Moving What Matters to the Middle
Slowing Down, part 8
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
January 24, 2009
Tonight I want to talk to you about moving what matters to the middle. Remember two weeks ago we were talking about how you and I are, like Daniel in the Bible, stranded in Babylon. How, like him, we each face the challenge of living out God’s values while we are surrounded by a world that has rejected those values as outdated, or maybe even as never even deserving of real attention in the first place. And I’m not talking here just about family values or moral values, I’m talking about all of God’s values. They are listed well in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Now it’s not that everything in our society is wrong. It’s that nearly everything in our society leads us away from what is best. The Apostle Paul said,
1 Corinthians 6:12 (NIV)
12 "Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.
It’s not about whether something is necessarily wrong – it’s about whether it’s best, and about what is controlling your life. I will not be mastered by anything. That’s really the question, isn’t it? The question is who, or what, will be our master. Ultimately you will have a master – your allegiance will go somewhere – to someone, or something. Christians are supposed to believe that if that someone is not God, then your world is upside down. Yet many Christians’ highest loyalty is not to God but to softball, or golf, or TV, or food, or the computer.
A couple weeks ago we were looking at Daniel, taken away from his native land of Judah and made to serve in the court of the King of Babylon. We were noting how he refused to follow the king’s diet that was laid out for him. For Jews their diet is a big part of their religious identity, so this is one of the ways Daniel held on to his understanding of himself as someone who belonged not to the king, but to the King of Kings. By sticking to his own diet, he was reminded of his true identity every time that fancy food was stuck in his face and in this way he actually used the culture around him to keep him centered on God. Let’s look at another example Daniel set for us.
Many years after Daniel is brought into Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar is dead, Nebby’s son Belshazzar is dead, and Babylon is being ruled by a Persian king, Darius. Darius digs Daniel because Daniel is bright and a great advisor. But since he’s the best and brightest, and he’s a foreigner, the other advisors are jealous of him so they hatch a plot to get him killed.
Daniel 6:4-11 (MSG)
4 The vice-regents and governors got together to find some old scandal or skeleton in Daniel’s life that they could use against him, but they couldn’t dig up anything. He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct.
5 So they finally gave up and said, "We’re never going to find anything against this Daniel unless we can cook up something religious."
6 The vice-regents and governors conspired together and then went to the king and said, "King Darius, live forever!
7 We’ve convened your vice-regents, governors, and all your leading officials, and have agreed that the king should issue the following decree: For the next thirty days no one is to pray to any god or mortal except you, O king. Anyone who disobeys will be thrown into the lions’ den.
8 "Issue this decree, O king, and make it unconditional, as if written in stone like all the laws of the Medes and the Persians."
9 King Darius signed the decree.
10 When Daniel learned that the decree had been signed and posted, he continued to pray just as he had always done. His house had windows in the upstairs that opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he knelt there in prayer, thanking and praising his God.
11 The conspirators came and found him praying, asking God for help.
Now what do we see here about the way Daniel structured his life? First of all, prayer was a priority for Daniel. Daniel was known as a praying man. His enemies knew they could get him in trouble by outlawing prayer to anyone but the king. This means 1) they knew Daniel prayed regularly to God; and 2) they knew Daniel wouldn’t stop praying because of this decree. It was a priority.
Second, Daniel had a place for prayer. Right there in front of his window facing Jerusalem – his homeland. That was his prayer place.
Third, Daniel established a regular practice of prayer. Three times a day. You could set your watch by him. He practiced it.
Fourth, Daniel had a position for prayer. Three times a day he knelt. Now you don’t have to kneel in prayer. You don’t need to use any particular position. You don’t have to pray facing Jerusalem. You don’t have to pray in front of an open window. You don’t have to pray upstairs. You don’t have to pray three times a day. You might pray twice a day – or five times a day – or for two minutes every hour. There is room for you to be wildly creative as you seek to incorporate God into your everyday way of life. You don’t have to do it like Daniel did it. But if you want to live your life distinctly for God and not just blend in to the culture around you, you must do something. And it must be regular. And it must be the thing the rest of your life gets structured around.
Let’s think about what some of us might say if we were in Daniel’s position today. “Well, it’s just food – what’s the big deal. It’s not like it’s a sin for me to eat better food.” “Man, I know I need to pray, but I’m so swamped – being a servant to the king and everything.” “Well maybe you’re a prayer warrior, but I’m not – it’s hard for me. You don’t understand what my life is like.” “I would love to pray, but I work 50 hours a week – I’m tired at the end of the day.” “I would pray, but I don’t know what to say.” “I may not pray 3 times a day facing Jerusalem, but I try to keep God in my thoughts.”
We have every excuse in the book. Some are probably even compelling. But what they have in common is they all keep us from structuring our lives around God in a definitive way. Several weeks ago we talked about putting the big rocks in the jar first. Daniel was a guy who put the biggest rock in the jar first. Prayer happened. It happened three times a day, facing Jerusalem, with the windows open upstairs. It happened in good times and bad times. It happened when nobody cared, and it happened when it could get him killed. Prayer was central. Prayer wasn’t the only thing, but it was part of an overall way of living Daniel adopted to keep himself immersed in God and protect himself from the overwhelming power and presence of the culture around him.
