Stop and Look: The Year You Finally Slow Down | Passed By | Chad Belew

>> [LAUGH]

>> I think part of the reason this time of year sometimes feels just

exhausting is because it kinda quietly assumes that we're missing

something because of effort.

That we need to try harder, we gotta be better, we gotta fix ourselves.

But lately I've been kinda wondering if it's not,

if that's not actually the problem, like what if we're missing?

What if what we're missing isn't discipline or

trying harder or hustle, but it's just more depth?

Last night, we celebrated my oldest son, Jayden's 21st birthday.

>> [APPLAUSE]

>> Yeah, and I know what you're thinking.

I know you're thinking I realize, that's me guys, that's me.

I realize like you're look at me and you're like, you're not old enough to have a 21 year old.

>> [LAUGH]

>> You laughed so hard, you snorted.

>> [LAUGH]

>> Okay, maybe you're not thinking that.

Never mind, look, I did not have Jayden in high school.

I didn't have him, you know what I mean?

I was at a college, I was in the military, it was married like, I just look young.

I dress young, it's just a fool you.

Anyway, body doesn't think so, that's my little guy.

This is our album cover that we, yeah, we had a country album coming out.

It's Minnie Mee, that's all R.I.P. to the beard.

>> [LAUGH]

>> The last one is us last night in Austin, Jayden's birthday.

You mighty, Jayden, that's Jayden's mom, Bethany.

We're all in Austin celebrating, I have a 21 year old.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> So we were there last night, we were, all of us started at some point,

flipping through our phones and the picture albums.

You ever do that?

One picture leads to another, and another, and suddenly time just kind of collapses,

and you are lost.

I just lost like little Jayden, like seeing what he looked like 20 years ago,

21 years ago, 19 years ago, 8 to 15.

Look at that, there's no way this was 10 years ago.

I remember looking at it, go back to the one where it's Jayden and I standing.

It's our album cover, I think that was five years ago.

He looks so little, like all these memories.

There's a video I was watching.

So Jayden was like, he may have been 12.

Something had happened, they had a day off from school.

He stayed home alone, Marty and I went to work.

And we came back home, and he was so excited.

And he was like, I have to show you what I learned today.

All right, cool.

And he grabbed some pillows that he had brought downstairs and he sets them on the ground,

and I'm like, what is happening?

I should have sent the video.

He stands in the middle of the room, like this, and he just, he's like, all right.

And he does a back flip.

And I was like, what?

We were shocked.

His little brothers, Jackson and Jett, Jett had to have been one, two, one and a half.

He's sitting on the couch, he was talking, so like, yeah, maybe two.

They're sitting on the couch and you can hear in the video, they're like, Jayden, you did

it.

They're so excited.

While Marty and I are like, wait, we were not home and you learned to do this today while

we were gone?

He said, yeah, I put pillows down, I'm like, you could have broken your, what are you doing?

But that was cool.

For the longest time, anywhere we went, I'm like, Jayden, do a back flip, do a back flip,

do it.

He's like, no, dad, come on.

I think I've done it at church, like get on this and do a back flip off.

But just here, like the back flip, I remember that moment.

I remember being there, being scared, being surprised, being like blown away, that my 12

year old taught himself how to do a back flip today, YouTube, you know, you can learn anything.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

I'm going to be a little bit nervous.

There we go.

He did a backflip.

I think crazy part.

Being back there, the memories, the hearing.

I don't remember hearing Jackson and Jett's reaction on the video until last night.

We were watching it.

Jaden was watching.

He was like, "That's the Jett I remember."

I was like, "Oh, I don't know what that means, but he's 11 now."

I was just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, looking at memories.

It was these memories captured in stillness, right?

Just the emotional whiplash of how did we get here so fast?

Like the joy and the grief living in that same space.

He's about to leave.

21 years.

There's something about moments like that.

They don't feel thin.

They feel kind of heavy in a good way.

They don't ask for analysis or anything.

They just ask for presence.

I think that's part of what many of us feel lately.

