Twenty-first century America owns me.

Like most people, I have too much to do. With a full-time job, a wife, two small children, a house, various church commitments, involvement in multiple Bible studies, and an attempt at launching a career as a novelist, I constantly feel overwhelmed and overmatched by my obligations.

Long days are my reality, and as a product of our culture, I have brought to bear its methods to try to manage my situation. That, of course, means action items on to-do lists and checking them off one-by-one as I make progress.

This results in my measuring the quality of life in terms of efficiency and productivity (two terms I don't find widely promoted in Scripture). At the end of a given day, I review the status of my task list and assign the day its value based on how much I checked off.

Now—add to all this that I'm a devout Christian. At some point American culture and God's Law must collide. In this case I had to ask myself, how in the world can I get everything done when God expects me to cease from work for one day every week? Even with seven days I can't get everything done.

God said the Sabbath was supposed to be a gift made for man (Mark 2:27). But it's still one of the Ten Commandments. How can something be a gift and a commandment?

I get the other nine. Don't murder. OK. Don't steal. Fine. Don't covet. Got it. Though I mess up some of the commandments at times, they all make sense.

Except the Sabbath. It simply can't be honored in this culture. And from what I see by the way they live, most Christians agree with me. Obviously, the fourth commandment must be outdated, in need of revision.

Right?

Which brings me to the problem with being a Christian. No matter how loudly outside forces shout something that makes sense to my worldly mind, God whispers the exact opposite to my soul.

Start honoring the Sabbath. I will show you a better way.

I heard the message I didn't want, and I responded the way I usually do when that happens: I marched out an army of rationalizations for why I didn't need to listen.

I reasoned that God didn't really mean what He said about the Sabbath in His Word.

I told myself I shouldn't be legalistic about it; I would just rest when it was convenient. I now know that's an insult to legalism. I was (mis)using the term as an excuse to do what I wanted to do, not what God wanted me to do.

I latched on to the theory that honoring the Sabbath is negated in the New Testament. I had heard some argue this, and I thought I had found the loophole that could save my schedule. I studied the relevant Scriptures and commentaries on them—but reluctantly I had to admit that I was unconvinced.

On and on I rationalized, engaging in a medal-of-honor-worthy performance in battling the Scriptures. Ultimately, though, nothing changed that observing the Sabbath is not only one of the Ten Commandments, but the one God devotes the most words to.

OK, God, I surrender. I will start honoring the Sabbath. In my way.

Again, I set my modern American mind to work. I considered a typical week's duties and formulated a project plan for completing them all within the allotted time, including a full day of rest. I could handle it. I just needed to shift some things around.

Like doing a lot of my "God stuff" on Sundays instead of during the week. Part of Sabbath rest is to draw closer to God, so doing tasks related to his ministry should accomplish that, right? After all, Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.

Of course, most of the flexible stuff I was able to shift to Sundays was administrative in nature—not miraculous. Nor was it directly helping others in need. So in essence, Sunday had become just another day overloaded with tasks to be completed, and my attempt at "spiritual multi-tasking" (another concept I, oddly, don't find promoted in Scripture) still felt like work, not rest.

Another plan I implemented was working harder on the other six days. Squeeze it all in, then take a rest. I was tough; I wouldn't be defeated. This strategy nearly resulted in a nervous breakdown.

Maybe I could mess with the definition of work. After all, who could really say what was and wasn't work? Washing laundry? Mowing the lawn? Vacuuming the house? If I saved all these types of activities for Sunday, I would be doing something different from what I did the other six days. Wasn't that rest in some sense?

Nope. Just another transparent attempt at achieving my will, not God's.

Finally, I had to admit that I was approaching the idea of Sabbath in entirely the wrong way. While the details of how one rests will differ from one Christian to another, I decided the only way for me to unequivocally obey God was to abandon my corporate mind-set and any attempt at still squeezing in the same amount of work every week. Come Saturday night, I would shove my task list in a drawer and not put a pen to it again until Monday morning, no matter what the consequences.
So I started to rest on Sundays—for real. I worshiped in the morning and spent the afternoon and evening relaxing with my family, reading, praying, studying God's Word, even sneaking in the occasional nap—something I used to be too tough (translated: foolish) to do.
Somewhere in the background, my task list called to me with all the stuff I had to do. But I wasn't listening. Stuff could wait.

The result should have been predictable: I learned—again—how much wiser God is than I and how much better he knows me than I know myself.

Did you ever notice Scripture likens not taking a Sabbath rest to slavery (Deut. 5:12)? God wanted me to enjoy freedom from the world's ways, but I was a willing slave to my task lists. The very reason I thought I couldn't rest was the very reason I needed to rest. But I couldn't see that at first because my human inclination is, sadly, toward slavery.

Thank God He commanded the Sabbath.

The joy I experience when I take a true rest every week renews my soul. It reminds me of who I am and who is really in control. It allows me to stop doing and start being. It gives me something to look forward to every week, which, in turn, gives me greater enthusiasm and perspective for working on the other six days.

At this point, my worldly reasoning wants to interrupt with, See, that's why resting is good: you recharge one day to be more efficient on the other six.

But that's not how it works. While that may actually happen to some degree, that's the wrong orientation. The Sabbath isn't a project plan for maximizing productivity; it's a command to renew one's soul and draw closer to God. If I work faster because of it, great.

I find, though, that I don't. This forces me to constantly reevaluate the items I include on my task list. When I first did this, I realized many were trivial and could easily wait while I rested. Others never should have made the list in the first place.

If all these tasks were important to God, He would have given me time to complete them and take a full Sabbath rest. But He didn't. So with a greater sense of God's will for my time, I have trimmed much of the worldly fat from my spiritual body.

I have also started to—thankfully—unlearn the corporate model of measuring the success of my life in terms of productivity. If I had continued down that path, surely I would have spiritually self-destructed along the way. Instead, I experience the joy of forgetting about my over-hyped to-do lists and focusing more on God once a week.

And by His power, the slave bond that 21st century America holds on me is broken.