Practicing Contentment

Transcript

Welcome, Retreat, And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. It's good to be with you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. So I want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home. Thanks so much for tuning in. It's good to be back with you. I was on a silent retreat last weekend along with uh Cameron, Josiah, and Drew. And one of the reasons why we do this, we do this every year, is because of this temptation I think all of us face, but especially if you're in ministry, it's it's to have your serving Jesus replace your knowing Jesus. And so every year we just pull away, and the primary goal is just to be with Jesus and grow closer to Him because we want our leadership to flow from that place of abiding. So thanks for letting us do that. Big thanks to Marg for preaching last weekend and Anna for leading worship with the worship team. Can we thank them for covering the bases last weekend? Before I jump into our message for today, I wanted to briefly uh just spend some time uh praying for what's happening in Iran as things continue to escalate there. I want you to know that we as a staff and a leadership team, we actually have a document, a set of guiding principles that help us determine when and how to say things from the stage based on things that are happening in the world. Because the primary purpose of a Sunday, you guys, is not to give commentary on current events. That's not what we're uh mostly uh here to do. And and in addition, uh, when we want to say something, we don't want to do that to virtue signal to the right or to the left or even to the moderates in the in the middle. That's not our aim or our focus. Our primary reason for saying something is because we want to point people to Jesus. Whenever you consider what's happening in the world, friends, whether it's globally, nationally, or locally, the primary question you need to be asking is what is the heart of Jesus in this situation? And my job as a pastor is to point you to him. And so maybe just a couple words before we pray about what the heart of Jesus might be what's moving in the heart of Jesus in this moment. I just want to remind you that Jesus is grieved by every death. Um, there's over uh 1,000, as of this morning, I looked it up, 1,332 deaths. And every one of those people that have died are uh people who have been created in God's image, who have infinite value and worth fearfully and wonderfully made in someone that Jesus died for. These are brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. We need to see. These aren't just numbers. When we just see numbers, it's dehumanizing. We need to see people. Um Jesus is the Prince of Peace. That's that's one of the titles given to him. He's the Prince of Peace. And he died on the cross and rose from the dead in order to create peace, not just vertical, us and God, but also horizontally. And he calls us to be peacemakers. His his kingdom is a peaceable kingdom. In addition, God is just. But the way God establishes just is not by violence, but by laying down his life. And so, see, these are some of the anchor points that have to uh sort of guide our thinking in these moments. And I want you to know that there are people in our community that are being impacted by this. Just this week I had an exchange with someone whose son is in Iran right now serving in our military. And so you may have friends or family members that are involved in this conflict, and um the death toll is continuing to increase. Eleven countries are involved right now. So let's pray for peace. Yeah? Let's exercise our kingdom authority and pray to the God who can bring peace and restoration and reconciliation. Um, God, we want to be people that first and foremost are formed by you, not media outlets, but rather who learn how to have the eyes and the mind and the heart of Christ. And so with that in mind, God, we pray for all the families who have been impacted by loss in this war. For every family and friend that has lost a loved one, God, would you be with them and give them your comfort and your healing and your wholeness? And we pray for peace. As things continue to escalate, I pray that you would help things de-escalate, especially for leaders that they would choose dialogue over a continued disagreement and violence. Um, Lord, we pray for your peace to come on earth as it is in heaven. And we pray for um those in our community who maybe have friends, loved ones, sons and daughters who are serving in our in our armed forces, that you would protect them and give them uh peace. Assure them of your comfort and your love and your presence for them. