The Sabbath is not supposed to be a day of dull drudgery, a day full of rules or a day to endure.
The Sabbath is an incredible, generous, extravagant, beautiful gift from the Creator to his creation!
- A day to stop
- A day to rest
- A day to worship
- A day to spend time with God
- A day to enjoy his creation
- A day to enjoy the people we love
- A day to step away from the endless pressure to work, achieve and produce
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But perhaps you’re thinking:
“OK, Eb… sounds good in theory. But how on earth am I supposed to make Sabbath work in my busy twenty-first-century life?”
In this article we’ll explore how to keep the Sabbath as a Christian.
Before we start, though, there’s one really important thing I want to say.
These are guidelines, not a rulebook
We need to be careful not to turn Sabbath into the very thing Jesus criticised the Pharisees for when he said:
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” – Mark 2:27 (NIV)
The point of Sabbath isn’t to create a giant list of rules that leaves you terrified you’re going to accidentally break one.
Sabbath is a gift.
And what follows aren’t rigid rules.
They’re helpful guidelines to help you create a Sabbath rhythm that actually works.
This article contains affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may get a commission, but you will not be charged a penny more. Thanks for your support!
1. Pick a day
The first practical step is very simple:
Choose your Sabbath day.
For most Christians, that will be Sunday.
And personally, unless there’s a good reason why Sunday genuinely doesn’t work, I think Sunday makes the most sense.
Why?
Because Sunday is already the day when Christians traditionally gather together to worship.
It’s the day when you’re most likely to find your church family together.
It’s the day that naturally lends itself to worship, fellowship, hospitality and spending time with God.
But Sunday isn’t going to work for everyone.
If you’re a vicar, minister, youth pastor, children’s pastor, worship leader or other church worker whose job involves working on Sundays, then Sunday can’t be your Sabbath.
Choose another day.
Likewise, if you’re a doctor, nurse, paramedic, firefighter, police officer or another essential worker who genuinely has to work on Sundays, choose another day.
And if your spouse works Sundays, you may decide that having your Sabbath on the same day as them makes the most sense.
The important thing is to choose a regular day.
Don’t just vaguely decide:
“I’ll have a Sabbath sometime this week.”
That makes it very easy for it to disappear.
Put it in your diary.
And treat it as a non-negotiable.
2. Prepare for your Sabbath
Next up…
Don’t wait until Sunday morning to start thinking about Sabbath.
If you’re going to have a whole day of rest, you need to do some preparation beforehand.
Otherwise you’ll wake up on Sunday morning and suddenly realise:
- There’s no food in the house
- The washing machine is full
- You’ve forgotten to buy something you need
- You’ve got emails to answer
- The children have no clean school uniform
- And you’ve got a mountain of things you need to do before Monday morning!
Not exactly restful.
So, during the days before your Sabbath, think ahead:
- Do the food shopping
- Get the essential household jobs done
- Finish the work that genuinely needs finishing
- Deal with the important admin
- Prepare anything you need for church
And, where possible, get ahead rather than leaving everything until Sunday.
You don’t have to create a perfectly organised life before you can have a Sabbath.
But a little preparation can make an enormous difference.
3. Stop working
This is your main guiding principle:
On your Sabbath, don’t work.
The fourth commandment puts it very plainly:
“Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work…” – Exodus 20:9–10 (NIV)
Obviously, this includes paid employment.
But work can sneak into our lives in all sorts of other ways too.
For example:
- Work emails
- Work-related social media
- Work-related admin
- Thinking about work
- Household chores
- DIY and home décor
- Shopping
- Meal prep
- Organised sport
- Life admin
- Homework
- Coursework
- Revision
- School, college or university admin
Basically, if it’s something that feels like work, try not to do it on your Sabbath.
What about housework?
This is where I think it helps to use a simple principle:
If it can easily be done on another day, do it on another day.
Personally, I don’t do household jobs on Sunday that could have been done earlier in the week.
I cook the food we eat on Sunday and I’ll wash the dishes.
But I don’t, for example:
- Vacuum the house
- Clean the bathroom
- Do a mountain of laundry
- Strip the beds
- Do the ironing
- Clean the windows
Now, obviously, real life happens.
If something genuinely needs doing, do it.
If you have small children, you’re going to have to change nappies.
