Slow Down: A rule of life

Opening

If you will open your bibles to Matthew 11 we will be in the last 6 verses of the chapter, so to verse 25… if you don’t have your bible with you, go ahead and use one of the Pew bibles. And if you don’t have a bible at all, that bible in the pew back in front of you, it’s yours. A gift from New Hope to you. Keep it, read it, apply the truths to your life, and God bless it. Now, for those of you who are new here, welcome, we are so glad you are here, as Rudy said, we are so glad you here, not because we want as many people here as possible, no, but because you recognize you need Jesus, and you’re here exploring the Jesus Way. Welcome. Now, if you are all in Matthew 11, will you stand and read with me… starting in verse 25.

25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.[g] 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Let’s Pray

How many of you have seen those signs in someone's yard, right outside of their driveway or by the road that are like the little green men with the flags that say “slow down!” Or a sign that says “drive like your kids live here” or something along those same lines. Well, we live right by one and every time I drive by it, I want to go even faster… it doesn’t make me want to slow down, but speed up. And as terrible as that may be, I know, I’m a petty driver at times, there is something inside us that tries to get us to slow down just like those little green men by the mailbox of a 30-something mother of four.

If you have one of those little green men, I’m sorry, they drive me absolutely bonkers and irate.

But it’s true… we all have that thing inside of us that, whether we listen to it or not, is screaming at us to SLOW DOWN, SAY NO TO SOMETHING, JUST REST! But in this fast pace, workaholic, grind 100 hours a week, you’ll sleep when you're dead, culture… Rest is almost something that no one thinks about at all.

When I sit down and think about it… this is all I’ve ever known. The business and grind of the western world, work till your drop life style. But believe it or not this is not how we were supposed to live, this is not how we, humans, were created to live. When God breathed life into the first man and the first woman, he designed us to actually, every now and then, rest. Take a Sabbath. Breath a little. unplug from the constant flow of bad news, bitter comments, the comparison game, all of it. And simply… rest.

We are all constantly busy, whether its with family, work, social media, our latest Netflix addiction, grandkids, friendships, or even church events, we are all filling our calendars to the brim with things we need, or think we need, to do and deep down, our hearts, our souls, are begging us to SLOW DOWN. Because that is not how we were designed to live. But what do we do? Instead of listening to that feeling, that urge inside us to rest… We shove that feeling, that internal scream, down, we suppress it and begin to add one more get-together, event, dinner, coffee date, whatever, to our already loaded schedules.

But friend, this, as I’ve already said multiple times, was not how you and I were designed for. It’s like we’re using a Honda Odyssey for a drag race. It might work, it might even cross the finish line… but the vehicle will be in pretty rough shape afterwards. This is what we’re doing to our bodies when we try and work at this frenetic pace that is American Culture has not only normalized, but encouraged. You may not feel it right now, but I guarantee it, it’s happening to you. We are all sick. In their book “Type A Behavior and Your Heart.” cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman coined the term “Hurry Sickness.” And friends, we all suffer from it.

The definition of hurry sickness is “A behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness.”

Another one says “A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to perform every task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of delay.”

One more definition by Meyer Friedman, the author… He says hurry sickness is “A continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.”

Any guess as to when he said this? The 1950s… Awkward silence… He literally defined most if not all of our lives…

We all have chronic hurry sickness. But friends, there is a cure… There is a better way to a better life. A life more inlined with the God we all say we follow… because friend, I’m here to tell you… hurry was not the way of Jesus… In fact, it was the opposite way around. Jesus was chill and laid back. We’ll get into it more, but if you call yourself a Christian, you need to cut the business out of your life.

