Opening Up to Grace

Chapters

• 0:00 Ice Cream Job And A New Testament Metaphor
• 1:51 Taking Off The Old Self, Putting On The New
• 4:54 Walking In The Light And Confession
• 8:21 Beyond Guilt Or Shrugging: A Third Way
• 9:30 Practicing Resurrection: Effort And Grace
• 11:09 Souls As Plants: God Makes Growth
• 12:28 Facing Sin For Healing, Not Shame
• 14:07 Five Common Mistakes In Discipleship
• 18:41 Root Sins Versus Isolated Incidents
• 20:41 Spiritual Laziness And Idolizing Comfort
• 23:05 Culture, Distractions, And Busyness
• 26:41 Junk Food For The Soul And The Cycle
• 29:16 Replacing Lies With Truth
• 31:12 Start Small, Be Consistent, Try Practices
• 34:01 Celebrate God’s Presence, Not Checklists
• 36:05 Action Steps, Lent, And Community Invites
• 39:35 Closing Prayer And Sending

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Good morning. My name is Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Cross Point. It's good to be here with you guys. I've shared this before, but I'll share it again because it's been a while. My first job when I was in high school was I worked at Coldstone Creamery, the ice cream place, if you've ever been to Cold Stone. It was great. Like a bunch of my friends worked there. Free ice cream. The first three months I gained 15 pounds. It was amazing. Just all the ice cream I could eat, basically, because our manager was completely out of the loop and didn't know what was going on. One of the things I did not expect though is how much I hated getting off work and smelling like ice cream and waffle cones. Okay. Because at first I was like, ooh, this is kind of nice. Like I smell really good. But eventually you get sick of it. And this is true with any job. I know some of you are like, okay, quit your complaining. You don't know what I have to deal with. Many jobs have it worse. You maybe have experienced this if you uh do yard work right outside, especially in the Wisconsin, humid, like covered in sweat and like, you know, grass clippings and all that. Um, or after working out, one of the best feelings is taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes. Right? You just like feel like yourself again, feel like a new person. And this is actually an image used in the New Testament letters, okay? Um, I don't think Paul, the writer of many of the letters, ever worked at Coldstone or did Mode's own lawn. But he talks about this idea, and I think it's a really vivid image for what life with God is supposed to be like. So this is from Colossians 3. He just got done reading a whole, like kind of listing off a whole bunch of sins, a whole bunch of stuff, and he kind of ends with one more and says, Do not lie to each other. But here's kind of where I want to focus is this like kind of bigger picture image that he's drawing on. Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. So don't do all the sin, don't like keep living in your old ways, because you've taken off your old self and now put on a new self, which is being renewed in the image of its creator. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. So there's kind of this big idea, and we see it in other letters too, where it's like, hey, don't do these things, don't keep living in sin, because you've taken that off, and you've you're actually like a new creation now. You've put on a new self, you're putting on new clothing, uh, you're growing new fruit that looks different than the old fruit. And so, you know, we obviously try to do this, we talk about this a lot at church, but one of the things that happens is we don't ever bother taking off the old self when we're trying to add on to the new self and do new self kind of stuff. And we keep sinning and living the life we were we were living before, while we're also trying to live this more like spiritual life with Jesus. Or maybe you want to stop sinning, but you feel really stuck. Like you've tried over and over and over and over and over again, you can't seem to stop. Or we've tried, we just can't get you just can't take off the old self, no matter how hard we try. Or maybe like you have for a while, and then new things pop up as you move through life. New temptations, new things with a new season of life. And what happens is if we don't tend to the sin growing in our life, it ends up being like mowing the lawn and then just putting some fresh clothes over the top, right? And like you look good on the outside, maybe you do all the right things, but you kind of stink a little bit, right? And you're a little sweaty and you just don't feel right. Like, okay, I'm trying, but this doesn't quite feel like the way it's supposed to, right? You need to deal with it. You need to take a shower, put on some fresh clothing. Now, Mac talked about last week that we don't like talking about sin, right? Or dealing with our sin or focusing or facing our sin because it's uncomfortable. Uh, we don't like that feeling of like failing, like we've screwed up in some way, we've messed up. And I think there are a couple ways, as I was thinking about this and reflecting on what Mac talked about too, that we respond to sin, probably based on your personality, your religious background, uh maybe different parts of our culture that you've adopted. It's just like, you know, in our culture, we just kind of learn things and pick up on ways we deal with stuff. And so on the one extreme, you might hear, like, hey, we're talking about sin, like, why do we have to talk about sin? Doesn't God love me just the way I am? Right? Doesn't God like forgive me? So, like, what's the big deal? Why do we want to focus on this? You know, maybe in our culture you've heard the phrase, you do you, right? As long as you're not hurting anyone, does it really matter? And so we can take this and apply it to God and be like, does God really care that much? Isn't sin something for like the 1950s or the Puritans or a different age? Like, aren't we, haven't we moved beyond that in our more like modern progressive world? Uh, here's what uh the Bible says, though, in 1 John 1. First John's one of my favorite books, and I feel like I just keep coming back to it because there's so much good stuff here. So this is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light. In him, in God, there's no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son purifies us from all sin, cleanses us. