Chapter 5 Jesus Slowed Down

Summary

In this episode, Troy Kennedy discusses the importance of slowing down and following Jesus' example of intentionally slowing down to engage with people and opportunities. He emphasizes the need to get rid of hurry and clutter in our lives in order to be present and aware of God's presence and leading. Troy explores how Jesus slowed down for the outcasts and how we can learn from His example to bring restoration and healing to others. He encourages listeners to embrace the discipline of slowing down and previews the next episode on fasting.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

Slowing down allows us to be more present and aware of God's presence and leading in our lives.
Getting rid of hurry and clutter is essential for spiritual growth and maturity.
Following Jesus' example, we should slow down and engage with people and opportunities that we might normally overlook.
Slowing down enables us to bring restoration, healing, and acceptance to those who are marginalized or considered outcasts.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
00:32 The Importance of Slowing Down
04:01 Learning from Jesus' Example
05:21 Getting Rid of Hurry and Clutter
06:07 Being Present and Aware
07:03 The Difficulty of Slowing Down
08:12 Jesus Slowing Down for the Outcasts
12:12 Slowing Down to Bring Restoration and Healing
13:31 Embracing the Discipline of Slowing Down
14:01 Preview of Next Week: Fasting

Creators and Guests

Host

Troy Kennedy

Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Troy Kennedy (00:01.026)
Well, hey everyone.

This is Hero Worship, my name is Troy Kennedy. We are on week five of our journey together. And last week we went through this season where Jesus spent time alone and we were walking in imitation of Him in that. I pray that it was really a rich time for you. Some people, being alone is not easy. Solitude and silence is one of those things that could be considered historic Christian disciplines that a lot of people have gained a lot from.

making us more even proactive than we are just merely consuming the constant noise and clutter and information in our lives. This week we're going to be doing something a little bit different but kind of related it's this idea that Jesus slowed down. Jesus slowed down and you see this pattern in the New Testament but before we get too much further just want to encourage you one just to understand that this podcast is meant to be a companion to the book Hero Worship at

well-weak journey to become more like Jesus. And so if you don't have that book, you can get it on Amazon, christianbook.com, and encourage you to do that in community. I think we get the most out of these things when we do them together. We journey together, we process it together. Nobody does theology in isolation, or they shouldn't be doing it in isolation. So hopefully you could do this with a family member, with friends, with your small group that meets in your home. Right now I have a group of people

About 20 folks at my church and we're actually walking through this summer here. It's the summer of 2023 and we're really having a rich time and I saw a lot of the feedback that I'm getting from those folks I'm actually using to inform the conversation where I having here on this companion podcast to the book So hopefully this has been something insightful for you and it's meant to augment the material that's in the book Not just to repeat it or be redundant

Troy Kennedy (02:02.02)
finding this to be really sweet and really rich, and I know I'm really enjoying it. One of the interesting things I've been finding out as we've gone through this journey together is...

The amount of young people, when I say young people, I mean like high school age and even younger who are doing this together and really finding a lot of benefit. A young man, 17, 16 years old, telling me the other day how he's been walking through this 12 week journey. Has he got a hold of the book? We've had some like 12 year old girls who have been in our class that has been happening at my church for the last several weeks.

sister who is interested in the conversation that this daughter and her father are having as they go through hero worship together now she has a younger sister who wants to be involved so you just never know people's receptivity to these things and if we are pointing people ultimately to Jesus as our model for what it is to be fully human to fully flourish to be everything

Troy Kennedy (03:11.196)
his kingdom as opposed to our own kingdoms as if he were in our shoes. In what manner would he do the things that we're doing and how can we proactively and intentionally meet with him to be transformed into his likeness from the inside out.

so that we will do the regular coming and going, the things that we do in our lives in the manner in which he would do them. How would Jesus do what it is that you are doing? The question used to be, what would Jesus do? And I think that's a great question. And maybe a more appropriate question for us is how would Jesus do it? How would Jesus drive through the neighborhood? How would Jesus interact with his neighbors? How would Jesus greet people at the gym? How would Jesus be a lawyer or a teacher or a housewife? How would Jesus?

be a friend, how would Jesus do the things that you and I do every day? And so as we come into these practices, we are learning all the time to put ourselves in the position to be mentored by the Master. Not out of obligation, not out of duty, but out of love and out of admiration.

And so when we talk about Jesus slowing down, we see this pattern throughout the gospels where Jesus, he slows down for apparently all the people you're not supposed to slow down for. He slows down for children, he slows down for Gentiles, he slows down for a woman who's got this checkered reputation in her community. He has conversations at length with people that you just, as a religious Jew, you're not supposed to have conversations with.

And yet Jesus, he seems to have all the time in the world for these people. He is on mission. He is on purpose. He is moving at his own pace. And at the same time, we can't always predict what it is he's going to invest his energy in. So as you and I learn how to slow down, we learn how to slow down to, in a way to push out even more of the clutter in our lives. In the book, we quote, author Dallas Willard, he says,

Troy Kennedy (05:21.718)
For our spiritual growth, our spiritual maturity, one of the most important things you can do is to relentlessly get rid of hurry in your life. Hurry and clutter. The busyness of things. Can we can crowd out the best things with a lot of good things, with a lot of permissible things.

