Navigating Normal: On Empty | Part 2

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.

I have a bad habit.

I probably have more than one, but let me just tell you one of them.

One of my bad habits is I drive my car uh until it's empty and beyond.

Anyone else do that?

Yes, yes.

Thank you, fellow brothers and sisters, right there.

My wife hates this.

You know, she's it stresses her out.

It is like, but there's just something in me, and I don't know.

I don't know if it's the challenge of it.

Because there's that challenge, like, how far can I go on empty?

Like back in the day, it used to be like a real guessing game.

Remember this, some of you?

Like your car didn't tell you exactly how many miles you had, it just went empty, and you had to guess how much farther can I go?

It's kind of exciting.

I liked it, you know, not gonna lie, you're like, woo! Now it tells you the miles, like we were driving up from Los Angeles uh yesterday to uh home today, and there was like a five-mile gap on my uh computer dashboard in the car saying between you know uh our distance and you know how much gas.

I'm like, honey, can we go all the way?

And she's like, no.

Um, and we didn't.

We stopped and got gas and um we're happily married, and that's how that works.

I don't know if it's the challenge of it, sometimes it's just the time of it.

And we you find this right?

Uh like you're just so busy, and you see the gas light goes on, and you're like, oh man, I need to do that, and you forget, and you hop in the car and you drive somewhere else, and you're like, oh, I totally forgot about it, and so you you just we run so fast.

Um and then I think the truth of it is there's something in me that okay, how do I say this?

That our gaslight lies to us.

Okay, you know, you've been there because it goes on and it says it's empty.

It ain't empty though.

You got a good 30 or 40 miles left in the tank, but you're telling me it's empty.

Just tell me the truth sometime, all right?

When it's e I want to know, oh yeah, I gotta really run and go get it.

Now the truth is 99.9% of the time it's absolutely fine.

It works out just fine.

I end up, you know, where I need to go on fine.

It works out, except except in emergency, except when life hits, except when, you know, you just begin to get caught up and you realize you really need to get there, and you realize, oh, I'm on empty.

I remember when I was in high school, it's pretty fun to tell these stories with my parents in the room.

I remember when I was on high school and I was coming home late, I think it was about midnight, and I was getting off, uh, for those who know 41st Avenue, and I was getting off 41st Avenue, taking a left, and as over the overpass, and I was, I didn't calculate my gas well.

And this was obviously pre-days of the digital mileage on there.

And I get up on the just up, driving up over the overpass, and then all of a sudden, go, go, go, go, and it stops.

Say a quick prayer, and I look in my rearview mirror, and an angel of the Lord shone a bright light on a gas station right behind me.

No, it was just the gas station light, it was them, but it felt angelic in that moment.

And no lie, I did this, it was a stick shift, I pop it out, and I just coasted backwards all the way in, made it all the way in and pumped gas that way.

Now, the reality is for much of this, it hasn't impacted anybody else until my daughter started driving.

And now it's impacting her, and she'll go, Dad! She'll be running to school or need to run an errand, and my tanks on E.

And I was like, Well, now it's not only impacting me, it's impacting her.

And Silicon Valley, we run hard, don't we?

We run fast.

Many of us are running on fumes.

Many of us are running on empty.

And the truth is, often it feels like we can get away with it.

We can get by, right?

We we can just make it until an emergency hits, until a pandemic hits, until a family crisis or health issue, and then you realize you do not have the emotional gas in the tank to navigate the circumstances that you're in.

Most of us find ourselves today.

And we often think that we can do this and it's not hurting or impacting anybody.

But the truth is, when we run on fumes, it impacts those closest to us.

Our friends, our family, our coworkers.

What do you do when you're running on empty?

Like, what do you really do when you're on E?

Maybe said a different way.

How do we respond when depression knocks at our door?

And we're gonna talk more about that next week.

And here's what's amazing: how does God meet us in our weariness?

And the answer is surprisingly good.

Last week we kicked off this series, Navigating Normal.

How do we navigate the normal we now find ourselves in?

It's not the normal we wanted, and it's not back to normal that we had, but it's the normal we now find ourselves in.

And nobody prepared us for a pandemic, and really, truly, no one's taught us how to navigate the world we find ourselves in.

And to compound problems is this.

We've been told over and over again we are living in unprecedented times, and so there is no roadmap to navigate these times.

