The Antidote for Hurry

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening Church.

Great to be with you this morning.

Welcome if you're new.

My name's Ryan.

Thrilled to be with you.

Great to be back preaching today.

This morning, we're kicking off a brand new series called Presence.

Would you say that with me?

Presence.

Oh man, you guys are awake.

Fantastic.

God's antidote for hurry, anxiety, and loneliness.

And as we begin, I just want to begin with a pause.

Would you do this with me?

Just kind of get settled.

Maybe both feet on the ground.

Take a deep breath.

If you're comfortable, even close your eyes.

Let your soul settle in.

For a moment, set aside the stress of the season, worries and concerns that you're carrying.

The endless to-do list.

And right now, would you invite the Holy Spirit into this moment to meet with you?

This is a holy moment.

In Jesus' name.

Why do we hurry?

I mean, why do we rush from one thing to the next?

And why is it that even when we have a spare moment, we feel it?

In Silicon Valley, we tend to measure life by how productive we are, not how present we are.

Isn't it true?

By what we're doing and not who we're becoming.

We have forgotten that we're human beings, not human doings.

And so here we wear busyness like a badge of honor, don't we?

We ask this how much can we squeeze into our day?

Gotta optimize, prioritize, and get as much done as efficiently as possible.

We live in what sociologists call the age of acceleration.

It's bigger, faster, maybe better.

It is better in some ways, in other ways it's not.

For most of human history, change has happened incrementally.

Today it happens exponentially.

Today we experience major culture shifts happening in years and now sometimes in months.

Technology is reshaping our world at warp speed.

Let me just give you a few examples.

Well, you remember, no, you don't, neither do I.

Electricity, the invention of electricity.

We traded with electricity, the rhythm of creation for the rhythm of production.

Before electricity, we lived, the people lived by the cadence of sunrise, sunset, evening meant stop, darkness meant resting.

The average person slept 10 to 11 hours a night.

Think about that.

Electric light extended the day, expanded productivity, ignited the modern work cycle.

Work was no longer tied to daylight.

It could happen 24-7.

Today, the average person is lucky to get seven hours of sleep a night.

From electricity to travel, the world got smaller and hurry got bigger.

For most of history, your entire world was about 30 miles wide.

You traveled at the speed of your feet, or perhaps a horse.

Then came the two great innovations, the car and the plane.

Today you can wake up in San Jose, be in Paris by the morning, a journey that once took months, now simply 11 hours.

Commercial flight, by the way, just think about how fast this has changed.

Commercial flight was for the elite until the 1980s.

Then it became affordable, mainstream.

This past Thanksgiving holiday alone, 10-day span, 31 million people hopped on a plane.

And the car, by the way, didn't just give us mobility, it accelerated the pace of everyday life.

Many of you commute what once took an entire day to travel.

And somehow we're still behind, still in a hurry, trying to carve our way and get the fastest to uh wherever we're headed to.

And then comes the computer, which promised freedom, by the way, but delivered pressure.

1977, the first personal community uh computer hit the markets, and ad said this.

Listen to this, this is amazing.

Ad said technology will cut the work week in half.

More leisure, more margin, more rest.

This one's gonna, you're gonna love this one.

By the 2000s, Americans will only work 20 to 25 hours a week.

Well, how'd that work out?

How that worked out is what anthropologists called the productivity paradox.

Every tool designed to save time ends up filling that time with more work.

Then came the internet in 1995.

Think about this.

30 years ago, only 15% of households people had access to the internet.

And it was a novelty.

It was dialed up.

And you waited for hours for anything to download.

Most of you don't even understand that world.

Because today you're expected to respond instantly.

What used to take a week now happens in a day.

Once we hired a team is handed to one person, and then once work left the physical office and lived on a laptop and now on our phones, it follows us everywhere we go, doesn't it?

What's once promised freedom now delivers unbelievable pressure.

Faster work created higher expectation at a non-stop pace.

And then the phone came along.

No, the phone's been around for a long time.

It promised connection, but it delivered distraction.

And if you want to put a hashtag next to that, anxiety as well.

We didn't notice it at the time, but the smartphone didn't just speed up our lives, it rewired them.

See, growing up, so I was born in 1981.

Growing up, we had what this thing is crazy, it's called landlines.

