Every time we turn to Christ in faith it is like a moment of Sabbath, a little foretaste of eternal rest and glory. The gift of that moment lies not in what we do but what we receive. It is the holy time set aside to receive the greatest gift of God ever has to give, which is himself, in his own beloved Son.
From: Phillip Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians: Ten Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do
Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Resentments cannot be held with the same tenacity when we enter his gracious light. As Jesus says, we need to leave our gift at the altar and go set the matter straight (Matthew 5:23, 24). In worship an increased power steals its way into the heart sanctuary, an increased compassion grows in the soul. To worship is to change.
From: Richard J. Foster
If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.
From: Eugene H. Peterson
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/eugenehpe528434.html
A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.
From: C. S. Lewis
Sabbath living orients us toward that which, apart from rest, we will always miss. The root idea of Sabbath is simple as rain falling, basic as breathing. It’s that all living things – and many nonliving things too – thrive only by an ample measure of stillness… It’s easy to skirt or defy Sabbath, to manufacture cheap substitutes in its place – and to do all that, initially, without noticeable damage, and sometimes, briefly, with admirable results. It’s easy, in other words, to spend most of your life breaking Sabbath and never figure out that this is part of the reason your work’s unsatisfying, your friendships patchy, your leisure threadbare, your vacations exhausting. We simply haven’t taken time. We’ve not been still long enough, often enough, to know ourselves, our friends, our family. Our God.”
From: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan
also see – http://richerbyfar.com/2015/02/15/daily-riches-what-happens-in-stillness-mark-buchanan/
Where every day is not the Lord’s, the Sunday is his least of all. There may be a sickening unreality even where there is no conscious hypocrisy.
From: George MacDonald
“We could call [a] problem with the current Sabbath vogue the fallacy of the direct object. Whom is the contemporary Sabbath designed to honor? Whom does it benefit?…In observing the Sabbath, one is both giving a gift to God and imitating Him.”
From: Lauren F. Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath
Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, Nourishment of mind by His truth, Purifying of imagination by His beauty, Opening of the heart to His love, And submission of will to his purpose. And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.
From: William Temple
If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything.
From: Eugene H. Peterson
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
From: Henry Ward Beecher