Welcome to another episode of Struggling Well, the podcast. we're so glad you can be with us. today. And before we get started today, I just wanted to say we mentioned several weeks ago that we were going to do maybe a couple of consecutive podcasts on parenting. And we will pick that up again. I'm not sure exactly when, but there have been a couple of other things that have kind of superseded that thought. So, we're hopefully following the guidance of the Holy Spirit here. So, this morning or this afternoon, you could be listening tonight, I don't know, or in the car. Jimmy has some things that have been really just impacting his heart and he'd like to share with you a couple of those things.
Thanks. yeah, it's one of those things. So, if I go back to you've if you've listened, if you know me at all, you know that my upbringing was founded in the church, although I found a lot of struggle with some of the performance-based practices of my church growing up. And one of the things that was never seen to me in a positive way at all was the idea of Sabbath. all I remember from Sabbath or Sunday as we celebrated it then was we went to church in the morning, we went to church at night, but you couldn't do anything else the rest of the day.
Like I never played popcorn or football. It's the reason why I didn't have an NFL career is because one of the reasons
I couldn't play that because it was on Sundays and you weren't allowed to do that on Sundays because Sundays were the Sabbath and so it never had a very good connotation in my life until much later in adult in my adult years and I began to understand the significance and the importance of Sabbath, setting aside time to focus on God, to focus on Christ, to focus on what he's done for us. And I was meeting recently with a young man who's got young kids and he's struggling to figure out how do you incorporate the Christian life into everyday living? And I don't know if it's my phrase or not. It's what came to me and it was this. I said, "What if you create Sabbath bases as opposed to a whole day. cuz even as an adult, Sundays were never my Sabbath cuz I was preaching. I was working. What if you create Sabbath spaces to enter into the reality of who Christ is in everyday life? And that got me thinking about one of my favorite little devotional books. Oswald Chambers wrote his my utmost for his highest. And in that there's two dates. the 12th and the 13th of January where Chambers writes under this title, have you ever been alone with God?
The idea of solitude with him and then these words now are his. He goes, "The lives of others are examples for us, but God requires us to examine our own souls. It's a slow work, so slow that it takes God all of time and eternity to make a man or woman conform to his purpose. We can only be used by God after we allow him to show us the deep hidden areas of our own character. It's the astounding how ignorant we are about ourselves. We don't even recognize the envy, laziness, or pride within us when we see it. But Jesus will reveal us everything we have held within ourselves before his grace began to work. How many of us have learned to look inwardly with courage?
And it's and it was that idea that has struck me, babe. The idea of disrupting my inner world, disrupting our inner world. Larry Crab was a mentor to you and me for many many years and he was maybe the master at disrupting your inner world. But that idea that we have to look inwardly, we have to t find that time to spend alone with God and look inwardly to see what needs to change within us.
And here's the exciting thing. As a believer, at the point that you receive Christ and believe that he's your savior and you repent of your sins, you are immediately filled with the Holy spirit. So, it's not like we have to work hard. I mean, we do to connect and allow him to the freedom to speak to us, but if we don't have those Sabbath spaces, those times of stillness and silence, it's really hard to hear because there is so much noise in our world. And I'm not just I'm not talking about news and TVs. I'm talking about our world. if you're a parent, a grandparent, you work a job, you run a company, you're whatever you are, there is noise all the time. It you can hardly get in the car without hearing other people honking or rolling down the windows and yelling stuff. So there's so much noise. So to have that Sabbath space of quiet, allowing the spirit that is already in you to speak, I think that we will be surprised at what we'll hear what we'll hear him say because I believe that each of us have so many phrases and words inside head of us that are not truth that we've heard from the time we were young kids about who we are, what we look like, what we think like. We've heard these phrases and they are louder. They appear to be louder than what the spirit of God can say to us.
Yeah. And it that last sentence of Chambers, the courage to look inwardly.
I don't think I don't like to look inwardly. I'd rather be caught up with look at Lord, look at all the things I do for you. And the truth of the matter is in the Christian subculture of our world that we live in, no one's ever going to criticize you for the things you do. But I don't think that's where it's really at. I think where it's really at in my relationship with Christ is inwardly looking to see what needs to be exposed in my character that is only going to be exposed when I take the time to be quiet with him.
And with that exposure, this just hit me as you were talking is exposure sounds like a harsh word like it Sounds like an undressing and it is. But when we take that time for those Sabbath spaces and we are listening,
we can then be freed of the things that entangle us that we're we've pushed to the side that we haven't either repented of or forgiven for or done whatever. And then we're just and then we wonder why we're so underwhelmed in our Christian experience.
Yeah. And it's not a matter of if those things get exposed. If I take the time to see what my pride, my envy my lust, whatever it is going on inside of me. It's not like he's going to reject me. He's accepted you and me,
right?
And he knows everything anyway. But it's for our good and our purpose that we have the courage to look inwardly to see what needs to change, what needs to be exposed in my character. That has nothing to do with the things I do for God. It has everything to do with who I am for God.
And I think it's a radical way of living in this it's sometimes easy to do Christianity. It's easy to talk the language. It's easy to make the right sounds at the right time, quote the right verses at the right time. But when it's just you and God,
and it's him sitting with you, you feel his presence. You know his presence because you've been quiet and you're not doing anything else, but you're waiting and you're listening and he's speaking to the deepest part of your soul. That the outpouring of that I think would be surprising and it's something that I know that God has me in a place of examining.
Yeah. And I think there have been seasons for me in my life where I've done really well with setting aside those Sabbath spaces, those times alone with God. And then there are times when I just fill my life with noise.
Yeah.
And I don't like driving in the car without the radio on. And it doesn't have to be music. It can be a sports radio talk show or whatever because I don't want to just sit there in silence. But maybe that's a time when God can use that to
help me to see and understand more what it means to be in relationship with him
because it's if Christ is going to be who I want my identity found in, then I need to grow in that relationship with him.
I agree.
And that's an organic thing.
So our prayer this week for you is that you would look for Sabbath spaces.
I don't necessarily think it has to be the same time every day because some of your schedule with young kids or work or whatever it may, but is there a place? Is it taking a five minute walk? Is it sitting alone and quiet in your in a study in your house or wherever it may be? Is there a particular space that when you get to that space that's going to be your sacred
Sabbath space?
And then seek to do that. And it's not like, oh, I missed a day. God's going to be mad with me. No, I think God is thrilled when we come to him.
Yeah. and we give them that time and we give them that space. So, our prayer for you this week is that you'd find your Sabbath space.
Thank you so much for listening and we look forward to talking to you next week.