Skip to content 7. The Barrenness of Busyness Sep 7 · 27 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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0:08 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 going to study the0:20 barrenness of busyness. And I want to take you to a text in Jeremiah chapter 2, and I'm going to look at verse 5 all the way to verse 18. But I want you to0:32 read that in your life group from verse 5 to verse 18. But for this video, I'm going to just highlight 3 scriptures, verse 5, verse 13, and verse 18. Let's read0:44 it together. Verse 5. Thus says the Lord, What wrong did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me, and went after worthlessness, and became0:56 worthless? 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 away1:08 from 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, 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 is the2:06 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 you pursue,2:18 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, God brings a2:30 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 living waters, and2:42 hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. What is the charge here? 2 evils. 1, they forsook God,2:54 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 who he is. He says, I'm3:06 the fountain of living waters. In other words, God is the source of continuous replenishment, continuous refreshment, continuous nourishment. God is3:18 the source of living water, fountain of living water. But yet, they walked away from him, and they are depending on other sources.3:30 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 what do you gain by going to Assyria to3:42 drink the waters of the Euphrates? Listen carefully. 2 places where they went to receive water. What gain do you have? Jesus says God says to them, what profit do you3:54 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? In other words, they forsook4:05 God, they went far from God, but then they end up making strategic alliances, political alliances with Egypt and with Assyria, and to get water from there. They4:17 built cisterns to bring water, and that it's broken cisterns that can hold no water, the Bible says. Listen carefully. This is a passage of scripture that speaks4:29 about God is a God who continues to invite us to find rest in Him, to find that inner rest, the restedness, the composure of our soul. The4:41 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 Bible says they that do4:52 that, they have walked away from him. They are pursuing worthlessness, and they are becoming worthless themselves. This is the word of the Lord. Now, do we have5:04 years to hear what the spirit has to say? You know, a story was told of a couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. At the fortieth wedding anniversary, the5:16 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. So5:28 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, took5:40 her to Happy Meal in in 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 to the5:52 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 the wife6:03 replied. She says, I meant my dress size, you idiot. Now listen carefully. 2 things we observed from that story I just shared. 1,6:16 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. We have a habit6:28 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. What is Jeremiah chapter6:40 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 rest and to have rest in their soul. But6:51 instead of coming to him for true rest, they are seeking after other things that gives them a sense of relief. Now this is where you and I, we7:03 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 other things, and you have7:15 become worthless. Empty yourself. 1 of the core things that I always tell pastors is to be able to have a grasp of an7:26 awareness of your state of your inner life. The reason is because if your inner life, your soul is tired, your soul is fatigued, your soul7:37 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 been living7:49 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, doing ministry,8:01 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 exhaustion in8:13 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 he8:48 was 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 are9:12 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, we9:24 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, we are9:59 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 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 live in.10:59 Secondly, we live in a cognitive environment. It's the intellectual realm. It is where you are educated. You read about things. You study things. You grow in your understanding of things. It's the cognitive environment.11:10 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 why people, even11:22 who are not in church, they want to be part of a community, so they join an RSO club or a Chinese association club or a chess club or tennis club. They join something because they want to be part of11:34 a club. It's a social environment because we are social beings. Beings. Fourthly, there's an emotional environment. What's the emotional environment? We need to understand that we live by our emotions. There11:46 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. In other words, you and I, we know11:58 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 are empowered. We know what is12:10 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. Now people who12:21 study human behavior, they say this, progress is always made in the first 2 environments, physical and cognitive. People always have growth in these 2. But12:33 the third the other 3, social, emotional, and spiritual, is where people stagnate, and they don't make much progress. Instead, that is the 3 places where they face12:45 much pain. They encounter a lot of pain in social, in relational aspect, in social aspect. And in emotions, they are always either they are angry, frustrated,12:56 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. Now ask yourself this fundamental13:08 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 making any progress in these13:20 things? Or which area do you experience pain? Story was told of 2 men who were cutting wood with axes. 1 man cut from morning13:32 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. He ended up with13:43 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, whenever I stopped13:55 to rest, I also sharpened my axe. Listen carefully. When you're ruled by busyness, you don't have time to sharpen your14:07 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 go into that14:18 place of soul fatigue. Secondly, we are overcome by stress. Hans Sealy is the father of stress research. He invented the word stress, and he defined stress14:30 like this. It is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand placed upon it. Think about it. Stress is not a circumstance, but rather our14:42 response to circumstance. You and I, we need to think about it. It's not circumstance, but how we respond to the circumstance, what we feel on the inside is stress.14:55 There are 4 levels of stress. Number 1, stress is our response and adaptation to change. Secondly, it is eustress. It's the positive, constructive aspect of15:06 stress. Eustress is actually the positive stress. The third 1 is distress. It's the negative, destructive aspect of stress. And fourthly, it's hyperstress. It's when the stress is15:18 too often or too prolonged. Now listen to me carefully. 