A Change of Place and Pace

If you want to experience deep change, healing, and breakthrough you need something different. It’s much more difficult to commune with God at deeper levels and pay deeper attention to your desires and wounds without disrupting your usual rhythms. To encounter new territory with the Lord, you need a change of place and pace.

I just returned from a three month sabbatical that I structured upon a change of place and pace. I spent only 10 days of my sabbatical at home, my usual and familiar place. I enjoyed my sabbatical in four very different places: a ranch in mountainous Montana all by myself, the tropical island of Roatan with my family of five, a house on a lake in New England with my family and some extended family, and a cabin the Sierra Nevada Mountains with some friends and some solitude. Each place offered a “newness” for listening to God, surfacing and noticing my normal ways of operating, and inviting change.

Similarly, in each place I lived at a different pace. My usual pace here in Silicon Valley is fast. Each day, each week I have a lot going on and a lot that I am responsible for—I pace my days at a good clip in order to do and enjoy all that is before me. My sabbatical operated at a completely different pace. Each day was slow. I did not have goals, to-do lists, meetings, or responsibilities—my only goal was to enjoy the day and walk closely with God. Deep things happened in my soul because I lived a change of place and pace. There’s a reason our Bibles often tells us about God summoning leaders into the wilderness for new encounters with Him.

You might not have the opportunity to take a sabbatical, but you still have the opportunity to creatively change place and pace in order to experience more of God. Dream up what this could look like for you. A three-night getaway might be what you need right now. Or maybe you change the place and pace of how you spend the first hour of your morning, or your evening. Perhaps you devote one day a month as your “sabbatical day”—drive to a new place each month, pace that day super slow, listen to and enjoy God. That could be transformative.