Less Haste, More Speed

By: Richard Gazowsky

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It was a good while ago that God gave me this simple prophetic word: “Less haste, more speed.” I don’t know if I can remember when a prophetic word has had so much influence on my life culture. One of the direct influences upon my ability to properly follow God, and submit to His daily instructions correctly, has been my ability to remove haste out of my life ~ especially in the decision-making process. And yet I find out, paradoxically, more speed occurs.

So it is with God’s instructions. Usually He will give us simple instructions and we have no clue as to how powerful the ramifications are. Their influences and effects on your life can be so encompassing that it can change your personal life culture to the point of taking you to a place of ineffective mediocrity to point of accuracy and effectiveness.

Haste is driven by the inner emotions of anxiousness, which powers so many things in our lives ~ such as love and desire. The only way to deal with haste is to take it through the passageway of death. And this is a whole lot easier said than done. It wasn’t until I came to the realization that it was impossible for me to change myself on my own, that I understood that the illusive goal of more speed could be achieved. Apostle Paul told us that if Abraham could have done it on his own, what we’ve read in the Bible would only be an Abraham story. But instead we are given a God story, about what God did for Abraham.

When Abraham entered into what God was doing for him that was the turning point. When you and I enter into what God is doing for us, the same thing will happen. We have to turn everything over to God’s control and submit, not only to His guidance, but His daily instructions that continually take us through the miniscule elements of life. At first this might sound complicated and difficult. But once you do it, you’ll find out that it is fun and enjoyable. Only a childlike mindset can prepare you for this type of transition.

Probably the hardest thing for you to understand is that God is willing to take all of the ugly things and save all of the good parts for you. He will take the worries, problems, responsibilities, even the calculations, and leave you with simple delight and fulfillment of each task being completed. And you get to enjoy it all! For me this seemed too good to be true. Yet it is true ~ simple and true! So how does this work in the real world?

Step one is to allow God to initiate everything. Didn’t He say, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?” That simply means, don’t start anything on your own. My wife and I knew I needed a warm winter overcoat to wear with my suits. Sure enough, when we went to look for one we found a beautiful coat made by Georgio Armani. But something didn’t feel right about it. About an hour later we went to the Armani boutique and found the same coat, this time in the right color for my skin tone, and it was 40% off! Still, it all didn’t seem to line up correctly. We waited a week and both of us decided we weren’t supposed to get the coat. Things just didn’t align properly in the Spirit.

I realize this is just a simple purchase of a jacket. But these are the small things that God wants us to be faithful with, so He can entrust true riches into our hands. Just yesterday Sandy and I again addressed the issue of my coat. Then it hit us. The missing element in the episode of the coat was the initiation phase ~ God hadn’t started it. Since He is the Alpha and Omega, and we knew God was trying to teach us is to wait and let Him start the process. If we initiate the thing, already we have started down the wrong pathway. How much more important this is when it comes to your career, or decision regarding some other important aspect of your life. It’s time for us to quit initiating things and ask God to pick out the best of our choices.

This is why haste causes us to waste so much time. We don’t understand how useless it is to go down an incorrect pathway and for the wrong goal ~ even though our goal may appear genuine and might, in our book, sufficient for our own purposes. It’s only the wisdom of God that knows what we will really face in the future. Only He has the ability to align your present purposes with their necessary goals ~ and ultimate fulfillment. It may seem to you to be laborious and a waste of time to stop everything and go back to square one. But I can tell you, use less haste and you’ll definitely enjoy the resultant pleasure of speed!

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Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”