802.725.8094
  Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are >
      • What we believe
      • Our Team
      • Our Building
      • Membership
      • Our Story
    • What We Do >
      • Worship
      • Children's Ministry
  • Give
    • Give
    • Volunteer
  • Grow
    • Discipleship and Small Group
    • Prayer Requests
    • We Care
    • Sermons >
      • Archived Sermons
    • Blog
    • Resources >
      • RightNow Media
      • Facility Use
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us
    • Stay up to date! >
      • Meeting Minutes
    • Need Help?
  • Events
    • Events
    • Calendar
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are >
      • What we believe
      • Our Team
      • Our Building
      • Membership
      • Our Story
    • What We Do >
      • Worship
      • Children's Ministry
  • Give
    • Give
    • Volunteer
  • Grow
    • Discipleship and Small Group
    • Prayer Requests
    • We Care
    • Sermons >
      • Archived Sermons
    • Blog
    • Resources >
      • RightNow Media
      • Facility Use
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us
    • Stay up to date! >
      • Meeting Minutes
    • Need Help?
  • Events
    • Events
    • Calendar

5 Reasons to Stop and Savor This Summer

7/31/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
 If you are an American Christian in 2018 there is a sad likelihood that it has been some time since you paused to savor anything.

And that’s not just a shame: it’s shameful. If God is
the giver of every good and perfect gift, we are all too often the ingrateful and distracted recipients of those gifts. We might prefer that the sandwich taste good, but we also insist on eating it in so hurried and distracted a fashion that we scarcely taste it.


The Christian Discipline of Savoring
 This is a problem for at least three reasons:
  1. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
First, our inability to pause and savor often stems from a strange and unwise resistance to the limitations of our condition. We multitask and race through the events of our lives as though it were a test where we might get bonus points for finishing first. We’re more concerned with getting things done than with getting things right. And much of our desperate cramming of things into a day is fueled by the insecurity that we are missing out: missing out on the news, on the latest episode, on the inside jokes.

    2. Sensation Overload
Second, God wants us to be sensitive to stimuli. It is Satan who desires that we be made numb and indifferent. And what he has accomplished through idolatry he is just as pleased to do through devices and a relentless pacing of life. Our frenetic lives and our blunted senses serve Satan’s purposes better than those of the God who created us.

    3. Experiencing Grace in the Everyday
Third, the good gifts of God are means of grace to those who receive them. The delicate reach of a twig, the late day sunlight completing its journey in rosy triumph on the rough trunk of a white pine, the way the neighbor’s cat stretches on its morning stoop in what might be worship. The way cool water perfectly satisfies the parched tongue, the way lettuce tastes better for having been crunched between one’s teeth, the pleasure we might take in bathing and being clean. These are all things that have been salvaged from the shipwreck of Eden and as such are means of grace. They make the desert island on which Adam’s sons and Eve’s daughters washed up more survivable. But they also point us away from the desert island to the Promised Land across the waters and to the One who will, in time, bring us there.

5 Ways to Stop and Savor
    So if we agree that we would be better disciples and happier people if we savored more what must we do to resist the tide of our culture?
  1. Stop multitasking. When you eat, for instance, do nothing else, taking care to taste the food in your mouth. Be present and aware in every moment.
  2. Express gratitude to God. If you particularly enjoy a song on the radio, thank Him for it. If the breeze feels particularly good, thank Him for it. Gratitude heightens the pleasure we take in the things for which we are grateful.
  3. Pay attention to your senses. Do inventories of all that you can hear, of every scent you can detect, every impression made on your skin. You are an embodied creature and God loves and saves you as such.
  4. Spend time with children. They are black belts in savoring.
  5. Be more easily satisfied. The person who has taken the time to read and really enjoy a good book is richer than the person who has filled his personal library with volumes and volumes that he has barely skimmed, even if the book he has read is the only one he possesses.
Do you have any tips or suggestions about how to practice the godly, Christian discipline of savoring?

​

1 Comment
Janet Tate
8/6/2018 10:14:47 am

This was the perfect reading for the first day of Family Camp here in Washington, Maine. Thank you for these reminders!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church Blog 

    Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church, Pittsford VT


    Author

    Pastor Joel Tom Tate 
    ​Leads Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church and thoroughly enjoys life in the most un-churched state in the Union.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2013
    April 2013
    April 2012
    March 2012

    Categories

    All
    Belief
    Chittenden
    Church
    Doubt
    Evangelical
    Family
    Palm
    Pittsford
    Prayer
    Resurrection
    Rutland
    Sermon
    Sunday
    Thomas
    Wesleyan
    Worship

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly