resting in his presence . And I think in our , I ’ ll speak specifically to the church staff member or volunteer who really gives themselves to it . There is a disillusionment where when we think we are doing stuff for God , that it equates to just being with God . And those things are not the same . And unfortunately , we ’ ve seen a lot of people lose out on their relationship with God because they worked on a lot of stuff with God , and they did a lot of stuff for God . But we never really prioritized the lighting in him , remaining in him . Ministering to him , not just ministering to the congregations and not just ministering to the community group or the staff , but ministering to the Lord .
That ’ s the foundation and the function of all of our gifts and all of our skills and our ability to write and communicate and lead . It ’ s to minister to the Lord . And I think that it gets sifted out in all of our cultural busyness . And I did an evaluation of 2024 , and I looked at these different buckets of my life and I realized every area of my life that was output oriented , I crushed it , man . I put out songs , I wrote a manuscript , we planted a church , all of this kind of stuff . But then when looked on anything that had to do with soul health , enrichment counseling , therapy , I had a below satisfactory in all of these areas . And I know what ’ s written on the wall . When you live your life like that , you end up being a headline or a flat line .
And I just decided , so I had my first counseling session of this year , last month , and my counselor was saying , how well are you doing not having your Bible and not having your journal or something that you ’ re working on God with , but just being in his presence ? And the craziest thing happened , I ’ m like , “ You know what ? That ’ s a great idea . I need to just be with God . I just need a delight in the Lord ”. There ’ s an Airbnb , a little cabin that I booked in Leander , Texas while I was writing my book . I ’ ll just get three or four hours a week just to go be with the Lord . And my counselor just kind of smirked at me . And he was like , “ Tauren , you could do that . That sounds amazing . Or you could sit in that chair and you could close the door and shut off your phone , put your Bible away . Maybe have a journal if you cannot write a sermon and just be with God ”. And I ’ m telling you , that is my number one thing . I ’ m driving this home with our staff , with our teams , with our Dream Team , even in our church . We have to reprioritize just being in God ’ s presence for nothing else but Him .
[ WM ] It ’ s about His Presence , 100 %. It ’ s about the presence of God . And unfortunately , the church has made it into a lot of things that my generation in the Jesus movement rebelled against , which were programs and doing and doing and doing stuff . It is about the presence and it ’ s about faith and family and friends and just folks . That ’ s what I reduced it to . That ’ s what it ’ s about with life . Because none of it really matters anyway .
[ Tauren ] And that ’ s the place of empowerment . I ’ ve been teaching our church through this the last couple of weeks , like Psalm 1 , “ And he will be like a tree planted by streams of water , and he ’ ll bring forth His fruit in His season . He will not wither . And everything that he does , he
prospers ”. And I looked at that word prosper because prosperity gets a lot of bad press , but that word prosper actually means advances . So , what I was trying to teach the church is you can be planted , you can be still and advancing . Not all stillness is passive when you ’ re planted next to something that ’ s moving , because God ’ s always moving . A lot of us think our productivity is based on our activity , when actually it ’ s more dependent upon our ability to be still beside the right source . So yeah , I mean we ’ re locked in step in step . I ’ m grateful for you .
[ WM ] Well , listen , gosh , thank you so much for this time and let ’ s impact the world .
[ Tauren ] Yes , sir . Thank you so much for the day . I really appreciate it . Great stuff .
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