What To Do When You Feel Overwhelmed | Miles Toulmin | HTB Livestream

Four things.

The first is this.

Retreat with Jesus.

In verse 31, Jesus invites the disciples to come with him to a quiet place.

And in verse 32, they go in a boat with him to a solitary place.

But in the original text, which is written in Greek, it's the same two words used in both of those verses.

Eremon topon, which means literally a wilderness place.

You see, the wilderness is a place throughout Scripture where God's people often end up.

The people of God wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before they entered the promised land.

Jesus himself spent 40 days in the wilderness before beginning his ministry.

It's a place, the wilderness is a place of testing, of preparation, of growth, of encounter, of God's provision.

So if you're here today and you feel like right now in your life you're in a bit of a wilderness place, perhaps you might just be in exactly the right place.

You see, it turns out that the key to greater impact and growth with Jesus is rarely addition, rather subtraction.

Jesus later explained that the gardener prunes to produce more fruit.

My family and I recently had the privilege of going away with many in this church to Focus, which is HTB's annual sort of church camp holiday away.

And when we were there, we had Tyler Statton come and speak to us from the US.

And he challenged us about the power of the wilderness.

And he asked this question, and I want to ask it to us today.

He said this, What could you do to make your life 10% slower and 10% quieter? This doesn't mean a less impactful life or less growth.

It will likely mean the opposite.

You see, we retreat in order to advance.

As important as the to-do list is the to-don't list.

This month, try to retreat with Jesus.

Rick Warren puts it this way.

He suggests to divert daily some devotional time with him every day to withdraw weekly, keep a Sabbath rest day, and abandon annually a break once a year if you can.