Unhurried Living | Helping Christians Rest Deeper & Lead Better

Your first tooth…Your first day of kindergarten…Your first car…Your first kiss…Your first home.  Life is full of firsts. We spend our lifetime taking first steps that lead to growing up and maturing into functioning adults.Along the way, our souls are taking first steps as well. The first time we heard about God. The first time we heard the name of Jesus. The first time we saw an answer to prayer. The first time we acted on His behalf, in the care of another. And, yes, the first time it all came crashing down around us.Today, I’d like to share with you three of my firsts. Turning points in my relationship with and understanding of God. Connect with Gem on Instagram and learn more about her coaching and community groups. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today, I’m sharing a conversation I had a while back with Mark Scandrette about  his book, The Ninefold Path of Jesus. In it, he shares his experience of seeking to live more deeply and faithfully into the nine beatitudes that begin what some call Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In his book, Mark shares a beautiful vision of what it might look like if we practiced the beatitudes as a way of following Jesus more closely and faithfully.  I love how Mark casts a vision for the kind of life Jesus considers blessed. So often, the culture around us suggests that the good life is in achieving more, or acquiring more, or impressing more people. But Jesus seems to say that a life of abundant goodness is found somehow in being more like him. He lived an abundant life. His way of treating people was remarkable. He was full of love, of joy, of peace, of all the things we seek. It’s good when we let Jesus define what a good life for us would be like.  We invite you to connect with Mark on social media on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

“What do you really want?” It’s a deceptively simple question, but the longer we live with it the more we realize we want so many different things at so many different levels to so many different degrees. It’s actually a genius question to surface that it is that our soul actually wants. This week Alan is sinking in deeper on a chapter of his and Gem's book, What Does Your Soul Love? Eight Questions That Reveal God’s Work in You.  The chapter is on Desire and the question that lies at the heart of that chapter is, “What do you really want?”  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

When was the last time you had a leisurely conversation? Do you find yourself talking fast, and cutting people short so that you can get on with whatever you were doing? It’s not your fault, it’s in the cultural air we breathe.We may assume that others are busy and we are likely in their way. Or we think the same about ourselves: I don’t have time for this!Most people these days don’t have someone who just simply listens to them. Many are over-connected on tech gadgets and yet are starving relationally. Listening is one very practical gift we can give to our fellow travelers that may soothe their soul.  Connect with Gem in a variety of ways:InstagramFacebookUnhurried LivingReplenish Community Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living.”So, if you are in a place of ongoing inner healing:How might you honor and respect where you are?What does waiting look like for you in this season?What are some ways your “faith roots” can sink even deeper into God in the midst?And, if you are walking alongside someone else who is in a place of ongoing inner healing:How might you honor and respect where they are?How might Hebrews 11:1 inform how you pray for them?How might you be a listening (with a non-fixing) ear as they process their not-yet state?We invite you to connect with Gem Fadling via Instagram and Facebook, or learn more about and connect with her Replenish community. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

In this week’s episode of the Unhurried Living podcast, I’m talking with Mike MacKenzie from Marble Retreat in Colorado about the issues that lie under our issues. He’s written a book called Don’t Blow Up Your Ministry that highlights how we sometimes think that if only we could solve our tiredness or our struggles with temptation we’d be all set, when in fact there are often deeper issues that are draining us or making us more vulnerable. For example, Mike shares that a lot of us in Christian leadership have an immense amount of intellectual knowledge of spiritual disciplines, of spiritual formation, or of any number of good things for our souls. But, the challenge is that we know them but don’t act on them much. Jesus said something very interesting in the Upper Room after he’d washed his disciples’ feet. He said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them (Jn 13:17).”  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

One of my favorite Dallas Willard quotes is this:“The path of spiritual growth in the riches of Christ is not a passive one. Grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Effort is action. Earning is attitude. You have never seen people more active than those who have been set on fire by the grace of God.” (CHRISTIAN HERALD (U.K.) 14 APRIL 2001.)That’s good stuff, isn’t it?People often mistake an unhurried life as one of shorter to do lists and greater passivity. That is absolutely not the case. We continue to point to Jesus as our WAY of life. Jesus engaged a full and active life, but he was not hurried. Likewise, we can be outwardly active and inwardly unhurried.This gets to the idea of “effort as action” that Willard suggests. We need not earn anything. This is the grace about which Willard speaks. The wider context of this quote is grace, but I’d like to focus for a moment on the specific idea of “effort” under grace. What does that look like?Connect with Gem on Instagram or visit her at the Unhurried Living website. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

This week, the Unhurried Living Podcast begins an occasional series based on the book Gem and Alan wrote two years ago: "What Does Your Soul Love? Eight Questions That Reveal God’s Work in You".   This important book, at its heart, is a basic assumption that Gem and Alan have lived with for decades... God invites us to change over our lifetimes.   Biblical language for this change is “being transformed.”  ** God is seeking to transform our more selfish tendencies into more loving and selfless ones.  ** God is seeking to change our perspectives from despairing to hopeful, from fearful to kingdom confident, from anxious to peaceful.  ** God seeks to transform the focus of our work so that it is more rootedness in kingdom values and kingdom goals.   Change like this is good news.We invite you listen and enjoy.  Learn more about Alan and Gem and Unhurried Living.  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Remember when devices were not omnipresent in our lives. Life before email, before text messages, before mobile phones and personal computers. It feels like a completely different era of life and hard to remember what it was like.  There is so much that our devices do to serve us. And they are wonderful when they serve, but not so wonderful when they become our masters.  Today on the Unhurried Living Podcast, we’re talking about a new book from Felicia Wu Song, "Restless Devices", helping us  identify how our devices have a way of making our lives more restless than restful.  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

If you’ve walked in snow you know the feeling of being the first to step in the untouched wonder. As we enjoyed our winter walk, we came up on a patch that felt a little unwieldy to me. So I asked Alan if he would go ahead of me and test out the path first. That’s a great wife move, right?!As I looked down at the path that Alan was creating for me with his big boots, a random thought about leadership slipped into my mind. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was the spirit sharing with me an early life lesson.Enjoy this episode of I Can Do That!Follow Gem on Instagram or learn more about her at Unhurried Living Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.