Life in the Fast Lane
24/7: Get Your Foot Off The Gas!
Matthew 11:28-30
Woodlawn Baptist Church
November 29, 2004
Introduction(see footnote)
Did you hear the story about Tattoo the basset hound? One evening Tattoo went for an evening run. It was a run he didn’t intend to go on, but when his owner shut his leash in the car door and took off for a drive, Tattoo had no choice. A motorcycle officer noticed a passing vehicle with something that appeared to be dragging behind it. As he passed the vehicle, he saw Tattoo. He finally chased the car to a stop, and Tattoo was rescued – but not before the dog reached speeds of 20-25 mph and rolled over several times.
Do you ever feel like Tattoo? Are you too busy? Do you feel hurried all the time? Stressed out by the fast pace of life? If you do, you’re not alone. Studies show that most people are stressed out, due in large part to the frantic pace of life we’re trying to keep. Today we have erected a new god in our lives. It is not the god of money, or the god of success: it is the god we call 24/7. Most who bow at the feet of this god have no idea they worship it. In fact, they never set out to pay homage to it, but slowly and subtly it has happened. 24/7 is all about a hurried and busy pace of life. It is fast, it is filled, it is frantic, but it is also frustrating and can leave you drained in every way when it’s all said and done.
One writer has appropriately called this condition “hurry sickness.” Our culture is infected with it, our churches can easily become infected with it, and if you’ll be honest about it, some of you are infected with it. A few months ago during several weeks of personal study, I began to notice how much my life was and is affected by what I’m talking about today – the drive to be busy all the time: to live 24/7. Here are some ways you can tell whether you struggle with it.
· You constantly speed up your daily activities.
· You feel as though, and have even said that there aren’t enough hours in the day.
· When you’re nearing a stoplight, you look for the lane with the least number of cars and head toward it. If the lines are the same, you look for what should be the fastest cars in front of you. You use the same logic in the check out lane at the grocery store. If the lines are the same length you try to do a quick count of how much stuff is in each buggy before you choose your lane.
· You’re a multi-tasker. You have mastered the art of driving while doing other things, like putting on make-up, or like me, read while you drive.
· Do you find yourself eating meals over the kitchen sink, never taking time to sit down? Do you find yourself feeding your family more and more quick meals? Your refrigerator is stocked full of microwavable meals and pre-cooked foods because you just don’t have time for the others? Are you eating out more and more because you don’t have time or energy?
· Your home, office, or workspace is filled with clutter. Your life lacks simplicity.
· People praise you for the amount of hours you put in, or for all the projects you have going on at any given time.
· Your relationships are superficial. You never go very deep with people because you just don’t have the time.
· You find yourself unable to love. Love takes time, and you just don’t have it.
· You experience chronic “sunset fatigue.” Each evening you’re too tired, or too drained, or too preoccupied to give yourself fully to the most significant people in your life.
Do you see yourself in any of these? If you do – there’s good news. God never intended for you to live the fast paced, frantic lives that we seem to have chosen. He never intended for you to fill every waking moment of every day with constant activity. He never intended for our church to have something going on every night of the week that everyone had to attend. God did not build you or anyone else to run 24/7. It’s a burden or a load you were never built to carry. Consider Jesus for a moment – if there is a perfect model of living, a perfect model of scheduling anywhere in the Bible, it is Jesus – the one who created us. Think about busyness and hurry in Jesus’ life for a moment.
Was He a busy man? Absolutely! Was He a hurried man? Absolutely not! Read the gospel accounts again sometime and you’ll be amazed at the things Jesus was able to accomplish and the lives that He touched. He took the time to talk to strangers, to build relationships with His closest friends, to eat with groups of people He didn’t really know, to attend the weekly synagogue meetings, even when the people didn’t want Him there. He spent time with the elderly, with children, and with everyone in between, then finally He went to the cross to redeem mankind, and yet He did it in the short space of three and a half years! How did He do it? I think the answer is found in an often-read invitation that the Lord offered during His ministry – an invitation that is yours to respond to. Look with me at Matthew 11:28-30, and let’s consider some of the key elements.
