Mike Breaux - Free Your Soul From Hurry (01/13/2026)
- Watch
- Donate
- Contact us
Summary:
Mike kicks off the «Regret-Proof Your Life» series by tackling «hurry sickness,» that constant rushed feeling that’s wrecking our souls in this crazy fast world. Drawing from Ecclesiastes, Psalms, and Jesus' invitation in Matthew 11, he shows how living hurried makes us miss precious moments, pass by chances to love people, and eventually crash with stress and burnout. The fix is radical: pull over and stop, pop the hood for honest soul-check with God, change lanes with intentional slower choices, and find true rest in Jesus alone—so we can live lighter, freer, and with way fewer regrets.
Welcome and New Year Kickoff
All right, hey, hey, hey! Happy New Year, everybody! Hope you had a great, great Christmas. Welcome to Lake Point! Maybe you were here for one of our Christmas services, and you decided to come back in the new year. So grateful that you’re here! Would you guys just help me welcome all of our campuses today: Mesquite, Firewheel, Forney, North Dallas, East Dallas, Rockwall; those in the bridge, those in the lobby, and those who might be joining us online as well?
So grateful for all y’all! My name is Mike Breaux, and I get to be on the team here. We are kicking off a new series this week that we’re calling «Regret-Proof Your Life.» Pastor Josh and I are going to look backwards at some phrases that might help us all move forward in 2024. I’m really excited about where we’re going to be going with all of this.
Regret from Overeating and Soul Detox
Speaking of regret, does anyone besides me regret how you ate over Christmas? Oh, maybe you’re like me and you’ve got this combination of sugar and gravy slogging through your arteries right now. One of your goals for the new year is to totally detox your body.
I’ve got a lot of work to do. I know that a lot of New Year’s resolutions will center around eating better, working out, 28-day cleanses, 21-day shreds, or 90 days to your perfect beach body. We ought to take care of our body, but as we start this new year together, I want to talk about you and I detoxing our soul, caring for the real us. Here’s the deal: We are not a body that just happens to have a soul; we’re a soul that just happens to have a body, and the condition of our soul will lead us toward or away from the kind of life that Jesus came to bring us—all the kind of life that has fewer regrets.
So I thought that maybe where we ought to start to detox this new year is with a thing that has been clinically labeled «hurry sickness.» Have you heard about this? We talked about this on the Daily Drive probably about six months ago. By the way, the Daily Drive is a little podcast we do every Monday through Friday here, and we are walking through the Gospel of John right now; we started in the new year, so tune in if you haven’t already. You ought to join us on that journey. But this hurry sickness thing is a very real diagnosis. Think you might have it?
Diagnosing Hurry Sickness
Well, let’s pretend that we’re sitting in the doctor’s office today and we’re filling out one of those long forms. Don’t you hate filling out those forms while you’re waiting in the doctor’s office? They’ve got all those family history questions, and you’re thinking, «I don’t have a clue. I don’t know whether anybody in my family had gastrointestinal problems, although I’m pretty sure Ethel did!» If you know what I’m talking about.
So let me just grab my doctor’s tablet, and let’s work through some questions that might establish whether or not you have hurry sickness. And just be honest as we go through this: Are you in a constant state of worry and stress? Do you work 90-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks, or 60-hour weeks? Do you live like everything is urgent? Are you always available? Do you have to take every text? Do you have to take every call? Do you have to answer back immediately? Can you not live without your phone or your watch or your phone-watch thing? Do you hate wasting time, even when you should be? Do you find it hard to relax?
Do you seldom take a day off? Do you hate waiting in line, whether it’s traffic, airport security, or the checkout line? Does your family eat most meals in the minivan? Do you walk super fast wherever you go? Do you talk super fast, dominating conversations? Do you drive super fast when there’s a hugely obvious yellow arrow pointing to everyone to merge to the right? Are you that guy that whips around everybody and cuts in line at the last second? Don’t be that guy!
It seems like we are moving at the speed of life, and we can’t keep up, and we can’t shut it down. Even when we try to rest at night, our body might lie down, but our mind just can’t rest. There’s a guy named Solomon writing out of his own frustration; I think he totally nailed our culture thousands of years ago when he wrote this: «So what do people get in this life for all their hard work and anxiety? Their days of labor are filled with pain and grief. Even at night, their minds cannot rest. It’s all meaningless.»