If somebody spills something, you going to have to clean it up.
If you have animals, they still need feeding.
Sabbath isn’t about pretending you’re not responsible for the people and creatures God has entrusted to you.
It’s about deliberately reducing unnecessary work.
What about shopping?
Personally, I try not to shop on Sundays.
I organise my week so that I don’t need to buy food on Sunday.
But again, I’m not legalistic about it.
If the opportunity arises unexpectedly to show hospitality on the Sabbath and I don’t have enough food to feed everyone, I will go to the shops to buy the extra food!
What about sport on Sundays?
OK.
Brace yourself.
I have strong opinions about sport on Sundays
Honestly, I think sport on Sundays is one of the devil’s cleverest tricks…
You can imagine the meeting, can’t you?
The devil and all his demons sitting around a table…
“OK guys we’ve got a problem… It’s church. The trouble is, going to church on Sundays is so good for them… it makes them so strong and far too dangerous to us… How do we stop that?”
“I know – why don’t we put drugs near the church to distract them?”
“No, no, that’s far too obvious, they’ll never fall for that!”
“OK, what about car boot sales on Sundays?”
“Hmm – I don’t dislike that idea, but it’s a bit niche…”
“OK what about sport on Sundays… team sports where they’ll feel obliged to go otherwise they’ll be letting the team down…”
“Wait – I think you might be onto something there, go on…”
“We’ll put the training in the week… they’ll start going to that because sport is good, right?”
“Go on…”
“And then we’ll put MATCHES on Sundays… they won’t be able to say no because otherwise they’ll be letting the whole team down… and then they’ll start going to church less and less… and then gradually they’ll get weaker and weaker… and they’ll stop reading their Bibles… and praying… and before they know it, they’ll be weak and ineffective and completely harmless to us…”
“By Jove, I think you’ve got it! That’s it. That’s the plan. Meeting adjourned.”
You might think I’m being a little over the top.
But here’s the thing…
I’ve been a Youth Team Leader at our church for many years and I also happen to be the Youth Pastor’s wife and I can tell you, there is a HUGE difference between the teenagers who come to church every week, and the ones who only come when they don’t have a match / meet / comp.
It’s not a small difference.
It’s like night and day.
So here’s my guiding principle: No ORGANIZED sport on Sundays.
By all means if you invite a few people over to your house for a meal after church and you all want to play football in the park after lunch, do that!
But don’t sign up for a football team that plays matches every Sunday morning. And the same goes for dance competitions, gym squads, hockey teams, rugby teams, rowing clubs, running meets…
You don’t have to make the same choices I do.
But I would encourage you to think very carefully about what regularly gets the best part of your Sunday.
4. Communicate your Sabbath boundaries
Here’s something that can make Sabbath much easier:
Tell other people what you’re doing.
If you suddenly stop answering work emails on Sundays, your colleagues might wonder what’s going on.
If you’ve always been available for Sunday matches, your teammates might feel hurt or confused when you keep saying your unavailable.
If your family doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do, they may accidentally fill the day with errands and activities.
So tell them.
You don’t need to make it a big deal.
Just tell them that you are trying to treat Sunday as a day of rest.
You might be surprised how many people respect that.
And once people know your boundaries, they can actually help you protect them.
This is particularly important if you’re trying to establish Sabbath as a family rhythm.
Talk about it together:
- What do you want Sunday to feel like?
- What things do you want to stop doing?
- What things do you want to make space for?
Make Sabbath something you do together, rather than something one member of the family is trying to impose on everyone else.
5. Actually rest
So far we’ve talked a lot about what NOT to do.
But Sabbath isn’t simply:
“Don’t work.”
It’s also:
“Rest.”
And those aren’t quite the same thing.
You could technically avoid work all day and still spend twelve hours glued to your phone.
You could binge-watch three seasons of a Netflix series.
You could spend the entire afternoon doomscrolling.
You could play video games until your eyes hurt.
And technically…
You haven’t worked.
But have you actually rested?
Probably not.
Sabbath is about actively choosing things that refresh your body and soul.
And exactly what that looks like will vary enormously from person to person.
For example, an introvert might find a quiet walk and an afternoon in bed reading deeply restful.
An extrovert might find spending the afternoon with friends much more refreshing.
Someone with a newborn baby might consider getting a 30-minute nap the height of luxury!
