I don’t mind saying, over the past couple of years I’ve learned, if ever so slowly, to become less hurried, less inclined to complicate things, and not fret about all my not-enoughness (yes, that’s now a word. I just made it up). You see, the more times I consistently choose to bring my authentic self to Jesus, the more I can lean on Him with all my insufficiencies as He reminds me that His all-sufficiency covers my need to hurry, to complicate and to try and piece every bit of my life together myself. Learning to become unhurried, uncomplicated, and undone, means we’ve learned to trust God regardless of the outcome. 

The gift of choosing to live an unhurried, uncomplicated, and undone life gives you the compacity to wait well and helps you form an awareness of the transitions you need to go through to see God’s promises fulfilled in your life. When writing, as Tom Monteleone suggests, transition cues are phrases or changes in your narrative that set up and prepare a reader for a progression or shift in the story. He goes on that these can be “as subtle or as obvious as an elephant sitting in the corner of a room.” 

Spending some unhurried, uncomplicated time with God causes you to become undone, as those subtle cues He laid out previously that you either ignored or were totally ignorant and unaware of, now become as obvious as an elephant sitting in the corner of a room. I know you’re thinking, an unhurried, uncomplicated, undone life? Who are you kidding? Have you gone completely crazy!?  This all seems so…well…hard, and I’ve no time for pie-in-the-sky-make-believe-notions that highlight my insufficiency to keep it all together. Well, my friend, that’s just the point. As Matthew 11:28-30 says, ‘Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.’ [MSG]   

Here Matthew gives away the secret to an unhurried, uncomplicated, undone life. ‘Come to, get away with, walk with and work with Jesus.’ Relying on our own strength can never lead us into an unhurried, uncomplicated, undone relationship with Him because we’ll just keep getting in the way of our progress and when that happens we get off-balance, off-kilter and we bring God down to our level of how it’s all going to roll out. Bill Johnson puts it this way, “When we only obey what we understand, we then have a God that looks a lot like us. He’s our size.” 

God is far, far, far bigger, and wiser than ourselves and the more we posture and position ourselves in His presence, the more we’ll trust His leading through all the transitions of our stories. Remember He is not only the Author of our faith, but the Finisher of our faith, however, we need to run and lose everything that so easily ensnares us so we can run with endurance the race marked out for us. [Hebrews 12:2] This is where we preserve energy in learning to ‘Come to, get away with, walk with and work with Jesus’ so His presence and communion teaches us to live out an unhurried, uncomplicated, and undone life. 

Edie Melson puts her two pence in when it comes to deciding who will be dictating the narrative of our stories. She says, “The enemy has an army of storytellers and scribes [that are] telling a different story.” Absolutely, and you’ll only know which voice is the one narrating your story when you spend constant unhurried, uncomplicated time in God’s presence and His Word. Don’t you fret, my friend if you’ve gone a little off course because God will be right there, patiently waiting for you until you get tired and worn out doing things in your own strength, and He’ll simply say, ‘Come to Me, get away with Me, walk with Me and work with Me” rest in an unhurried, uncomplicated, undone life.

Wendy xo      

Where do you need to stop striving and doing things in your own strength and rest in God’s presence for a while?