Justin McRoberts (Songwriter + Author of Sacred Strides)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee.

Why? Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can.

Glorify God in our work, but in.

Five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of.

Five Mere Christians from history.

These are the top men and women that I would love to have on.

This podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right? So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended.

End quote. But here's the thing.

In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5meerchristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Hi, I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as loan Officers, roofers, and medical assistants. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Justin McRoberts. He's a songwriter, musician, and author of a terrific new book called Sacred Strides the Journey to Belovedness in Work and Rest. Justin and I sat down and had a terrific conversation about how practically to work and rest from a place of belovedness in Christ. We talked about what types of rest can save you from burnout and exhausting vacations. And we even talked about how ridiculous.

Songs like Justin's you make the poops can honor God.

This is one of my favorite episodes.

I've recorded this year. You guys are gonna love this conversation with Justin McRoberts. Hey, Justin. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast, man.

Happy to be here, man. Thanks for having me excited.

We're getting a chance to hang. I've been a fan of yours from afar for a little bit. You've done a lot professionally. I was rereading your bio. I was like, oh, my gosh. What's the short version of the Justin McRoberts story?

From professional standpoint, my. You know, Seth Godin says that art is anything you do that forces a connection between people. And as my skill set has evolved, as my passions have changed, what I'm really up to has stayed the same. And I do the best I can to forge connections with people.

That's the through line.

That's the through line. It was music for a long time, and even doing. While I was playing music, I was telling a lot of stories, so it became storytelling, which parlayed itself into some preaching, which parlayed itself into retreat leading and books and podcasts and whatever way I can find. It's sort of like, you know, whatever way I can get to you, that's how I'm gonna get to you. And that's been the story.

It's like, the medium doesn't matter. I'm here to tell stories and make connections between people.

The medium is. It matters. It just matters secondarily. And I try not to get hung up on the specifics of the thing. I want to do it well. I think that's what I mean. Like, whatever I can do well is what I want to be doing. Like, the medium matters insofar as, like, it needs to be beautiful, it needs to be executed, because that's the way you love people, is you do your craft well. But the thing that matters in the core of all of it is the connection between myself and the folks that I'm trying to connect with and the connections I help them forge with other people on the other side of those conversations.

Really well said. Are you still writing songs?

On occasion it comes up. I mean, I don't think it'll ever go away. And it came up more recently because I've got a 13 year old boy who is incredibly musically talented and he likes the craft of making music. And so I find myself back in the. In the throes of it again. It's sort of a distant personal passion buried back in there somewhere, but it does come up.

Did your son help you write the terrific song that's now on my kid's Spotify playlist? You make the poops?

Yes, as a matter of fact, my son, I'll confess this, he helped to hone the tail end of that. But it really was mostly mine. The song about poop really was mostly mine. And then later I got to put it off on him because he's a kid. But yeah, I love it. That's so good.

But serious question, like, you have a lot of songs that talk about God explicitly. You got a lot that don't that are just ridiculousness. How does ridiculous work? How does fun work? Like you make the poops? How does that matter to God? How can a song like that honor God?

You know what I think God is honored by is the fullness of a human life. I don't think God is particularly interested in a, like a specific shape or a specific expression or only a specific expression of humanity. I think God is honored by a full human life. And one of the ways we know we're living a full life is the experience of joy. And one of the ways we know that we are experiencing joy is that we are laughing. Humor, far more than just a delivery tool, is a metric. It's. Humor is a way we know we are alive and connected and aware of ourselves and our relationship with others. Humor's a way we can actually notice. I feel connected to you. I feel safe with you. I feel comfortable in this place. I know myself well enough to have altitude on myself. Humor is a way to measure whether or not I'm actually alive and enjoying my life. And I think God is honored by a full human expression of life.

Yeah, I think God has a sense of humor. See the platypus. I think, listen, say what you will about the chosen, whether or not it's good art, debate both sides of that, but I do think they get the voice of Jesus right? And I love that like Jesus has a sense of humor. There's a scene where he walks into the house and owner of the house is like, be careful of that room. It's haunted. And Jesus, like, I'll take that one. Like, yeah, like, I could see Jesus saying that, right? Like, humor is a metric. It's not just a delivery mechanism.

Well, hey, talk about sacred strides.

This new book, from what I've read, every page I've read so far, has been lights out, profound.

Why did you write this book?

