Counterintuitive

Yes, you read that correctly. We're going to talk about slowing down. But wait. Isn't this series about gaining momentum, becoming an "unstoppable force", moving toward the idea of G.O.A.T. status in our Spiritual life? What does slowing down have to do with momentum? Well, as is often the case, Spiritual ideas go counterintuitive to what makes worldly sense. In the world's economy, you get places by going faster, working harder, studying more, practicing more, spending more. More, more, more. However, from the very beginning, the Lord painted a picture of slowing down, resting, taking your time, enjoying the moment.

In one of my discipleship groups, we just finished reading the book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry" by John Mark Comer. As a pastor of a megachurch, John Mark's life was as full and busy as it could possibly be. At some point, he realized that he couldn't keep up the pace. That the Lord didn't want him to keep up the pace. And so he began to slow down, take time to rest, transfer some of his work and responsibilities to more people, and to structure his life to be more simple.

The book is very challenging. No matter your age or season of life, really stopping to consider how busy our lives are, to think about how unhealthy that can be Spiritually, and to take steps to align our lives more the way God intended, as I said, from the beginning. The whole time I'm reading this book, I'm thinking about how much I wish it had been around even when I was a teenager. My life in high school was as out-of-control busy as many of you feel you are today. There's a lot more stuff to spend time on in the 2020's as there was in the 1980's, but that didn't stop me from, as they say, burning the candles at both ends.

I didn't play sports in high school, but I did cover sports. I was the basketball announcer, and I wrote all of the school news and sports articles for the county newspaper. I was also trying to make academics a top priority. I remember coming home sometimes after 10 pm to get started on my homework that was due the next day. Some of you are nodding your head and "amen-ing" right now because you do that as well. I was also involved in my youth group at church. My junior year, I drove a school bus. Yes. Look it up. They have student bus drivers in North Carolina. I got to school every day by driving the bus. Worst job I ever had, but that's a story for another day. And my senior year, I worked at two radio stations as a deejay.

Fortunately, or more likely unfortunately, I was young and had lots more energy than I do now, so I often didn't notice how tired, burnt out and distracted I was. Maybe you don't notice so much either.

CHALLENGE:

1. When someone asks you how you're doing, how often do you answer, "tired?"
2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressful would you say your life is? Why did you give yourself that score?
3. When you look around at friends, peers, teammates, classmates, how stressed do they seem compared to you?
4. If I asked you to write down details of how you spent your time over the past week, how much of it would you remember?

Sabbath

In the John Mark Comer book, he talks about three...I guess we'll call them practices...that are spoken of in Scripture that are designed to help us eliminate some of the hurry in our lives. I'm sure you've heard of the first one: sabbath. The Lord Himself introduced the idea of sabbath at the very beginning--as part of the creation story. Genesis 2:2-3. God created for 6 days and on the 7th day, He rested. Not only did He rest that day, but He declared that day as "holy". Meaning He set it apart as something special.

Moses carried the idea along during the Israelites journey to the promised land in Exodus 16:23-26. On the 6th day of the week, they would gather enough food so they could rest on the 7th day. He said, "Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord." Jesus confirmed the importance of a day of rest in Matthew 12:8 and Mark 2:27. He clarified that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. God literally created the idea of taking a day when you would rest from your work, whatever your work may be.

I know what you're thinking: "So, you're telling me that every 7th day I need to take off 24 hours where I just rest from the activities I'm normally engaged in? Do you have any idea how long 24 hours is? Do you realize that's over 14% of life? (Thank you to whoever did the math.). Or you may be thinking, "That's all well and good, but that was thousands of years ago. Life's not like that anymore." So, I get all of that. I don't think God put the Sabbath in place just for the Israelites, by the way. There was nothing unique about Israelite humans over non-Israelite humans. Or humans of today versus humans of a long time ago.

Now by what I'm about to say, I don't mean to undermine anything the Lord has set in place. If God said that taking 14% of your life to rest from the other 86%, and He declared that idea as holy, then we would all be better off to do as He commands. But. Is it realistic to just snap your fingers and start doing that. It may in fact be realistic. And it may in fact be the best thing you could do for your relationship with God.

If you're not willing or able or ready to take that kind of massive step, then I would suggest maybe this. Start by finding maybe a couple of hours, or a morning, or an evening every week that you could set aside and declare as a Sabbath. A time when you would rest from your normal work. So, no studying, no practicing, not working at your job if you have one. And maybe that needs to include no screen time, no social media. Just a time that you set apart every week to honor the Lord's command for you to rest.

"Okay, so what am I supposed to do during this 'sabbath' time I set apart." Here's a shocker: nothing. If nothing is too big a leap for you, how about just doing something you love, something relaxing. Maybe that one thing you're always saying, "Man, I wish I still had time to ____________." Fill in the blank. If you find you need to do something, pick something that doesn't cause you stress. For some people, a sabbath might include going for a run or a walk, working out, playing golf, cooking, drawing or painting something. Something where you are in "the zone". Something that gives your mind and your spirit and your soul an opportunity to breathe.

I would include practicing a Sabbath as a Spiritual discipline. And like all Spiritual disciplines, it requires practice. You work up to 100 push-ups by starting with a few and building up over time. Some day, you may find that you're able to set aside a literal 24-hour day to rest.

CHALLENGE:

1. How does the idea of setting aside some time to rest from your normal work and responsibilities feel?
2. Think through your weekly schedule. Is there a time when you might be able to set aside a few hours to practice a Sabbath?
3. What would you do during a Sabbath time? What might your "nothing" look like?
4. What do you think Jesus meant when He said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath?
5. Read Hebrews 4:1-10. How do those verses help you when it comes to considering and implementing a Sabbath?

