RelationSHIFT | Part 2 | From Routine to Relationship

there an app on your phone that you wish that you could delete? That you would never have to have that again. You could turn it off. You could you could delete that. Never have to open that up again. Do you guys have an app on your phone? Maybe for some of you it's messages. Like you don't want any more text messages. For those of you precious people that have 20,000 unread emails, there's a support group for you. But I have an app on my phone that I despise. Listen, hate is a strong word. But this app was an entire session with my therapist. I'm not even kidding you. And that app is called Calendar. I have a disdain for the Calendar app on my phone. It is color-coded chaos. Because I have so many calendars on top of the normal calendars that I have. I have our family calendar. I have a calendar for doctor's appointments that are just for Ryan and I. Because when you hit almost 50, that starts to like tick up. And then I have work. I have Jordi's work. I have Journey's personal calendar. Which I don't know why. I don't know why I accepted it. I have the church master calendar. I have my church meetings. I have Ryan's church meetings. It is color-coded chaos. There is not a day where there's not something on my calendar. There are meetings on my calendar that I didn't schedule. But somehow have to attend. In fact, I don't know how Ryan is accepting me attending a meeting that I didn't even schedule. But that's showing up on my calendar. Because the busyness of this world keeps pressing in on me. I don't know if you feel it. But I feel constant busyness. Having to do more. Having to do to keep moving. And our sermon series for this month is called Relationships. Because there are times in our relationship with the Lord that we are dry. That we are desperate for another move of His Spirit. But this morning we're going to talk a little bit about, in week two of our series, we're going to talk a little bit about moving from routine to relationship. I mean sometimes I look at my week and I think there's no way in the world, it is not humanly possible for someone to fulfill the events that are on my calendar. And somehow, sometimes I'm like, God what what do I do with all of this? How do I work through this? Sometimes we treat God as an appointment on our calendar. He has His own event.

6 a.m. prayer. Sunday morning service. Small group. So we we have events and we've included the Lord in these events. But for some reason the routine of day in, day out, this part of our life is so dry. We're not happy. We're broken. We're stressed out. We're not sleeping yet. We're exhausted. We're exhausted at the end of the night but we can't sleep because of the busyness of our mind. It's continuously going. The routine of our life has taken the place of a relationship. Our problem isn't that we have too much to do, which maybe it is. But a lot of the times our problem is that we have separated the spiritual from the everyday. That these are the spiritual things that we do. These are the everyday things that we do instead of combining them and allowing the Lord to speak to us in every moment of our life. So grab your smartphones. Grab your Bibles. Let's let's dive into the Word of God this morning with our sermon entitled, From Routine to Relationship. Our theme verse for for this series is James chapter 4. And here James is—Ryan went through it last week—but he says Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. You see, in 2019, Ryan and I found ourselves in a very, very dry place. We were pastors in Washington State, right north of Seattle. And even though we had been in ministry, you know, my dad's a pastor, and so I had been in ministry for years, you know. I was the pastor's kid, then I became the pastor's wife, and then I became a pastor. And so, just doing ministry and being a part of the work of the Lord inside the church building had been my life. And in 2019, Ryan and I found ourselves in a very, very dry place. We were experiencing incredible growth in Washington State.

There were a lot of, I mean, just salvations and baptisms, people getting delivered from drugs and alcohol, brand new believers coming into the kingdom. But we found ourselves doing a lot of great things for the Lord and neglecting being with the Lord. See, we were doing good things. We were doing the things that we were pushing forward in ministry and desiring to see people's lives changed, but it became a routine. Day in and day out, and we removed ourselves from the presence of the Lord. Now, here's the thing. Two weeks of intensive counseling that they give to missionaries who come off the mission field, they sent us to this. Our marriage was fine. We were doing good, you know, the church was growing, but we were broken. And I don't know if you've ever been there where you have worked and you have done and you're just like, I can't do another thing. This message was birthed out of that two weeks of intensive counseling. And listen, if you haven't been here for very long, you're gonna know. Ryan says it all the time. We're gonna tell you a lot more about our failures than our successes. And we believe in Christian counseling, finding somebody that can speak life into you

to help you with any baggage that you have from maybe childhood or past relationships and direct you toward who God has called you to be. And we are not ashamed of that. We think that the church needs to be a place where we can be honest that it's okay that we're not okay. Sometimes the busyness of the world, the busyness of our calendar, it only takes one little thing, one small thing to just crumble you. As pastors, we found ourselves in this place of the routine of working for the Lord had replaced our relationship with the Lord. We had begun to make the things of God so important that we forgot to invite him into our everyday life. See, these are the important things of God that we forgot to invite him into our everyday life. This is just me driving to work. These are the important things that we need. This is what God looks down and says, oh, look how great they're doing. They're leading a small group, they're witnessing, they're serving at Transform 85, these are all great things. But if that's where we say that God resides in the God things, the spiritual things that we do, then we're missing a verse of scripture in our everyday life. We separate the ordinary and the spiritual. Look at 1 Corinthians 10 31.

