Slowing
- in the 1960s, expert testimony was given to a subcommittee of the United States Senate on time management
- the essence of the testimony was this: because of advances in technology, within twenty years or so people would have to radically cut back on how many hours a week they worked, or how many weeks a year they worked, or else they would have to start retiring sooner
- the challenge, they said, was what people would do with all their free time
- thirty years later, not many of us would say that our primary challenge is what to do with all the excess time
- the malady of our day is hurry sickness
- we now have shampoos that combine conditioner, eliminating all the time-consuming rinsing that we used to do
- we have pizza delivered in thirty minutes or it’s free
- in Detroit, a hospital advertised that emergency-room patients would be seen in 20 minutes or treatment is free, and business jumped 30% at that hospital
- we eat fast food, not because it’s good food or cheap food, but because it’s fast food
- even when fast food was invented, you had to get out of the car, go inside, place your order, and take the food to the table
- so they invented the drive-through lane to enable our families to eat in vans, just as nature intended
- one man lamented, “The hurrieder I go, the behinder I got!”
- when we line up at the grocery store, we mentally calculate the number of people in each line times the number of items in each cart, and watch out if the other line moves faster!
- we create mock races for our children – “Let’s see who can bath the fastest. Hurry up!”
- we build faster vehicles and computers, and when somebody asks us why we need more speed, we can’t answer, except to say that faster is by definition better
- our world has become the world of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
- Meyer Friedman defines hurry sickness as “above all, 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, frequently in the face of opposition, real or imagined, from other persons”
- another man writes, “Nothing is more characteristic of modern life than the complaint, ‘If I only had time.'”
- what does this have to do with spirituality?
- quite simply: hurry is an enemy of godliness
- hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day
- it can destroy our souls and prevent us from living
- if we are to grow spiritually, we need to eliminate hurry from our lives
- a pastor phoned a wise friend looking for spiritual direction
- he talked about the pace of his life and the rhythms of his family
- he asked, “What should I do to be spiritually healthy?”
- long pause
- “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life”
- another long pause
- “Okay, I’ve written that one down. That’s a good one. Now what else is there?”
- another long pause
- “There is nothing else”
- and this advice is valuable today
- time management isn’t really where I want to go tonight
- what I want to focus on is the necessity of slowing for your spiritual health
- and I want to begin by looking at the example of Jesus
- did Jesus work hard? absolutely
- after describing a busy day, Mark writes:
- (Mark 1:32) That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed.
- (Mark 1:33) The whole town gathered at the door,
- (Mark 1:34) and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
- on another occasion, the demands of ministry caused him to miss supper and work so late, listen to what his family said:
- (Mark 3:21) When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
- after a strenuous teaching session one day, he went out on a boat and slept right through a storm
- talk about a picture of exhaustion!
- yet Jesus was never in a feverish rush as we are
- Jesus took time away
- (Mark 6:31) Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
- (Mark 6:32) So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.
- doing God’s work is very important, yet Jesus recognized to do it effectively we need periodic rest and renewal
- a preacher one boasted that he never takes a day off because Satan never takes a day off
- another wiser preacher responded, “I usually don’t use Satan as my example”
- Jesus knew the wisdom of slowing in the middle of hectic demands
- as we look at Jesus’ life, we find that Jesus took time for the two relationships that get pushed aside when we’re too busy: our relationship with people and our relationship with God
- we’re often too busy for people – in fact, a whole area of time management tells us how to get rid of people faster so that we can get back into our hurry
- I think often of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and how the priest and the Levite passed by the man who was robbed
- where they too busy?
- yet Jesus had time for people
- he could spend hours talking to one person, such as the Samaritan woman at the well
- and he also made time for God
- (Mark 1:35) Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
- (Mark 1:36) Simon and his companions went to look for him,
- (Mark 1:37) and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
- while everyone was looking for Jesus, he recognized the priority of meeting with God in the morning and getting his marching orders directly from him
- the remarkable thing is, that the night before his death, Jesus could say:
- (John 17:4) I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
- let me quote from a little booklet by Charles Hummel:
- How could Jesus have used the word “finished”? His three-year ministry seemed all too short. A prostitute at Simon’s banquet had found forgiveness and new life, but many others still walked the street without forgiveness and a new life. For every ten withered muscles that had flexed into health, a hundred remained impotent. Yet on that last night, with many useful tasks undone and urgent human needs unmet, the Lord had peace: He knew he had finished God’s work.
- now we want to become like Jesus
- I think we can learn some important lessons relating to our spiritual life from his life and the teaching of the Bible
- WE NEED UNRUSHED TIME ALONE WITH GOD AND OURSELVES
- I often ask myself – if Jesus needed to withdraw from the crowds and spend time along with God in order to be effective, how much more do we need unrushed time alone with God?
- if Jesus was sinless and lived a perfect life, and yet he felt the necessity of retreating from the needs and demands of others, how much more is this necessary for our spiritual life?
- I’ve found, like Elijah, that God often doesn’t speak through the wind or the earthquake, but God speaks in a “still, small voice” – a small, gentle voice, and if we’re going to hear it, we have to slow down!
- I know for most of us, we’re very busy
- we begin the day racing to get to work on time
- and we end the day exhausted, collapsing into bed
- our mind is continually racing, and even when we’re in the car, we have the radio going so our minds won’t have to slow down too much
- now let me tell you about your devotional life:
- you open your Bible, if you even have time for that
- and you look at the assigned passage of Scripture
- and automatically you begin to see if the passage is going to take you too much time to read
- honestly, if you use a one-year Bible or other Bible guide, you’re rushing to get the Bible reading done
- you certainly don’t have time to slow down and meditate on a certain passage of Scripture!
