Living Slow in a Fast-Paced World
Spiritual Formation in the Age of Nanoseconds
Sometimes I feel as if I am traveling on one of the bullet trains in Europe or Asia as I go through life. The fastest commercial train is the Shanghai Maglev in Shanghai, China. It reaches a speed of 286 mph as it travels from Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport to the city outskirts. I know that my life is not moving that fast, but it seems as if things in the world are changing so quickly that I can’t keep up. Up until 1900, human knowledge doubled roughly every 100 years. By 1945, it was doubling every 25 years. Today, on average, it doubles every 12 to 13 months.[1] Does that make you a little dizzy? It does me!
Well, I’ve got good news! The Earth is still rotating at 1037 mph and completes its rotation in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. Just like it has since God created it. Our society runs on nanosecond time, but we still take a breath every 15 to 20 seconds and our hearts still beat only 60 to 100 times every minute.
The problem is that we are carried in the wake of our fast-paced world and begin to expect our souls to keep up.
The Deceit of a Nanosecond Soul
Here’s the quiet lie of our fast-paced world: If everything else can be instant, why can’t my spiritual growth be that way? Why can’t my spiritual growth be instantaneous? Why can’t I be over this grief already? Why haven’t I mastered patience yet?
Our souls were never designed to change at nanosecond speed. And when spiritual growth doesn’t arrive quickly, we assume something is broken — usually us.
But nothing about the Christian life has ever been portrayed as being instant. We have just been “googlized” and “AI’d” with the false assumption that everything should be as fast as typing a prompt, hitting enter, and getting an instantaneous answer.
Spiritual Formation Is Never Fast
The Apostle Paul describes spiritual growth with a phrase that goes against our instant-results culture:
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV)
Being transformed. Present tense with continual action.
This is what the historic Church has called spiritual formation: not information downloaded in an instant, but your inner spirit shaped over years by repeated exposure to God’s Word, time with him in prayer, and worship.
Dallas Willard put it plainly: …transformation of the inner life is not “hurried,” and any teaching that promises otherwise misunderstands both grace and the human soul.[^2]
Grace is fast. It saves in an instant. But grace is also slow - the slow re-forming of a life into Christlikeness.
Becoming more like Jesus requires that we spend time with him.
Think of his original disciples. They were with him twenty-four/seven.
Practicing Slowness in a Nanosecond World
How do we slow down to allow Christ to form you in his image?
Practice mini-sabbaths throughout the day. Slowing down for even five unhurried minutes several times each day - to pray, worship, and focus on God acts like compound interest in your spiritual formation.
Measure your spiritual growth in seasons, not days. Ask who you were a year ago, not who you were this morning. We all have bad days!
Let waiting do its work. When answers don’t come instantly, resist the urge to manufacture speed. Waiting is often the very mechanism God uses to shape us.
Use proven spiritual disciplines. Reading God’s word, prayer, silence, solitude, fasting, and lectio divina are ancient “technologies for a soul” that move us into the slow lane of spiritual formation.
A Slow Hope
The world will keep accelerating. Computer chips will get faster. WIFI will get quicker. Data and knowledge will keep doubling. But your hope was never meant to keep pace with any of that.
Your hope is anchored in a sovereign God who has always worked above and beyond time. He is patient, faithful, and utterly unhurried by our standards.
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you…” (2 Peter 3:9 NIV)
Slow is not the absence of God’s work in shaping your life. Slow is His work — quietly shaping and forming you one ordinary day at a time. The challenge is to walk at his pace and not to run ahead of him.
[1]: https://source.cognia.org/issue-article/defining-learner-success-digital-age/
[2]: Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002).