Backblast – Dec 14, 2024
AO: The Fortress – Grace Church – Perrysburg, OH
PAX:
Geppetto – Q
Capitol
Photon
Golden Gate
Binford
Deliverance
Sherbert
Flo
Van Wilder
Coconut
Workout: Leadership Ruck – Embracing A Life Without Hurry
No FNG’s so right into Mission and Principles:
F3 – Fitness, Fellowship, Faith
Mission – Plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership.
The core principles of F3 are that it must:
Be free of charge
Be open to all men
Be held outdoors, rain or shine, heat or cold
Be led by men who participate in the workout in a rotating fashion, with no training or certification necessary. You versus you. Modify or stop an exercise if you need to. The most important thing is that nobody gets hurt.
End with a Circle of Trust
The Thang:
Pre ruck before Badger/Spaulding beatdown. We talked about ways to slow down our lives.
NOR/COR/BOM: Binford was the Six. Doesn’t know where he would be without this group!
Prayers for Golden Gate and his wife and her cousins. Prayers for patience
It was an honor to lead.
Full notes from the discussion:
Hurry Sickness: We are moving too fast, doing too much and its dramatically effecting our sense of the world and how we feel about it
a behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness
"hurry sickness" describes a state of mind where individuals feel constantly pressured by time constraints, leading to stress, anxiety, and a diminished quality of life
Do you have hurry sickness? Do you:
-Pick the shortest line at the grocery store
-Count cars in traffic and pick the lane with the fewest cars
-Multitask to the point of forgetting one of the tasks.
10 symptoms of Hurry Sickness
Irritability
Hypersensitivity
Restlessness
Workaholism or nonstop activity
Emotional Numbness
Out of Order Priorities
Lack of care for your body
Escapist behaviors
Slippage of spiritual disciplines
Isolation
Overall Discussion Question
Passage: "Hurry is a thief. It steals our joy, our peace, and our purpose. It robs us of the present moment and leaves us longing for a future that never quite arrives."
Statistic: "The average American spends 705 hours (29 days) on social media each year."
General Hurry Question: How has hurry affected your relationship with yourself, others, and God? What are the specific ways in which hurry has hindered your spiritual growth and overall well-being?
Part 1: Slowing
Passage: "Slowing down is not about being lazy or unproductive. It’s about prioritizing what truly matters and letting go of what doesn’t. It’s about living with intention and purpose, rather than rushing from one task to the next."
Statistic: "The average iPhone user touches their phone 2,617 times a day."
Slowing Question: What are the underlying reasons for your busyness? What fears or insecurities drive your need to constantly be doing something? How can you challenge these underlying issues and embrace a slower pace of life?
Part 2: Sabbath
Passage: "Sabbath is not just a day; it’s a discipline. It’s a deliberate act of setting aside time to rest, to worship, and to reconnect with what truly matters. It’s a chance to step out of the hustle and bustle of everyday life and into the peace of God’s presence."
Statistic: "The average American watches 2,737 hours of TV each year."
Sabbath Question: What are the obstacles preventing you from observing a true Sabbath? How can you overcome these obstacles and create sacred space for rest and renewal?
Part 3: Simplicity
Passage: "Simplicity is not about deprivation; it’s about liberation. It’s about letting go of the excess that clutters our lives and hinders our ability to focus on what truly matters. It’s about living with less so that we can experience more."
Statistic: "The average American household has 300,000 items."
Simplicity Question: What role does materialism play in your life? How can you simplify your possessions and commitments to reduce stress and increase your focus on what truly matters?
Part 4: Silence and Solitude
Passage: "Silence is not the absence of noise; it’s the presence of God. It’s a space where we can connect with our deepest selves and with the divine. It’s a place of peace, of healing, and of transformation."
Statistic: "A survey by Microsoft found that 77% of young adults said when nothing is occupying their attention, the first thing they do is reach for their phone."
Silence and Solitude Question: Why do you find it difficult to sit in silence? What fears or anxieties arise when you're alone with your thoughts? How can you cultivate a deeper relationship with God through silence and solitude?
Final Wrap-Up Question
Passage: "The ultimate goal of the ruthless elimination of hurry is not simply to slow down, but to live a life of meaning and purpose. It’s about living fully present, loving deeply, and serving generously. It’s about embracing the journey, not just the destination."
Statistic: "The average guy spends 10,000 hours playing video games by age 21."
Wrap-Up Question: How can you integrate the principles of slowing down, Sabbath, simplicity, and silence and solitude into your daily life? What specific steps will you take to live a more intentional and meaningful life?
Quotes Attributed to Dallas Willard:
On the nature of hurry: "Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life in our day.1 You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life."2
On the importance of slowing down: "Slowing down is not about doing less; it’s about doing less of what’s less important so you can do more of what matters."