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him, we make God out to be a liar, and his word is not in us. See, God does love us just the way we are, but he also cares deeply about our sin and the things we do in our life. How we're walking, whether we're in the light or the darkness. Because how we walk affects whether our relationship with God, how that's going, it affects our relationship with other people, how we're able to love others. So God does care, but another extreme is to kind of go all the way to the other side of the pendulum and be like, okay, God is like judging me, right? If you grew up in a religious background, I'm not Catholic, but I hear people use the word Catholic guilt a lot, right? Like God is just up there judging me, wagging his finger at me, telling me all the ways I screwed up, you better, you better shape up if you want to follow me, right? And now, one of the things Mac talked about last week, is there's kind of like a third way between those, right? Actually, when we looked at sin and guilt and conviction in the Psalms, uh, we see that what we what we're supposed to do is come to God honestly in our prayer when we've been convicted, because the more honest we are about the sin in our life, um, the more honest we are about sin, the more deeply we actually experience God's love. Right? Because you're really only we only feel love to the extent that we're known. And if we have stuff we're hiding, there's always like this feeling of like, oh, but if you really knew the real me, right? And so when we bring that all up to God, honestly in prayer, we experience the full depth of his love. We when we come to him honestly with prayer that's rooted deeply in his love for us, despite our faults and failures, but also secure enough in God's love to actually hear the conviction and the challenge that he brings. We then get to receive God's grace in our lives. Acknowledging sin doesn't have to threaten our relationship with God, it actually deepens it. See, sin is not going to drive you apart from God, and by acknowledging it, when we do that with God, it deepens our connection to him. This is where in 1 John 1 9 it says this verse we just read. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us or cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, this is only step one, right? Because we we bring our sin to God, we confess it, um, but then post-confession, there's like, I think, another couple ways we can go wrong here. One is we move on quickly, be like, whoo, did that, check that box, don't want to really have to think about that anymore and kind of move on and hope that God will fix us and deal with whatever happened in our life, or we'll come to him again if we screw up again. Right? The other uh kind of extreme is again on the other side to vow, I'm gonna do harder, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna do this, and we like white knuckle our way through, like trying really hard to fix ourselves. Again, what we're gonna be talking about today and over the next several weeks in our series is that there's a third way to go about facing our sin. Uh kind of holding the truth of both of these things. One, we don't have to beat ourselves up, and we cannot fix ourselves, and we need God's spirit to do that. And we have some responsibility in how we tend to our discipleship and our spiritual formation, right? Both of these things are true. This journey of living a more godly life will require effort if you're going to actually lean in. And so we're starting a series called Practicing Resurrection, where we talk about how we actually do this. It's like great as an idea, but how does this actually work itself out in life? How do we live a godly, resurrected life here and now? Not just waiting for heaven when God's gonna make it all better, but how do we take hold of that life that was promised us here and now? How do we put the appropriate effort and intentionality in our spiritual life? Dealing with our sin, taking off our old self and putting on the new self found in Christ, while recognizing we can't be the ones to fix ourselves, and it ultimately has to be God's spirit. It's like a tightrope almost that you have to walk. Like both these things are true. To use another image or metaphor, I think one of the ones the Bible uses that was helpful for me as I'm thinking about this is of a plant, right? Thinking of your soul as a plant. So in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul is talking about the spiritual life and the work he's done with this church in Corinth. And he's like, you know, some of the people are like, I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow this person. And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 3 6 says, I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. So you cannot make yourself grow spiritually just out of sheer force of will, like white knuckling your way into spiritual growth. And yet, if you think of your soul as a plant, there are things you can do to open it up to growth. Right? Ways you can tend to the soil, ways you can deal with the water. I usually kill plants, but you know, you know the gist, right? Open it up to sunlight or shade or whatever it needs in order for it to flourish and grow. Um, and this is where you see in Psalm 1, one of the famous Psalms, that kind of contrasts two people: one person who's godly, rooted in truth and godliness, one person who is wicked. The wicked person is like the chaff who just blows away, but the godly person is deeply rooted in the good soil because they followed the way of God. And so, in the series leading up to Easter, where we celebrate the risen Jesus who conquered death so that we don't have to deal with sin, we might can be free from sin in our life, we're gonna look at how do we face sin head on? Not beating ourselves up in guilt and shame, not working really hard to beat to fix ourselves, but in a way that opens us up to God's transforming work and grace and power in our life through the Holy Spirit.