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for praying with me this morning. Uh, so we're in this season of Lent, which you'll remember is this 40-day period leading up to Easter each year, and it's marked by a deeper spiritual engagement. So we're all really leading in, uh, wanting to seek Jesus in a renewed way, in preparation for the joy that Easter brings. And our Easter series this year is called Practicing Resurrection. This is really important. Remember that resurrection in the New Testament isn't just a future promise, it's a present practice. It's not just about what happens after you die, it's something we're to be living into here and now. In Christ, you've been given new life, abundant life, and you're to be putting that on display, embodying it in the here and now. And one of the primary ways that scripture talks about this is by taking off the old self and then putting on the new self. And so that's really the heartbeat of this series. Each week we're naming something that we're to take off. Part of our old self. An old way of relating and behaving. We're gonna take that off in order to put on our new self, a character quality that we want to live into that represents Jesus, our new life in Christ. And this, of course, is saturated in grace. So I'm gonna remind you that this is not about us transforming ourselves. Um, rather, we experience transformation as we attend to God's grace, as we open ourselves up to God's gracious activity in our lives and we surrender to it. Well, then God begins to change us. God renovates our hearts, reshapes our character, transforms us from the inside out, such that we're able to practice resurrection in our daily lives. This week I want to talk about how to take off excess and put on contentment. One of the characteristics, you guys, of the old self, uh, who you are apart from Jesus, is excess and overindulgence. Sort of hoarding more than we need, right? Uh holding on to more than we can handle, consuming more than satisfies. That's the old self. But the new self is all about practicing resurrection and it's characterized by contentment. Rather than reaching for more in our new identity, our new identity in Christ, we know when enough is enough. And rather than demanding more, we actually delight in what God has already given. So, how do we take off excess and practice contentment? Now, that's the question I want to chase down with you today. Now, I want to start just with this observation. Uh, I hope it doesn't require a ton of convincing, but I'm gonna give you plenty of evidence today. That we live in a culture of excess and untamed self-indulgence. Uh, when Josie and I first moved here back in 2008, uh, we were relatively uh newly married, about three years in, and I had just graduated from grad school, and we had some student loans to pay off. We were pretty broke. I mean, we didn't have a lot. Um, I had been in grad school, Josie was the only one who had been working for several years, and so we had some student loans, and our goal was to pay those off and hopefully save up a little bit to eventually buy a house. And so when we first moved here uh through a family connection, we ended up renting an old, a pretty old and small cottage uh through a family friend. And quite frankly, it was a pretty nice upgrade uh from what we were used to in Chicago. We had a really small uh apartment there. This place actually had a yard, which was awesome, and um, so we we felt really blessed. Um one of the things though, when we moved in, is that this cottage had zero closet space. Um we noticed this right away. It had two uh kind of smaller bedrooms, and each bedroom had one closet, but it wasn't even like a full door wide. It was like kind of like a half door wide, and then just deep enough uh for like a hanger to like hang something in there. But that was it. And so uh what we ended up doing was Josie took one closet, I took uh uh the closet in the other room, but we still couldn't fit our clothes in these tiny closets. So we had to kind of do the seasonal rotation where for that season, well, that's what went into the closet, and then everything else sort of went into storage. And this actually led to a bit of a mirror moment for us. So a mirror moment is when, whoa, all of a sudden you see something about yourself you didn't notice before. We realized that even that this cottage was built decades ago. I mean, it was old, but we had this realization that when this place was built, the people who moved into it didn't think that these closets were small. You know, that wasn't something they were griping about. Um, these the closets had enough space to fit everything that they had. It it it met their needs. And see, it pointed to a time when people just had way less stuff. They lived simpler lives. And again, just hold this up. This is right after grad school, and we're pretty much broke. We had hardly anything, and we still couldn't fit all of our stuff into these closets. Fast forward to our culture, and things, the contrast couldn't be more startling. The average home in the 1950s was about a thousand square feet. Uh, the average home today is uh more than double that. And when it comes to our closets, they're not just like a door deep, you know, and wide. Um, well, many people have walk-in closets, right? Um the size of an entire bedroom is like your your your closet. And somehow that uh still isn't enough for a lot of us. Despite homes that are double the size and walk-in closets, we still run out of room, and so we need storage units. Right now, there are more storage units being used in the United States than there are McDonald's restaurants globally. Just lock that in. I think it's safe to say that we have a problem with excess and overindulgence, and this is no bueno. It's not good. We've become, in the process, enslaved to our disordered desires, prisoners of our impulses, ensnared by our appetites. We've become victims of instant gratification. And at the root of all this is not just behavioral consumption, where we're constantly buying and consuming more. It's actually a condition of the heart. In other words, this isn't just about closet size and storage units. This is about what's