SPEAKER_01: I want to start tonight by helping us continue to settle into God's precious presence, to experience God's care.
SPEAKER_01: There's never a moment where God isn't with us.
SPEAKER_01: And God knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us completely.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to read to you Psalm 139, and then I'm going to invite us to practice what's called a breath prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And the inhale, so every breath you have is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_01: And the idea is I want you just to slow down your breathing, receiving each breath as a gift to you.
SPEAKER_01: And on the inhale, you're going to just say, God, you know me completely.
SPEAKER_01: And on the exhale, you love me perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: And this is rooted in Psalm 139, 1 through 6.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read it to you.
SPEAKER_01: It says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
SPEAKER_01: You know me when I sit and when I rise.
SPEAKER_01: You perceive my thoughts from afar.
SPEAKER_01: You discern my going out and my lying down.
SPEAKER_01: You are familiar with all of my ways.
SPEAKER_01: Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, you know it completely.
SPEAKER_01: You hem me in behind and before.
SPEAKER_01: You lay your hand upon me.
SPEAKER_01: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
SPEAKER_01: So take a moment and just breathe in and breathe out, centering yourself on the God who is already present to you.
SPEAKER_01: On the inhale, God, you know me completely.
SPEAKER_01: On the exhale, you love me perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'll pray for us.
SPEAKER_01: I imagine every single person here tonight is walking in with something that they need to let go of in order to be fully present to you.
SPEAKER_01: And so we just release our cares and concerns, our anxieties into your hands.
SPEAKER_01: We ask that you would remove these distractions and open up space in our hearts and our minds and in our lives to be attentive and responsive to you.
SPEAKER_01: We're so grateful that you know us inside and out.
SPEAKER_01: You know us better than we know ourselves, including the dark stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, despite all of that, you move toward us with your perfect love, a transforming kind of love.
SPEAKER_01: And so we welcome your transformation in our lives tonight.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Tonight we step into a season, the season of Lent.
SPEAKER_01: Lent is this 40-day period of time leading up to Easter each year.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, that number 40 has some biblical significance.
SPEAKER_01: Noah was in the ark for 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the terms of the covenant for 40 days and 40 nights.
SPEAKER_01: The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: And after he rose from the dead, he appeared for 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: 40 days is a long enough period of time where if you really gave yourself to something, it could make a difference.
SPEAKER_01: The social sciences show that it takes at least 21 days to break or form a new habit.
SPEAKER_01: Depending on how difficult that habit is that you're trying to break or form, it could take much longer, but at least 21 days to experience change.
SPEAKER_01: And Lent is double that.
SPEAKER_01: Lent is a long enough time where if you fully gave yourself to the work God wants to do in your life in this season, it could bring about profound transformation and change.
SPEAKER_01: During Lent, we're invited to shift how we normally engage life on autopilot to come into a season with a little bit more intentionality and focus, a little deeper focus on the person of Jesus, inviting and attending to his transformation in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: The focus throughout Lent is repentance.
SPEAKER_01: It's repentance, which is a tricky word for many people.
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes it conjures up feelings of guilt and shame.
SPEAKER_01: But the word in the New Testament literally just means a change of mind.
SPEAKER_01: It's about going from what you think to what God thinks.
SPEAKER_01: It's about realigning your life with God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's marked by a deeper spiritual engagement, a deeper surrender to God's love.
SPEAKER_01: And tonight I want us to consider a truth that might, I don't know, feel a little bit accusatory at first, but just bear with me.
SPEAKER_01: I want us to consider the truth that we're all addicts.
SPEAKER_01: We're all addicted to things other than God.
SPEAKER_01: And before you get defensive, just try this on.
SPEAKER_01: I want to put this in context.
SPEAKER_01: All of us, every single one of us, were created with a God-shaped whole in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: God created us with an inborn desire for Him, to seek after God.
SPEAKER_01: This is part of God's loving design.
SPEAKER_01: God is love.
SPEAKER_01: As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God exists in eternal loving relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Out of the love that God is, God created us to experience His love, to participate in that love.
SPEAKER_01: We were created by love, in love, and for love.
SPEAKER_01: And at the center of that is a craving, a desire to be in relationship with this kind of God, a God who is perfectly loving.
SPEAKER_01: Augustine put it this way: he said, You have made us for yourselves, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a God-shaped hole in the center of your being.