Now I know that is a very VERY blanket statement but it is so so true. We all need to cut out business out of our lives. We’ll get into this a little bit later, but please don’t shut this idea down, and don’t laugh it off saying I’m radical or idealistic… Here is what I would say to you who are thinking like that…

As a follower of Jesus, as His disciples, we are to become like Jesus. We are to adopt His way of life. What the earlier church called simply, “The Way.” The way they lived the way they did everything was mimicking Jesus, doing what He did! And what did Jesus do? He was SLOW! He didn’t rush through life! He didn’t think “Oh, my job is so important I need to be in the office 5 days a week, and work 12 hour days, then come home, have dinner, work around the house for another hour or so, go to bed, then wake up and do it all again. And then on Saturdays I work around the house, cleaning the stove, then cutting down that tree outside, then weeding the flower bed for a couple hours, and then the canning, I have to do the canning, then I eat dinner on Saturday then go to bed, then, maybeeee if I don’t over sleep because I’m exhausted or if the kids aren’t acting up I’ll go to church, and then come home, do some laundry, some dishes, clean the bathroom, then start the whole week over again…”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

That is not a life of a Jesus follower. That is NOT a life of someone modeling their life after Jesus… friends, that is a recipe for disaster.

Hurry is a sickness… it is, there is no if, ands, or buts about it. Hurry is a sickness. When we cram our schedules to the brim, we tend to boil over. And to live a life that honors Jesus, you must, as the pastor and philosopher Dallas Willard said, “you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from you lives.”

This is going to be a two part series on slowing down, rest, and sabbath. Today I want to focus on the slowing down part of it, the ruthless elimination of hurry from our lives. Then next week, we’ll dive deeper on the idea of sabbath. But today, lets focus on slowing down… and first, I want to talk about why we need to slow down.

Why slow down?

First and foremost because Jesus’ lived slowly. Whether you like it or not, he did. He was never in a rush. Jesus practiced Sabbath when He was on this earth, He wasn’t rushed, He took time with people, to heal and teach them. In one passage of Scripture in Matthew 14, we read that Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, had just been murdered, and Jesus tried to get away from all the people, to be alone and pray, “13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” He didn’t push them off and say “I have some mourning to do. Leave me alone!” He said “I have time to do this. I can mourn later.”

Jesus did not rush through life. He didn’t push people away because he was too busy for them. He lived at a pace to where, if was interrupted, he could take time with them. Do we have this trait? Do we, when interrupted, pour out love and compassion? Grace and patience? Or do we pour out anger and bitterness? Irritation and anxiousness? Friends, I would have to say for most of us… it’s the latter group.

Pastor and speaker, John Mark Comer in his book, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,” has this quote, “Love, joy, and peace are the triumvirate at the heart of Jesus's kingdom vision. All three are more than just emotions; they are overall conditions of the heart. They aren't just pleasant feelings; they are the kinds of people we become through our apprenticeship to Jesus, who embodies all three at infinitum…”

And then he adds. “And all three are incompatible with hurry.”

I think about back to my last year at home, before Clara and I moved here. During that time I had a lot on my plate. I was on staff at my dads church part-time as the youth leader, I was a full time Custodian, and I was juggling helping with worship at church, trying to see Clara when ever she was home, juggling two podcasts, and starting my worship initiative, being on the board for a Christian retreat, etc. etc. etc. So I want to walk you through a NORMAL day, of my life back then.

During that 2022-23 school year, I was working at the high school 5:30 AM til 1:30 PM, I would then, most days, head to the gym for an hour or so, from 1:30 til 2:45. I would then head home for a shower and a quick lunch, this would maybe take about 30 to 45 minutes. That would bring the time down to 3:30. and by that time, I had to go put in my time at Church, so that was another 2 or 3 hours, so on the light side, I was back home around 5:30… I would eat dinner with my family, that would get done around 7… and then I had an hour to do whatever I wanted, talk to Clara, watch hockey, what have you… and then, ideally, I’d be in bed around 8 o’clock to do it all again the next day.

This was a NORMAL day in my life around that time. And the year before I was heavily involved with Pathway Church, a church I helped plant, and that was 30 minutes away, so I was out there a couple of days a week, and still doing podcasts, janitorial work and long distance courting Clara. The point of this is… during this time I was not as loving as I should’ve been to my family. They oftentimes got put on the back burner of my relational stove, I would yell at my younger brothers, just wanting to show me their latest lego creation or drawing, I would get mad at my mom for not reading my texts correctly and not having my lunch ready, like she was some kind of a maid, I would freak out at the littlest inconvenience because I only had so much time before my next commitment. The point is, I was not loving to those around me, I was not a peace, at all, and most definitely not joy-filled.

