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God is Close (Psalm 23)

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When you think of God, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

For many of us, God is someone that is off in the distance. Watching life unfold, He may be involved here and there, but we often have this picture of an absent parent. Either physically or emotionally absent. We wonder if He is involved in our lives, how involved is He?

Another way to think about this, how do you experience God?

Some experience God as accepting of every decision we make, merely cheering us on in life, or maybe we experience Him as judgmental and filled with wrath. Ready to strike us dead if we drop the ball one more time.

According to A.W. Tozer, “What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.”

What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. -A.W. Tozer

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Why would that be so important? 

The reality is, what we think about God determines how we pray to God, how we live our lives, and, more importantly, it determines what our relationship with God is like. 

For example, if you believe that God gives good gifts and is generous, or if you think God is holding out on you, that determines what you pray for. 

If we’re honest, whether you have a church background or not, most of us see God as distant.

Especially in this current moment.

But how close is God? The answer can be found in Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
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 overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

In this culture, 2500 years ago, a shepherd was so much more than that. A shepherd could also be a king. David was a shepherd, and a king is telling us who God is and what God is like that you and I are under the rule of God as king, but also in the care of God as a shepherd.

you and I are under the rule of God as king, but also in the care of God as a shepherd.

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A king and shepherd take care of their people, their flock. A shepherd would sleep at the opening of the gate when the sheep slept to keep them safe. They make sure they are at peace, at rest, have what they need. David is telling us, this is what God is like. This is who He is.

Because God is close, we are never alone.

Because God is close, we are never alone.

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What do we have because God is close?

Everything we need. We lack nothing. Because God is my shepherd king, because God is close, I have everything I need. One of our struggles, at least mine, and maybe you can relate, I may have everything I need, but what about what I want? Because God is close, he knows what we need. And because He is a good king, a good shepherd, if he withholds from us, that’s because he knows what is best for us. 

What does God do?

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

God leads me. God leads us. God is in front, guiding our steps, protecting us, seeing what is ahead, what dangers and good things lie ahead. And he leads me to rest, to refreshment. 

I don’t know about you, but right now, this image in verse 2 is something my soul longs for. Green pastures, quiet waters, refreshing. 

These last few months have been hard on all of us, and in the presence of  God, we are made new, we are recharged. 

Green pastures and water are what sheep need to live, to keep going. 

Do you know one of our most significant needs and also our biggest struggle? Rest. Stopping. Slowing down. This is why you get sick the first few days of vacation because you sprint into it. 

David says, because God is close, we can rest. 

Because God is close, we can rest.

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Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap. To stop. 

Because God is our good king and shepherd, we can stop pushing, stop pushing our kids, stop pushing our agendas, stop comparing ourselves to others. To just rest. 

But he leads us to plenty of food, green pastures. 

The funny thing is how much we are like sheep.

Sheep do not naturally lie down and rest. They are easily scared animals, easily stressed out, they run, freak out, worry, are anxious, and they are crowd followers. If one sheep goes into the water or walks off the cliff, so do the rest of the sheep. 

Now, think about this last season of covid: have you been scared? Stressed out? Have you run from anything or anyone? Freak out? Worry? Anxious? 

I have!

I need Psalm 23; I need this hope that I have a good king and shepherd who leads me and protects me and knows what I need and guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

What does God do when life is the darkest?

Look at verse 4: Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

There is a phrase that is easy to overlook. That we walk through the darkest valley. There is an end to the valley. There is an end to the darkness.

And we can have that confidence because God is close, we are never alone.

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Friday Five

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As churches are beginning to resume physical services, it feels like a lot of things are changing and changing quickly. If you’re a leader, you might be feeling the pressure of this and beginning to feel tired of this last season but also physically and emotionally exhausted. If that’s you, below are some posts that I hope will be helpful to you.

Here are my favorite podcasts, books and blogs in our Friday Five:

Favorite books:

Katie and I are doing a zoom book club on Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs with the author Steve Cuss. I read the book last year, so it has been helpful to re-read it and interact with Steve Cuss and others on it. If you haven’t read it, I would encourage you to read it, especially in this season where anxiety is on the rise. 