Quote Attributed to John Ortberg:
On the impact of hurry on our souls: "Both sin and busyness have the same effect – they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul."3
Corrie ten Boom:
"If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy."
Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – F3 Leadership Ruck
1. Silence and Solitude.2. Sabbath.3. Simplicity.4. Slowing.
Do you see hurry as an issue? Why or why not?
What are the potential negative consequences of living a hurried life? Do you think that hurry in life stunts growth in spiritual maturity? Why do you agree or disagree?
Where do you see hurry in the world around you, and in your own life?
Is your hurry compensating for something or covering up something or running from a pain?
Some say that people actually like to live hurried lives, that some of us are even addicted to it. Do you agree? Why or why not? Do you see that in your own life?
What are you going to do about it?
What do you do to rest? What would you do if you had more time to rest?
What is hurry sickness? What are the negative results of hurry sickness?
How does a hurried lifestyle impact our relationship with God? What happens to our spiritual lives when we’re way too busy?
How do escapist behaviors like constant scrolling through social media and bingeing television add to the problem of busyness?
In what ways are they affecting your physical and spiritual well-being?
What kind of escapist behaviors tempt you when you need to disconnect from the busyness of life? In what ways have these escapes distracted you rather than giving you the rest you need?
Do you like being alone? Why or why not? How would you feel about being alone and quiet—no phone, music, TV, or added background noise?
What priorities keep you too busy to practice silence and solitude?
Historically, how has worry had an impact on your ability to rest? What kind of questions or regrets do you ruminate over regularly?
How do you typically spend your days off? How do you fill up your days when you don’t have to work?
What makes it difficult for you to stop, even for a couple of hours?
“What could you do for a 24-hour period that would bring you deep, soul-level, throbbing joy?”
What could it look like for you to intentionally carve out a sabbath day once a week? What are you most excited to do on your next sabbath?
What was the last “fun” purchase you made? Did it make you feel complete? Why or why not?
Do you consume or accumulate new things that you don’t necessarily need? Why do you think that is the case?
What do you think about our society’s culture of greed and consumerism?
Do you think of your habits as consumeristic or even greedy? Why or why not?
What in your life could you downsize or give away? What would it look like to try living with less for the next month?
Hustle Hurry Podcast:
Are we unaware of the “water” we are swimming in? The hustle and hurry. Have we grown up in way that we don’t even realize how hurried we are?
In what ways do you waste time, and what would it look like for you to ‘live deliberately’?
Do you find yourself affected by ‘digital distraction?’ What else brings noise and distraction into your life?
In what ways do our human condition and our surrounding culture encourage a spirit of restlessness?
Why might hurry stop us from becoming the person we want to become?
What would it look like for you to start getting really intentional about practicing Sabbath?
Are you aware of the gospel of consumption and can you identify ways in which you are affected by it?
“Who am I becoming?”
“Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.”
Why are hurry and love incompatible?
What would it look like for you to start getting intentional about practicing simplicity?
How do we ‘inhabit the moment’ and how do we live a quiet life and still be productive?
Buckminster Fuller, the architect who invented the geodesic dome, later became a futurist and systems theorist. In his book Critical Path, he came up with the “knowledge doubling curve.” He estimated that if you could measure the cumulative knowledge of human civilization, from the year of Jesus birth, it took 1,500 years for it to double. But from there, it doubled again by 1750. From there, it doubled every hundred years, up until WW2. After the way, it doubled in 25 years. By the 80’s, it was every 12 months.
Some current estimates put the number at every twelve hours.
So, if you were born the same year as Jesus, it would be a millennium and a half before the cumulative
knowledge of the human race would double; if you’re born today, it’s doubled twice before dinner.
Hence the moniker for our era—“the information age.” And yet, while we have more information than ever before, we don’t seem to actually live much better. In fact, many of us feel more anxious, scattered, and distracted than just a few decades ago.
The cultural critic and professor of media at NYU, Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, widely considered the seminal work on the effect of TV on our culture, coined the phrase “low information-to-action ratio.” By that he meant, we’re overloaded with information, so much so that we rarely do anything with what we learn.
He said it this way:
“The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.”
We have more information than any other generation in human history.
In fact, we have so much information we often feel overwhelmed as vast terabytes of “news” constantly
assail us via our phones and devices.
This creates a paralysis in us. We then grow accustomed to this paralysis and live with it as our default.
We’re used to hearing new information, even being moved by such information, and then doing abso- lutely nothing about it.
In the book, we set out four practices for un-hurrying your life: 1. Silence and Solitude.2. Sabbath.3. Simplicity.4. Slowing.