Skip to content The Barrenness of Busyness Sep 8 · 30 min ...more
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Rev. Paul Jeyachandran leads the Intentional Disciple Making Church (IDMC) Movement, which is all about calling churches back to its disciplemaking roots. Visit us at idmcmovement.com
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0:09 Hi, church. What a joy to meet you through this video as you gather to study the bible together in your life groups. This day, we're gonna study the barrenness of0:21 busyness. And I wanna take you to a text in Jeremiah chapter 2, and I'm gonna look at verse 5 all the way to verse 18. But I want you to read that in your life0:33 group from verse 5 to verse 18. But for this video, I'm gonna just highlight 3 scriptures, verse 5, verse 13, and verse 18. Let's read it together.0:45 Verse 5. Thus says the Lord, what wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me1:06 from and went after worthlessness and became worthless? Pay pay attention to some of the things that are said here. What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me? In other words, they walked away from1:08 God. See, when they walk away from God, they are walking after something else. What is that? They went after worthlessness. Another passage of scripture says, another1:19 translation, they went after empty things, and they became empty themselves. They became worthless. Listen carefully. When1:31 you say yes to God, you say no to the world. When you say yes to the world, you say no to God. You can't have both. Mutually1:43 exclusive partnership, just like a marriage. But here, the bible says they went far from God, and they went after empty things. And in the process, they became1:54 empty themselves. They became worthless. Key question to ask is, what are you becoming? If your life is filled with chaos and confusion and meaninglessness, then this is2:06 the question to ask, what has happened? Have I gone far from God? That's the key. And you went after worthlessness and became worthless. What you2:18 pursue, you will become. What you follow after, you will become. What you worship, you will end up becoming that very thing. So listen carefully. Jeremiah chapter 2, God2:29 brings a charge against his people. And then in verse 13, he highlights 2 key evils they have done. For my people have committed 2 evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living2:41 waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. What is the charge here? 2 evils. 1, they forsook2:53 god, but secondly, they have hewed out for themselves cisterns that can hold no water. See, God is saying he's giving them a picture of who3:05 he is. He says, I'm the fountain of living waters. In other words, God is the source of continuous replenishment, continuous refreshment, continuous3:16 nourishment. God is the source of living water, fountain of living water. But yet, they walked away from him, and they are depending on other3:28 sources. What are they depending on? Verse 18 says this. Now what gain do you what do you gain by going to Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile? And what3:40 do you gain by going to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates? Listen carefully. 2 places where they went to receive water. What gain do you have? Jesus says God says3:52 to them, what profit do you have by going to Egypt to drink from river Nile? And what gain do you have by going to Assyria to drink from the waters of Euphrates?4:04 In other words, they forsook God, they went far from God, but then they end up making strategic alliances, political alliances with Egypt and with Assyria, and to4:15 get water from there. They they built cis cisterns to build bring water, and that it's broken cisterns that can hold no water, the bible says. Listen carefully. This is a4:27 passage of scripture that speaks about God is a God who continues to invite us to find rest in him, to find that inner rest, the restedness, the4:39 composure of our soul. The inner disposition needs to be rested. And God says, I will give you that rest, but you do not come to him. Instead, you go to the world. The bible4:50 says, they that do that, they have walked away from him. They are pursuing worthlessness, and they are becoming worthless themselves. This is the word of the5:02 Lord. Now, do we have years to hear what the spirit has to say? You know, a story was told of a couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary.5:14 At the fortieth wedding anniversary, the husband said to his wife, honey, what do you wish as an anniversary present? And the wife said, I wish I can be 6 again.5:28 So the husband booked a tour to Disney World, took the wife on every ride possible. She was wobbly and groggy, going up and down in all these different rides,5:40 took her to Happy Meal in in McDonald's McDonald's, and gave her Happy Meal after Happy Meal, and then took her to movie marathon, Disney movie marathon, watched all the Disney movies, and then came to5:51 the hotel completely exhausted at night. She collapsed in her bed. And then the husband asked her, honey, how does it feel to be 6 again? This is what the6:03 wife replied. She says, I meant my dress size, you idiot. Now listen carefully. 