And you had a phone and it had a wire connected to it.

If you wanted privacy, you took the phone with the wire and you went into around, because it extended really long, and you went into the bathroom or into the hallway to get a little moment of privacy.

But the problem was someone else could pick up the other phone and listen in and interrupt.

Car phones, they were a luxury item that you saw on TV and for the wealthy.

2007, the iPhone entered the scene, fitting the entire world in your pocket, and then in 2010, Instagram, and we enter the age of a rise of curated comparison-driven life.

The shift wasn't just technological, by the way, it was neurological.

The average adult checks their phone 96 to 144 times a day.

Young adults, it's 150 to 190 times today.

This tiny device meant to serve us now shapes us.

Neurologists tell us constant stimulus retrains the brain to crave distraction over depth, speed over stillness.

Jonathan Haidt, in his landmark book, The Anxious Generation, calls 2010 to 2015 the great rewiring.

During that period, anxiety and depression doubled among teens.

In person time with friends dropped 30 to 40 percent.

We've become the most connected people in history and the loneliness.

And all of this is before the next great technological leap and revolution which we're in, which is AI, which we're adopting faster than any other technology in human history.

Life is sped up and our souls can't keep up.

Life has sped up, hasn't it?

And every year, doesn't it feel like it gets faster?

And our souls can't keep up.

How do you catch your breath in a world that is running at right next speed?

And what if what if what your soul desperately needs is closer than you realize?

This season is an amazing season, by the way.

I gotta clean these.

God's presence with us, God stepping into our mess, not God against us, not God apathetic towards us, not God distant or aloof.

No, God is with us.

Think about this incredible reality.

God is always, already present with you.

God is already, right now in this moment, wherever you go, already, always present with you.

The question.

See, we celebrate it at this time.

The question isn't how do I get more of God?

The question is, are we present with Him?

Am I present with Him?

You see, the longing for your soul, the antidote for hurry, anxiety, and loneliness is actually found in eight words.

In fact, the series is one sentence, three weeks, one sentence, eight words.

We'll go some other places as well, but it's just these eight words.

Psalm 46, 10 says this.

Would you read it out loud with me?

Be still and know that I am God.

That's it.

It's as simple and difficult as that.

Be still and know.

Like what your soul longs for, what your soul needs in our technology, rapid, high speed life.

Be still.

And know that I am God.

Be still is the Hebrew word Rafi.

It means to put an end to a state or activity.

I love this.

To sink down.

Relax into.

Another way you could read this verse is relax.

Relax into the presence of God.

Relax, sink deep, and know personally who God is.

The soul was made to rest in God, like a tree, rest in the soil, like a child, rest in her mother's arms.

You were designed, you were made for the presence of God.

What your soul hungers is his presence.

And yet we satisfy and satiate it with so many other things that never fulfill us and keep us wanting.

And no.

That's the Hebrew word yada.

It's this deep, intimate, personal understanding, not just factual knowledge, it's knowledge by way of experience.

B still addresses the hurry.

This knowledge, as we'll look at next week, addresses anxiety that we're experiencing.

The invitation isn't just to know about God, know facts about God, it's to know him personally, intimately, profoundly, in a way that shapes your daily life.

And then I am God.

In Psalm 46, this word God is the Hebrew word Elohim, but it also uses his personal covenant name, Yahweh.

Elohim is the supernatural being who originate and rules over the universe.

God's creative activity.

And Yahweh is his personal covenant name, his faithful active presence.

This addresses the issue of loneliness.

Being still puts us in our proper place in the presence of God, which means he is God and I am not.

I am not in control.

I do not hold the universe together, but he's got it, doesn't he?

So I don't have to.

He is all powerful, all-wise, all-knowing, all good.

God is faithful, active, and present in my life.

Anxiety, loneliness found in eight words, be still and know that I am God.

This is how I came to hear this phrase, and it just profoundly began to resonate with my soul of like, okay, this is this is what my soul needs.

We must learn to be present to the presence, our Heavenly Father, in the present.

We must learn in our day and age, we must learn, it's something that we have to take an action of learning, to be present with the presence in the presence.

In fact, Brother Lawrence says it this way the most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God.

That means finding constant pleasure in his divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.

In fact, spiritual formation isn't getting more of God.