happening on the inside, the condition of our hearts, because what's driving this excess, this self-indulgence, this excessive acquisition and accumulation is actually a soul that's trying to find fulfillment in things other than God, in things that don't actually satisfy or fulfill. And the more we try to do that, the more disordered our desires actually become, and they end up being displaced. Displaced from God and attached to other things. So here's what I want to do today is I want to do a few things. I want to map out how pervasive this problem is. For this reason, we can't take off what we can't name. So if we think about taking off the old self, you can't take off what you're unwilling or unable to name. So we've got to see this so that we can take it off. And then I want to talk about what leads to lasting fulfillment and satisfaction, which will then pave the way for how we can experience and practice contentment. So let's jump in. Excess, you guys, takes many forms, but I want to name three that seem to be spiraling out of control. The first one is material excess. So let's go back to closets and clothes for a moment. Uh, the average American purchases 59 pieces of new clothing every year. That's the average American. That's more than one per week. But studies show that the average American wears less than half of what's in their closet. So here's what's happening, I'll just break it down is that fashion trends are constantly evolving and changing. And so we feel the pressure to keep up with those fashion trends, so we're constantly buying new clothes because what we bought yesterday wouldn't be cool to wear, right? Um and so we're constantly buying and updating our clothes, but because what we bought yesterday isn't cool to wear, it ends up sitting in our closets. So we end up rotating uh between a few outfits again and again. Well, most of what we've purchased isn't used at all. You guys, this is excess. It's going beyond what we need, and it's driven by impulsive purchases, right? Um and what's more, you guys, is we live in an we live in a world that, I mean, to be fair, it it tries to activate and then exploit our appetites, this impulse for more. Um, this is what drives most marketing strategies. It's known as inadequacy marketing. So most marketing is designed to accentuate and create a feeling of lack in your life, a sense of inadequacy, that you're missing something really important. Oh, how miserable your life is because you're missing that something. But lo and behold, uh, they have the product, the product that if you just purchase it, will take away that feeling of lack, that sense of inadequacy. And it works. It works. This is why people continue to tap and swipe and buy things that they can't afford. You know, um, have you ever had an impulse buy? Yeah, most of you are yeah? No? Never? You've never been in that moment where you're like, a few seconds ago, you didn't even know that this thing existed. You didn't even know it was a thing. And then you see it, and in a few seconds you realize that you you decide I can't live without this thing I didn't even know was a thing a few minutes ago. It's become, in a matter of seconds, like an essential thing. Like I need this, and so you buy it, and then of course, you hardly use it. You guys, this is why you need to pray up before going to Costco. I mean, straight up, you gotta like fast and pray because you'll go to Costco with like uh a list of seven items. I need these seven items, and you'll walk away with a full cart. Right? Because you're going through Costco and all of a sudden you see the display, and you're like, ooh, wow, that look that looks ri- I got honey. We could use that, right? That would be nice to have. And look, it's on discount, right? Like it'd be it'd be irresponsible if we didn't get that, right? And then we start uh like you know, cart creeping. You guys do it, you've done it to me. You like look in the cart and you're like, ooh, that looks cool. Where'd you find that? And you're like, oh, down that aisle, and it's on discount. You'd be irresponsible not to get it, right? Hurry up, I got one of the last ones. And so we hustle off and get the last thing. You guys, this is I know you know. I know you know what this is like. Um, there's a whole thing called retail therapy where we're feeling crummy about life, overwhelmed and stressed out, and we click and buy on Amazon thinking it will take away all the pain we're experiencing or whatever, and it doesn't work. It just leaves us empty. Jesus had some stuff to say about how we hoard stuff. He said this in Luke 12, 15. He said, Watch out. Watch out, be on guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in abundance of possessions. So life, true life, is not going to be found in an abundance of possessions. In 1 Timothy 6, 7, and 8, Paul says this, for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But notice this, he goes, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. When was the last time you thought, you know, I'm content with just food and clothing? Like I've got what I need. I don't need anything more. This is one of the biggest areas of excess today. And if you need more proof of it, just this, just pay attention this week to how many delivery trucks you notice. Uh, because the average person receives 167 packages delivered to their home per year. Um that's uh over three a week to put it in context. So this is one area of