I mean, honestly, how many of you would say you’ve really been going 100 miles an hour, and you find it difficult to calm down your soul? You may even be with family, like cuddled up on the couch, and you still can’t shut it down because your mind is just swirling with endless to-do lists and unfinished projects, and your soul rarely finds rest.
We Miss Out
Let me just give you three personal observations. I probably don’t need to tell you this, but when you and I live this way, the first thing that happens is we miss out. We just miss out. We miss out on countless opportunities—countless moments. In this series, we’re going to be talking about regret, and most of the regret in my life centers around my pace because moving at the speed of life, we miss out on so many moments.
Somebody gave me a mug years ago, and on the mug is this inscription: «Yesterday is history; tomorrow is a mystery; but today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.» Speaking of presents, did you get the opportunity to watch little kids open Christmas presents this year? It’s so fun! They’re so excited; they go for the first one, the biggest one first, right? But they have this uncanny ability to keep one eye on the one they’re opening while they’ve got one eye on the next one they’re going to open, and they can even see what their brother or sister is getting at the exact same time.
The thing is, we carry that on into adulthood. We’ve got one eye on the past, we’ve got one eye on the future, comparing our life with everybody else, and we miss out on the present—the gift that’s right there in front of us. So I’ve just been trying to slow down and unwrap the present and just kind of soak in the power of the moment that’s in front of me.
I really love that simple verse from the Christmas story, kind of an obscure verse found in Luke 2:19. After everything’s happened, it says, «But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.» She was not going to miss out on this moment. She wasn’t stressing out about all the circumstances; she wasn’t thinking about what their future move might be. She just held that baby, and she treasured, and she pondered, and she unwrapped the present and just soaked in the moment.
Gang, that is so, so good for your soul! And whenever I do it, I always ask, «Why don’t I do this more often?» The answer usually comes back: «Because you’re moving way too fast.» John Mark Comer puts it this way: «Hurry is violence on the soul.» I don’t think he’s overstating that because, in my experience, hurry is a soul wrecker. I mean, hurry is a family wrecker. Families can get so overscheduled. We get moving so fast doing so many activities that we miss out on moments.
Kids who are constantly shuttled to adult-planned, adult-driven, highly structured activities can just miss out on being a kid. I know as parents we reason, «Well, my preschooler isn’t going to waste time just playing; they need to be productive; they need to learn a skill.» I mean, how else are they going to get a scholarship 14 years from now? How else are we going to keep up with the other families if my kid doesn’t make the T-ball travel squad?
Solomon again, I think, nailed our culture when he said this in Ecclesiastes: «Then I observed that most people are motivated to success by their envy of their neighbors.» Gotta keep up! «But this too is meaningless; it’s like chasing the wind.» If everybody else is running fast, and everybody else is getting ahead, if their kids are in it, then we have to have it, and we’ve got to do it too, and we’ve got to be in it too.
So driven by this unhealthy competitive spirit, we get moving at the speed of our culture, and our kids get turned into these mini high-achievers and are not allowed just to be kids. Then, fast forward, they start passing that on to their kids and then to their kids, and then to their kids. We keep on passing this hurry sickness like a lethal strain of flu.
Saen Kirar once wrote, «The press of busy is like a charm. Its power swells; it reaches out, seeking always to lay hold of ever younger victims so that childhood or youth is scarcely allowed the quiet and the retirement in which the eternal may unfold a divine growth.» He’s just saying that families, especially kids, can get moving so fast that they miss out on hearing the still, small voice of God. They start regularly missing out on worship opportunities; they can’t get involved in kids' ministry or student ministry; families rarely go to church together; they rarely pray together or talk about God together—not because they’re bad people, but because they’re just super busy, always on the move, and they never get a chance to develop the eternal.
Oh, they might learn a skill; they might stimulate their intellect, train their body, get a scholarship, win a trophy, or a championship ring, but they miss out on developing their soul.
We Pass By
It’s been my experience that moving at the speed of life, we miss out. Not only do we miss out, but we also pass by. There are so many opportunities to do good that you and I miss out on, and we pass by those things because we’re just moving so fast.
When we get moving so fast, we can’t see them, or if we do see them, just in our peripheral vision somewhere, we get moving so fast that our time is much more important than people. Man, I’ve been there! Talk about regret. I do have fewer regrets these days, but I racked one up this summer, and I really hesitate to tell this story. I hesitate to get this vulnerable, and I’m so glad that God is not finished with me.
