Change of Pace

If you have your Bible, turn to Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Over the next couple months, we're going to be kind of back and forth between Hebrews 10, 11, and 12, and then uh Genesis as well.

And I'm really excited about these conversations we're about to have.

I hope they're as much a blessing to you as they were in the process of the Lord sharing them with me.

So today I would encourage you to just uh maybe take some notes and have some things that may come together for you even in this service, and then uh maybe there's some things as you kind of contemplate and think and pray and work outside of this that the Lord will bring into focus uh outside of this place, outside of this moment.

Uh Genesis 12, starting in verse 1, says the Lord had said to Abraham, Leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family, and go to the land I will show you.

Uh we started talking about this passage a few weeks ago and talked about Abraham's father uh actually was from a place called Haran, and they relocated the family to a place called Ur.

And he actually named one of his sons, so Abraham's brother, he named him Haran, and while they were in Ur, he died.

He was killed actually.

And uh he died early, and they decided to leave Ur.

We don't know exactly why, we don't know if it was just grief or if it was they needed to get out of Dodge, but they did, and so they traveled about 800 miles, which would have been a few years worth of journey, all the way up to uh Haran.

And so Abraham's father gets stuck in Haran.

He had a vision to go all the way to Canaan, but he stops in Haran, and you can imagine, like if you named your child after your hometown, and then you went back there, how easy it would be to not be able to move past that.

And so that's what happened to Abraham's father.

Abraham, on the other hand, um, was called by God to not stay stuck in Haran, and so God calls him to leave that place and to go to a new place.

And it says in verse 2, he says, I'll I'll make you into a great nation, and I'll bless you and make you famous, and you'll be a blessing to others.

I will bless those who bless you, and I'll curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the families on earth will be blessed through you.

All right.

Um, I want I want to start with uh a few things.

We're gonna work off the board here today, and I'm gonna scribble a bunch of stuff, and hopefully by the end, it it all makes sense, and you got something to pray about.

Um, but um uh I want to start with kind of what happens in in a place like this, because all of us have changes we need to make, and change isn't uh always fun.

A lot of people hate change, some people like change, but for the most part, we all recognize we need to change.

Uh there's things that we need to develop.

There are new places we need to go, new levels we need to get to.

We can't stay stuck where we are, and so the process of change, uh I'll just kind of make it simple.

It's uh ready, aim, fire.

Ready, aim, fire.

Let's let's start with ready.

Ready.

The idea of being ready.

Are you ready for what's next?

Are you ready to change?

Uh readiness is related to your attitude.

Uh readiness is extremely important.

In fact, um, if you go to a counselor, uh the counselor will ask you if you're ready to have a certain conversation.

Are you ready?

Uh, because if you try to push somebody a place they're not ready to go, even if all of their healing and all of the truth and all of the help is on the other side of that conversation, if they're not ready to have it, it's not worth having.

Uh readiness.

Are you ready?

Are you ready for where God wants to take you?

Are you ready for what God wants to show you?

Are you ready to become who God wants to make you?

Ready.

It has so much to do with it.

Uh, last weekend we did our baptism at Alum Creek, and we baptized 160 some people at Alum Creek.

We had four lines of people being baptized.

It was amazing.

I think we had over 700 people that were there.

Beautiful day.

And so I was one of the baptizers, and I'm out there in the line, and I'm just taking in the whole day, and I'm looking around, and I'm overwhelmed at just what God is doing.

And I got a chance to meet some people I hadn't met yet, and a few of them came up and said something to the effect of, Pastor, I want to thank you for, you know, God's really used you in my life, and and some of the messages that you've shared have been right on time for me, and it's really been big uh in my life and my relationships and and and the application of those messages.

I just want to thank you.

And of course, anytime I hear that, it's very encouraging.

I I take time to internalize that and to receive it and to thank God for it.

But here's what I know I know that actually somebody that's had that experience, it has more to do with them than it does me.

