This week we finished up our series, The Middle. We did so with some video teaching from Mark Comer’s talk at The Meeting House (taken from their Jesus People series).
If you missed it, you’ll wanna watch it. If you were there, you may wanna watch it again. (video below)
Here are a few things that resonated so well:
As we observe the ways of Jesus, his life, his ministry, his relationships, we notice something very interesting – Jesus was never in a hurry. If we want to know him more, if we want him in the middle of our lives, and if we want to be in the middle of his love and mission, we too must slow down.
As we walked through this series, we encouraged our community to invite God to be in the middle of our confusion & crapp-i-ness, in the middle of our interruptions, and in the middle of our sickness. For that to happen, we must always be inviting Jesus to be in the middle of our lives, our hearts, and our relationships.
Some things Mark Comer said are worth reflecting on:
- Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life (a Dallas Willard quote).
- We either believe the lie that money and stuff makes us happy or we don’t.
- What are you doing to slow down?
- shut off your phone for extended periods?
- stop at stop signs?
- don’t rush to the shortest line at the grocery store?
- sit down for more than five minutes to have a meal?
- breath deeply a few times a day?
- Slowing down, along with solitude, sabbath and simplicity, are key disciplines to following Jesus.
- When we fill every single space we have with our phone, the TV, a google search, a text, a glance at the news, etc, we are closing up portals that used to be open for prayer or awareness. So many missed opportunities to be with God or with others, simply because we fill up our space and time.
- For some reason, we always feel like we have no time – like we’re in a hurry. This is a problem.
Make sure to set aside a few minutes, to breath, think, pray, and invite Jesus to be in the Middle of your life and heart. It is never time lost, but rather, time invested.
Wow! That video was incredibly powerful. Going to experiment with some of the ideas shared. Ongoing challenge is to eliminate distractions and just “be” in the moment with God and with other human beings. Thanks so much for sharing.