Almost everything I do at this point in my life, specifically, I do because it's been in me for a long time. So these are stories and reflections I have been in and in conversation with for Honestly, going on 17, 18 years, I've been in these conversations about the relationship between work and rest with people I coach or with people I was pastoring or with friends for a whole long time, and the moment seemed ripe. You know, post pandemic, a whole lot of rethink was going down. A whole lot of, like, I used to do this and now everything's changed and what am I going to do? And the conversation I wanted to have with folks on the other side of the big rethink, whether they're doing church work, whether they're doing. They're running a business, or whether they're trying to figure out from the ground up, what am I going to do with my life. I wanted to move past just what am I going to do? Or how I'm into, like, why do you want to do it? What's in there? What's actually driving you to want to build a business? What's driving you to want to start this entrepreneurship? What's driving you to want to rebuild the thing that fell apart? I think at the core of it, we're not just trying to build stuff. We're not even just trying to make a living or even make a name for ourselves. I think at the core of our work lives, the question on the table is like, is there a place for me in the world? Am I loved? Am I experiencing myself as a beloved person on the planet? I think the thing we're chasing when we work is, is actually belovedness. That was actually the impetus. So instead of it being a book about rest or even really a book about work, rest, rhythms, at the core of the book is this mantra of sorts that my natural posture isn't rest and my natural posture isn't work, my natural posture is belovedness. And my work and my rest both flow from my belovedness and then return me to it. I wanted to frame the conversation differently so that we weren't just rehashing the same old conversations. We weren't just running over the same old road and hoping you do it differently. Instead, we were slowing down to pay attention to the road in front of us and say, why do I do what I do? Why do I want to do what I do? What's actually driving me? And then help us move forward from there.

So you just, like, breeze past one of the most profound sentences that have ever been spoken on the podcast. So I want to park there for a second, because I feel like we could do an entire episode on this. And I pulled up the line for the book. Here it is. My natural posture is not work. Nor is my natural posture rest. My natural posture is belovedness. And both work and rest spring from.

My belovedness and return it to me.

So we're gonna break this down.

But first, what do you mean when.

You say your natural posture is belovedness? I think some listeners are like, what the heck is this guy talking about?

Exactly. You should definitely read the book because it's there, the thing I'm chasing. So Parker Palmer, who's a voice in my life, has mattered a whole lot, suggests that he doesn't use words like work and rest so much as he'll talk about things like action and contemplation. It's just different language for the same conversation. And what Palmer says is that action and contemplation are both ways. We are getting to a sense of full aliveness, that both action and contemplation spring from the same place, which is my relentless desire to be fully alive. So when I pick a job, let's start with work, because I think that's where a lot of us in this realm are starting. This is a place where we talk about what am I doing well, what I can have. And you and I both know this. I can have exactly the job I want, that I could design a job for myself. You and I live in the same space here where it's like, I've designed my job for me. So no one designed these things for me. I designed my job for myself. And there are days when I feel deeply connected with what I do and deeply connected with the world in and through what I do, deeply connected with God in and through what I do. There are also days when I don't. And the difference between those days is not whether or not I feel like I'm in touch with the job, whether or not I'm in touch with, like, my place in the world in the job. In other words, when I Pick a job. What I'm really pursuing is a sense of being fully open, alive. What makes a job really worth it in the long run. And from the perspective actually deep soul level human experience, what makes work feel great is that I'm connected. I feel fully alive in it. That's what actually makes it worth it. I flip that word. I talk about belovedness because I think the framework for being fully alive is being connected with God. I think that's the thing. So when we talk about being fully alive, am I connected with God in and through what I do? Belovedness is the way I like to talk about that.

Yeah. Because I think a lot of people here, fully alive, it's like, do whatever you want, follow your passions, follow your dreams, do whatever makes you happy. You're talking about something different here.

Yes, I am. And I'm not against following your passions. I think your passions will lead you to certain places and then your passions will change, which is fascinating, isn't it? We'll get to a place, we'll follow our passions, we'll get to where we think we're going to be supposed to be and then we're standing in that place and things start to change and I'm not as fully satisfied. Our passions are the glimpses we have into full aliveness. They're decent guides, but they're terrible trainers. They'll get us to a certain place, but once we're in that certain place, discipline has to pick up and another form of self examination, like, yeah, follow your passions and then once you get there, do some thinking and some rebuilding and some reexamination. And then by the way, your passions will change and certainly follow them again. And like, let's see where this whole thing takes us to. Your passions are these glimpses into this deep desire we have to live completely and fully alive, connected to ourselves, connected to the people around us, connected to God. They're guides, but they're not the whole thing.

