How often do you feel completely present? Not distracted or preoccupied by your schedule, your agenda, or your phone? If you’re like most people, you probably feel like you can barely keep up with all you have going on in life, let alone have time to slow down a bit. In today’s teaching, Pastor Stephen talks about how when we get too busy, we often see the relationships in ouras valuable only to the degree that they benefit us and our agenda. And when we choose to now be present, we limit the influence and the impact that we can have in those relationships. So what can we do to change the pace in our lives?
PLAY AUDIO ONLY
MESSAGE NOTES
“The problem is that we are too distracted and preoccupied. We make ourselves too busy for the people aruound us” And as a result, we start to view our relationships by how much the oither person does for us. We determine how close we are with our friends absed on how good of a friend they are to us. When we describe our neighbors, we describe how good they are to us.
We see our relationships through a lens of what we get out of it, not what we can bring to it. We value people by the way they impact us. And we get upset when people don’t meet our needs.
We aren’t present! It’s the reason you can work at a job for 10 years and nobody knows when you leave. Or why you can live somewhere for 5 years and never know who your neighbors are.
In Luke 7, we see Jesus show us a different pace of life. It’s an interuption
Soon afterward Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed him. 12 A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her.13 When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion. “Don’t cry!” he said. 14 Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped. “Young man,” he said, “I tell you, get up.” 15 Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk! And Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Jesus stops and notices this woman even though she had nothing to offer Him. Yet Jesus allowed Himslef to be interupted daily.
Do you leave room in your life to be interupted?
“People aren’t a distractin to your agenda. People are the agenda.”
Everywhere we go is an opportunity to slow down and show love.
Walk slowly so you can be present with the people around you. Walk slowly from your car to your house. Out of the office or your school.
This doesn’t mean we neglect what we have to do. But it means we keep our eyes open. We don’t have to change our patterns to change our perspective.
Jesus didn’t create the world to meet your needs. He created you to meet their needs!