It's not despair, maybe that's there, but not emptiness, just the quiet realization that life keeps moving.

And sometimes it feels like it moves faster than our ability to stay present in it.

That life keeps happening, and we're not always sure we were fully there for it.

You see a picture and I'm like, "I don't even remember it, but I don't even know if I was fully there."

The song that we sang earlier, Brittany referenced it.

It's a song I go back to over and over and over again.

I'm definitely not some kind of music expert, so I don't even know.

I think the song's good.

To me, I don't know anything about production language or technical terms.

I just know that when something hits me in the chest, it hits me.

Many of you have heard me talk about the song.

I convinced Monty and to play it and sing it this morning.

It's a song meant to live.

It was a song written by John Foreman, who was a lead singer for Switchfoot.

If you've grown up in church, and Switchfoot was a Christian band back in early 2000s.

But I heard it back there, but my favorite artist, John Bellian, he redid the song in 2023.

He redid it, it's got an orchestra as part of it.

I haven't stopped listening to it for the last two years.

My Apple music wrap up.

Here's your favorite song again.

JD and I were texting because we both love John Bellian.

My favorite song was meant to live.

My favorite album was one of John Bellian's albums.

I'm kind of obsessed.

I don't listen to a lot of music.

When I do, I put on a song that I know is just going to hit me.

Half the time when I'm driving to church on Sunday mornings, I put on meant to live.

There's a line in it that stops me every time.

This is wondering why the world has passed him by.

And I'm almost 44 years old now.

I feel that line deep in my soul.

I don't hear it as despair.

I just hear it as like awareness.

Like that moment when you realize something important is happening and I don't want to miss it.

There's another line in the song that says maybe we've been living with our eyes half open.

Maybe we're bent or broken.

Again, to me it doesn't sound like shame.

It just sounds like honesty.

Not broken, not failing, just distracted.

There are moments in life that I think they interrupt this thinness that we live in where

there are moments that they don't announce themselves.

They don't necessarily feel spiritual.

They're just moments that kind of stop you.

Have you ever experienced those?

There were so many, especially like going through all these photos and stuff.

But when I was thinking through a moment that just stopped me, it just happened.

Jet, not the one Jayden remembers, the current one.

Jet, 11 years old, is the kid who go upstairs, play on his iPad, play video games half the time

and disappears.

If you come to the house and you're hanging out with us, especially if you're like newer

at the house and we hear someone running down the stairs, you'll hear Mottie or I go, "Jet,

put on clothes!"

Because he runs down in his underwear, always.

We're like, "Put, Jet, we have guests.

You can't be running around in your underwear."

Always.

Please put on clothes, Jet.

Right, Robert, Robert at the house and we're like, "Jet, put on clothes!"

He's like, "Okay."

The other day he came downstairs, so Mottie and I were working on something and we were

busy.

But he started talking about how he set up the PlayStation 5 in their room, but he set

up a download faster and he was describing it.

We're working, I'm busy.

It was just one of those moments where I think both Mottie and I just kind of stopped and

we were just looking at him.

He's like, "I got it.

I got it set up.

It's downloading faster."

So I did this to the network and then I did this to the PlayStation.

We're just there.

I'm like, "What is he talking about?"

How does he know these words?

And he was so excited.

And I remember just looking at him and being like, "He's brilliant.

He's blowing my mind.

I can maybe figure this out if I YouTube and watch somebody tell me how to do it."

And maybe he did that.

But even as an 11-year-old to figure that out and do it, it's like blowing my mind.

I was just looking at him like, "This kid's brilliant.

He gets that from his mom, but it was just one of those moments that just kind of stopped.

Whatever we were doing didn't matter.

It was kind of like, "Man, look at this kid."

And I think a lot of times, even right in this sermon, looking at these things, it's a reminder

that I miss things.

And it's moments like that.

They don't ask to be explained.

They just ask to be noticed.

We're really good at explaining things.

We can explain emotions neurologically.

We can explain attachment chemically.

