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Today we are wrapping our series on Digging Ditches.  The first week we talked about the importance of reading your Bible and I am so happy to see so many of you are reading and following a plan!  We talked about the importance of being in a small group because we all need to be accountable to each other.  We need each other when we are down and we celebrate together when we are up.  We then talked about giving because that’s the God in you and the more you give the more you are given.  Last week we talked about prayer because it interrupts heaven and you and I are made to partner with God to change history, to bring the kingdom of God on earth.
Today I am going to challenge you in a different kind of way and you probably can tell by just looking at the sermon title.  In this day and age I believe everyone is busy and there is a tendency for all of us to equate busyness with productivity, to equate busyness with hard working.  But is that really Biblical?  Are we really doing what God wants us to do?  Or are we trying to fulfill our own agenda?  I’d like to share one more important principle as we close out this series, and this might be one that’s most challenging for all of us.  I hope you slow down and take the time to listen and to process it.

Discussion Questions

1. How do you feel during the times you are not working or producing something?

2. If you identified a high level of busyness in your life, what is it that is driving you to push so hard all the time?  What are you trying to accomplish?  Who are you trying to impress?  Does God really ask you to do all you are doing?

3. Read Mark 1:32-39 and Luke 5:15-16.  What are some examples of how Jesus modeled an unhurried life?

4. Identify a time in your life when you really slowed down and enjoyed each experience that came your way.  What helped lead you to this time of slowing?

5. “To be spiritually healthy, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life,” what is one thing you would need to change in your life so you could slow down?

Changing Your Mind

Pray that God’s Spirit of peace will fill your hearts, homes, workplaces, and thought patterns.  Ask God to teach you the life-giving discipline of slowing down.

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Don’t know if you watched the Superbowl last Sunday, it was quite an exciting game.  It came down to the last play of the game and New England had one last shot.  Tom Brady threw the ball high in the air all the way to the endzone and of course you know the result.  There is a name for this play and it’s called the hail Mary pass.  The rationale is that a pass thrown under such desperate circumstances could only be completed with the help of divine intervention.  The phrase comes, of course, from the Catholic prayer based on the angel’s greetings to Mary recorded in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel: “Hail Mary, full of grace….”
I believe Mary is brought in for the last play of the game because prayer is something we generally associate with desperation. The idea is that for the majority of the game I can rely on my own resources. I will depend on my game plan and my personnel. However, at a moment of crisis and desperation when I’ve run out of time and opportunity, when human cleverness and mortal strength have failed me, and when all other options are gone, that’s the time to throw up a prayer. “Hail Mary…”

Desperate people pray.  They pray without thinking about it.  They pray even if they are not sure who they’re praying to or if anyone out there is listening at all.  Desperation prayers have been the beginning of spiritual life for many people, and that’s not a bad place to start.  But if we only pray when we are desperate, we are missing the point of prayers.  Prayer has the potential to interrupt heaven, to change history.  Today I will talk about some practical ways so that we can get into a habit of “interrupting heaven.”

Discussion Questions

1. What’s the first prayer you’ve ever prayed?  Is it easy for you to spend time in prayers?  Why or why not?

2. Read Gen 18:20-33.  What do you think of Abraham’s prayer to God?  Have you ever prayed like this?  If so, what was it about?  Did God answer your prayer?

3. What are some of the things you often pray for?

4. Who are some friends/family members you can pray for so that they can have a relationship with God?

Changing Your Mind
Encourage one another this week to choose a time and a place and spend 5 min in prayers every day!