This is what it says. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Notice this verse doesn't begin with something impressive. Not preaching, not serving, not worship, not reading your, listen, not reading your Bible or praying. At that time, not going to the tabernacle and spending hours in the presence of the Lord. No, what does this scripture say? It says, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. I think sometimes routine comes into our life because we separate the spiritual from the ordinary and God wants to make every moment in our life holy because then it's no longer a routine. Now, I said this in the first service and unfortunately I'm gonna say it again. I need the holy moment in my drive to work. Some of y'all have never driven behind me or been in front of me. But I can tell you right now, us Florida drivers, listen, we are some of the most aggressive drivers. We must have all migrated from the North. We are some of the most aggressive drivers and I've gotta tell you, I have, the conviction of the Lord over the last couple weeks of me inviting him, because one of the things like, oh, inviting him in my driving. Oh, I don't wanna do that. Listen, invite him into your driving

and if you have that amazing sticker on the back of your car with the transformation logo, please invite the Lord into your drive. My husband, wonderful man, cannot have anything on his car that shows him as a Christian. He can't have the, you know, Jesus is my co-pilot. He can't have that on there because he is one of those aggressive Florida drivers. Inviting the Lord into our everyday life that it's all holy, because then it's not routine. Because what drives us out and causes us to be so burdened by life is when the routine doesn't stop and we forget to see the Lord in every moment of our life. And that's where Ryan and I found ourself in 2019. We were dry. We had worked so hard and God was like, yeah, but I'm still here. Did you remember me? God isn't glorified only through sermons or songs. He is actually glorified in our schedules. If we invite him into them, if we stop long enough to take a moment and hear him, because the goal of our life isn't to live a less busy life. The culture that we live in, it is busy. And it's only gonna get busier because the enemy knows that distraction is one of the best things to use against the church. It's not to make our life less busy. The goal is to live a God-filled life.

He doesn't want to be a space, an event on our calendar. He wants to bring meaning to every moment that is already scheduled because scripture says he knows our days. Scripture says that he knows the very hairs on our head. He made the moments. He knows what's around the corner tomorrow. So us inviting him into every schedule, he's already there. It's us acknowledging that he's there because then the routine things, the tough things, the hard things, the things that are bearing down on us, they actually get lifted. Listen, we cannot let busyness steal our closeness with the Lord. Do not let your busyness steal your closeness with the Lord. We're gonna see a verse of scripture here, a story in scripture in Luke chapter 10 of this exact thing. Luke chapter 10 verse 38, it says this. As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he taught. Verse 40, but Martha was distracted. By the big dinner she was preparing, she came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you

that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come. and help me. Listen, every time I read this book, this story in this book, Mary is the younger sister, Martha is the older one. The reason why I know that is because I'm the younger sister. I have a sister that's older than me, and listen, on Thanksgiving, I sat at the kitchen and my job was just to entertain her. She did all the work. I was just there to entertain. Martha was distracted by the big dinner. It was a good thing. Listen, she saw Jesus. She invited him into her home. She was preparing food for him. Those are good things, but she got distracted, and then she got angry that her sister wasn't helping her. Listen, when busyness replaces closeness, we will start to get angry at the people around us that we don't think are as busy as us. Oh. Listen, Ryan and I, we've been married for 27 years. We worked a lot out in those first couple years, a lot. We went to, we've been to marriage counseling. We don't, listen, premarital counseling is wonderful. Postmarital counseling is so important because you don't know what you're getting into

until you get into it, and you're like, whoa, God. There's some things here we gotta work out, but the thing that Ryan and I probably have a tendency to maybe be the most snarky about and fight the most with each other is who is busier. Does anybody else play that game in your home? No, no, no, I am more exhausted, and then if, listen, love him, if he tries to tell me how much he had to do that day, I'm just like, seriously. Did you see my calendar and all the events and meetings that you put on my calendar? No, there is that thing inside of us that if somebody else isn't as busy as us, we start to get angry. We start to blame. Jesus, will you tell her to come and help me? Because I'm in here doing all this work all by myself, and this is what Jesus said. But the Lord said to her, my dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details. There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her. When busyness replaces closeness with the Lord, we will begin to get resentful. We'll begin to look at other people and wonder why do they get to enjoy their life? Poor me, no one helps me. Martha was busy around Jesus.