SPEAKER_01: God put it there intentionally, and only God can fill it.
SPEAKER_01: And the way it's filled is by experiencing who God is.
SPEAKER_01: The God who loves you and cares for you and created you out of love to experience his love.
SPEAKER_01: You guys tracking so far?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
SPEAKER_01: So here's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is sin, sin distorts our desire.
SPEAKER_01: So instead of desiring God, we end up desiring other things.
SPEAKER_01: We end up trying to fill this God-shaped hole in the center of our beings with things other than God that of course can't fill us.
SPEAKER_01: They can't fill us, and yet we try to get them to fill us.
SPEAKER_01: So we end up displacing our desire for God, this inborn desire for God.
SPEAKER_01: We displace that desire, and we end up desiring other things, trying to get those things to fill us, and they don't, and we're left unsatisfied.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm submitting that all of us do this.
SPEAKER_01: I do this, you do this, and it doesn't matter how long you've been following Jesus, whether it's five days, five months, five years, fifty years, we all do this.
SPEAKER_01: We try to fill uh parts of our lives with other things that only God can truly fill.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a cool testimony.
SPEAKER_01: You guys all know this.
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember a time when I didn't follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And um and I've been like a professional Christian for quite some time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of big deal if you didn't know that.
SPEAKER_01: But like I still do this.
SPEAKER_01: I want my cake and eat it too.
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a town called Edina right outside Minneapolis, and the pejorative put down for people who live in Edina is cake eaters.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is because years and years ago, um this there was like the wealthy community just outside of Minneapolis, and at that time to eat cake was sort of like a luxury.
SPEAKER_01: So the pejorative put down for anybody in Minneapolis, you're a cake eater.
SPEAKER_01: And it's true, I'm a cake eater.
SPEAKER_01: Like I genuinely desire God.
SPEAKER_01: There's a part of me that genuinely desires God.
SPEAKER_01: And I even have rhythms and practices and things in place to seek God every day and every week.
SPEAKER_01: They're in place.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, I'm not 100% pure desire for God.
SPEAKER_01: I also have distorted desires that I act on, that I seek to try to fill me up.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not one or the other.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a blend.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a mixed bag.
SPEAKER_01: I do both.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we're all like this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm submitting tonight that all of us have addictions and attachments to things other than God to try to fill things that only God can fill.
SPEAKER_01: Gerald May put it this way: he said the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being.
SPEAKER_01: All people are addicts.
SPEAKER_01: Addictions to alcohol and other drugs are simply more obvious and tragic addictions than others.
SPEAKER_01: To be alive is to be addicted, and to be addicted is to stand in the need of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Uh what is an addiction?
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to define it for you.
SPEAKER_01: An addiction is any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of a human being.
SPEAKER_01: This is what an addiction is.
SPEAKER_01: It's a compulsive attachment.
SPEAKER_01: The word attachment, um, this is interesting, it comes from the old French word attaché, which literally means to nail something to, to be nailed to.
SPEAKER_01: And so this gives a word picture to go, and attachment is taking a desire and then nailing it to something else, nailing it to a person or to something with the hopes that it will fill you up.
SPEAKER_01: And what ends up happening is we become prisoners to our impulses, slaves to our desires.
SPEAKER_01: Which, by the way, is why our culture is so confused about freedom.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a culture where everyone prides, takes great pleasure in their freedom, that they're free to do whatever they want to do.
SPEAKER_01: As long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the you-do you culture.
SPEAKER_01: You can do whatever you want, and you're free to do it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you should do it, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And if it does involve anybody else, as long as it's consensual, it's good to go.
SPEAKER_01: The problem, you guys, is we're essentially baptizing people's desire, whatever they desire as a good thing, and giving them freedom to go chase after it.
SPEAKER_01: And it ends up not contributing to their freedom at all, but actually they become enslaved to their desires.
SPEAKER_01: In the Bible, freedom is not permission to do whatever it is you want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Freedom in the Bible has to do with being free to genuinely desire the right things, namely loving God and loving others.
SPEAKER_01: That's what scripture means when it talks about freedom.
SPEAKER_01: So here's how addiction works.
SPEAKER_01: I want to throw up this diagram because I think all of us have experiences.
SPEAKER_01: It starts at the top with some sort of stimulus, something that grabs our attention and promises to fill us or satisfy us in some way.
SPEAKER_01: Netflix, social media, ice cream, right?