2 things we observe from that story I just shared.6:15 1, men don't listen. Even if they listen, secondly, they don't get it right. Now this is true for us, you know, in general. We6:27 have a habit of listening to what God is saying in his word, but yet, we don't listen. And even if we do listen, we don't get the whole picture. That's why I want you to catch this. What6:38 is Jeremiah chapter 2 is all about? It's all about people of God coming to God to find the source of satisfaction, coming to God to be refreshed and to rest and to have rest in their6:50 soul. But instead of coming to him for true rest, they are seeking after other things that gives them a sense of relief. Now7:02 this is where you and I, we need to allow the word of god to be like a spiritual X-ray, to really look at the state of our soul. And god says, you have gone after other7:13 things, and you have become worthless. Empty yourself. 1 of the core things that I always tell pastors is to be able to have a grasp of7:25 an awareness of your state of your inner life. The reason is because if your inner life, your soul is tired, your soul is fatigued, your7:37 soul is not healthy, you will not finish well in life or in ministry. In recent times, people who have been caught up in scandals, who have been7:49 living double life, 1 of the things that is said about them is that they were too tired. They were tired for a very long time, tired of doing ministry, traveling, doing8:01 ministry, exhaustive ministry. Listen carefully. It's not just physical tiredness. This is a soul fatigue. And what is a soul fatigue? It is the tiredness, the exhaustion8:12 in one's inner life. And when a soul is tired, it will wander off from God. It will start to live double life, a8:24 compromised life. Story was told of an American explorer in the Amazon jungles. This American explorer, he employed some of the natives to carry8:36 his luggage as he as he went on this expedition. He was he was bashing his way into the jungles, speeding to his destination. And he was8:48 so driven that he went on and on without even stopping for a moment. Finally, they came to a clearing in the jungle, and all the natives dropped their load and9:00 refused to walk another inch. He came back to them shouting, come. Let's keep going. What are you waiting for? 1 of them replied, we are9:11 waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies. I want you to listen to me carefully. How true this is, you know? Many of us, if it really takes stock of our soul, we9:23 probably can say like this, our body and our soul is few steps apart. In other words, it's out of step. It's out of sync. The reason is because there are so many things that9:35 causes fragmentation in our lives, so many things that is causing us to be tired in our soul. So today, I wanna explore with you what are the root9:47 issues that causes soul fatigue. What are the root issues? I wanna give you 3. I want you to meditate today's lesson. 1, we are ruled by busyness. Secondly, we9:59 are overcome by stress. And thirdly, we are experiencing overload. Let's look at it 1 by 1. We are ruled by busyness. I always say this. Right? We rush10:11 here. We rush there. We end up becoming Russians. In other words, we are always rushing. You know, the catchphrase of this modern society is this, I10:23 gotta run. I have to run. I gotta run. I'm in a hurry. See, listen to me. People are doing so many more things. No wonder we have no time. No time to10:35 really take stock. No time to really go and set aside time of of Sabbath before the Lord to worship him, to adore him, to cultivate a think time. There's no margins in our lives. Listen. We live in10:46 5 environments, and I want you to catch this. 5 key environments that we live in. Number 1, we live in a physical environment. That is the material world that we live10:58 in. Secondly, we live in a cognitive environment. It's the intellectual realm. It is where you are educated. You you read about things. You study things. You grow in your understanding of things. It's the cognitive11:09 environment. Thirdly, it's a social environment. God created us to be social beings. We need to be part of a community, a community where we have a sense of belonging. That's why11:21 people, even who are not in church, they want to be part of a community, so they join an RSL club or a Chinese association club or a chess club or tennis club. They join something because they want to be11:33 part of a club. It's a social environment because we are social beings. Fourthly, there's an emotional environment. What's the emotional environment? We need to understand that we live11:44 by our emotions. There are feelings attached to everything. There is a there is a sense of dominant emotions that we experience, so emotional environment. And finally, there's a spiritual environment.11:56 In other words, you and I, we know that we are spirit beings. We need to have a relationship with the God who created us. We need to have that relationship with the higher being so that we are12:08 empowered. We know what is right and wrong. We can navigate our lives through his word, through his and following his ways, and fulfilling his will. 5 environments we live in.12:19 Now people who study human behavior, they say this, progress is always made in the first 2 environments, physical and cognitive. People always have growth12:31 in these 2. But the third the other 3, social, emotional, and spiritual, is where people stagnate, and they don't make much progress. Instead, that is the 