excess, it's uh material excess. Here's another one, and I'm gonna put this nicely culinary excess. You like that? Um so Americans outpurchase uh the rest of the world, but we also out-eat the rest of the world. Uh we not only buy more than we need, but we consume more than we need. So if you're gonna live like in a in a like a healthy diet, meaning you're not shortcutting yourself, you're not depriving yourself, but you're also not going uh above and beyond what you need. The average adult needs somewhere between 2200 and 2,500 calories per day. Okay? Somewhere in that range. Now, most Americans are eating 3,600 calories a day, so that's over a thousand more than you actually need. And of course, it's not just eating, it's also drinking. You guys, where we live is not normal. I'm just gonna tell you that here in Wisconsin, uh, we're not normal. Wisconsin has one of the highest excessive drinking rates in the United States. So I had to do some research. What does that mean, excessive drinking? You want to know how they define it? For women, it's having four or more drinks in one sitting, and for men it's five. That's excessive drinking. Now lock this statistic in. Twenty-five point two percent of adults in Wisconsin say they drink excessively on a somewhat regular basis. One in four adults, somewhat regularly, are consuming at least four or five more drinks in one sitting. In 2022, Wisconsin was rated the drunkest state. Is this a surprise once you know that statistic? Wisconsin is consistently near the top in per capita alcohol consumption. Now, look, okay, before you get mad, um I'm all about enjoying a good meal. Good food and drink is to be enjoyed. God created it for our enjoyment. So I'm not critiquing good food and drink, but what I am critiquing is that we're eating and drinking beyond sustenance, right? It's overindulgent, it's excessive. And the truth is it's costing us. This is expensive, you guys. It's costing us financially. Um, all this eating and drinking, according to uh one personal finance magazine, the average American eats out four times a week. Four times a week, which is way more expensive than cooking and eating at home. When you total it up, that's over$10,000. On average, it's over$10,000 extra dollars per year beyond what you're spending at the grocery store. Uh the average Wisconsinite uh spends$790 per person, so if you're married, it's double that, on alcohol per year, and over$1,400 on coffee drinks, which let's just face it is basically dessert with a shot of caffeine. That's what like that's what we're doing. It's expensive. It's costing your wallet quite a bit. And also it's costing your health. Eating out uh obviously isn't quite as healthy. Uh, most of what we're consuming is ultra processed food loaded with sugar and salt and saturated fats, right? This is why 40% of Americans are obese and 20% of adolescents. And all of this, you guys, increases your chance of health problems. Type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and so on. Which then, by the way, is a is really expensive to treat. It's costing us. Now, I want to be clear, I'm not standing outside of these problems preaching at you. Okay? I'm right here with you. Um, every Friday night, we as a family uh practice Shabbat, okay? Sabbath. And we often do like a sweet treat of some kind. It's it's usually uh we make a skillet cookie and then we put a little ice cream on top. So everybody gets a little bit of the skillet cookie and we do ice cream. Well, here's what's happened to me over the past year is my uh the way I do my skillet cookie has become increasingly excessive. Somewhere along the line, I I realized you know what would taste really good on top of this skillet cookie is just a little smear of peanut butter. So now I put a little peanut butter on top of my cookie, and then I was like, you know what would be even better is if it had a little bit of crunch. And you guys already know I'm addicted to those um Costco extra crunchy peanuts, so I'll sprinkle a little of those on. And you know what? Um, this of course needs to be balanced, not just with one scoop of ice cream. I mean, what are you talking about? So uh what's better than two is three scoops of ice cream and then some more peanuts on top. Last night, you guys, I went downstairs with like a giant bowl. This is the problem. I have no desire to stop. I'm just I'll just admit it, I'll acknowledge it. Like I like my sweet treat uh on the weekends. And yet, Scripture even addresses this. In Proverbs 23, it says this do not do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags. And in 25, 16 it says, if you find honey, eat just enough, too much of it, and you will vomit. There's a bug up here. Um I've been there. I remember when I when I grew up, we went to church, and one Sunday they had a donut day. And the rule was my parents are like, you can have one donut. And I remember one day I'm like, they're not really paying attention, they're socializing, and I ate like four, and I threw up. Okay? So this is another area of excess that I'm trying to raise our awareness about is excess food and drink. A final one is excess entertainment, uh, specifically our technology use. Neil Postman stated before the internet was even a thing, so this is how prophetic this is, that we are entertaining ourselves to death. The average American watches 2.8 hours of TV a day, which does not include streaming YouTube or social media