I was leaving LakePoint one weekend, and you know I had just preached three services. I’d been here four weeks in a row, and I was tired and in a hurry to get home. That hurry sickness thing just kicked in. I jumped in my car, drove as fast as I could to get to DFW, got on the shuttle to go over to the terminal, checked in real fast, and I noticed on my phone—I fly quite a bit, and every now and then I get upgraded. Now, I usually am on a regional jet, so it’s not a big deal. The first class is not fancy, but I got it!
I looked on my phone: «You’ve been upgraded! Yes, seat 1 °F! Yes, I am so tired! I just want to get in seat 1 °F, that big cushy seat, and just go to sleep all the way home!» Yes, yes, yes! Now being in seat 1 °F, it’s a bulkhead seat, so you can’t put your backpack under your seat; you have to put it up ahead. So I knew I better get on quick so I could get my backpack up in the overhead bin.
So when they announced, «Group one is now boarding, » I jumped up. I’m the first one! Man, I’m right after the people that are pre-boarding. I get down the jetway, and I’m right behind this lady who’s in a wheelchair, and the guy that pushed her down is having trouble helping her get out of the wheelchair. I said, «Hey, can I help?» He goes, «Yes, please!» So I helped him get her up out of the wheelchair. She could hardly get around, and she stepped over the Jet Bridge onto the plane. She was having trouble doing that, and I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, «1F, give her 1 °F.»
I’m like, «What are you—I’m 1 °F! You know I’ve been preaching for you! I’m 1 °F!» Then you all do this too: I started arguing with God. I said, «Well, you know, I’m not even sure they let you do that; they might not even let us switch.» And then the flight attendant asked her, «Where’s your seat?» She has to dig through her purse. Now the jetway is backing up; I’m blocking everybody in the jetway!
Anyways, we need to get this thing going. She’s probably in a middle seat on the very back of the plane. I don’t know! I’m in 1 °F! I sat in 1 °F, and I didn’t sleep one second. It’s like God was just saying to me over and over, «Come on, man, quit shutting me out. Do you know you just missed out on an opportunity to be a light in somebody’s life? You passed by this opportunity to really make a difference to someone.»
I just sat there, going, «I’m so sorry, » and I felt like God just gently spoke to my spirit, saying, «Next time, next time.» Okay, are you familiar with the parable that Jesus told about the Good Samaritan? Some religious guys were traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho; they were coming home from church. They probably weren’t bad guys—they were just busy church people, multitaskers with hurry sickness—but they weren’t able to be fully engaged, fully present in the moment, and it says in the story they passed by on the other side. As they passed by, they missed out on the blessing of being used by God.
John Ortberg writes about how his friend Dallas Willard spoke into his life about hurry sickness. He said, «We must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives.» This doesn’t mean that we’ll never be busy; Jesus often had a lot to do, but he never did it in a way that severed the life-giving connection between him and his Father. He never did it in a way that interfered with his ability to give love when love was called for. He never did it in a way that caused him to treat someone as an interruption. Jesus was often busy, but never hurried.
You see, the problem with hurry is that hurry is not just a disordered schedule; it’s a disordered soul. When you have a disordered soul, you have a diminished capacity to love because love and hurry are simply incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is just one thing hurried people just don’t have.
We Crash
So moving at the speed of life, we miss out; we pass by; and eventually—we crash! I mean, so much research has shown that the number one health deterrent these days is stress. It fuels all kinds of emotional and physical breakdowns. I know there are certain occupations that are more prone to burnout, and sometimes, you know, life just throws you a curveball. But again, it’s not as much about our external circumstances as the internal one.
So, let me just ask you, how are you sleeping these days? I recently heard that the number one physical predictor of happiness is the right amount of sleep. Maybe that explains why there’s a whole lot of grumpy people in our country these days because about half the adult population in America can’t fall asleep at night.
Forty-nine percent of American adults suffer from some form of insomnia, and I like what my buddy Randy Frazee writes in his book called «Making Room for Life.» He says, «We can’t solve the problem by purchasing the latest mattress used by NASA, goose-feathered pillows, silk sheets, down comforters, and mahogany poster beds. In the end, the problem is the way we live our lives when we’re awake.»
Pull Over
So what do we need to do? I mean, how can we cure this hurry sickness and find true rest for our souls in this new year? Well, instead of missing out, passing by, and crashing into things, the first thing we’ve got to do is we have to pull over. We’ve got to pull over and—I almost wrote down slow down—but from my own experience, I know it’s got to be more radical than that. You have to pull over and just stop!
