What pace are you setting? And is it sustainable?
Chadron Bible Church Podcast
Setting a Sustainable Pace - Selected Scriptures (The Journey of Life series)
(soft music) - Welcome to Shadron Burian Church, where we wanna have deep roots in Christ and in God's Word so that we will bear fruit for God. Helping others to follow Jesus as well. Find us at Shadron Burian.org or on other platforms under Shadron Burian. Thanks for joining us. (soft music) (soft music) All right, well, it's good to be back with you guys after a little vacation. We have been talking about life as a journey, right? And life is a journey. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint. It's not a 100 meter dash. And if we try to run the journey of life, if we try to go through the journey like we would, a sprint, well, then we're not gonna run well and we're not gonna finish well either. I got a story from Lincoln Burian pastor, founder of Harbor Ministries, Tim Bulke. He wrote a book called Thin Places and he describes one of his races where he did not finish well. He says, "Watching my son's track meets through the years "provided a clear illustration "of what it means to run the race well "and have something left in the tank to finish strong." My youngest son was a gifted track athlete and he excelled in several events, but it was a not so successful relay race, his sophomore year that I remember vividly. Dylan was running the second leg of the race. He received a great hand-off and after the first lap, he was well out in front. The problem was he forgot he was on an indoor track. And would be running two laps that day. On the back stretch of the second lap, he hit the proverbial wall. As he came into the last turn, he faded struggling to make the hand-off. Their relay team finished last that day. So that right there is a good picture of what we wanna talk about this morning as we resume our study. We're talking about setting a sustainable pace for our life's journey. A proper pace, a sustainable pace. Any marathoner knows there is pace setting required to run well to finish. Well, and so my question for us this morning is simply this, what pace are you setting? And is it sustainable? Is it sustainable? I think most of us, if we were honest, would say that we're running our journey like a sprint at breakneck speed. Whether we feel like it or think it, that's the truth. I think most of us are more tired than we think we are. Kind of like neglected flowers, my flowers, while I was gone on vacation. They have unattended weeds choking them out or a lack of water sort of sapping their strength. I think like those neglected flowers of mine, our souls are struggling to survive the busy pace of life in our culture today, which we've talked a lot about. One man said, this is how fast paced our culture is. If you lose your father on a Wednesday, work expects you back on Monday. And that is hard on your soul and that's hard on your relationship with God. I would say that's a shame. We don't give our souls time, enough time. The drivenness of our culture, the expectations in our culture, the default on, I always have to be on sort of thing. The time-saving devices that we have, let me just depart with that, by the way. Time-saving devices have just made things actually more difficult. We actually have less time as a result of it in modern America and it's crushing our souls. It's exacting great costs upon individuals, upon families, upon churches, upon organizations, you name it, comes with a cost. We are neglecting our souls. We're neglecting what matters most in life because of it. So we're neglecting our souls, and therefore we're neglecting the things in life that matter most. We've talked about already in this series how we are considered the busiest generation in history. That's crazy to think about because all of the technology was designed to make us less busy. Like in the '50s everybody thought we'd just be sitting around on our hands. We wouldn't know what to do. We've got all these machines to do our clothes, to do our dishes, to do this and that. But actually we're busier than ever, and you'd think that we'd have it easier than any other generation, but anxiety, things like anxiety and depression are at an all time high. And not just among adults, but also among our children. So we're modeling it for our children as well. They're exposed to all of this. And so I would suggest that it's time to slow down, plain and simple. It's time to slow down, to set a sustainable pace for our lives and for our relationship with God. And I think failure to do so will result in fatigue and burn out, miss living life. That's one of my favorite terms out of this study. Miss living, you actually live for the wrong things in life although you're busy with an assortment of things. We'll miss live our lives. We'll look back at the end and say, "Why did I do that?" And why didn't I do that? And we're gonna result in a poor finish. So we wanna