will you slow down?

here are the slides from this morning >  clear eyes 20 – the way of Jesus 2

Richard Foster said this – “In contemporary society our adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds.  If he can keep us engaged in “muchness” and “manyness”, he will rest satisfied.  Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.”

Hurry kills relationships.  Love takes time – hurry doesn’t have the time.  Hurry kills joy, gratitude and appreciation.  People in a rush don’t have time to enter the goodness of the moment.  Hurry kills wisdom.

Wisdom is born in the quiet, the slow.  Wisdom has its own pace.  It makes you wait for it – to wait for the inner voice to come to the surface of your stormy mind but not until waters of thought settle and calm.  Hurry kills all that we hold dear: spirituality, health, marriage, family, thoughtful work, creativity, generosity … you name what it is that you value… hurry kills it.

Hurry is a sociopathic predator running loose in our society.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” Galatians 5:22  

None of these are possible when I am in a hurry.

Jesus frequently removed Himself from the world.  He spent time along in prayer and solitude.  Unless I spend extended periods of time along with God in prayer, solitude, quiet and sabbath, the speed of the world will distort my understanding of God.  Can you see that?  If I run at the pace of the world all the time, do you see how easy it is to expect God to run alongside me at that same pace?  So that He can meet my needs on the go, when I need them?

However, if I slow my pace down, if I slow my life down and slow my soul down and if I get silent and still, I am opening up an avenue when I can actually hear God.  I cannot hear him when I’m running 100 mph.  I cannot hear Him when everything thing depends on my performance, my coming through, things to work out just as I need them to when I need them to, etc.

John Mark Comer said this – “We are embodied creatures.  Whole people.  Our minds are the portals to our whole persons, so how we think has all sorts of ramifications for how we experience life with God.  But the mind is not the only portal.  This is why, for example, so many Westerners don’t fast anymore.  What was once a core practice for the way of Jesus has fallen by the wayside.  We can’t fathom a practice that comes at life change through our stomachs.  We are so used to books and podcasts and teachings at church that we often forget: We’re not just a brain on legs.  We’re whole people.  Holistic, integrated, complex and full of a dizzying amount of energy.  So, our apprenticeship to Jesus must be a whole-person endeavor.  Mind and body. 

 And if we can slow down both – the pace at which we think and the pace at which we move our bodies through the world – maybe we can slow down our souls to a pace which they can “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

We live in an age of fast transportation, fast computers, fast internet, fast food, fast videos, fast social media scrolling – and they’re all only getting even faster.  Believe it or not – whether we realize it or not – this is shaping our assumptions about life.  We expect to be able to do everything at faster speeds and greater volume.

As we begin to apprentice under Jesus to learn His way of life, the question for you we must ask is this … What is this hurry, all that distraction, addiction, and pace of life doing to your soul?

Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.

We have a problem…time.  And the solution is not more time.  The solution is to slow down and simplify our life around the essentials of our apprenticeship to Jesus