EMBRACING THE KINGDOM III
The Pace of Jesus
Psalm 23:1-6
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures He leads me beside the still waters.
3 He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are
with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house
of the LORD Forever.
There’s a way God wants us to live that’s radically different from the way most of us live…
I. HURRY SICKNESS
1. Houston, We Have a Problem
39 percent of Americans reported being more anxious than they were a year
ago.
Our attention span is dropping with each passing year. In 2000, before the
digital revolution, it was twelve seconds, now it’s eight seconds—Ex a
goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.
York, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb0vxXZuqek.
2. Hurry makes us sick
Psychologists and mental health professionals have literally labeled “hurry
sickness.” a disease.
Def. A behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness.
Def. A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to
perform every task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of
delay.
3. Hurry burns us out
In her BuzzFeed article “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” Anne
Petersen commented that “burnout isn’t a place to visit and come back from; it’s
our permanent residence.” What used to be the isolated experience of a New
York day trader or emergency room physician is now the reality for most people.
4. Hurry kills relationships.
Love takes time; hurry doesn’t have it. It kills joy, gratitude, appreciation; people
in a rush don’t have time to enter the goodness of the moment. It kills wisdom;
wisdom is born in the quiet, the slow. Hurry kills all that we hold dear:
spirituality, health, marriage, family, thoughtful work, creativity, generosity…
name your value. Hurry is a sociopathic predator loose in our society.
5. Hurry and Love are Incompatible
Good Samaritan
Luke 10:30-37
30 Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to
Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him,
and departed, leaving him half dead.
31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him,
he passed by on the other side.
32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came, and looked, and passed
by on the other side.
33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he
saw him, he had compassion.
34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he
set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35 On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the
innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend,
when I come again, I will repay you.’
36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the
thieves?”
37 And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and
do likewise.
6. Hurry hinders spiritually
We always say “walking” with God, not “running” with God.
The famous psychologist Carl Jung said Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the
devil.
Corrie ten “if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy”
There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they
cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.
Finnish Proverb - “God did not create hurry.”
II. SYMPTOMS OF HURRY SICKNESS
1. Irritability – You get mad, frustrated or just annoyed way too easily. Little
normal things irk you. An ongoing low-grade negativity.
2. Hypersensitivity – All it takes is a minor comment to hurt your feelings. Minor
things quickly escalate to major emotional events. Depending on your
personality this may manifest in either (anger, nitpickiness, anxiety, depression,
or tiredness)
3. Restlessness – When you actually try to slow down and rest you can’t relax.
Can’t focus your mind. Go to bed and toss and turn with anxiety. You watch TV
but check phone, email, etc. Etc.
4. Workaholism (or just nonstop activity) – Either you don’t know when to stop or
you can’t stop. Could be career or excessive house cleaning and errand
running. End of day very little to nothing left to give your family and kids.
5. Emotional Numbness – You don’t have the capacity to feel another’s pain or
your own pain. Empathy is a rare feeling.
6. Out-of-Order Priorities – Disconnected from your identity. Life is reactive not
proactive. Trapped in the tyranny of the urgent.
7. Lack of Care for your Body – You don’t have time for the basics: eight hours of
sleep, exercise, home cooked food, minimal stimulants etc. Don’t sleep well.
Wake up tired. Live on carbs, Caffeine, and sugar.
8. Escapist Behaviors - When too tired to do life giving stuff we turn to
distractions – overeating, overdrinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social
media, surfing the web, looking at porn.
9. Decreasing Spiritual Disciplines – Overtired and no energy for spiritual
disciplines
10. Isolation – You feel disconnected from God, others, and your own soul. When
you try to get with God you are so distracted you cannot connect.
III. HOW DID WE GET HERE?
1. Artificial Time
First clock tower erected in Cologne, Germany in 1370.
Before that, time was natural. It was linked to the rotation of the earth on its axis
and the four seasons. You went to bed with the moon and got up with the sun.
Days were long and busy in summer, short and slow in winter. There was a
rhythm to the day and even the year.