So don’t copy somebody else’s Sabbath.
Work with your personality and your season of life.
Here are some ideas:
- Go to church
- Spend time with Christian friends
- Have people over for lunch
- Go for a walk
- Go to the park
- Spend time in nature
- Play a board game
- Play informal sport
- Garden
- Read
- Study the Bible
- Meditate on Scripture
- Pray
- Listen to God
- Journal
- Have a nap
- Go to bed early
- Enjoy a long, relaxed meal
- Spend unhurried time with your family
But please don’t try to do all of these.
That would not be restful!
If your Sabbath becomes a frantic schedule of restful activities, you’ve simply created another busy day.
Leave space.
Leave margin.
Leave time to simply sit and be.
The whole point is to slow down and rest!
6. Go to church
Now I’m going to be quite direct.
Go to church on Sunday.
If Sunday is your Sabbath, church should be a central part of it.
Why?
Because the Sabbath is a holy day – a day set apart for God.
And if we’re deliberately setting aside one day to focus more on God, what better thing could we do than gather with God’s people to worship him?
Jesus clearly modelled this for us in the Gospels.
Jesus’ normal practice was to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath.
For example, it says in Luke:
“[Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom..” – Luke 4:16 (NIV)
So if we’re following Jesus…
If we want to be more like Jesus…
…gathering with God’s people should surely be a major part of our Sabbath rhythm.
And don’t just GO to church…
- Serve at church
- Encourage people at church
- Pray for people at church
- Build up the body of Christ at church
- Fellowship at church
- Use your gifts at church
Church isn’t just something we consume.
It’s something we participate in.
Of course, if you work for the church and your Sabbath is therefore a different day, this doesn’t apply to you, you’ll be at church on Sunday anyway.
But that doesn’t exempt you from the next guideline…
7. Spend extra time with God
The Bible is clear…
Sabbath is a day set apart as holy.
Don’t limit that to the hour or two you spend at church.
Use the extra space to spend extra time with God.
This might be the perfect day to do the things you regularly tell yourself you don’t have time for:
- Study the Bible
- Have an extended prayer time
- Spend time listening to God
- Worship God
- Journal
- Read a good Christian book
- Go on a prayer walk.
- Sit quietly and reflect on what God has been teaching you.
- Have an extended quiet time.
- Try a spiritual discipline you’ve been meaning to practise.
And because you’re not rushing from one thing to another, you may find that your time with God feels different.
Less hurried, less distracted, more spacious, more enjoyable.
8. Consider unplugging
Now for one of the biggest Sabbath challenges of the twenty-first century.
Your phone.
Our phones are incredibly useful.
They’re also incredibly good at stealing our attention:
- Endless notifications
- Constant pings and beeps
- A quick look at Instagram
- A quick check of the news
- A quick scroll
- A quick message
And suddenly an hour has disappeared.
And then there’s the other modern idea that we’re supposed to find rest through endless consumption:
- Netflix
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Gaming
- Social media
- Doomscrolling
Is that really what we want our Sabbath to become?
I don’t think so.
Does that mean you can never watch television on Sabbath?
No.
You need to work that out for yourself.
Perhaps you’ll decide to have a completely technology-free Sabbath.
Perhaps you’ll put your phone away but watch a film together as a family.
Perhaps playing PlayStation with your teenage son is genuinely one of the ways you connect and enjoy being together.
That’s very different from spending six hours alone in front of a screen while simultaneously doomscrolling.
The question isn’t:
“Is television technically allowed?”
The question is:
“Is this helping me receive Sabbath as a day of rest, delight, worship and relationship?”
You know your own habits.
You know where your weaknesses are.
So set the boundaries that will actually help you:
- Maybe your phone stays in a drawer
- Maybe you switch it off
- Maybe you delete social media apps for the day
- Maybe you don’t use your phone until after church
- Maybe you keep technology but deliberately reduce it
Whatever you decide, I’d encourage you to think less, not more.
And definitely consider trying a proper digital break for at least part of your Sabbath.
You may be amazed at how much mental space suddenly appears.
9. Make Sabbath a day of delight
This is probably the most important guideline of all.
Enjoy it.
Seriously.
Enjoy your Sabbath!
