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Who likes Chick-fil-A? I love them; sure, for their chicken, but also for their values. Those values are heavily influenced by the Christian beliefs of its late founder, Truett Cathy. He was a believer who integrated his faith right into his business, which is why all Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.

Right now, Chick-fil-A is the third-largest fast-food chain in the United States, right behind McDonald's and Starbucks. Financially, their numbers are going up every day. A single Chick-fil-A location brings in more than double the revenue of an average McDonald’s. They are an absolute powerhouse. Yet, when we think about this from a purely business perspective, their success makes absolutely no sense because they close their doors on the busiest day of the week for the restaurant industry.

Business analysts have run the numbers. By staying closed on Sundays, Chick-fil-A leaves an estimated one billion dollars on the table every single year. Just imagine that for a second. If they changed that one rule and opened on Sundays, they would likely bypass Starbucks to become the number two chain in the country, and with their per-store averages, they might even threaten McDonald's at number one.

Wall Street analysts have asked them to change it. Their competitors don't understand it. But to understand the "why," we have to go back to the founder. Truett Cathy made a decision: he wanted to honor God on Sundays. He wanted to set aside one day a week to rest, to reset, and to focus on the Lord, and he wanted his employees to have that same opportunity. Closing on Sunday wasn't some rigid religious obligation for him. It was an act of relationship and trust. He trusted God with his Sunday and his business, believing that if he put his time with God first, God would take care of the other six days. And God absolutely took care of him.

This brings us to a deeply personal question: Are we resting and trusting the Lord with our days?

We might not be running a billion-dollar chicken empire, but we are all managing the economy of our own time. When we look at our schedules, so many of us have an underlying fear of falling behind. We think, If I don't work seven days a week, if I don't answer emails on my day off, if I don't say 'yes' to every single commitment, I won't have enough. I won't be enough. There is a genuine fear that if we stop striving for just one day, the whole world will fall apart.

But what would happen if we stopped? What if we intentionally chose to take one day a week just to rest, reset, and be intimate with Him? Not as a legalistic rule, but as an act of surrender and giving God a day of our week so that He may build us up, refresh our spirit, and remind us of who He is.

The Lord of Our Rest

To understand a biblical view of rest, we have to look at the words of Jesus in Mark 2:23–28. Walking through the grainfields on the Sabbath, the Pharisees criticized His disciples for plucking grain, turning a day of rest into a legalistic argument. Jesus responds by saying, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

Jesus is very clear: the Sabbath day is given to mankind as a blessing. We were not made for the Sabbath; it was given to us so that we may find spiritual and physical rest, be refreshed, and refocus on God’s purposes. As followers of Christ, we are to enter into rest with an attitude of dependence upon Jesus. This full trust cultivates an intimate relationship with God.

The origin of "resting" goes all the way back to Genesis 2. After finishing the heavens and the earth, God rested on the seventh day and made it holy. Pete Scazzero, in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, says that “we imitate God when we keep a day of rest.”

We see this pattern built into the Ten Commandments as well. In Exodus 20, God tells the Israelites not to have any other gods before Him and not to make any carved idols. Just a few sentences later in that chapter, He commands them: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."

Why are these connected? Culturally, for us, work and unrest have become our other gods. Our hustles are our carved idols. By telling us to keep one day holy, God is commanding us to break the idols of our own productivity. The goal here is not to feel like we have to keep the 4th commandment as a rigid law, it is already fulfilled in Jesus. The goal is to trust God with everything and let Him be sovereign over our schedules.

To put this into practice, we can look at the rhythm of rest like a traffic light:
Stop, Wait, and Go.

1. Stop (The Red Light)

"Come to me," says Christ. We are invited to go to Him, sit at His feet, and cease from doing anything but being still in His presence. The world does not promise rest, and our work lives certainly don't. Jesus alone has true rest.

We live in a consumeristic culture that makes us deeply tired. Even when we sit on the couch, our brains are sprinting on treadmills because we are doom-scrolling, reading the news, or checking social media. Speaking of treadmills, if we go to a gym to walk on a treadmill and rest our minds, there are often 100 television sets hanging from the ceiling! That does not feel like stopping and resting. Sometimes stopping the body isn't enough; we have to stop the noise. We have to stop the input of the world so we can actually hear ourselves think and hear God speak.

The word Sabbath literally means “to cease.” Cease from everything for a moment. What happens when we do? Stopping gives us perspective. It makes us think, feel forgotten feelings, and wonder. I once heard a pastor say that people often won’t stop because they don’t want to deal with themselves. They know that if they sit in the quiet, they will be overwhelmed by what's inside.

I know this personally. When people ask me, "How are you?" I frequently respond, "Too many things, too little time." But are these "too many things" really worth doing? If there is no peace, and if I can't even pause to ponder the beauty and goodness of God as a result of doing too much, what good is it?