Yeah, they're not the whole thing because there's been lots of research, I talk about this in older book of mine called Master of One that shows that following your passions isn't the best path to finding vocational joy. The way you find sustainable passion and joy in the work is doing work that primarily serves others with excellence. It's mastering the craft, which is what you were talking about a few minutes ago, Right? Like that's how we find sustainable joy for ourselves is by seeking to serve first rather than be served in the image of Christ, right?

Yes. And that's part of what happened? We'll get to the place where, you know, we think we're going to be or think supposed to be. We're doing that job, we've created the thing and we'll find ourselves maybe slightly disappointed or a little bit disconnected because it's never the job itself that actually is satisfying again. It's. I go back to Seth Godin. It's the connection that we have. So what makes it art, what makes it beautiful, makes it good, is the connection what the thing we're doing forges between ourselves and the folks we're working with. Yeah.

I think if you can rest in.

The belovedness of God, rest in your status as a beloved child of God, then the what we do becomes a whole lot less important because regardless of circumstances, I can find a lot more joy in the work because I'm experiencing that belovedness. Right.

Like, but like, this isn't something you.

Get quote unquote one time and then move past.

So like, how do you, as you do the work, work you love, but.

That work, that's going to be frustrating. How do you remind yourself of the belovedness of the father on a regular basis as you do the work?

That's great. I'll say a couple things. One is, I think like in the context of a life of belovedness or a full aliveness, whichever language you want to use, the work takes on a different kind of importance. And one of the things that goes away is anxiousness. Oftentimes when it comes to doing important work, we tend to live with this kind of anxiousness where anxiousness about the work or about its effectiveness. This. One of the ways I measure significance in my immaturity is I have that sense of like, I've got to nail this thing. There's a story in the book that I'll just tell my dad, who was my initial model for what doing work looked like. I loved watching my dad get ready for work. He was up at 5, a white V neck with suit and tie. Old Spice, like went to work, left at 6:30 in the morning. I didn't see him till like 7:15. Like he worked. And I loved his work ethic. I like that he, he put the hours in. I still like that about people. You and I totally resonate here. Like I love watching folks apply themselves to something and give it like hours and passion. And I love that. Well, what I didn't know as a child at five years old, when I was watching my dad get ready, I didn't really know exactly what was driving him. So come along 12 years old again. This is a story in the book. He invites me to set up this office for him, this new business venture. And I'm on the floor at 12 years old because there's no furniture in the office. And I'm just. I'm applying stamps to these envelopes, and I'm doing it poorly. And my father comes over and sees that these stamps are all kinds of crooked on these envelopes, and he gets really, really, really upset. My dad didn't get angry very much. He was passionate person. But anger wasn't like a key feature in our relationship or in my experience of him, but he was really clearly angry. What I think as a kid at 12 is that he's mad at me for doing a bad job. And that wasn't entirely untrue, but the thing underneath it was this. He was terrified. He was scared that. And I get this now as a professional, he was scared that if this didn't go well, these envelopes showed up and they were sloppy, that he would lose out on a relationship. And if he missed out on this relationship, that's a business connection he might have. And that that connection falls than this one does. And now the business venture isn't going to work, and then life's going to fall apart. There was this anxiousness that was part of the metric for importance of work in my dad's life that he was driven by a little bit of a fear and an anxiousness that he had to do this thing and had to do it well, otherwise things would fall apart. That happens in all kinds of facets of work, including, like, hyper religious work. You and I both know pastors who feel that way all the time. Do they put hours and hours and hours into putting the sermon together? Yes. Do they do it because they love it? Probably up to a certain point. But do they also do it because there is this anxiousness driving them that you have to get this thing down, you have to pin this. Otherwise, like, maybe God's gonna be disappointed or your church is gonna fall apart, or their soul's on the line. One of the things that happens when we actually function from a place of belovedness in our work is that anxiousness starts to go away. And I function from 1. The primary knowledge that God is actually going to do what God said is God's gonna do, which is to hold the world together.

And God doesn't need you to do anything.

No. And he invited you into this work. Yes. Because you've got incredible skills. But he invited you into this work because you're loved.

He wants to be with you because.

