Good morning. Today we’re continuing in our series through Psalm 23. We have called this series Stress-Busters because we’re looking at the antidotes or the solutions to the 7 most common causes of stress. Last week, we looked at Psalm 23:1 which was God’s solution to worry. “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not be in want.”
Today, we are going to look at God’s Antidote For Busyness. We are busy people. But always know that it could be worse. You could always be Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Google. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Marissa said she gets about 800 e-mails a day! On Saturdays and Sundays, she often spends 14 hours straight answering e-mails. She said she’s learned how to live on 4-6 hours of sleep a night. Now that’s busy.
Or how about Amy Schulman, a partner in a big law firm. She says that she has 2 assistants. One assistant for 7AM - 4PM and another for 4PM - Midnight. It takes 2 assistants to cover her 17 hour day. She’s at the office by 7:30 every morning, then home by 7:30 that night, but answers emails until midnight. She has 2 cell phone carriers, just in case one drops coverage. She said she tries to turn off her cell phone during meals with her family and when she is in the movie theatre. Very thoughtful, but very busy.
Or Brett Yormack, CEO of the New York Knicks. He says that he wakes up at 3:30 every morning, to be in the office by 4:00. Works until midnight every day. Leaving about 3 hours for sleep. But he says he is able to sleep in on the weekends. He isn’t at the office until 7AM on those days.
Now, the clinical term for this is workaholic. And I don’t know if any of us have allowed work to take over our lives in such an extreme way, but at times we may feel that our lives are just about as out of control and busy as these workaholics. We look at our schedules and it feels like we’re living life at this constant, break-neck speed.
Our schedules are full, but what are some of the things that fill them? I brought in some visual aids to help us think about this.
First, we have a laptop computer and a cell phone. These items represent your job. Your work has a way of taking up your time, causing you to be busy. Did you know that 25 years ago, the average American worked 40 hours a week? Now, the average American work week has increased to 50 plus hours.
A New York Times article from the summer of 2006 reported that 43% of people polled had no plans of taking any type of summer vacation. And of those who did go on vacation, 1/5 of them took their work laptop, and 80% took their cell phones for work related purposes. So work keeps us busy.
The second thing we have is a basketball and a tennis racquet. These 2 items represent the activities that your kids find themselves in. Let’s think about the activities they can be involved in. You have basketball, football, soccer, golf, baseball and softball, cheerleading, golf, band, academic team, tennis team, drama team…
Now that’s a lot for your kids to get involved with. And those are just the things that are offered through their schools. Most of them are involved in summer leagues, guitar lessons, beauty pageants, social activities, and the list goes on. You know how much stuff is out there for your kids to do. And some of your kids would love to do it all. So your kids activities make you busy.
Here is another item we all have, a remote for the TV. This represents our own entertainment. We like to go to the movies, to football games, we enjoy watching our favorite shows. And just like the kids activities, our options are endless. Entertainment keeps us pretty busy.
How about these? We have a laundry basket and a wash cloth. What about the house work, does it ever cause you to be busy? Isn’t it nice to know that once you get the dishes washed or the laundry folded, it’s going to be awhile before they pile back up again? Yeah, right. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Housework keeps us busy.
What about this last one? Here is a Bible. Church activities can take up a lot of our time as well. Even our service to God and to this church can feel overwhelming at times. They can keep us pretty busy, can’t they?
Now, none of the things on this table are bad. In fact, all of them in one way or another are very good and enriching to our lives, which is why it’s so easy to allow them to crowd our schedules.
But there’s only so much room on this table. Another item or 2, and there would be no room left at all. And that’s the way a lot of our lives are lived. Completely packed, no extra room, our lives are completely filled up, we are too busy.
And when our lives get too crowded, we aren’t able to give our full attention to the things that matter most. Family, friends, church community, our relationship with God. It is easy to get too busy, and those are often the things that are left out of our busy schedules.
Can anyone relate to what I am talking about? Do you find yourself too busy? Are you too busy for your own good? Well, here is a little quiz to find out if you’re too busy.
1. Are you always in a hurry?
2. Is your “To Do” list always unrealistically long?
3. Do you use days off to catch up with unfinished work?
4. Has more than one person ever told you to slow down?
5. Do you feel guilty when you do relax?
6. Do you have to get sick in order to take time off?
If you were able to answer “Yes” to any of these questions, then you might have a problem with busyness. But the good news is this: this is not the kind of life God wants you to live. In Psalm 127:2 it says, “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for He grants sleep to those He loves.”