We can explain biologically.

We can explain love, harmonally.

And all of that matters, but sometimes explanation becomes a way of escaping the experience.

It's possible to understand something completely, but still miss it entirely.

You can explain a sunset, but never actually see it.

There's an ancient story.

It begins in the middle of an ordinary day.

It's in the book of Exodus.

In Moses, he's out just working.

He's shepherding his flock.

He's working.

He's focused.

He's busy.

Scripture says Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midland.

He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb.

The angel of God appeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of the bush.

He looked.

The bush was blazing away, but it didn't burn up.

Moses said, "What's going on here?

I cannot believe this.

This is amazing.

Why doesn't the bush burn up?"

God saw that he had stopped to look.

God called him from out of the bush.

Moses said, "Yes, I'm right here."

God said, "Don't come any closer.

Remove your sandals from your feet.

You're standing on holy ground."

Moses is working.

He's focused.

He's doing his thing.

But he notices something that doesn't make sense.

There's a bush on fire, but it's not being burnt up.

It is not being consumed.

And the story doesn't say that God shouts at Moses.

It says God saw that he stopped to look.

And that's the moment in a story that everything changes.

Commandments before calling, before purpose, he just stops.

The first thing he hears is an instruction.

God says, "Take off your sandals.

You're standing on holy ground."

Nothing new suddenly appeared.

In fact, if you look at the story, it's interesting as I was reading the story.

It's almost like the bush has always been there, and it's always been on fire.

That's what it seems like.

What is happening?

Hold on.

When I read it, I imagine God being like, "Oh, he stopped, finally."

He did it.

Because God wasn't trying to get his attention.

He was just waiting on him.

And when Moses walked by, it says he stopped, and he looked.

And I think God is reminding him in that moment.

He said, "Take off your sandals.

You are standing on holy ground.

Actually, you're not only in the present, but you are in the present."

And the presence of God in the present.

And the difference, it wasn't God showing up.

It was Moses not letting the moment slip past him.

I think there are moments that happen all around us.

Moments that maybe they feel weighty.

They quiet us.

They ask us not to rush through them.

Not because they're religious, not because they're dramatic.

But because something in us knows like this matters.

And we don't always have the language for it.

So we move on quickly.

Or we distract ourselves, or we explain it away.

Maybe the invitation isn't to explain more.

Maybe it's to notice longer.

There's another moment in Scripture that just feels easy to skip past.

People, they're bringing children to Jesus and the adults in the room.

Very practical, very efficient.

They're like, move things along.

Get out of the way.

We have a mission.

We are busy.

Nobody ever does that to your kids, right?

They're like, there's more important things happening right now.

And Jesus stops everything.

Mark 10 says, people were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them.

But the disciples rebuked them.

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant.

He said to them, let the children come to me and do not hinder them.

For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Truly, I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them, and he blessed them.

Jesus refuses to rush past this moment.

And I think it's a reminder that life unfolding in front of you is not an inconvenience, it is the point.

I don't think what most of us are longing for is answers.

I think it's permission.

Permission to slow down without guilt, permission to trust that some moments are meant to be felt, not solved.

And permission to believe that attention itself might actually matter.

You've had moments like this.

You didn't imagine them, you weren't being unproductive, you weren't behind, you were just present in that moment.

And I told you to close your eyes and I think back to those moments, you could probably remember those moments.

And then there's other moments where you might talk to someone.

Like I had a conversation the other day, someone was telling me about this time that they saw me doing something.

And I forgot what they were even talking about.

But the way they were explaining it, I was like, that seems like a really cool event, like what was happening.

Like you were there.

But as a reminder that there are things in life that we experience that are just incredible.

And a lot of times they're little things. They're things that remind us that we're human.

They're things that remind us that like to be alive is the gift.

And we pass them by because we're busy.

We got things to do, we were focused, we got a job, people are counting on me.

And you stop and you experience the present.

I think that's what Jesus was constantly reminding us to do.

Tomorrow we'll have worries for itself.