SPEAKER_01: Something that says, I can fill you.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens is you respond to it.
SPEAKER_01: You say, Hmm, that sounds good.
SPEAKER_01: I think I'll have some.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
SPEAKER_01: It feels good.
SPEAKER_01: It gives you pleasure.
SPEAKER_01: There's a little dopamine hit that you get in response.
SPEAKER_01: And over time, what happens is you end up desiring more of that thing.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: That's why I can't have ice cream in the freezer because I'll want more of it.
SPEAKER_01: It's right there.
SPEAKER_01: It tastes so good.
SPEAKER_01: And over time, the more you work yourself around this circle, the more it becomes habitual, the more you become enslaved.
SPEAKER_01: What's also interesting is that the more uh you act on this, the more you actually need.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: This is why when you get to the end of that first episode, you end up watching a second and a third episode, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because that little dopamine, what it the hit it gave you the day before, now it's not giving you the same amount of pleasure, you need more of it.
SPEAKER_01: And so you keep going on, and the dependency increases and your freedom is diminished.
SPEAKER_01: Gerald May, in his book Addiction and Grace, which I'm going to be mentioning several times tonight, he distinguishes between two different types or categories of addiction.
SPEAKER_01: Um, you could think of this as uh the coin of addiction has two different sides to it.
SPEAKER_01: And one side, he says, are uh um attraction addictions.
SPEAKER_01: An attraction addiction is a compulsive attachment to something we believe will give us pleasure, relief, meaning, or control, and we move toward it because it promises life.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I've been describing.
SPEAKER_01: This thing says, hey, I can feel you.
SPEAKER_01: It activates desire in you.
SPEAKER_01: You go, I want that, so you reach out and grab it, thinking it will make you okay, thinking it will give you pleasure, and over time it narrows, it restricts your freedom as you become increasingly dependent on it.
SPEAKER_01: The other type of addiction is what he calls an aversion addiction, and this is a compulsive attachment to avoid something we fear, hate, or cannot tolerate.
SPEAKER_01: Something we move away from in order to feel safe.
SPEAKER_01: So, this one, rather than being driven by desire to want something, it's driven by fear to avoid something.
SPEAKER_01: It says, I can't let myself feel this.
SPEAKER_01: And similarly, over time, it restricts our freedom, it narrows our freedom, and creates dependency.
SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, um, I'm terrified of heights.
SPEAKER_01: I do not like being high up, and I'm growing, I'm getting better at this.
SPEAKER_01: But there have been many times where Josie and I are at like a national park, and she'll walk right up to the edge.
SPEAKER_01: And then she'll go, Oh my goodness, Mac, you have to see this.
SPEAKER_01: It's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: And early on, I'm getting better at walking right up to the edge and going, okay, that is beautiful, and walking back.
SPEAKER_01: But uh early on, I wouldn't risk that.
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't risk that.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: My my fear of heights uh ke held me back.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the freedom to go up to the edge, and because of that, it limited my experience.
SPEAKER_01: I read Gerald May's book, Addiction and Grace, this past fall.
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of a seminal work.
SPEAKER_01: I had heard about it for years and finally sat down and read it, and I found it so enlightening and convicting.
SPEAKER_01: So convicting.
SPEAKER_01: Um, as I read through this book over the period of several weeks, I had to confront and reckon with all the attachments that I had going on in my life.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't fun, but it was freeing.
SPEAKER_01: Here are some of the things that I notice that I'm attached to, that my desire is attached to in a way that doesn't produce freedom, but rather dependency.
SPEAKER_01: You ready for this confession?
unknown: Ready.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, coffee.
SPEAKER_01: I rely on coffee to get me going pretty much every morning.
SPEAKER_01: I gave up coffee during Lent last year, you guys.
SPEAKER_01: It was the worst decision I've ever made in my life.
SPEAKER_01: I had a headache for like a the first half, like a half a week.
SPEAKER_01: I ended up having dreams about coffee throughout Lent.
SPEAKER_01: I've just started dreaming about coffee.
SPEAKER_01: On Easter morning, I had my first cup and I came in so excited.
SPEAKER_01: I was giving people hugs and high fives, and I thought it was because I was excited about Easter, and Cameron was like, You've had coffee.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm over reliant on caffeine.
SPEAKER_01: Uh sugar.
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I eat pretty pretty healthy.
SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, uh, we have a tasty treat like every Friday night, and my helping keeps getting bigger and bigger.
SPEAKER_01: Like I crave the treat on Friday night.
SPEAKER_01: Um, exercise.
SPEAKER_01: I'm uh working out's good.
SPEAKER_01: Um, some of you should do it more, quite frankly, but um, I can get addicted to it.
SPEAKER_01: I can rely on it for like stability and anxiety release.
SPEAKER_01: I can get cranky if I go days without working out.
SPEAKER_01: Same thing with reading.
SPEAKER_01: I love to read.
SPEAKER_01: But if I go a few days without reading, you guys, I start to get twitchy, um, kind of cranky and irritable.
SPEAKER_01: Like you don't want to be around me.
SPEAKER_01: Um, technology.
SPEAKER_01: I spend when I'm bored or have a down moment, I'll often reach for my phone and immediately start scrolling and clicking and liking.
SPEAKER_01: And performance.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to be a good pastor to you all.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a good shepherd, and yet part of that is that I'm addicted to achieving and accomplishing and doing well.
SPEAKER_01: There's lots of things.
SPEAKER_01: And the the thing that's tricky is none of these are bad in and of themselves.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay to have a cup of coffee, it's okay to enjoy a good TV show or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01: They're not bad in and of themselves.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is the weight we begin to put on them.
SPEAKER_01: The reliance that starts to build around these things such that it well, it enslaves us.
SPEAKER_01: We become dependent on them in places where God should ultimately be, where we should be depending on God.
SPEAKER_01: Part of Lent is reckoning with our attachments.
SPEAKER_01: Um I've kind of playfully punched you in the nose tonight and basically said you're an addict too.
SPEAKER_01: Um, we're all in this together.
SPEAKER_01: And Lent is a time to reckon with the fact that we develop these attachments that restrict our freedom and reduce our dependency on Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: When we do this work, though, uh oftentimes what happens is we resist it because we've been so accustomed to looking at the dark parts in our lives, the parts that aren't right, with guilt and shame.
SPEAKER_01: And so we really don't like to do this because it's uncomfortable and we immediately feel bad about ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm just gonna name this for you.
SPEAKER_01: That is not how transformation works.
SPEAKER_01: Transformation works as we attend to God's loving presence in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 2.4 says that it's the kindness of the Lord that leads to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: It's the kindness of the Lord that brings about a change in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Not God's judgment, not his wrath, not his punishment.
SPEAKER_01: It's his loving kindness.
SPEAKER_01: And so I started tonight by saying God knows you completely.
SPEAKER_01: God knows everything about you better than you know yourself, and he knows every single one of your attachments.
SPEAKER_01: He knows all about your disordered desires, and he loves you perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: He's not looking to rub your nose in it or shout at you or make you feel awful.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to meet you with grace and invite you into freedom.
SPEAKER_01: And so we want to um head into a time of reflection.
SPEAKER_01: You have some work to do tonight.
SPEAKER_01: This is a space where you get to meet with God and attend to what God wants to do in your life.
SPEAKER_01: In just a moment, on our screens, there's going to be uh a slide with a list from Gerald May of attraction addictions and aversion addictions.
SPEAKER_01: You might have to put on your glasses, I apologize.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the truth is we can clearly get addicted to a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01: So you can use this list to do an audit, take some inventory, but I'd encourage you to use this space to begin to reflect on your life.
SPEAKER_01: Where am I attached to things other than God?
SPEAKER_01: Where is my freedom being restricted?
SPEAKER_01: And where might God be wanting to set me free?
SPEAKER_01: So let's take a few minutes to reflect together.
SPEAKER_00: Is that we don't know how to belong to God.
SPEAKER_00: We might know it intellectually in our heads, but like Max said, in our lives, we have all these things.
SPEAKER_00: That feel like freedom, but ultimately draw us further and further away from him, that drive a wedge between our connection with God and ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And so we live like orphans, like we're all on our own.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we come to uh receive the ashes tonight, uh ashes in the Old Testament were used to symbolize uh the desire for repentance, for having a repentant heart.
SPEAKER_00: So they were an outward symbol of something happening on the inside, right?
SPEAKER_00: Similar to if you laugh or if you cry, it's it's showing an emotion that's happening inside of our heart and in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: Um the ashes show the world that this is where I'm at right now.
SPEAKER_00: This is what my heart is feeling is that I need repentance.
