1: You have a decision to make.
What’s your natural instinct? Speed up? Get it done? Move forward?
Terry Looper suggests a different path. “Instead of going faster, as we’re inclined to do, the goal is to learn to adopt a slower pace.”
What should be your goal? To get neutral. “Where you desire God’s will over your own,” Terry writes in his book Sacred Pace: Four Steps to Hearing God and Aligning Yourself With His Will.
Why? Because, he observes, “from this openhearted, openhanded position, God’s answer can be most clearly heard and most boldly obeyed. It is both where we hear Him best and where we can receive His best.”
“Patience doesn’t mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations,” Sharon Salzberg writes in The Power of Patience. “It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that’s unfolding, rather than . . . ripping open a budding flower [or] demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.”
2: This week, we’ve been exploring the powerful lessons Terry learned after experiencing a nervous breakdown.
At the very moment he had achieved his goal of financial security with the sale of his company, he collapsed.
“Once the papers were signed, I should’ve been on top of the world. I was not just a millionaire as I’d always hoped, but a multimillionaire!” Terry recalls.
Yet, “after ignoring month upon month of warning signs, I suddenly could not get out of bed,” he remembers. “It felt like the oxygen had been turned off in my brain, making it impossible for me to even lift my head from the pillow. This was more than just a physical sensation. It was emotional, spiritual, and mental. A shutdown on every level.”
Terry sought out therapy and began reading the Bible regularly. In time, these two habits transformed his life.
“God’s Word shows us what to do, gives us the power to do it, and increases our faith as we do it,” he observes.
Being consistent is critical.”Through daily Bible reading and time spent in prayer and other spiritual disciplines (such as devotional reading and meditating on and memorizing Scripture), our day-to-day spiritual life is nurtured,” Terry writes, “and before we know it, a robust faith has surfaced.”
“When I don’t regularly take time with Him, I weaken and lose my way,” he notes. “I lose sight of what He intends for me and what He thinks of me. I start focusing on the world and listening to its messages instead. I have to take time with Jesus, away from the frantic pace and demands of my life.”
3: One of the most important lessons Terry learned was to slow down.
“That’s what His sacred pace is for,” Terry explains. “It gives every believer an opportunity to commune with Him as Friend and really hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit.
“He is that necessary guiding voice—a living voice, not a preprogrammed one like we find on our smartphones—offering turn-by-turn instructions to keep God’s people on the best route for both the conditions we’re in and the conditions to come.
“In other words,” he notes, “personalized, proactive help is available to every man or woman of God who is willing to listen.”
However, truly embracing this guidance requires us to pause and be still.
“The essence was that while God commands us to work hard while we work, He also instituted regular, rhythmic periods of rest,” Terry writes. “For example: day and night, planting season and harvest time, the Sabbath, and so on.
“Both our labor and our rest allow us unique opportunities to serve God with our time,” he notes, “furthering His purposes and His kingdom in different ways.
“Both are also meant to reflect our dependence on Him for our security rather than self-reliance. Limiting how much we work, and being obedient to the times of rest He has ordained, reminds us that it is God who ultimately provides for our needs.”
Slowing down. Resting. Being neutral.
“To stay on God’s pace,” he notes, “means staying connected to the Vine, who is Christ. Jesus extended this invitation to every follower: ‘Remain in me, and I will remain in you. . . . I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit’” (John 15: 4–5).
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: When I face a decision, do I rush to act—or create space to listen and gain clarity?
Action: The next time I feel urgency to decide, pause. Take a few quiet minutes to slow down, get neutral, and seek clarity before moving forward.
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