Slowing_DownTN
SLOWING DOWN
Friday I went to Southern California with my daughter, KT, to check out some colleges. I noticed a few things on the freeway, everybody is A, in a hurry, and B, multi-tasking. Isn’t it amazing what you see people doing while they try to drive on the freeway? I thought this morning we’d have a little free-for-all and you tell me what you’ve seen on the freeway. Make-up. Shaving. Eating. Watching TV. Drying your hair – that’s a new one! Smoking and talking on the cell phone – who’s holding on to the wheel? Changing shirts. Reading the newspaper. Reading emails. Painting fingernails.
The Bible tells us that hurry and worry and scurry have dramatic negative effects on our life style. I’ve written four of them down on your outline today.
1. You feel more stress. The Bible says, “Overwork makes for restless sleep.”
2. You lose your joy
3. You will be less productive. This is the law of diminishing returns.
Notice Job 9:25 “My days go faster than a runner; and they fly away without seeing any joy.” I lose my joy. And then I’m less productive. Proverbs 21:5 “Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; but hurry and scurry puts you further behind.” You have to pace yourself. You’re actually less productive if you’re going, going, going all the time. You have to have breaks. You have to slow down.
Spiritually when I’m running at a high speed the fourth thing is…
4. I can’t hear God. If you’re moving at a fast pace in your life all the time you don’t know God. Because you don’t know God in a hurry. You get to know God when you slow down. When you be quiet. When you become still. Psalm 46:10 says this “Be stil,l and know that I am God.” Be still! When you’re not still all your circuits are busy. You’ve got God on call waiting. The circuits are on overload. You can’t hear God because you’re too busy and there’s too much noise in your life.
The first half of the verse goes with the second half. “Be still, and know that I am God.” If you are not still you will never get to know God. The only way you get to know that God is God is by being still. You have to have some times of quiet, some times of solitude, some times of stillness in your.
I’m going to suggest five counter-culture values or strategies to have joy go up in your life and stress go down in your life.
1. Learn contentment. If you’re serious about slowing down you don’t start with your schedule. You start in the heart. Paul says this about contentment. Philippians 4 “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” Notice the verse says “I’ve learned to be content.” Contentment is something you learn over time.
How do you do that? Paul says “There is great gain in godliness with contentment. [In other words it’s a valuable thing if you’re godly and contented at the same time.] For we brought nothing into the world and we can’t take anything out of the world. So if we have food and clothing we will be content with that.” He’s saying life isn’t about things. I didn’t have anything before I was born. I’m not going to have anything after I die. So things… yeah, I can use them. But life is not about things so I’ll just be content with what I’ve got.
Let me explain what contentment is not. Contentment is not saying I don’t have any goals, I don’t have any dreams, I don’t have any desires, I don’t have any plans, I don’t have any ambitions. That is not contentment. You ought to have goals and dreams and ambitions.
Contentment means this: I don’t need more in order to be happy. I’m not waiting for more in order to be happy. I’m happy right now. I have dreams and I have goals but I don’t need more in order to be happy. That’s contentment.
You’re as happy as you choose to be. You can’t blame it on your circumstances. If you’re not happy with these circumstances you’re not going to be happy with other ones. There will always be something wrong. We live on a broken planet and nothing is perfect. Contentment is I don’t have to have any more than I’ve got right now in order to be happy.
When you learn that you’re on the road to slowing down your life.
Here are three major myths in our culture
· Having more will make me more happy.
· Doing more will make me more worthy.
· Life is competitive. Life is a competition with other people.
Once you’ve got step one – that’s pretty counter-culture learning to be content in your heart now you’ve got to move to your mouth. You may not realize this but your mouth actually controls the pace of your life. The way and the speed and how you talk to other people actually influences your heart rate and it influences your stress level in life. Here’s the second counter-cultural thing…
2. You must listen before speaking.
The Bible says this in James 1:19 “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” Notice a couple things. If you do the first two the third is automatic. If you are quick to listen, and if you learn to be slow to speak I guarantee you, you will be slow to become angry. If you’ve got an anger problem this is the solution, the antidote to your anger. Learn to be quick to listen, and slow to speak. If you do that, you will learn to deal with your anger.
The Bible says this, Ecclesiastes 5:2 “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God’s in heaven, you’re on earth, so let your words be few.” Watch your words and be slow to speak.
There’s an organization on the Internet called SlowDownNow.org, which teaches people how to slow down their lives and their words, to slow down the pace of their lives. Proverbs 29:20 says this “Do you see a man who speaks in haste? [In other words you open your mouth before you engage your mind.] There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
Once you get the heart and the mouth slowed down now you’re ready to work on scheduling. That’s the third counter-cultural strategy.
3. You obey the fourth commandment.
The Bible is filled with instructions about living the kind of life God made us to live. Healthy living. He made us, He understands us, He knows us like no one else. He’s our creator so He tells us how to live. Moses went up on the mountain and came down with the commandments. One of the ten is about rest.
Exodus 20:9 “You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is the day of rest dedicated to Me.” God says rest is so important I’m putting it in the big ten. God says I want you to take a day off every week. That’s called the Sabbath. Which literally means a day of rest. So God says every seventh day I want you to do this. It’s so important that the way God made creation He rested on the seventh day. Not because He was tired – God never gets tired. He rested to give us an example and say I want you to do this.
The day isn’t important. It doesn’t have to be a certain day just so it’s every seventh day. Jesus said we weren’t made to serve the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made to serve us. So the idea is one out of seven. That’s how God designed us. That’s how God made us.
This is easy to violate. It’s so easy to think, If I just pour in one more day I’m going to get more out. I’ll just do it for a while.