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Take An Honest Inward Look
Being too busy, or living a hurried life is not a badge of honor, but for some reason we feel compelled to convince people that we are busy all the time. If someone asks you what you’ve been doing lately, we feel guilty if we don’t have a list of activities to name off. Our calendars must be filled. We carry our organizers and PDAs in an attempt to look busy. It is the man or woman who rises early and goes to bed late that is bragged about. When you get together as a group of parents, you’ll begin to compare activities to see who is the busiest. “We have church on Sunday, football on Monday, basketball on Tuesday, church on Wednesday, basketball on Thursday…” Don’t you see it? It is the person who can work longer, or harder, who can fit in more activities that is rewarded, and while there is something admirable and even worth rewarding in that life, it can easily become something less than desirable and empty.
In a world where our computers, our movies, our music, our worship services, our prayers, our times of devotion, our meals, our cars and more have been made to run faster, we are not really the better for it. In fact, we are worse off for it. We are worse off because in our fast-paced, instant world we have become impatient with God, too busy to pray anything more than token prayers, too busy to read or study, too busy to develop the kind of depth of soul that it takes to live a real and purposeful life. We are religious, but spiritually bankrupt. We attend church, but we lie, we steal, we are angry, bitter, unforgiving, unloving, stressed out, burned out, and put out. Why? Because there is no depth. Living 24/7 has only promoted superficial, shallow, hollow lives: lives that are outwardly admirable, but are inwardly lacking. Those of you who struggle with hurry and being too busy—living 24/7 know that nagging feeling that tells you something is wrong, something is missing.
You may have never thought about it, but the hurried, overly busy, 24/7 pace of life is not simply an issue of cleaning up your schedule – it is fundamentally a spiritual issue. If you are too busy, hurried all the time, stressed out by the frantic pace of life you live: if you are tired and worn down and frustrated that all your evenings are spent and filled and there’s no time for rest—you are dealing with a spiritual issue, not a scheduling issue. And that nagging feeling? It’s not a feeling at all; it is the Spirit of God convicting you, prompting you, trying to open your eyes to a problem in your life. God’s Holy Spirit comes at you with the mirror of the Word of God and gently (and sometimes not so gently) tells you to look and see yourself. The problem may be…
Pride
Is pride the culprit in your life? Do you stay overly busy because you think no one else can do what you do? Or because you can do it better? Do you live a hurried life because you’ve become overly convinced of your importance? Is there some secret part of you that wants to be noticed? Why aren’t you as busy as the next guy? Why don’t you put in as many hours as that friend? Why haven’t you climbed to the top of the ladder yet? You don’t want to be any less than the next guy, so you hurry it up a little, take a little shorter lunch, stay just a little longer, work just a little harder, schedule that one extra meeting, take the shortcut, and on and on it goes as you strive to shave the time off so you’ll have time for something else. Is it pride that is causing your busyness and hurried state of affairs?
Fear
For many, it is fear that drives us to live in a state of hurriedness. We fear that we are wasting time – our culture tells us that we’ve got to be moving and being productive 24/7, so we rush on to the next activity. We look at our lives and fear we’re wasting them, so we try to fit in as many activities and adventures and accomplishments as possible, driven by fear and worry.
Very often, our busyness has nothing to do with being afraid of wasting time or precious years of life, but with being afraid of intimacy. How many men and women will work long hours and refuse to sit still because it is easier to run here and there and work long hours than it is to develop real, meaningful relationships with a husband or wife, or with a son or daughter? You don’t know how to communicate to them; you get frustrated with the push and pull of some relationship, so you just stay away by staying busy.
