Keith Battle - T Time

That’s what I do week after week. What I do is study a passage of Scripture. I examine it, I research it, I write about it, and I pour myself into it for an extended amount of time. Then I come before all of you, and I teach you what I learned. I try to do that faithfully. I did all of that this week with those verses, with that passage. I had my normal routine, but have you ever tried to cook dinner with good intentions, and you thought, «This is not going to work»? So I decided, «We’re going to eat out today, y’all. We’re going to go out to eat. We’ll get some fast food or carryout or something.» I think what was causing my writer’s block was that I couldn’t teach that material passionately like I usually do without it seeming self-serving. I don’t feel comfortable coming up here telling you all, as a pastor, that I deserve to be paid well, even though that’s what the Bible says we need to learn. But I can’t do that; I’m not going to do it. I’m just conflicted. So maybe I need to bring in a guest to tackle it. I’m just being honest with you—I got stuck. I couldn’t teach it, and I couldn’t write it. It wasn’t coming together.

So whenever I’m stuck, this is what I do. When I don’t know what to do, one of the things that helps me is I take what I call a prayer walk. When I’m sitting down and feeling stuck, I’m in a physically stuck position, so when I say I’m going for a walk, I try to go outside and avoid crowds. I just aim to walk out on a trail or somewhere in nature. I don’t know what it is scientifically about walking, but when I walk, it opens up a part of my brain that generates ideas, and I tend to find solutions to problems that way. It doesn’t always happen, but what I want to share with you today is what I received while I was walking. So I’m going to ask you now—this is not going to be an examination of a Biblical passage, so I don’t want you sending me an email saying, «Hey, don’t even preach the Word anymore; you’ve backslid.» I just explained what happened this week. I tried to prepare a little sermon, so what I’m going to do is take you on this walk with me, and I’m going to tell you what I got from this walk. Is that okay? I’m just going to talk to you about what happened while I was walking.

Now, the continuity of content in the walk is seen in the fact that as I was walking, topics were coming to my mind in the form of words. The consistency of it is that all these words started with the letter T. I don’t know why that happened, but that’s why I’m giving this subject the title «Tea Time.» I had to call it something. When I say «tea time,» I’m not talking about gossip because I don’t have the tea like that. I’m not referring to an English meal around four in the afternoon where we have light fare, and I’m not talking about what time you start your golf match. I’m calling it «tea time» because the points begin with a T.

As I was getting these words while walking, I could clearly tell they were coming to me, and I’m sure that at some point I started forcing some of these T-words because after I got about three of them, I thought, «Well, all of them will have to start with T after a while.» But here’s what happened: as I was walking, the first thing that came to me was this: true self. What I mean by «true self» is that it is impossible to reach your full potential in life without being truly who you are. You are not going to ascend by acting, not to your highest potential, because acting is exhausting. It is tiresome to play the role of someone else. Even actors get a break from being in character; every now and then, someone has to say «cut.» I want to say that to all of you who are faking who you are: cut! Like in that show where they had three people up there, and they all claimed to be the same person—I can’t remember the name of the show, but it went something like, «Will the real person please stand up?» We’re waiting on the real you because God has never made another you, and He will never make another you. There will never be another you, and it would be a tragedy for us to live this life without ever meeting the real you. Now, I know that many of us have been raised and developed in ways that prevented us from being who we truly are because we were raised by parents who tried to shape us.