Amazing Love, to Honor You, Slowing Down
Knowing & Delighting in God: Slowing Down – Silence and Solitude
Have you ever felt there wasn’t enough time to get EVERYTHING done? How about driving down the highway and you just have to pass the car in front of you; yet, you really don’t get anywhere THAT much faster than the car you passed, or they meet up with you at the next red light? We are conditioned to believe that if we hurry things will get done faster right?
This is what everyone sells us. Dominos Pizza states they don’t sell pizza they sell delivery. Some of us need to have shampoo and conditioner in one bottle, because we don’t have time to lather, rinse with shampoo and then repeat with conditioner. Chilli’s and Applee’s started a “Car Side To Go” take out. We need to have a data plan on our cell phone so we can ALWAYS stay connected via Facebook, Twitter and MySpace – all for the sake of CATCHING UP with others. But, what would happen if we stopped and asked ourselves, “Do we see God in our lives”?
What if you focused on God, would he protect you?
What if you focused on God, would he provide for you?
Would he reveal Himself to you?
Perhaps bless you?
What would happen, if you removed ALL this external “stuff” and filled it with God? What would you see? What would you think if I told you “Hurry” was one of the most obvious sins? Does “Hurry” cause preachers to not preach well because they ONLY have 45 minutes? Does “Hurry” ruin your witnessing opportunity, because you only 10 more minutes? Hurry, more often than not, causes us to focus on the outward physical “needs” in our lives instead of the inward relation of our heart. To be hurried takes your focus off of God and puts it on EVERYTHING else but Him. Instead of waiting for marriage, we hurry into having sex with our significant other or instead of just listening to our friends, we are too busy talking because we want to “move on” to another topic.Instead of just letting God work things out, we take our own action because God wasn’t working “Fast enough”.Instead of listening, we speak. John Ortberg puts it this way:
“Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.”
5 Factors Which Indicate You May Have A Disordered Heart
RACING:
Ever look for a line at a store, match yourself up with another person in line to see who checks out faster? If you do, you win; if you lose you complain or get frustrated, perhaps even depressed?
MULTITASKING:
When driving do you find yourself putting makeup on, shaving, listening to 5 stations at once to get all the info? Texting/driving, reading/driving, eating/driving
SUPERFICIALITY :
This is simply a truth about human formation. Perhaps one reason that Abraham Lincol achieve the depth of thought he did is that he grew up with so little to read. David Donald notes in his biography that Lincoln grew up with Access to very few books: The Bible, Aesop’s Fables (which he virtually memorized), and a few others. “He must understand everything – even to the smallest thing-minutely and exactly,” his step mother remembered. “He would then repeat it over to himself again and again…and when it was fixed in his mind to suit him he never lost that fact or the understaning of it”.
Lincoln himself often spke of how slowly his mind worked, how even as an adult he read laboriously and out loud. His law partner and biographer William Herndon claimed that “Lincoln read less and thought more thany any man in his sphere in America.”
But today we have largely traded wisdom fror information. We have exchanged depth for breadth. We want to microwave maturity.
[The Live You've Always Wanted by John Orteberg page 81]
SELFISHNESS:
You forget to be gracious or gratuitous to those who do things for you. A simple, thank you would be awesome.
DISCONNECTION
Love and Hurry are incompatible: God = Love = Love is Patient; If it is hurried it isn’t patient, if it isn’t patient, is it truly love, and if it isn’t love then can it be of God?
If you answered yes to any of these you may have a disordered heart.
So how do we Fix This?
SLOW DOWN! Prioritize and FOCUS. Purposefully choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait. (slow lane, longest line – let one get in front of you, farthest parking spot, Chew your food 15 times before swallowing, don’t wear a watch.) creates Patience and silence in the heart. When we purposefully wait, or evening involuntarily are put in a waiting mode, we need to think of God. However, instead, we are “too busy” to think God, because we are finding the next song on our iPod or updating our facebook status.
So rather than reach for your cell phone next time you are waiting try to fill your time with somethign God, for instance:
* Think about Scripture.
* Think about Jesus and His death.
* How Christ justly Justified the sinner buy dieing on the cross and spilling His blood.
* Drive without the music on.
* Sit outside and just listen to creation.
* Listen and don’t speak.
What are some examples that Christ tell us about Silence/SOLITUDE.
Matthew 4:1-10 NASB
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” 4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’” 5 Then the devil *took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 and *said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU’; and ‘ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.’” 7 Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.’” 8 Again, the devil *took Him to a very high mountain and *showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; 9 and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus *said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’”
Beginning of His Ministry withdrew to the desert to fast and pray
Matthew 14:13 NASB
Now when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed Him on foot from the cities.
The Death of John the Baptist motivated Jesus Christ to MOURN in a desolate place.
Matthew 14:23 NASB
After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone.
After Jesus Fed teh 5 thousand, he went up on a mountain alone to pray – alone.
Luke 22:40-41 NASB
When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” 41 And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, Before His, prayed to God for the cup of God’s Wrath to pass not by His will but His Fathers, sweat blood
With all this we can understand why John Orteberg states:
“Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us.”
Why is this so Important?
Because we need to have a RENEWED mind [Romans 12:1-2], and not be conformed to the World. The world is molding you!
A researcher found that it takes a high does of amphetamines to kill a mouse living in solitude. But a group of mice will start hopping around and hyping each other up so much that a dose twenty times smaller will be lethal – so great is the effect of teh world on mice. In fact, a mouse that had been given no amphetamines at all, placed in a group on the drug, will get so hopped up that in ten minutes or so it will be dead. “In gorups they go off like popcorn or firecrackers, ” the writer observed.
We might guess that only a mouse would be so foolish as to hang out with a bunch of other mice that were so hopped up, going at such a frantic pace in such mindless activity for no discernible purpose, that they would put their own well-being and even lives at rick. It would be wrong to think so. The messages come at us in a continual stream “We
‘ll help you move faster…Act now, don’t’ delay!…You can buy it now if you’ll just stretch – no money down, easy monthly payments…”
Too much TV, Work, Leisure, Food – all dulls your Spiritual Hunger Maybe you need to Fast from something in order to experience Silence/Solitude?
Praise the Glory of His Grace
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