Distraction Is Your Enemy

Sarah Jakes Roberts & Touré Roberts sit down with host, Bobby Schuller, on TBN’s Praise. Listen in as Touré Roberts and Sarah Jakes Roberts discuss the idea of balance. Through creating balance in your life, you will be able to overcome the distractions that you face in this world. Don’t ever allow distraction to take you away from God’s voice.

God is saying to you today:
“You have the power to make a difference in the lives of others. “l am the vine; you are the branches. Remain in Me to bear much fruit. You are chosen and called for a purpose. Walk boldly in it.”

God is saying to you today:
“l am the ultimate provider. Rely on Me for your every need. I am your rock and stronghold in times of trouble. Trust in My faithfulness, for I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The soul is after something, the soul is longing for something.
And if you don’t stop to get still, then you will misinterpret the longing of the soul, which is God, which is alignment with God, which is, is connection with God.
You will misinterpret that longing and try to appease self through the things that we, I mean, that’s, that’s kind of a check too, isn’t it?
And that’s something I struggle with where it’s like only I can speak.
Oh and only I can go to the book tour and only I can do this and, or only I can do it well.
And, and that’s a mistake. That’s a mistake because here’s the thing when you get out of the way, you will realize that there are people on your team and your staff that will crush what you think you have to do.
Or, you know, maybe it’s not that maybe it’s, they may not crush it like you, but you need the rest.
What’s more valuable right now in this season is your rest.
And so yeah, Eagle gets in there and uh you know, I I this, this chapter in the book uh is called uh balance after the blow.
And it’s powerful. And one of the most powerful chapters, it’s about regaining your equilibrium.
After some unexpected setback happens to your death of a loved one, et cetera, et cetera.
And one of the points is going into what I call power save mode, energy, save mode where I am operating on fumes.
And when I’m operating on fumes, my energy, my, my uh the best thing call is energy, my strength is reduced.
And so now I have to pause and be a strategic energy investor and delegate and, and do all these things.
II I just this book, you know, I know we’re talking about this book but it’s changing my life and I wrote it and it’s Yeah.
No, I was just gonna say if I can chime in, you know, I uh I co pastor with my husband but I don’t speak every Sunday.
So I may not relate fully to the every Sunday pressure of having to get up and speak.
But I do do think a lot of things at my house and in my home and they’re pretty daily and in doing those things.
I’ve got a little ego when I start thinking, I’m the only one who can do certain things like I’m the only one who can cook the dinner.
I’m the only one who can do the girl’s hair. I’m the only one who can do the homework.
I have put this pressure on myself to be the only one who can do it.
And what I am learning is that I do take pride in making an incredible meal for my family.
I do take pride in the way I do the girl’s hair and the homework and all of those things.
But I’ve also like that. It is not the end of the world if we order in, it is not the end of the world.
If they walk around and their hair is not brushed today at the end of the day, sometimes I have to choose my wellness, my health over.
Um you know, trying to be super mom because there’s an imaginary badge that comes with that.
Sometimes you gotta be willing to take the cape off.
Listen, the the most important person in your life is you and that seems crazy.
It’s like God seems so unchristian unspiritual, but it’s not if you’re not good, God can’t use you.
You know, if you’re depleted, if you’re, you know, one of the chapters about the five signs of imbalance, weariness is one of them.
When you go from being tired to weary, you are on your way down.
A lot of great leaders have fallen, not because they were bad people, not because they were immoral people.
It’s because they were tired people, they were weary people.
So, so to steward me is is ministry to steward me first as goes me. So goes the church.
So goes everything. And I think that that’s something that, uh, there’s a paradigm shift that is needed.
You know, if, if, if I’m not, well, my church can’t be.
Well, if I’m not, well, my business can’t be. Well, I’m not.
Well, my marriage can’t be well, so, pri self prioritization is everything. Um, let’s talk about some practical steps.
What’s something that like anybody today can do right now that would help them find, you know, better balance in their life?
I, I think the first step to balance is actually not a step. It’s to stop.
I, I have discovered that it takes more faith to stop than it does to go and to start something new.
And the reason why it takes a lot of faith to stop is because most people believe that if they actually would stop, the world would come crumbling down overnight, they would be bankrupt.
You know, they would be out of a job that whole bit.
But even, you know, our Lord taught us in the very beginning, the principle of the Sabbath and Sabbath doesn’t mean rest, rest is connected to Sabbath, but that Hebrew Word literally means to cease to stop, you know, and so so God right there in Genesis is teaching us a fundamental principle that it is actually OK to stop.
And the one who set your universe in motion and set everything that you’re proud of in motion uh can sustain it and maintain it while you take time to recreate yourself, right?
And so um so I think the first step is to stop.
Now, the reason why stopping is so important is because life is noisy. Yeah.
Life and, and here’s the thing, life is noisy.
But people don’t realize how noisy life is because noisy has become normal. It isn’t until you actually stop that.
You realize, oh my God, my my norm is noise, right? And so what’s what’s the challenge with noise?
Why is noise such a problem?
Noise is a problem because you cannot be connected to God’s voice in the noise.
And so what if God is saying it’s time to make a left or it’s time to sew in this field or to do that?
Well, you’re just going and going and going and going and you’re headed towards God knows what.
