This last week we finished Pepe’s house and our final Spring group went back to the States. Then our staff went for a few days stay in the mountains south of Monterrey for a spritual retreat.

As I was putting together a couple of lesson plans for the trip, I realized that myself God has been teaching me a lot about work lately. The spring has been a tiring time and Christ has really brought to the forefront that I can’t do everything and that remaining in him (John 15:5) needs to be my complete focus. If I remain in him, fruit that will last will come naturally.

And so on my heart has been this idea of the need for a rythm of life that includes rest and also that time and love for God need to have priority over time and love for others and ‘good tasks’.

I realized that many of the staff were struggling with similar problems and so we decided to make sabbath and solitude the focus of our retreat.

So we spent some time looking through Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Isaiah 58:13-14, Mark 2:23-3:6, Romans 14:5-8, and Hebrews 4:1-11. These passages gave us wide picture of what the Sabbath is. I can’t go into it all here, but we talked about how God has given us the Sabbath as a gift. It is a day for rest that will strengthen us and help us let go and focus on God.

I and (I believe) all of the staff, are going to be trying to take one day a week to rest from our work and try to enter into God’s rest.

We also looked at Mark 1:29-39 and talked about how often times we need to say no to good things. That solitude is not privacy, rather it is the place of transformation where our bare selves meet Christ and are changed. There we can learn from Christ what our purpose is and we can say yes to him. Then we can say no to the things that distract from that.

Please be in prayer for the staff and me as we seek to find rest and remain in Christ.