You ever prayed those prayers?

God, I just I need more of you.

And I get what we're saying about, but you can't get more of him because he's given himself fully already to you.

It's becoming more aware of the God who's already with you.

It's learning to be present to the ever-present one in this present moment.

Now, if this, Ryan, is the antidote to hurry, anxiety, and loneliness, why do we still struggle with loneliness with stillness?

If this is it, if it's this simple.

In fact, Dallas Willard, the great uh philosopher, he wrote, hurry is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life in our day.

You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.

And many of you know this quote because this guy, John Mark Colmer, wrote a book based on this quote, the ruthless elimination of hurry.

Yeah, you've heard, you've heard it, haven't you?

It's a bestseller.

It was a bestseller, and here's the funny part is we're still struggling with hurry.

We underlie things, and yet we still struggle to put them into our daily practice.

Let me talk and give a few reasons why we struggle to put them in our practice.

The first, oh, this is so um, yeah, it is what it is.

It's on the nose.

Being boring is uh being still is boring.

We are losing the ability not only to embrace boredom, but to value it.

Today, boredom is bad, isn't it?

In the pre-digital era, we were bored all the time, by the way.

Car rides, we did not have phones or tablets or movies or anything else.

You just stared out the window and annoyingly asked your parents, are we there yet every six minutes?

TV, you only had 11 channels, and if you missed your show, you missed it.

There was no on-demand summer days, by the way, you were just sent outside to play.

Your parents had no idea where you were, by the way.

My dad used to say this: boredom is the pathway to creativity.

I hated that as a kid, but there's truth to it.

When you have nothing to do, you start to get creative, you notice things you didn't notice before, you have space to actually think.

Boredom is not bad, and by the way, boredom is not unproductive.

Psychologists tell us that when the mind stops receiving stimulus, it shifts into reflection mode.

The very space where prayer, listening, and clarity are born.

Boredom is the doorway to attention, and attention is the front door to the presence of God.

Boredom is the doorway to attention, and attention is the front door to the presence of God.

In Scripture, God meets people in silence, in the waiting, in the space, in the stillness, in the places we now avoid.

In the age we're always on, we need to intentionally embrace boredom for the sake of our minds, our hearts, our souls.

And as parents, we gotta be okay with having our kids be bored and drive us nuts for a little bit.

It's actually good for them.

First reason we struggle with being still is being still is boring.

Secondly, being still is hard.

Boring is hard.

Distraction is our default, isn't it?

We have elevated productivity, and so we interpret uh being still as unproductive, don't we?

We must always be active, always going, always on.

The world is discipling us into distraction, fragmentation, and speed.

So listen to that.

The world is discipling you, training you on me, cultivating distraction, fragmentation, and speed.

Uh this week Spotify released their unwrapped, uh, Spotify Unwrapped.

It's where you give a rundown of what you listened to all year.

How many minutes did you listen?

The top podcasts, top albums, number one songs, and more.

Here's mine, by the way.

Um I listened to 41,311 minutes.

That's 28 days of listening, by the way.

Uh, some of you have less, some of you have more, okay.

Uh my top albums, we must respond, Bethel, Evolve, Imagine Dragons.

My wife's like, that was a shocker.

I'm like, it's my workout music, okay?

Uh Sob Rock, John Mayer, which I'm a big John Mayer fan, Move of God, Top Artist, Bethel, John Mayer, Coldplay, Justin Bieber, Imagine Dragons.

All of us got this this week that are on Spotify.

And if you're on social media on Instagram, everyone was posting it.

And how many minutes and what was your musical age?

Mine was 28, my wife was 24.

Um, yeah, we're still hip with it.

Okay.

Now, can you imagine if Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube didn't unwrap?

How many minutes did you spend?

What was the most viewed videos?

The world is dis disciplining us in distraction, fragmentation, and speed.

Jesus invites us into a different way.

Stillness, wholeness, presence.

It's what your soul is craving.

Richard Foster, in his uh just classic, The Celebration of Discipline, writes this the biggest The biggest problem we have today is distraction.

He is writing this in 1998, by the way.

The biggest problem we have today is distraction.

People are just consumed with muchness and manyness.

God will let us be distracted if that's what we choose.

If we want to be attentive and present, there is no way.

Being still is hard.

