EP 4: Finding Rhythm

Welcome to the Thirst with Hunger podcast with Pastor Sandy Edwards, where we destroy every obstacle that hinders people from knowing God. Here you'll be challenged, encouraged, and equipped to pursue his presence, walk in truth, and live with bold faith. Let's dive in.

Hello everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the Thirst with Hunger podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Sandy Edwards, and I just want to say welcome to 2026. It's a new year, and you're likely in a place of seeking the Lord, and you're setting your intentions, you're making your plans, you're thinking about purpose and direction and what this year is supposed to look like. At least I hope that you are sitting your heart before the Lord, right? But I just want to remind you that in Proverbs 16:9, which reminds us of the tension between our plans and God's sovereignty, it says, the heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. So before you go head over heels into all of those things like mapping and building and committing and striving, there's something that you need to pause to understand, because I am confident that today's teaching will be a blessing to you. Practically, as this year unfolds. By now you have discovered that I am not a motivational speaker. I am not interested in motivating you to do anything. And this is not a productivity system dressed up as spirituality. This is establishing a healthy foundation as you navigate this year and every year. After. Because many of you listening, you, you love God, and yet you find yourself tired and unsettled and confused, and you're frustrated in your walk with God. And it's not because you've abandoned prayer, but because you were taught a misaligned understanding of it. So before we talk about goals, and before we talk about vision, before we talk about discipline and devotion And doing more for God, let's reset our foundation. Because if you don't understand rhythm, you will spend this year striving where God intended for there to be a flow. And you will spend a lot of your time forcing things to happen where God intended for there to be Grace, and you will imitate what others are doing and how God is moving in their life where God intended for you to have intimacy with him. So I want you to take a moment to slow down and to be still and listen to this episode with the intent to hear God. Spiritual rhythms are the God-ordained patterns that shape each individual believer's life. They are not checklists or performances. They are these steady things that we do every day to keep our, our hearts aligned with God and our lives ordered according to his will. These rhythms include prayer, worship, time in the word, fasting, rest, and walking in communion with God day by day. And these rhythms, as to how they are demonstrated and executed in each follower of Christ's life, will look different. It doesn't mean that the rhythm and the way that God is moving in your life is any less important or any less structured or any less valuable because he's not moving that way in someone else's life. And so this is not a modern New Age theory or concept. From the very beginning, we see one with God. He set the pattern that we should have. He worked and then he rested. He created and then he rested. And God did not rest because he was tired, but because rhythm matters. There's a reason why he worked and then he rested. He created and then he rested. And he didn't wait until he was tired to rest. He was not tired. God did not— get tired. Now we do because we are in our human bodies, right? We have human experiences. We get tired. But we should not wait until we are tired to rest. Rest should be a natural part of our rhythm. Prayer has always been a rhythm for God's people. If you look at Daniel, he didn't pray when it was Convenient. He prayed because it was his way of life. Jesus, though he was fully God, he withdrew regularly to pray. And that alone should silence this lie that prayer is optional or seasonal, or prayer is something that you squeeze into your life. But it really should be how you stay connected and how you commune and fellowship with God every single day. The word of God is another rhythm. Scripture is not designed to be visited occasionally. It's to be lived and discovered and received daily. And those who delight in God's word and meditate on it consistently, you are more rooted, stable, and fruitful. The word of God transforms the mind when it is regularly received. If you find yourself making excuses for things that should be a priority, then this is the reason why you're not bearing fruit. And so we have to understand that rest is holy, and God did not intend for us to only rest when we are exhausted. Frantic and spiritually dry. Whatever area of our life where we lack rest, we will lack clarity. We will lack understanding. We will lack fruitfulness. We will lack stability. Whenever there is an area of our life that lacks rest, we will lack understanding, wisdom, application, all of these things. Not having rest, not making rest the rhythm of your life, you will lack clarity, you will lack understanding, you will always be in confusion. So living with these rhythms require intention. And again, it doesn't look the same in every season, and it doesn't have to. Some seasons allow for long uninterrupted time with God. Other seasons require faithfulness in smaller increments. What matters is not the length, but the consistency and the surrender. What matters is not the length, but the consistency and the surrender. And these rhythms that God is wanting us to establish, they're not rituals. They are relational. They are how we stay grounded, how we hear God clearly and walk in the peace of God. And when these things are practiced rightly, they don't lead to burnout. They always lead to transformation. They always lead to fruitfulness and increase in every area. And so spiritual rhythms, these rhythms, they're not optional if you want a healthy, growing, God-centered life. They are how your faith is sustained. And the first thing you gotta understand if you wanna have a fruitful year in 2026 is that God is not confined to a quiet room. Somewhere along the way, many of us as believers were taught directly or indirectly that real authentic prayer can only happen when the house is silent. When the phone is off, when the journal is open, and nothing interrupts. And yes, there are seasons where God does invite us into deep, uninterrupted time with Him. And yes, there are seasons where you will have 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 hours to just spend it with the Lord. And Jesus did model this when He withdrew to desolate places in Luke 5:16. But that is not the only way communion works. God does not disappear when life gets loud. He does not withdraw when responsibility increases. He does not step back because your day fills up. And scripture never says pray when conditions are perfect. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says to pray Without ceasing. And the Greek word used here in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 for without ceasing, it means constantly recurring. It implies a never-ending open line of communication. A never-ending open line of communication. If prayer were only for the quiet room Right. The Apostle Paul would have never commanded us to do it without ceasing because we cannot stay in a quiet room forever. That means that prayer is not an event. Prayer is a posture of communion. If God can only meet you in silence, then he's not Emmanuel, God with you. Because God should be your life. Prayer should be your life. You should always be in constant communion with the Lord. It should not end the moment that you leave your set-aside time in the mornings with the Lord, or your set-aside time at night with the Lord. Prayer should not end when you get up off of your floor. Prayer should not end when you leave church and you leave the altar. It should be this constant communication, never-ending open line of communication with the Lord. And there are seasons where you may have 5 uninterrupted hours to pray, and praise God for those times and seasons. Steward them well and receive them with gratitude. But there are also times and seasons where you may only have 30 focused minutes, fragmented moments, whispered prayers between responsibilities. And we must look to Ecclesiastes 3:1 that says, for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. God is honored by the time you make for him. And the time you give Him when it is given honestly. God is not offended at any given moment by our limitation. He is, however, offended when we do things from a place of performance and resentment. You're not honoring God and giving freely to God by mourning a past season He has already closed. You honor him by inviting him into the season you're actually in. And so that means that you don't grow resentment in your heart if for 30 minutes you have this set aside time, you only have 30 focused minutes to spend time with the Lord, then you give God everything you have for those 30 focused minutes. If you have children coming in and out of your prayer time and they're making noise and they're doing all of the things, then you Give God that time too. It's enough of us thinking that in order for us to be effective and fruitful, then if I didn't get my 1 hour of quiet time, then I'm going to carry resentment all day and treat other people wrong all day because I did not spend time in the secret place like I normally do for that 1 hour or that 2 hours or that 3 hours. I didn't get my time, so that's a reason for me to be rude. No, your problem is, is that you're not communing with the Lord also throughout your entire day. And you're looking at, well, I only have 30 minutes, and you're beating yourself up about not having 3 hours. And God is like, well, today you only had 30 minutes, so give me those 30 minutes. Finding that rhythm, discovering that rhythm, and being okay with the way that God is flowing for today. If you only had 30 minutes today, then give God everything you got in those 30 minutes. We will never experience any type of fruitful anything in our spiritual life, in our natural life. We will never experience fruit being fruitful if we're obsessing over time, if we are obsessing Over time. And this is why you have no peace, because you're borrowing time instead of giving it. Instead of honoring God with the time that you do have, you're trying to borrow more time. And then you spend the entire day being frustrated, mistreating your children, mistreating your spouse, mistreating different people when you're at work because you didn't get your 1 hour. If you only had the drive of 30 minutes to work to, to spend that time with the Lord, then you honor God with that 30 minutes that you have. You don't grow resentment in your heart because you only had 30 minutes. There will be a time where you have more than 30 minutes. But again, it's about giving God your time and not borrowing time. from the time that you didn't have, or getting upset because of the time that you didn't have. Maybe you need to plan a little better so you can have more time. But some of us don't slow down to ask the Lord how we can plan and be a better steward over our time and our lives because we're so focused on what we didn't get to do, or how much time we didn't have, or because all of these other things started happening when we could have been spending time with the Lord. So maybe asking the Lord how we can plan better to have time. God is honored by the time you make for him and the time you give him when it is given honestly. So now we need to also correct a deep misunderstanding about what sacrifice looks like in the Christian life. We often believe that sacrifice means doing something miserable. We think if it isn't hard, or if it doesn't look like suffering, then it's not spiritual. We think sacrifice means fighting against the season we are in. But that is not the biblical definition of sacrifice. Romans 12:1 calls us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Notice that the scripture doesn't say anything about making your life miserable. Notice it says a living sacrifice. It's about making your life available. It is engaging with God exactly where you are, not where you wish you were. Not where you wish you were, not the time you wish you had, but making your life available. Living sacrifice. Living sacrifice. It's one of those things that it's not about what we're experiencing, but how we experience it. It's not about what we see, right? Because if the way that you see sacrifices is this heavy, overwhelming burden, you're always going to feel tired and exhausted when God has called you to a place of dominion and authority and freedom. Sacrifice isn't about making your life miserable. It is about making your life available. It is