SPEAKER_00: I need something different, I need to change, I need to go into God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's something vulnerable to do, to say that we need that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Especially in a world that likes to put our best foot forward and kind of show the world the best versions of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: So to admit our weakness and our failure and our struggle can feel vulnerable, but it's also incredibly freeing to bring that out into the light and say, yes, I am an addict too.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do struggle.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I need grace.
SPEAKER_00: And so ashes were a way of showing that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the examples, especially for you kids that are here, maybe you would remember uh from a few weeks ago, we talked about Jonah down in the kids area and the the king of Nineveh, when he was confronted with the sinfulness of him and his people, he put on sackcloth and ashes as a way of repenting and crying out to God and saying, okay, we need to make a change.
SPEAKER_00: We need to call on God and hope for redemption, hope for grace, even though we don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we wear ashes tonight, we echo that same prayer and that cry of God, I need your grace in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I need your forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do this on my own.
SPEAKER_00: So before we do the ashes, I want to take a couple minutes to lead us in a prayer of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so feel free, I'm gonna read it.
SPEAKER_00: So feel free to close your eyes, leave your eyes open, kneel, do whatever, put your hands out, whatever you need to do to kind of settle yourself into praying for repentance tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed.
SPEAKER_00: So take a moment to confess with a radical honesty what you need to confess to God tonight.
SPEAKER_00: We've sinned by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
SPEAKER_00: We've not loved you with our whole heart.
SPEAKER_00: We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
SPEAKER_00: For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us.
SPEAKER_00: That we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so if uh everyone who's doing the ashes could go ahead and come forward.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when you're ready, uh, you know, feel free to sit for a little bit longer if you feel like you need to.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but come up to the front.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you can line up and then um receive the ashes on your forehead.
SPEAKER_01: That's good news.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't walk out on us.
SPEAKER_01: You know, no matter how bad it is, he's not gonna leave us.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't give up on us.
SPEAKER_01: Breaking free from our addictions is no small task.
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy, and it's actually not something we can do on our own.
SPEAKER_01: We are incapable of freeing ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: As I was uh thinking about this, I got the picture of a uh like a rabbit in a snare.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Uh my wife Josie and I are watching the the T the latest uh series of Alone, you know, where they drop you off in the middle of nowhere and then they have to survive whoever lasts the longest.
SPEAKER_01: Well, they often trap animals, and it just reminded me like when a bunny puts their head in the snare, their instinct is to fight to try to free themselves, but the more they fight, the tighter it gets until it chokes them out.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what it's like when we try to free ourselves on our own apart from God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: When we fight against it, it actually further ensnares us and it eventually chokes us out.
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes we trade one addiction for another in our attempts to free ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Uh my wife Josie and I, we have done CrossFit for almost a decade now.
SPEAKER_01: Um rather intense form of exercise.
SPEAKER_01: It's for intense people.
SPEAKER_01: Um of the things that we've noticed, having been part of a few different gyms, connected to a few different gyms at this point, is that CrossFit tends to attract a lot of uh former addicts, of people who at one point struggled with alcohol abuse or some other form of substance abuse.
SPEAKER_01: There's a number of people we know in the gym who at some point struggled with addiction.
SPEAKER_01: And when you observe them, it becomes clear well, they're still addicts.
SPEAKER_01: You just traded one addiction for a different one.
SPEAKER_01: You're now addicted to CrossFit.
SPEAKER_01: And it's great because, man, fitness is a much better addiction to have than alcohol.
SPEAKER_01: But as part of your recovery, you just traded one for another.
SPEAKER_01: I have a cousin who was a drug addict, and he um near overdosed and died.
SPEAKER_01: He actually lost mobility for two weeks.
SPEAKER_01: He couldn't walk.
SPEAKER_01: And that was his rock bottom moment, and he said, if I keep doing this up, I'm gonna kill myself, I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_01: And he decided it's time to turn my life around, and he took up ultra-marathon running.
SPEAKER_01: So now he runs like over a hundred miles at one time.
SPEAKER_01: He's done it in Europe.
SPEAKER_01: He, I mean, it's quite impressive, but it's an addiction, right?
SPEAKER_01: When we try to free ourselves, we get more ensnared.
SPEAKER_01: And even when we can sort of free ourselves, we end up trading one attachment for another.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the key to addiction is actually to surrender to grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's not to fight harder against it or to trade one thing for another.