How are we doing that today? When you read your Bible and you see the word “church” in the New Testament, the original Greek word there is “ekklesia.” And ecclesia literally means “the called out ones.” So if the church is “the called out ones,” in what sense are we currently functioning in that capacity in our culture? In what sense are we living in a way that shows that we are called out and set apart to live creatively and uniquely unto God? Not only are we often missing that by a mile, but when preachers stand up and warn that Babylon is taking over, that we’re soaking in it, that it’s infecting us, we can count on a certain number of our people actually taking Babylon’s side, defending it and its values and giving reasons why Babylon really isn’t so bad, and telling us it’s unreasonable to expect them to stand fast against its influence and truly live as the “called out ones.”
But that is our calling. And what is needed, my friends, is a way of living that brings us out of the culture around us. Now some people object to that. In the modern church some will say, “Why take action to structure my life around God when my whole life can be a prayer?” Good question. Our whole lives SHOULD BE a prayer! But all of life can only become a prayer as we learn to make little pieces of it a prayer! If we find that we cannot set aside a few minutes a day to pray in the quietness, then we certainly will not be able to go about the busy affairs of our day in a spirit of prayer. The daily moments in prayer are what train us for a life that is soaked in prayer through and through.
So if we want to get God off the sidelines and out of the margins and into our lives where he should be, then our lives need to be structured intentionally and specifically around him.
I want to move into the next section of this message now and talk about two essential practices that will help us begin to create that structure in our lives. Before I start on that, I want to be clear that this is a work in progress in my life. I have not in any sense arrived. I have made huge progress in the past few months, but I have also had some big setbacks, and I continue to struggle with this. But I believe it’s a struggle we ought to be engaged in. We should not be so comfortable with blending into Babylon. It’s appropriate for us to have to put a little elbow grease into resisting the pull of the culture.
Before I introduce these two practices to you, I want to frame them properly. Let’s begin by thinking about how the culture is already pulling us into many pieces. Let me focus you for a moment on your burnout. Let me get you thinking about your exhaustion as you try to live at the pace the world is setting for you. Let me ask you what price you are paying for living the way you do. This is essential because as I begin talking to you about these two practices, I do not want to present them as big drags that are going to mess up your life and ruin your fun. The truth is most of us are being pulled in a hundred directions and are struggling frequently to keep our heads above water. We are weighed down by heavy burdens of care. Some of us can’t make ends meet and we worry. Some of us bear the constant burden of financial prosperity. That’s not easy to bear. Some of us are workaholics. We don’t feel good about ourselves unless we’re producing. Some of us live with various fears and worries. Some of us feel the constant urge to control everything in life and make everything work out just so. Some of us cannot bear the idea that someone might not like us. Some of us can’t find peace or contentment and fear we never will. Some of us are crushed beneath the weight of bitterness or resentment of past wrongs. Some of us carry deep regrets. It’s no wonder we’re a society of addicts. Addicted to tv, to sugar, to caffeine, to gambling, to smoking, to alcohol, to approval, to pornography – to whatever is going to give us just a small thrill and help us forget our burdens for a moment.
So I present to you tonight not a formula for oppression and drudgery, but a way out of the rat race – a cure for what’s ailing you. The first of these is one I have mentioned several times, but I should just cover it again quickly. It’s called Sabbath. Sabbath. A day a week dedicated to uselessness! What you and I need more than anything else is to come to understand that we are valuable not because we perform but because we are the beloved – created by God for rest, for relationship with him, and to live happily and at peace where God has placed us in the world. Check out what Jesus said:
Mark 2:27 (NLT)
27 Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people. Hey, that’s you! That’s me! God gave this to us as a gift. God gave this to us because we NEED it. Have you ever given your children a gift they didn’t really appreciate at the time? When I was a very small child my grandparents gave me a savings bond. I don’t remember how much it was for – a few hundred dollars maybe. It was pretty hard for my dad to explain that when I was sixteen, I’d get three hundred bucks for my sixth birthday. I didn’t remotely understand or appreciate it. Of course when I was sixteen or whatever, it was pretty cool to get $300 bucks and then I was able to appreciate it.
God gave us this gift. It’s what you most need. And actually it’s what you want! How often do you say, “I just need some time off?” Well there happens to be a day created just for that purpose. It was made for you so you can rest and relax and let go of your concerns about getting this done or that done.