He wants to be with you. So the counterbalance to that story is, you know, years later, towards the tail end of my father's life, and, you know, I'm not exposing anything that shouldn't be exposing, like, I lost my dad to depression and suicide when I was in my mid-20s, because all that anxiousness eventually caught up with him. Which, by the way, goes back to an earlier question, like, why write this book? Yeah, because I watched that happen. He's going on 54, I think at the time. I'm like 20, 24ish at the time. And my dad, we went running together. That was one of. One of the things we liked to do. But I didn't start running with my dad because I wanted to get in shape. I wanted to be with my dad. That's it. I just. Wait. That's a thing he did that he loved. So I would go running with my dad on this last run we took together. And again, this is a story in the book. Like, we got like two miles into this four and a half mile run we had planned and he just couldn't go anymore. His knee was hurting. There were all kinds of things going on with his body. And as we're walking back, he's trying to hide his face from me because he's. He's crying and he keeps apologizing. I'm sorry, I can't keep up. I'm sorry, I can't keep up. I'm sorry, I can't keep up. And I could not have articulated it at the time, but I can now. I didn't care that he couldn't keep up. I just wanted to be with my dad. That's it. That's why I was there. So I moved around to the side of his body where his knee was starting to fall apart. I picked up his wrist and threw it over my shoulders and we walked that last mile, which was at least as satisfying a moment as doing the whole jog. Because the ball game wasn't like getting the jog done. The ball game was being together. Now, I tell that story not because I'm trying to forge some sort of, like, emotional connection with a reader and like, oh, we can trust Justin now. I think that's the heart of the father in and through all facets of life, but very specifically work. Why were you invited to do the work you were invited to do? Is it because it's important work? Yes. That's not untrue. Is it because you are shaped A certain way, and you have a certain skill set, and these things are going to be really good for other people. Yes, that is also certainly true. But the thing that underpins all of it is that you are invited into a work by God, who is holding all things together so that you would be connected to God, period. Everything else is true. It's just secondarily true.

I love this term that Keller used to use. You're talking about the work beneath the work.

Yes, Right. Exactly right.

All of us, it's like those motives are mixed.

You talk about the pastor, you talk about the mere Christian listening, listen, they believe that their work, and it is. It's a means of glorifying God and loving neighbor himself. Praise the Lord. Great motivation. Right? But there's also an ugly side to the work beneath the work. There's also less than God honoring motivations of fear, of anxiousness, of performance. Right. Like, you coach people to free them from the work beneath their work today. Like, what do those conversations look like? Like, I don't know if you can even go there, but, like, if you could coach your daughter, dad today, like.

Your dad's a client, what would you recommend he do to free himself in.

The work beneath his work?

Man, honestly, a lot of these conversations, specifically around fear, they have to happen after failure. It's, in other words, when we. Or what we would call failure, like, we want to have these conversations, like, really early with folks in their twenties. And we want. But truth of the matter is, like, you really have to, like, do an important thing and then watch it fall apart in order to really have the conversation. Conversation. Because these are not cognitive, academic conversations. They're formative conversations. And formation happens not just in your brain. It does happen in your brain. It happens in your guts. It happens in your spirit. It happens in your body. These have to be things that we actually have to try and then fail and then actually stop. And this is where rest comes in. Actually stop and pay attention to what just happened and not just the metrics, because we should pay attention to the metrics, but also pay attention to how we feel and who we are in retrospect. So I wrote the book in this way where there's a relationship between work and rest. And one of the things that rest does is it does not just, like, give us a break from the awfulness of having to do work. Actually, rest provides a space in which we can evaluate the goodness of work. We can evaluate ourselves in work. So on the other side of a failure, most of these conversations of what we call a failure. I try to walk people through, and I would walk my dad through like, hey, as M and H travel was falling apart, it. Let's talk about what was actually going on. You were terrified. You were barking at your kid in an office. Like, I know that's not who you want to be, so let's talk about that moment. Like, what's. What's going on in your brain. What I try to do is I try to march through those moments as best I can really slowly and provide the space necessary in a posture of rest that we can evaluate who we are when we're doing our work. Because while we're doing it, I don't have time. I don't have time to just evaluate myself, like every 15 minutes while I'm actually doing the job. What I need to do is I need to take more regular space in between projects or at the tail end of projects on the other side of successes and failures to look back and say, who have I been while I have been doing this?

Hey, so I want to circle back. You're talking about rest, and you use this term, reflection, over and over and over again. That's a very different lens to see rest, rest through. I mean, the world defines rest as like exhausting vacations at Disney World. Right?

Like, like totally.

Like, how are you defining rest? Because clearly reflecting on our work is a big piece of this for you, right?

