My family moved to the United States two years ago after 15 years of living and serving in Uganda. We felt depleted, like we had poured out everything we had and left the very best of ourselves there in the red dirt. Sometimes I still feel that way. I’d venture that I’m not alone in that feeling. I’d venture that many of us feel “all poured out,” like maybe we have used up the very best of our resources and are running on low.
When we moved, it felt impossible to count all the differences between American culture and life overseas, but what caught me off guard more than anything was the pace. Everything and everyone was moving so fast, and I felt the pressure of the expectation to keep up.
And the more quickly I moved, the more anxious I felt.
You know what I am talking about, even if you haven’t recently moved. We feel the pull of this frenetic pace of life and desire to be faithful to God’s call on our lives to serve. In an effort to do this well, it is easy to find ourselves sucked into the hurry and the overwhelm, which leaves us even emptier than we began.
So, how do we slow down and live with the long view in mind? When there are so many people to love, serve, and help, when there are so many good things to say yes to, how do we live at a different pace that leaves us full and grounded? How do we exchange lives of hurry and anxiety for lives of purpose and meaning?
Jesus was never in a hurry, to my knowledge. Even when He was on His way to heal someone, He had time to be interrupted. Even when one of His closest friends was on His deathbed, He waited a few days before heading that way. As Jesus’s followers, we are called to live like Him. So, we are going to look at three simple practices of Jesus that will help us fight against hurry, chaos, and exhaustion and live with the long view in mind.
First, we must stay in communication with our Father.
Throughout all the gospels, we see Jesus pause and take time away from His ministry to go and be with God. He spends 40 days in the wilderness alone with His Father before He begins His public ministry, and then, all throughout His life, He slips away from the noise and the busyness. Sometimes, He sends His disciples ahead of Him so He can be alone with God. He stops before, during, and after ministry to pray, both publicly and privately. In between miracles and teachings, Jesus takes active, intentional time away from busyness, away from distractions, to commune with God. And if even our Savior needed this time, how much more do we?
How often have we bought into the lie that we are just too busy to spend extended time with God? I know I have.
And I think one of our biggest hurdles is that we are busy with good things. We are busy loving our people. We are busy serving our communities. I would be willing to bet that if you find yourself in this room today, you tend to be a pretty high-capacity person. You say yes to a lot. You pour out generously. You give of yourself without holding back. And these are beautiful qualities. But if all this saying yes and keeping busy is crowding out time with God, we might be missing the point if we are rushing past conversation with Him because we are so eager to do the next thing for Him. If we aren’t careful, all our busyness, even good busyness, squeezes out our time for communication with our Father, the very thing we need most to sustain us.
Not only does Jesus model this, He instructs us to do it. In John 15, just before He heads to the cross, Jesus urges His disciples to remain connected to Him. “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. This is to my Father’s glory.”
It is to His glory that we depend on Him.
We cannot offer what we do not have. If we are not spending time asking God to restore our joy, we won’t bring laughter and joy to others. If we aren’t spending time receiving His love for us, we won’t be able to pour out a love that reflects His character.
I’m not just talking about a once-a-day quiet time here, though that’s a great place to start. If we are going to pour out the love of Jesus to those around us, we need to soak in His Word. We need to memorize it, meditate on it, and speak to God throughout our days.
I can’t tell you how often I have been amid a difficult conversation with a child and had the words of Psalms running through my head. Or I have paused to ask the Lord, “Are you anxious about this God?” and in the quiet heard His whisper, “No, I’ve got it.” We need communication with Him like we need oxygen.
No matter how busy you are, make it a point to connect with God throughout your days. In line at the grocery store, in the car, in the waiting room, cry out to Him and pray His Words back to Him. If we want to be people who change the world for the GospeI, we have to start here.
Real, connected, intimate time with Jesus is the number one way to push back against the frantic pace of the world around us. It’s the thing that centers us, it’s the thing that most loudly declares our trust, and it’s the thing that sets us apart.
Second, we practice being present.
Jesus was extremely present during His life here on earth. With the possible exception of His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, we do not see Jesus worried about the future. When someone stops Jesus to ask Him a question, He pauses what He is doing or stops on His way to wherever He is going to answer. He sees the woman at the well and pauses to talk with her. He feels the woman with the issue of blood touch His hem on the way to heal Jairus’s daughter, and He stops to find her, to look into her eyes, to bless her.
I believe that worry and anxiety are the number one thing driving our break-neck pace of life. We race around, stay busy, and stuff our lives too full because we are worried we won’t do enough or measure up.
I have come to see that a significant source of my anxiety is that I am either living in the past or the future. I know I am not the only one who does this.