But let’s go back to the quote. “Love, joy, and peace are the triumvirate at the heart of Jesus's kingdom vision… And all three are incompatible with hurry.”

Let’s talk about each of them… How about love… Why is Love incompatible with hurry? Think about it, folks. When we are in a rush, we have little time for interruptions, and so our gut reaction is irritation, anger, frustration… things that does not reflect the Jesus who, as we just read, reacted to interruption with love. and that is why hurry and love are not compatible. (EXPOUND?)

What about joy? Joy is often times produced in the mundane and slow parts of our lives. Think about it… how many of us, when speeding to our next appointment, or looking at our jam-packed calendar go “oh boy, I can’t wait for my four-year-old grandsons soccer game?” Have you ever seen a four year old play soccer? It doesn’t feel me with great joy. Yes it’s cute, but my sport-mind can’t get past the shooting the ball the wrong way up the pitch. It just doesn’t compute to me, but oh well. But how many of us see rushing to do the next task as something that fills us with Joy? Does it?

And then peace… It’s often in the slow mornings that peace is there. I can see the Lord’s provision when I slow down and I can simply be at peace… There’s a reason Merriam-Webster’s antonym’s for peace is strife. Because the definition of strive is “a lack of harmony.” When we’re in a hurry, our wires get crossed, our communication is lacking, and we become people of few words, and those words are short and cross. Because we’re not focused on the right things.

For me… I find myself filled with love when I wake up at 6 A.M and go to my chair, sometimes with a cup of coffee, I light a candle, put on my ambient music, and just being with God. Where I sit and let him speak to me, and then, after a while, I speak to him. And then… I rest in his presence; being filled up with Love from my loving father.

Joy is often found, to me, on my sabbath, when I can slow down and literally taste my coffee, one sip at a time, and not chug it before I head out the door, or slurp it while I write a teaching for youth group on Wednesday. Peace comes when I can connect with Jesus deeper, when I can connect with Clara, when I can slow down and just focus on Jesus more. That is where I find joy, and peace, and love.

Friends if you’re sitting out there today and you’re thinking “I relate to the packed schedule, short tempered, frustrated individual. But I don’t want that.” then let me turn you to the passage of Matthew 11, that we already read where Jesus says “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” An Easy Yoke. A light burden. This is the cure… but how do you get there? Great question. Let’s first ask the question…

Why do we need to rest?

Simply put… we were not designed to be going from 5 AM til Midnight and then doing it all over again… our bodies can’t handle it. If we are pushing and pushing ourselves to the limit constantly, we’re going to break down. Did you know that most places had laws in place that forced business to close on Sundays… that places could not be open on Sundays, this was a thing in most places until the 1960s and some as recently as the 90s. Then, places like 7/11 opened… 7 days a week, until 11 pm… then Walmart began to open 24 hours, 7 days a week… I remember hearing stories of when everything used to close down at 6 during the weekdays and on Sunday, down town was a ghost town. Nobody thought of going out to eat or to a youth sporting event… let alone go grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon… yet, now? We’re speeding around like a crazy person, ready to fall apart if we slow down.

I can’t emphasize enough… WE WERE NOT CREATED FOR SPEED. But Slowness with God… We need a sabbath day to slow dow, and disconnect from the world around us, and just be… Be with family, with friends, with God, in nature, in bed, eating good food, enjoy the life God has given us… Enjoying God himself.

But unfortunately… our world lives in a “need to be distracted” culture. So much so that ________ (Stats about 2007 from book). The phone, and media in general, is the great thief of this ability. Media… TV, movies, music, social media, instagram, facebook, twitter, Spotify, video games… you fill in the blank… we’re losing our ability just to be present…

Here’s some terrifying statistics that prove just how much in need of slowing down we are…

According to the most recent data I could find… the Average person spends 4 hours and 37 minutes a day on their phone… that ads up to over 1 day per WEEK. and 6 days per MONTH! In the month of September we’re going to spend 1/5 of it on your phone. 1/5! And I did the math… you will spend 1/5 of the YEAAAAAAR glued to your device… 1/5! That’s 2.4 months!

