One Giant Leap - Week 3: Slowing

I'm really excited to continue our series this morning one giant leap, and Chief

has taken us through two of these, and I hope that you are implementing

these spiritual disciplines. And if you found it difficult, that's kind of the

point I've never been. I've never been in a situation where discipline wasn't difficult,

because it goes against what we want to do right, it reshapes us.

So I hope that you've taken these messages seriously, and I hope that

you will take this one today and stack it on top of these other things

that we've learned about, because I believe if you will do this, I

just I really believe that God's going to do something greater than we could imagine

if we can get these small steps right. I believe that giant leap is

coming. I really do, and I don't believe it's I don't believe it's

far from us. I think it's just a matter of us getting to the

root of it and making that happen. I hope that you're doing that,

But my gut tells me that a lot of you are like me, and

you have a hard time implementing discipline and that's okay too. That's all right,

because this is never going to be accomplished in one sermon series. This

was never going to be accomplished in one year. The things we're talking about

today are never going to be accomplished in a short amount of time. They

are lifelong disciplines. But my prayers that we just continue trying until we're dying.

Can we do that together, Let's dive in this morning. I want

to encourage you. There's no rush to implement these things because they are lifelong,

because they are a journey. There's no rush. In fact, to

rush would be to kind of miss the entire point. And today we're going

to talk about the discipline of slowing, and so I thought that maybe I

would just preach longer than I ever have before to illustrate the point. I'm

kidding now or not, we're not gonna. I thought maybe I would illustrate

it that way. I would just go all day and just maybe by the

end of it you'd get it right. Slowing down. We're not gonna do

that. We're gonna We're gonna go to the word like we're supposed to.

We're gonna get the point across here. I just believe that if we can

master the art of slowing down, we can truly begin to experience that abundant

life that Christ has promises. We walk around all the time wondering where is

that abundance. I feel like there's nothing left of me. I feel like

I'm at the end of my rope all the time. And once I get

over this hump, there's a bigger hill to climb next, and there's a

bigger mountain. Doesn't sound like abundant life. It's because we haven't mastered the

discipline of slowing. I believe we miss out on so many things that God

has for us, just because we're in a hurry all the time, and

I wonder where are we hurrying to? Because as I was preparing this message,

I thought about initially, you ever are on the road driving and you're

headed toward a red light and you have that person and maybe you are this

person. I've been this person, that person that speeds up, it goes

around you, and then y'all end up put the red light together. We

laugh at that because we've experienced that, but in our spiritual lives, you

realize that most of us are that person that we're in a hurry to get

nowhere. We're in a hurry to wait, and that just compounds on our

hurry and our chaos, and it makes us feel worse. Actually, what

if we drove a little slower, and then maybe we might hit the green

light instead of the red light. Go with me to the Book of John,

chapter fifteen. We're gonna start in verse four. We're gonna look at

how Jesus describes the key to living abundant, fruitful lives. John fIF tam

sorry. In verse four, it says, abide in me. This is

Christ talking. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot

bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless

you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, it is he that bears much

fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does

not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers,

and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. Verse seven.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, Ask whatever

you wish, and it will be done. For you. By this,

my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my

disciples. Father. We thank you for your word, Lord Jesus. We

thank you for your words specifically here, and they take root deep within us

and changes from the inside out. In Jesus' name. Amen. You know

I go to this, this part of the Gospel of John a lot.

If you if you go back and look at some of the messages over the

past couple of years that I've spoken, I end up here a lot.

And the reason is, I believe because Jesus is near the end of his

life. He's near the end of his ministry and his life. He's about

to go to the cross, and he and he uses these last precious moments

to say some of the most important things he ever said to the most important

people in his life. And I just can't help but think that it's like

he's sitting there talking to me, saying, hey, disciple, here's here's

what it is, here's the here's the bottom line. We've done a lot

these past few years in ministry. We've seen miracles, we had been crowds,

we fed lots of people, we did all these awesome things, but

now here we are in the dark at the end, and I believe he

says the most important things. He wanted his disciples to hang on these words

while he was away. The key word in this passage is abide. You

know the Greek word for the same Greek word appears throughout the New Testament,

and it's often translated as remain or stay, or continue to exist or persist.

All of them have the same connotation that we're remaining, we're staying.

There's not a whole lot of movement going on. It's about staying, it's

about waiting. Abide, And we know that there are actions that go along

with our faith. If you don't believe that, ask about it on end

of Gray. I bet you Chief can give you an incredible answer. There

are always actions that go with our faith. Faith without work is right.