Favorite podcasts:

Speaking of Steve Cuss, he did a great interview with Carey Nieuwhof on seeing the signs of stress and managing anxiety.

Favorite blog posts:

Chuck DeGroat has a great guest post from Robert Stewart on Seeking to Understand the Rise, Fall, and Loss of Young Pastors. This is a sobering post for sure.

At this point, there’s a good chance that you are getting tired of doing online church or even attending an online church. It is hard. But Carey Nieuwhof had two posts that I think are incredibly helpful and honestly, straight fire for leaders: 5 reasons your online numbers are suddenly dropping and 8 ways to lead the new digital church.

2 posts that are straight fire from @cnieuwhof.

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As a bonus, here’s a video that will hopefully bring you a laugh.

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Why Love is So Important in Relationships [Especially in Quarantine]

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Katie and I recently did a message on 1 Corinthians 13 in our series Fully Charged. 

It is one of the most well-known passages in the bible. It’s read at most weddings, but what is it telling us? On the one hand, it is about relationships with other people. What it looks like to relate, to have a healthy marriage, friendship, or family. It also shows us what God’s love for us is like towards us. We see a picture of a Father in heaven who loves us in a way that is hard to fathom. But it is also about what spiritual maturity looks like for the follower of Jesus. In the context, Paul says we could have all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t have love, what do we have?

I think this passage is especially important in the world we live in, where we are sheltering in place, spending more time with our family, and missing some of the community that we have built.

Dave Willis said, “We are facing a defining time for marriages. No couple will emerge from this the same as they were before. You’ll either emerge from this crisis stronger by leaning on each other or weaker by fighting with each other.” and I think that’s true. 

So what does it look like to have a healthy relationship in quarantine? Paul lists out what love is and is not.

We’ve already seen that love is patient and kind, and that love does not envy, boast, it is not prideful, dishonoring of others or self-seeking, and how anger and being historical show up in relationships.

But how does it show up in relationships, and why is it so important? Especially in quarantine.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, we’re told what love does, and I think, what makes love so powerful in our lives:

Love protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails. 

Love protects. We often think of protecting in love as someone standing up for someone or keeping harm from happening, and it is that. It is also protecting your heart, your mind, your desires for love. 

Do you protect your calendar for your most important relationships?

Do you protect your eyes, mind, and keep up the fight against lust so that you can experience all that love has to offer?

Do you face the pain and scars you carry so that they don’t wreak havoc on your most important relationships?

Protection is so much bigger than what we make it out to be, and the reason that many of us don’t face our past is that it is painful.

Love trusts. Many of us struggle to trust, and so we miss love. 

We struggle to be vulnerable, to share all of who we are. 

I know I do. I like to keep things to myself, I’m afraid of being laughed at or sounding silly, and so I hold back. When I do, I miss out on love. I miss out on sharing love and receiving love. 

Love trusts. Love opens itself up. Love is willing to share stories, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. That doesn’t mean you share everything with everyone, but love means that you share it with someone, and that might be one of the hardest parts of love. 

Love hopes. Hope is a picture of the future, what could be, what this relationship could become. 

And that hope guides my actions, my reactions, my words, and feelings towards the other person. 

One of the things that a married couple must continue to build into and fight for is hope for the future of your relationship and family. It is easy to look at another relationship and see what you don’t have or where you aren’t yet. But don’t lose hope. It is so easy to do that.

Love perseveres and never fails. Love doesn’t quit. Love walks in when everyone walks out. 

Many times, we give up on people or relationships before we should. Often, this has to do with ease or letting go of stressful situations, but love requires us to dig in and persevere.

It is easy to look at the verses in 1 Corinthians 13 and think, I have no hope for love! Because it is a lot, it is a high bar. But also have a deep longing to experience this kind of love. 

These verses give us a picture of God’s love for us. 

But it also shows us where we are supposed to be in our most important relationships. 

Yes, we fall short. 

But this list gives us a glimpse of areas we need to grow in, ask God’s help to accomplish so that those around us feel our love. 