You say, “I can’t rest on the Sabbath – I have too much to do.” Well, think about going on vacation. When you know you’re going on vacation, what do you do? You spend the previous week getting ready to go – wrapping things up at the office, getting the house into shape, etc. If we decided to get serious about accepting God’s gift of Sabbath rest, we’d realize preparation is needed for that as well. It’s a day of vacation every week! We’d realize we have to get stuff done during the week because we’re not doing it on that day. And now I’m getting where I want to go with you – do you see what I’m saying? Sabbath isn’t something we can slap over our lives as we currently live them. Sabbath requires us to step back and rework some things. We plan for it. We live in light of it. We keep it in mind. We approach it creatively, asking each week how we will rest and allow God to recreate us that week and how we can honor God with that day. One component of Sabbath I have enjoyed is that Christy and I for the last few Sundays have gotten up in the morning and gone to Biggby’s and had coffee together and just spent time connecting over coffee. I’ll tell you what, that recreates me like nothing else I can think of. There is nothing I love to do more than sit with that woman and have a real conversation with her. Christy is God’s gift to me (so is coffee!), and because we’re learning to take Sabbath seriously we are finding ways to enjoy each other more. And I love the idea that however many Sabbaths we have left together, we might very well spend a portion of all of them sitting and talking and drinking coffee at Biggby’s. And I believe God is pleased. See you can do this! You can find a way to let the Sabbath do what God created it to do in your life. But what you can’t do is just keep barreling through life and then suddenly slam on the breaks Sabbath morning. It won’t work. You’ll skid right through the day! You’ll have so much stuff that was left undone that you’ll almost have no choice but to tend to it. No, instead we approach the Sabbath prayerfully, not just on the Sabbath, but throughout the week. Instead of watching TV all evening on Thursday, we get out and mow the lawn because we know we’re not doing it on the Sabbath. See how Sabbath has just done us double-good? We’ll be able to have a Sabbath now, and we avoided another useless night of television during the week.
God created the world and on the seventh day, God rested. And you need to rest too. Don’t argue. For all you resisters, the more defensive you are about it and the more you resist it, the more you are like the child laying in bed holding his eyelids open and screaming, “I’m not sleepy!” Why is he doing this? Because the moment he stops doing it he’s going to drift off to sleep and he doesn’t for a moment want to sleep.
Some of you don’t for a moment want to slow down. You want to keep barreling through life a million miles an hour and then talking about how exhausted you are. I know – it’s hard to imagine there’s any other way. But there is, and it begins at the foot of Christ’s cross where your only purpose is to worship – not to produce.
The second practice I want to talk to you about tonight is called The Daily Office. Now you can call this what you want, but The Daily Office is what Daniel observed. It is simply the practice of pausing for prayer and worship three or four times a day, very regularly. It might be three periods of 10 minutes. It might be a longer time in the morning, a brief time in the early afternoon, another brief time later afternoon, and maybe a bit longer time in the evening again. Now this whole Daily Office thing is new to me. The whole idea that it’s important to devote more than one particular time period a day to focusing on God is new. It makes perfect sense, but unfortunately it’s new. So in my life for the last few months I’ve been trying to sit in silence for twenty minutes at least twice a day. During that time I try to just focus on God – to see Jesus in my mind’s eye. I practice silencing all the voices that clamor for attention in my mind, putting to rest all my concerns. I hear Jesus saying to me like he said to the wind and waves, “Peace, be still.” When I am distracted I sometimes repeat the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I have shared with you honestly my struggles with fear. I cannot even tell you the difference this has made in my life when it comes to fear. I am learning to bring my fears and worries to Jesus, place them there at his feet, and then sit in silence and learn to rest–to quiet my mind, to stop my racing thoughts.
Psalm 139:23 (NLT)
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
This is how I have begun to enter into a life that sets aside time for God regularly.
Now the Daily Office isn’t an amped up “quiet time,” or “devotional time.” Most of the time people refer to quiet time as a way of getting their batteries charged for the day, or getting their perspective right before they go out and busy themselves up. But the purpose of The Daily Office is to teach us to live moment by moment in the presence of God. If we are to learn to live all of our moments in God’s presence, then we must begin by giving God specific moments, and we must do this on a regular enough basis that we are drawn again and again to God’s unique perspective on the world and on who we really are. This has the effect of “spreading” God all through our lives. It’s not about how many minutes we’re spending, it’s about making sure that we structure our lives in a way that moves what matters to the middle. Yes, that will probably take more time than most of us have thought about before, but not drastically more, and the effect in our lives and our families will be dramatic.
As we create these spiritual rhythms, we increasingly see ourselves as people drawn not to chaos and noise and motion, but to quietness and peace. And we learn to live out of that peace. Even in our loudest and most outgoing moments, we live best when we live out of a deep, underlying peace, born of a quiet confidence that God is our refuge and strength, that he is available to us every moment of the day, and that he is enough.
Psalm 16:8 (KJV)
8 I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
The Daily Office teaches us to set the Lord always before us – to keep him at our right hand. In the Daily Office, we follow Daniel’s example, giving God priority and a place, we regularly practice being with him, and maybe even find a favorite posture or position – all of this will orient us more and more toward God.
There are four main components to The Daily Office: stopping, centering, silence, and scripture. I will go into detail about each of those with you next week, and we’ll bring our “Slowing Down” series to a close once again to move into other things for a while. I’m sure we’ll return to it again yet this year. But think about those words this week: stopping, centering, silence, and scripture. Ask yourself this question: what do the Sabbath and The Daily Office have in common? May the Holy Spirit guide you as you think about that this week. Will you pray with me? Let’s say this as a prayer together.
Isaiah 40:28-31 (NIV)
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. AMEN!