Yeah. I came into the practice of rest like a lot of folks do, which is like, I was tired. I didn't choose rest. It sort of chose me. It caught up with me and I was burnt out. Which is to say, like, it's a practice that if I don't do my body, my soul, my psychology will just stop me. If I don't stop, eventually my circumstances, my psychology, I'm just going to end up stopping anyways. So that's one. Yeah. Reflection. So the relationship between work and rest, instead of it being like rest is the space between work projects, or rest is like the. The remedy for the difficulty of work. One of my guides coming to the practice of rest is. Was an author named Mark Buchanan. And he talks about the Sabbath in a book called the Rest of Restoring youg Soul by Restoration during the Sabbath. What does it mean to Sabbath? It means two. And this is his mantra. It means to cease from what is necessary, embrace that which gives life, and then do whatever you want. Which is a reflective question. It's a question that leads me to ask, like, what is it I'm doing? Where's the Line between obligatory behaviors in my life and joyful behaviors in my life. His thing is, like, this is what Sabbath is. As you, like, you stop and you pay attention to your own life. And I never thought about, like, that. I never thought about, like, stopping to pay attention to my life. I was just trying to. And you just said it. I was trying to get away. Like, I'm going to get away from my life. What I didn't know when I was doing that was like, I was kind of condemning the life I was living by saying it's something I need to get away from. As opposed to, like, what if I was pausing more regularly to receive the goodness of my own life? That sounds a little bit more like what like a loving God might be actually up to is, I've given you this incredible, wonderful life. You're not seeing me in it as often as I would like you to. Which is part of why you're experiencing so much anxiousness, as part of why, when you rest, you're not really resting. You're just. You're working to get away. I want you to be fully alive and feel very loved in your life. So let's stop more regularly to pay attention to how good things actually are. So that when you rest, you're not just trying to get away. When you rest, you're not just trying to recover. When you rest, you're receiving me and you're receiving my goodness. Reflection is a way I talk about that posture of receiving the goodness of God as it exists in our lives, instead of trying to chase it in some tiny crevice of our lives between work projects.

Okay, what does that look like, practically to receive the goodness of God? Make this a little bit more concrete. What does it look like for you, Justin?

Yeah. So reflect is the ball game. It looks like stopping and practicing what I call the examine. It's from a. My religious tradition will talk about the work of examine and remembering. So it begins with regularity. So I have to do this more regularly. You know, folks will have all kinds of debates around when the Sabbath needs to happen. Can it be a Friday? Can it be a Saturday? I think so long as it's regular and there aren't, like, huge gaps in between it. I don't think it matters all that much.

I don't think God cares at all.

No, but what I think God does care about is can I stop regularly enough so that I can actually hear and see?

I don't think he cares about the win. I think he cares that we accept his good gift.

Of rest 100% in order to do that, like, like most things, like, I have to do it with some form of discipline and practice. So it begins with regularity, it begins with reflection, stopping regularly enough and then stop to remember. So it looks like looking back over my week. And I can do that with a calendar. I can do it with journal. And this is like, I work with folks all the time. Like, what works for you? Some people like to journal, Some folks do not like to journal. Some folks get all kinds of sweaty and anxious when they look at their calendar. Some folks don't. We just figure out what works for you. I want you to be able to look back over the course of the last week, two weeks, month, and let your life catch up with you. It's by the way, the work your soul is doing anyways. So it, like, it's part of why we feel anxious. It's part of why we have these. These nodes of. Of joy is because our soul is holding on to these moments of significance and like, live in memory. So, like, if I just provide the space and do it regularly, some of those old really kind of ground in patterns of how I live and how I see my life will, like, I'll start to dissociate from them, which is good. And I'll be able to look over the calendar, be like, gosh, honestly, I walked out of that meeting and I am so deeply thankful for this team of people I get to work with. And that's what I was feeling when I walked out. I just didn't have the room to actually, like, give thanks in the moment because I was moving on to another meeting. But I really was. I mean, the Janet showed up and she had that thing that she was absolutely pinned that thank God for Jay who came. I mean, who brings donuts like this? But they did. Like, I'm just so thankful for this team. That's part of what I mean is like, let's stop regularly because we're having these incredible experiences. We're having these wonderful relationships all the time. And my life is more often. And I think this is just true because God is this good. My life is far more often way better than I give God credit for. So I want to stop and look back over the course of the last few days and actually take in and enjoy the life I have. I think that's the primary discipline for most of us when it comes to the practice of us right now is looking back over the course of days and seeing where goodness showed up, attributing that to God holding our lives together. And then on the other side of that, we can talk about, like, what a practice of rest might look like. But if I'm trying to rest from a life that I think is primarily bad, I think my rest is going to be really problematic.