It has a it has everything to do with their readiness.

Because they're like, oh, my life was changed.

Well, because you were ready.

Okay?

I spoke the same message as the person next to you and they just went to lunch.

You're ready.

I've told my wife, I thank God I met her when I met her.

Because I was ready.

If I had met her in another season, I wasn't ready.

And so she may have come to judgments about me based on not necessarily who I am, but how ready I wasn't in that season.

Timing was big, readiness is big, and so it not just in these moments, in this season of your life, are you ready?

By the way, this is one of the advantages of misery.

What could possibly be an advantage of misery?

Well, people often don't change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

So if you find yourself miserable as uncomfortable as that might be, it might be what it takes for you to be ready to do the thing you could have done five years ago.

But now you're ready.

And so, ready, you just gotta ask yourself, are you ready?

Ready's a big deal.

Ready's attitude.

Aim.

Fire.

You gotta be careful you don't go ready, fire, aim.

Anybody ever done that before?

I've done my share of that.

It's like, we'll we'll we'll aim later, okay?

You get a few of those under your belt, you're like, you start to value aiming.

Moments like this in this environment is really good.

It's it's it's it's the time we come together and we allow God to aim us.

To aim us.

How do we aim?

Well, we aim when we slow down, we think, we listen, we learn, we question, we pray, we think, we discuss, we aim.

Aiming's important.

You you you gotta have self-awareness around what you normally do.

So, like, if if you're like, think of it like this: you know, you know how like if you're ever cutting wood or whatever, and you can't undo the cut once the cut's made.

And so they say measure twice, cut once.

You heard that?

Anybody ever just felt like they didn't even need to measure?

You're just that confident in yourself?

You know, you look, you're like, eh, it's about that, it's about that.

You cut it and you get you get it wrong a few times, you're like, I might want to measure.

We have any measure once, cut once people?

You're like, why would I measure twice?

Like, I measured once.

That's fine.

People that do that tend to sometimes come back and realize they measured wrong.

They say measure twice.

But then there are the measure ten times cut once people.

You ever have somebody that just doesn't want to put the tape measure away?

Like, how many times are you gonna measure?

Go ahead and cut.

And so when it comes to aiming, you gotta know yourself.

Are you the type of person that could just sit behind the scope forever and never pull the trigger?

Uh you know, you you can always come up with a reason to not pull the trigger, especially if you're prone to being afraid of making a mistake.

And so, but it's also a mistake, though, to just fire too quick.

You gotta aim.

And so we we pray and we process and we at some point we aim, and then we're people of action, so we we do, we execute, we we step out and we put the faith into obedience and into practice.

I want to talk about aiming, and and and today I want to give you a little math, a little math equation here.

Um I started talking last week on perspective.

Case people, equal perspective.

So if aim is kind of my I get perspective, I see something and then I do something.

What we're hoping for today or in uh in our relationship with God is to get a divine perspective to aim us so that we can take action.

And perspective is often influenced by pace, place, and people.

In other words, think of it like this: if you hung around the same people all your life in the same place and you did the same stuff at the same pace, your perspective would get stuck.

If you add one different person into your life, you've changed your experience, you're gonna have a different perspective.

If you come from a family that all looks the same and votes the same, and then you marry someone in the family that votes different, and you invite them to Thanksgiving, you get a different perspective.

And so often our perspective changes as our experiences change.

We go, we we get around different people, and we go to new places, and we go in different paces.

I I want you to think today we're gonna talk about pace.

We're gonna talk about pace.

Um what is your default pace?

Like your preferred pace?

Like I think of three kind of paces.

You've got uh you've got stop, go, fast, and slow.

You got stop, go, fast, slow.

What is your preferred pace?

Are you are you a go fast type of person you just want to go, go, go?

You you have a bias toward action, go.

Maybe you are when I joked about ready, fire, aim, that's just you want you want to go and you want to go quick.

Or maybe you're the type of person that's like, no, I I prefer to go slow or or to stop.