Listen, you have a lot to do.

You have demands, you have pressures, you have people that need you.

Being still, we are to be still not because there's nothing to do, or because you've completed all your tasks.

They just didn't make the cut this year, but I do love you too.

Um, my buddy Brian does not, so I don't play it as much anymore.

Okay, that's another story for another time.

Being still, listen to this.

Be still, not because there's nothing to do.

There is always more to do.

Be still, not because you completed all your tasks.

Be still precisely because there is too much to do.

There is more than you are able to accomplish.

Stillness is an act of trust, a declaration that he is God and you are not, and he holds the whole world in his hands, and you do not, and he will take care of you.

We still know that I'm God.

Being still is born, being still is hard, being still takes practice, by the way.

It will feel unnatural at first, awkward, slow, a waste.

At the beginning, it will even be difficult.

Feel unproductive.

There won't be any massive insight, probably.

You're often just fighting to quiet your soul while your mind jumps from worries to do's to take times to get like your mind still.

It's honestly a lot like working out.

Where in the beginning you're just sore.

But as you stick with it, you begin to experience the fruit of it.

That's why we created those presence kits.

We had handed them out last week, and we're creating a rhythm of just daily being still.

If you didn't get one, we have a few left in the back, uh, but we do have a card, and we want you to just take it daily.

I'll talk more about it, but we want you just daily or texting out a verse.

You can uh sign up for that, uh verse in the morning, just to be still and to be present, to just begin to put this into practice.

We must learn to be present to the present in the present.

Um, in college, I had this um heard about people that were like, you know, practicing silence and solitude.

And already in college, like my soul's hungering for this, right?

Just realizing the pace and the pressure.

Um and so I I you know go like, okay, I'm going to I'm gonna do an hour of silence and solitude.

And I get excited, I'm like, I'm gonna do an hour, I'm gonna start doing an hour every day.

This is awesome, right?

I'm like, and and there's a little of this like college-age pride, and then I'm like, I'm an amazing Christian, and you know, look at me, I'm doing an hour of silence and solitude.

I sit down, and I felt like an hour, but only five minutes at the past.

I made it to like seven minutes.

And Larry Dunn's a pastor at the church that uh I attended, he's one of the kindest, most godly guys.

Um, and I remember uh sitting down and just sharing my heart, like, Larry, I want to do this, and um like I couldn't even make it like ten minutes.

And he said, Ryan, Ryan.

Trying to be still and silent for an hour is like trying to run a marathon without training.

Like you just can't do it.

Like being still takes practice.

Why don't you just start with five minutes?

Why don't you just start with ten minutes?

And as your soul settles into the rhythm, you'll begin to crave and desire more time with God.

Build it slowly that way.

In fact, that's what many of us need.

We have this ideal of what should be.

Start in the real.

Being still is boring, being still, you know, is hard, being still takes process, just take five minutes, ten minutes.

And here's, I think, the number one reason why we struggle with being still.

Being still is a soul reveal.

It's in the silence when you can finally hear what's really going on inside inside of you.

Silence finally gives space for the soul to speak.

Silence exposes what noise covers up, doesn't it?

We live noisy lives so we don't have to deal with what's going on.

We use noise, we use scrolling, we use hurry to avoid grief, fear, insecurity, past wounds, loneliness, conviction.

If we just stay busy enough, we can escape it.

There's this, I remember talking to a firefighter years ago.

And he was talking about what they do when they step onto the scene.

And, you know, you step onto a chaotic scene, maybe it's an accident, maybe it's a fire.

Um what they do is counterintuitive because what I would think is the minute you step onto the scene, you rush to where you see the greatest need, you hear the loudest cry, and you address the biggest problem.

Like that's what you should do.

And what he tells me is they do something called a size up.

Sometimes they call it a 360 size up.

Before they rush into the scene, uh they stand often in front of their engine or just on the scene and they size up the scene.

Because what he told me, he said, Ryan, because sometimes the loudest cry isn't the biggest need.

Because the one who's silent that can't cry is in more need than the one who can at times.

And so they take a moment to size up, to evaluate, to survey, to see the scene, and then after sizing up, then they begin to move in.

Being still is a soul to size up, and the noise of our world and all the pressures and demands.

The minute we're still, it begins to help us see what's actually going on inside of us.