- we turn our Bible reading into a race, if it even happens at all – and the result is we don’t have time to slow and really meditate on a certain passage
- now let me tell you about your prayer life
- when we were children, we would be able to pray our grace very quickly: “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful, Amen.”
- when you pray – if you even have time to pray – you almost begin, “Lord, I’ve only got two minutes. Not a lot of time. I’m sure you understand.”
- and your mind is racing ahead, and you certainly don’t have time to slow down and listen to God
- an ordinary car engine turns at four thousand revolutions for minute
- a racing motor can turn up to ten thousand
- we try to live our lives up at ten thousand
- and the problem is, when we come to pray, we’re still revving up at ten thousand RPM
- and we’ve got to slow down to hear the still, small voice of God
- Bill Hybels writes:
- Embarrassingly few Christians ever reach this level of authenticity; most Christians are just too busy. And the archenemy of spiritual authenticity is busyness, which is closely tied to something the Bible calls worldliness – getting caught up with this society’s agenda, objectives and activities to the neglect of walking with God.
- Any way you cut it, a key ingredient in authentic Christianity is time. Not leftover time, not throwaway time, but quality time. Time for contemplation, meditation, and reflection. Unhurried, uninterrupted time.
- it’s time to slow down, reflect, and listen
- it’s necessary for our spiritual health
- the archenemy of spirituality is busyness
- I really believe that
- SLOWING IS A SPIRITUAL ISSUE OF TRUST
- when God created this world, he finished his work in six days, and rested the seventh to give us an example
- you might disagree with me, but I believe that Christians are no longer bound by the Sabbath as a law, but only as a principle
- it’s good and proper to rest and cease from our labors one day in seven
- but I’ll tell you why its hard to do this
- we have a hard time believing that the world is going to go on just fine even when we’re resting
- when we’re not out there plowing the fields, or in modern terms, working the customers, troubleshooting, selling, and preparing, we have a hard time believing that the world will continue as it should
- why do you think we have such a hard time slowing down for even half an hour or an hour to pray and spend time with God?
- we believe that if we don’t get down to real business, our lives and businesses are going to suffer
- slowing down to spend time with God is an issue of trust
- as somebody has said, the urgent will always call for our attention – the phone, crises, problems – but prayer and quietness and slowing will never call for us in the same way
- the important is often lost in the tyranny of the urgent
- the spiritual disciplines we’re looking at, as a path to greater spirituality, cannot be rushed
- you cannot rush prayer, celebration, confession, worship
- they’re important and crucial, but you have to slow to experience them
- so how are we to slow?
- if slowing is so critical to our spirituality and walk with God, how do we proceed?
- ONE: CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSHING
- I have a book on my shelf with a wonderful title: Slow Down and Get More Done
- they’ve done studies which show that Type A driven people who rush around do not actually get more done than those who slowly and without hurry accomplish their tasks
- overcome the deception that you have to rush around in life in order to be effective
- believe that God hasn’t given you more to do than the time to accomplish it
- don’t you believe that?
- why would God give us more to do than he did time to do it?
- realize the 168 hours a week are enough – you don’t have to rush
- change your thinking!
- TWO: TAKE STEPS TO SLOW DOWN ALL DAY
- don’t just slow to do your devotions; slow down your entire life
- don’t be like a hamster on a wheel
- live like Jesus, who never rushed and never was frantically trying to catch up
- somebody has suggested that for a month, we deliberately drive in the slow lane on the highway – you might arrive five minutes later, but in a better frame of mind
- declare a fast from honking – put your horn on a vow of silence
- for a week, eat your food slowly – chew at least fifteen times before each swallow
- in the grocery store, look carefully to see which line is the longest and get in it
- let the person go ahead of you
- go through one day without a watch
- you get the idea – deliberately choose waiting
- and as you do so, you’ll be telling God that you are trusting him to enable you to accomplish all that you need to get done
- THREE: GET ALONE
- this is really a separate discipline, the discipline of solitude, but it’s necessary
- Jesus went to the wilderness for forty days of solitude at the beginning of his ministry
- he went into solitude when he heard of the death of John the Baptist, when he was going to choose his disciples, after he had healed a leper, and after his followers had engaged in ministry
- slowing down and getting alone helps to free ourselves from the thinking of society and the external pressures we face
- it’s wise to get alone daily and spend an unhurried time just with God, and to schedule parts of days or even entire days alone quarterly or annually
- FOUR: AT THE VERY LEAST, SLOW DOWN DURING YOUR TIME APART WITH GOD EVERY DAY
- if you’re going to do one thing, just set aside a certain time every day that you declare to be a hurry-free zone
- don’t answer the phone
- don’t multitask and try to do anything else but one thing: spend that time with God
- read his Word and pray
- a number of people have found that journaling helps
- don’t try to write anything profound, but just write out your prayers to God
- “…the very act of journaling – sitting down, reaching for the spiral notebook, focusing our thoughts on life, writing for five or ten minutes – will reduce our RPMs from ten thousand to five thousand”
- write out your prayers
- but just spend at least some time alone with God as your personal, daily hurry-free zone
- I’ve given you four suggestions:
- change your attitude toward hurry
- take steps to slow down all day
- get alone
- and create a hurry-free zone of your life every day
- I want to challenge you before we leave to take one of these and to put it into practice this week