312:43 places where they face much pain. They encounter a lot of pain in social, in relational in relational aspect, in social aspect. And in emotions, they are always either they are12:55 angry, frustrated, bitter, resentful, and all those things comes in, and they don't have a relationship with God. So pain happens in these 3, and growth happens in the first 2. Now13:06 ask yourself this fundamental question. Where do you see you growing? Do you feel like you made any progress in the year 20 20 Or even in this first quarter of this this year, 20 21, are you making13:18 any progress in these things? Or which area do you experience pain? Story was told of 2 men who were cutting wood with axes.13:30 1 man cut from morning till evening without stopping. He ended up with a large pile of wood. The second man did the same, but he would work 60 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes.13:42 He ended up with an even larger pile of wood. Now they asked him, how come he did get more than the other guy who did no break? This is what happened. He says,13:54 whenever I stopped to rest, I also sharpened my axe. Listen carefully. When you're ruled by busyness, you don't have time to sharpen14:06 your axes. You don't have time to really come before God and to refresh your inner man. That's why we become fragmented, and we become we we go14:18 into that place of soul fatigue. Secondly, we are overcome by stress. Hans Sealy is the father of stress research. He invented the word stress, and he14:29 defined stress like this. It is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand placed upon it. Think about it. Stress is not a circumstance,14:41 but rather our response to circumstance. You and I, we need to think about it. It's not circumstance, but what how we respond to the circumstance, what we feel on the inside14:53 is stress. There are 4 levels of stress. Number 1, stress is our response and adaptation to change. Secondly, it is eustress. It's the15:04 positive constructive aspect of stress. Eustress is actually the positive stress. The third 1 is distress. It's negative, destructive aspect of stress. And fourthly, it's15:16 hyperstress. It's when the stress is too often or too prolonged. Now listen to me carefully. 4 levels of stress. 1, it's the stress. Eustress is positive. Distress is15:28 negative. Hyperstress is the stress for too long. Now when you think about stress, stress can come even out of good things. Moving house, you become stressed. Getting married, you will have15:40 stress. Adding a new baby to your family is stressful. All these things are stressful. They are good things, but they are stressful. That's why any stress cannot be for too long. If it's too long, then it becomes15:51 hyperstress. But imagine if a person is constantly in a state of stress. They had no way to come and be refreshed. You know what will happen? They will look for a mistress.16:06 Mistress. Now that's a joke, people. Just laugh. Yeah? In other words, you and I, we need to know how to handle stress. Now remember, stress is not16:18 what happens to you, it what happens in you. So we need to take charge of what is happening in us. Otherwise, our soul will end up becoming16:29 tired. Soul fatigue will be the result. Now thirdly, we are experiencing overload. There are 4 kinds of overload that I want you to capture. 1, hurry16:40 overload. We already established this, that we are running from meeting to meeting. We rush here. We rush there. We become Russians. In other words, there's a hurry overload, not enough time to do all16:52 the things that are in our plate. Now this is measured by the schedule. It's measured by our calendar. It's measured by what we put on our plates. So hurry overload.17:03 Secondly, there is a fatigue overload. What is a fatigue overload? It is measured by our strength. You know, these days, people are living margin less life. In other words, there's no17:15 margin. They have not carved out spaces to go and be refreshed with worship, in community life, and all that. People are rushing from 1 to another. As a result, they're tired. There's a fatigue overload. Their17:27 strength is also depleted. Now people who are these days, it's actually statistically said that this is a generation that is on overdrive. In other words, they are17:38 fatigued. They are constantly low energy. Not only that, in some developing nations, this is actually a worry for the government because the population, the new birth, is actually17:50 dwindling. Why? Because people don't have time for romance. People don't have time to to really get together and have that relaxed atmosphere. Why? Because they're18:01 constantly on an overload. Either they're hurried or they're fatigued because there is not enough physical strength. Thirdly, there's a debt overload. What is a debt overload? It's measured by our18:13 spending. People today are borrowing up to their necks in mortgages. People use the plastic cards. They cannot feel it. Know, Apple Pay, you don't feel the money18:25 leaving your hand. You don't feel the pocket becoming empty because there is there is no there is no sense of what is going out of your hands. And as a result, what happens? People spend more18:37 than they earn, especially with companies like Afterpay. Afterpay is doing so well. And the reason why they're doing well is because this generation wants all the18:48 luxuries of