So this is really good. So. And I know you don't want to be prescriptive because this reflection can look different from listener to listener, but for you, do you have a journal out, and you're looking back at your calendar over the last seven days, every Sabbath, and are just journaling these reflections? Is that what this looks like for you?

What it looks like for me is actually look at my calendar. I used to work with a journal more regularly. Part of what I figured out about my journaling process is I don't snag moments in enough detail to remember well with my journal. But I have a truckload of details in my calendar. And so, like, when I'm doing reflective work, I will look at my calendar. And for example, I was like, I was just in Colorado. I had a Thursday night event and a Friday night event. I had a Saturday morning event, a Saturday night event. And then I did thing on Sunday morning and a thing on Sunday afternoon. Way too many things to actually, like. It was just a whole. A whole ton. And what I will do tomorrow, when I have more of an actual, like, space, because tomorrow's going to be more like my Sabbath day, in actuality, is I'm going to look at this calendar and remember the names of the people, people I was with. I'm gonna remember the events and just take in, like, that was an incredible. And it was. It was a great weekend. I know that it was. But I'm gonna actually look at the calendar and then remember these things and give thanks. I have to use my calendar because that's where my better details are.

Yeah, no, that's good. That makes sense. I was talking with a friend a couple months ago about this. You know, we were talking about Sabbath, and he's like, well, you know, I already keep my laptop turned off on the weekends. I already don't go into the office on Saturday. How is Sabbath different? You're hitting on one thing. This practice of examine E X Amen. If you guys are interested in looking up that liturgical practice, this practice of reflection, that's different. Like, what else makes Sabbath rest in your eyes different from worldly rest and leisure?

One of the primary differences for me goes back to that Mark Buchanan book in which he said, cease from what is necessary and embrace that which gives life. Yeah.

Kevin DeYoung says it's an island of get to in a sea of has to.

That's 100% true. I recognize as a highly responsible, caring adult that I'm really committed to doing what I'm supposed to do. And that's a really good part of who I am. I had not until I started practicing Sabbath in that way many years ago now. I really wasn't paying attention to like, like joy and the experience of joy. Like it was a byproduct. It was this payoff. If I did my job well, then I could experience some joy. But it wasn't like a. I didn't know myself in that way. So one of the things that makes Sabbath different for me is there are things that I do that are just flat out like really, really life giving. And I get to make a list of those things and do them. So I'll, I will.

Regardless of how well you performed at work, this is a picture of grace.

Yes. I received the actual grace of my life. It's a great way of said, yeah.

It'S like I've never thought about it this way, but that's exactly what this is like, no Sabbath. Regardless of how I performed, I can rest that the Father's goodness and the grace that he has shown me and enjoy the good gifts that he has brought me.

You know, I've got these friends, I'm not one of them. I do like mountain biking, but I've got these friends like take like six hour mountain bikes. Not every time mountain bike rides and you know, not every time they Sabbath, but they love it. And that's the thing that they will regularly do when they've got their Sabbath days. You know, one of them is a fireman. Did it go super well that during the week? Well, that's a tough metric as a fireman to like, did you have a great week as a fireman? Like some weeks are like, was it a good week, was it a bad week? It's sort of same. But regardless of this, on this day, like he's going to get out on this bike and he's going to go for four hours and he receives that. He receives the goodness of his own body that he's got a body that can still do this regardless of how the week went. He still gets to connect with, with God and be in nature and get outside and exercise like it is. Exactly that. It's an experience and a practice of grace. You are loved and you get to live fully alive regardless of your, your Performance.

Yeah, that's good. That's really good. I found that after I began to truly Sabbath, I mean this must be, I don't know, six, seven years ago.

I have felt much less of a.

Need for quote unquote, vacations.

Like, I've probably taken less time off.

Totally off in the last six, seven years than I did the six, seven years prior. But I'm way more rested.

I just don't feel the need for vacations because I'm in the sacred time stride.

I'm in the rhythm of true rest, not vacation rest, which frankly is exhausting every single week.

Have you found that to be true for you?

