If you get thrown into a tizzy because of one interruption to your schedule, then you will miss out on God's best for you. One of His greatest miracles of all time (the lady with the issue of blood) was actually an interruption to His schedule. Imagine if Jesus had said: lady, I'm on My way somewhere, get away from Me, I've got a schedule to keep? No, we've got to step back and remind ourselves: God is God, and we are not. Interruptions are often Gods way of re-acclimating us to a new rhythm - and we need that.
Let me just give you some application questions.
1a) Who are the most important people in your life? There should only be a couple, unless you have five children. If you have five children, please write all of their names down. I'd hate to see them in counselling later. Mummy wrote his name and not mine! Who are the most important people in your life? Take 30 seconds and write their names down. Just do an honest assessment of how broken we are.
1b) Are you choking? Are you a good person, who can't seem to move forward in God, because the thorns have got to you? The people you just wrote down: are they getting the most of your energy; or are they getting what's left over? Are they being put first; or is everything else? Are the urgent things taking the place of the most important things?
2a) What are you called to be doing? What are two things you're doing in this world, which no one else can take your place and do? If you're a wife to a man, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a husband to a woman, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a mother to a child, no one else should be taking that place. If you're a pastor over a certain area, no one else should be taking that place. What are the things that you are doing, that no one else can do?
I would say this: the best wisdom for your life would be to delegate everything else.
2b) Is that getting the most of your energy; or is it only getting what's left over?
I'm telling you, if I was doing this in a counselling office, it would cost $120 an hour. These are huge questions. Let me ask it this way: If you were to move house tomorrow, what would you keep? What would you sell? What would you give away? What would you throw away? Why not do that today? If you're keeping stuff in your house, that you would throw away if you moved tomorrow, then all it's doing is taking energy from what you should be doing today.
We've got stuff-itus, and I would say this to you. If I took a look at your diary, and it didn't coincide with the people who are the most important, and the calling from God, then you're choking. You're choking! The cure for both of these things is Sabbath.
The Sabbath is a day where we separate ourselves from the worries of this life. There's something that is healing about taking a day back from all of our ‘lists’, our ‘things to do’; to have one day in seven that's different than every other day - that gives us a reset button. There's something about that, which cures us from: the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth.
Take a blank piece of paper, and draw a line down the middle. I want you to be honest with God about the worries of this life. The things that has caused you to be ‘here, but really there’, write on one side of the line called 'The worries of this life - that you can do something about' (versus those you can't).
I don't have a job. Well you could go apply for 50 jobs a day until you get one. There's an element that you can't do anything about, but there's an element of that you can; so the worries of this life that you can do something about; and the worries of this life that you can't do something about okay? This will only be between you and God, very therapeutic.