SPEAKER_01: It's actually not to fill it up with anything else at all, it's to simply create space.
SPEAKER_01: Now we normally try to fill with this thing, we create space to attend to God and to allow God's grace to fill things.
SPEAKER_01: The key is not to fill the space, but instead to simply be open.
SPEAKER_01: We don't rush to fix something or to fill anything.
SPEAKER_01: We just get present to the God who's already present to us, and we open up our hands and our hearts to receive what he wants to give us.
SPEAKER_01: Grace can't be earned.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: You can't earn it, all you can do is receive it.
SPEAKER_01: You can't extract grace from God through manipulation or making promises.
SPEAKER_01: All you can do is sit before God humbly and receive it.
SPEAKER_01: And see, this is what happens, you guys, is addiction and attachments block our receptivity to God.
SPEAKER_01: They narrow our freedom, reduce our dependency, and they block our receptivity to God.
SPEAKER_01: But when you simply open yourself up to God's grace, what happens is that connection and receptivity is restored, and now the strength of that attachment gradually gets reduced.
SPEAKER_01: This is why grace, you guys, is the catalyst for all spiritual formation.
SPEAKER_01: It's simply about opening ourselves up to the God who's present, at work in our lives for good, and we grow to the degree that we surrender.
SPEAKER_01: Our surrender rate is directly proportional to our transformation rate.
SPEAKER_01: So, how is God inviting you to attend to his grace during this Lenten season over the next 40 days?
SPEAKER_01: That's the question I want you to answer before you leave tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Where is God's grace at work in your life?
SPEAKER_01: And what would it look like to attend to that grace, to open yourself up to it and to surrender to it completely?
SPEAKER_01: Traditionally, um, spiritual practices are important for this.
SPEAKER_01: And in Lent, um, these spiritual practices tend to go in one or a combination of three directions.
SPEAKER_01: So this is me casting some vision for you about what it might look like to attend to God's grace in a deeper way over the next 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: The first direction of practices is to engage up through prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so one way to begin breaking free from our attachments and addictions is by simply creating space, more space for prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer is about connecting with God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the purpose of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: It's not to fix yourself, it's not to get something from God.
SPEAKER_01: The primary purpose of prayer is to connect with God, to be with God, to be in relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: Prayer then becomes the space where you can name without guilt or shame your attachments, your compulsions, the things you're addicted to, and trust that the God who is for you cares about your freedom.
SPEAKER_01: What would it look like for you to create more space to be with and to connect with God over the next 40 days?
SPEAKER_01: I've noticed in pastoring people for a long time now that there's usually three spots, three different times during the day that people tend to have available to connect with God through prayer.
SPEAKER_01: The first is right when you wake up in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe over the next 40 days, you simply wake up a little bit earlier than you normally would, or maybe the first thing you do, you stop doing that, and you just start by centering yourselves on God, connecting with God, and begin naming the things as you head into this day that already feel like they have a grip on you.
SPEAKER_01: A second space you might consider increasing your prayer is during your lunch break, or at least part of your lunch break.
SPEAKER_01: For me, it's sometime between 11 and 2.
SPEAKER_01: I just try to pause and breathe, center myself on Jesus, and then begin to name and surrender some of the attachments that I'm noticing already in my day.
SPEAKER_01: And then the final space you might want to consider is at the end of your day.
SPEAKER_01: This is the hardest one for me because I'm often tired and I feel used up, and I just want to go watch TV.
SPEAKER_01: But instead, maybe for 40 days, instead of turning on Netflix, you could pause and you could review your day in God's presence, asking God to show you where His grace was at work, and humbly surrendering and repenting of any compulsions or cravings or distractions that seem to have pulled you off track.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first way you can go deeper in Lent is to engage up through prayer.
SPEAKER_01: The second is to engage in through fasting.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting during Lent is a spiritual tool to help expose and loosen our attachments so that we can more fully attend to the work Jesus is doing in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: I mentioned that I gave up uh coffee last year.
SPEAKER_01: That was miserable.
SPEAKER_01: Um, absolutely horrendous.
SPEAKER_01: This year I'm giving up social media because I've noticed that I'm reaching for my phone too often.
SPEAKER_01: I'm spending too much time scrolling.
SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, it's making me anxious.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of stuff happening in the world right now, and I feel like my body is just full of cortisol.