Now, again, I know that sometimes circumstances and seasons of life can increase the complexity. Where we live and commute times and traffic patterns—all that stuff can accentuate the pace. But generally, pace is what you make it based on decisions that you make. You can even move your body to a new, slower location, but guess what? Your hurried soul is coming with you because wherever you go, there you are!
The fastest I ever ran in my life wasn’t in a big city like L.A. or Chicago or Dallas with all the crazy frontage roads and cloverleaf exit ramps. I was living in a sleepy little town in Central Kentucky of less than 8,000 people—a very rural setting. It’s the kind of place that people move to to escape the hurried pace of life, but I was leading a rapidly growing church; I had a young family; I was saying yes to way too many things. I was always available. I had to pedal down. I was trying to help everybody, reach everybody, please everybody. My pace was out of control!
You ever seen that guy in the circus, the plate spinner guy? That was me! That was me, man! I was all over the place, and my soul was getting pretty jacked up, and I had to pull over and stop. I had to hand a plate to this person, a plate to this person. I had to let something fall. About that time, a buddy of mine walked into my office and gave me two quotes. He said, «These might really help you.» I tacked both of them up above my desk in my office at the time.
One of them said this: «No one looks back on their life and says, ‘I wish I’d spent more time in the office.’» The other one was this, from Brennan Manning: «May all your expectations be frustrated; may all your plans be thwarted; may all your desires be withered into nothingness.» I’m reading this thinking, «Thanks, dude! This is really cheering me up!»
Then it continues: «So that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing and dance in the love of God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit.» You see, your pace doesn’t have as much to do with your external environment as it does with your internal environment. Pace flows from a restless soul.
So where do we find rest for our soul? What I’m going to tell you, I know it’s going to sound like a preacher answer, but I want you to know from my own experience as an ordinary guy who used to suffer big time from hurry sickness that there is only one place you’re going to find rest for your soul in this new year—and that’s in God! Our souls find rest in God alone.
David put it this way in Psalm 62: «Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him. Truly he is my rock, my salvation; he is my fortress; I will never be shaken.» My anxious, shaky, can’t-shut-it-down, restless soul only finds rest in the unshakeable God. See, we get to thinking, «Man, if only that circumstance would change, then I could slow down! If I could just experience that! If I could just go to a tropical paradise for a month and get a massage every day, then I’ll be able to rest and shut it down!»
Listen, I’m learning there is no experience, no cruise, no va-va-voom getaway to the lake, no amount of money—it’s not about any thing outside of God that brings the kind of rest your soul and mine craves. My soul finds rest in him alone! He is my Sabbath!
I love the way St. Augustine said in his famous prayer, «You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.» God, you’re my Creator; you know me inside and out; you know my soul—you know the real me, the one you breathe life into; and you know it’s restless until I find my rest in you.
That’s one of the reasons making this weekend gathering just a regular rhythm of your life—it’s just what you do—is so crucial because it gives us a chance to kind of pull over and just connect with the lover of our soul. It gives us an opportunity to express our gratitude; it gives us a chance to soak in his goodness, to hear from his word, to connect with other people. It just helps us slow down together.
This might be that rare hour in your week where you don’t check your phone at all! And right now some of you are thinking, «Oh yeah, I need to check my phone.» By the way, I read an article recently that said people literally cannot live without their phone. They just can’t do it! They’ve just got to check what’s happening right now on Snapchat or TikTok, got to see that Instagram or Facebook post and who liked it. We can literally be slaves to screen time, and as a result, our lives are getting filled up with stress and worry, envy, and addiction to approval-seeking.
We reason, «Come on, bro. I hear you, but it’s just the speed of life these days. Come on, man; that’s just the way it works in our culture.» Well, the Apostle Paul says this to a bunch of Jesus followers who were living in a hurry-sick culture: «Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold.» Don’t let the pace of this world determine your pace. Let the Holy Spirit, who wants to develop all kinds of really great soul stuff like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, let him set your pace.
Let him help you make your schedule. Ask him to help you determine your priorities in the new year. If you do that, he will remind you throughout the day, «Come on, man, just breathe. You need to chill. Just shut it down. Slow down. Relax in the truth of who you are. You’re a much-loved man; you’re a much-loved woman. You’re already accepted; you’re already secure; you’re already significant. So don’t run so hard and so fast trying to prove yourself to somebody!»