And so I think the first step is to stop uh to get steel.
Uh and then that’s gonna bring you to an awareness, right?
Because one of the things that the noise does and I I can talk about this all day.
So just interrupt you. But one of the things about the noise is the noise disconnects you from reality.
It only connects you to the reality of everyone else.
So you’ve got your cell phone and, and if you are on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, what you’re doing is you are experiencing the proposed realities of other people, right?
So you don’t know if it’s your thought, you know, you get on social media and if you just scroll your timeline and you’ve got 10 posts, you can go through 10 different emotions.
I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m angry, I’m jealousy, jealousy and all that other stuff.
And so, so so balance, the first step to balance is stopping so that you can become aware.
It’s such a good word. I, I remember this revelation I had when I was at a nice restaurant with my wife and we were at a, at a dinner and I was looking at everybody was on their cell phone.
A lot of people were on like this amazing restaurant with this incredible chef. And it’s an amazing expensive experience.
You know, you got a babysitter and sometimes you see couples and they’re both on their phones and, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But then the funny thing is my wife got up to go to the bathroom and, you know, it was the first thing I did.
I like my phone like compulsive. I couldn’t just be there and eat the food.
I couldn’t just enjoy the space or the music or the design of the building or pray or just have a smile.
I, I had this built like thing built into me. I’m a pastor.
You know, I’m supposed to be praying and I feel guilty with you.
Like I just, and I like grabbed it as I’m judging these people.
I’m like kind of like looking at them with this critical eye.
And then my wife gets up to go to the bathroom and I’m like, and I, I didn’t have any, there wasn’t like nobody was calling me.
I opened my phone, I didn’t know why I didn’t know what I was going to do when I was on my phone.
It was compulsive. But is your thumb on autopilot where like you don’t even know how you got on Instagram?
Like I went to check my message now I’m on Instagram or I went to check the email and now I’m doing this.
No, the phone and it’s by design and that’s the thing. It’s by design it 13 years.
My background is uh business and technology.
So I used to build data centers for fortune 100 companies and I had a guy come to me easy 15, 16 years ago and he was trying to pitch me something I should have bought it actually.
But he was trying to pitch me this concept that was undergirded by the fact that everything was gonna come to your phone.
You know, and I’m like, get out of it. I like your phone. No, get out of here.
And so the design watch this.
We are distracted by design, you know, corporate isn’t bad, you know, I believe in capitalism and, you know, I believe I’m not, you know, that’s my point.
They want us to be distracted. It is you are distracted by design. It’s interesting. The phrase pay attention.
I think I understand why they use the phrase pay attention because your attention is, is expensive. It costs something.
Your, your eyeball. I, I think it’s, I had all the numbers at one point but, but your attention is worth billions of dollars.
And so, and so when we are paying attention to something we are paying and it’s like there’s, there’s this old fairy tale I remember and it’s about this little boy who can pull a string anytime he goes through something bad in life, it was given to him by a fairy.
And so every time he goes through something bad in life, he pulls a string and his life fast forwards and then he gets to the end of his life and he regrets that he didn’t endure all the suffering.
It’s very Russian. You know, and to me that’s what we’re doing.
Our phone is like a little bit of the string we can pull or we can check out of life, but maybe we’re missing out.
Sometimes the even the boredom, which is a type of suffering is a space where God can speak to us.
II, I had a friend of mine that he said, I wonder how many miles if we could record it we’ve done on our Instagram.
Like if you think, OK, I just moved like, wow, you know, wow, six inches, you know, eight inches, whatever.
Like I wonder how many miles we’ve done just doing this on Instagram or tiktok or whatever it is that we’re on.
And I think there’s a hunger to, for what you’re writing about that people, they, they want to regain, you know, some life again and they want, they want freedom.
Like how do we and balances the world because there’s some people, like, get rid of your cell phone, that’s not balance either.
Right? You gotta, you need a cell phone to, to do any, you can’t even go to Disneyland without a cell phone.
You know. So how do we find is there? I guess there’s a, a part of balance.
It’s probably discipline, isn’t it? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Well, it’s, it’s so I talked about stopping to come to a place of awareness.
But the awareness that I’m not that I’m talking about is not necessarily self awareness.
Self awareness is a popular buzzword and it’s a wonderful thing to be aware of self, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it.
Maybe you can make some corrective measures changes or what have you.
But there’s another level of self awareness and that is soul awareness.
And the reason why understanding the difference between self awareness and soul awareness is so critical is because the soul is after something, the soul is longing for something.
And if you don’t stop to get still, then you will misinterpret the longing of the soul, which is God, which is alignment with God, which is, is connection with God.
You will misinterpret that longing and try to appease self through the things that we do, through social media, through, you know, drugs and alcohol, through relationships.
And so, so this, this message is everything and it talks about how to get down to the longing of your soul because your soul is after something, your soul wants something and your soul is intelligent and it knows where to find what it needs at.
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