2. Light Bulb in 1879 by Thomas Edison
3. Digital Age
2007 The year Steve Jobs released the iPhone; Facebook opened up to anybody
with an email address, Twitter became its own platform, first year of the cloud,
along with the App Store. Intel also switched from silicon to metal chips
A recent study found that the average iPhone user touches his or her phone
2,617 times a day. Each user is on his or her phone for two and a half hours over
seventy-six sessions. 1
Another study on millennials put the number at twice that 2
Philip Zimbardo’s recent research on the “Demise of Guys” (i.e., the crisis of
masculinity in Western culture) has concluded the average guy spends ten
thousand hours playing video games by age twenty-one.
4. Algorithms of Distraction
Everything is being intentionally designed for distraction and addiction. Because
that’s where the money is. – Tristian Harris
Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook now calls himself a “conscientious
objector” to social media. In an interview with Axios, he begrudgingly admitted:
God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains. The thought process
that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, was
all about: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention
as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine
hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a
post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and
that’s going to get you…more likes and comments. It’s a social-validation
feedback loop…exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up
with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.
5. The Effect
A. We are more hurried than ever before
B. We are less healthy emotionally
C. We are stressed out far too often
D. We are more physically unhealthy than ever
E. Suicide rates have drastically increased
10-year study shows elevated suicide risk from excess social media
time for teen girls
Through annual surveys from 2009 to 2019, researchers tracked the media use patterns and
mental health of 500 teens as part of the Flourishing Families Project. They found that while
social media use had little effect on boys' suicidality risk, for girls there was a tipping point.
Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the
study--when they were about 13 years old--and then greatly increased their use over time
were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults.
"Something about that specific social media use pattern is particularly harmful for young
girls," said BYU professor Sarah Coyne, the lead author of the study. She noted that girls'
social tendencies likely make them more susceptible to the negative effects of social media.
"Research shows that girls and women in general are very relationally attuned and sensitive
to interpersonal stressors, and social media is all about relationships," Coyne explained. "At
13, girls are just starting to be ready to handle the darker underbelly of social media, such
as FOMO (fear of missing out), constant comparisons and cyberbullying. A 13-year-old is
probably not developmentally ready for three hours of social media a day."
Coyne suggests that parents limit young teens' social media time to about 20 minutes a day,
maintain access to their accounts and talk with teens frequently about what they're seeing
on social media. Over time, teens can gradually scale up their social media use and
autonomy.
Jamie Zelazny, PhD, RN, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine, noted that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among individuals aged
10 to 24 years. Further, suicide rates have tripled among youth aged 10 to 14 years, as well
as among girls, and suicide rates are significantly higher among African American children
younger than 13 years.
“A study published in 2015 found that the threshold for where kids start to have more
mental health problems is the 2-hour mark,” Zelazny said during the presentation. “Teens
who reported using social media sites more than 2 hours a day were much more likely to
report poor mental health outcomes like distress and suicidal ideation. A study done the
following year found that problematic internet use resulted in poor mental health outcomes
longitudinally, and these were mediated by poor sleep.”
Other study results suggested that social media use among teens is linked to low self-
esteem, poor body image and risk-taking behaviors. Moreover, social comparison
and cyberbullying have been associated with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation
among adolescents.
…Results showed 67% of participants reported feeling worse about their own lives because
of social media. Further, 73% felt pressured to post content that boosted their appearance
to others, 60% felt pressured to tailor content for popularity and likes and 80% reported
being affected by social media drama. However, 73% reported feeling supported on social
media through challenges or tough times, 53% felt more connected to their friends’ feelings
and 93% felt more connected to their friends’ lives.
IV. SOLUTION
1. The Jesus Way
Matthew 11:28-30
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
hoikopiōntes, “those tired from hard toil
pephortismenoi, “those loaded down
YOKE
A yoke was a common idiom in the first century for a rabbi’s way of reading the
Torah. But it was also more: it was his set of teachings on how to be human. His
way to shoulder the weight of life—
SLOW
Jesus walked slowly
1 Julia Naftulin, “Here’s How Many Times We Touch Our Phones Every Day,” Business Insider,
July 13, 2016, www.businessinsider.com/dscout-research-people-touch-cell-phones-2617-
times-a-day-2016-7.
2 . Kari Paul, “Millennials Waste Five Hours a Day Doing This One Thing,” New York Post, May 18,
2017, https://nypost.com/2017/05/18/millennials-