Isaiah 58 gives us this beautiful picture of Sabbath as something to delight in:
“If you watch your step on the Sabbath and don’t use my holy day for personal advantage, If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration, If you honor it by refusing ‘business as usual,’ making money, running here and there— Then you’ll be free to enjoy God! Oh, I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all. I’ll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.” Yes! God says so!” – Isaiah 58:13-14 (MSG)
Sabbath is not supposed to be:
- Miserable
- Boring
- Some kind of punishment
It’s not supposed to be one giant list of things you’re forbidden from doing.
God’s holy day is supposed to be a day of joy and delight.
So ask yourself:
- What helps me enjoy God?
- What helps me enjoy his creation?
- What helps me enjoy my family and friends?
- What helps me slow down?
- What makes me feel refreshed rather than drained?
For you it could be:
- A long Sunday lunch with friends and family
- A walk in the countryside.
- Sitting in the garden with a cup of coffee.
- Playing a board game with your children.
- Reading a Christian book.
- Going to the beach.
- A long nap
- Or simply sitting quietly with God.
Whatever it is, build your Sabbath around those things.
10. Don’t try to make it perfect
Don’t fall into the trap of trying to make your Sabbath “perfect”.
Or worse, give it up as a bad idea when your first attempt doesn’t go as planned.
Your Sabbath doesn’t have to be perfect.
God is not standing there with a clipboard putting a whole row of big Xs next to your name every time you look at a work email or pop to the shop for a pint of milk.
Sabbath isn’t about creating a flawless twenty-four-hour bubble where nothing goes wrong.
It’s about developing a rhythm.
If something interrupts your Sabbath, don’t throw the whole thing away.
Sometimes you are going to have a brilliant Sabbath where you have the most glorious extended quiet time, go to church twice, have a whole bunch of people over for Sunday lunch and end up having an impromptu 2 hour worship and prayer session in your living room.
And sometimes you’re going to have a Sabbath where it feels like everything goes wrong.
That’s OK.
Life happens.
Just start again next week.
Each Sunday, do your best to:
Stop. Rest. Worship. Delight.
And remember:
Consistency over perfection.
11. Review and refine your Sabbath
Finally, give yourself permission to learn.
Your first few Sabbaths might feel strange.
You might find yourself constantly thinking about work.
You might discover that you didn’t actually rest because you filled the day with activities.
You might realise that your phone is a much bigger problem than you thought.
Or you might find that one small change makes an enormous difference.
So every few weeks, ask yourself:
- What worked?
- What didn’t?
- What actually helped me rest?
- What helped me spend more time with God?
- What gave me joy?
- What do I need to change?
Don’t treat this as failure.
Treat it as learning.
You’re developing a rhythm.
And rhythms take time to establish.
A simple Sabbath template
If all of this feels like a lot, don’t overcomplicate it.
Here’s a very simple starting point:
The day before your Sabbath
- Get everything done that absolutely has to be done before Monday
- Let Monday-you worry about the rest
- Consider writing Monday’s to do list today (this was a game-changer for me!)
- Get an early night
The day of your Sabbath
- Get up early enough to have a quiet time before church
- Have a quiet time
- Go to church
- Enjoy time with friends and/or family after church
- Spend some quality time with God in the afternoon
- “Unplug” as much as possible
- Get an early night
Final Thoughts
So, how do you keep the Sabbath as a Christian?
You don’t need a complicated rulebook.
You don’t need to create a perfect twenty-four-hour routine.
And you don’t need to become obsessed with whether every tiny activity technically counts as “work”.
Instead, remember what Sabbath is for.
It’s a gift.
A day set apart for God.
A day to stop, rest, worship and delight.
So pick a day.
Prepare for it.
Do your best.
And don’t worry about doing it perfectly.
Because the goal isn’t to create another burden.
The goal is to receive God’s gift.
Recommended books on Sabbath
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer
- Subversive Sabbath – A.J. Swoboda
- Keeping the Sabbath Wholly – Marva J. Dawn
- The Rest of God – Mark Buchanan
- Sabbath as Resistance – Walter Brueggemann
- The Sabbath Practice – John Mark Comer
READ MORE >>> Recommended books on Sabbath
Pin this article
Scripture copyright and permissions
For information about the Bible translations used on this website and their copyright notices, please see the Scripture copyright and permissions page.
