164: How To Establish A Family Rhythm Through Sabbath and Celebration

We are going to give you a framework to be able to set your family’s weekly rhythm. You can establish a routine for your family, despite how chaotic or busy your lives are. Just as you may create a family budget to direct where your money goes, you can establish family rhythms to direct where your time goes. If you do not take authority over your time, you risk living in the tornado of whatever events the day or the week throws your way. There is no room for moments, rest, or enjoyment in that kind of life. However, when you live by intentional rhythms, you can live the life God created for you. A life of learning to abide in Him.

In This Episode, You’ll Hear About The Following:

• A framework to be able to set your weekly rhythm:
  • Start with rest
  • Plan your day of rest in blocks
  • Step away from social media on your day of rest
  • Defend the rhythm
  • Don’t forget to celebrate…especially when times are tough

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

• Listen to our interview with Dr. Saundra Dalton about the seven types of rest in What Your Doctor Wishes You Knew About Rest
• Listen to our interview with Katherine Wolf about Learning To Celebrate Everything When You Feel Like Celebrating Nothing

Quotes ANd Tweets:

• Your day of rest may not come easily, but it is worth creating, investing in and protecting. @imbetweenshow
• If God can stop each day and look back at what he created and call it good, then perhaps we need to learn to celebrate and call out the good in our lives too. @imbetweenshow
• Celebrating is about remembering who holds our past, present, and future. So, even when life doesn’t seem worth celebrating, may we find the courage and strength to choose celebration as our act of worship.  @imbetweenshow

Questions For Personal Reflection:

1. Did your family of origin practice Sabbath? 
2. What are barriers in your life that stop you from keeping sabbath?
3. What would your life be like if you switched your thinking from ending your week with rest to beginning your week from a place of rest?  
4. What restores you and gives you life? 
5. What is the easiest type of rest for you to practice? What is the most challenging?

Discussion Prompts For YOu As A Couple:

• Discuss how you would like to plan your day of rest with your spouse. Use these questions to help you shape what the time will look like.
  • Do you want to split our time into blocks? Ex: Morning, afternoon, evening? You can also split it into one-hour to two-hour blocks.
  • Do we have a regular date night during the week? Is this something we would like to incorporate into our day of rest? 
  • What would be restful for you? What would be restful for our children?