Ruthlessly Eliminate Hurry

hurry

Why don’t we see God any more like the people in the Old Testament did?

Have you ever thought of that?

As a pastor I get this question from time to time.

Where is the pillar of fire? Where are the angels? Where is God’s booming voice?

It seems like the Old Testament people and even the New Testament people heard God so clearly.

And you know what, even throughout the early church history this experience seems uniform.

God’s people hear from God, they see visions, they dream dreams...

God seems more real and present to them then He does to us today!

It has only been in the last 50-100 years that people have really begun to ask this question...

So we have to ask ourselves.

Is it God?

Or is it us?

I mean we as a people like to blame God for whatever is happening that we don’t like, but why don’t we ever think, but I have noticed that we never consider the possibility that maybe its me?

Today I have one point and one point only in this Sermon.

Our world conditions us to be too busy for God.

Our world conditions patience right out of us

Our world conditions us to need it and need it now!

Our world trains us for hurry!

To be in a hurry is rewarded in the workplace

And when someone asks you how you are doing....”Oh, just really Busy” is a badge of honor.

Speed of life is so crucial that we spend thousands of dollars on the latest phone, tablet or computer all for a marginal increase in speed

We are so conditioned that speed is a value that often times when you go on vacation it takes 2 or three days to really relax!

And when you come back, it takes two or three days to get back in the swing of things...

We as a people have learned to serve our sense of hurry more than we climb into the quiet place of listening for God’s voice.

Our sense of hurry drives us to an unholy business that will leave you starving for God

Finding and even desiring to be quiet and alone with God is so uncommon

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Let’s go over a brief history of speed

Before the 1800’s

The fastest horses could get you between 50-80 miles in a day , So for thousands of years, the fastest people were warriors, curriers or merchants

What does 80-100 miles look like????

So if you were really trying hard, you could get to palm springs from here in a day …But we are talking leaving very early in the morning and arriving well into the night

Just after the 1800’s there was an increase in shipbuilding technology and the fastest sailboats could go about 110 miles in a day with good wind.

Buy the 1830’s ship building improved more and you could get about 250 miles out of a boat

By the 1860’s you go go 250 miles per day on a train and trains just kept getting faster, by the 1920’s you could go about 900 miles on a train,

today the fastest train if there was track long enough could take you 8000 miles if it want non stop...

By the 1950’s there were early passenger planes and you could travel 1500 miles in a day…I mean imagine telling your friends…I am flying to New York and it is going to be so fast, it will only take me 2 days!

Now, it is a 5 hour flight, with wifi so you don’t even have to miss work because there is wifi

Now modern planes can take us 10,000 miles in a day!

right now individuals can drive 1,000 miles a day

Our lives have been sped up by the technology all around us...

But it’s not even that

How many of you wished you had more sleep?

For thousands of years people would go to sleep a couple of hours after dusk.

The average amount of sleep people got was 11 hours, usually more.

During the time of the renaissance people got so much sleep that it was very common that there was a brief waking hour around 2-3am where people would do chores, read, or even socialize with their neighbors. Then they would go back to sleep for a couple of hours...

This was called segmented sleep…and it was very common

Well after this was the industrial revolution and people started waking up earlier and going to bed later

But everything changed in 1879....In 1879 the light bulb was invented

Our sleep times went from an average of 11 hours to where it is today…at 6 hours...

Some of you would be excited to get 6 hours of sleep!

Our lives are hurried along and there is no change of pace on the horizon

In 2007 the iPhone came along…that spawned android phones and now we have screens in our face for 14 hours a day...

We have relentless notifications…We have likes and comments to deal with…emails are ever present…the boundaries for work are all but gone

It seems like you are at work non-stop because that email is always there...

All of this has built a condition of the soul called: Hurry

Renown Christian thinker, Dallas willard comments that

“Hurry always excludes God. It has an attitude of fending off something terrible that's about to happen. But your body has to find peace knowing that God is in charge. That's why Isaiah 28:16 says, "...he that believeth shall not make haste."

So why don’t we see God they way the Old Testament people did?

Why don’t we experience God in this way....

I We have so distracted ourselves with hurry that we have lost the ability to be silent before God

Look at Psalm 46:10

English Standard Version Psalm 46

10  “Be still, and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!”

This verse has made it onto bookmarks and bumperstickers,

And every time someone posts a picture of a sunset, somehow Psalm 46:10 gets quoted....

But the reality is that we are not good at being still! We are not good at doing nothing!

but do we even know how to be still and silent before a holy God any more?

Silence before God is where breakthrough happens

If you want to put this verse in to practice…Try it today…Go home and aim at doing nothing. Try to have no agenda…Don’t take it as a time to read or listen to music…Find a quiet place and just sit there....Let me tell you something, you desperately need this

It is no wonder that it seems like these Old Testament experiences are few and fare between

Let’s look at one of these Old Testament experiences:

In the book of 1 Kings

Elijah has just killed 100 prophets of Baal, by calling fire down from heaven…So if your new to the Bible these are people who represent a false god...

