The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Buchanan
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Category: Book
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $5.36
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 44701
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0849918707
Dewey Decimal Number: 263.2
EAN: 9780849918704
ASIN: 0849918707
Publication Date: March 13, 2007
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Condition: New, never read, may have minor wear from being on a retail store shelf.
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Product Description
Widely-acclaimed author Mark Buchanan states that what we've really lost is "the rest of God-the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of Himself we can know only through stillness." Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God's own rhythm of work and rest. Jesus practiced Sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and He reminded them of the day's true purpose: liberation-to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant. With this book, Buchanan reminds us of this and gives practical advice for restoring the sabbath in our lives.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 A Must Read! June 2, 2008
When was the last time you wasted time for God? This is the best book written so far dealing with sabbath rest. Keeping the Sabbath isn't about not doing something on Sunday, it's about stopping to enjoy God and life. The book is well written, well thought out and will grip the reader within the first 5 pages.
Great read! March 2, 2008
Funny, challenging, inspirational and full of practical ideas for practicing the presence of God and understanding how to live a Sabbath life. I took tons of notes!
I Needed This November 9, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a Pastor of 20+ years, I am almost embarrased to find myself so ignorant of the truths Mark shares in this book. I wish I could get it in the hands of every Pastor in the world... This book has changed my life and my thinking about the Sabbath... This book is a must read for every person who desires to be made whole, and refreshed.
The Rest of God--best book I've found on Sabbatyh October 4, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Pastor-writer Mark Buchanan has crafted a book that is at once delightful and challenging to read. Buchanan targets the American church-goer with these words: "The world is not dying for another book. Bit it is dying for the rest of God" (1) In so doing he pinpoints the biblical message which is even more urgent for front-line cross-cultural workers laboring under the "tyranny of the urgent" and the "reality of insufficient resources." So how is one to find a day with God in a spiritual war zone, with inadequate laborers, insufficient replacements, and inadequate prayer cover?
His journey from overwork, tiredness, little joy, and stunted joy rings true with countless missionaries laboring around the globe under similar circumstances. He confesses a well-kept secret: "for all my busyness, I was increasingly slothful...I was squandering time, not redeeming it...The inmost places suffered most" (2). I was reminded of conversations I've had with colleagues in Budapest and Boston, Jakarta and Johannesburg, who all said the same thing: "I was doing lasting damage...the pace and scale of my striving were paying diminishing returns. My drivenness was doing no one any favors..." (2). From that common ground with global Christian workers, Buchanan shared how he "learned to keep Sabbath in the crucible of breaking it."
Buchanan understands the missionary-ministry mindset. He rightly recognizes that most of us see Sabbath at something archaic and arcane. Many of us grew up legalistic about Sabbath, a day on which we couldn't do things that we really wanted to do. Instead, he seeks to convince us that "Sabbath, in the long run, is as essential to your well-being as food and water, and as good as a wood fire on a cold day" (3). His thesis is straightforward: "Sabbath imparts the rest of God--actual physical, mental and spiritual rest, but also the rest of God--the things of God's nature and presence we miss in our busyness" (3).
This book will change your mind about Sabbath.
Accordingly, "any deep change in how we live begins with a deep change in how we think" (4). Sound familiar? Any change in our conception of Sabbath begins with fresh eyes, an awakened imagination. "So God in Christ, and Christ through the Holy Spirit, is seeking to change our minds" (7). Yet like Zacchaeus, Jesus not only wants to change our minds, he wants to change our ways. Jesus invites us to embrace "a practice that embodies and rehearses his new way of seeing" (7).
Buchanan starts with a chapter on "Work: One Thing Before You Stop," and follows with 13 chapters that inform what stopping will do for your soul. He invites the reader to stop the legalism, stop to remove the taskmasters, stop to think anew, stop to find what's missing, stop to see God's bigness, stop to number our days, stop to find a center, stop to become whole, stop just to waste time, stop to taste the kingdom, stop to hear God, stop to pick up the pieces, and stop to glimpse forever.
Chapter Two: "A Beautiful Mind: Stopping to Think Anew" caught my time-oriented lifestyle off-guard. "Under God's economy, nothing really changes until our minds do. Transformation is the fruit of a changed outlook" (32-33). So far, so good. But Buchanan continues: "God is more interested in changing your thinking than in changing your circumstances..." All of this touches on the art of Sabbath-keeping. "What makes Sabbath time--whether a day or a year, an afternoon or a week, a month or a moment--different from all other time? Simple: A shift in our thinking, an altering of our attitudes" (33). Oooh! He had me. "Sabbath is time sanctified, time betrothed, time we perceive and receive and approach differently from all other time...We become ourselves in the presence of Sabbath: more vulnerable, less afraid. More ready to confess, to be silent, to be small, to be valiant" (33).
Since experiencing a transformative Sabbatical in my life for six months in 2001-2002, I have evangelistically encouraged hundreds of missionaries to take a Sabbatical. Typically, they laugh politely. Buchanan's words in Chapter 10, "Restore: Stopping to Become Whole," helped me understand the disappointing dismissal of many missionaries to the concept of taking extended time away to spend with God. "I don't think it's possible to benefit from a sabbatical if you've never learned to keep Sabbath. Sabbatical is Sabbath writ large. If we haven't been faithful in the small things, why do we expect to be entrusted with the greater ones?...Sabbatical is just doing dally, for several months of days, what you've already learned to do weekly, for many years of weeks" (147).
Sheer Gift - a little wordy, but a clear and much needed message to Christians in our culture September 9, 2007
I am a big fan of Mark Buchanan. When I read 'Your God Is Too Safe' I thought he was the freshest Christian voice writing today. What he had to say was great but his writing style was equally impressive, restrained, easy-going yet filled with delightful and descriptive analogies that kept me turning the pages. His second book, 'Things Unseen' was equally delightful and thought-provoking. His third book, The Holy Wild, tended to re-tread old ground from his first book.
With his fourth book now out, Buchanan shows that he still has important things to say. The need for us in modern Western society to step off the treadmill regularly, to take a deep breath away from the busyness of life, to actually focus on the important (spending time with God, relaxing, recharging) at the expense of the urgent (the To Do list) is imperative. Buchanan duly sets about redeeming the exercise and the lifestyle of Sabbath for us.
The writing style that once so entranced me, however, now mildly irritates. At times he seems so intent on unveiling a new analogy (or two, or three, for the one point) I almost forget what he is trying to say. The delightful and inventive turn of phrase now seems flowery past the point of necessity. Where I charged through his first book, I pushed through this one.
BUT, his voice is still honest and useful. We should heed his discussion of how we don't recognise feasting because we are constantly full, replete. And of how absurd the concept is that we can be busy doing things for God, and yet not know him. His discussion of emptying ourselves so that we may be filled. Of remembering how to play and of not trying to do God's job for him. And the most importantly (for me), of the truth that "the work's never done, and never done quite right. It's always more than you can finish and less than you hoped for." And of a realisation that, therefore, the 'rest of God' is not a well-deserved reward for all of our hard work. No, it is instead "sheer gift".
As is this book.
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