Things start happening quickly, uh, it's going fast.

And you pump the brakes.

Often this is where tension comes into relationships, whether it's business partnerships or marriages, often is you know, we've said this before, when you're dating, opposites attract.

When you're married, opposites attack.

Because you were attracted to them because man, they're a fast mover, and there was something about them you're like, ah, you know, I tend to get stuck and get slow, and I like them because they get me moving.

Or maybe you're a fast mover and you're like, no, this person kind of, you know, they they they bring peace into my life and they temper me down a little bit.

And it's cute when you're dating, but when you get into life and career and you start going, often this becomes a lot of conflict because we don't see it as a blessing.

Often we see it as a problem to solve.

Somebody's got to win instead of a tension to manage.

We have to really be asking ourselves what's the right pace for now.

And so self-awareness around what is your preferred default pace.

Are you a go person?

Go, go, go, go, go, go fast, or are you a person that really doesn't like to go fast?

I prefer to go slow.

Because what I'm gonna tell you is often it's in the change of pace that you can get a different perspective.

Most of the time, though, this is what you got to keep in mind.

Just because the pace changes, even if it's against your will, like like you're trying to pump the brakes, but it's not getting any slower.

You're trying to make it stop, but it keeps go, it just keeps going.

Or the other, you're trying to make it go and it won't go, you're spinning your wheels.

And you're giving all your blood, sweat, and tears to try to get this thing going, and it's just not going, and so you're frustrated.

It takes wisdom and presence of mind to see the pace that's outside of your comfort zone as an opportunity for new perspective.

Life has a certain rhythm, life has a certain cadence, and oftentimes life will happen in such a way that you are in a pace, either too fast or too slow, or we've been stopped too long, or we're going too much.

At some point, that pace, you'll be forced out of it, but how will you respond?

Will you see that as an opportunity to step back and to gain a new perspective that you wouldn't normally get, or will you keep trying to force your pace on your situation?

It was interesting from just watching human behavior when the pandemic shut everything down.

It was quite interesting because you had people who were living at a frenetic pace, a frantic pace.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

And all of a sudden you couldn't go.

People hopping on and off of airplanes and traveling, all of a sudden you can't fly.

People running from this city to that city, this activity to that activity, all of a sudden you couldn't do that.

And so now the forced pace, the new pace caused people to step back.

And you know what's interesting?

I'm a listener.

I listen to people, man.

I and I I heard some people I talked to, I'm like, man, in the pandemic, I'm like, how was all that for you?

And I heard certain people go, you know, it was crazy, it was kind of a blessing in disguise because I've been going so hard so fast for so long, and all of a sudden it was all shut down.

And I had some of the most meaningful moments with my kids.

I had some of the most meaningful moments with our family.

We got closer together than we've ever been.

I had some people say that.

So what happened?

The change of pace happened, which was a change of perspective, and they're going, Why am I doing this?

By the way, well, part of what fell out from the whole thing was the great resignation.

That was a big deal, right?

People were like, Man, they had me so busy on this job.

And once it all shut down, I hadn't really thought about it.

Do I even want to do this?

I don't even think I like this job, you know.

I knew I didn't like these people, you know, for like 10 years, but I stayed with the job, and now it's like it got me thinking about it, and I don't know if I want to go back.

I think I might want to do something else.

The the the whole change of pace caused a change of perspective for people.

But we know it didn't all go good.

There was a lot of domestic violence that took place during the pandemic.

There were divorces that came out of there, there was fractured relationship, there was a lot of pain that came out.

Why?

Because if you're going 100 miles an hour and everything's whizzing past you, it's blurry.

And if you blow a tire, it's not blurry anymore.

Now you can see everything plain as day.

And so often it was the frenetic pace that kept people from having the conversations or coming to the reality check of how the bad the relationship actually was.

And now we're together and we realize we've not been investing in this relationship, so we're bankrupt emotionally, we're bankrupt relationally, and the truth now came to light.