And it can be hard at times, and there's times where we resist it, but it is the place where God wants to speak to you, and where He wants to bring healing and wholeness to you.

That all the noise around you is drowning out the voice of God?

Well, how do we embrace stillness in an age of distraction?

In fact, I'm gonna lead us into a place of stillness.

I want to give you just three steps to the stillness, and then I'm I'm asking, I'm pleading, I'm begging, I'm desperate here, that we would do this daily as a church.

Daily, not not like I'm like just the the dose.

So I'll give you a daily practice, a daily rhythm, ten minutes out of your day.

You can give ten minutes to God to being still in his presence.

You can.

You're gonna choose the time.

I'm not saying when, I'm an early morning person, but do it daily.

All right.

Three steps to stillness, and then I'll just give the daily practice.

First, simple, simply physical stillness.

Physical stillness.

Find a quiet place, no tech distractions.

It can be on the couch, it can be in the car, it can be in the bedroom.

If you've got small little kids, it's probably when they're asleep.

One of the places that I I love as far as stillness is just I have this little table, it's a kitchenette table, and in the morning, it's my space.

That's it.

And every other time it's it's not a good space, it's not quiet, but I have just a space of stillness.

Some of you, you can do this in a coffee shop.

Some of you can.

You can do it in nature.

Just find a quiet space, make it easy.

Turn a place that's every day into a sacred place in your home or your car.

Physical stillness.

And as you get physically still, then move to mental stillness.

I keep with me just a little um journal in my to-do list.

Because chances are the minute you start to get still, your mind starts to race to your to-do list and things you have to do, and I just write them down.

I set it aside, and I know I won't forget it, and then I go back, and then you have these distracting thoughts, and then you just address it, and I'm gonna push through.

So we move from physical still where we just need to get our body still, address the mental clutter, mental stillness, and then move to emotional stillness, because that's when the soul begins to speak.

Those things begin to bubble up, and you begin to hand over to God your fears, your hurts, your unforgiveness.

You hand over self-righteousness or things that have made you angry, anything that you're holding on.

You just begin to bring them to God in his presence, and you make this a daily practice.

It looks something like this.

Simple first.

Stop the scroll.

Just stop the scroll.

You can, by the way.

The way I do it often is I keep the phone in a different room because this has discipled me really well.

I'll just grab it and I'm like, oh my goodness, I have to check my email.

Oh, I have to check my bank account.

Oh, I have to check the calendar.

Oh, I have to check Instagram.

I got to Instagram last because it's probably what I checked first, and I was too ashamed to say that first.

First, stop the scroll.

You can put your phone or device on, do not disturb.

Second, find a space of peace.

That's that physical stillness.

In your box, you have a candle.

If you didn't get a box, you can get a candle.

Often saints throughout history have lit a candle.

I don't know if I can light this thing.

There we go.

Just as a visual reminder of the presence of God.

That God is already, always present with you.

And it can take an ordinary moment in an ordinary space, and you welcome the presence of God, and it moves it into a sacred space.

It can take that little kitchen table or the couch or your bedroom or your car or just that quiet moment at your office in your cubicle.

And it just takes that moment and it just accuse the soul of like, no, this is a space of peace.

And then this is very very practical.

Set a timer for ten minutes.

And you just set it for ten minutes, and you turn your attention to God.

We are texting out scripture.

Be still and know that I'm God.

And you invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you.

Can we do that this morning?

Not just talk about being still, but have a moment.

A sacred space of peace.

We're going to take the next several minutes and I'm going to let your soul settle in.

And then we're going to continue in worship.

And as we do, each Sunday, we're going to partake in communion to remind ourselves of God with us, God for us, his presence.

In this moment, the God of the universe longs to be with you.

Longs to hear from you.

Longs to speak to you.

Take that deep breath again.

Can even put your hands on your lap with your hands faced open as a posture of reception.

Opens.

Relax into the presence of God.

Commanding your soul, be still.

Identify those anxious thoughts, the words and know that He is God.

All powerful.

Always.

All God.

All God.

He holds the universe together.

Always present us.

Be still, my soul.

Be still.

Relax.

Jesus, we want to know you.

We want to know you personally.

You've got us.

So as we continue, would you quiet us with your love?

Jesus' name.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.