Mary was still with Jesus. Martha's hands were full, but Mary's heart was open. And Jesus didn't correct Martha for serving. Listen, we work. As believers, we serve. We are to serve one another as believers. Jesus didn't correct Martha for serving. He corrected her for missing him while she served. He didn't say, dear Martha, you're upset and worried about this big dinner. No, he wanted to eat. But you are worried and upset over all the details. You're letting the, what does Scripture say? There's a verse of Scripture that says that the small foxes spoil the vine. It's the little things in our life that begin to poke at us, and that's when we begin to move away from the Lord. We cannot allow busyness to replace closeness. And friends, we need to match his pace. We need to live this life on his pace, not ours. This world is pushing us, is pushing us to a pace that is not sustainable. Listen, we had three kids. All three of our kids were in club sports. We had basketball. We had volleyball. We had, Jeremiah was on a travel basketball team. Jordan and Journey were on travel volleyball teams. When we were in Washington State,

Journey was on a travel. travel basketball team, and they played on Sundays. And so, we would, and actually, it turned into an incredible outreach because the team would actually meet at our church, attend the first service, grab Journey. She'd be there in her little, I mean, she was in the fifth grade. She had her little basketball uniform on. They all walked in with their basketball uniforms on. And then, being that I was doing worship at the time Ryan was the pastor, we couldn't leave to go watch the games. So, the coach and his wife would take Journey to the games. There was a moment when Journey came to us. She was in the fifth grade. And she said, I'm so tired. I just wanna go to church. And just, listen, this world will push us. Now, there are good things. I wanted my girls in sports. I played sports. I think it's great. I wanted my son in sports. I wanted him to enjoy the fun of his childhood. But we don't have to be at everything. There is a moment where we can say, you know what? That's just too much. We're gonna take a step back. Because, my girls told me,

because of my vertical challenges, because my sister's six foot, and my husband's six four, and my dad's six four, and my mom is five four, so I'm five four. My girls told me that they would make division one volleyball if it hadn't been for me. Because, you know, they would have been so much taller. I said, well, you get all your athleticism from me. So, not your dad. No, I'm just kidding. This world is pushing our pace. And Psalm 46 10 says, be still and know that I am God. Stillness is not laziness. It's awareness. Can I say that again? Stillness is not laziness. It's awareness. You are aware. You might still have a job to do, but you are aware of what God is doing around you. See, Martha could have made the dinner listening to what Jesus was saying. I got this job over here that I gotta do, but I gotta listen to that. She got distracted by the details of the work that she was doing that she missed the Savior. Be still and know that I am God.

It's a heart posture that says, I am not God. I can't hold all these things together, but you can. It's not rushed, it's not frantic, it's not reactionary. It is steady and quiet and peaceful. A pace that moves with the Lord. That moves with the Lord. Matthew 11, 28 says this, and this verse hit me very hard this week, and I pray over you that any of you that are weary and broken today, you will hear the words of your Savior, and you will be encouraged and blessed, because Matthew 11, 28 says, then Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. There's a lot of times that I don't do this. When I'm weary and I'm carrying heavy burdens, guys, listen, there are moments when I just call my sister, but my sister can't give me rest. My sister can't fix. Now, I've got a safe place to share what I'm carrying. She can't fix it. She can only listen. Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying a heavy burden. I will give you rest. He goes on to say, take my yoke upon you. The yoke is the thing that they would put on the cattle

or on the ox to be able to plow a field. It's work. That yoke is the work, and Jesus says, take my yoke on you. Let me teach you why. Jesus says, because I am humble and gentle at heart. That means we are not. And you will find rest for your soul. Jesus says, for my yoke is easy to bear and the burden that I put on you, it's light. He knows our frame. He knows how much we can handle. If you have gotten to the point that you can't handle anymore, then you're not wearing the right yoke. Because in that moment where I have felt like I was broken and I can't carry anymore, the minute I go to the Lord, he replaces what was on my shoulders and he gives me something new. And it's lighter and it feels better and I can actually pull this. Did my circumstance change? No. Did my problem change? No. But the load that I was pulling became lighter because he had it. He began to give me rest. Think about a metronome. When we're up here on worship, we have this click in our head. It's a click that keeps us on everybody on the beat of the song. We know it's a click track, but it's a metronome and every musician knows that if you rush the tempo, you ruin the song. Now, I try my best. You can ask our amazing drummer, Josue, every time I lead worship, he's like, I'm getting a workout today. Because every time I lead worship, I'm like, can we just do that just a little bit faster? How about a little bit faster? But this is what I found. There are some songs that we can't do a little bit faster. You know why? Because I can't get the words out. There are too many words to the song. And so then I'm trying to sing the song. And I'm like, oh, let's slow that back down to the tempo of the author of the song because I guess they got it right.

And I just tried to speed it up. Friends, the Holy Spirit is the metronome of our life. He has set a rhythm. He has set a beat to our life. And the more we fight against that to push and become busier, to get more done, to allow ourselves to to be distracted and our pace gets quicker and quicker. The song begins to be destroyed. It begins to fall apart. The Holy Spirit sets the tempo. And when we slow our internal pace to match his rhythm, our souls come back in tune. Jesus said, come to me and I will give you rest. Listen, this morning, you might not just be spiritually empty, you might also be spiritually hurried. That you're so busy, the pace of your life is so busy, that you have forgotten to connect yourself to the source.