Message: “Neighbor Is a Verb” from Ross Stackhouse

Message at 34:25. Okay, we’ve been talking a lot about “hurry sickness” – a way of describing our growing tendency to live life at a pace and level of distraction that is doing harm to our souls and minds and bodies. And we’ve been talking about the solution to it. But how do you actually put the solution into practice? Since the problem and the solution are spiritual and emotional by nature, implementing the solution is anything but easy. It is simple, though. It’s as simple–and challenging–as arranging or rearranging our moments and days so we start to experience a new normal, so Jesus’s vibrant life becomes our new normal. We’re going to talk about a practical and deeply spiritual tool called a “rule of life.”

Related Topics: discipleship, emotional and mental health | More Messages from Ross Stackhouse

From Series: "Eliminating Hurry: the Great Enemy of the Spiritual Life"

Dallas Willard said, “Hurry is the great enemy to spiritual life in our day.” We are more hurried, busy and distracted than we’ve ever been as human beings. We sleep less, rely on digital devices more and more, and think of “slow” as a really, really bad thing. Whether it is out of a sense of fear or insecurity or pain or guilt or a combination, normal for more and more of us is living life at a speed that doesn’t lead to life at all–at least not the abundant spiritual life for which God made us. There is good news: God’s mystery, power and love are there for us to experience all the same. The good news is that there is a richer, deeper, better faith beyond the mediocre faith we’ve been frustrated with or have avoided altogether in the midst of our rushed, distracted living. If we can learn to unhurry our lives and learn to be still with Jesus with our weariness and burdens, we will find rest for our souls. We will find that Jesus’s yoke is easy and his burden is light.