You can't change the past, just be here in this moment right now.

And I know this isn't like a go out there hustle, get ready, 2026, it's going to be your year.

And I think it could be.

Not because you're hustling or working harder or doing more.

But because you actually are learning to slow down.

And not just slow down to slow down, but slow down to recognize.

Slow down to realize that like there are moments in your life you were having that other people would die for.

And it's your life.

And you can experience them.

We don't have to be busy.

And that is what we are told by culture is the pinnacle.

Make it, do it.

Hustle, you can make all this money, you can do all these things.

It doesn't give us life.

And I'm sitting in a chair right now talking to myself.

I get it.

I want to do all these things.

But I've been reminded in the past like probably a year.

Maybe I'm getting older.

I think I'm going to die soon or something.

Don't shake your head yes.

Y'all know if it happens.

It's always the wife.

No, there was a about a year ago.

Molly and I were talking and we were trying to figure out what life is going to look like.

We knew some of our VA stuff was changing.

We're going to have money coming in that we don't have to work for.

We already did the work.

What have we just stopped?

Retired?

Let's just sell everything.

We can't afford to do that.

But we could if we move somewhere else.

It's this cheaper to live.

If we sell everything, we moved to Portugal.

We can live there.

It's 40% less cost.

We can live in Portugal.

We should plan something later in the year.

November happened, something changed.

There's a big thing that happened in November and then in January, something else changed.

We were like, "Maybe we should go sooner to go look at this."

We had some points on some credit cards.

We booked a trip.

We went to Portugal in March.

We spent like nine days there.

We were looking around and I'm looking like, "Where are we going to buy a house?"

Look at this beach.

The biggest waves in the world are right here.

I don't surf and I wouldn't do that, but it'd be cool to watch other people do it.

I remember I got in this mindset of like, "I get to slow down."

I would tell people in conversation like, "The only way I'm going to slow down is to get out of here."

The only way I can get out of this hustle and this.

I got to prove things I got to do is to get out of here.

I got to go somewhere else that they understand what that looks like to slow down.

I still think maybe that is the case.

But when I was looking at this plan for the new year and the message and trying to put it all together,

I was like, "You know what?

I just have to be intentional."

If you pick me up and put me in Portugal, I'm still going to have this angst that I got to do something.

When we were there, I was like, "Hey, if we drive like an hour up from Porto,

there's a clothing manufacturer there that makes really cool blanks and clothes

and I can get them to manufacture some clothes and then we can sell them."

I was ready.

We were going to do this.

As well, it's like you're never going to slow down.

No matter where you're at, you're not going to slow down.

Unless you are intentional about it.

Unless you stop and look.

Because as the song says, the world has passed me by.

I think for a lot of us, especially here,

the culture that we live in and the place that we live, it is so easy for life to pass us by.

If you won't book it is, but there's a book where someone is asking people who are dying.

They're elderly, they've been here, they've done life.

What would you have done differently?

I would have slowed down.

I would have been present where I was.

I would have experienced the relationships that I had on a deeper level.

I wouldn't have tried so hard to impress everyone with what I could get or do or make.

I would have slowed down.

And I know that I say that and everybody's like, "Yeah, and you're going to leave here and you're going to be like 26.

It's going to be my year."

And that's fine.

I wonder if maybe this should be the year that we stop and we look and we see what's right in front of us.

And we experience the moments that maybe we would have captured on a phone to look at 20 years later.

Maybe this is a year that it's not the phone that gets to keep the memory, but it's your body because you experienced it.

So maybe the invitation as we begin this year isn't to go back and recover everything that we missed.

Because we can't go back and it's not to do more or to hustle harder, maybe it's just simpler than that.

Maybe it's learning how to be here now.

So the moments that matter don't just pass by unnoticed.

So may this be the year that you stop and you look and you slow down and you experience life.

Because if not, you will look back and say it passed by.

I love you guys.

Let's slow down and let's love each other well.

We'll see you next week.

And next year. That was it.