life. They don't wanna wait for it. They just wanna buy it today and pay for it later. Listen carefully. They are getting into debt, and the more you get into debt, you are becoming19:00 addicted and addicted to and a slave to the bank. People work all their life just to pay off the loan that they have. Now this is debt overload. Now I'm not saying that you can't borrow19:12 money to buy a house. You're it's I'm not talking about good debt, but I'm talking about bad debt. But even good debt, some people borrow so much that they actually are living in a constant19:24 state of financial pressure. That's a debt overload. Fourthly, it's an emotional overload. Emotional overload, it's measured by our shallowness.19:36 Debt overload is measured by our spending. Emotional overload is is measured by our shallowness. In other words, we haven't taken time to fill the reserves of our soul. We haven't spent time19:48 to equip ourselves in our thinking to to to learn how to think, to renew our thinking. Therefore, our thoughts, our emotions are shallow.20:00 Listen. We gotta train ourselves. And because of that, there's an emotional overload. Because of the pressures of life, so much demand is placed upon us. So much more is asking for our20:12 attention, our time. And as a result, what happens is we become emotionally overloaded because of shallowness. Now when you think about these things, I want you to listen to me carefully.20:24 I'm not just talking to members in a church. I might I'm I'm also speaking to pastors. Because from personal experience of walking with pastors, I can tell you this, that many of them20:36 struggle with this 1 thing. Even the other day when I was talking to a senior pastor, he was saying, Paul, that I've been in ministry for 30 years. But when I started in20:48 ministry, when I was doing the same things like preaching, teaching, and leading people, building teams, walking with people, walking with my leaders, I used to enjoy it. I had it was like20:59 8 out of 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10. But these days, it's only 3 out of 10 or 4 out of 10. I don't find joy in these things. The reason is because I can tell you what the21:11 reason is. The reason is there is a soul fatigue that sets in. The burden of ministry, the constant burden of ministry, the relentless, requests that come in, the relentless relentless21:23 pursuit of wanting to do things so that people are happy, people are pleased, and doing all these things, constantly being giving out, giving out, giving out, ultimately eats you on the inside.21:36 This is important. I want you to listen to me. We need to take time to refresh ourselves. But how do we do it if you have a responsibility? Like, senior pastor has a responsibility to oversee everything21:48 that goes on in the church. How do you do it? The way we do it is to do it on the run. Jesus did it. He showed us a model. That's what we've been studying in these past few weeks, isn't it? To21:59 carve out margins in our lives, to be able to take time, even in our busy schedule, to schedule in a time to go alone with God and to have that silence and solitude so that we can reorientate22:11 our inner life. We can bring back that composure in our inner life. If we don't do this, if we are ruled by busyness, if we are overcome by stress,22:23 and if we are experiencing overload for a long time, what will happen is that we will set we will have that soul fatigue. And when the soul fatigue comes in, it starts to22:35 corrupt our relationships. It starts to corrupt our spirituality. It starts to corrupt our discipleship. Listen to me carefully. Now you may say that,22:46 pastor, that's why I wanna take a break from my ministry. I wanna I I don't wanna lead a life group. I don't wanna do this. I wanna just take a break so that I can have I know of people who take breaks. Just because you22:58 take a break doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get refreshed. You know why? Because you need to not just remove something, but you need to replace it with something. And if you don't have the23:09 discipline of replacing it with proper discipline to study God's word, seek God's word, and to really seek God in worship, and to grow in him, and be intentionally mentored by someone,23:21 tutored by someone in that, you will backslide even more. This is the truth. That's why I advocate people to run. On the run, we refresh ourselves. How do we do it? Follow the23:33 pattern of Jesus. Follow the principles that he did. What is it? We need to learn to budget. We need to have a gospel centered budget, a bible centered budget, a god23:45 centered budgeting. That's the key. I want to catch this phrase. I want you to catch this. Take note of this. Memorize this. We are not called to rest from23:56 work. We are called to work from rest. In other words, the work will always be there. I cannot take a break from being a father. I cannot take a break from being24:08 husband. I cannot take a break from being responsible for the stewardship that God has entrusted to me. So how? Even I can't do it, how? How can I take a break? Taking a break is24:20 not about giving in or saying, I can't do this anymore. I can't handle that anymore. No, not that. But instead, coming to a place to be able to say, Lord, help me to budget. So it's not resting from24:32 work, but working from rest. How do you do it? You need