Sheryl Brady - Pay Attention to the Tension

On your way down, touch somebody until I pay attention to the tension. Pay attention to the tension. Pay attention to the tension. Have you ever pulled up to a four-way stop and you’re not sure when it’s your turn to go, and other people think it’s their turn? You don’t know exactly when it’s your time, but you know it isn’t their time. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, «I was here before; you gotta hear it!» It just kind of creates that little tension I’m talking about. I have a little bit of feedback, so if you want to help, I mean just slightly—you don’t know, «Is it my turn? Is it my move? Is it my time to make a move?» Those moments right there in life create tension. And yet, however, somebody has to make a decision; otherwise, we’re all going to sit there all day and get nothing done. So sometimes, you just have to make a decision to move. I don’t like to make a lot of decisions, especially on Sundays. By the time I get through preparing on Saturdays and coming in here to preach two services on Sunday, the last thing I want anyone to say to me is, «Where are we gonna go eat?» At that point, I want to say, «Why don’t you just have something in my hand so that I can eat?» But I don’t want to be the one that makes that decision. Yet, I understand that if you’re going to live, if you’re going to do life, you have to be willing to make decisions. We make hundreds of decisions every day—some of them unconsciously, and some of them very consciously, like, «Oh, I have to get up out of this bed this morning.» We have to make a decision to get up. We have to make a decision to go to work. We have to make a decision to either eat or not eat, to get in the car to drive to work, whatever it may be. And then comes the most dreadful thing: «What am I supposed to wear to work today?» And what about my kids? «What are they going to wear?» Oh no, this was pajama day! Man, I forgot it was pajama day! It’s just one thing after another, but we have to make those kinds of decisions. We get in the car and our GPS tells us to go the opposite of the way we’ve always gone, and we’re wrestling with it like, «Why would you tell me to do that?» Just last week, my GPS was telling me to go in a different direction than I was used to going, and of course, I didn’t listen to my GPS. Okay, we have a problem; we are barely on speaking terms! I didn’t pay any attention and went the way I always go, only to get over there and realize there was a car accident, and I was going to be held up for a long time. So I didn’t pay attention at that moment. Those are just a few of the decisions we have to make every day. Some of the decisions we make, we expect to have to make them, but then there are other decisions that come up in our lives that we find ourselves having to make, which quite frankly, we were hoping we would never have to make. I call them surprise decisions—decisions out of nowhere. You know, decisions when our loved one dies, and now you must decide where to bury them, how to bury them, and go through all of those things. Those are decisions you never really wanted to make. A surprise job offer comes when you had been thinking about it a year ago, and you didn’t settle it because you didn’t get the job offer. Now, out of nowhere, they call you and want you to take the job, and you’re like, «Man, if you had called me then, I would’ve been ready, but now I’m not really ready.» So it’s kind of a surprise decision. A relationship—sometimes you think a relationship is going fine, and then all of a sudden, someone brings you a little piece of information, and that little piece of information changes everything, demanding you to make a different decision. Then there comes the decision, «Because of what’s happened at my job, now I have to downsize, ” and you didn’t see that coming. Maybe the house you are living in was sold out from under you, or you’re paying your rent only to find out later that the owners weren’t paying their mortgage. Because of that, you have to move and get out. These are what I call surprise decisions—decisions that were not necessarily on your radar at the moment. Usually, when you have to make decisions like that, it’s without fail that you always end up having to make them when you’re short on time or lacking the proper information. And then you have to make them.