We know that. But this concept of abiding in Christ, it's not something

you can rush. It's not something you can do quickly. It's not something

you can accomplish in a day or an hour or a week. Even the

natural example the fruit, the branches the vine. Jesus uses this natural example.

Have you ever tried to make fruit hurry up and grow now. Look,

I know science has come a long way. There's a lot of grow

houses, there's a lot of ways that they've accelerated that process, but that

has taken centuries. Fruit grows at the speed it grows. If you try

to rush it, it'll be unripe and it's not worth anything. Or you

rush it too fast and it gets too ripe and it's still not worth anything.

Getting it to that precise moment where it's actually useful takes time. This

is why we find it so easy to be busy in our world, because

our world is ruled by the adversary, the god of this world, and

right now the world is very fast. Speed is king in our world.

I was just talking about this with with one of my best friends in the

world the other day. We were working and I was we were going up

the road up toward North Carolina, and there's some places there where you don't

get very good cell reception, and I was clicking on a link on my

phone and it didn't open immediately, and I couldn't see the content immediately.

And I looked at him and I said, I'm about to throw this thing

out the window because it's not fast enough. You see, we're addicted to

speed. You may not know that, you may not realize that, and

that's okay, But we are addicted to speed. Our world moves at such

a pace, and it has trained us to move at such a pace where

if things go slowly, we hate them. My food's not ready when I

pull around to the window. What are they doing in there? They don't

have enough help, nobody working. We say these things all the time because

we're addicted to speed. We're addicted to moving quickly forgetting what we want immediately.

Our world is designed that way, and the ruler of this world has

made it that way, because if he can keep you busy, if he

can keep you moving quickly, you might miss the slow and sudden. God

of all, it's been going on so long that we're conditioned to operate in

a hurry, many of us. I don't know about you. Do you

find yourself feeling kind of disturbed when you're not doing anything? Anybody like that

where it's just like, hey, I know, I need to rest.

I need to lay down on the couch just for it, just for thirty

minutes. I just need to not do anything. And the whole time you're

laying there, you actually don't rest because you feel guilty about not being busy.

You're addicted to it. I'm addicted. We're all addicted to It's a

problem, so let's fix it. We've been convinced and deceived to believe that

speed leads to success, and in some regards it's true. It is very

convenient to hop on a plane and be able to get somewhere that would normally

take you like weeks by boat, and you can get there in a few

hours. That's very convenient. Fast food very convenient when you need something.

You know, it's great to pull around, get a thousand calories in and

get through the rest of the day very fast. And trust me, it

gets to a thousand a lot quicker than you think it does. But the

trade off is that when I feel full from those calories, I'm missing out

on most of the nutrition, most of the nutrition that actually leads to good

health. That fast food might get you to the end of the day,

But will it get you to seventy, will it get you to eighty?

Will you make it? What's the trade off for speed? But the point

here is not to go back to horse and buggy. I'm not advocating for

that. I'm not trying to go back to dial up internet. Trust me,

I would not make it. The devices I own would not make it,

the walls would not make it. I would just be so furious.

I'm not advocating for going backwards. God's leading us ahead, but he's leading

us ahead in a speed, at a speed, at a pace that our

world is not going to allow us to do easily. We have to recognize

that hyper speed across the board has far more drawbacks than advantages. And it's

especially true in our spiritual lives because we're spiritual creatures. God created us that

way. So if your spiritual life lacks, so does the rest of you.

So what do we do? We have to practice the discipline of slowing.

And I can already hear your objections, pastor when am I supposed to

do that? I usually hear these objections in my fiance's voice. I don't

know why just comes across that way, But where's the time I don't I

can't cut anything out. I can't let go of anything. I mean,

the kids, and the job, and in church, and and we are

conditioned to come up with every excuse. Doesn't mean it's easy. In fact,

to move slowly. It's going to take more effort from you than moving

quick because the current, the river of the world around us is moving at

this crazy pace and you're gonna start to slow down, and that water is

gonna push you and push and push and push. It's gonna take more effort

to do this, but it's so worth it. I get it. Everything

has to get done, and it does. I'm not I'm not. I'm

not saying your schedule is not valid. I'm not saying all the things you

have to get done or not that they are. They are, but not

at the cost of our souls. And we have a choice. We can

control our schedule or it will control us. We have a choice, and

whether we're conscious of it or not, we're making that choice every day to

slowing. It's not about doing less things. It's about doing things intentionally.

