What If Flexibility Is A Spiritual Discipline

A closed highway can reveal what we really worship: comfort, control, or trust. After a Sunday that starts with joy at church, a simple drive home turns into a five-hour detour caused by nearby forest fires and massive traffic backups. By the time I finally walk through the door, I’m exhausted, frustrated, and convinced I have every right to be grumpy. 

Then one word keeps cutting through the noise: flexible. I talk through what it looks like to loosen my grip on my timetable, my preferences, and even my small “deserved” rewards, and to choose peace when the situation won’t change. If you’ve ever felt your mood hinge on delays, canceled plans, or unexpected obstacles, you’ll recognize the battle instantly. 

This episode originally aired on September 13, 2022, during one of the worst fire seasons in British Columbia and Washington State.  Until this year... Right now fires are raging again throughout our province and the smoke is giving our world a dark orange glow that can feel suffocating. This episode fits for today as much as it did 4 years ago.   Danny Mac

Transcript

Welcome And Daily Five Minute Start

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mack. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and let me help you start your day right.

A Sunday Detour After Church

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Good morning everyone. I'm so glad that you're here with me today, and I'm really glad to be here today as well. Those of you that read our show notes yesterday will know that my wife and I had some difficulty getting home Sunday night because of some forest fires in our area. On Sunday morning, we got up, we went to church with our family, enjoyed it, we had a great time in church, it was a wonderful service. And then my wife and I went had lunch with our daughter and her husband and their stepdaughter, and then we decided to come home. Now that trip from her place to our home should take about 20

Highway Closure And Five Hour Crawl

SPEAKER_00 0:54

minutes. We knew there were forest fires in the area, and we heard that they were sort of in the general direction past where we lived, but what we didn't know was that the fires had come down near the highway, and so the highway was actually closed. That caused this huge, huge backup of vehicles on the highway. This is the number one highway from Vancouver going east. It is traveled by thousands and thousands of cars every day. This road was now closed. The backup of traffic was absolutely horrendous. I thought I was going to be smart, get off the highway, take one of the parallel roads that would get us partway there, but no, even it was jammed up, and we sat there waiting for a long time without anybody even moving. Finally, we were able to turn around and we got out of there, and we decided the only way that we were going to get home was instead of traveling east where the fires were, we needed to travel west so that we could get back to another bridge that would cross the Fraser River for us, and then we could come back along the other side of the Fraser River to get to where we live, which is what we have to do. Well, that process took a long time. So from the time we left our daughters to the time we got home, it was well over

Losing Joy And Feeling Justified

SPEAKER_00 2:10

five hours. We were exhausted, we were worn out, and to be quite honest with you, all of the joy and excitement and things that I had felt in church that Sunday had sort of gotten pushed aside. I'd lost a lot of my joy in that traffic, and I had become grumpy, and I had become frustrated. And you know what? I felt justified in being grumpy and frustrated. I felt it was my right because of all the problems we were having that day.

God’s One Word: Flexible

SPEAKER_00 2:40

But the Lord began to speak to me. And there was one word that kept coming through my mind in a variety of scenarios, and it was the word flexible. I felt God telling me that I needed to just relax and be flexible. So I spent some time last night and this morning looking through some of these scriptures about what the Bible actually says about being flexible. And you know what says quite a bit. So let me just share with you some of the things that I learned about flexibility over the last twenty-four hours. In order for me to be flexible as God wants me to be, I need to be willing to let go of my timetable and my purposes when he decides to interrupt it for me. Quite frankly, I wanted to get home and watch the first day of NFL football and I couldn't do it, and I was uptight about that. But God said, just let go. There was nothing I could do to change the situation, and so the only thing I really could do and should do is trust him in that situation. You see, flexibility means that we need to be able to live above our circumstances and the situations that we are facing.

Contentment Through Christ And Letting Go

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Philippians 4, verses eleven to thirteen. Paul writes and says, I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I've learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little, for I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength. There's a guy who learned to be flexible. He lived above the circumstances because with what he has from Christ, no matter what the situations are that he was facing, Christ was with him. Sometimes we need to be flexible because God has something else in mind for us too. Over in James chapter four, verses thirteen to fifteen, James says, Look here, you who say today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and we'll stay there a year, we will do business there and make a profit. How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog, it's here a little while and then it's gone. What you ought to say is if the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or do that. You see, there's always has to be that ability to adapt to change to what God's leading us into because we don't know all of the pieces and all of the plans, but he does, and we need to trust him with that.

Final Encouragement And Invitation

SPEAKER_00 5:03

I know some of those things are tough to deal with, but nothing is more important than us being able to maintain a right walk with God in every situation and circumstance. Have a great day, my friends. We will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.