look now this morning at two reasons why we should slow down and then two requisites, two slowing down. We'll look at some practical ways that we actually can slow down. Number one is that slowing down, slowing, this practice of slowing allows us to listen. As a father of four little ones who were on display up here for all of you to see this morning during worship, I know that I cannot get anything across to them, virtually anything across to my little ones if I don't have their full attention. If I don't make eye contact with them and ask, "Did you hear what I just said?" Basically. And you know, my wife feels the same way about me, I'm sure it times. If there's a cornhusker game on, a football game on, she probably doesn't have my attention. She's probably best to wait till it's over. Or during halftime, look me in the eyes, right? Square up and say, "Hey, did you hear what I said?" I can't tell you how many times she told me something. And I said, "Yep." And I actually didn't pay attention, right? But the point is slowing allows us to listen because we stop and we pay attention. In this world, there's so many distractions. And what I said about my relationship with the little ones or with my wife is true in our relationship with God. We have to slow down enough to listen sometimes in order to hear the things that his spirit, sense the things that his spirit is communicating with our spirit. Slowing allows us to listen. In the life of Jesus, we've started to look at some of the things that Jesus did. And we're not even looking at what he said necessarily. What did Jesus do? Well, for one last time, we looked at how Jesus stepped out. He stepped away from everything to go spend time with God, with the Father on a regular basis. It didn't matter, the busier Jesus got, it's like the more you see in the gospels, the more he stepped out. Well, today I wanna look at John 143 with us, a unique verse, I have a lot of unique verses today. But there's a lot you can glean between the lines with the life of Jesus and the gospels. John 143 there says, "The next day Jesus "decided to leave for Galilee." Well, I think when we read that, we are tempted to insert a gas pedal and four wheels and highway 60 from Jerusalem to Galilee or from Galilee to the Jerusalem. We insert a Honda Accord. Since the Bible says they were in one accord, right? (congregation laughing) Last Sunday was Father's Day. This is my week to get my joke in. (congregation laughing) I think we insert a car into that picture with the disciples and they're jamming out to their favorite worship music heading north to Galilee. And they are texting their friends, the 70 disciples maybe, and they're Snapchatting their progress with Jesus. When in reality, a trip like that probably took three days on foot. Three days slowly traveling through the beauty of God's creation and they're walking along. What do you think they're doing as they're walking? Much like the crew of dads and kids did yesterday. Slowly walking because we had little ones, it was a lot slower than some of us would have liked. But that slow pace allowed us to have really great conversation. This is where Jesus did a lot of his teaching with the disciples. Great communication, relationships are built as they're slowly making their way along. There was transition time for the disciples, downtime. This is where a lot of their relationship with Jesus was developed. It was after he got done teaching in the downtime, after he got done teaching the crowds. So that's something to think about. How much downtime Jesus and the disciples had? How much transition time that they had just to pause and listen to Jesus? And to think about how much transition time we do not have today. Because between the time I order my fast food meal and the time I get it, I'm on my phone. See in what my friends are doing. There is no transition time, even in fast food. By the time I hand my bank, when I hand my check to the bank teller, and by the time she gives me my receipt with the balance on it, I'm on my phone checking the weather. No downtime. When I'm driving in the car, I've got the radio blaring. I'm texting my friends. I shouldn't be, but I'm also looking for big bucks, right? In the distance. No, I'm just saying, there's no downtime. There's always something to do, rather than what? Rather than talk to God. Rather than spend time with God. I've never met a Christian. Who said, after studying the Gospels, boy, Jesus sure ran a lot. He sure seemed like, it sure seems like when I study his life, everything was just out of control. Like, I don't know if Jesus ran. Just a funny question, right? To leave for eternity. But did he run? Doesn't really matter. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he played a game of soccer too. But Jesus never ran around frantically trying to get things done. He didn't run from one emergency to another. He didn't let the tyranny of the urgent take over his life. He had a God-centeredness about him. A calmness about him. Even when his life was threatened, they're gonna throw him off a cliff. It's like he can just walk away. There's a calm, there's a centeredness to Jesus Christ. There's a peace there. There's a lingering there. How he lingered with conversations. He had time for people. He had time for love. I think it's interesting how when we talk about doing life with God, we talk about walking with God, right? We never talk about running with God. The Bible talks a lot about walking with God, but not a lot about running with God. And I think there's something to be made of that. My wife and I love to go on evening walks. It's a ritual. That's where we seem to really connect. That's where we really communicate. That's where we just converse, we connect. It's on a walk. I don't know what it is about a walk, but somehow that's where we come together. That's where our souls mingle is on those walks as we talk about our hopes and our dreams and our fears and all of that, it just comes out as we're walking together. If I and my Christian life feel like I have to run with God to keep up with him, it's probably not from God. At least that's been my experience. If I feel like I'm running in order to keep up with the will of God, it might not be the will of God. We walk with God. You know, the Psalmist Psalm 23 never said the Lord is my shepherd, therefore I have to run faster. He said the Lord is my shepherd. He leads me beside still waters, not rushing waters, still waters. That's where he's gonna lead us. If I feel like I'm running again, I question that big time. I feel like at that point, I'm letting the external pressures of life or maybe even my emotions drive me instead of the Lord driving me. But I think this is interesting how often Christians today, we wonder why we don't sense God. Even though why we're driving, right? 70 miles an hour, maybe 75, down the highway. We've got that radio blaring. We're texting our friends. Maybe we're paying bills, checking our emails, all at the same time. And we wonder why God just doesn't seem to be real in my life. Why don't sets his direction, his call? The average iPhone user they say touches their phone 2,617 times per day. Our phone is ever before us. The Psalmist on the other hand, Psalm 16, 18 said, "I have set the Lord ever before me." I feel like it's hard to set the Lord ever before you if your phone is ever before you. This is my challenge to us, to step away from that for a little bit. To have some healthy relationship with our devices that allows for a healthy relationship with God. Setting the Lord ever before us means living within this sort of constant awareness of God in our lives. And it's pretty hard to do that when there's constant chirping and beeping and ringing. I know I'm hammering a lot on technology, but guys, these smartphones, I'm telling you again, I'm not Amish or anything, nothing I have anything, it's the Amish, all right? The smartphones are a fairly recent invention and they're wreaking havoc on our society. And for a while there, for a decade or two, we just went full bore into this thing. And now we're learning the consequences of it. And this is why you see articles like someone sent me an article recently, adults and teens ditching smartphones to go back to flip phones. It's wreaking havoc on us, on our health and all sorts of ways. So there's that. When I was on vacation this last week, we had a couple of gloomy days of weather. You know, we're supposed to be at the beach. Instead, we have rain and clouds. And because my mind is just in this area on this track lately, I thought, what a gift. Because even a vacation can just be too much overwhelming. We've got this whole to-do list. We've got all these things to do. The weather comes in and wrecks it. And I think sometimes God says, good. Today's a good day to slow down, slow the pace. I think some of the things that we would call upsets, disappointments, hassles, interruptions in our day might just be God saying, hey, take a break. Now, something to think about. But secondly, slowing allows us to love as well. Slowing allows us to love. Love is the highest virtue, highest value in God's kingdom. No doubt about it, right? Matthew 22, greatest commandment, love God. And love your neighbor. First Corinthians 13, four. First thing said about love in the love is section of the Bible is love is patient. It's patient. So love requires our time. Love is actually very time consuming. At our men's deal yesterday, our dads and kids camp, I asked the kids, I said, how do you spell love? And they all said, L-O-V-E. And I said, well, there's another way to spell love. What is it? There's an old saying that says to a child, love is spelled T-I-M-E, right? Love is spelled time. A kid just wants to spend time with you. You know, I was on vacation again. I have a lot of illustrations from vacation today. But I had a ritual every day about eight or nine