I stay preoccupied wondering what life might be like now if only I had done or said something differently. What if this specific thing wouldn’t have happened? What if I wouldn’t have made that mistake?
Or I race ahead to the future. What if this or that doesn’t happen? What if this doesn’t work? What if I fail?
But what if I truly believed that God has provided me with everything I need to live in this moment right now? The fullness of His presence and provision is right here, completely available to me. And the way I access it is to pause. To speak to Him and engage with the people, places, and tasks that are right in front of me.
We are all in this room because we want to leave a legacy. And in order to do it, we must have relationships that are aimed at discipleship. We all know that discipleship doesn’t happen in a hurry. It happens in all the little interactions over months and years of loving someone. It happens in the mundane and hidden moments of pausing, looking someone in the eye, and choosing to love them even when it is hard. It happens when we are present, surrendering our future fears and past regrets to God, and trusting Him to give us what we need right here, right now.
In Philippians 4:6, Paul says to believers, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” I love this because Paul doesn’t just instruct us not to be anxious, which is much easier said than done. He gives us something to replace our anxiety with: prayer, petition, and thanksgiving. He’s instructing us to stay in communication with our Father. He is instructing us to surrender our fears to God. He is instructing us to be present and thankful.
I want you to try it. Next time your mind starts to fill with regrets about the past or “what if” panic about the future, I want you to pause and call to mind God’s Word. Call to mind what you know to be true about Him. Look around you. What good, lovely, excellent thing can you thank Him for right now? Stay present in this moment with God, who loves you, called you, and has promised to be everything that you need.
Our God meets every need. Our God uses all things to fulfill His purposes. We can trust Him. We can be present right here, right now, and faithfully do what He is calling us to do today because we have a promise that He alone will take care of tomorrow.
And lastly, we set our minds on eternity.
Throughout all the Gospels, Jesus constantly reminds His disciples that He hasn’t just come to save us but that He is also going to prepare a place for us. Even as death drew near to Jesus, He fixed His eyes on something better – an eternal Kingdom with His Father and an eternity spent with you and me.
What if we could do the same? What if we could lift our eyes from all the troubles here on this earth, all the heartache and hardship surrounding us, and focus for a moment on an eternity with Jesus where all things are made right and restored? No matter how hard things are right now, if we know Jesus, then this is not all there is.
Hebrews says we yearn for a better country.
In 2nd Corinthians, Paul puts it this way: “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
And Paul says here that the secret to experiencing this deep peace of being renewed day by day is to turn our eyes to the eternal, to the unseen. We aren’t just to vaguely know that Heaven is out somewhere in the sky where we will go one day. No, we are instructed to set our minds on things of Heaven.
We have an eternal promise, and it’s this: Hurt that is overwhelming right now? It will be replaced with joy. That broken relationship? It will be restored. That deep ache? It will be filled. That thing that feels so all-consuming? It will be consumed by the goodness, love, and mercy of God. We will stand victorious because of Christ! And this is what we are called to focus on, to fix our eyes and our hearts and our minds on.
When the world is spinning all around us, and we are tempted to jump into the frenetic pace to keep up, when our minds are tempted to race ahead of our actual lives and spin with anxiety about the future, I want to encourage you to ask yourself, “Will this matter in eternity?” If the answer is yes, keep going, my friend. If the answer is no, it’s time to let it go and to fix your eyes on Heaven.
Here come the holidays, friends. Our world, our culture, is spinning with a hurry that is affecting all of us and our relationships. But we are people who know the Lord. We have tasted and seen that He is good, and we must live with the long view in mind. Let’s look to the life of Jesus as we endeavor to serve Him and those around us. He will hold our hands and stay with us all the way home.
Our Faithful God: 52 Weeks of Leaning on His Unchanging Character is a summation of the faith lessons and inspiration gathered over an extraordinary life of dependence on God that catapulted in December of 2006, when an 18-year-old Katie traveled as a missionary to Uganda. Falling in love with its people so much, Katie moved to Uganda one year later to begin an adventure with God that has captivated millions over the years. She soon founded Amazima Ministries with the mission of empowering Uganda people in 2008, and made the nationally-known decision to become an adoptive mother to 13 beautiful girls by the time she was 23. Through the years, she is only more sure of God’s unfailing faithfulness and kindness, in an increasingly unsteady world.
“My prayer is that you would be filled with joy in His Word like never before and stand with me in awe of His unchanging, unending love.” —Katie
Photo credit: ©PenguinRandomHouse/KatieDavisMajors
Originally published Friday, 22 December 2023.