That is a lie.

These are not unprecedented times.

They're new to you, and they're new to me.

We haven't navigated them, but many people throughout history and God's word have navigated such days as these.

And so we're studying the life of the prophet Elijah and when he lived in days that were not too dissimilar to the days we're living in, and how do we navigate the normal we now find ourselves in?

Now, last week I did a full kind of background history lesson on who is Elijah, what he was going through.

I'd encourage you, go back and listen to that to catch up to if you need to know who he is.

We find his story is specifically what we're teaching is in 1 Kings chapter 18 and 19.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

Elijah was a prophet of God who lived in the 9th century BC.

He lived in very politically corrupt times.

There was a king who was one of the most evil kings of Israel, King Ahab, and a queen that was even worse than him, Queen Jezebel.

And he lived in political corruption.

There was spiritual and moral decay.

Israel, which was to be a nation under God Yahweh, had then deserted God and followed Bael.

And I can you can go back and listen to all of the pain and heartache that that caused.

Then a severe persecution broke out.

Anyone who was follower of Yahweh, specifically prophets, were killed, and then a national crisis at the same time.

This is the landscape that of the prophet Elijah is then to bring about a spiritual and a social renewal.

And in 1 Kings chapter 18, we see this incredible showdown on Mount Carmel, where Elijah confronts the prophets and the powers of Baal and the king.

1 Kings 18 · chapter mention

He's standing on this mountaintop with 450 prophets of Baal, 400 prophetess, a priest of Ashrah, and he's standing alone.

And he says, Whichever God responds by fire is the one true God.

And there's this incredible showdown.

I encourage you to go listen to it.

And eventually, uh, when Elijah prays to his God, his God Yahweh responds by fire.

And he started the day standing alone against 850 of the prophets and priests of Baal and Asherah and the king and all the people gathered.

And he ended his day.

The king now standing alone.

And all the people were beginning to experience a spiritual national revival.

And then something happens.

Something that you don't expect a spiritual giant to experience.

Certainly not someone who's godly, a hero that we put on a pedestal.

He just faced an army, if you will.

And then the queen, the queen Jezebel, threatens his life, and the text says, and Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

And this is where we pick up the story, and this is where we discover what do we do when we're running on empty.

If you have your Bible, would you open to 1 Kings chapter 19, verse 3?

1 Kings 19:3

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life.

When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness.

He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.

That's not kind of what you would expect from someone who just had the greatest spiritual victory of his life, so the greatest demonstration of the hand and power of his God.

And now he's just saying, Take me, Lord.

I'm done with it.

One threat pushed him over the edge.

Notice what he said.

He said, I've had enough, Lord.

Take my life.

I'm no better than my ancestors.

Then he laid down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, Get up and eat.

He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water.

He ate and drank, and then he laid down again.

The angel of the Lord came back a second time, touched him, and said, Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.

So he got up and ate and drank, strengthened by the food.

He traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horab, the mountain of God.

Horeb or Mount Sinai.

This was the mountain where Moses was up for forty days and forty nights, receiving the law of God.

This was the mountain where God showed up to Moses, and he now wandered onto the mountain of God.

And there he went into a cave and spent the night.

In fact, next week we'll pick up there the story, the sermon titles, Into the Cave.

We're going to talk about depression and anxiety, and I'll share more personally about my own personal 18-month deep dark journey with depression.

Today, let's talk about when we're running on empty.

What do you do when you're running on empty?

And how do you actually know you're empty?

How do you know you're on E?

How do you know, like, what is the warning sign?

Is there something that gives you 30 miles in advance before you actually run out of gas to know, you know what?

I'm heading that direction.

Is there the check engine light of your soul to be able to say, hey, guess what?

You need to pay attention to this, otherwise you're going to run dry or break down.

In the text, we actually see three warning signs of running on empty, three check engine lights, if you will.

The first is simply this when your feelings start to drive your decisions.

When your feelings start to drive your decisions, Elijah was afraid and he ran.

When we're afraid, when we're uh anxious, when we're under chronic stress, our natural response, our biological response is fight, flight, or freeze.

And he runs.

But he got, you're like, but it doesn't make sense.

One person, he stood up to 850.

Logically, you have God on your side.

What happened?