Solitude

Another practice that's good for your Spiritual momentum is solitude. I would say this is actually much harder than just practicing a Sabbath. But integrating it with a Sabbath can be life changing. Biblical solitide is the intentional practice of stepping away from human noise and daily demands to rest, pray and commune with God. Think for a moment about how much your day, week, month, life is completely free from noise. If you answered zero, I think you're in the majority. I would include screen time in the category of "human noise". It may not be making actual sounds waves all the time, but doom scrolling could definitely be classified as noise.

I know what you're probably thinking. Adults' answer to everything is getting off mobile devices and screens. I can't argue with that. I think a lot of the reason that adults go overboard on mobile decides and screens is that we know life without them as well as life with them. Many of you don't know a life when there wasn't an Internet and when telephones were attached to a wall and the receiver was hardwired to the phone. For those of us who do, we remember times when it was really, really, really quiet. When nothing was going on. When there are no noise, and when you had to just deal with nothing but the thoughts in your head.

One of my favorite things growing up was going outside after dark. I would lie down on our red picnic table in the back yard and stare off at the stars. It was what helped me to think about how big God was. I would think about what it might be like to travel to some of those stars, and I often wondered if that's what we got to do in Heaven--travel around and see the stars. That was time that I spent all by myself. Nobody else was around. And there was no noise. Just me, the back yard, the picnic table and the stars. Be honest with me: as you read that, wasn't a little part of you thinking about how awesome that would be? I think it's because our souls long for some solitide.

And I think solitude just invites the Lord to come and be with us. Even if we know that He is with us all the time, getting away alone to a quiet place helps us to experience God's presence more, to hear His voice more clearly, and to allow Him to restore us. You might say, "aren't we doing that when we sleep?" Yes, sleeping is also restoring your mind and body from a day's activity. But there's something that conscious solitude does to your spirit that sleeping doesn't. It makes it possible for us to be fully aware of the Lord's presence and to converse with Him. It's hard to grow a relationship with somebody when you're dead asleep! You need to be awake, alert, intentional, and focused. But when there's nobody else around and there's no other noise or distraction.

CHALLENGE:

1. Read Psalm 46:10. What does that short but powerful verse mean to you?
2. Luke 5:16 is one of many verses that talk about Jesus going off to be alone. How does Jesus example of practicing solitude help you understand the importance of solitide?
3. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to practicing solitude?
4. Pick a time this week when you can truly get away from people, noise and distrations and actually do it. After you've done that, think about the time. What did you do? What was easy? What was difficult? What was refreshing about the time? Did you hear from the Lord in a way you may not have with more noise and distraction around?

Simplicity

A third practice that John Mark Comer talks about in the "Ruthless Elimination of Hurry" is simplicity. Maybe a good, easy definition of simplicity is getting by with less stuff. If you're a teenager, you haven't had as much time in life to accumulate "stuff". I've moved a number of times as an adult, and every time I move, there are boxes and plastic bins full of stuff that I never unpacked from the last move. I'm literally hauling stuff from one house to the next without ever having looked at that stuff. When I started teaching seven years ago and started getting summers off, I would make it a practice every summer to pick something to declutter. This past summer, I decided to go through all of my stored up stuff and find all the pictures and photo albums I had collected over the years--some were mine, some from my parents and grandparents. Oh sorry, I should tell you that at one time in the past, pictures had to be printed to look at. We used cameras and took our film to the drug store to have the pictures developed and printed. If you were lucky, a couple of times a year, you would get to look at a stack of pictures that likely included Easter, summer vacation, birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Well I literally found hundreds of pictures. I didn't throw many of them away, but I did scan them all to digital format, and I did organize them all into one place. That kind of felt good. I like organizing stuff. But every summer I find a whole bunch of stuff I've accumulated over the years that I don't need anymore. So I just throw it away, or if it still has life left in it, give it away.

For most of you, your life is probably a different kind of cluttered from mine. Maybe it's phone apps, or shoes, or clothes. It could be the American way of having to have the latest, newest, greatest, fastest. I'm not a big fan of Apple products. That's a story for another day, but the people who know me know that about me. I think maybe Apple championed the idea of lastest-greatest. Every year or so they release a new iPhone. And people all over the world line up to trade in their barely used iPhone 45 for all the awesomeness of an iPhone 46. That's not exclusive to Apple, I'm just picking on Apple. But our society now is geared toward that. New flash, new features, faster, louder, more fun, more exciting.

There's nothing espeically wrong about all that. But I wonder if we ever ask ourselves, "isn't what I already have enough?" Do I need another hat to add to my collection of 100 hats? Do I need another pair of shoes to go with my collection of barely worn shoes? Do I need a bigger, a better, a faster, a flashier? If I was just satisfied with what I already had, what could I do with the money I saved? And for the stuff I have that I never use, is there something that someone would consider a "need" where for me it was just a "want".

Simplifying your life, reducing clutter, being satified with the Lord meeting your needs, saying no to the next greatest gadget, sharing some of the vast amount that you have with someone less fortunate. All of these, surprisingly, can kickstart areas of your Spiritual life you had no idea needed some life breathed into them! Your Spiritual momentum may be on the verge of talking off simply by shedding some of the things that could be weighing you down.

CHALLENGE:

Read the following verses and ask the Lord to show you how simplifying your life could bring life and growth:

1. 1 Thessalonians 4:11
2. 1 Timothy 6:6-7
3. Luke 12:15
4. Matthew 11:28
5. Ecclesiastes 4:6
6. Matthew 6:3