And this woman Jezebel is after him and wants to kill him…She is kind of powerful…So Elijah runs away

2 Kings 19:9-13

English Standard Version Chapter 19

The LORD Speaks to Elijah

9 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. 13 And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Even in the “Old Testament God experience” God speaks in a whisper...

This Hebrew word that is used for Whisper is

“d-ma-mah”

The word is used interchangeably for the words

Calm

Silence and

stillness

We ask questions like why don’t we have old testament experiences with God

and we fail to realize that old testament people encountered God in quiet, silence and unhurried lives.

But we look for God in the fire and the earthquake in the wind

We go to church and hope and wish for some sort of spectacle to amuse us…

We are constantly looking for the next distraction

But God wants us to practice being still and silent before him!

We live in a world where to be silent is to be an anomaly!

We travel quickly every day

We rarely sleep

We have a smart phone shoved in our face 90% of the time

It is no wonder that we have become addicted to hurry and we have lost many of these experiences with God

Here is what some great christian thinkers have said about hurry over the years

Walter Adams: “To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer an only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.”

Ronald Rolheiser: “We, for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.”

Dallas Willard: Wickedness gets hidden through a hurried life

What I hope we see in Jesus is an invitation to an unhurried life.

It doesn't mean that you are unproductive

It doesn't mean that you are lazy

Because Hurry is a condition of the soul.

Matthew 11:28-30

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.”

Every week we have looked at this scripture from a different angle.

I am convinced that this scripture is the key to an unhurried life.

Here is why. This is an agricultural society, they knew how Oxen worked.

If you were to put two young oxen in a yoke together and have them plow a field, they would have been useless…They would wear themselves out so quickly.

Any farmer knew that you always connected a younger oxen with an older oxen

The older more experienced oxen would set the pace for the younger oxen.

Jesus’ invitation is to take up his yoke—to travel through life at his side, learning from him how to shoulder the weight of life with ease.

To step out of the burnout society to a life of soul rest.

So when Jesus is saying take my Yoke.

He is giving them a picture of oxen plowing a field and telling them, listen when you are walking with me you will walk through life with me…You’ll be connected walking at my speed and not yours.

I will set the pace in your life!

And here is the deal, Jesus wont make you lazy…Ever! Laziness is not tolerated in the Bible. Jesus simply sets the pace for work…He sets the pace for life.

See

Accepting Jesus is the act of reorganizing your life around his life.

I think what happens when we accept Jesus is like, ok Jesus…Here is my life come and take it…We assume that Jesus has to reorganize his life around our lives…And we do things like “Make Time” for God

But the reality is that some of us have said yes to Jesus but never done the hard work of reorganizing our lives around his life...

We are far more likely to ask Jesus to adapt to what we are doing...

Stopping…Engaging in silence....Trying a new Rhythm is so uncomfortable

Jesus has offered his yoke but we would rather say, I like what your doing Jesus but I’m good I’ll watch from the sidelines...

Jesus you are moving too slow, never mind I’ll take the wheel!

I think if you could go back and time and have a face to face encounter with Jesus…You’d find a person who was relaxed!

I mean he started his ministry with 40 days of prayer and fasting...Who does that?

Why did Jesus do this? Why did Jesus start his ministry this way?

Why is it that whenever large crowds came Jesus would retreat to a quiet place?

Why is it that Jesus wouldn't allow others to speed him up?

Because Jesus never served a sense of Hurry!

Hurry is a drug…It controls us, but we need it to give us purpose in life...

Jesus was relaxed and he invites us to walk with him in an unhurried life

Just like every week in this series, I want to invite you to sabbath

The reason I did this sermon is that I think it will do you little good to have a sabbath without permission to do nothing durring that sabbath.

To take one day and recognize that you can not have more time

you can not keep up with the pace of life if you tried

The Sabbath is God’s gift to you to relentlessly eliminating hurry

Sabbath

as the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann said...

“Sabbath, is ‘an act of resistance.’…An insurgency and insurrection agains the ‘isms’ of the Western world—globalism, capitalism, materialism, all of which sound nice but quickly make us slaves of the rich and the poor.” (168)

This week as you take a sabbath, I want to invite you into silence...

That is where we find God!

Silence is the great unhurrier of our souls

SILENCE AND SOLITUDE

“The noise of the modern world makes us deaf to the voice of God, drowning out the one input we need.”

So this week Try finding

1. Silence:

-External Silence

Sit in silence for 30 minutes and do nothing!

Then when you have found external silence…Try to calm the chatter in your own mind…The to do list that keeps coming up...

Turn that into a prayer list...

Then look for solitude

Solitude: “It’s when you’re alone, with God and with your own soul.” (133)

• Solitude in not loneliness: “Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment”- Richard Foster (134)

When we go after silence and solitude....We begin to kill the sense of hurry in our lives...

I believe that God wants you to relentlessly eliminate hurry in your life…To have regular times of silence and solitude because this is where we will encounter the living God!

Jesus can and will change your pace of life.

Let’s pray