In cornerstone terms, slow is about living with purpose, on purpose that there

are no accidents. You know, actually, this discipline is slowing. This

is the way God moves. We see it all throughout scripture. We're gonna

get there, but this is the way God moves intentionally on purpose, no

wasted movements, not in a hurry, but always on time. To keep

in mind that our goal here is to slow down so that we have room

for his divine interruptions. See, a lot of us don't even have any

space in our lives for God. We don't. We we're so busy and

so captivated by all the things that we never make room. And yeah,

can God lightning bolt down right now and interrupt, Absolutely absolutely he can.

But more often than not, he doesn't do that. He's waiting for us

to make room for him to move. We see how Jesus moved in the

Gospels. Go go read, Go read through the Gospels again. When make

time, skip a Netflix show I don't know, don't, don't, don't

boot your computer for thirty minutes, and read some a little bit. Just

go back through the gospels. Watch how Jesus moved. He moves deliberately,

slowly, on his own terms, at his own pace. They couldn't even

get him to hurry when Lazarus died. You got we realized that we read

that story all the time. Sometimes we miss that they could not get him

to hurry when his best friend died. Was Jesus callous? He didn't care

about Lazarus. He had bigger things to do. He loved Lazarus. He

wept for Lazarus. He brought Lazarus back to life. That's how much he

cared about him. He did that miracle before ever going to the cross.

He said, Lazarus, come out here. I love you. Jesus cared,

but he was being intentional because there were other things. He had to

make room for the Father to do some other things on the way. Time

and time again, Jesus is interrupted, and he always takes the time to

do a miracle, or to teach a lesson, or to drop one of

those one liners, and to be like see ya. I imagine him just

kind of walking away chatting with the boys on to the next but deliberate,

intentional pace. We see this all through the Gospels. We see God do

it all throughout Scripture. The whole purpose is to make room for God in

our lives. And this can only happen when we slow down our souls.

And since our bodies contain our souls, where do we have to start with

our bodies? If you can't practice slowing in your physical body, your soul

will never slow down. John Ortberg describes the discipline of slowing like this,

cultivating patience by choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.

Now, that's a real kick in the teeth, isn't it. Well,

intentionally wait, Intentionally put myself where I'm gonna have to wait on the

next thing. Yeah, it's a really novel idea. It's because we hate

it so much and our world doesn't work that way. But a promise it's

worth it. See physically moving slower or having less on the schedule. That

doesn't magically do it. So I'm not trying to get you to walk slow

everything you do. I'm not trying to get you to late to work.

I'm not trying to I'm not trying to for you to just over edit your

schedule. It's a practice you must practice with the intention of colliding with Jesus

more often. Don't just quit your chief said, don't quit your job and

say they told me to a cornerstone said, I gotta have less stuff on

my plate. I gotta move slower. Hey boss, I'm I'm not gonna

come in for about an hour and a half later than I normally do.

I gotta move slower. Pastor told me to please, don't do that.

That's not what I'm telling you to do. I'm telling you to practice this

discipline, and we're gonna give you some practical ways. But practice this with

the intention of colliding with God more often. Consider what the prophet Isaiah wrote

in Chapter forty, starting in verse twenty eight, says, have you not

known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the

creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary.

Understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him

who has no might. He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be

weary, and young men shall fall exhausted verse thirty one. I believe you

know this one. But they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not

be weary. They shall walk and not faint catch it. Those who intentionally

wait on what the Lord? If you do that, if you enter into

this with the purpose of waiting upon Him, with the intention of colliding with

him more often, if you make room in your life to encounter God,

he will give you strength and power beyond what you can imagine or consider.

The psalmists in Psalm forty six, verse ten, we know this one too.

We quote this one all the time. I don't know what it is

about what we've done, but we quote these scriptures. We don't live by

them. We really like to quote scriptures. But then we look at our

lives and where is this happening? Only in the quote forty six, verse

ten, be still, the Lord says, and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the

earth. And this whole Psalm so forty six, the Psalmist is describing chaos,

how the world is in turmoil, how the nations rage, how all

these things happen, and how God is the present help for his people,

and in verse ten quotes the most high commanding recognition of who he is commanding,

know that I am God. But what's the first step? Be still?

We may have the truth within us as we move at hyper speed with

the world. We may know the facts. Chief and I were just talking

about this this morning. You may know the facts, you may know the

scripture, you may know who God is, but you can still get caught

in moving at that rapid pace. Here's what slowing does. It takes what

you know and forces you to come to terms with it. There are a

lot of things that we know that we don't want to come to terms with.