engaging with God exactly where you are, not where you wish you were. This leave it at the door statement is where we miss it. We treat our quiet time with the Lord like a gas station. We pull in, we fill up, and then we drive away, and we stop praying when we close the journal. We stop meditating when we close the Bible. Instead of the encounter shaping our day, we leave the encounter and go about our day independently. But Jesus gave us a different model in the Lord's Prayer. In Matthew 6:11, he says, give us this day our daily bread. And in John 6:35, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Think about bread. You don't eat a loaf of bread at 6 AM and expect it to satisfy your hunger at 6 PM. Bread is sustenance. It is fuel for the immediate moment. When Jesus says he is our daily bread, he means he is the sustenance For each part of the day, he is the bread for the stressful meeting that you may have at 10 a.m. He is the bread for the difficult conversation at 2 p.m. He is the bread for the exhaustion at 8 p.m. He is the bread for when you are dealing with children and their attitudes. He is the bread for when you're dealing with conflict in your marriage. He is the bread for when you're heading into a business meeting. He is the bread for when you're planning and. setting your intentions for the year. He is the bread for every waking, breathing moment of your life every day. And that true sacrifice, that living sacrifice, is never forgetting him in any area, time, or season. It is the refusal to be independent. It is the constant hourly decision to say, Lord, I need you in this moment just as much as I needed you this morning. He is the bread of life. He is the sustenance for the entire day. You needed him just as bad as you do right now at 3 PM as you did at 6 AM and 5 AM and 3 AM and 2 AM and 1 AM when you were up this morning. And so prayer does not end when the day begins. Prayer does not stop because the busyness of the day begins. You don't leave prayer to go to work. You carry prayer into the work. When you go for a walk, you walk with God. When you're in meetings, you invite his wisdom. When you exercise, you offer your body as a temple. Of the Lord back to him. When you're eating, you recognize that your body is a temple and you consume things that are good for the temple of the Lord. When you parent, you speak blessing and not frustration. When you're with your spouse, you ask God to guard your words. And it's not about getting everything right all of the time. It's about sanctification. It's about spiritual maturity. And this is the essence of Colossians 3:17, and it says, and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. If you have to shut down your life to connect with God, you were taught separation and not communion. God desires involvement, not isolation. Prayer is not something you pause your life for. Prayer is how you live life with God. And there is a level of maturity we need to reach where we stop waiting for the world to go silent so we can hear God. Because here's the reality, the world is not going to go silent. If you are waiting for the kids to stop screaming, the phone to stop ringing, or the demands to cease before you expect God to speak, you are limiting his voice to your convenience. We also, in addition to spending our separate individual alone time with the Lord, we need to develop a spiritual hearing that pierces through the noise. Think about a parent in a crowded, loud playground. There are dozens of children screaming and playing. But when their specific child cries out, even faintly, they hear it. They snap to attention. Why? Not because the room got quiet, but because their ear is tuned to the relationship. Jesus speaks to this in John 10:27. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And so I want to show you exactly what this looks like in scripture. There's a moment in the Gospel of John where the noise was not just distracting, it was deadly. In John 6:16-21, The disciples are in a boat. It is dark, the wind is raging, and Jesus is not with them yet. Listen to verses 19 through 21. It says, When they had rowed about 3 or 4 miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea. Then they were glad to take him into the boat. And immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. And here's what these rhythms look like in John 6:16-21. You have the rhythm of fear versus faith. They were terrified because they saw the supernatural through the lens of their stress. And when you lose your rhythm with God, even his answers begin to look like problems. We see also the theology of the struggle, James 4:6. Why were they rowing for miles but not getting anywhere? And it's because they were trying to overcome this storm with natural effort. And James 4:6 says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. This word opposes in the Greek means to rage and battle against. In John 6:16-21, they were literally trying to row in their own strength Their way through this wind and this storm. And so then we see an exchange happen by the end of it, and we see humility begin to take over them, and we see that the moment they humbled themselves and they welcomed Jesus, they arrived. That last verse says. Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. So grace is the power that moves the boat when your rowing can't. So when you stop trying to row in your own strength and you invite Jesus into the boat, you get the grace of immediate arrival. Not because the journey is short, but because his presence collapses the distance. In Psalm 46:10, it says, be still and know that I am God. This is a verse about this internal stability during the busyness of life. It's about having internal Stability. And stillness is a heart posture. It is the refusal to live in a defensive mode. We have to understand that this inner discipline affects our outward reality. Proverbs 4:23 warns us to keep our heart with all vigilance. If your heart is clenched and you're building things and mapping things out and executing tasks while being anxious and striving, your words will be sharp and your decisions will be reactive. But when you practice This inward discipline of being still. When you purposefully quiet your inner man despite the outer noise, you become the calmest person in the crisis. And the result and the fruit of this will be deep knowledge. You cannot be intimate with God while you are running. You can only know about