Misplaced Priorities
Many people who hurry here and there do it because they have never really determined what their priorities are. The soccer mom who is feeding the kids breakfast and dinner at the drive through and is keeping the van rolling from this practice to the next practice is a mom living in a family with misplaced priorities. Husbands get their priorities out of line, fathers miss the best years of their children’s lives because of misplaced priorities, church members miss out on one of the greatest privileges by being too busy to enjoy the church relationships God has given them, and it all comes from this misguided thinking that says we’ve got to keep the pedal to the metal and run at breakneck speed to get to some imaginary finish line – the promotion, or the next trophy, or a raise, or whatever else it might be.
Lack of Discipline
The last problem I’m going to point out is simply a lack of discipline. How many times do you run back and forth to Wal-Mart? How many extra trips do you have to send your husband on simply because you don’t have the discipline to wait or plan ahead? So much of our busyness and our hurry comes because we are just too lazy and thoughtless to plan ahead. Some of you came to church in a frenzy this morning because of a lack of discipline. Some of you are chronically late because of a lack of discipline. Some of you work 24/7 because of a lack of discipline in your spending.
Can you be honest with yourself? Are you living 24/7 because of pride? Fear? Because of misplaced priorities? Lack of discipline? Notice again what Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden…” The word labor comes from a word that means to feel fatigue as the result of hard work. It means to labor, to toil, or to be wearied. The words heavy laden are a word picture. The idea is that of a donkey or a pack horse that was designed for work, but now it is so over burdened that it is staggering under the load. Now be honest before the Spirit of the Lord: are you living in a state of constant fatigue and weariness? Are you overburdened by the load you’re trying to carry? Is the pace of life you’re living wearing you down? If it is, then what is the Lord’s invitation? “Come unto me…”
Yoke Up With Christ
Jesus’ invitation continued as He said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Now, saying that we’re going to yoke up with Christ is one thing, but understanding what that means and doing it is another. When Jesus said to take His yoke, He was talking about the way two animals were harnessed together by means of a wooden instrument that went around the necks of both animals and then was hitched to the tongue of a cart or plow or some other piece of farm equipment.
What does it mean for you when Jesus tells you to take His yoke upon us? It means at least three things.
We must trade our purposes and goals for His.
To really do this, you’re going to have to come to terms with why you are here in the first place. God didn’t put you on this earth solely for the sake of your pleasure and so you might pursue every interest that came along. He put you here for the sake of His pleasure, and your pleasure and joy is only going to be found in delighting Him.
Why are people living such hurried, frantic lives? Because they’re trying to do it all, trying to have it all, trying to accomplish it all, trying to be the best at this and that, spreading themselves too thin, wearing themselves out for the sake of the good when Christ offers what is best.
Christ has a clear purpose for your life, and His invitation is to shuck off the yoke of hurry and worry and stress and busyness that you are bearing trying to find fulfillment and purpose – shuck off that yoke and take His upon you. His yoke is vastly different from ours. His yoke is one of simplicity, one of meekness, one that offers rest, one that is light.
Listen, you cannot bear the yoke that society offers. You cannot bear the yoke that self tries to carry. It will break you down. It will wear you out, burn you out, stress you out till you feel like you’ve got nothing left to offer, and nothing left to enjoy. You can’t go to Six Flags enough to escape the load. You can’t vacation enough, can’t sleep enough, can’t eat enough, can’t smoke enough, can’t camp or fish or hunt or hide enough to escape the load, because every time you get away for a little while, you’ve got to come back to that same old yoke.
Christ offers you something different. Once you take an honest inward look and realize that the load you are carrying and the pace of life you’re trying to keep is not fulfilling you, you can then drop that load and take Christ’s yoke on you. What is the yoke? It is the yoke of religion? Is it the yoke of teaching a class, or pastoring a church, or leading a ladies group, or cleaning up your act? Is it the yoke of obeying the 10 Commandments? Or of loving your neighbor? Is it the yoke of church attendance or paying a tithe? The yoke Christ offers is the yoke of relationship – of being rightly related to the Father through Jesus Christ. It means understanding what your real purpose for life is and eliminating everything else. It means understanding the roles that God has given you to fill, and forgetting all those that are someone else’s.