He got, he was on empty, and now he began to react to his feelings of fear rather than seeing what God had done in his past.

When your feelings start to drive your decisions.

For some, you may not identify with the word feelings.

Would you just put this word there?

Desires.

When your desires, your impulses start to drive your decision making, and you're just going, like, I just crave that, I just need that, I just want that.

And that's the way you start to make decisions.

You know, uh, my wife, um, she is the most even killed, um, up person, like always, I almost always in a good mood person.

Like, she's the best person to hang out with, the best person to be around.

It's awesome.

I I'm the this person, right?

So I'm kind of moody broody, but it also means, I know, um, it also means I'm I really know how I feel.

Because I like journal and I write out my feelings, and probably too much so, let's be honest.

Um, I can like come up a little bit.

But her personality, she's not even just kind of aware how she feels.

Sometimes it isn't until some physical ailments like from stress or stuff comes up.

It's like, no, I think I'm stressed.

I'm like, I always know I'm stressed.

I love how Chris Hodges says it, and I encourage you to do this.

Pay attention to your emotions, appetite, sleep patterns, and exercise habits.

Write down your feelings each day.

You're like, oh boy, I'd have to like ask what am I feeling?

Describe as honestly as possible what's going on inside you.

Begin to become aware.

See, uh, there's this idea uh in psychology of cognitive distortions that when we're under stress, we begin to have these distortions.

One of them is emotional.

It's I feel, therefore, it must be true.

You ever been there?

I feel this, therefore it must be true.

And so your feelings begin to determine reality.

Feelings are a great indicator of how you're doing, they're a terrible indicator of what's real and true around you.

And we begin to make decisions based on our feelings.

Dr.

Amy Cuddy said it this way, trying to help explain what everybody else is, we're all going through.

She called it the um the pandemic flux syndrome.

If you're feeling anxious, depressed, unsettled, like you need to make a major life uh decision or move, you're probably experiencing the pandemic flux syndrome where your feelings are driving your decisions there.

It's our desire to regain control in some way and so make some major decision to feel like we're in control when we're feeling completely out of control.

First warning sign.

The warning sign, feelings or desires drive your decisions.

Second one is when you retreat from community into isolation.

When you retreat from community into isolation.

And the last 18 months had us move and socially distance, and we naturally were isolated, and it was violating to our soul in so many ways.

And we there's times where we needed it, but we also needed to lean into connections, whether it was online or in person.

Notice that he left his servant, went a day's journey into the wilderness.

Many commentators believe he just was giving up on ministry.

Like when the leader of a revival saw revival start to break out, he got so discouraged, so depressed, he just ran away.

It was too much for him.

And began to isolate.

Isolation and solitude are two different things.

Solitude is uh reconnects us to God.

It's it's one of his gifts.

Isolation disconnects us from God and others.

Uh, isolation depletes the soul, whereas solitude actually is a gift of God that recharges the soul.

Isolation is a tool in the hand of the enemy to keep you stuck where you're at.

Uh one writer said it this way: solitude is chosen separateness, separation for refining of your soul.

Okay.

Uh isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

When you retreat from community, when you push yourself away from friends, and you step into isolation away.

That's a warning sign.

Have you pushed significant or key people away?

Second or third warning sign, rather, is when you lose perspective, passion, and purpose.

Notice Elijah, he prayed, May I might die.

I've had enough.

Any of you prayed that prayer?

I've had enough.

I'm tired, I'm done.

Take my life, and then he compares, right?

This is what we do when we lose perspective and our passion.

We begin to compare and look around.

And Instagram's great for that because then we just look around at everybody's, you know, filtered lives, and our unfiltered soul is compared to that, and we just feel like failures, and we lose perspective.

We lose our passion for what God's called us, we lose sight of our purpose.

Well, how do we know we've lost perspective?

Um, I was reaching out to one of our psychologists uh counselors in our church, getting their expert opinion on this, and one of them sent me the list of cognitive distortions.

Let me just read a few of these because you'll you'll hear Elijah and what he's going through, and chances are you'll be able to identify yourself as well.

The all-or-nothing thinking.

You see things in black and white categories.

If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

It's your perspective loss.

Overgeneralization, you see a single negative vent as never-ending pattern of defeat.

Mental filter.

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like a drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

You think that happened to Elijah?

Disqualifying the positive.