But what happened?

It wasn't that everything changed, it was your perspective changed because the pace changed.

By the way, the idea of Sabbath.

The idea of Sabbath is is a is a it's imposed by God for us to impose on ourselves every seven days that we change pace.

Because you get going so fast.

What do you want to do you want to wait on the next pandemic before you slow down and look at your life?

Because we know how this goes.

You can get going so fast, it's you lose a decade.

And you look back and go, what was I doing?

So God creates this concept for us every seven days to kind of come here and quiet ourselves and to aim ourselves and to be ready and to listen and to change pace so that I might see something I didn't see when I was whizzing down the road at 50 miles an hour, 55 miles an hour.

Everything was a blur, and now I stop for a couple of hours and I worship and I look in his word and I allow him to search my heart and maybe he illuminates something about what he wants me to do.

Let's go back to the text.

In Genesis 12, it says that God says to Abraham, leave your native country, leave your relatives, leave your father's family, go to the land I'll show you.

And look, look what it says.

It says, Go.

I want you to go.

He went from being stopped in Haran to go.

It was a change of pace.

If you if you read uh the text, and I'm gonna give a little summary of the of it, but that's chapter 12 that we just read.

Okay.

Chapter 12, God gives him a promise, and we know this is more than just him going to a different geographic location.

This isn't just, hey, I want you to go from Haran to Canaan.

This is about purpose.

I'm gonna, he said, I'm gonna bless the world through you.

I'm gonna make a nation out of you.

But it's not just about you having a nation.

This isn't a nation that's there to dominate other nations.

He goes, in fact, I'm gonna bless all other nations, all other peoples through you.

Of course, if we go to the right altitude and we look at the text and we look at the whole Bible, we see that what God started with Abraham, he completed through Jesus.

And so it's it's the idea of reconciling man to God and God to man and man to man.

It's beautiful.

And so he starts it there.

So it's not just about I want to give you a piece of land, it's I'm gonna give you incredible, amazing purpose.

That's in chapter 12.

I'm gonna make a great nation out of you.

Well, Abraham was 75 years old, he was aging, and he was already kind of getting toward the childbearing, you know, beyond childbearing years, his wife was getting older.

And so it actually, they get to chapter 16.

In chapter 16, she still not had a baby.

They have a promise from chapter 12, but chapter 16, they have no f they have no fruit, they have no children.

And so you have now Sarah goes to Abraham and says, Hey, the pace is too slow.

God's given us a promise, but it's too slow.

I really empathize with Sarah because um, you know, think about it.

Sarah knows in chapter 12 God's given Abraham this promise, and maybe Sarah thinks, could it be that my deficiency and my inability to get pregnant would be what would cost the world and what would cost my husband and what would cost God this promise?

Maybe because I'm unable to have a baby, maybe it's my fault.

I mean, I know we know God's omnipotent, he's all powerful, he could do anything, but you know, doggone if it isn't a battle sometimes.

You're kind of like, Am I is it me?

Am I in the way?

And so Sarah feels she's afraid that the promise won't come true.

And in chapter 16, the pace is too slow for her.

So she goes to Abraham and she comes up with this idea basically.

She's like, let's have a surrogate.

At that time, surrogates didn't happen in the um doctor's office, they happened in the bedroom.

They didn't have all that technology that we have now, right?

So they so he she says, Why don't you sleep with Hagar, uh, my my our servant?

And so he does.

He's like, you know, yeah, we God's going too slow.

God's going too slow.

And so they force it.

And they're in that funny zone where they're trying to figure out are we being proactive or are we trying to manufacture something God wants to do organically?

So I empathize, I get it.

But they end up in their distrust of God's pace and in their frantic, frenetic pace, they decide to try to manufacture it.

And so what do they do?

Now Hagar has Ishmael as a son, and now the tension ensues because you have Hagar and Sarah that resent one another, and Sarah's mad at Abraham, and Abraham's like, yo, it's your idea.