4 levels of stress. 1, it's the stress. Eustress is positive. Distress is negative. Hyperstress is the stress for15:30 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 have stress. Adding a new baby to your family is15:42 stressful. All these things are stressful. They are good things, but they are stressful. That's why any stress cannot be for too too long. If it's too long, then it becomes hyperstress. But imagine if a person is15:54 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, hurry overload.16:41 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 all the things that are in our16:53 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. Secondly, there is a17:05 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 no margin. They have not carved17:17 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 are tired. There's a fatigue overload. Their strength is also depleted.17:29 Now people who are there are these days, it's actually statistically said that this is a generation that is on overdrive. In other words, they are fatigued. They are constantly low17:40 energy. Not only that, in some developing nations, this is actually a worry for the government because the population, the new birth is actually dwindling. Why? Because people17:52 don't have time for romance. People don't have time to to really get together and have that relaxed atmosphere. Why? Because they're constantly on an overload. Either they're hurried18:04 or they are fatigued because there is not enough physical strength. Thirdly, there's a debt overload. What is a debt overload? It's measured by our spending. People18:16 today are borrowing up to their necks in mortgages. People use the plastic cards. They cannot feel it. You know, Apple Pay, you don't feel the money leaving your hand. You don't feel the pocket18:27 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 more than they earn, especially18:39 with companies like Afterpay. Afterpay is doing so well. And the reason why they're doing well is because this generation wants all the luxuries of life. They don't want to wait for it. They just want18:51 to buy it today and pay for it later. Listen carefully. They are getting into debt. And the more you get into debt, you are becoming addicted and addicted to and a slave to the19:03 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 borrow money to buy a house. You're it's I'm not talking19:15 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 constant state of financial19:26 pressure. That's a debt overload. Fourthly, it's an emotional overload. Emotional overload, it's measured by our shallowness. Debt overload is measured by our19:38 spending. Emotional overload is measured by our shallowness. In other words, we haven't taken time to fill the reserves of our soul. We haven't spent time to equip ourselves19:50 in our thinking, to learn how to think, to renew our thinking. Therefore, our thoughts, our emotions are shallow. Listen. We've got20:02 to 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 our attention, our time. And20:14 as a result, what happens is we become emotionally overloaded because of shallowness. Now, Now, when you think about these things, I want you to listen to me carefully. I'm not just20:25 talking to members in a church. I'm also speaking to pastors. Because from personal experience of walking with pastors, I can tell you this, that many of them struggle with this20:37 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 in ministry,20:49 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 like 8 of21:01 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 the reason is. The reason is21:13 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 pursuit of21:24 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. This21:36 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 responsibility to oversee everything that goes21:48 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? To carve out22:00 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 reorientate our inner22:12 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, and if22:24 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 to corrupt22:36 our relationships. It starts to corrupt our spirituality. It starts to corrupt our discipleship. Listen to me carefully. Now you may say that, pastor,22:47 that's why I wanna take a break from my ministry. I wanna I I don't wanna lead a life group. Oh, 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 you take22:58 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 the discipline of23:10 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, tutored by23:22 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 the pattern of23:34 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 God centered23:46 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 from work.23:58 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. Husband. I cannot take a break from24:10 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 is not about giving in or saying, I24:22 can't do 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 from work, but working24:34 from rest. How do you do it? You need to learn to budget. So I'm going to put this slide on your screen. I want you to look at this. You've got to examine where are your24:45 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 your schedule, time24:57 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 before god. Every month, I25:09 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 it in.25:20 Secondly, hurry from hurry schedule time. Secondly, fatigue, strength, rest. If you're tired all the time, that means your strength is not there. What do you25:32 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 body repair25:44 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. In other words, know where25:56 each dollar is going in your life. Fourthly, emotional overload. Emotional overload is seen in our shallowness. In other words, we are so distracted. We're so26:08 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 do we need to budget is26:20 we need to budget worship. Because only when you come and worship the Lord, your emotions will be at rest. Read the Psalms. Psalmist26:31 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 the raging ceases.26:43 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 leave the home to go to26:55 office, you prepare your physical body because you need to have a proper appearance. You need to look groomed and well
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Habakkuk | Part 02 | Moving From Reason to Revelation | Rev Paul Jeyachandran Paul Jeyachandran
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