unknown: 12:11

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 12:12

Thinking of the Colossians image. What are the things we need to take off in order to put on the new self? How do we do that? How do we tend to our growth in a way that opens us up to God's grace more and more? Um, another image that's used throughout church history, and Jesus used about himself, is to think of sin as like a sickness, like a disease, and that Jesus and the Holy Spirit and God's work in our life is like a doctor. Okay? So, like if you go to the doctor, if you have a problem, if everything goes well, they will kind of observe you, they'll diagnose you with something, they'll treat you and hopefully make it better, right? And then there's like prevention to make sure it doesn't happen again or doesn't come back. Um, one of the early church writers, one of the earliest ones after the New Testament, Ignatius of Antioch, he's actually one of John's disciples, he talked about Jesus like this as a physician. We have also as a physician, the Lord our God, Jesus the Christ, the only begotten Son and Word, being life, he became subject to corruption that he might free our souls from death and corruption, and heal them, and might restore them to health when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lusts. So for him, for one of the earliest church writers after the New Testament, salvation wasn't just about being forgiven of our sins so that when we die, we can go to heaven. We got like our get out of hell free card. Salvation was about experiencing the healing work of Dr. Jesus in our life and in our soul right now, today. And the only way we get that is if we open ourselves and our life up to God, if we face our sin, bring it to God and allow him to heal it. So our bottom line for today is that practicing resurrection requires commitment to opening yourself up to the light of God's grace. Right? John, in that verse we read, said God is light, right? And if you think of your soul as a plant, like we need to bring it into the light to experience healing. When we hide our soul away in the darkness and in secrecy, uh, it withers and dies and gets corrupted. We need to bring it into the light to experience healing. So as we start, again, over the next several weeks talking about sin and how we face it, I just want to give you a few tips of how not to deal with sin before we jump into what sin we're specifically gonna talk about today. First of all, big mistake is to hustle as if you have the sole responsibility for living a holy life, right? This is what many people who grow up in a more like religious background feel like, man, it's all up to me. I gotta do this, I gotta hustle, I gotta make all this happen. But secondly, on the other side, is to live as if you have no responsibility for your discipleship. Right? First Corinthians chapter nine, Paul actually talks about that our spiritual formation is like running a race. And if you are an athlete, you would discipline your body, right? Think of the Olympics. People who put in so much time and energy and effort and discipline. He's like, the thing we're working for is way more important than whatever like gold medal or gold crown we could get from a sports game. And so it requires like we why wouldn't we want to put in the effort and discipline? So we have to like kind of manage those tensions. Third thing here, I'm really bad at counting, I should put numbers. Third thing, the mistake you make is to compare yourself to other people. All right. This one is hard because it feels really good, right? Because you get to choose who you compare yourself to. So you get to compare yourself to someone who's struggling worse than you are, and it's this really nice way to then not have to reckon with the sin in your own life to go, oh, at least I don't do this. At least I don't talk to my spouse this way. At least I don't drink that much. At least, and we say that in our, maybe we don't say it out loud, but we say it in our minds and in our hearts. And it's a way to be like, oh, I'm doing pretty good. I don't need to deal with this. Right? But the actually the word discipleship or disciple means a learner. And so we should constantly be learning and growing. Again, not like in a perfectionistic, like beat yourself up kind of way, but in a way that we're constantly tending to be like, God, there's more in my life that I need to turn over to you. So even if I'm not as bad as whoever, um, that doesn't matter. What matters is my own journey and walk with Jesus. Uh, next one is expect life change overnight, right? Maybe you've experienced this, you get like this moment of conviction of like, man, I am gonna deal with the sin that's been plaguing me in my life, and you're like, I'm gonna do this, and then the next day nothing changes, and you're like, Well, I guess it's over now. Like, I don't know what else to do. Like, the problem is that deep discipleship takes time. It takes uh like unlearning our habits and the patterns of sin we've let grow in our life takes time for it to get uh unlearned and worked out into something else. And so don't get discouraged when it doesn't change right away. Because sometimes that happens and it's a miracle, and we praise God for it. But most of the time, maybe I'm just more unspiritual than the rest of you, it takes a while for sin to get worked out of my life and for something new to grow. You need to keep at it. Like when I look at my spiritual life, there's often days and weeks where I don't see any change or any transformation