SPEAKER_01: So I sense God saying, just detach.
SPEAKER_01: The world will still be there in, you know, 40 days or so.
SPEAKER_01: So you can just let go of that, and instead of filling that space with mindless scrolling, you can attend to me instead.
SPEAKER_01: Fasting isn't about deprivation, it's about awareness.
SPEAKER_01: It's about noticing the things that act on you, your impulses and cravings, and bringing those things into God's presence, saying, I really want to be connected with you more than anything else.
SPEAKER_01: What might God be inviting you to give up during this season of Lent?
SPEAKER_01: This is where that list that we had on the slides of all those attraction addictions become really important.
SPEAKER_01: You could take one or a few of those and give those up over the next 40 days and see what kind of change it produces for you.
SPEAKER_01: What do you notice?
SPEAKER_01: What is God growing in you?
SPEAKER_01: You can engage up through prayer, you can engage in through fasting, and then the final one is you can engage out through serving.
SPEAKER_01: As we begin to surrender our attachments to God's grace, grace then naturally begins to flow outward.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I've noticed about being attached to things is it makes me selfish.
SPEAKER_01: When I'm attached to things, when I'm um sort of addicted to things, my focus is on meeting that addiction.
SPEAKER_01: It's focused on me getting what I want or think that I need.
SPEAKER_01: When we learn to surrender those things, when we learn instead to depend upon God's grace, what happens is that I'm actually freed and then transformed, and that grace then extends outward.
SPEAKER_01: I'm less self-focused and more other-centered.
SPEAKER_01: One of the ways you might prioritize transformation and attending to God's grace during this Advent season is just to make sure grace is flowing outward to other people.
SPEAKER_01: And you go, okay, well, how can I do that?
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: We have so many needs here at this church.
SPEAKER_01: Sarah poured her heart out from the stage this past weekend with perhaps the longest host moment we've ever had, begging for help in the kids area.
SPEAKER_01: You could serve in kids over the next 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: You could invest in the next generation.
SPEAKER_01: We've got a table out in the foyer with all sorts of different serve teams you could be involved in, whether it's helping in our sound booth over the next 40 days, or our safety team, or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01: These are important ways to go.
SPEAKER_01: The world doesn't revolve around me, and I'm not just focused on myself and what I need or what I think matters.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna step into the things God wants me to give myself to.
SPEAKER_01: The further you go into the way of Jesus, the more generous you'll become.
SPEAKER_01: Generous with your time, generous with your energy, generous with your resources.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna uh close our last kind of reflection moment.
SPEAKER_01: I want to give you some space to develop an action plan for the next 40 days if you don't already have one.
SPEAKER_01: The key question is where is God inviting you to intentionally lean in spiritually during Lent?
SPEAKER_01: Is it up through prayer, in through fasting, or out by giving yourself away?
SPEAKER_01: Let's take a few minutes to reflect.
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm gonna share a couple things that just happened for me during that song.
SPEAKER_01: Um one, my heart uh welled up with love for you all.
SPEAKER_01: I just want you to know that I love you guys, and what a privilege to be able to lean in together as a community and follow Jesus together, to go deeper.
SPEAKER_01: You're not by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not alone in this.
SPEAKER_01: We get to journey together toward Christ.
SPEAKER_01: What a gift.
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I felt the Holy Spirit saying is there's somebody here, there's people here who need prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's healing prayer physically, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But I just sense that we need to create some space for prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you're part of our leadership team and you have the space to come forward, I don't know what the volume will be, but if you need prayer for any reason, if I'm talking about you, please come forward after the service.
SPEAKER_01: This is a space where we want to join God's work in your life and pray over you.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, we love you.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for your incredible patience in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: That you don't give up on us, you don't walk out on us.
SPEAKER_01: Even when we're confused and choosing the wrong things, you fight on our behalf and you chase us down with your grace to free us, to restore us, to redeem us, and make us whole.
SPEAKER_01: We commit this season of Lent to you.
SPEAKER_01: We can't change ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We can't even open ourselves to your grace on our own.
SPEAKER_01: And so we ask for your help.
SPEAKER_01: Would you open us up to your grace over the next 40 days that we might be able to attend to, surrender to, and submit to your transforming love at work in each and every one of us.
SPEAKER_01: And may together we become a community that reflects your light and your love to a watching world.
SPEAKER_01: For we ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Go in peace.