Yet, in God’s grace, Jesus has this love for us. Jesus extends these to us. He keeps no record of wrongs, he serves, his love never fails, it protects, it hopes, and it lasts. God is not easily angered and delights in the truth. The truth of who God is and the truth of who He made us to be. 

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Relationships in Quarantine – Anger & Being Historical

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relationships

Katie and I recently did a message on 1 Corinthians 13 in our series Fully Charged. 

It is one of the most well-known passages in the bible. It’s read at most weddings, but what is it telling us? On the one hand, it is about relationships with other people. What it looks like to relate, to have a healthy marriage, friendship, or family. It also shows us what God’s love for us is like. We see a picture of a Father in heaven who loves us in a way that is hard to fathom. But it is also about what spiritual maturity looks like. In the context, Paul says we could have all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t have love, what do we have?

I think this passage is especially important in the world we live in, where we are sheltering in place, spending more time with our family, and missing some of the community that we have built.

Dave Willis said, “We are facing a defining time for marriages. No couple will emerge from this the same as they were before. You’ll either emerge from this crisis stronger by leaning on each other or weaker by fighting with each other.” and I think that’s true. 

So what does it look like to have a healthy relationship in quarantine? Paul lists out what love is and is not.

We’ve already seen that love is patient and kind, and that love does not envy, boast, it is not prideful, dishonoring of others or self-seeking.

But two things that can destroy any relationship and they show up in most relationships is anger and being historical.

Anger is connected to patience. We get angry; however, that plays out for us when our spouse or the other person in the relationship makes us wait. They fall behind, make a mistake, don’t do what we want when we want it. 

Love isn’t easily angered. It takes a deep breath; it doesn’t lash out, mentally, verbally, emotionally, and especially physically. 

Yet, do you know who we are the harshest within relationships? Do you know who we say the worst things too? Those closest to us. Many of us will say something to those closest to us: our spouse, kids, parent, in-laws that we would never say to someone else. That isn’t loving. Yes, you are comfortable, but that isn’t showing them love and isn’t loving them the way God loves you. 

As an 8 on the enneagram, anger is my go-to emotion. And for most men, it is the only acceptable emotion, but anger often covers over our feelings of shame, fear, and vulnerability. 

I know for me, the moments I feel most vulnerable with Katie, I try to cover it up with anger. I try to hide. I’ve had to learn to ask myself, “What is my anger showing me?” That is an uncomfortable question for sure, but one that is revealing and tells me a lot. Because our feelings tell us something, and we must dig into what it is telling us. 

One way that anger shows up, especially in marriages (but any relationship), is through being historical.

You’ve probably seen this. Maybe in the house, you grew up in, a friend relationship, or even your own.

Where you keep score, who cleans up the most? Who takes the trash out? Who does what and how often they do it. Many times, we do this because we feel like we are being taken advantage of, but instead of having that conversation, we lash out in anger. 

The reality is, no relationship or marriage is 50/50. Who does more than another may change based on health, life stage, and age, needs of other family members or jobs, or school.

In many relationships, though, there is a giver and a taker. If this isn’t faced and dealt with, it can cause real pain. I’m the taker in our relationship, and Katie is the giver. In the first half of our marriage, this caused immense pain for her because of my selfishness. It was difficult for me to face it, deal with it, where it came from, and how it was affecting her and our marriage. Now, we haven’t switched roles because it is more natural for me to take, but by God’s grace, I have grown in my giving as well. And she has grown in her ability to say what she needs, which is has been an enormous blessing.

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Relationships in Quarantine – How we Destroy Relationships

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Katie and I recently did a message on 1 Corinthians 13 in our series Fully Charged. 

It is one of the most well-known passages in the bible. It’s read at most weddings, but what is it telling us? On the one hand, it is about relationships with other people. What it looks like to relate, to have a healthy marriage, friendship, or family. It also shows us what God’s love for us is like. We see a picture of a Father in heaven who loves us in a way that is hard to fathom. But it is also about what spiritual maturity looks like. In the context, Paul says we could have all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t have love, what do we have?

