What Would Jesus Do? Rest.

By Andrea Lucado

When the question comes up, What would Jesus do?, we most naturally answer with action statements:

Jesus would forgive.

Jesus would stand up for truth.

Jesus would preach to the nonbeliever.

Jesus would turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and give a poor man his own cloak.

These are all biblically sound responses, but we often forget something else that Jesus did, and he did it quite often: rest.

In the Book of Mark, we see Jesus consistently retreat during his years of ministry, either to be alone or to be with just a few of his disciples to rest and to pray. For example, in Mark 1:35, after Jesus has spent a long night of healing the sick and casting out demons, it says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

We see this again in Mark 6 when Jesus advises his disciples to get some rest after he has sent them off in pairs to do mission work. “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” he says (Mark 6:31).

After Jesus feeds the crowd of five thousand men plus women and children, he retreats and goes away to a mountain to pray (Mark 7:46).

There is a pattern here. Minister, then rest. Minister, then rest. If Jesus needed rest from ministry, certainly we do too. You don’t have to be in full-time ministry to be a minister. Your ministry right now might be in your own home or your workplace. It could be to your neighbors or extended family. If you are a Christ follower, you are probably ministering somewhere. Are you also resting?

What if we considered rest equally as important as evangelism? It sounds strange, maybe even a little scandalous to suggest it, but if we are really trying to do what Jesus would do, we would not only fulfill the Great Commission given us in Matthew 28—to share the gospel with all the nations—we would also do what Jesus does again and again in Mark and throughout the gospels. We would take time away to rest and recharge.

Pastor Steven J. Cole poses an interesting question: “Could there be any significance that His Word often refers to the Christian experience as a walk, seldom as a run, and never as a mad dash?”

Could we be going about this “good Christian life” all wrong? Could we be missing a huge piece of the puzzle?

It’s tempting, especially in the area of ministry, to succumb to urgency. People need to be saved, healed, listened to, prayed over. Taking a nap or a day off when there are so many needs feels wrong. But Jesus had, literally, thousands of people lining up to meet him. So many needed him. Actually, the entire world needed him. He still took time away to pray and rest and be alone. This seemed to be what recharged him before another full day of performing miracles and healing the sick.

Being a faithful follower sometimes looks like evangelizing on the street corner and praying over hundreds of people. It also sometimes looks like sitting in a chair and being still for hours at a time. It looks like taking a solitary walk and talking to God. It looks like not much at all, but it is, as we see in the Gospel of Mark and elsewhere in scripture, absolutely critical to God’s mission for His people.

You can read more about Jesus’ ministry in our study The Gospel of Mark: Read All About It.