Think about how we avoid things that we don't like or that make us

feel bad. I know that the prices are going up at the grocery store.

I know that the prices of houses are going up and staying up,

and it's absurd. Trust me, I know that. But when I sit

down and have to look through listings, I have to come to terms with

that and the implications that has on my life and what I need to do

to prepare to be able to handle that. Slowing forces you to come to

terms with the truth about God, that he's not just someone to be quoted.

He's not just somewhere off doing his cosmic thing and I'm struggling. It

forces you to come to terms with that He is your present help in your

time of need. But we don't get that until we get still, and

we don't get still until we slow down. So let me give you a

few practical ways to practice slowing. And I'm in the process of implementing some

of these in my life. Do you take them or leave them? You

have to do what works for you. But let me just give Maybe you're

wondering, yeah, Pastor, that sounds great. I'm still stuck back where

you said earlier. Where where am I going to find the time to do

this? Let's look at a few Try this one. Number one, take

the long way home. I always joke with my kids about this. We

every time we go to family dinner and we'll go to some restaurants somewhere and

we get back in the car after dinner and I say, all right,

we're taking a long way home. And I just love it because they just

freak out out. They're like, no, no, like going having to

be in the car any longer than it takes to go from a straight line

to home. I mean, they just freak out, and it just brings

me so much joy. I say, oh no, we're taking a long

way home, and if it's cold, I'm like, and we're rolling the

windows down the whole way. You know. They just they hate the idea

of taking the long way home. And I'll be honest, I do too.

Any more time I got to spend in the car in traffic or dealing

with other people. But I do this intentionally when I'm by myself, if

I run an errand if I if you know, if I'm just if there's

not a plane to catch, I just take the long way home. I

just decide instead of GPS and see if the interstates shut down, which I

do that a lot because it's shut down a lot. Instead of checking that,

I just take a scenic rout and it forces me to be present.

Forces that And you know what I also do. I turn the radio off

and I take that opportunity like she was talking about two weeks ago, and

I turn it into the practice of silence and solitude and slowing. You build

that into your schedule, Well no, no, pastor you don't understand I

got to get home or I got to get to work. Okay. Don't

do it on your way to work. Don't take the long way to work,

okay, students, don't take the long way to school when you're already

running late for class. Do it at the end of the day, when

the only goal is to get home and lay on the couch. Trust me,

I get it. Just take the long way home and force yourself to

wait. Or maybe you show up ten minutes early to your next appointment,

Like I know y'all got doctor's appointments, Dennis, all those things. How

come we always show up and this you show up to wait? Right,

the appointments at nine. I mean I might get in there by and look

they're working hard. This is not an indictment. I'm just saying that it's

gonna happen anyway. What if your appointments at nine, you show up at

eight fifty, Well, then I gonna get up earlier. Yeah, and

Jesus had to carry the cross. I don't know. I'm just maybe I'm

saying that for me. I'm saying that to me. I'm just saying,

get up a little earlier, get there ten minutes before, and do this.

Go inside and leave your phone in the car. Oh my gosh,

Passer Clay has lost his mind. It's already gonna take an extra thirty minutes

once I sign in. What am I gonna do? Oh? God forbid

you speak to someone. I don't know. I'm preaching a little bit cheeve.

I I'm just a little God forbid you speak to the person next to

you and share the love of Jesus. God forbid you take your paper Bible

in and read it for those thirty minutes and then someone asks you, hey,

what do you read? Because listen, you go in any waiting room,

everybody's got everybody has their phone out. We're all addicted to the rectangle

and it's glowing and burning our eyes and our brains. Slowly. If you

take a paper book in and it happens to be the Word of God,

imagine the conversation. But the truth of the matter is maybe you're like me

and you don't really want that. We have to come to terms with the

fact that a lot of we don't really want to have that conversation because that

will take effort, That will take me being vulnerable, that would take me

having to learn someone else's name and their struggles and their things. And I'm

already dealing with so much. I want to tell you Church, Jesus said

his burden is easy, and Jesus took the weight of the entire world upon

his shoulders. We're called to take those things on. You will actually feel

lighter if you'll take on some stuff and help someone else carry it. That's

a different sermon. Number three. Set some scheduled times for your social media

and your email and your apps. Well, Pastor, I got a lot

of important emails. Yeah, me too, But you know how many unimportant

emails I have, like at least a thousand times over the important ones.

And I'm the type to pull it out and just scroll my email just every

so often. It drives me nuts when people don't see emails, because I'm

like, how aren't you as addicted to it as me? But set times.