I mean, I didn't come up with that.

Like, you're the one that came up.

She's like, I know, but you said yes.

He's like, I mean, what'd you want me to say?

No?

You know, it's like, yeah, I just agreed with you, you know.

It's gonna catch 22 here.

It just dysfunction goes nuts.

And so now you've got Abraham and Sarah don't have a kid, and then you have Abraham and Hagar have Ishmael, and there's crazy tension in the house.

At one point, it becomes so abusive.

Hager takes her son and leaves, and eventually they fully get kicked out.

It's just it goes haywire because anytime we don't trust God's pace, when God's saying slow or stop, and we go, no, no, no, but I'm a go fast person, and you try to force.

You try to superimpose your pace.

It's really hard right now because so many things in the world have been catered around your speed.

It's all on demand now.

You know, they're right now over at Kroger.

They're in a track stance, ready to put your groceries in the back of your trunk.

If you just hit the app and you'll go over there and hit the trunk, and they're just in there loading it.

Amazon is right now.

They're trying to figure out how to get the stuff to you three seconds faster.

You know, it's Amazon Prime.

We're like, that's incredible.

Amazon now?

Try them out.

You hit Doritos right now.

You'll have them on your way out.

Pretty soon they're gonna have Amazon yesterday.

You know, it's like so we don't we don't like to wait.

We don't wait for anything.

If you gotta wait more than four minutes for an Uber, you're like, what's the world coming to?

Friend, hear me.

God will not be rushed.

He's not on your app, he doesn't work on your app system.

He he's not even giving you a ticker on how fast he's gonna be there.

You don't get to track his GPS on his way to come to you.

If you're gonna really go at his pace, you're gonna have to learn how to sit in the waiting room, how to be patient.

He will not be sped up by you or me.

And so you have Abraham and Sarah with probably some good intentions learning how to trust God's pace in chapter 16.

They come up with a bad plan that creates collateral damage.

And of course, in chapter 21, God gives them Isaac as a fulfillment of his promise.

But now you just did this stuff in chapter 16 because you didn't know how to trust his pace.

Um few weeks ago, I took a few weeks off.

I took uh four weeks off, and um first time I did that was in 2021.

2021, I just was exhausted after the whole pandemic, comeback, all this stuff.

I found myself like I felt like I had fought a war.

I know everybody did, and I was like, man, I I just I need to take some time off.

I need to rest, spend some time with my family.

And so in 2021, I planned to take four weeks off.

My first week, I was so antsy.

I was working out twice a day.

My wife's like, bro, why are you doing two a day?

It's like you're supposed to be off.

And I was like, I don't know, but I just feel compelled to like, you know, I was working out like crazy.

I was fidgety, I was, I was antsy, I was uncomfortable.

And I kid you not, by Friday of the week one, I was like, you know, I don't think I'm gonna do this.

I was ready to come back to work.

I was like, this isn't, this isn't doing anybody any good.

My wife kept asking me, like, are you all right?

I'm like, no, not really, but I think I'm just gonna, I think I'm gonna cut bait on this whole, you know, four-week off thing.

I'm ready to get back to work, you know, this isn't this isn't good.

And so she's like, okay, I mean, if that's what you want to do, fine, but maybe you ought to like dig into this a little bit.

So it was a change of pace I wasn't used to, and there was something inside of me that was off, and so I decided instead of just doing honestly, what would have been the easy thing, which was to be to jump back into my activities, I decided to dig into the uncomfortable feeling.

I decided, you know what, I'm gonna not go from ready to fire, I'm gonna aim, I'm gonna find out what is going on.

I've talked about this a little bit in the past, but let me just give you the summary.

I I, as I went through that process, through it wasn't a pleasant four weeks to be honest with you.

It was quite uncomfortable, but I did some digging that set me up for success down the road because God had a way he wanted to aim me, and it took a change of pace.

It took me stopping.

