I'm delighted to contribute to this new feature called "Forward!"—a short editorial designed to help us think in a, well, "forward" direction.

The first thing I want to say is... we need to stop!

The '60s musical Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! captures my fancy, but that's wishful thinking—"this world ain't stopping for nobody." If anything, the heat's increasing to suck us into the "cares of this life" whirlpool.

We'll move forward, though, if we stop.

What do I mean? Consider one of the cares of this life unique in history: the overwhelming nature of the "Information Age," driven by the science and communications revolution. I read recently that 1,000 new books are published in the United States every week—300 per day in Britain!

Thomas Kuk, in an essay titled "Coping With Technology," observed, "Our society is so permeated with technological advancements that it is virtually impossible not to be influenced by one form or other."

Kuk quotes a study of 1,300 junior and senior managers throughout the United States, England, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. "Seventy-three percent indicated they needed enormous amounts of information to be successful in their job. At the same time, 33 percent reported ill-health as a result of information overload, 66 percent reported increased tension with work colleagues and diminished job satisfaction caused by information overload. Sixty-two percent admitted their personal and social relationships have suffered as well."

Can spiritual relationships likewise suffer?

"In our rush to stay connected, we make the assumption that technology is our solution to managing our life and lifestyles. We make the assumption that technology always saves time... assessing technology has created an inability to accurately appraise time. People often underestimate the amount of time something takes to complete because they overestimate their own abilities or those of their tools or devices they use. We have become victims of multi-tasking madness—the ability to juggle multiple thoughts, tasks and jobs."

They even have a term for the problem: "techno stress." "Our challenge," says Kuk, "is to understand how this relationship between time and technology impacts us and develop a strategy to cope with it."

I see and feel the knowledge and time overload threatening to spiritually swamp many of us in the Church today. The threat is real, and the solution is simple.

Stop!

Stop, daily, and return to the simple spiritual roots of prayer and Bible study, coupled with regular fasting. Stop the world's intrusion by making our prayer, Bible study and fasting more frequent, more fervent and more relevant.

Two last-day scriptures are very real: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase" (Daniel 12:4), and a seemingly contradictory one, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). In a day when we are swamped by knowledge overload, verse 1 explains the root problem: "There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land"—after all, who in the world has time for it?

We do, if we make time to walk and talk with God, and listen to Him through studying His Word.

We have to stop to move forward. UN