We schedule everything that's important. Chief always says this. We schedule things

that are important, schedule some time to look, scroll all you want within

that time. But all those apps are designed to keep you there for as

long as possible. So set the alarm, and when thirty minutes is up,

I'm getting off Twitter. I'm gonna go find something that actually builds me

up. And let's take it a step further. Because I've done this,

and maybe you've done this. When you set that alarm and it goes off

while you're scrolling and you hit okay and you can keep scrolling, you start

doing that on a regular basis, maybe it's time to delete that app.

When you start to circumvent and go around your own boundaries, you might need

a little help, so it might be better just to take it off entirely.

Make it hard to access. We talked about a long months ago.

We talked about making spiritual things easier to access. Make the things that drain

your time and your attention make them harder to access. Maybe number four,

This one's crazy. Stop multitasking. You know that when you multitask, you

know it's actually scientifically proven. Now they've done studies enough on this that you

actually can't multitask. You actually can't. You end up doing less of both

or three, or however many things you're trying to do at once. You

end up really accomplishing nothing compared to what you would do if you would just

focus on one thing at a time. And this has gotten so bad for

me that now I do it. In entertainment, I turned the ballgame on.

I'll just share with you in the spirit of transparency. The Super Bowl

was last week, right, pretty good game. I had it on and

I have my iPad. She's gonna laugh. I had my iPad playing a

football game. On my iPad while watching the football game. It's a little

window into my life that maybe you didn't need. But I sat there.

I don't even remember some of the big moments because I was doing two things

at once. Now pointless things, entertainment, relaxation, not anything productive.

But I was doing two things. That's how that's how addicted we are to

We got to feel like something's happening. Do one thing at a time,

and accomplish it completely before you move on. Now, I'm not talking about

emergencies. Emergency pops up. Obviously, take care of your emergencies. Remember

this is a discipline, it's a practice, the rule of life. I've

been doing this thing this year where I'm trying to read more, and I

set it up. I gave it a space in my living room. I

only sit in this chair, I only use this coaster to set my coffee

or tea on, and I read very quickly. Learned if I don't put

my phone in a different room entirely, I'll never get that chapter done.

So get up, sit down there with the coffee, lead the phone somewhere

else, and read the chapter. When the chapter's done, it's fair game.

Do whatever you want, but at the focus. If I don't give

it a singular focus, it never gets done. Or one last one,

then we'll move on. Walk slower this one. Listen. Truthfully, this

one goes against everything within me. Because Amber tells me all the time,

you walk so fast. She blames me having longer legs than her, But

really I just move fast. I liked my mom used to say this thing,

and maybe this is where I got it. You should say you need

a walk with purpose. She's trying to give me a hurry up so we

could you know, you know how kids are. He kind of lolly gag

around, and that's very frustrating for adults. But she used say the thing,

walk with purpose. You need to walk with purpose. And I don't

fault her for that. I appreciate that. Actually I really love that because

I like to get where I'm going and move on. But what if walking

so fast, moving so fast, we're just further conditioning ourselves to move at

high speed. It's just like taking a long way home, take the long

path to the mailbox. Take a lab fatin, What happen You took a

lab around the house before you went to the mailbox. Well that's ridiculous,

Pastor Clay. Maybe it is, but it will teach you to slow down

and it will give you some week. Look, we even say these things

dead moments, some dead air, some dead space for you to talk to

God. What if you took that long way to the mailbox and spoke to

God for that entire time. If nothing else, it adds a little more

prayer. Why waste the time unless you don't waste the time, you use

the time. And this list is not exhaustive. Again, these are just

ideas. These are things that I've tried to do that help me. The

point is that you're figuring out, doing the hard work of figuring out what

slows you down so that your soul can slow down. And maybe this you

think this all sounds ridiculous and that you're not by yourself. Trust me.

We live in a time where discipline is so foreign. Our world is so

given to the right. Now, what feels good? Now? What makes

sense? Now? What's the most trendy thing to hop on? Now?

That's the world we live in. It's anti discipline. So I get it.

Not a lot of shouts and amens, But I'm telling you this is

the job of the church. If we don't get this right and we don't

move like this, how will the world ever know? As we close,

I'm gonna let the band Clint. You guys can get ready. As we

close, I want to give you one last thought from scripture that I think

kind of it gives us a really good uh foundation to move forward with as

we try to practice these things in our lives. Turn with me to First

Thessalonians, Chapter four. First Thessalonians Chapter four, Paul writes to the Thessalonian

church, and he's talking about a lot of different things. It's a very

rich couple of letters. But near the end of First Thessalonians, here in

chapter four, starting in verse nine, he writes, Now, concerning brotherly

love, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you,

yourselves, have been taught by God to love one another. For that,

indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But

we urge you, brothers to do this more and more. Verse eleven.