The average American spends 2 hours and 55 minutes watching TV. They spend 3 hours listening to music per day and another 1 hour listening to podcasts. Guys… we’re consuming media at an ALARMING rate. And in turn we’re losing our ability to just be… Back when I as a junior in highschool, my friend group at church had this thing we would do and it was actually so good… when we were in a group and someone would whip out their phone and start texting or scrolling while we were hanging out, we would all yell “BE PRESENT.” at them and usually, they would toss the phone across the room onto an unoccupied couch or chair. Funny, but it worked… folks we’re losing our ability to be present with those around us… and were losing time with loved ones…

I see this most when I’m out at a restaurant… Clara and I, when we go out to eat, have this rule… and this started when we were dating, we stack our phones on top of each other and put them at the far end of the table. That way, we’re not forced to grab them… I can’t tell you how ANNOYED I get when I see a family, or maybe just a parent and a couple children, out to eat and the parents are doom scrolling on their phones and the kid is just sitting there… wanting more than anything for his parent to connect with them… wanting to spend time with the guy he probably looks up to the most… for his dad to value him over facebook or instagram. To put the gosh dang phone down and talk to him, to get to know him… to ask him some questions. But no. The phone is there… whether its instagram or texting friends…we’re losing our ability to just be.

I think about the old Andy Griffith Show… but the scenes where Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bea would all be out on the porch just being… that’s what 21st century Grant County is missing… how often on a Sunday afternoon do you drive through town and see a couple sitting on the porch playing guitar and sitting and being? Never! but we need to slow down. We need to breath, put the phone down and breath.

Here’s one more frightening stat… The average human attention span is only 8.25 seconds… which is less than the goldfish's 9-second attention span. That’s right… We’re losing to goldfish… and because of this, we’re losing our ability to slow down… to just be present… to just be.

What do we do now?

Now we pose the question… how do we find, what Matthew 11 calls, the ‘Easy Yoke.’ How do we find this cure to hurry sickness and the ability to slow down, to give our burdens to God for the long haul? How do we live a hurry free life? Well, the answer isn’t more time… it’s actually… to follow Jesus.

Now I know what you all our thinking… “I already follow Jesus! What do you mean I need to follow Him????” Well, by follow Jesus I don’t mean you said a prayer back in grade school and now you’ve been showing up to church at least 40 Sundays out of the year and you serve in kids church and then you go out to your 9 to 5 and just get ready to do it all over again… no by following Jesus I mean literally following him…

That term comes from rabbi’s in the Bible time where their disciples would literally FOLLOW their master, their Rabbi around and adopt his ‘way of life.’ they would sleep when he slept, eat when and what he would eat, they would literally learn from their Master.

But we in 21st century America don’t do that. We just don’t. We think following God is as simple as showing up to church on Sunday and we’re good… But we need to adopt this truth that following Jesus requires us to do the things Jesus did. Clara’s dad, says it this way: Be with, be like, begin doing. That’s the outline for following Jesus. Be with Him, be like Him, and begin doing what he did.

Like I said earlier, Jesus was not a rabbi who hurried about His life. and He still isn’t a God of hurry… but of peace and of slowness. Here are some ways to begin practicing a life of slowness like Jesus did…

First one is silence and solitude. Here’s what this means… it means take time out of your day to spend intentional time with God in the silence and solitude. In Luke 5:16 it says that “ So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” So we are to do so as well.

We need to find a place that’s quiet and away from the hustle and bustle of your day. I try and get mine done in the morning, and I’ll shut the lights off either in our living room or, if Clara is up, I’ll try and do it in the bathroom. but you pick the time and place that is right for you. I encourage to do them either in the morning or evening, before your day gets too crazy, or after the crazy has died down. One rule here… don’t make it rushed, don’t make it something you have to do, but something you get and want to do. Have you ever hung out with a friend and it feels like they’re just there because they feel like they have to? Yeah, don’t do that to God. Give Him your full attention. Whether for 5 minutes or an hour. Start at where you feel comfortable, and grow. I also encourage you to bring a physical Bible to you for your silence and solitude. Don’t bring your phone with you. The phone, as we said before, is then number 1 thief of attention. Keep it as far away from your quiet time with God as possible.