o'clock in the morning, I would go drive two miles, go get some ice to fill our coolers. They replenish the ice. Well, on Father's Day, I think it was. I might've been another day. Anyway, I was reading a book about dads and the influence the dads have. And I thought, I'm gonna take one of my kids along with me today. So I take my little boy, put him in the front seat, no seat belt or nothing. And we drive two miles down the road. And we go get some ice and we come back and he hops out of the truck and says, "Mom, that was so much fun." He's like, "All we did was go get ice." But to a kid, time is love. Love is time. I have a lot of stories like that I wanna share, but I won't. Take the kids with you on some errands, take just one. They will come home, they'll burst through the door and say, "Mom, we had so much fun." Really, we just went to the hardware store. Just went to the gas station. But time is love. Love requires time. I've got a quote here from our study on the ruthless elimination of hurry that we went through recently. And he says, "Hurry and love are incompatible. "All my worst moments." Let me put it up there for you. All my worst moments as a father, as a husband, and as a pastor, even as a human being, are when I'm in a hurry. Late for an appointment, behind on my unrealistic to-do list, trying to cram too much into my day, I ooze anger, tension, a critical nagging, the antithesis of love. If you don't believe me next time, you're trying to get your type B wife and three young, easily distracted children out of the house when you're running late, just pay attention to how you relate to them. Does it look and feel like love? Or is it far more in the vein of agitation, anger, abiding comment, a rough glare? Hurry and love are like oil and water. They simply do not mix. I would attest to that. I would say hurry is opposed to love, it's opposed to joy, it's opposed to peace. And I wonder if our hurried lives today are part of the reason why we are so ineffective at the Great Commission. It's 'cause we're not keeping the great commandment to love people. Love requires our time, requires investing in people. Proverbs 19-2, I quoted that this morning in our call to worship. It says he who hurries his footsteps, heirs. He who hurries his footsteps, heirs. We had a graphic picture of this just yesterday driving down the highway. We had a convoy of three vehicles with dads and kids. And there was a convoy of truckers who desperately wanted to get around us. And they made it, it was absolutely irritating. And it was obnoxious to have a semi cattle trailer on your bumper 10 feet behind you trying to pass you. They would pass us even going with a hill in front of us. They didn't know what was coming up next. It was actually very dangerous. Hurry can be dangerous. Earlier this spring, I was thinking on my way home from Alliance when there were cars in the ditch because of the icy weather. I thought hurry is dangerous. Hurry can be deadly. Is there a time for hurry? I think so. The 911 call, the rescue situation, sports. You're gonna run fast, right? It can be pleasurable thing too, to run fast. But we're talking about our soul life here. Now, there's a time for that sort of thing, but we're talking about a hurryness of the soul that affects our lives. I found a couple of pictures that I wanted to share with you guys, I don't have a lot to say about them, other than I just want them to stick into your minds. Picture of a kid with a megaphone, trying to get their dad's attention who's sitting there on his cell phone. Remember I had a picture a couple weeks ago of a man out there, beautiful creation, mountain, lake view, and here he is on his phone. Great, it's soul time for screen time. But how about this one right here? A dad and kid, or a parent kid marathon. Does that look like fun? (audience chuckles) That's an ugly picture. And I tried desperately hard not to do that on that hike yesterday. Come on kids, come on. Love is patient. I got another story from Tim Bulky here in his book, Harbor 7, he said, "I once heard a story of a father who took his son hiking. They spent time planning the trip for weeks. The son had carefully filled his small pack and waited on the front steps for his dad to arrive home from work so the journey could begin. The plan called for the father and the son to hike a few miles up a mountain and make camp before sunset. But things ran late at work and traffic was heavy on the way out of town. During the drive, the father rubbed his temple, cursed the traffic and turned up the baseball game on the radio. The son never took his eyes off of his father. When they started their hike, the father was impatient. His son had to stop to use the bathroom and then tie his shoe. At one point, the son stopped to watch a snake poke its head in and out of a hole. The father grew impatient and urged his son to hurry. They had to make it to the campsite. The father walked faster. The son had to