You reject positive experiences by insisting they don't count for some reason or other.

You maintain negative beliefs that is contradicted by your everyday experience.

You can go through these, but when you lose perspective, you lose your passion or purpose, these are warning signs to say, hey, you got about 30 miles.

You need to pay attention, you need to fill up the tank.

Now, here's the good news.

I said it last week, I'll say it this week.

Maybe every week.

You're not broken.

You're not broken.

Are you running on empty?

Are you tired?

Are you weary?

See, the thought that we have and we think was like, no, no, no, I'm broken and I'm I'm hopelessly lost and I'm a failure.

No, no, no.

Let me just help you out.

You're normal.

You're normal.

We're in this boat together, and there is hope.

What do you do when you're running on empty?

Let me give you a principle and then a practice.

The principle is this you are not a human doing, but a human being.

You are not a human doing.

And we identify our lives by what we do.

My approval is based on what I accomplish.

I am only as good as my last success.

My doing, what you say of me, what you think of me, and how you esteem me.

And we live our lives finding our identity on our doings.

You are not a human doing, you are a human being.

Back, Reddits last week, my favorite verse about Elijah found in James.

And Elijah was uh help me out.

Human being.

By the way, he did way better than the first service last time.

I had to have him do it.

We'll do it again, anyways, because uh you got more.

But that was well done.

Elijah was a human being, just like you and me.

See, we subtly think and put people on pedestals and heroes of the faith or leaders and say, they never struggled with this.

And if you really love God, you would never run on empty.

And if you really walked with Jesus, and the reality is, is Elijah, one of the great prophets, he ran on empty.

And I love that this is in scripture for us that we can draw from and learn from.

You know what Wayne Codero in his book Leading on Empty said?

He said, We don't.

Forget we are Christians, we forget that we are human.

And that one oversight alone can debilitate the potential of our future.

Dr.

Stephen Fiardi, oh boy, sorry, Steve, wrote The Depression Cure, says this we were never designed for the sedentary, socially isolated, sleep-deprived, poorly nourished, indoor, frenetic pace of modern American life.

And that was written before the pandemic.

You're not a human doing, you're a human being, you're not a machine.

You can't just keep going and going and going.

Now here's what we know about machines.

Isn't this crazy?

We know for my iPhone to work, we gotta plug it in and charge it.

And you do this habitually, consistently, religiously, because to live without this, oh, it just wouldn't be living, would it?

And to not charge this, this is now just a glorified paperweight.

Why do we do this so consistently, but we don't do it here?

How did this become more important than here?

See, we just missed it along the way.

We get caught up in the rap race, we get caught up in the pace, and our souls suffer along the way.

We know that our car needs to be filled up with gas, and yet we forget that our souls do as well.

And so, if the principle is you're not a human doing, but a human being, the practice then is to accept your limitations and God's invitation to rest.

How did God respond to Elijah?

I love this by the way.

How did he respond?

This is so good.

He didn't respond with shame, he responded by serving him.

Did you notice that?

Elijah, think about.

I mean, just if you were wanting a spiritual national renewal and revival to take place, you chose Elijah.

He had this great moment of leadership, and then when he's set to kind of lead people in this renewal, he deserts them, he flees, he gives up on ministry, basically says, I want to die.

Like, no, man.

And God doesn't come to him and go, you screw up.

What were you thinking?

What's wrong with you?

Don't you remember what I had done and how I'd work?

How could you fold under that one threat?

No, that's not what God does, but that's what we do to ourselves, right?

It's the self-talk that keeps many of us captive and breaks us down, living under shame and guilt.

God shows up.

Instead of shame, he serves.

Elijah collapses under this broom tree.

It's like anywhere from six to twelve foot tall, very slender, just kind of just enough shade that you might be able to be covered from the sun.

And he sleeps.

And God lets him sleep.

Because you know what?

The most spiritual thing for Elijah to do in that moment was to sleep.

He needed rest.

And then, not a lecture.

You know, God even got into the bread-making thing in the pandemic.

And water, and he eats, he serves them and nourishes his physical body, and he goes back to sleep, and then he does it again.

And you know what he said is so good.

Take this and eat, for the journey is long.

Some of us want a quick fix, and you're coming and you're hearing, and you want a really quick fix of God, just deposit it, boost, man.

