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Elements City Church

Unhurried: week 5 - The Practice of Sabbath

Unhurried: week 5 - The Practice of Sabbath

Following Jesus is an act of resistance to our cultural push toward hurry, hustle, distraction and shallowness. Most of our greatest mistakes tend to come when we’re in a hurry. Maybe the life Jesus invites us to is to move more at the pace of grace. We are not anti-work -- we are anti-hurry. As followers of Jesus, we're called to walk in the way of love, and one simply cannot love in a hurry. Join us as we seek to slow down. We’ll lean into some practices and rhythms that help us live unhurried, so we can actually build up our life with God and others.

Locations & Times

Elements City Church

1825 N Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA

Sunday 5:00 PM

Thanks for joining us!

Whether you're on-site or online, we are praying that tonight will be an encouragement to you! May God whisper to you and help you in taking your next steps in a journey with Him. If you're new, we'd love to have you fill out our connection card.
https://connect-card.com/yr4Y0g8VLBSqzKXeubjb
"As followers of Christ, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives."
Dallas Willard
“People who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently.”
Walter Brueggemann
The Israelites remembered life as slaves in Egypt.

Pharaoh considered himself to be, and was considered by most, a god. His socioeconomic system was driven by slave labor. His insatiable desire for more revealed, not just his greed, but his anxiety! Pharaoh created an anxious system.
Now God reveals Himself and His values to the Israelites as Moses delivers the Ten Commandments, summarized below:

1. No other gods before God.
2. No graven images to worship.
3. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath.
5. Honor your father and mother.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. Do not covet anything of your neighbor’s.
According to Brueggemann, the Fourth Commandment (on Sabbath) is the bridge between the first three commandments and the last six commandments.

Commands one through three tell us how to relate to God.
Commands five through ten tell us how to relate to others.

Commandment four is what enables us to honor the other nine.
This God is secure in His own power and strength!
Sabbath as Resistance

Sabbath is a way to resist the demands of the culture in order to pursue the commands of God.
Sabbath is an alternative way of functioning in our world that rejects the greed of our day and age, that rejects the demands of others -- and even of ourselves -- to make this powerful statement to a watching world:

WHO I am in Christ and WHAT I have in Christ is enough.
We get the word, "Sabbath," from the Hebrew word, "Shabbat."

Shabbat has four ways of being translated that teach us how to Sabbath, according to John Mark Comer.
Sabbath to Stop

Our culture demands that we all move at a pace of life that is simply not sustainable. We resist the demands of culture by stopping what we’re doing once a week.
Sabbath to Rest

Sabbath rest is what helps you feel alive again in the deep down places of your soul. It’s what re-awakens your heart to receive the love of Jesus, and then share that love with others. God designed it to be this way!
Sabbath to Delight

It’s a day to curate joy. Joy isn’t something that comes naturally to most of us. We have to fight for it! We have to make a conscious decision to be joyful.

Ask yourself: What can I do for a 24-hr period that would give me deep, soul-level joy?
Sabbath to Worship

Sabbath is not a day for fasting, it’s a day for feasting — to celebrate all God has provided for us.
Start where you’re at -- not where you think you should be!

Keep this principle in mind as you begin to plan what Sabbath could look like for you.

Like so many of the practices of Jesus, this is a call not to do more, but to do less.

If you make space to rest in Jesus, you will find Him there.

Thank you for partnering with our mission!

Thank you for enabling us to be the Church in our city! Your gifts help fuel the mission of Elements City Church, as well as our capacity to function as a church on a daily basis. You can give online at the link below or through the Elements app.
http://elementscitychurch.org/give
Whether you joined us here or online, we are grateful to worship with you!

For those here tonight we're having our first Afterparty of the year! It's March Madness, and we'll have the game on in the parking lot after service. We have two food trucks outside, as well some jumping castles for the little ones. Stick around and meet some people in the Elements community!

Join us next week as we begin a new three-week series, Resist & Rest, culminating on Easter Sunday.

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