One of the things I uncovered was that being around my sons in the summer every single day, I was confronted with their special needs and their autism, and it made me really sad.

It made me really sad, and I hate being sad.

I'm not good at being sad.

If you come to me and you're sad, I'll be sad with you for a little bit, and then pretty soon I'm gonna be like, okay, guy, the sun's gonna come out tomorrow now.

All right, I know.

You know, there was a guy who complained he had no shoes until he met the man who had no feet, and so we're just not gonna stay sad here, okay?

Let's bring it around, okay?

Everybody, count on three, we're all gonna smile, okay?

Right now, we're gonna draw a line in the sand and we're gonna move on into optimism, okay?

Weeping may endure for two minutes, but joy comes in the third minute, or I think there's a scripture about that.

I don't like to be sad.

I try to get out of that season as quickly as I can, and I was confronted with day in and day out sadness.

And as I started to dig into it, I realized God showed me something in the change of pace that aimed me.

It was this Greg, if you don't understand how to be sad, and if you don't dig into all this and get some real freedom, you're gonna start avoiding your sons because you are avoiding being sad.

So you're gonna look up, my man, and you're gonna have a lot to show for it, but you're gonna have you want to talk about regret what you can't get back, because you instinctively were avoiding sadness, and so you have no relationship with your sons.

You just kept coming home late, you just kept going harder and faster, and life was blurry, and you ran for the hills every time, sadness.

So if you don't figure out how to work through your sadness and how to be sad, you're gonna avoid your sons to not be sad.

I didn't get that realization at the pace I was running, it took a different pace.

The second thing I realized was that you know, we moved here in 2010 and planted one church in 2011, and the church took off and grew, and and now I've got a lot of people that I love and care about, and we've got a staff, and we've got these great things happening in the city, and I could go on and on about the fruit of what God's doing.

But long story short, I felt the weight of responsibility, especially during COVID.

I felt like, oh my goodness, I felt like I felt like I was at war, really, like a war-time general, and all this fear about what if I can't lead it well, and what if it goes, and so I was bearing this weight.

It's good to be responsible as a leader, but I went over the top.

It was like I was bearing the weight.

So for four weeks I wasn't gonna preach a sermon, I wasn't gonna lead a meeting, I wasn't gonna make any decisions.

Four weeks I'm out, and so I have this feeling that everything I'm responsible for and everything I love is at risk.

And if I can't preach and if I can't lead, and if I can't do meetings and make decisions, I'll go to the basement and I'll work out twice a day because if I can get more stamina physically, and if I can get a little bit stronger and I can get a little bit healthier, then when I come back, I can do more.

Which, hey, it's good to be healthy, but no, this was being provoked by something deep inside me that I was bearing a weight of responsibility that was going beyond what was mine to do.

And so now I'm carrying something that belongs to God, and that weight, my friend, was going to crush me.

I probably could have carried it a little longer, but it was gonna crush me.

And I couldn't see it until I changed pace.

And if I'm not careful and I don't let God show me, and I don't, in chapter 16 in 2021, if I don't stop and respond to the pace God has me to show me what He wants me to see, I might ready fire aim, and you end up with some kind of Ishmael, and you end up in some kind of chaos, and you end up with collateral damage, and you end up with real regret.

But if you'll pump the brakes in chapter 16 when you feel like you can't trust God's pace, and you don't know if he's gonna be faithful to his promise, and you'll learn to trust, then in chapter 21, God comes through, you haven't made the decisions in chapter 16.

Make sense?

Where we really see it come to fruition, by the way.

This is where I end.

This chapter 22.

Chapter 22, after Isaac is born, God says, I want you to sacrifice Isaac.

He says this to Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son.

It's a hard-to-read text, and you gotta read below the surface when you read it because it's kind of uh kind of makes you cringe, makes your skin crawl because you've got this man and his son, and now Isaac's, he's actually not a child anymore, he's grown into a young man.

God says, I know you waited a long time and I know a lot's happened, but I want you to sacrifice them.