I’m telling you, you have to get intentional this year about this. You’ve got to pull over, turn off the motor, shut off the noise, and ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. I would suggest that you take a day at the start of this year—very soon! Take a sick day if you need to! I mean, call in sick, because the truth is, if you can’t pull over and shut it down, you are sick!
That’s your New Year’s homework assignment. Take a day, turn off your cell phone—I mean, completely off! Be totally unavailable for a day. Close down your laptop; don’t check emails. Fast from noise; fast from drive-throughs; withdraw from the usual barrage of activity and information. Turn off the TV, take off your watch, and just breathe deeply and pray and meditate and listen and reflect and take a nap!
Just get by yourself, or arrange a whole day around just listening to God, and if you do, I’m guessing you will hear the lover of your soul say, «Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I’m gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.»
So, the first thing you’ve got to do? You’ve got to pull over.
Pop the Hood
The second thing, you’ve got to pop the hood. You’ve got to pop the hood! Pull over and pop the hood.
Anybody like me? You hear a strange noise going on underneath the hood of your car, and you just turn the music up? Anyone do that? You’re going, «Man, I ain’t got time to deal with this right now! I don’t have the money right now to deal with whatever is going on, so I’m just going to crank up the music and keep on driving.»
If we’re going to live with a healthy soul this year, we can’t keep doing that to our soul. We have to pop the hood and examine what’s going on under there with fearless honesty. You come to God in the quiet, and you say that prayer from Psalm 139: «Search me, O God. Know my heart; test me; know my anxious thoughts.» You pull over, pop the hood, and you say, «God, you are the master mechanic! I need you to troubleshoot my soul. I need you to take me to the root of my hurry sickness.
Does it find its roots in pride? Is it insecurity? Is it envy? Is it jealousy? Is it ingratitude? Is it fear? God, point out any character issues you see in me. Father, what is it that’s making me idle so fast? What’s contributing to all the noise of my life? Why are my RPMs out of control? What am I chasing? What am I running from?
Is all this extra stuff I’m accumulating really making my life better? Why is my body running so rough? Why is my mind constantly racing? Why does my soul feel so empty? God, why can’t I sleep? Why do I spend so much time at work? Why can’t I say no? Am I addicted to approval? Why do I over-schedule my kids? What is it that’s fueling this competitive drive to always be first?
What part does procrastination and clutter play in overwhelming me? And what part does perfectionism play in my procrastination? Why do I work so hard to be accepted when I already am? Why do I run so fast to be somebody when I already am? And when Jesus says, „Come to me, ” how come I don’t?
You’ve got to pull over, pop the hood, and take an honest look inside. Say, „Search me, O God! Diagnose my anxious thoughts!“ I found it extremely helpful to get a trusted friend or two under that hood with you as well. I would encourage you to have some friends in your life like that—maybe get into a group this year at LakePoint, or head to Regen, get a sponsor, even a Christian counselor.
Under the hood with you is super helpful! But if you want to stop missing out and you want to stop passing by, you’re going to have to pull over and pop the hood.
Change Lanes
And then finally, you’ve got to change lanes. You just have to change lanes!
Here’s something profound: if nothing changes, nothing changes! There you go! I mean, you and I can sit here, and we can think, „Yeah, you know what? I hear you. I probably am running way too fast. I actually probably do suffer from hurry sickness, and I might need to make some of these changes.“
Then we rush out of here, go right back at the same breakneck pace, and we never actually pull over; we never actually pop the hood and get God involved, and we just continue to live with a frazzled mind and a restless soul.
If we’re going to detox from hurry sickness, we have to change lanes. We have to start doing some things intentionally different. You have to get super intentional about this! Remember, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your lives!
So maybe you could start with a few practical things. There are a few things that I’ve just kind of personally started doing to help me with all of this. I’ve been eliminating clutter in my life. I’ve been cleaning up my truck more often, my closet, my calendar—going, „I don’t need that, don’t need that, don’t need that!“ I’m taking this day off; I’m taking this week completely off!
I’ve been doing stuff like that. I’ve been letting people go in front of me in line at the store, and I stopped counting how many items they had in the express lane. I used to go, „You’ve got 17 items! Why are you in this line?“ Instead, instead of racing people to the door of a crowded restaurant, I’ve been stopping and holding the door for the people behind me to let them get in and get the table ahead of me!
It’s so hard, and I failed miserably at this the other day! I’ve been setting my cruise control on the speed limit—not one, not two over, not five over, not ten over—just on the speed limit! I know you can’t do that everywhere—especially in Dallas, you’ll get killed! But there’s this one highway that I take on a regular basis; I’ve been setting the cruise to the speed limit.