almost run to keep up. At times, the father had to verbally push and drag him along so they could move even faster. And when they did get to the camp, the father hurried to pitch the tent and warm a can of soup. Through the glow of the hastily made fire, he caught a glimpse of his weary son, asleep on the ground with tear stains on his cheeks. He says that at that moment, he knew he missed it. He may have reached the destination, but he missed the journey. He missed it. He missed living life. He failed to recognize the importance of an opportunity. Guys, this is something that over the long haul of my years of preaching here. This is something I want to instill in us. I want to instill in us the ability to recognize what truly matters in any given moment, living for what matters, not just what is on the list of things to do. Living for what matters forever. To do that, we've got to recognize a moment at any given moment. So let's talk about that. That's our third point. Slowing requires self-awareness. Slowing requires self-awareness. We don't want to be driven by the externals, the external pressures, the external authorities in our life. We don't want to be driven by the, maybe some false internal authorities either. Sometimes our emotions try to tell our will what to do when we know all along that God's word says to do something different. But we want to be driven internally by the spirit and the spirit's influence on our soul. Psalm 43.5 says, "Why my soul are you downcast? "Why are you so disturbed within me?" He goes on to correct his soul. His soul is down, right? Depressed, depressed, because of the external things that are going on in his life. He's got people that are after him trying to get to him. He's looking for deliverance there, but he says, "Why are you in despair?" He says, "Hope in God." This is a man talking to his soul, saying, "Hope in God and praise him." So he has an awareness of where his soul is at at that given time. And he addressed it. I think all of us have gauges. We have internal tanks, and there's a gauge on those tanks that tell us where those tanks are at, basically. And one man, again, Tim Bulke, I've learned a lot from him this year. He said, "I know I'm fatigued when I'm playing less." "I know I'm fatigued when I'm praying less." These are indicators, these are gauges. I know I'm fatigued when the little things set me off much more easily than they should, or than usual, right? Some, for some reason, they just always set you off. But more so when I'm fatigued. He says, "I have an increasing need for escape." And that's different from this separating from work. "I'm fatigued when more of my identity "is becoming tied to my work." When I stop pushing, you're stretching myself, stop reading, stop learning, when I pull back from pursuing God in solitude. And when I feel alone, like I have no peers to connect with. We just in Sunday school class this morning, listening to Mr. Ewing, he said, he said, "I know I'm overwhelmed "when my right eye gets blurry." Maybe you guys have some bodily, sort of, I don't know, quirks like that. Something tells you, you're overwhelmed. Me personally, I know I am overwhelmed when I start to long for simple work. And this is something I'm just learning about myself. When I am overworked here, I long to go back to farming or something simple like a mowing a lawn. Because it's simple work. And you know what? That's actually, that is actually something that a counselor might prescribe someone going through, that's overworked. Is to do simple work. Less stress type of work, like building a fence. You know, chopping wood. Doing some painting, mowing lawns. Something like that. I think that is something that's in us that God put there. That's a natural God-given response to get through difficult times. You know, I went through a really difficult time once. And the following year I had to, I spent the whole year cleaning up our farm, a third generation farm. Just trailer after trailer after trailer. I mean, using a metal detector to find metal in the ground buried underneath the grass, right? Or grandpa's old, the hose off his drill. You know, old farm equipment buried in the sand. And I cursed it back then and I look back and I'm thinking that's how God got me. Part of the way that God got me through that was simple work. And the progress you see doing it can be really encouraging. If I want to go binge watch something, I know I've been, I'm probably overwhelmed and I want to get my mind off of something. I want to escape my world and get into another world. That's not mine. Maybe it's, I'm not doing the things I enjoy anymore. I'm not gardening, I'm not reading, I'm not playing that instrument, whatever it is. Find out what fills your tank. Slowing also requires intentionality, though. Ephesians 5, 16 says, make the most of your time for the days are evil. And I used to read that and say, I just need to be serving the Lord. 24, seven, I need