Yeah. So I write really specifically about vacation. I'll frame it this way. So first. Yes, like, you know, when I get away now, and I don't do it as often as is culturally prescribed for the exact same reason you don't. I don't need it. In the same way, I think independence and this is super straight from the book, I think a dependence on vacations does two things. One, I think it exposes a kind of animosity that we have towards one, our jobs and two, our regular lives. In fact, I know far too many people who will quote unquote, get away on vacation and then come back to their regular lives and have resentment for their regular life because they wish they lived on the beach in Maui, they wish they lived in Thailand or wherever they go to vacation. They have, in essence, they've diminished the quality and depth and goodness of the life they're actually living. Vacation as a practice, because of the way we do it, it can be really damaging. So the way I set it up is I talk about this anecdotal story. I was flying to Germany to do a few things with the US military and different bases on post in Germany. And I'd been, this is my second time heading out there and the first time if, you know, if you've traveled internationally, you know, like jet lag can honestly be a thing. It's an 11 hour flight. So I'm going to do it right this time. This is the time I. This is the storytelling. You can tell by me saying that I didn't. So the way I'm going to do it right is I'm going to stay up all night. The night before I'm going to sleep on the plane and then when I get off It'll be like 10:30, 10:15, 10:30 in the morning, Frankfurt time. And I will, I will slept through the night. I'll be awake. It idiot So I stay up all night and I do the thing. I, I do exactly what I plan on doing. I sleep the entire flight. But because I slept on a plane for 11 hours all crumpled up against a seat, when I get off the, when I step off the plane, I pick up my backpack, 55 pound travel pack, my back goes out and for two and a half days I can't stand up straight. I can barely get out of a chair. And when I roll out of bed, I've got to go on, on like all fours and then get to a wall and make myself. It was awful. And then I get to this chiropractor on an army base in Germany. Boy, is that a setup. I mean, talk about a second. That's like a punchline of a joke. I was with the chiropractor in Germany on an army base. Snap, crackle on pop. What she says, she says you slept wrong. And boy, what a phrase. Like not all forms of rest are good for you just because you do it like it's a thing, because your soul needs it. And this is the problem of sin. Anything you need, need to do is a thing you're going to have to learn to do. Well, that's the problem of sin. Anything your, your body, soul, your brain, anything that's actually good for you, like every dark machinery in the world wants to keep you from doing it. So what on earth makes you think it's going to be natural and easy so we can rest poorly? Vacation is a way we rest poorly. So in the book I say, you know, I need a vacation. I think people say, and I've heard it in movies, et cetera. Consider how many people you know come back from a long awaited vacation and immediately wish they had a few days of vacation to recover from their vacation. Or maybe they half jokingly suggest that they need a separate vacation from the work it took to make the vacation happen. If my soul doesn't know what it feels like to rest, then time away can very easily become another form of work. I just won't use the time well because I won't know how to. We dive into vacation out of this fever pitch of a life and we quite literally maintain the same postures, same attitudes and same pace. We just think we're doing it differently because we've got a Mai Tai on our hands. And what we do is we come back to our regular lives with a distorted view of ourselves, of our own souls and the life we're living. I think vacations can be really, really problematic.

Yeah, that's really good. It's really good. I'm so grateful for voices like yours who are resurrecting this ancient idea of Sabbath and resting. Well, but I am also concerned about. Concerned that there's a risk of swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

Right.

Because when we look at the scriptures.

Like God worked six days and rested one.

Jesus worked hard.

His family said he was quote, out of his mind, end quote, busy.

Right. When he talks about our burden being.

Light in Matthew 11, I always come.

Back to this passage. He's offering his followers rest for their souls, not necessarily rest for their bodies.

It's the soul rest. It's the belovedness that's important.

I want you to riff off of.

This for a moment.

Do you think it's possible that our.

Generation swings this pendulum too far in the direction of rest?

Yeah, I think it's one of the things rest, among many other things. Rest, self care. Like all these things are good. And this is how we, this is how we do things culturally on the grand scale is we over correct. And we always do like we quite literally always overcorrect. And I think that's a fine step. Which then comes into it comes back to like the practice of, of. Of examine. Cool. Like we're all talking about trauma now. We are all talking about triggers now. We are all talking about self care now. We are all talking about embodiment now. All of these things are great conversations to have. Cumulatively they can lead to really important re evaluations of how we're living. But none of them, none of them places you want to land. We are in the place right now culturally of full blown overcorrection, that everything comes with a trigger warning. I don't think that's necessarily bad. But I do want to talk about why. Like what, like what is it we're chasing. We're chasing or wanting is a sense of being safe in the world. Well then let's make that the actual discipline and not labeling, you know, putting up the trigger warning on everything. Same, same with rest. There are far too many folks I knew living in their late 20s, early 30s who have a deep fear. And this is what's happening. Have a deep fear of work. I don't think. And this is, you know, another, another overcorrection, I don't think because they're all lazy. Maybe some of them are. Maybe that is your nephew. Maybe your nephew really is that lazy guy and he honestly is addicted to that video game. That might be true. I think there's a fear Here, that one. I don't want to do significant work and then watch it fail and then watch my soul crumble the way I saw my dad do. Totally get that. So let's talk about that. We're in a moment of overcorrection. You're scared to death of living like your parents understand that. So let's do the same thing, but do it differently instead of just divorce ourselves from doing it at all.

