I failed at keeping the Sabbath holy until I stopped trying alone

I was tired. The kind of tired that a good night’s sleep doesn’t touch. I’d been leading a church for years and, somewhere along the way, the tank had run dry without me noticing. So I did what I always do when I identify a problem: I read widely, gathered some tips, drew up a plan. I was going to fix this.

I treated rest the way I treat everything: as a project to be optimised.

Three weeks later, I had quietly stopped. I couldn’t tell you exactly when. There was no dramatic failure - just a slow slide back into the busy week, the phone back in my hand, the work creeping in at the edges. I felt like a failure. A church leader who couldn’t even rest. I told myself I needed more tips. A better plan. Stronger resolve.

I didn’t consider that the problem might not be my technique.

I finally got round to reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits (Random House). Late to the party, I know. It’s a genuinely good book - sharp, practical, grounded in real research into why change is so hard. I can see why half the world has read it. ‘Community’ appears in chapter nine. 

The problem with isolation

Somewhere along the way, our Western culture has absorbed the idea that growth is basically down to you. The Church included. And we didn’t notice. The Sunday message lands, the room feels alive, and then everyone drives home. What happens next is between you and God - which sounds spiritual until you realise it isn’t working.

I hadn’t realised I’d fallen into the same trap, until eight of us tried it together.

Last autumn, we started meeting in my living room. Eight of us, all tired in our own ways, wondering if there was another way to live. We talked about what Sabbath meant. What we were each finding hard. And then we went away and tried it. Then came back and talked about that, too.

At one meeting, someone admitted they’d checked their emails. Someone else had worked three hours on Saturday and felt awful about it. Nobody left. Nobody quietly disappeared. We laughed, talked about why it was so hard, and kept going.

People had encouraged me before. What I hadn’t had was people doing it alongside me

And I noticed something I hadn’t expected: the itch to scroll, to check, to fill the silence with work had a different quality now. Not because someone was watching. Because eight other people were wrestling with the same thing, at the same time.

I wasn’t being monitored. I was being accompanied. People had encouraged me before. What I hadn’t had was people doing it alongside me. Those are not the same thing at all.

We gathered over food. Someone would ask how we were getting on. One evening, a man said he hadn’t touched his laptop all weekend. He’d spent Saturday afternoon playing with his daughter. Nobody said anything for a moment.

Not what, but who

The same distorted lens shaped how I read Jesus. I just hadn’t noticed. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me” (Matthew 11:19). I’d read that verse dozens of times. I’d preached it. I knew a yoke was built for two. You and Jesus, pulling together. 

But I was still failing, alone in my house, phone in hand, every week. And the burden wasn’t getting lighter. The way wasn’t getting easier. Which is precisely what Jesus said wouldn’t happen.

What if I’d turned his invitation into an individual project? I was slowly realising Jesus wasn’t offering a private change plan. He was inviting people into something altogether different. A way of life that was never meant to be carried alone.

What if the living room was part of the answer? Eight people, same struggle, same week. Maybe that’s what makes the yoke easy and light.

I still have weeks when I fail at Sabbath. I suspect most of the group does. But I’m still practising, which I wasn’t before. Something is holding. I don’t think it’s the information I’ve accumulated. I think it’s the eight people.

I wonder how many people are out there trying the same thing alone. Reading the right books. Praying harder. Wondering why it isn’t working. When the question was never how. It was who.