I think this passage is especially important in the world we live in, where we are sheltering in place, spending more time with our family, and missing some of the community that we have built.

Dave Willis said, “We are facing a defining time for marriages. No couple will emerge from this the same as they were before. You’ll either emerge from this crisis stronger by leaning on each other or weaker by fighting with each other.” and I think that’s true. 

So what does it look like to have a healthy relationship in quarantine? Paul lists out what love is and is not.

We’ve already seen that love is patient and kind. But now we see what it is not: Love does not envy, boast, it is not prideful, dishonoring of others or self-seeking.

What all of these have in common is me. Ourselves. What we want.

Envy is a longing for something that isn’t currently ours. It is also feeling discontent with your life, what you have or where things are. This sets into relationships very easily. Often because of what we imagine someone else’s relationship to be like. 

Boasting is puffing ourselves up, focusing on yourself and your needs over the needs of others. It is easy in relationships and marriage to puff yourself up, to look at yourself, and give yourself more grace than you give to the other. It is easier to see the faults of someone else than to see your own. 

Arrogance is thinking we’re better than we are. 

When we envy others, boast, are arrogant, we push people away. 

Often, we do these things to be right, but also to protect ourselves from getting hurt. We do these things to avoid saying something hurt us. If I envy you, then I can blame you for my problems. If I boast, I can put you down to make me feel better. If I’m arrogant, I protect myself from getting hurt. If I’m not proud, I’m willing to open my heart up to pain, yes, but I also open my heart up to love. 

All these emotions and actions do is isolate us. 

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul is inviting us to let go of these desires. 

What if you weren’t jealous of someone’s life or relationship? Imagine the pressure you bring to your relationships simply because of jealousy or a picture in your mind?

The flip side of this is contentment. Are you willing to be content with where your relationships are? That doesn’t mean you don’t grow or move forward, but there is a lost art of being satisfied with life and relationships. 

To not control or manipulate your relationships to get your way but to let them breathe and come alive.

Again, at the core of this verse is me—my needs. 

And this is easy to do in relationships. Because we often feel like the other person isn’t there for us, meeting our needs enough, we are putting too much effort into it. 

But, we can slowly, without knowing it, destroy our closest relationships by pushing people away by making sure they don’t measure up to our standards. 

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Relationships in Quarantine – Kindness

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Katie and I recently did a message on 1 Corinthians 13 in our series Fully Charged. 

It is one of the most well-known passages in the bible. It’s read at most weddings, but what is it telling us? On the one hand, it is about relationships with other people. What it looks like to relate, to have a healthy marriage, friendship, or family. It also shows us what God’s love for us is like. We see a picture of a Father in heaven who loves us in a way that is hard to fathom. But it is also about what spiritual maturity looks like. In the context, Paul says we could have all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t have love, what do we have?

I think this passage is especially important in the world we live in, where we are sheltering in place, spending more time with our family, and missing some of the community that we have built.

Dave Willis said, “We are facing a defining time for marriages. No couple will emerge from this the same as they were before. You’ll either emerge from this crisis stronger by leaning on each other or weaker by fighting with each other.” and I think that’s true. 

So what does it look like to have a healthy relationship in quarantine? Paul lists out what love is and is not.

The first was patience.

The second is…Kindness.

Kindness is serving someone, helping someone, believing in someone, encouraging someone’s strengths. 

What do you do when you serve someone? You help them; you use what you are good at, your strengths to make up for their weakness. 

Kindness is giving. 

Kindness believes in someone. All of us, men and women, young and old, kids, we want to know someone believes in us. That someone is proud of us. 

In the ancient world, kindness could also refer to affection. When we first start dating someone, we shower that person with kindness. We go out of our way to serve them, compliment them, shower them with gifts, affection, but as a relationship grows and gets older, that can begin to diminish. 

Think about it: do you know what one of the first things to happen in a relationship is? Affection. Do you know what leaves a marriage first? Affection. 

Katie and I often tell couples: Affection is the barometer of your marriage.