or anything God is doing. But as I look back over a year or three years or five years, I'm amazed at how much God was doing that I was not aware of. Right? The ways he was reshaping me and reforming me as I offered myself up to him. There's little bursts where it's like, whoa, yeah, this feels really good. I'm seeing change, but a lot of discipleship is just trusting that God is working beyond what we can see and sticking with it. Um, and then the last one here is the kind of mistake we make is we treat habitual sins as isolated events, right? So here's an example. Let's say you snap at your spouse, you yell at your kids, you have frustrations while you're driving, you have some resentment towards people you work with, right? And each of these things is kind of like a little thing, like not maybe not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but underneath it all is anger, right? And so you could deal with each one of these little things, but if you dealt with the anger that has taken root in your heart, it would actually affect almost everything else in your life. Right? And this is something that is kind of like a newer thought for me, is a lot of the early church desert fathers and mothers talked about sin this way, which I think is really helpful, that we have root sins in our life that have rooted themselves in our heart. And when we deal with those, kind of like a tree, if it was sick, if you deal with the source of the sickness, it will fix the other issues that are happening. And so that's kind of what we're gonna be talking about over the coming weeks is specific sins, but like root sins that have rooted their way into our heart and diagnosing how they work in our lives, how they got there, because uh, if you were to read James chapter one, James, I really like the way he talks about sin. Um, as like it entices us away from God. And I imagine it like sin is like this guy kind of like in an alley somewhere. He's like, hey, come over here, I got something good for you, right? And it entices us away from what God has for us and kind of tricks us into living something else. So we're gonna diagnose like, how does this false picture of goodness entice us away from God? Uh we usually don't sin because we want to sin. Like I doubt most of us, if you're really following Jesus, wake up and be like, you know what? I think I'm gonna lose it today on my spouse, right? That's not like in your plan for the day. Uh, but something kind of tricks you into thinking this is what you need to do. We sin because we get tricked into thinking this is what it means to live a good life. So we're gonna talk about how does this happen? How do we resist and open our hearts to God's healing power and how do we put on this new self found in Christ, right? So that sin doesn't have a spot to grow back. How do we grow our soul in a way that it it takes up so much space of all the goodness God has created us for that our sin can't even take root. Today, uh, the sin and kind of root issue we're gonna talk about connects with this whole topic and kind of sets us up for the rest of the series. Uh it has to deal with our discipleship and our life with God. And this is spiritual laziness, right? Or idolizing comfort might be another way to say it. The Bible talks about idleness, like just not doing anything, like being idle. In Hebrews chapter 6, uh, the author of Hebrews talks about persevering in faith. And he says this uh we want each of you to show the same diligence, like perseverance to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized, that your faith might be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. Right? And so spiritual laziness, complacency, uh, we can idolize comfort, and it stalls out our relationship with God. Right? This is primarily about not putting the appropriate energy and intention in our spiritual life, not taking our relationship with God very seriously. Now, you may think like, hey, good, I'm not lazy, I don't have to worry about this one. This is not just for the lazy people out there. There, which I count myself as one of them. This is also for the busy and productive people that have space for so many other things in your life, but you're lazy in your discipleship and your love for God and your love for others. Now again, I just want to remind you, not trying to make anyone feel guilty, right? We're not trying to beat ourselves up or leave being like, wow, that was a real bummer of a day. But you might feel conviction, right? I know I felt conviction preparing for this, but conviction is okay because it has the opportunity to draw us deeper into our relationship with God. So spiritual laziness might look like if I say, I don't have time to read my Bible or pray or whatever, but I find time to listen to podcasts, right? To scroll on social media, to watch Netflix, etc., etc. It's not really actually that I don't have the time. It's actually that my priorities are all out of whack. I've prioritized something above God. And I think it's helpful just to be honest about that. Instead of lying to ourselves, instead of giving ourselves a free pass and being like, oh, you know, things are busy, whatever, you know, to be honest that like actually there's something happening in my heart and in my priorities that has prioritized this over God in my life right now. We too often use the excuse of time and busyness to cover up the truth of what's happening in our hearts, which is that we just don't want to connect with God right now. I don't really want to spend maybe like