In other words, it is senseless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night. God wants His loved ones to get their proper rest. If you’re burning the candle at both ends, you’re not as bright as you think you are. Psalm 23:2 says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters.” You see, God wants you to live a whole, balanced, and complete life. He wants you to not be so busy all of the time.
A CNN pole recently said that 59% of all Americans would like to slow down and relax more. Another pole said that we have 8 and a half hours less leisure time than we did a decade ago. Today, we are working more and enjoying it less. So here is a prescription for people that are too busy in life to enjoy what God has given them. This is God’s antidote for busyness. God says to RELAX!
The “R” In Relax Stands For Realize Your Worth.
The reason most people overwork is because they confuse their work with their worth. We think that if we work a whole lot, achieve a lot, we’re worth a lot. We confuse what we do with who we are. We get our primary identity from what we do. When we meet someone, after we find out their name, usually the second question is, “What do you do?” We get our worth, we think, from our work.
But the Bible doesn’t teach that. It says that our worth has nothing to do with our work. The solution to that idea is to realize what God has to say about you.
James 1:18 says that, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all He created.”
In other words, God says that we are the most important of all the things that He has made. If God likes me, and I like me, if you don’t like me, that’s your problem. As Christians, we need to realize just how valuable we are to God.
The “E” In Relax Stands For Enjoy What You Already Have.
Ecclesiastes 3:13 says, “…everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil, this is the gift of God.” In other words, we are told that we should enjoy what we have worked for. It is God’s gift to us.
Is it possible that we can be so busy trying to get more that we don’t enjoy what we already have? Sometimes we have a problem, the desire to acquire. Someone else has that, so I have to get it. They’ve moved up so we’ve got to move up. We’re so busy trying to keep up with the Jones’s, that we don’t realizing they just refinanced their home, or filed for bankruptcy.
We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t even like. But again, that’s not the way that God wants us to live. In Ecclesiastes 4:6 it says, “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”
In other words, this passage tells us that it is better to have only a little, with peace of mind, than to be busy all the time. So, we need to learn how to enjoy what we already have.
The “L” In Relax Stands For Limit Your Labor.
We need to make a conscious decision to make time for other things besides work. We need to schedule time for ourselves, time with God, time with our family. Work is important, but it isn’t all there is to life.
Limiting your labor is especially important for 2 groups of people:
The first group is those of you who are parents. It can be difficult to juggle work and manage a family at the same time. Parents, of all people need to learn to set some perimeter for their lives. Our best requires rest. It is possible that you can get so many irons in the fire that eventually you will put out the fire.
In Ecclesiastes 10:15 it says, “A fool’s work wearies him, he does not know the way to town.” What this verse is telling us is that only a fool works so much that they don’t know their way back home. Parents that find themselves too busy, often cut out the importance of their family.
The second group of people that need to be careful are those of you who are self employed. If you’re self-employed, your tendency is to never stop working. You bring work home, and you never seem to take time off. Most often, you are not on a 9 to 5 job because you keep the work with you all of the time.
It is vitally important that you learn to limit your labor in order to truly relax. Now, last week, I used a fishing pole, and this week, I’m using a bow. Now if you know anything about bow hunting, you know that you don’t leave the bow stung when you don’t plan on using it. Why? Because if the bow is never unstrung, eventually it looses its power.
In the same way, if we never take time off, if we never slow down and get away from the busyness of life, we will eventually loose our power as well.
A lady called her pastor one day, and she was very upset with him. She said, “I called all day Monday and I couldn’t get through to you.” The pastor informed her that, “Monday is my day off.” The little old lady continued, “Well the devil never takes a day off.” To which the pastor replied, “Yes, and if I didn’t take a day off I’d be just like the devil.”
Well, in Exodus 20:9-10 it tells us that, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”
God says that one day off every week is the rule. It is important that you take a day each week to rest, and to focus on God. Now I don’t think that it matters what day you choose as long as you choose one every week. Sunday may be your day of rest. But Sunday is not my rest, it’s a work day. So I have to pick a different day to rest. Limit your labor.
The “A” In Relax Stands For Adjust Your Values.
In order to reduce busyness in my life I must change my thinking about what is important. Ecclesiastes 4:4 says, “And I saw that all labor and all achievement springs from man’s envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
We place a lot of importance of getting stuff, and staying busy, because that is what makes us successful. What we need to do is realize what is important in life, and chase after those things. Family, friends, our health and enjoyment, a relationship with God.
Finally, The “X” In Relax Stands For Exchange Your Pressures For God’s Peace.