Affection is the barometer of your marriage.

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Now, for men, when we think of affection, we often think of sex. But affection is very much like kindness. It is caring, reaching out, giving a hug, a compliment, holding the hand of your spouse.

This shows up in love when we do it without any hope of receiving something.

Often, kindness disappears in a relationship because the other spouse isn’t reciprocating the way we’d like. Many of us are fearful of going first and breaking the cycle that couples get stuck in. But kindness can soften the heart of the other person, especially when there is nothing underneath it, no motivation outside of wanting to love the other person.

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Relationships in Quarantine – Patient Love

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Katie and I recently did a message on 1 Corinthians 13 in our series Fully Charged. 

It is one of the most well-known passages in the bible. It’s read at most weddings, but what is it really about? On the one hand, it is about relationships with other people. What it looks like to relate, to have a healthy marriage, friendship, or family. It also shows us what God’s love for us is like. We see a picture of a Father in heaven who loves us in a way that is hard to fathom. But it is also about what spiritual maturity looks like. In the context, Paul says we could have all kinds of gifts, but if we don’t have love, what do we have?

I think this passage is especially important in the world we live in, where we are sheltering in place, spending more time with our family, and missing some of the community that we have built.

Dave Willis said, “We are facing a defining time for marriages. No couple will emerge from this the same as they were before. You’ll either emerge from this crisis stronger by leaning on each other or weaker by fighting with each other.” and I think that’s true. 

So what does it look like to have a healthy relationship in quarantine? Paul lists out what love is and is not.

The first is…Patient.

Have you noticed that love and hurry don’t mix? Great relationships take time. They take time to develop, to get to know the other person. You don’t share your story, the details of your life with people quickly. It takes time. 

We are impatient people. We want food fast, the Internet fast, we get annoyed when Netflix buffers. 

We are impatient relationally. This plays out by being demanding, bulldozing people, and pushing too hard. We want people to work on our timetable, to make changes in their life when we think they should. But healthy relationships allow the other person to grow and develop at their speed. 

We are also impatient daily with those closest to us. We are pushing them, expecting them to be what we want, to do what we want. 

Yet, love says, “however long it takes for you to get your act together, I’ll be here.” This is showing compassion and grace in a way that doesn’t come naturally to most people; at least for me, that’s true. 

Our culture says if they don’t change fast enough, if they hold you back, move on. If they are getting in the way of your dreams, hit the road. But what if we miss out on things when we do that and have that attitude?

Can you imagine Jesus saying, “you aren’t changing fast enough, I’m done with you.” Can you imagine him saying, “Why can’t you just get over that hurt and move on or else I’m out of here?”

Patience is moving at someone else’s pace rather than pressuring them. It is staying in step with them. 

Patience in relationships is moving at someone else’s pace rather than pressuring them.

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Have you ever felt pressured in a relationship? That isn’t loving. That is pushing. 

Patience is understanding the season someone else is in, how they process life and decisions. 

Patience isn’t natural to us and not encouraged at all, especially in relationships.

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Friday Five + 1 [Quarantine Edition]

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Welcome to the Friday Five. I hope you are staying safe and healthy as we are in quarantine life.

Before getting to my Friday Five. I’ve been writing about how to live and lead in this new season of life. In case you miss them, here they are:

Here are my favorite podcasts and blogs in this quarantine world:

Favorite podcasts:

I’m working on a sermon on loneliness, isolation, and the power of presence, especially in a quarantined world. This podcast with Tim Ferriss and Esther Perel on Tactics for relationships in quarantine was incredibly helpful. It’s long but has a lot of nuggets in it. Specifically, how to navigate your relational world while at home and under the stress and anxiety of quarantine.

Keeping with the quarantine theme, Andy Crouch was interviewed by Jennie Allen about how to have hope in this season. How do you move forward as a church? What should rhythms for your family look like? It found it incredibly helpful right now.

Pete Scazzero had a great podcast on our collective dark night of the soul in this season. He looked at what we are all losing, but what it will be mean for communities, families, and churches. There is a sadness we are all living in that will have enormous ramifications on us.