I’ve got the window down, I’ve got the radio on, I’ve got my hand out the window, doing this thing! And you’re thinking, and you probably have your turn signal on the whole time, you old man! I might! I’m not sure! You know, I’m becoming that slow old guy you hate to get behind! And I’m just smiling, looking in the rearview mirror at the hurry guy behind me, going, „Hey dude, I’m just trying to help you detox your soul!“
You know, I’ve been leaving earlier from my house so I don’t stress out as much. I’ve been getting to the airport earlier so I don’t like sprint for the gates any longer! And this has been really huge for me: I’ve been listening to my wife and the Holy Spirit, and sometimes they’re one and the same as they both remind me, „Come on! You said you were going to slow down! Slow down! Slow down!“
Y’all ever been on one of those glass-bottom boat tours? Maybe in the Caribbean or maybe off the coast of Mexico or in the Gulf somewhere? A crowd of people gathers around this viewing area on the bottom of the boat, but there’s nothing really to see because the boat takes off from the harbor or whatever, and the water’s just kind of stirring under the glass. Everything just becomes a blur as the boat pulls away.
But then the captain of the boat pulls into a cove, parks it next to a coral reef, shuts off the engine, and then in a few moments, everything just gets real still, and the bottom of the boat turns into this magnificent world of underwater beauty. It was just a few feet away the whole time, but you couldn’t see it because you were just ripping through the water at a rapid pace.
The only way to view it is to slow down and come to a stop! Gang, we are so good at skimming the surface, aren’t we? We keep going faster and faster and miss out on so, so much that’s right there below the surface. So I’m just trying to slow down intentionally and notice more and reflect more and count more and give thanks every day of my life!
David wrote some song lyrics that pretty much flowed out of his time of intentional shutting it down. He said this in Psalm 116: „Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me. He saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, and so I’m going to walk in the Lord’s presence as I live here on this earth.“
He’s saying, „God’s been so good to me; I’m going to walk in the awareness of his presence and his goodness. I’m going to thank him first thing in the morning and last thing at night! I’m just going to pull over, I’m going to pop the hood, and I’m going to start changing lanes.“
I told you my pace was pretty crazy years ago. Back in that sleepy little, slow-moving town, the church was really growing like crazy, and I had this really unhealthy, super pastor complex—working way too hard, way too much. Then I had to deal with some pretty hard, unexpected trauma that was happening in our church, and one night it was just… I don’t know how to describe it other than it just felt like it was pressing down on me.
I can remember so vividly just taking a walk that night in the rain—just rain pouring! I mean, I’m drenched, and I’m just pouring my heart out to God. I’m just talking honestly about what I was feeling. I mean, prayer is a two-way conversation between two people who love each other, right?
As I walked and I talked and I vented and I cried and I tried to listen, this verse just kept going through my head: „Be still and know that I am God.“ I can remember getting in my truck and driving to the church that night. It was really late at night; no one was there. I walked into this dark little chapel, didn’t even turn the light on, and I noticed my old guitar sitting on the stage.
So I walked over to it, picked it up, and started picking a little bit, and a song came out. Now, I would play it for you, but I’m not a very good guitar player, and I’m not such a good singer anymore. But it feels like yesterday I was sitting there in the dark, and these words just flowed out of me: „I want to be still and know you, Lord. I want to be still and seek your face. I want to be still and know how much you love me. I want to be still and know you, Lord.“
I felt the peace of God just wrap around me like this warm blanket and just settle my soul down. You see, God doesn’t want you and me to live all revved up on the inside. Now, he does want us to live a productive, difference-making kind of life, but to find our rest in him.
So here’s a New Year’s invitation to all of us hurry-sick people from Jesus himself: He says, „Are you tired? Are you worn out? Maybe burned out on religion? Come to me! Get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me; learn how I do it. Watch how I do it; learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you’ll learn how to live freely and lightly.“
What do you say we take him up on that invitation this year and live with fewer regrets?
Time to Be Still
So I want to wrap this up a little differently today. I want to give you some moments just to be still. And I’m going to ask, nobody moving around, nobody trying to get a jump on the parking lot. Just sit for a while, and let’s all just be still for a few moments. You can pray, you can reflect. We’re going to play a little music, and I just invite you to focus on that verse. I pray that you would experience his peace come and settle you down as well. So let’s just get real still and let’s do this together.