If I can get one of those like superchargers that I just hit it, and in my phone is completely recharged, and boom, that's what I want with my soul.

And I, friends, I gotta tell you, if you're depleted and empty, the journey is longer than you think.

In fact, we're gonna talk more in depth about that next week with anxiety and depression.

He says, I'm gonna walk with you through this, I'm gonna supply what you need in this, and I'm gonna serve your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

And so the practice is we have to accept our limitations and God's invitation to rest.

You're limited.

I'm limited.

We can't do it all.

We have a limited amount of time.

We need to accept our limitations and begin to step into the rhythms God ordained throughout history and time and even in creation for us to rest that in our day and age we violate because we live at this breakneck technological speed.

Um, when I was a 20-year-old, I went on this pastor's retreat, and I got to hear uh Rick Warren speak.

He's the author of Your Purpose Driven Life and the Purpose Driven Church.

And uh I remember, you know, he said one line along if you if you find if we find ourselves burning the candle at both ends, we may not be as bright as we think.

I'm like, well, that hurt, thank you very much.

And true.

And then he gave these three things.

He said, here's three areas of rhythms to embrace that honestly, honestly, we do sporadically, that we need to embrace systematically.

We need to carve them out in our calendar and set them aside.

You can't afford not to.

And the first one was he said, we need to divert daily, divert daily.

You know, it said of Jesus that he often withdrew to lonely places to be with God.

It says that he got up very early in the morning.

See, you need a set-aside time of silence and solitude, what we used to call back in the day a quiet time.

Now that's just what we do to kids when they're in trouble.

That settles our soul, recenters our heart, and gets our focus onto Jesus.

Where you say, and here's the challenge: get 30 minutes a day.

That literally just means wake up 30 minutes earlier than you already are, get a nice cup of coffee, find a spot, maybe it's a couch, maybe it's a chair, maybe it's you know on your deck, and you get into God's word and you pray and you talk to him.

If Jesus needed to do this on the regular, I think we need to do this.

Divert daily.

By the way, pay attention to beginnings and endings.

How you start the day and how you end the day.

I remember uh Rick Warren when he was talking about this, he said, if you work with your hands, you often tend to rest or play with your mind.

And if you work with your mind, you often tend to need to rest or play with your hands.

And so, like being for me, like playing basketball, or when my kids were little, actually, no, the boys still do this.

We we get a wrestle, you know, and uh some of those sorts, they're so refreshing.

And and I just want a full full confession.

I'm preaching to myself right now.

I don't have this all figured out, and this is the Spirit of God convicting and teaching me as I'm teaching you.

Because honestly, you know the way I like to fall asleep?

I like to fall asleep to watching beep Bobby Flay, and then I wake up at about 1 a.m.

and I like unplug the TV because I can't find the remote, you know.

So you gotta divert daily.

This rhythm of diverting daily, settling your soul.

Spend time with him, set it aside 30 minutes, and then retreat weekly.

He went on and say, retreat weekly.

And right next to retreat, I want you to write down the word Sabbath.

Sabbath.

Sabbath literally means to stop and delight.

It means to stop, it means to cease work, to cease striving, and to delight in all the goodness that God is and has provided.

See, Sabbath, it's actually one of the Ten Commandments.

Uh, we we forget this, and it's reiterated when they're going into the promised land to stop and cease.

It set Israel apart from all the worships of the other gods that said, you have to strive continuously, you have to do more, do more, do more.

And God says, no, no, no, I'll do more when you stop.

See, Sabbath is an act of faith, trusting that God works when we aren't working.

It's actually found in the very fabric of creation.

God said he created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day he rested, or he stopped, or rather, he delighted in what he made.

And God says, this is the order of life that you would stop, that you would stop, that you would take a 24-hour period and that you would stop, and you would stop working, you would take your phone.

Oh, this is gonna get hard, you would stop this stuff, you would stop text, you would stop social media, just take one day.

You go, Ryan, my job, you have no idea.

Um, I'm a CPA and I'm pretty important, and it's nonstop.

You don't understand the valley.

There's tons of studies out there, by the way, when it talks about uh your effectiveness and productivity.

And studies tell us, by the way, that after 50 hours of work in a week, your effectiveness and productivity goes immensely down.

And as you work more hours, you actually are working more inefficiently and ineffectively.