to serve, serve, serve, preach, preach, preach, teach, teach, teach. Now I look at that and I go, that might mean I should be preaching, I should be teaching on this day. That might mean I need to have a pillow fight with my kids and let them win. I always feel stronger when I come out of those matches. Take the most of your time, recognize in the moment what's most important. There's nothing wrong with taking some time to, right, that transition time and you get home from work, whatever. But remember what's most important? Is it really the show I'm watching or is it these kids? Maybe I should go build some Legos with these kids. I know I come at you from a father with little ones perspective a lot. I get that. You know, hey, think of it this way. I can rush my little ones and you can rush your elderly parents. To the younger, to the older. Trust God's spirit to apply it to your situation today. I live intentionally. We have to intentionally change some of the habits of our lives. I think we have to slow down our bodies in order to slow down our souls. So let's develop maybe some counter habits. Here's some practical suggestions for you. You might refuse to text and drive. How about that? You might get in the longer line at the grocery store. I did that, that was hard. Just to slow my body down. You know what I mean? Just to get in the habit of it. And again, these aren't legalistic things. These are playful things. Not legalistic, playful all the way through. Make a full stop at a stop sign. How about that, huh? No California stops allowed. Show up early for an appointment. If you got one. Walk instead of drive somewhere. The other day I had to go get a package. I went, you know what? I'm gonna walk there today. But it's not that far from church. Cut the lesser things out of your schedule. That might be another way to slow down. Cut some of the lesser things out. And then find a hands-on sort of practice. Some sort of hands-on hobby. Like gardening or maybe read a real book instead of your virtual one. Or something like that. Find a hands-on hobby. When it comes to the phone, you can turn your phone into a dumb phone. I do that all the time now. Our phones have really neat apps. Like the Focus app where you just push Focus and it shuts basically everything off except for like the people that you want to be able to get through to you. So you can get your work done. Something like that. I refuse to open your phone first thing in the morning. You know, get in the word first thing in the morning. Refuse to let it be the last thing you look at night. Look at it at night. We, you know, we don't like to keep our phone in our bedrooms. It takes away from my wife and I's time. 'Cause we'll just sit there and look at our phones and then we'll get tired of that. Go to bed. So we sometimes just don't allow the phone to even be in the room. You might say, hey, past seven o'clock, let's just not have our phones with us. You might adopt a no phone Friday sort of thing or maybe once a month say, hey, no phones today. So again, all these things, whatever, you know, a one minute pause throughout the day I found is really helpful. If I'm just going and going and going, now and then I just stop. If I put everything down, I just get it back in union with the Lord. Just take one minute just to pause and talk to God. Shut everything down and just sort of hand everything back over to Him in my day. When I start to feel like things are creeping up and the to-do list is building, you know what I'm saying? You got your to-do list at the beginning of the day and it seems to just get more and more and more and at that point it start to get kind of wired and I just say, you know what, Lord, I just give all this to you. Give it all back to Him. I think I got another slide here. Well, I thought I did. I don't know what happened to it, but these are some practical ways that you can start to slow things down. I hope that it's helpful for you. Let's pray. Lord, thanks so much for just today's message from the Word. It's pretty unique. It's not what we're used to hearing today. And I just trust that your spirit would help to apply it to our lives. In some ways, Lord, this is kind of a conflicting message because it's just something that we're just not used to. I don't think we're not used to this sort of pace. And so it seems abnormal. It seems strange to us to think about doing these things. It's otherworldly. That's all there is to it. It's not like the world. And so I just asked for grace in your spirit's application to each one of our lives individually. We're all at different places in our life and our walk with you. And whatever's not from you, I just pray that you'd remove it from our ears, from our minds, from our memory. Whatever is from you, whatever you want us to apply right now, I just pray that you'd impress it upon us. And I just trust you to use it. Use your word for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)