what feels like wasted time and prayer when I could get something done or watch TV or check out and relax. Right? You'd rather distract yourself with social media than pray. You'd rather feel productive than slow down enough to listen to God's spirit in your life. You'd rather research health food or exercise routines, obviously not me, but some of you guys, or hunting products, or cars, or politics, or whatever, than spend time researching God's word. You don't want to put boundaries around your time or your attention or your energy in order to create space for God for your life, for God in your life, right? This is me. Uh, it's so easy to use our time or our energy or busyness as a cop-out. But we find the time and the energy for the things that are important to us. And if day by day goes by and we never find time for God, maybe that means if we're being really honest, God doesn't feel that important to us right now in our life. So, how does this happen? How do we go from being like on fire? Because most people who follow Jesus at one point in their spiritual walk, they're excited, like all of these things come naturally and easy and it's exciting to press in. How do we go from that point to being excited about what God is doing in our life and tending to that, to moving towards a place of spiritual laziness and letting that take root in our soul? How do we go from being on fire and excited to making excuses for why we don't have time? How do we go from saying Jesus is number one to kind of just letting everything else crowd him out? So a couple things to note. One, our culture has set us up to fail for this, right? Whether it's technology, social media, like just constant connection, it is harder than ever to give space and energy and attention to God when there are so many things crowding us out at all times. You know, our brains are being rewired to be more distracted, right? To look for little dopamine hits. And none of the, none of that is compatible, or at least makes it easier to follow Jesus and to create space for God in your life. We also have a cultural idol of busyness and productivity, right? It's all about like crushing it and like doing this and doing a side hustle and doing all these things. And these are important values in our culture. And they're so ingrained, we often don't even question whether they're things we should be doing or want to be doing or not. We just assume this is what you have to do to live life. Um, I like what uh the writer AJ Swoboda says. It isn't a sign of health or godliness to be well adjusted to a sick society. Right? We often are so well adjusted to our society and we think like, oh, look, that's great, I'm crushing it, when maybe there's something else happening underneath the surface. So to take your discipleship seriously in 2026, it is an uphill battle, like every step of the way. Like you have all these things that are coming at you, tempting you to compromise. Whether it's your work is more demanding or you're constantly uh in connection with email on your phone and text messages and all of that, whether it's your kids needing more stuff and need to be in more activities, technology is more stimulating, attention spans are lower, all of these things. But I don't just want to blame our culture, although our culture makes it really hard to follow Jesus right now in this day and age. Uh, because the fact that our make that our culture makes it difficult doesn't mean we don't have any responsibility for just drinking the Kool-Aid, right? Here's what a woman named Lanta Davis in this great book I read last year said. She said we love complaining about how busy we are, but refuse to take responsibility for choosing the very things that exhaust us. The truth is that we prefer our listless routines, our harried schedules, and our inflated sense of obligation to the existential terror of sitting quietly with ourselves. We prefer comfort over joy. You see, we choose spiritual laziness or we fall into it because it promises something it can't actually give us. See, it promises us comfort and rest and peace and contentment. Like if I just get all the things done on my to-do list, my life will be good. If I just had more time to check out, I would have the energy to deal with the rest of life. It gives us these promises, and so we turn to these things instead of God because they promise rest and contentment. And ultimately it's a lie. Right? These things in our culture that promise us this is what the good life looks like are a lie. But it's a lie that is so easy to believe, right? Like it's more work to read your Bible than it is to scroll on social media or to turn on the TV. That is just a fact of the matter. Like it is way easier just to turn something on that will numb you or do something that feels natural and easy than it is to engage with the God of the universe who wants to speak to you. And so, after a long day or a long week, the easiest thing to do is to just check out, to do whatever feels natural, whatever I think in the moment is going to make me feel better. But it's like junk food, right? It makes us feel better for a little while. In small doses, it's fine, it's not a big deal. Um, but instead of health, it offers numbing and distraction, and it makes us sicker and sicker and sicker. And when we constantly turn to that, like many of us have, myself included, over and over and over again, the more sick we feel, the easier it is just to keep going to the easy thing. And it's this vicious cycle. Um, so what do we do? Uh, how do we like