Him, and to really know Him, you must stop running long enough to recognize who is standing in front of you, much like the disciples in John 6:16-21. Are you stopping and pausing long enough to seek the One who's in front of you? Are you pausing long enough to recognize Jesus? Are you seeking him? Are you asking him? Or are you making assumptions about what you think you should be doing? Are you making assumptions about what your issue really is? Are you making assumptions about The issues that other people have in their life? Or are you seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness and letting all the things after that be added unto you? The things can't be added unto you unless you seek the Lord first. So are you stopping? Are you pausing to recognize and ask the Lord his heart, his thoughts concerning 2026 and your life and your marriage and your finances and all of these things? Or are you making assumptions about what it should be? Making assumptions is what's causing the confusion. Making assumptions is why you're having a hard time. Making assumptions is why there seems to be all of this, this chaos in your life, because you assumed instead of seeking the Lord. Are you pausing long enough to ask the Lord his heart, his thoughts concerning 2026 and every year after, or concerning those engagements that you said yes to, concerning opportunities that you've accepted and said yes to? Did you ask the Lord what is his heart concerning it? Should you have even said yes? Our assumptions is what get us into trouble. Assumptions are not made on a solid foundation. They are made on a whim. They're made based on what you think it should be like instead of what God actually said. It's you planning your own way and not being open to the Lord establishing your steps. So if you want things to be different in your life this year, You must stop to look at Jesus, to find his rhythm for your life, to discover his rhythm for your life. And that rhythm is up to what God said, not everybody's opinions. But what did God say that the rhythm is for your life in this specific time and season? Enough comparing yourself to other people and how God is moving in their life. Those moments and things that other people experience are only designed to encourage you to grow in your faith, to believe God. It's not supposed to be something you covet and look at so-and-so's life and say, well, I wish I had that opportunity. I wish I had this. No, you don't, because you don't know the rhythm that God has for that person's life. You don't know what it costs another person to be where they are. You have to discover the rhythm that God has for your life and to stop borrowing time and give the time that belongs to God back to God, him being first, your first love. I want to share with you, your life is about getting to the place of the easy yoke. Jesus said in Matthew 11:29-30, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke Is easy and my burden is light. Your goal for 2026 above all else should be about getting to the easy yoke and getting to the light burden. And if after all of your planning and after all of your mapping and out of all of your meetings and all of this other stuff that you are doing to prepare for 2026, Or preparing to walk out in this year, if at the end of that it does not produce an easy yoke and a light burden, then you are taking on things that do not belong to God and that he did not ask you to carry. So if you go down your list of things you plan to do this year, your goals, your dreams, if it does not lead you to the easy yoke and it does not lead to the light burden, you need to take it back to the Lord. There are different boundaries that God has for each of us to live within. For someone else, God may say that that is not where he wants you to go, and for someone else, he may say that is where he wants them to go. But again, it's about seeking first the kingdom, not your best friend, not all these people, but seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness, and then all of these things will be added unto you. Your life is about taking on the easy yoke. Your life is about finding the burden that is light. Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you," not the yoke of what you think it should be, but his yoke, which is easy, and his burden, which is light. And a yoke binds two things together. So if he said to take my yoke upon you, you stay connected to Jesus by carrying and putting on the easy yoke. And his yoke fits every season. In the storm, that— the yoke of Jesus is going to look like trust. In the quiet, the yoke of Jesus is going to look like intimacy. In the busy, the yoke of Jesus is going to look like being fully dependent on him. And so Jesus has a specific rhythm tailored for your life. And when you wear a yoke that doesn't fit, it leads to burnout. But when you take on his yoke, which is what he said to live in, because your life is about getting to the easy yoke and the light burden, the friction disappears. So let us pray. Father, I pray for every listener right now. Who feels the burden of a yoke that doesn't fit. I pray for the one who is tired from rowing against the storms of life, the cares of life, in their own strength. And Father, help us to humble ourselves today. Like the disciples in the boat, we want to stop our striving, God. We want to stop our rowing, and we gladly welcome you into the boat. That is our life. Help us to take on the easy yoke, God, the one that makes the heavy burden light. In the chaos, be our peace. In the noise, be the voice that pierces through the noise, Lord. And in 2026, let us not just survive the storm. Let us arrive at the destination you have for us. Help us to discover the rhythm that you have for us, Lord. We no longer want to be tossed to and fro like the wind, God. We no longer want to be just existing, God, but we want to be fruitful and purposeful in you. We don't want to keep going and experiencing the same thing year after year after year because we refuse to do what you said. And your instructions are so simple, God. They're not hard. They're not complicated. They're not weighty. We just gotta yield. So help us to yield. Help us to surrender, Lord, and help us to discover the rhythm that you have for each of us. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Thank you for listening, and may God bless you as you navigate 2026.

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