When I graduated from seminary, between doing school full-time, working remotely, and serving at the church, I felt like I could not stop. Not because I didn't want to, but because I felt like I couldn't. Yet, we were designed to work for six days and rest for one. Did you know the only command spoken both before and after the fall of man is the command to rest? It is wired into our biology.

When I was a young bodybuilder, I read a silly post on Facebook that said, "There is chest day, back day, and leg day... but there is no muscle named 'rest,' so there is no rest day!" Without thinking much about it, I thought that was awesome. I worked out seven days a week for three months. Finally, my coach looked at me and said, "You're a fool." He explained the importance of resting and banned me from the gym once a week. The results were significantly better once I started to rest.

That is how it works with our souls. Building spiritual muscle requires intentionality. Just as physical atrophy occurs when we avoid exercise, spiritual atrophy sets in when we neglect the foundational rhythms of grace.

2. Wait (The yellow Light)

The Prophet Isaiah says those who wait for the Lord—rather than rushing into things with their own wisdom—shall renew their strength. It does not say they might renew their strength; they shall renew it! They shall mount up with wings like eagles. Have you ever seen the wings of an eagle? They are powerful. When eagles prey on something, they can pick that prey up and fly high again because their wings are so strong. Those who wait upon the Lord shall run and not be tired; they will walk and not faint. The key is to wait.

Once we stop our physical bodies, we move to the yellow light: Wait. We cannot wait unless we first stop moving.

Taking a day off from work is very different than taking a day off from the worries of life. We can sit on the couch all day and still not feel rested because our minds are consumed with worry. Science backs this up, stats prove it, and Jesus modeled it when He constantly went into isolation to wait on the Father. If Jesus needed rest after working long days, who are we to say that we do not? Are we stronger than Jesus?

Resting comes with waiting. Finding activities or hobbies that make us feel rested—like running, swimming, or fishing—is good. But our brains are like monkeys, constantly jumping from one thought to the next. In those activities, we need to learn to wait. We can pray, talk to the Lord, and cast our burdens on Him.

We are a society completely driven by time. We check the clock when we wake up, before bed, when we meet people, and every time we breathe. The challenge for us is to break that pattern once a week. Let us not be driven by time; let us be driven by God. God does not look at a clock for us, so why should we constantly look at a clock when we are with Him?

When we hear the word "wait," we usually think of waiting in line at a store or in traffic; sometimes frustrated, tapping our feet, looking at the clock. But waiting on the Lord is like a child with a parent when learning something. They are attentive, their eyes are on their parents, and they are ready to receive instructions. Waiting on God is an active posture of the heart, not just sitting in a room doing nothing.

When Moses interceded for the Israelites in Exodus 33, he waited on the Lord. God gave him a beautiful promise: "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

3. Go (The Green Light)

Finally, the green light: Go. Go and follow Jesus.

Go like Jesus did, before going back to His work of teaching, preaching, healing, loving, comforting and so on.. we often see Jesus went away to spend time God the father to be built up and when He often went back to work after resting.

Do we ever feel like we need a couple of days off just to return to the normalcy of life again? When we rest, we can perform better. Getting away and loving the Lord is highly countercultural, which is exactly why we are called "Christians."

But there is a warning here: we must not turn our rest day into a chore. These disciplines are not meant to earn God's love, but to position us to experience it more fully. We can easily take a beautiful gift and turn it into a legalistic obligation.

Imagine going to a pastor or a ministry leader for advice. We ask, "How are you?" and they just look exhausted. They say they are fine, but looking at their fatigue, we suddenly don't want their advice. When the world comes to us, they come for who we are. We want to be rested in the Lord so that when the world encounters us, they feel the peace that we have in Him.

If we want to go and do things in life, we have to surrender it to the Lord in trust. All our work is wasted and has no value unless it is done in trust for the Lord. He has full authority and security over our lives. There is no worth in waking up early, going to bed late, and being anxious all day.

What is the point of a green light if there is nothing to flow? How will we be filled with living water unless we wait? And how can we wait unless we first STOP and allow the Lord to fill us? When the green light comes, we flood the roads with the living water that only Jesus Christ can give.

Breaking the Idol of Productivity

On the cross, before Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," He cried out, "It is finished."

He completed the ultimate work of our salvation. Because His work is finished, our souls can finally stop striving to prove our worth. Again, a reminder that rest is a response, not a requirement. We don't take a Sabbath to earn God's favor; we take it because we already have it.

So, see this as a takeaway: Let us find our rhythm. We can't just wake up one day and say, "We will rest perfectly." It is a learning process, a discipline, and a practice. We come to a Person, not just a practice. Jesus didn't say "go take a nap," He said, "Come to me."

Let us practice putting our phones away. Put social media away. Put toxic people and the idols of life away. When we do this, we aren't just taking a break, we are actively rebelling against the world's lie that our worth is tied to our productivity.

Some of you might even say, "Kranthi, we are under the new covenant, and our Sabbath is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, so I do not need to take a rest day." ...Alright, don't do it then!!