use. So that figure right there is 19 on between 19 and 20 hours a week. The average American is just sitting passively consuming entertainment. The average American spends 10 hours a day online with roughly five hours streaming or watching content. Netflix has over 250 million subscribers worldwide. And TikTok has over uh 1 billion active users. Um, and the average time spent TikToking per day is 52 minutes. Now I'm not a TikToker, but if you add that up, 52 minutes per day, uh the average person is spending six days a year watching short videos for entertainment. That's how much that equals out to. We're entertaining ourselves to death, wasting excessive amounts of time looking at screens. Uh many of us spend hours a day on social media clicking and liking and swiping and sharing and consuming, and yet our soul, if we're honest, still feels empty. I can't remember any time where I spent time doom scrolling and then at the end, like walked away going, man, does my heart feel so alive right now? We know this, and yet we keep doing it. Again, I'm not outside of this sort of preaching at you. I'm in this, I'm with you. Uh, before Lent, uh, I would say my attachment to social media wasn't great. Uh, despite having uh some personal limits on your iPhone, you can set a limit for how much access you have to social media or specific apps, and I had set limits for that, and I got into the habit of just uh blowing past those. So when the limit popped up, oh, ignore and just keep going. And then I noticed even at night, oftentimes I'll read for a bit at night, get the kids down, read for a bit, and then uh Josie and I to wind down, we'll watch a show or something. I found myself increasingly bored with what we were watching, so then I would scroll. So I had two screens. I'm like toggling between whatever show is on and my phone. When you're looking at two screens, try not to be bored, you know you have an issue. So I gave up social media for Lent. And you guys, it has been great. Uh and I mean that honestly. I will be honest with you. Last year I gave up coffee, that was awful. I literally found myself dreaming about coffee during Lent. It was not good. But despite the first, I mean, maybe the first couple days I felt a little twitchy. I noticed I a couple times took out my phone and then would like automatically reach to open the app or whatever, and then oh, it's not even there. But for the most part, you guys has been I have not missed it. I don't miss seeing the crazy crap you guys post, all right? Like it's been kind of nice. My cortisol levels have never been better, okay? I find myself breathing evenly again. It's been good. It's been really good. So here's a key question I want you to consider, okay? Just think about this. Honestly. If you were to keep consuming like you are right now for the next 10 to 20 years, what kind of person would you be? If nothing changed, if you zoomed out on this week or this past month and you kept buying and eating and drinking and watching like you are, where would you be in 10 to 20 years? What kind of character would you have? How is all of this consuming shaping you? Now here's a scary thought. Um, and Cameron said this in our preaching meeting. He's like, yeah, and I bet if you asked most people what they hope to be doing in 10 to 20 years, um, like maybe in retirement or whatever, it's not less consumption, it's more. Which is terrifying. Terrifying. The problem is that none of these things are bad in and of themselves. Okay, so we need to understand this. None of the things that we're indulging are like inherently evil. Like God actually created them as good things. It's good that we wear clothes, okay? I don't I'm glad you're wearing clothes today, okay? Clothes are good. Food and drink are necessary, right? And I'm not even against enjoying a good show or a movie. These aren't bad or inherently evil. They're goods, but the problem is when these good things become our gods. When our desire for them ends up ruling over us. The problem isn't these things. The problem is how my desire for them ends up dominating and controlling me, such that then I become enslaved to my desire for them. None of these things are bad. God created them as good, but what's happening is our appetite for them is running out of control such that we become enslaved to them, and then my desires become displaced. My desires no longer for God, but for these other things, and I become enslaved to these disordered desires. Rebecca D. Young says then sin creeps in and corrupts these pleasures when our desires for them run out of control. Right? So the problem is, is that our desire for these things run out of control in a way that owns us. And Scripture warns about this. So here's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, 12. He says, I have the right to do anything you say, but not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but, he says, I will not be mastered by anything. So Paul here, in the book of Corinthians, Paul is responding to a letter which we don't have in responding back to them. He's writing back to them based on a letter that they sent to him. And here he's quoting them. He quotes the same line twice. Apparently, the Corinthians had this philosophy that I have the right to do anything. I can do whatever it is I want because I'm free in Jesus now. And Paul is countering this, and he counters it by pointing out two things. Not everything you have