Sermon Tone Analysis

A few weeks ago our kids spent a number of days at Choral Camp at Rosedale.

While they were doing that, Heidi went back west and spent some time at a place called Innkeeper Ministries which is just a little ways this side of Dayton, Ohio.

Innkeeper ministries is a free retreat center for pastors.

It consists of a couple of large houses with acres of yard, ponds, and woods with paths carved through them.

There places of solitude to just sit and think and pray and listen to God.

We both arrived there quite tired and not necessarily in a good way, if you want the honest truth.

I guess if you didn’t want it, you got it anyway.

While we were there, I did a lot of thinking about rest.

For some time I’ve been working through a book called “The Emotionally Healthy Leader”, by Peter Scazzero.

In this book, Peter tells his story about how through some very painful circumstances, he came to realize that he really was not in a good place emotionally.

He came to realize that the more emotionally unhealthy he became, the more he started trying to drag his church along behind him and make things happen.

And when things started to crumble around him, he couldn’t figure out why.

He thought it was everyone else’s fault, not his

He had done a lot of thinking and writing about what emotional health looks like, but he wasn’t applying those principles to his leadership and he was paying the price

And so he wrote this book out of those painful lessons that he learned.

He divides his book into two sections

The Inner Life

Facing your Shadow

Leading out of your singleness or Marriage

Slowing Down for a Loving Union with God

Practicing Sabbath Delight

The Outer Life

Ways in which being emotionally healthy plays out in practical tasks

I did manage to finish the book, and while there were some things that made me kind of say, “Whaaa?”, there was a lot of it that described me and the place where I was finding myself.

I could talk quite a while about it

The title itself sort of catches my attention.

Sabbath Delight.

Peter tells the story of one of his friends who went to Israel.

On a Friday he was sitting in an outdoor cafe when a group of teenage boys ran by singing and shouting.

At first she though that something was wrong because they were making such a racket.

She asked the waiter what was going on and the waiter said, “They are very happy that it will soon be the Sabbath.”

“Happy about the Sabbath?” she asked, uncertain that she had heard him right?

“Yes,” he said, “they are welcoming the Sabbath with their songs and shouting.”

Second Start

(ESV)

15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.

16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Jesus Is Equal with God

18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

The Sabbath.

(ESV)

12 “ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.

13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.