confront this thing that's taking root in your life? Maybe my life, maybe I'm the only one, but I think it's probably in most of our lives, if we're honest. Um, and there's a couple things. First, we have to replace and confront the lie that spiritual laziness offers us, uh tricks us with, with the truth. Right? If I was really honest, one of the problems is I believe that I know what I need more than God knows what I need. And so if I'm like really honest with that, I will just kind of do my own thing and think like, okay, this will make me feel better, right? That I can fill myself up without God. Right? Or maybe we believe the lie that God is just demanding more of us, or that my spiritual life is just a checklist of like God just wants me to do a bunch of stuff, and so I gotta like check these boxes if I'm gonna be a follower of Jesus. But the truth is God doesn't just want more from you, God actually wants to fill you up and nourish your soul. Like God isn't just demanding things from you, he's trying to give to you. And now this is simple to put into action, right? So think of, okay, what do we do? Like, what's the treatment to this root that is kind of grown in our heart and soul? Pretty simple, right? Stop doing that stuff and start connecting with God. It's simple, but it's not easy to do, right? It's not the hard work is actually doing it, right? G.I. Joe said knowing is half the battle. No, it's like 10% of the battle in this case. Like, the hard part is putting it into practice. And I just want to say I'm an expert in spiritual laziness, okay? Something I've dealt with my entire life, even as a pastor. So here are some tips that I have found for confronting this and dealing with it in a way that actually helps us grow closer to God. So learn from my mistakes here. First, we need to confront the lies and the bad news we believe, right? The things that pull you away from God are telling a lie about what they're giving you. Whether it's like, oh, if I s if I check out on my phone for the next 10 minutes, maybe I'll feel better, right? I'll feel more relaxed, right? That is a lie, just a heads up. It's not how it works. Um, if you want any chance of resisting these things that pull us away from God, you need to recognize name and confront those lies. All right. Really random nerd thing now. Who has ever played the video game portal? Anyone? I know David has. Okay, a few people? Okay, good. Um, so this is what the video game looks like. Um it's kind of like you're in this like test area, and it's really cool. You have like the it's like a 20-year-old game. I'm gonna spoil some things, so I'm sorry if you've not played it. Um, where you're gonna like shoot a gun and it makes a blue circle, then there's an orange circle, and if you walk through the blue circle, you walk out the orange circle. Super like melts your brain as you're trying to figure out how do I like get through these rooms and these puzzles and stuff. But you have this whole time, there's like this robot that's leading you, speaking in a robotic voice, that's telling you, like, hey, you're doing these like nice little tests and experiments. And then it promises you at the end of the experiment that there will be cake, right? Keep going, there will be cake. Eventually, you kind of find a spot where there's like a, I don't can't remember, like a panel is shifted over, and you crawl into this hole and see like underneath what's happening, and you see this. Someone scrawled into the wall, the cake is a lie, and by the end of the game, this robot is trying to kill you, right? Okay, that's my that's the reference. So this is gonna sound really stupid, okay? But sometimes when I'm like, oh, I'm really tired, and I feel like God prompting me to like connect with him, and I pull out my phone, I'm like, nope, the cake is a lie. Like, this is not gonna do the work I think it's gonna do, right? Checking one more thing off my task list before I connect with God and then running out of time to do it is not gonna do the good work I think it's gonna do. It's a lie. And so, whether that's your phone, whether that's productivity, whether that's checking out in front of the TV, whether that's drinking another beer, whether that's food, alcohol, drugs, TV, whatever it might be, we need to confront these lies, right? And just name them for what they are and call them out so they don't have power to trick us anymore. That this is not gonna do for me what I want it to do. All right, secondly, uh start small. If you are not really doing anything in your spiritual life, it does not take much to get started, right? You might hear people talk about like, oh, I had like this hour prayer time, or I studied the Bible for a couple hours this morning. All of that is awesome. But if you're doing zero, I will tell you just five to ten minutes is enough to help you connect with God. Right? Whether that's in the car, on your way to work, whether that's um, you know, prioritizing some time at night, in the morning, at lunchtime, whenever's easiest for you. It doesn't take much and it's a great start. And similar to the downward spiral of like busyness and checking out that pulls us deeper and deeper away from God, when we start to connect with God, we find like, oh, actually, this is kind of nice. This was kind of refreshing, and it puts winds in our sails to keep going and connecting with Him. So start small. Um, or don't do something drastic, right? Sometimes what we need is something to just shake us out of our routine. So I've shared this a few