Second, observe a sabbath day… and, we’ll get into it more next week, but observe sabbath. Pick a day out of your week, I would suggest Sunday or Saturday. Clara and I do Saturday since I work on Sunday, but take a day and REST! We’ll get into it deeper next Sunday, but take the day, rest, do NO work, make sure you prep for this either Friday if you’re planning Sabbath Saturday or Saturday if you plan on doing in Sunday, prep meals if cooking is something you don’t want to do on sabbath, clean, do dishes, do laundry and that way on Sabbath you can simply be. Be present in nature, in the sleeping in, in the every moment. Just be in the moment with Jesus. And one more thing, on sabbath, shut the phone down, put it a way. Clara and I have a sabbath box to put our phones in. That way you’re not hooked into instagram or email or texts or time or games or whatever… Again, we’ll get deeper into sabbath next week… but try and practice sabbath this week. And remember, it’s not a day off… they’re very different. Friday is my day off, and i do work around the house, I change tail lights, i do dishes, scrub toilets, all so on Saturday… I can be present and rest.

Thirdly, practice slowing down with a few simple steps… again, this is if you want a peaceful, slow, unhurried life, just as God has designed it. If you don’t want this, ignore everything I’m saying, but begin practicing slowing. Do some, or all of them.

Obey the speed limit. I know I know. Radical. But seriously. Many of us will speed through town or country roads, whether 2 or 3 MPH over or, as I was on the way home from Illinois last Saturday, 15 over. I know, confession time. But driving the speed limit, even when no one is in front of us, is a practice of slowing (literally) and patience. You will get to McDonalds eventually… why not try and slow your souls pace by going 25 in a 25 as opposed to 30.

Come to complete stops at stop signs.

Drive in the slow lane

Parent your phone. Put it to sleep at a decent hour, in a different room in the house, and before you. Clara and I have a rule… the bedroom is a no phone zone. We keep our phones out of the room when we go to sleep. Why? Because anything that happens during the night will be there in the morning. There’s no reason to keep our phones near at night. So put your phones to sleep. Give them a bedtime. Go ahead and put them into airplane mode and let your brain slow down before bed. Don’t overstimulate it! Nothing is so important that it can’t wait until the morning. And if you think there is… get a landline and give the number out to people who need to contact you at 4 A.M. I’m sure the list is minimal, if not nonexistent.

Police your social media intake.

Set a time limit on social media.

45 minutes is plenty enough time to see what your second cousin or that friend from high school you haven’t said two real, in-person, words to since graduation, is up to. My theory is if they don’t have my number, their obviously not worth keeping in contact with, so why do I care what they post on social media?

Get off it all together.

Clean out your schedule and begin to say no to things. Purposefully put blocks of nothing in your schedule to SLOW DOWN. Clara and I try and leave one night a week open for connection and just slowness. Do it. Our schedules weren’t meant to be packed to the brim. So don’t. Say no to things. Say no to that coffee date, say no to one more commitment at school. Say no to things. But to do this, put your priorities in order. God, Family, Church, School. Make your priorities clear and begin to cut things out of your schedule.

Begin to single task… This one gets me. I like to think I can multitask, but as my wife makes very clear, no one can ever multitask well, but we’re not designed to. So tackle one thing at a time. Single task. Don’t text and drive. (One illegal, but two, doesn’t work. )

And finally, take time to stop and smell the roses. Walk slower… Don’t walk like you’re life depends that you get thru a mile in 30 minutes. Walk like you’re enjoying the world around you. The sights, the sounds, the people, the animals all around you! Enjoy them, They’re there to get to know and enjoy. God created them for a reason. Stop and smell the roses!

Wrap up

We’ll talk about sabbath next week… but until then, practice living slowly. Do these things, work on your heart. Get off the phone and BE PRESENT. Eradicate the hurry sickness in your heart, ruthlessly eliminate the constant pressure of having to do everything. Slow down, take time and smell the roses and enjoy and appreciate this life God has given us. Don’t run your life into the ground, but practice the art of stillness with God. Turn off all distractions and noise and simply be present with the God of the universe who wants nothing more for you than to follow Him and experience the easy yoke of His way of life.