So how do we identify? What are the best things? How do we see those God opportunities that He puts in our path? I think very often we miss the presence of God. I think the universe, I think the world, I think your surroundings are dripping with God's presence if we will slow down long enough to have eyes to see.

to have eyes to see the people who he brings in our path, to have eyes to see the opportunities that come across our path, to have ears to hear what it is he's trying to say to us. And for some reason, you just can't do those things in a hurry. You just can't bustle through life and expect to always be attuned to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

to be attuned to the needs around us. For me, I have to physically walk slower as a discipline. I have to physically drive slower. I have to pick the longer line at the grocery store. I have to pick the slow lane on the freeway. I have to go slow enough so that when that person comes across my pathway, in the hallway, I don't just make eye contact. I just don't say, hey, how's it going? But I am actually interested in them,

in their lives. So, slowing down is a discipline for many of us. Some of you, slowing down is really natural and really normal. For some of us, it is very difficult because we tend to live in the future.

Troy Kennedy (07:17.054)
You know, here's where I am today. I'm at point A. Point B is over here. There's these goals, there's these ambitions, there are these things that I have out in front of me that I want to accomplish. And I'm in a real hurry to get there. I want to go from point A to point B right now.

And what happens is, is we miss the beauty of the journey. Sometimes point B, you never even get there. You never even get to the goal. Not to say that you don't have goals and that's not a good thing. But the journey is just as important as the goal. Your character as it is shaped by the journey is just as important as the thing that is accomplished.

And we become more aware and more cognizant of these things when we have the capacity to slow down, declutter, and be a little bit more reflective, be a little bit more aware, be a little bit more present in the moment.

I've been studying the book of Luke for a bit. I tend to center a lot of my study on the gospels. And in Luke chapter 8 we see this scenario where Jesus, he goes to this area which is primarily Gentiles, people who are not Jews, and he meets a man who would be unclean by anybody's standards. He's a man who is possessed by demons. He is unclean spiritually, he's unclean physically, he spends time in the graveyard around dead man's bones.

He's been ostracized from his community. He is unacceptable in every conceivable way. And Jesus goes to this man, and without getting too deep into all the theological implications of it, he reaches out and engages with this man who is unclean, unacceptable in every way. He's out of his mind. He's running around naked. He's been pushed out of his own community.

Troy Kennedy (09:12.052)
And Jesus brings him restoration. Jesus reaches across and embraces this guy and changes his life.

And then the next scenario, Jesus is back into more of a Jewish area, and he's told that this Jewish leader, his name is Jairus, that his daughter is dying. Would Jesus please come to help her out? So Jesus is on the way, and then the crowds are pushing in on him, and that there's apparently a woman who has had an issue of blood, some kind of menstruation, some kind of...

Letting a blood in her person that has made her an outsider has made her unclean has made her Impure she is another person who's been pushed to the outside by her situation And she's reaching in she's seeking a healing and she touches Jesus and he asks who touched me When everybody was touching him, but there's something special something different Something about the power that left him

in response to this woman's faith that was different. And he turns to her and he says, daughter, right, your faith has healed you. This is another person who is unclean, who is who is pushed aside, who is outside of her community. And Jesus touches her, embraces her, calls her daughter. And then he ends up going to this guy, Jairus' house, and Jairus says, the people say, oh, you know, the girl's already dead. Don't waste your time. Jesus is like,

Okay, just let's go ahead and enter in here. Let's just see what's going to happen. Jesus says she's not dead, she's just sleeping and they laughed at him. Then he takes three of his disciples and he takes the mother and the father, they go up to the room and he touches her. He touches this dead body which would have been considered unclean.

Troy Kennedy (11:10.294)
And once again, Jesus reaches across impurity. He reaches across uncleanness. He, he traverses the, the cultural mores of the day to accomplish something. He brings life to this girl, to this woman. He says, daughter, young woman arise. So we see in this scenario, Jesus slowing down for apparently all the wrong people, he was supposed to be in a hurry to go heal this girl so she would not die.

But he does.

He spends time with a Gentile man with demons who is unclean, who is ostracized from his community. He spends time slowing down for this woman with the issue of blood, who would have been considered unclean, who would have been on the fringes of her community, who would have been an outsider, and then goes up to a place where there is a dead body, which by every Jew's account would make you unclean. And he touches all these people. Jesus spends the time to reach across our uncleanness,

purity to bring restoration to bring healing and to bring life. So as you and I follow in the footsteps of the Savior as we are learning how to slow down to see the opportunities that God is bringing in our path.

What does it look for you and I to speak restoration, to speak life, to speak healing, to be a bringer of wholeness and joy and acceptance to those people we would normally not even register with us in our coming and our going? Can we slow down long enough to hear the Spirit of God speaking in and through us?

Troy Kennedy (12:58.098)
and moving beyond us as we slow down for the opportunities he brings across our path. So Jesus slowed down. There's many other examples of him doing this throughout the Gospels, but that was just something on my heart as I had read that this morning. I want to encourage you to embrace this discipline, especially if it's hard for you, and enjoy

Troy Kennedy (13:26.722)
the experience that comes across your path.

and see things in ways you've never seen them before, as we're always in such a hurry to get from point A to point B. So if you have any questions or thoughts or comments, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me. My email is Troy at TroyMKennedy.com, and I would love it if you would let me know how this is working for you and what the experience has been like for you. If you have any questions, I would love to hear that, and I would love to be able to engage with that in future episodes. So next week,

about how Jesus fasted. Fasting is one of those things we see a pattern in the early church, we see that a pattern in Jesus life. We don't see Jesus necessarily commanding fasting, but he assumes that people are fasting and is something that people have been practicing in multiple cultures for a very long time. So we're gonna see what does that look like in the imitation of Christ for us to fast in ways that draw us closer to the Savior.

Troy Kennedy (14:31.612)
steps of Jesus to love him, to become like him, and ultimately to share him with the world around you. God bless you, and I'll talk to you next time.