And.

Or they're afraid that they won't be able to find meaningful work, so they're not going to even try. Totally understand that. So let's talk about self knowledge because this isn't about not doing work. This is about learning yourself, which is part of the practice of work. I think you're 100% right. And we are right now in like we are in the overcorrection. And what I'm wanting to do is I'm wanting to get a hold of some of these conversations and not even on the grand cultural scale, because I don't think that's where it happens. I want to talk to folks in small groups and talk to folks individually. Like, what is it that you're afraid of when it comes. Specifically when it comes to work? Because I don't think you want to live a life of leisure. I do think you want to live a life of purpose and you're scared to death to try because you're thinking you're going to blow it. What I'm going to say is, you're not going to do it right out the gate because there isn't a doing it right. There is a doing it over the course of time so that you would become the kind of person who can do it. That's the job, that's the work. And it's possible. So I get being scared. Let's just not live there.

That's so good, man. Hey, three questions. We wrap up every podcast with. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting most frequently? If we pulled open your Amazon order history, what do you bind over and over again for people?

I give folks John o' Donoghue poems a lot because I think poetry invites us into a different way of seeing and poetry invites us to slow down. You have to slow down, pay attention in order to read poetry. So I've hand John John o' Donoghue poems out a lot. I give away that Mark Buchanan book really, really often because it's such. This is why I didn't write a book on Sabbath keeping is because I would rather point at great Books on Sabbath keeping. This is a book about the relationship between work and rest and how they lead to our belovedness. That's a great book on Sabbath keeping. I hand that one out a ton. And then for folks who are trying to dig really deep into practices of, of prayer and reflection, I'll hand out either Henry Nouwen's in the Name of Jesus or I'll hand out New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.

Yeah, that's good. That's really good. By the way, have you read Mark Buchanan's book God Walk?

You know, I actually have not.

Yeah, it's like a pretty new book. It's good. It's really good.

That's great. I'll check it out.

It's like about the spiritual. He basically argues that, you know, every major religion has a corresponding physical practice. And for Christianity, it's walking. Oh, walking at the speed of a three mile per hour.

The speed of God is three miles an hour, which is the average. I've heard that anecdote and now I know where it's coming. That's great.

Yeah.

Hey, who would you want to hear.

On this podcast talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world?

Oh, man. You know, like one of my favorite people to work with is. I don't know if I had a chance to talk to Scott Erickson much.

I have not.

No, you guys would really click. And you know, Scott's awareness of his internal processes as he works is really, really profound. And he does the thing we're talking about in which he's. He's aware of his sadnesses, he's aware of his depressive patterns. He and I are working on a project right now about the intersection of spiritual practice and mental health. I'd love to hear Scott on this program. I think that'd be great.

Yalls book you did on prayer, that prayer, 40 days of practice is like beautiful illustrate thing was phenomenal. I was like a super fan.

So we did that one. Then we do a follow up and then we are now doing a third one which is we're calling in the Low. It's a book on depression and, and prayer.

Hey, before we sign off, you're talking to a global audience of mere Christians, very diverse vocationally. Justin, some of them are songwriters like your yourself. Some are entrepreneurs, some are marketers and crafts, women, whatever. What they share is a desire to do great work for the glory of God and the good of others.

What's one thing you want to leave.

Them with before we sign off.

What you do matters because who you are in it matters. And what makes your work worth it long term is that in and through the work you've given the world. God has given the world the gift of you and that you are where God reveals His best self. And so I'm so thankful you do what you do.

What you do matters because who you are in the work matters is so good. Justin, I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do for the glory of God and the good of others, for reminding us of the belovedness of every child of God, and for showing us how that belovedness can lead us to deeper rest and better, more restful, more life giving, more full work. Guys. I what I've read of this book has been phenomenal. I'm definitely gonna finish it. The book's called Sacred Strides and you can learn more about justin@justinmcroberts.com Justin, thanks for hanging with us today.

My pleasure man.

Thank you man. I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I did.

Hey, if you're enjoying the Mere Christians.

Podcast, do me a favor.

Go leave a review of the show on Apple Podcasts on Spotify wherever you.

Listen to the show. Hey, thank you guys so much for.

Tuning in this week.

I'll see you time next next time.

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