Favorite blog posts:

Being in quarantine can add a lot of stress to your marriage and family. But how do you deal with it? I appreciated the ideas in this blog post from Toni Nieuwhof on How to battle back when quarantine makes your marriage worse. 

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about what church will look like post-covid, and I have appreciated Andy Crouch’s thoughts on the topic (see above). He has a great article about how every business and church is now a start-up.

Bonus: What does leadership look like in this covid world? Harvard Business lays out 4 things great leaders are doing right now.

Stay tuned next week as I’m starting a new blog series about relationships in quarantine that you won’t want to miss!

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What a Crisis Does to Relationships and Organizations

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A crisis does many things.

It clarifies things; it creates stress and anxiety; it pushes us to do things we have been putting off and a whole host of other things.

One thing that a crisis does, though, is magnify reality, what is wrong and right in our teams, relationships, and organizations.

a crisis magnifies reality, what is wrong and right in our teams, relationships and organizations.

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Here’s what I mean.

If your church was growing and had momentum, there is a good chance you kept that. If your church had a strong leadership pipeline and discipleship strategy, that has continued if your church had a clear win, why you exist as a church, that continued.

If your marriage was healthy, yes, this has made it hard and brought stress into your life, but you had a foundation to continue to build on.

If your marriage was on the rocks before the crisis, before Covid-19 hit, your marriage is most likely continuing down that road.

What a Crisis Does to Relationships.

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If your church did not have a clear win before the crisis, the crisis only magnified that lack of clarity.

What often happens in a crisis is we simply continue to do what we did before, whether it worked or not. And the reason is that it is what we know, it is what is comfortable for us.

At this point, in this season of quarantine, we see what we spent our lives building. We see it in our relationships and churches and teams. That doesn’t mean you can’t pivot if things aren’t going well. It doesn’t mean you can’t come out of this stronger, but it does show you what you have to work on.

One of my favorite books that I always quote to my kids is The Compound Effect. In it, the author makes the point that our life becomes the sum of our choices. Like compounding interest in a bank account, each decision build towards something when things are stripped away, when the world shifts, like right now, we see what we have built towards.

What a Crisis Does to Organizations and Churches.

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How to Be Still in a Crazy World

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Be still and know that I am God. -Psalm 46:10

Most of the time, when I hear this verse, I feel guilty for how fast I run. But now, I read it, and I am reminded, I have to stop. I’m stuck at home. I’m working from home, our church is gathering online, our relationships have gone almost entirely virtual. Vacations and trips are on hold, conferences, and training have stopped (for the most part).

We are still.

But many of us long for the speed we used to have.

I’m afraid many of us are missing the invitation that God has for us. Before, we missed it because of our addiction to speed and productivity. Today, we are missing it because we hate being home, and we long for speed, so we are giving in to boredom and Netflix.

So, how do we apply this verse in the midst of being at home?

Be still and know that I am God. -Psalm 46:10

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Be still. If you have kids, you are immediately thinking about the advantage of your friends and family without kids have, but that isn’t necessarily reality.

Loneliness, isolation, and boredom are things we are all fighting.

One of the things I am finding helpful is scheduling time to be still, time to reflect, pray, read my bible, listen to worship music. Schedule times to take walks, to slow down.

To experience rest, we still must schedule it like we do our work time.

Know God. I think many of us thought, “If I’m home more, maybe now is the time to start that side hustle, write that book, start that project.” What if this was the season and time for us to know God more, to know Him more deeply. To face some places in our hearts that we have kept hidden from Him?

What if, those of us who follow Jesus are closer to Jesus than before covid?

Give things over to God. Trust Him.

Trust Him with your finances, retirement, your fear, your anxiety.

Rest is an acknowledgment that God is God while you stop.

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I shared before about a practice I’ve tried to do, where I write down three things I’m thankful for. This is such an essential time for an exercise like that. To stop and thank God for something. This also helps to reset our hearts on where things are. Yes, things are hard. Yes, things are tough. But God is still God, and each day, we need to remind ourselves of that truth.