“The Final Movement: Sabbath as Worship
We’ve come to the last teaching session of the spiritual practice of Sabbath, and my prayer for you is this: wherever you are in the journey, whether it’s been life-giving or frustrating, keep at it. Remember—the Sabbath is not just a Christianized “day off.” It’s not a break to collapse into; it’s a rhythm that God designed to grow our capacity for worship.
St. Augustine of Hippo once said that the deep-rooted issue in humanity is not that we don’t love—but that we often love the wrong things, or we love the right things in the wrong order.
Centuries later, in a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, the secular author David Foster Wallace echoed this idea:
“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship… If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly…”
In short, whether we realize it or not—we are all worshiping something.
Jesus said it best in Matthew 6:21:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
To Sabbath is to reorder our hearts and place our treasure in God. It’s an intentional act to stop, rest, delight, and worship.
Let me be very honest with you. From everything I’ve observed in modern Western life, our hearts are not naturally tuned to worship God. Here’s how I know: When something else competes with time spent with God on a Sunday—soccer, gymnastics, surfing, golf, even sleep—we often opt for the busyness of life. And please hear this: there is zero condemnation in my heart as I say this. I’m simply making a loving observation of the human condition. We are not naturally oriented to worship God.
So what do we do?
This is exactly why Jesus gave us the Practices—what we also call spiritual disciplines. They are a structure, a rhythm of grace, designed to help you experience the Spirit’s transforming work despite the chaos of life. There will always be things competing for your time. But when God made the Sabbath holy, He made a portion of time holy, set apart—so that we could return to Him in worship.
I love this quote from Practicing the Way:
“The Sabbath is practicing for eternity.”
So as we close, let me remind you of the four movements of Sabbath we’ve walked through together:
Stop
Rest
Delight
Worship
This is not something you perfect overnight. This is a lifelong journey.
I don’t expect most of you to spend your Sabbath worshiping God the entire day.
But I encourage you with all my heart—just keep at it.”