ideas that ought to get brainstorming juices going, and that should probably be the effect of it. But to know that it’s out there. 

A list like this could be totally different from one person to another. But what really brings you rest? But also, I will say this maybe as a companion to that statement, that is to judge your restfulness over time, is that fair to say? Because maybe there are things that really would be good for you to do in the moment that you might come out of and be like, “You know what? I really don’t feel all that much different.” Which I guess is also maybe we were working on the presupposition that somebody who is practicing these things was coming into it already exhausted and overloaded. And that’s not necessarily the case either, but it might be someone who goes into a time of just quietness or taking a walk along the street here between meetings and then come back and not feel particularly different for it. 

But if I do that over the course of days and maybe weeks over time, that creates a different disposition in me that maybe just one walk or something like that wouldn’t even accomplish. So anyway, I think it goes back to what you said earlier, is we want to measure this over time, not necessarily in the moment. 

Yeah. So, making room matters, and we want to offer the room, the margin that we create, to God to use to actually give us his care, to receive his care for us and not just be filling it with anything else that comes our way. And then whether we are at work or whether we’re at rest, the other part of this conversation is around how do we bring our actual lives to Christ as the responsibilities are carrying on? 

So, we’re going to talk a little bit about what that can look like. So, I just want to accent, we are really shifting now to the second idea that was presented there on the second and third slide. The first one is, how do we rest? And Jesus said, “Come apart with me.” And then on the other one, he says, “Come and find rest by yoking with me. Let’s do this together.” And that’s really where you’re going now here, Isaac. Yep. Thank you. The main idea here is that a demanding season of life maybe you’re in a week or a month or something that just feels like, “Man, I cannot carve out that space,” or even, “When I don’t feel restful,” whatever.” 

Even if you’re in a demanding season, which we all face from time to time, it does not put life with God out of reach for us. Even in demanding seasons in life, God’s not far from that. And one of the things that we talk about, Matt, you and I work with Abide discipleship and things like that, is this idea of a return to Christ. 

Returning to Christ in an ordinary life, in an ordinary day. Ways to remember his presence always with us. Christ says in John 15, “Abide in me and I in you,” or “Remain in me and I’m remaining in you.” That’s really good news for us.  Christ is with us in the midst of our responsibilities, of our busyness. 

And so, he intends to use everybody’s circumstances. I think that’s amazing. Everybody’s circumstances right now, he intends to use for his purposes in growing a relationship with God. And we often think as soon as I’m out of this phase, man, I’m going to really grow with Jesus.” 

And I think Christ is like oh, but I’ve got ideas for this phase. Please let me in this one. Yeah. And I think that’s exciting to think about. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve just been pining to head off into the wilderness and just be a monk or a hermit up in the hills or something and just be alone. 

I feel like, oh, that would rejuvenate my spiritual level to do something like that. That’s just not the way it works. I’m not saying maybe that’s a good choice for some people. But the to be a mother or father at home and taking care of the many incessant needs of the children constantly pulling on you and needing something every turn is just as much a place of meeting God and being formed into his image, being sanctified as being away with him up on the mountaintop. 

Just to emphasize your point, which I really think is a key takeaway, is that wherever you are is the only place that God can actually meet you. In fact, he has yet to meet anybody except where they actually are. And so, we come to him weary, exhausted perhaps, and we, as Peter says here, “Casting all our care upon him because he cares for us.” 

Come away, you need some rest. He cares for us. And he’s going to meet us and use all of the circumstances and the responsibilities in our life to form his life in us, to form us into people who can live from a place of rest and peace like Jesus did. And anyway, I’m getting too far off here perhaps. But yeah, go ahead. And so, these four action items really break down what that return can look like. Yeah. And it comes with an acknowledgement of noticing what we’re carrying, so honestly, this is my lot, this is my circumstance. Taking that, turning it towards Christ and telling him honestly. 

I love this idea of honesty with God. And God welcomes that honesty, and I think being able to do that is so important. And notice how doable all these things are. All of us can check box one “Okay, I’ve got that going on. Okay, now can I talk to Christ about it? Yeah, I can do that as well.” And then bringing that, entrusting, bringing that whole concern including what you cannot control. 

So, that’s really this posture that we got in the questions. Wonderful expression to you and me, Isaac and that expression then being entrusted and given over to Christ and then responding to Christ. Those I think are tremendous handholds of what that return looks like. 

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. And these are not like step one, two, three, four. These are overlapping prompts and it can be just for your wanting, handhold is the word for it, as you said. So, I wonder if we would have time here to actually walk through bringing some opportunity, bringing some condition of our day today, some responsibility we’re carrying, some load, and bringing that to Christ right now. 

In the midst of this webinar. That’s a good idea. Let’s do it. Okay. So, we’re going to basically walk through those four prompts, and as you’re able, as you’re joining the webinar or listening after the fact, whatever, as you’re able, just pause here for a minute with us, and you can keep your eyes open, you can close them, you can simply listen. 

You don’t necessarily have to change your posture or your surroundings to participate in this. And we’ll just start with remembering Jesus’ invitation to us again, where he said, “Come unto me. All ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This is not an invitation to create some special experience. This is an invitation, an opportunity to address the Lord who is inviting us. So, what is one thing that you would like to bring before him today? Just go ahead and ask him to hold that, to help you as you pray. What’s one thing that you would like to bring before him today? You don’t need to work through your whole life in this next minute, but just one concern, one responsibility or just how you’re arriving or feeling on this webinar right now. 