There have been four or five times in my life when I decided for a length of weeks or months that whatever I was doing at that time was so important that I couldn’t afford to take a day off. So I didn’t.
It never worked. I became more irritated with my family. I became more tired. In the end I didn’t get as much done. This just doesn’t work. It was incredibly prideful of me to think that somehow to think that what I was doing at that moment was more important than listening to what God said about how He made me. God says I want you to do this. He wants us to do this.
It’s also important to think about how do I do this? What do I do on my Sabbath? If you’re not careful – a lot of us do this – we use our days off to catch up on other work. So at the end of the day off we’re actually more tired than we were before. We have this feeling like, I’ve got to get back to work so I can get some rest from the rest I was supposed to get this weekend. We all can relate to that.
What do you do on this Sabbath day to actually have it be a day of rest? I rest my body. I recharge my emotions. I refocus my spirit.
1. I rest my body.
2. I recharge my emotions. Do things like just being quiet. Reconnecting in relationships. Some kind of recreation that rejuvenates.
3. Then I refocus my spirit. That’s worship. You don’t take a day off from
God. You worship. Worship puts life into perspective. No sport can do that. No hobby can do that. I need time to put my life in perspective by remembering how great God really is. I need time to be alone with God. I have to remind myself of Psalm 127:2 “It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don’t you know that God enjoys giving rest to those He loves?” Take a Sabbath. Not a day off but a day of Sabbath. When you do that you remind yourself, not because you have to. But because God enjoys giving rest to those He loves.
What we’re talking about is not optional. God says in the big ten, every seventh day you take a day off. It’s right up there with, Don’t commit adultery and Don’t murder anybody. That’s how important God says it is. You may say, I would never commit adultery. I would never murder anybody. But I don’t take a Sabbath lots of times. I work right through the weekend. You’ve got to take the time off. You rest your body, you recharge your emotions and renew your spirit and focus on God.
My Sabbath is Friday. I’m just not available to the world.
4. Pause and pray before deciding.
I’m talking about the decisions you have to make on a regular basis. When I say pause and pray that doesn’t mean you wait a year before deciding something. I’m talking about ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. You may be sitting in a board room or a committee meeting or talking to your kids and you just shoot up a little microwave prayer, “God, what do You want me to do in this instance?” And you wait. “God, is there anything You want to say to me right now?” And you wait. “God, help me to make the right decision.” And you wait.
You don’t tell anybody this. You don’t say, “Excuse me a minute. I want to pray.” You keep your eyes wide open while you’re looking at that person and you pray, “What do You want me to do, Lord? Give me wisdom.”
The reason you do this is because when you stop to pray in that pause you get perspective. And perspective is what helps you make wise decisions.
Proverbs 19:2 “Zeal without knowledge is not good...” Let me explain this. Zeal is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm without getting the facts first – without knowledge – is not wise. It’s not good. “…A person who moves too quickly may go the wrong way.”
This same verse Proverbs 19:2 in God’s Word translation says, “A person in a hurry makes mistakes.” Have you ever had to redo work because you were in a hurry the first time and didn’t do it well the first time?
Proverbs 20:25 “An impulsive vow is a trap; later you’ll wish you could get out of it.”
How many of you would agree it’s easier to get into debt that out of debt? How many would agree it’s easier to get into a relationship than out of a relationship? Yes. How many would agree that it’s easier to get into trouble than out of trouble? Yes. How many would agree that it’s easier to gain weight than to lose it? How many would agree that it’s easier to fill your schedule than to fulfill your schedule? It’s easy to make commitments. It’s hard to fulfill them.
What is God saying? Ponder before promising. Deliberate before deciding. Muse before you choose. Reflect before you select. Consider your commitments prayerfully and carefully before you decide. Pause and pray before deciding. That will slow your life down.
The fifth thing and this is the last – we’ll wrap it up with this…
5. Trust God’s timing.
The Bible says this in Ecclesiastes 3:10 “God does everything just right and on time, [Circle that. “Just right and on time.”] but people can never completely understand what He’s doing.” God has a plan for your life. You know that. But He also has a timetable for your life. Did you know that? God has not just a plan for you life He has a timetable for your life. Here’s the rub. God never explains His timetable. Doesn’t that just tick you off sometimes?
The most painful thing is when you’re in a hurry and God’s not. Part of maturity in growing up, children have to learn the difference between No and Not yet. A delay is not a denial and as an adult follower of Jesus Christ you have to learn the same thing with God – a delay is not a denial. And God knows the right time and the right way. He has a plan and a timetable.
God’s timing is perfect. The Bible says, “These things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.” That vision that God has given you that hasn’t happened yet, it’s coming. It’s coming on God’s timetable. You’ve got to learn to trust God and to slow down and stop complaining.
Prayer:
Today as a church family, as a group of people supporting each other, we want to make a counter culture decision together. Jesus, we want to enjoy the life You’ve given us not just endure it. We want to bring sanity and simplicity back into our schedules. We want to live balanced, healthy lives. We want to have time for the relationships that matter most – with you, with those we love, with each other in our church family.
“Dear God, thank You for bringing me here. Thank You for Family Life Center. Help me to learn contentment and to stop comparing myself to others. Help me to listen before speaking. I want to obey You and observe a Sabbath day of rest every week. Help me to pause and to pray before making decisions. Help me to be patient and to trust Your timing. Jesus, forgive me for the times You’ve put up signs that I missed because I was too much in a hurry. I invite You to be the manager of my life. Not just setting the direction but also the pace. I want to spend time alone with You every day so You can set my pace. In Your name I pray. Amen.