Of course, in that day, people sacrificed their children to gods, to false gods, and it was a way of showing allegiance to the gods.

This is how much I'm willing to sacrifice, to where they would sacrifice child, child sacrifices, and so you have Yahweh saying, I want you to sacrifice your son.

And so Isaac goes up to sacrifice him, and or Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac, and his son is going, Dad, where's the sacrifice?

He's like, God will provide.

And so he goes all the way to the moment, he's ready to follow through, and of course, God stops him and says, No, I'm Yahweh.

You don't sacrifice your babies to me.

I sacrifice my baby for you.

Yeah, it's foreshadowing to Jesus, he's showing who Yahweh is, he's showing grace, he's showing grace early.

Now, here's what's amazing about that story, though, because everybody zeroes in.

People tend to zero in on Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son.

Ah yeah, I mean, he was willing to obey God all the way.

I think the real story is that in chapter 22, Abraham had had such a revelation of Yahweh's grace, and he had understood Yahweh's pace that he knew even up to the last second, he will provide.

In chapter 16, I tried to force my pace on Yahweh, and when I forced my pace on Yahweh, I ended up with Ishmael.

I ended up with a situation, I ended up creating chaos.

I will not do that again.

And in chapter 22, I believe all the way up to the end, he will provide the right thing at the right time.

It was Abraham learning to trust God's grace and trust God's pace.

I know he's gonna provide, and in the right time, God provided a ram in the thicket.

So let me tell you, I took four weeks off about four weeks ago, and I had a great time.

I didn't really want to come back, to be honest with you, for a minute.

I mean, I'm like, I love these people.

I could probably do another week, I probably could do another couple weeks.

It was pretty nice.

I had some of the richest moments with all three of my kids.

I experienced tremendous peace.

The first time in 2021, when I took four weeks off, I sat there and watched every service online.

Texting.

You know they still have reverb on the preaching mic.

Everything's a little off.

I'm just gonna be honest.

I didn't watch one thing when I was off this time.

I I know I planned to, and I was like, eh, I'm good.

God, you got this.

God, you got this.

Brother Huey's gonna bring it.

Right?

God, you you got this.

Mike Young's gonna bring it.

Lord, you this is your thing anyway.

I'm not bearing this weight.

I'm gonna rest in you.

I'm gonna trust your pace.

And so, what you do in these moments when God disrupts your pace, and it's not what you would do as a default, don't keep trying to go fast when God has said slow down.

If God has you at a stop, look around.

Take advantage of the fact this moment's not blurry.

But go to the other end too.

Some of you, it's going so fast right now, all you wanted to do is stop and you're overwhelmed at the speed.

I know it's not your default pace, but even when things are going faster, they feel out of control, it feels too heavy, it feels too quick, it feels too blurry, I don't like this.

I don't like this.

Step back and say, change a perspective.

God, what are you trying to show me?

What do you want to teach me right now?

And if you'll do this, right, somewhere on this board, you allow God to aim you.

You allow God to give you a new perspective often when it's a pace outside of your control or something beyond what you would prefer.

So let's take a moment right now.

I invite you to stand up on your feet.

I want to pray with you.

Why don't you look at this board for a minute?

First question is are you ready?

Are you ready?

Are you ready to go where God wants you to go?

See what God wants you to see, become who God wants you to be.

Aim.

Before you take action, look at perspective.

Are you at an uncomfortable pace right now?

Uncomfortably fast or slow?

I'm stuck and I'm spinning my wheels and I need to take my foot off the gas.

Lord, what do you want to show me in the uncomfortable pace?

Where are you at here?

Maybe you feel like God's given you a vision, he's given you a promise.

And here you are in chapter 16, and you got to make decisions.

And if you'll stop and wisdom, slow down and be receptive and let God show you what He wants you to see at the uncomfortable pace.

You'll see His faithfulness, and ultimately you'll make better decisions and you'll grow.