We must learn to walk in step with Him.
A yoke works best when the two animals are as nearly alike as possible. One Old Testament law forbid the yoking of an ox and a donkey. In the New Testament we are told not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. There is a principle we can learn here – if one of us is to change, it will not be the Lord. We must learn to walk in step with Him. Too often though, because of our own stubbornness, because of our sinful nature, we expect Christ to walk in step with us.
The only way we will learn to keep step with the Lord is to spend time with Him. I think of the way bands march in military step. The only way it ever begins to look right and become meaningful is for each person to spend a lot of time marching together. The same is true of our relationships with Christ. The only way we’re going to learn to keep step with Him is to spend time with Him. Spend time with Him in prayer. Spend time with Him in His Word discovering who He is, what He is, how He feels, what is important to Him and so forth. How can you do that if you are constantly running here and there? You will either keep step with society, or you will keep step with the Savior, and in case you’ve forgotten, the two aren’t walking together.
We must accept the load that is ours to carry.
The invitation to take Christ’s yoke upon us is not an invitation to quit; it’s an invitation to work, and to work hard. You see, He’s not taking away our load, but instead He wants to replace our load with His. Again, it’s about trading our purposes and goals for His.
Conclusion
Many of you today are tired. You’ve become overburdened. The pace of your life is fast and relentless. Sometimes you’re running as fast as you can, but other times, like Tattoo, you feel like you’re being dragged along by the neck. How long will you try to keep up that pace?
I’ve spent the morning talking about how we spend our time and living 24/7, but there is another spiritual application that needs to be made as well from this passage. It has to do with the load that some of you are carrying called sin. Not sins, plural, but sin, singular, as in the sin nature that you’ve been carrying since you entered into this world. That sin nature compels you to live a life trying to please God into letting you into heaven, or trying to earn His favor. It is what compels a man or woman to hope that their good works outweigh their bad, or to think that if they are good enough, loving enough, giving enough, honest enough, that that will be favored enough to grant one access to eternity in heaven. That sin nature is what drives a man or woman to turn from God and say there is no heaven or hell, or that it doesn’t really matter what you believe – and today I want to tell you that you are carrying a load that will take you someplace you don’t want to go.
You see, when Christ uttered the words we’ve studied this morning, His primary application was for those whose eyes were closed to the truth that the only people who would be saved were those who repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ alone for salvation. Had those people only seen, they could have been saved! Do you see today? Will you be saved? Will you trade your load for the yoke of Christ? Will you trade your burdens for the forgiveness and peace and acceptance that can be found only in Christ? Will you come to Him today and take His yoke upon you?
I’ve told you before about the first car I bought in High School. It was a 1970, 4-door Bel-Air with a 350 in it that I bought off a little old lady that was going blind. The day I bought it, I handed her the money, and she told me in front of my parents, “Son, that car’ll run – you get out there and drive the hell out of it.” Well she was right, and I did. I kept the accelerator on the floor almost every day. I burnt the tires off of it, was getting tickets every month, gained a reputation I didn’t need, and when I gave the car to my dad, it would barely do 90 mph. I wasted my savings account paying for tickets, tires and gas, and I burned up a car that only had 49,000 miles on it, cutting it’s life easily in half.
Listen, you can get new cars, but you’ve only got one life. Like that little old lady, society tells us to get out there and live life to the extreme – to spend it up – to keep up a pace that we were not built to run. You can try it if you like, but in the end you will find that your life has been wasted, and you’ve cut valuable years off your life that could have been spent otherwise. Today Christ invites you to lay all that down and yoke up with Him. Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.
Works Cited:
1. The story of Tattoo, the reference of hurry sickness and some of the indications of such sickness are borrowed from a sermon by Joel Smith titled, "Busy, But Unhurried"
