Pause

I just finished a wonderful magazine. Life Action Ministries produces an annual Spirit of Revival magazine. This year's emphasis was on rest. Since I finally got around to reading it 6 months after it arrived in my mailbox, I decided it probably had some words for me!

And it did - words that I felt appropriate to share with you as well. The overall theme of the magazine is that as a society we move so fast, we need to hit the Pause button from time to time. God knew this, and He established the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. And yet Pause is about more than Sabbath. It's about getting alone with God. To promote spiritual pauses in our lives, Life Action recommends that we:

Divert Daily
Withdraw Weekly
Abandon Annually

And then, in the minutes and hours and days and weeks in between, we should follow Brother Lawrence's advice: Practice the Presence of God. Lawrence - a monk who worked in the kitchen and repaired sandals - exhorted believers not to ignore the process of getting to know how to hear God's voice. Most significantly for me, he exhorted: "Don't try to go faster than grace."

That's probably my biggest downfall. I have the heart of an activist. When I believe in a cause, I want to do something about it. When I have a passion, I want to plan and structure and outline and MOVE. When God says wait, watch, and pray, I struggle. I try to go faster than grace.

So I'm working to slow down. I'm trying to me more relational, more intentional, more prayerful. I'm trying to pause. Whatever task God puts before me I want to do with all my heart - but I never want to go faster than grace.

Selah.