the right to do is beneficial. Just because you have the right to do it doesn't make it beneficial for you or for other people. And just a reminder: even if you have the right to do it, we're not to be mastered by anything, because we have only one master and one Lord, and his name is Jesus. Don't be mastered by anything. You guys following the logic? And so Paul is pointing out even though you may have the right to eat more, to buy more, whatever, not everything is beneficial, and you can't be mastered by those things. Don't let good things become your gods. So it leaves us with this question: how do we break free from our addiction to excess? How do we get free from this? And I think the answer starts with getting clear on what truly satisfies us and fulfills us, what actually leads to satisfaction. Frederick Buchner uh put it this way: he says, a glutton, and here we're talking about gluttony, you guys, because gluttony is as an addiction to excess, a glutton is one who raids the icebox, the refrigerator, for a cure for spiritual malnutrition. Right? A glutton is like gorging food to try to fix a spiritual lack. So I'm convinced that underneath all of this excess, excess buying, excess food and drink, excess technology use is a confusion about what actually fills us. We're overindulging on stuff because we're confused about what will actually satisfy us and fulfill us. And so we reach for this thing, and the truth is it gives us a little bit of pleasure. It gives us a dopamine hit, but dopamine doesn't last very long, and so then we need more of that thing in order to keep that hit going. Um and so we're addicted to instant gratification, but instant gratification only lasts an instant. No matter how much you buy, it's not gonna fill you or satisfy you, you'll feel like you still need to buy the next outfit. No matter how much you eat or drink, you're gonna get hungry tomorrow. That's the way it works. And no matter how much you scroll, it's not gonna fill you up. You're gonna feel like you need to scroll more. Our desires escalate, and then we become imprisoned to them, chasing satisfaction and things that can't deliver. I showed this at our Ash Wednesday service, but this is an addiction diagram. Here's how it works, if we could throw that up. So it starts at the top with some sort of stimulus, some sort of item that promises you to be fulfilled. Okay? The the item on Amazon, the uh, you know, skillet cookie with ice cream, there's a stimulus that says, I will make you feel good. And we respond to that stimulus by indulging, by giving into it, and this produces a pleasure response, a dopamine, dopamine is released in our our brain, so it feels good. Okay? But remember, instant gratification only lasts an instant. And so when you hit get that dopamine hit, eventually it wears off, and so you crave more. Oh, that dopamine felt so good. I want more of that, and so there's this craving that develops in you for more of it. And as you chase more of it, as you go back to that thing to get another dopamine hit, over time it becomes a habit, a regular practice in your life, and an addiction. And see, we get attached to all kinds of things other than God in our daily lives that distort our character, that don't really fulfill or satisfy, but actually put us in this endless loop of chasing dopamine hits. I said during our Ash Wednesday service, but I'm gonna remind you that you have been created with a God-shaped hole in the center of your soul. God created you that way. He created each and every one of us with an inborn desire to find fulfillment in Him, in God. And we're to find it through a loving relationship with God. God is love, He created us. We are created by love, in love, and for love. Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. And so God has created you with an inborn desire. There's this hole, a God-shaped hole in the center of your being that only He can fill. Imagine this image came to mind while I was thinking about this point. Imagine working on a puzzle, like you're putting a puzzle together, and there's a missing piece. And that missing piece, you guys, is God. And what we're doing is we're trying to take all these other puzzle pieces and try to fit that into the God piece, and it's not working. And so the solution, you guys, is we need to find fulfillment through a relationship with God in Jesus Christ. The only solution is to stop trying to plug these other pieces into this God piece and instead recognize that God alone can fill that. To recognize that these goods that aren't to be gods need to stay in their proper place. Goods make lousy gods. God is the only one who can fill you and satisfy you. Uh, fill up that hole in your life. And so, uh, if we're going to get free from excess, it actually starts with getting filled by God. And so here's our bottom line for today. Practicing contentment, practicing contentment involves being filled by Jesus. Allowing Jesus to fill that God-shaped hole in the center of your being. If we're going to take off excess and overindulgence, we have to stop trying to get that hole filled by other things. And instead, we need to run to God. We need to channel our appetites towards God. Recognize that all of these desires we have, God alone is the one who can fill them. And they're filled, they're satisfied through a deep, meaningful, intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This is what allows us to detach from