And if you set aside 50 hours and you stop and rest, you'll be a better worker for your company, you'll be more productive and more alive, and people are gonna go, well, I need more of what you have.

But it takes faith to do that.

And you delight.

You delight in God.

You maybe have an extra long time with Him.

You get out in nature.

Sunday's a great day for many of you to do it.

It's my workday, I can't do that, but you can do that.

Where you come and you get to be in the presence of God with the people of God.

You delight in a great meal.

If your sushi's your thing, have sushi.

If it's a steak and potatoes, have steak and potatoes.

Open a nice bottle of wine, delight and tell stories of what God's doing.

Delight in nature.

See, it's this day of refreshing and renewal, and that rhythm impacts and changes our lives and begins to fill our soul.

So he said, divert daily, retreat weekly, and then thirdly, he said, abandon yearly, where there's a break in your year where you just take off to truly recharge your soul and your heart and your mind.

And most of the time we take trips or vacations to escape our reality, don't we?

You know, Israel, it had multiple festivals.

These were amazing, by the way.

There were multiple festivals that were filled, all centered around who God was, and you had great meals.

Some of them were camping, you know, a festival of booze, and other ones were, you know, just different environments, but it all centered around family, the season of work and celebration.

Instead, we used to call vacations.

You remember what we used to call vacations?

Holidays.

Any idea where that word comes from?

Holy day.

That a vacation is actually a holy day set apart for the refreshment and renewal of God's people.

And where you don't vacation from God, you vacation with him.

In the presence of God, we said this in uh last series, is the fullness of joy.

He created you for delight.

He created those desires in you, and in him they're found in fulfillment.

And where you'd abandon yearly.

What we do sporadically, we have to embrace systematically.

You have we have to put it on our calendar, mark it off, block it off.

Hey, you know what?

I'm I'm not available from Saturday sundown to Sunday, you know, at 5 p.m.

I don't know what your time is, but you would just outline it and you would hold it.

Trust me, you are going to begin to experience the renewal and replenishing of your soul.

This is the way Jesus said it.

He said, Come to me.

All who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Did you walk in today weary?

Did you walk in burdened?

Then he says, This take my yoke upon you.

The yoke is is the picture.

Every rabbi had a yoke, it was their teachings, it was their way of life that a disciple was learning to follow and walk in.

And it's the picture we all know of the yoke of two oxen being yoked together for work.

And he's literally saying, the work that I have when you're under mine, it's actually easy and light.

For I'm gentle and humble at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

My yoke is easy, my burden is light.

See, rest, renewal, filling your tanks found in Jesus and in the ways of Jesus.

I like how John Mark Comer said it in his uh book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.

He said it this way: if you want the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

He often withdrew to lonely places.

The festivals.

In this moment, would you come to Jesus?

Weary and burdened.

He is your rest and his way is restful.

We're gonna worship and just kind of give you a few questions to ponder.

First one is are you in a season of life?

Or are you caught in a cycle?

You know, when the pandemic started, it was a season, right?

And it quickly became this isn't a season, this is a cycle.

When your kids are small, that's a season.

When when you're running tirelessly, that your kids have every experience they possibly can, you're caught in a cycle.

Is the pace of your life pushing out your peace?

Like you're running so hard.

That what is whatever you're pursuing worth the price of your peace?

You know, a buddy of mine was a part of a startup here, and on the ground floor, one of the first five employees, and it just took off.

And he came to me and he's telling me his process, and he says, You know, Ryan, my position outgrew my peace.

And you know what he did?

He demoted himself, invited a guy that he hired to be over his area because it wasn't worth the price tag of his peace and his family and his relationship with Jesus.

And for some, there's a promotion that outpromoted your peace.

Your pace pushing out the peace of your life.

And finally, what rhythms?

What rhythms do you need to embrace or replace?

And full disclosure that's what I'm wrestling with right now.

Those are the things that I realize are in my soul that I'm not preaching to you, I'm preaching to me.

And actively wrestling, okay, God, there's rhythms in my life and things that you need to replace, and there's new things I need to embrace.

What about you?

Lord Jesus, I pray for my friends right now as we worship.

You would meet them and you would speak to them.

The hurriedness of what's next, you would settle to hear your voice, your tender touch, your loving care, and that we would enter your rest in your ways.

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.comslash card.