And then just tell him honestly in your own words about that. You might pray something to him, “Lord Jesus, Father, Holy Spirit, here’s what I’m carrying. And I need your help with it.” And then just bring him that whole concern. Ask for his help with what is yours to do and trust him with what you cannot control, and trust him with the outcome of what it is that you do. Bring him that whole concern and trust him with the outcomes. You don’t need to have some particular feeling or anything or a clear answer at the end of this or before you carry on with your next task. But we can thank him that we’re able to bring this to him. So, just go ahead and take a few more seconds to thank God that he cares and that he offers us his rest. 

All right. Thanks for participating in that. Just a brief return to Christ, recognizing his presence with us, his care for us, his willingness to offer that. And then moving out of a place like that, out of a return, one of the things that Jesus talks about in John 15 again where he’s talking about abiding is that he ties abiding in him to obedience to him, and actually then taking the next step and just saying, “Okay, Lord, I’m trusting that you’re going to be with me. I’m trusting that what you say is right and that you’re leading me in your way.” And you can then take next steps, banking on that reality that he is caring for you. Whether you felt it or not, God cares for you. And so, our actions can then reflect that as we go out from this return.  

So, now we’re just going to consider here towards the end, what one realistic way that we can carry this or creating space, creating margin from the webinar today into the coming week just real briefly here, and then we might have time for a question. 

Two things here to consider, I think for us, Matt, and anyone listening is you don’t have to do both of these things, but just something that might be standing out to you right now. When it comes to creating space for rest, maybe just answering in your own mind right now, what is it that you need? When would that be able to happen? When would you be able to actually carve out that margin and what would need to be changed or shared or declined or simplified, as Matt walked us through those earlier. What would need to change basically to allow that space for rest in our life? Or if you really don’t have answers to that, maybe the question is this: What’s the conversation I need to have in order to find out what that rest might look like for me? 

Who can I talk to about this? Just to continue on that conversation. And then the other box here is the ordinary return. When might I remember to return toward Christ? What would it look like to just carve out a moment or two to be in prayer before him and to bring him the cares of my day and my life? 

Matt, I have an idea of what that might look like for my life. Do you have any thoughts into helping people imagine what it might look like to plan for these returns throughout an ordinary day? A couple of things come to mind. Every afternoon I try to I set my alarm for 12 minutes and I call it my baptismal nap because I remember my baptism and then try to fall asleep if I can. Sometimes I don’t, which turns into silence for 12 minutes, which has been beautiful. But many times, I do drift and just as a short nap does, I feel renewed, which I feel like is similar to a baptismal experience. I try to do it as often as I can on any particular day in the afternoon. 

Again, that doesn’t take a lot of time and it gets interrupted. It’s not like it has to happen at all. But I tend to look forward to it, Isaac, and I think that is something that’s really beautiful. It’s turned into that. It’s turned into something that I really look forward to which I think a return to Christ should be that. 

Yeah. I love that. I would think one of the easiest places probably for me is to repurpose some ritual that’s already a part of my day, and to reframe that as this is where I’m returning my mind and my heart to Christ. So, for me, I’m a coffee drinker, and I have a coffee ritual where I’m doing pour overs and things like that, which is probably too much. 

But I do that nearly every morning of my life when I’m here at home. And during that time, I’ve decided how I’m going to use that. Some people might just groggily measure everything out, weigh it, heat the water, pour it over, whatever, drink it. But for me, it’s a time to recall Psalm 23 or go through the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of my day. 

Again, it’s just something that would exist in my life with or without prayer, right? It’s just something I’ve naturally become accustomed to doing, but now I’m repurposing that to become a return. And what’s great is that almost everybody on this call probably has mealtime prayers, right? 

Those are return spots. They’re already anchor points in your day. Yeah. Maybe the moment that you sit in your car before heading into work or before coming back home at the end of the day, maybe that’s your anchor point of a return to Christ, giving him the cares, handing them over to him. Anyway, something fun to think through. 

What are some points in my day that can be reframed around remembering God? We don’t want to turn this into some sort of legalistic or difficult obligation for people to carry out. “Oh, okay, now I have to be thinking about God way more often than I do or something, and I’ve already got a lot of other things I’m trying to think about.” 

I’m not saying you have to retain him in your thoughts all the time or something like that. That’s not what we’re proposing. But again, if we can just find one or two anchor moments throughout the day to return to him, I think the cumulative effect of that over time would be peace inducing, turning us into people of peace, for sure.  

With that is there anything else that you wanted to say, Matt, that’s on the tip of your tongue. Nope, sounds great. Great. If somebody has just one burning question or something that they wanted to share, we could take time to do that. I know we are at the top of the hour now. But if you want to unmute yourself, you’d be welcome to do that now, and we’ll talk a little further. 

Just as we close then, there are a couple other resources that I just want to point your attention to. One of them is an article called Grounding, which is a skill for living with demands. This is very similar to the return idea that we just discussed. This is on our website. And then there’s also a podcast on that’s come out as well. 

That goes a little bit deeper into some of the things we covered briefly here and could be a real help to you. And you can just go to our website and type in a search probably, grounding. It would be pulled up. Absolutely. All right. Thank you all for joining today. 

I think just maybe finishing with the invitation that we began with might be a good place to go. And Jesus said, again, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” May we respond faithfully to that invitation from Christ today. Thank you so much for joining us. Matt, thanks for participating. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Have a blessed day, everyone.