disordered desires. And instead of pivoting out of displaced desires, we place our desires in the right place, which is in God Himself. One of the best things you can do in order to bring this about is just to pray for it. To pray and ask God to give you a deep desire and a clarity about where he's trying to fill you and how he's trying to do so. Pray that God would give you an appetite, a desire, a longing to know him more and more, such in a way that it motivates you to seek him moment by moment, every single day of your life. This is how the scriptures speak, you guys. Here's what it says in Psalm 42. It says, As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God, when can I go and meet with God? Right? It's not my soul pants for social media. It's my soul pants for God. When can I go meet with God? That's what I long to do. Psalm 63, 1 says, You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you. I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I mean, how many of you could say, honestly, like, I have an insatiable appetite to know and love God more and more? And if you don't, here's the tip: pray for it. When I was a freshman in college, I memorized these two verses. So I'm 42 and so I'm 63. And I got into the habit of uh sort of waking up in the morning, and one of the first things I would do is just recite these two verses, and then I would just pray, God, would you please give me an appetite, a hunger, and thirst to know you more and more. Create in me a deep desire, a longing to seek you, to know you, to chase after you with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Do this work in me, a work I can't do of my own. I surrender my desire to you today. Uh, shape my desires to long for you. And you guys, I don't probably pray that every day, but it's been a constant in my life for 25 years. It served me well. And I encourage you to do the same thing. Make it a habit of surrendering your desires to God and asking God for you to desire the right thing, starting with Him. If we're going to get free from excess and overindulgence, it starts with getting clear about what actually fills us. And it's not the stuff we're running to. We got to stop running to these other things, and we need to run into the arms of Jesus, knowing He has what we need that fulfills and satisfies. He alone is the source of abundant life. So here are some next steps for you. Some questions to pray through in Jesus' presence this week. Where have good things become God's in my life? In other words, where is my desire sort of attached to other things in a way that's become disordered? What am I trying to fill through compulsive consumption? So, in other words, get curious. Instead of buying or eating or consuming technology, get curious. What is it, in fact, that I'm trying to sort of, you know, satisfy in those moments? Because the answer might surprise you. And then how is Jesus wanting to fulfill me by going deeper in relationship with him? Allow Jesus to speak to you on this. Jesus is the source of life and he wants to fill you and satisfy you. How is Jesus wanting to do that in your life? Here's some practices, and this these three go together. So it's not just three practices, it's actually one that go together. Um, number one, do an excess audit. So do a brief audit or examination of your life, and you can use the three categories I gave you of material stuff, um, food and drink, and technology use. Uh identify one or a combination of those, and then fast from one of those areas of excess. So develop a plan. I'm gonna fast from this, I'm gonna detach from that area of indulgence, and then replace that consumption with communion with God. So whatever you were consuming to get a need met, you're gonna fast from that. But the energy you spent pursuing that thing, you're now gonna reinvest in a relationship with Jesus. Trading consumption for communion. Does that make sense? Okay, I feel like it was pretty clear. Um does it make sense? Okay. Megan? Okay, good. Thanks. Um, okay, so uh we have the family forum today. If you're planning on coming to that, um, it's after the second service, so please uh uh come back for that. Um I was asked to give some quick instructions. When you walk in, we're gonna start no later than 1145. So if you're coming back, make sure you're here a little bit before 1145. We're gonna have tables set out in the foyer, and we're starting with some salad. So just find a table, start enjoying some salad, and then we're gonna have some questions for you to talk or discuss at your table. Those include who you are, how long you've been going to Cross Point, and one way you're noticing God at work in our shared life together. Okay? So if you're coming back for that, that's where I'd invite you to jump in. All right. If you'd stand, I'd love to close us in prayer today. Father God, we thank you that you've created us with this inborn desire to know you and love you. And we confess that so often we try to meet and fill that desire with other things. We are enslaved. There's areas where we are ensnared, and we ask you to free us. Free us from these false attachments that don't actually deliver the very thing that we want. And instead, I ask that you give each and every one of us an insatiable appetite, a hunger and thirst, a deep longing to know you more and more, such that we seek you in our daily lives. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Go in peace.