A Different Beat

Southeast Christian Church
12 0

It can be exhausting, both mentally and emotionally, to live in the world these days. As believers, we need to be reminded of the rest and renewal that God wants us to be intentional with, and we want to have purposeful rhythms that reflect what God has directed in Scripture. Rhythm can simply be defined as moving with consistency and intentionality to a certain beat, and we want to understand God's beat for our lives.

For many of us, the challenge is not only a busy calendar, but it's also having a busy and distracted mind. Nowadays, our minds rarely get a chance to rest, but God takes rest seriously and we should as well. We often need to step back and assess how we're prioritizing time to rest, because it is as important as many other spiritual disciplines that we tend to put a higher priority on. 

We are constantly distracted, and it has resulted in this being a culture of exhaustion where we're more tired than we've ever been. But we know the pace that everyone else lives by, and so for us to act differently feels weird. It feels uncomfortable. However, life was not meant to be one long run-on sentence with breaks and pauses. We were meant to have intentional rhythms to our days, weeks, and lives.

DISCUSSION/REFLECTION QUESTION: Do you ever feel you are trying to compete against others with your pace or busyness? What can you do this week to shift your perspective on this competitive mindset?

Community tags

This content has 0 tags that match your profile.

Comments

To leave a comment, login or sign up.

Related Content

0
Accept What Jesus Offers
Jesus died on the cross while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), so we can be sure that his gift of peace is just like his gift of eternal life: free. The trouble with gifts is that they need to be accepted in order to be used, enjoyed, or experienced. Jesus offers us his peace through the gift of the Holy Spirit, but if we don’t accept his gift, we will never experience his peace. This is why so many Christians aren’t living in peace, but are instead mirroring the dissension, anxiety, and chaos of the world. They may have come up out of the waters of baptism declaring themselves a new creation in Christ, but they haven’t turned their focus away from the world and onto Christ. While his peace isn’t dependent upon our working for it, our experience of his peace is dependent upon our turning toward it. How do we turn toward Christ’s gift of peace? Philippians 4:4-6 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (NIV). Because of what Jesus has done, we can turn and rejoice in him always. We can give everything to God in prayer and petition and we can have a genuine heart of thankfulness. When we take this posture of submission to Jesus in the midst of our circumstances, we fully receive his peace that “transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).  Reflection/Discussion Question: How can you rejoice in the Lord in the midst of your current circumstances?

Related Stories

2
Prayer Pockets
I was in the habit of praying, early in the morning, alone, in a room when no one was around and I’ve slowly gotten out of the habit. This challenge has made me think about praying ANY time I am alone. One such time really jumps out to me - my Mom and Dad are living as snowbirds in FL and they have purchased a little bit bigger home (which they hadn’t closed on yet) - for all the guests they have - well they were starting to stress about selling the smaller home they already had. They were having to clean, pack up the dog and leave at a moments notice almost daily. Every Saturday they had to vacate the house and it was becoming very stressful. I was visiting over Spring Break last week, and they were out running errands, didn’t want to bother me, but asked if I could get the dog out of the house for them, they had a showing in 20 minutes. I didn’t think about doing this until I entered the home, but I prayed- I was alone. I asked God for the person coming to see the house be so passionate about having the home that they would make an offer that day. I just can’t capture the feeling in words, but I just knew God placed his hand on the situation and it felt amazing when my Mom sent me a text - we have a verbal offer! I told her what I did and we both got those happy tears, you know the ones you get when you know, you just know the creator of all things truly loves you and craves time with you. My alone time prayers have increased for many other things, I’m not perfectly following a schedule, but I love pouring my heart out to our Father in heaven and know he is ready to listen at any moment. Appreciate the challenge!