This gets at the very root of your stress. There are 3 kinds of fatigue:
There is physical fatigue, tired muscles. That can be fixed pretty quickly.
There is emotional fatigue, tired emotions, and feelings.
There is spiritual fatigue, a dry spirit. This is the deepest kind of fatigue.
You may need a vacation. But a vacation will not help these last 2. You need more than just time off to recharge your emotions and focus your spirit. You need a relationship with God. You can take a 2 week vacation in Tahiti but when you come back you’re still going to have the same problems. The pressures are still going to be there. It means more than just taking time off; it means re-adjusting my values and exchanging my pressure for God’s peace.
Now, we know that an overcrowded schedule is a pothole of our culture. Something we all face. That’s not in question. But some of you may have wondered, “How can scripture speak to us now in a culture that is so much more fast paced than the culture a few thousand years ago?” Now, it may surprise you to know that one of the main themes of the Bible speaks directly to our fast-paced, overbooked, crowded culture.
The central story of the Old Testament is that of the Exodus. Cliff notes are used to give you a shorter version of a story. So here is the ultra cliff-notes version. God’s people, the descendants of Abraham, moved to Egypt in the middle of a famine. When they moved to Egypt, they were just one family. A big family of 12 brothers, but a single family. But this family grew and grew and became a small nation within Egypt. A new Pharaoh didn’t like that, so this is what he did. He turned them into slaves.
Then the people started crying out to the God of Abraham. “Rescue us from this slavery, we can’t take it anymore.” God heard their cries. He sent Moses to stand up to Pharaoh and lead them out of slavery.
And not long after they had escaped Egypt’s armies and crossed the Red Sea, God gave to them the code of conduct that was to guide their lives, the Ten Commandments.
One of these commandments spoke directly to their time in slavery. Exodus 20 tells us that, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”
Do you see what God is doing? He knows that they had spent years, decades in forced labor. And now that they’re free, God is instructing them to take some time off. Rather than having them work all the time, God wanted them to stop and get their rest. And that’s what the Sabbath is all about. It’s about stepping out of that constant overload of activity and giving yourself permission, sometimes even forcing yourself if necessary to rest.
Can you see the connection? 2 overworked societies. We also struggle with slavery. We have a tendency to become enslaved to our schedules. God now, just as He did 3,000 years ago, is calling His people to become intentional about stepping out of that busyness in order to rest. Sabbath, or rest I believe stands as God’s answer to our overbooked lives, our overcrowded schedules.
You see, we weren’t created with the ability to go, go, go and never stop. If God rested on the 7th day of Creation, wouldn’t it make sense that those of us made in His image would also need a day of rest each week? Or do you feel guilty when you relax?
If so, I don’t know why. Jesus didn’t. He took time off. Are you busier than Jesus? Is what you’re doing more important than what Jesus did?
So, how do we enjoy it? What do we do on our day or rest? And that’s the beauty of the day of rest, you have permission to do whatever necessary to refill your tank. Pray, read, hang out with friends, mow the lawn, go on a walk, go fishing, take a bike ride, whatever it is that refills your tank.
Now, as we wrap things up this morning, in order to practice and enjoy a day of rest, there is one last thing that you need to understand. And that is, it’s okay to say “No.” We can’t do everything. If we say yes to every request and every opportunity, this table here will be pretty crowded. It’s okay to say “No.” In fact, your sanity and health is dependent upon you saying “No” at times. Saying “No” is really important on your day of rest. Maybe it’s “No” to your boss who wants you to work that day, or “No” to that activity that takes you away from your family. It’s okay to say “No” to things.
This morning, we’re going to take a few moments together as a congregation to rest. To take a short Sabbath in the middle of our day. I realize this may be hard for some of you, but you’ll survive.
There will be some reflection questions on the screen. Take a moment and look at those and reflect a bit.
(Take a few minutes. Have these questions on the screen: What activities or commitments have caused your life to become overcrowded? What would it take to eliminate these things? Whether it be a couple hours, an afternoon, or an entire day, when could you carve out some time for rest? What would an ideal day of rest look like for you?)
In closing, as a minister I’ve been around a lot of people as they approach their death. I have never had one person say to me, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.” No one has ever told me, “I wish I had done more house cleaning, or yard work.” But I have heard many people say, “I wish I had spent more time with my kids, or with my wife or husband.” “I wish I had spent more time building my relationship with God.” You see, we stay too busy all the time. What we need to do is learn God’s antidote for busyness. And simply put, that is to RELAX!
Let’s Pray!
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