to learn to budget. So I'm gonna put this slide on your screen. I want you to look at this. You gotta24:44 examine where are your overloads. If the overload is in the area of hurry and it's measured by schedule, then you need to budget budget time. You need to put enough space in your24:55 schedule, time to be alone with God, time to have silence and solitude, time to have a day of worship. I already shared with you in a previous lesson. In a in a year, I spend few days before25:07 God. Every month, I spend a whole day before God. Every week, I spend a chunk of time before God. And every day, I spend a few hours with God. Now these things matter because we schedule it25:19 in. Secondly, hurry from hurry schedule time. Secondly, fatigue, strength, and rest. If you're tired all the time, that means your strength is not25:31 there. What do you do? You put enough rest. Switch off those TV. Switch off the Netflix. Go and sleep. Sleep is the best thing you can do. And when you sleep and you get refreshed, let the body25:43 repair itself. These are important. Thirdly, debt. When you're overloaded in debt, you need to this is measured by your spending. You need to put your financial budget in place. In25:55 other words, know where each dollar is going in your life. Fourthly, emotional overload. Emotional overload is seen in our shallowness. In other words, we are so26:06 distracted, we're so anxious, we're so we're easily upset, easily pricked, easily we can flare up. Those things, it shows us a shallowness in our emotions. What do26:18 we need to budget is we need to budget worship. Because only when you come and worship the Lord, your emotions will be at at rest. Read the Psalms.26:30 Psalmist cries out to God about his emotions. He cries out to God, and he says, God, why is my soul raging inside of me? And then he comes and encounters God, and then all the26:42 raging ceases. He's calm, and he comes before God. So what do you need to budget? Budget worship. How often do you go and prepare yourself in your spirit? See, when you leave26:53 the home to go to office, you prepare your physical body because you need to have a proper appearance. You need to look groomed and well dressed so that people will take you seriously. Correct? So27:05 you do all that to prepare your physical body. How much more your spiritual body? Because your spiritual life, your inner man, is important because you are a spirit being first, then you're a physical being. Your27:17 spirit being needs to be readied. And if you don't take care of the spiritual being, over time, 'll become fatigued. That's why take care of the inner life. 1 of the core things I would say to you is27:29 continually go before God and assess these areas of your life. 1, your physical area of your life. Because if you don't take time to assess it physically, am I doing27:40 well? Am I do is my health in the right place? Am I eating healthy? Am I doing right exercises? Physically, take that rest. Do the things that you need to do. If you don't do it, you'll end up sick.27:53 Emotionally, if you don't end up taking care of it by going before God to worship, you will end up burning out. Spiritually, if you don't end up taking care of yourself in your spiritual28:04 life, you will end up backsliding, living a compromised life because of soul fatigue. Finally, if you don't take care of the finances in your life, the ability to do things, the28:16 choices in your life, if you don't have a grasp and a grip over your how you spend and what you spend on, that you're not an emotional spender, you you are wise in your stewardship, you have a sense of28:28 balance, and the wisdom of God leads you in how you spend your money, then you'll be alright. But if you don't have it, you will end up in a huge debt because of all the bad decisions you made in life. Listen carefully.28:40 This is important. So today, we're talking about soul fatigue. And what is a soul fatigue? I already shared with you. Soul fatigue is where one's inner life is completely28:52 exhausted. It has come to a place where it's totally tired. And in Jeremiah chapter 2, God says to you and I, what wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after29:03 worthless things and became worthless? Don't become worthless by falling after worthless things. Come back to God. Do not forsake him because he's the only 1 who's the fountain of living29:15 waters, who can refresh us, who can restore us, who can repair us, who can rebuild us, and who can release us into our destiny. God bless you. I'm praying for you. Let's look to the Lord29:27 in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this moment. Even as we come before you, I ask that you do a surgical work of change within our hearts. Help us to understand. Give us that grace to29:39 be able to see the the true condition of our inner life. And if we see it, we cannot unsee it. We need to do something about it. So help us, mighty God. Holy Spirit, we pray29:50 that you help us. And I pray that the as the life group continues to dialogue around this, you will do a deep work in each of us, keep us accountable, and help us, Father, to restore our life inner life, that30:02 we will continue to grow in you and become all that you have called us to become. In Jesus' name. And people of God said, amen and amen. We love you. God bless you.
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