Here's our key. And to aspire to live quietly. Now that's just the

most backwards thing to twenty twenty four that I can think of. Live quietly.

No, no, no, I gotta get online and shout what I

think. No, no, no, I gotta make sure they understand me.

Paul says, aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs,

and to work with your hands as we instructed you twelve so that you do

all those things, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent

on no one. In the midst of this instruction on love and purity and

pure living and the coming of the Lord Jesus, Paul tells the Thessalonians to

aspire to live quietly, to mind their own business. Dis instruction coupled with

work with your hands, which we can take to mean actual work, purposeful

work, not frivolous work, not work that is just busyness, but work

with your hands. I think he said it that way on purpose. This

is not a thought experiment. This is not an ethereal exercise. Work with

your hands. Do what you're called to do that leads to a consistent,

independent life that can be recognized by those who don't yet know Jesus, which

is the whole point of everything. Church. I don't want you to slow

down so that you're just you're more sloth like you just kind of. I

don't want you to slow down so you're more like surfer dude, like where

everything's like whatever. Man, you know you're there when I get there.

I don't want you to do I'm not trying to change who you are.

I'm trying to encourage you to give space so God can change who you are.

You can only do that if you slow down. A quiet life,

one where madness and chaos and hurry they are not of avoided, but they're

dealt with because we're disciplined. You know, they don't. I don't know

how to preach without talking about football, I guess, but you know they

don't. They don't practice at half speed. They practice the way the game

is. You got to practice at the You have to put these practices in

place so that when the game happens, you're prepared for it. It's not

avoiding. We don't. Well, you know they're having a run too fast,

so let's change the rules. No, no, no, they're equipped

to handle the speed because they practice. It's the same with the discipline of

slowing. You can't avoid the chaos, hear me. You can't avoid the

madness. You can't avoid the trouble and the toil. It's going to happen

with or without you. But God has called you as his people, to

come to terms with the truth and deal with the chaos by learning to control

your schedule and move at His pace. That's who we're supposed to be.

A life like this can only be accomplished by practicing silence and solitude, simplicity

and slowing. And Chief's got one more for you next week that's going to

rock your world if you'll do it. And this discipline of slowing, it's

not explicitly described in scripture, but we see it. We see it,

you know how. I think of those songs where David said, where are

you? God? Where are you? You know what I said, God

just doesn't appear as soon as he prays that prayer. God's moving at God's

pace. And David, the older he got, the more he understood that

that's the same for us, because we realize God's moving at his pace.

I want to be on his timetable. Look today, you may be thinking

this is impossible. You may be thinking this is absurd. But I believe

that even if you think that, deep down, we know this is what

our souls really need. Our souls really need to move at the pace they

were created to move, and not thrust forward at this ridiculous, ludicrous speed

that we try to move at. If you stand with me all over the

room, I want to encourage you, and I want to pray for you.

If our alter team would get ready. That's what our souls desperately need

to come to terms with the truth of Jesus Christ, to come to terms

with the love of the Father and the empowering embrace of the Holy Spirit.

So what I want to do is alter team. If y'all will get ready

and just just be here, be available, We're gonna go into this next

song. I picked this next song intentionally for Clinton lead for this day,

for this message. It's called here Again, and you know this one.

Will you meet me here again? God? It's such a beautiful song for

a lot of reasons, but mainly because it forces us to say, here

I am Lord, I'm standing here still. Will you come meet me right

here? Look, whether you take that list of practical steps and use it

or don't, I pray that you just take these next few moments that you've

come and you just stand still and you just say Lord, here I am

If for no other time today I'm slowing right now, will you meet me

right here again? I want us to worship together. I want you to

come, pray, Come find a partner if you need to, and pray

and ask God to slow you down, Help you slow down, that we

may collide with his love and his mercy and his truth more often. Lord

Jesus, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your power.

We thank you for the truth. God, we thank you for the

challenge in these next few moments. Help us to not rush, Help us

to not think about what's next. Help us to slow right here, right

now. Lord, we humbly ask that you meet us here and then,

Lord, do whatever you want to do. God, we love you,

We thank you in advance. Come on listening together.