Revitalization
"to impart new life or
vigor to: restore to an active or fresh condition"
This week we had another
guest speaker; it was Perry’s wife Andrea. She gave an overview of the Elijah Project: a Bible-based
program that she designed to help people address stress and exhaustion in their lives by
learning how to rest. I’ve
personally gone through the Elijah Project and have found it to be extremely helpful and encouraging.
I’ve heard about the importance of rest before both spiritually
and physically. Almost every
resource I’ve looked at to help me train for the 100-mile bicycle ride I’ve
committed to in September has said something to the effect of “REST as hard as
you train”. The simple truth is our
bodies and spirits can only take so much without experiencing crippling
fatigue.
Andrea ended her message by talking about the Lord’s Prayer
and how its something most Christians can drone through without much
thought. Like many other beautiful
truths, its meaning had lost its vigor and effectiveness by being mindlessly
repeated. Andrea then talked about the reading the
same text in a different translation of the Bible. The “new” voice revealed truth and beauty that had always
been there and it seemed to come alive and have new meaning. It was this illustration that made me
realize that the point of rest is to revitalize us, to give us new life and
that it isn’t just for our benefit.
I don’t want to be dead and boring to my
friends, family, co-workers, and customers like the Lord’s Prayer was to Andrea;
I want to be a means by which God reveals His truth and beauty to others. The
only way that I can ensure that will not happen is by taking time to rest and be
revitalized.
God has some pretty specific and incredibly interesting
things to say about how we as humans should find rest and revitalization. He does not want to tire us out with endless
lists of chores and rules, rather, He sent His Son so that we might have abundant life (see John
10:1-21).
The Elijah Project goes through many of these principles and iff you are interested in going through it for
yourself all the resources are free online and can be found at
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