hello my name is Gary Shotton and i’m going to talk about the subject of rest and you know we’re typically in america and especially around the rest of the world we’re always in a hurry i am got to be guard this myself so in a way i’m talking to myself as much as i’m talking to you we’ve got to take time to rest and we look at even creation in the beginning in genesis 1 god created the heavens and the earth and on six days he created different aspects of creation on the sixth day he actually created mankind but after the sixth day on the seventh day he rested if god said i need to rest not for the same reason i think we need to take a good look at our lives and be willing to have rest take rest take time to get away and relax i’m speaking to you in a way that i have great experience of not being good at taking rest i am very consistent of my sundays my once of me week to take the day and honor god with my church attendance and and that’s relaxing to me i don’t mean i have to sleep all day my my seventh day but i i am restful uh true rest comes when we’re connected with god only god can give us true rest and we have to though guard against this uh idea that if i just stay busy busy busy there’s always something that i can be busy busy doing there’s always something that that doesn’t get done and it’s gonna cause us when we realize that we need balance in our life and rest is a part of life you know we can look back in history and just wonder when there wasn’t automobiles and there wasn’t cell phones and there wasn’t the internet man that would have been maybe boring but and maybe they did rest and maybe because if they didn’t have technology they had to work harder every day but this technology was intended in some sense to make things life easier the microwave oven makes cooking easier and faster but what was intended to make us easier and faster seems to have maybe sped things up maybe i am going at a higher pace a faster pace than ever before and if you follow that path we’re on the wrong trajectory we are speeding things up to unbelievable speed of life that we’re going to kill ourselves and hurt ourselves and we all know that that uh or at least i know that if i’m not careful there’s always something i need to do every minute of every day and i don’t rest so rest is important i could go into detail about the times that i was so tired so physically and mentally tired that i made poor choices i didn’t do what i should have done and i was making poor choices mental fatigue mental uh rest uh is something that will that that if you don’t have it will will open the door for you to make uh mistakes i’ve seen it i’ve done it and so that’s part of taking a rest i know that there’s times where i’ve been pushed for a decision and oh i need to decide right now on something well if i haven’t thought about it if i haven’t slept on it bigger decisions i almost always wait on any big decisions until i’ve at least slept on it because it seems that in the morning when i first wake uh these business decisions are clearer and if i feel confident after i’ve taken a long rest then i’m less likely to make a a choice that’s a detrimental to my future you know when we’re uh talking with somebody uh we’ve got to be careful that we’re listening to them when we’re reading a book or reading the bible we’ve got to be careful that we’re concentrating on what’s being said or what we’re reading we have this idea that we can just be going so fast every day that by going faster we can accomplish more we have just all kinds of approaches that we can see that that just going faster going being more active being more committed having more things on our agenda does not mean that we’re advancing in our business life per se i know that i used to try to fill my calendar fairly full of different activities well what am i going to do today well there don’t have anything very important on my schedule so let me figure what i could put on my calendar well a lot of those things i don’t want to add to my calendar a lot of things that i could do with a quick phone call rather than driving over or going over to a particular meeting i don’t know need to go see them and so setting a budgeted time and setting aside a adequate time for the important things of life and then taking rest taking a rest i will tell you that on my personal physical body i discovered that i had what’s called sleep apnea i wasn’t able to go to sleep at night and get good rest well that’s a name that’s just something that that i needed some medical help with it wasn’t an operation it’s just a breathing device that i use every night that i realized that i was thought i was getting sleep but i was waking tired physically i was a sleepy during the day i would fall asleep at a drop of a hat or just instantly and that was actually a physical condition that i wasn’t taking in oxygen to the level that i needed and i needed a little aid just a little bit of extra air many people have this so it’s not that weird but i now am able to get a good night’s sleep and i’m used to that it gives me a good night’s sleep each one of us have a different metabolism in our body and some of you could maybe get up by with just five hours of sleep some of you six hours of sleep i need a little more than that i need more than seven hours of sleep maybe it’s because i’m getting a little older too but you have to determine that good rest is as important as strong activity and cutting a few things out of your agenda out of your schedule uh and having a rest that that i mean physical rest is important now don’t forget that uh true rest only comes when we have god in our lives we could work uh really hard for months and even years on a pathway that is leading to nowhere we could work along the wrong in the wrong direction for a long time without god’s wisdom so just having activity gaining setting a goal making sure you hit the goal if it’s not consistent with god’s will for your life and not consistent with god’s calling in your life you’ll find out that at the end of even years that you’re following a path that didn’t result in what you wanted to wanted to experience i was at times i was setting my goals to be a professional engineer well that’s probably a good goal but in time even though i studied and tried for that i i realized that that would have redirected my course in life i i wanted to plan my life further out so i could really see maybe five and ten years out there’s nothing wrong with planting but in this idea of rest i could i could work 10 12 15 years in a direction and then discover that that wasn’t even god’s best for me i prefer to have good rest and then ask god to guide me and lead me every day every week now i don’t jump around it doesn’t just happen i’m doing one thing one week and i jump to another thing i have a long-term trajectory but it all comes with hearing god’s voice and hearing god’s voice for me comes with having a restful attitude i have peace godliness with contentment is great gain is one of the verses that i refer to godliness with contentment is great gain well contentment a lot of times mean i have a a restful attitude towards life thank you for being a part of Inspiring Better Business