Detach from Chaos, Attach to Christ, and Break Free from the World's Demands

Our world offers endless prescriptions for wholeness—a sense of fullness through achievement, a perfect work-life balance, the ideal Instagram feed, or the pursuit of well-being and leisure. Yet these cultural visions of fulfillment often leave us more restless than before.

There is a more satisfying path. God invites us not simply to take a day off, but to be transformed to be like him through the joy, delight, and holiness of sabbath all seven days of the week.

In The Sabbath We Need, John and Jena Starke guide you away from the world's anxious systems and into participation with God in his rest. This is not another book about relaxation or self-care. The biblical emphasis on sabbath rest isn't necessarily about recovering from the week but to be set apart like the God who rested on the seventh day.

Based on their own practices as a family of six living in Manhattan, the Starkes offer a path for detachment from the world for a deeper attachment to Christ, providing hope for a culture exhausted in its search for rest. True sabbath is formation toward divine holiness and counterformation away from worldliness.

With The Sabbath We Need, you will discover



- The difference between counterfeit fulfillment and the true divine fullness of sabbath keeping;

- Practical ways to make the sabbath the center of gravity for your week, reshaping your rhythms of life;

- How to practice sabbath in different stages of life and in seasons of pain, success, struggle, and loss; and

- How to receive the gift of sabbath as God intended and practice it in a way that leads to joy, delight, and interior rest.



Choose the way of holy rest. The Sabbath We Need leads you out of worldliness and into holiness, out of anxious systems and into the heart of rest.



Jena Starke is the administrator at Apostles Church Uptown in New York City. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, John, and their four children.







John Starke is the lead pastor at Apostles Church Uptown in New York City. He is the coeditor (with Bruce Ware) of One God in Three Persons and is the author of The Possibility of Prayer and The Secret Place of Thunder.He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jena, and their four children.



Introduction: Something More Than Self-Fulfillment

Part I: Sabbath as Formation



1. Bricks Without Straw



2. Sabbath as Holiness



3. Growing Out of Our Coping



4. The Healing of Sabbath

Part II: The Practice of Sabbath



5. The Problem and Promise of Solitude



6. Work and Rest



7. Imagining the Day



8. Sabbath Grief and Healing



Epilogue



Notes