Sermon Recap
God’s Rhythm
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Brian Hunter · January 4, 2026
“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”
Scripture Referenced
Recap
To open the new year, Brian asked a simple question: as everyone rushes back into normal life after the holidays, what rhythm is the Lord actually inviting us into: the world’s rhythm of hurry, hurry, hurry, go, go, go, or God’s rhythm? He took the room back to the very beginning, Genesis 1:26 through 2:3, and had someone read the creation account aloud to notice the pattern: God works, and God rests. Rest isn’t an afterthought tacked onto the story, it’s built into the rhythm from the first week of creation.
Brian traced the same pattern through Jesus’s life. Right after his baptism (the moment heaven opens and the Father calls him beloved, the highest possible endorsement) Jesus doesn’t launch into ministry. He retreats to the wilderness. Later, in the middle of a storm that terrifies his disciples, Jesus is asleep in the boat. And when the Pharisees criticized him over the Sabbath, he answered with what Brian pointed to in Mark 2: the Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, not people made to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. The principle, Brian argued, isn’t a single day of the week to check off: it’s a posture of rest woven through an entire life, echoing the picture in Song of Solomon of catching the small foxes that spoil the vineyard, the little things that quietly wreck peace if left unchecked.
Brian closed practically: rest is a discipline, not something that just happens once the to-do list is empty. He pointed the room to a free app called Pause, built by author John Eldridge, with a thirty-day program for practicing stillness, and invited the church to start the new year by learning to rest on purpose rather than waiting for permission.
Touch Points
- As you start this year, are you living more by the world’s rhythm or God’s rhythm?
- Jesus rested right after his biggest moments of affirmation and right in the middle of a storm. What does that say about when you actually need rest?
- What “little foxes” (small distractions or habits) tend to spoil your peace before you even notice them?
- What would it look like to build one small practice of rest into your week this month?