times, is that last year for Lent, right, which Lent starts this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. So this would be a great time to give something up if you're like, oh, I know this thing is like the thing I'm struggling with. Try giving it up for those 40 days. Um, I deleted social media off my phone because I was like, no, this is not good for me. It was like the best decision I ever made, right? I still had it off my phone all the way until the beginning of January, and then for like a week I was like, nope, can't do this, get off again, and I deleted it off my phone again. And so do something drastic to kind of shake you out of your routine and to create more space for God in your life. Next, fourth, fourthly, be consistent. Uh desire, what I found in my own life is desire for faith and for God ebbs and flows. And when I listen to those ebbs and flows, I kind of get out of my habits and routines of connecting with God. But when I just be consistent, um, what happens is most of the time when I don't feel like connecting with God, but I just be consistent, I'm so glad I did. And I'm like, oh, this was great. Why did I almost not do this, right? Um and over a period of time, I look back and be like, man, I'm so glad I've stuck with these things. So be consistent or try a few different things and see what works for you. Maybe this is like all new for you. Try some different things. Try listening to worship music in the car, try journaling, try reading the Bible, try praying. Of course, in an ideal world, we should be doing all of these things. But again, if you're not really doing anything, just try something to give yourself over to God and try a few things, see what works. Maybe it's like walking outside, praying to God in nature. Maybe it's just being silent and quiet before Him. Figure out what works and then do it. Prioritize it in your life and make it happen. And lastly, just like we need to confront the lies, we also need to celebrate the truth, right? Reinforce, like there's so many things in our world that are reinforcing lies in our life. We need to reinforce the truth, right? So just like I say, hey, the cake is a lie, I'm not gonna look at my phone right now. I say, God, you want to connect with me in a deep way in this moment. And I reinforce why I'm doing what I'm doing. Or when I feel like God has showed up when I connect with him, I praise him for that and thank him and celebrate that. So it gives me like uh more excitement to keep going. Now, the point of all of this is not just to do a bunch of spiritual stuff, right? To replace our busyness with spiritual busyness or check a bunch of faith boxes, but to connect with the creator of our souls, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and is inviting us deeper into a life centered on his kingdom that isn't a burden for us, but is a gift he wants to give us. I really like the way, kind of as we wrap up here, that C.S. Lewis says this. He says, We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. This is not about a checklist, but about living the life you were created for. Life that at times is difficult and requires saying no to our impulses, but is also uh marked by a deeper joy and peace and love than we could ever imagine. So here's some action steps, some prayer questions. You can find these um online. Why don't you just go to the next slide? On the digital service guide, you can find them. Uh try to do an examine this week. Wake up to what's happening in your life. This is you can find this on our website. Kind of just a daily prayer of like looking at your life, seeing maybe you're like, I don't know where I'm out of alignment with God's kingdom. The examin is a way that we can start to notice that. Consider giving something up for Lent this year to create more space for God in your life. And then confess your spiritual laziness to someone else and check in with each other throughout the next uh several weeks, right? Have some accountability around that. Um, I just want to encourage you guys, a couple reminders before I pray. Uh, don't forget that there is Ash Wednesday this week. Again, pray about what God might be inviting you to give up so you can connect with him in a deeper way. Don't forget about serve team signups, sign up for soup and chili. I think we have seven or eight when I looked this morning, uh, people bringing soup and chili. So even if you're not like, oh, I'm not all about the competition, just you know, sign up, bring something, it makes for a great time. And then there are two meetings right after church. One is the Baptism Interest class, which is out these doors and down that way down the hallway. And then the other one is the meeting for the Asheville, North Carolina mission trip that Betty Schmidt is gonna be leading. It's also down that way. To the right, there's a conference room shelf information about that rebuilding after Hurricane Helene. So if either of those things are interesting to you, we'd love to see you at those meetings. Let me pray for us real quick. God, we thank you so much for your love and your grace and that you are willing to confront us with hard truths sometimes. And God, I just ask that we would not shrink away from it. We would not squirm and kind of wiggle our way out of the conviction we might be feeling. I know that I'm feeling, um, but we would instead uh turn to you, come to you honestly, so that we could experience your grace and experience a deeper level of connection with you. In your name we pray. Amen. All right, thanks, guys.