Struggling to keep your New Year's resolutions? You're not alone. We're talking about the real tug-of-war we all face between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and how societal expectations might just be tipping the scales against us. But there's a silver lining – our journey to personal improvement and fulfillment of God's vision for our lives.
It's not just about personal success; it's about striving for a reward that won't tarnish or fade. This episode isn't just a look into historical texts; it's a modern-day call to action. Live out your values boldly, knowing that such a life can be a beacon for others in their quest for that imperishable crown.
Struggling to keep your New Year's resolutions? You're not alone. We're talking about the real tug-of-war we all face between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and how societal expectations might just be tipping the scales against us. But there's a silver lining – our journey to personal improvement and fulfillment of God's vision for our lives.
It's not just about personal success; it's about striving for a reward that won't tarnish or fade. This episode isn't just a look into historical texts; it's a modern-day call to action. Live out your values boldly, knowing that such a life can be a beacon for others in their quest for that imperishable crown.
Hey, what up? It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church. Welcome to our podcast. I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today. I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you. Enjoy the message.
Speaker 2:The New Year's resolution, if you've lived through New Year's before, is a common thing in America. So if you're new to New Year's, it goes like this I resolve myself to do something to better myself in some way. The most three common resolutions are and these are exact wordings. They're vague it's number one to lose weight, and number two is to exercise more and number three is to eat better. We're really hitting the trifecta there towards health. Towards what end, I'm not sure, but it will be good once we get there. I'll start with three stories about my own New Year's resolutions. I read an article once. It was from Harvard Health and it said the average person in America gains between one and two pounds a year for their whole lives, and that one or two pounds is typically gained between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And so then I jumped on a scale and, sure enough, I weighed 17 pounds more than when I graduated high school. I was like that's a cool trick. Maybe you're not concerned, I know I look like a beanpole, but I also work in data, so, like trend lines, you know, if I keep this up, guys, it's not a good, that's not good. As for exercise, when COVID hit, I thought to myself. I don't need a gym membership. I can do body weight exercises and I started a spreadsheet and I tracked my beginning and ending and starting up again and ending and beginning again and ending of some workouts, and so I got stronger and then got weaker, and then got stronger again and then got weaker, and this has been a reoccurring theme in my life. I haven't worked out for about a month and a half now, so that's good, but maybe 2024 will be the year for consistency for me, that's right.
Speaker 2:Positivity and finally, with diet. I don't actually really struggle with diet, I think, because I don't enjoy food as much as a normal person. I read food blogs and I'm like these people are having a great time and I don't get it. So that helps, but when I get stressed, nonetheless, I still struggle with chocolate. So every fall my wife gets some more makings because we have one of those campfire things in the backyard and you can do the s'mores with the kids, and so then when I get stressed and I work from home, I go upstairs and I eat one to six Hershey's bars and then my wife says Andy, like it really puts me in an awkward position when I offer s'mores and we don't have them, or she's more frustrated. You're literally stealing the children's joy.
Speaker 2:The thing is, no one sets out to gain a pound or two a year. No one plans. No one sets out. No one wants to lose all of their strength to gain over and over again. Nobody plans on eating sweets all the time.
Speaker 2:But here we are. In fact, if you compare desires, we all have similar wants. We want healthy relationships. We want a stable and growing career. We want to make a difference, we want meaning and satisfaction in life, and yet some people are able to say no to certain things. There's this welling up of a desire that we have and then we make a resolution and then competing desires kind of push that out. I want to be healthier and yet I also want to eat this donut. Maybe I'll only eat half a donut, maybe I'll eat the other half in 30 minutes, spreading out the donut intake game changer, and all of the time.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes these desires come down to what we want to be good for us in the future doesn't feel so great now, but what feels great now doesn't always work out so high for us in the future. So culture exacerbates this, makes it worse by saying follow your heart, listen to your desires. Well, my desires are conflicting. Which one should I do? Well, the one that you want more, or the one that expresses you best, or something like that. And here's the bad news, though it's like. Some desires, though, really are selfish. Some desires, deep down, not only undermine our own lives, but tear at the very social fabric of our relationships and our jobs and our communities. We have to say no to some things repeatedly and consistently, to become the type of people that we want. This talk is about self-control, that no to whatever it is that's blocking you from wanting to be what you want. This talk is about self-control, which is pushing down the urges and the desires that we have that undermine our future selves. And so this morning, we're going to talk about the nature of self-control from the Bible. We're going to talk about the power behind self-control in the Bible, and then I'll help you guys. I'll try to help so that you can keep your New Year's resolutions right. I'm on Team New Year's resolution this morning Nine.
Speaker 2:This series is about the fruit of the Spirit. It's in Galatians 5. This passage should sound familiar to you. It reads as follows the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control this list are character qualities that God Himself has and that he wants for us. They are great not only because God does them, but they are great because he gives us them. These aren't natural, by the way. Maybe you are successful with a few of them, but they aren't just something that you wake out of bed and you're like, oh perfect, I have a high character today. You have to grow into them, but the Spirit helps us. The Spirit gives us this power that we might bear this fruit. The list begins with love and ends with self-control, and that's important.
Speaker 2:Early on, you have this dichotomy in chapter 5, splitting up how we should use our Christian freedom. Do we use it to keep sinning? No, we should love, in verse 13. You, brothers and sisters, we're called to be free, but don't use your freedom to indulge the flesh or sin, not like your skin, but like the selfishness. Don't use your freedom to indulge selfishness. Rather, serve one another humbly in love. So love is where we're going, but you have to say no. You have to say no to the flesh. You need self-control in order to be a loving person. Now, in American culture, we hear freedom and maybe like helicopters, start in your mind and, like a Kreen's Clearwater revival starts playing or something.
Speaker 2:Freedom in the Bible is not specifically about individual rights that you have, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Freedom is literally talking about the spiritual battle that has been won on your behalf. So you used to be a slave to yourself. You could not do what you ultimately wanted to do. The things that you want to do, you can't do, and the things that you don't want to do, you do. Just like Paul says in Romans 7, it's this bondage of our wills, even our desires. We just keep getting folded back in on ourselves. How am I selfish? Oh, I'm selfish. Christ came in and ripped that apart so that now we are free to not sin. So Paul is urging us don't use that freedom to keep sinning. You should say no to the sinful desires. You should say no to the sinful desires.
Speaker 2:When I was a boy in school, I was told no repeatedly, but the very first that I remember is that I was making noise in the back of the class. If you've ever sat next to me in a meeting, you'll know that my tendency is to drum on things. I'm a fidgeter and I move, rocking back and forth depending on the engagement of the conversation. I have a lot of energy, but the teacher said no, andy, sit still. So I can just feel my body humming. But I'm going to be a good boy. That's actually good for me. Right, to be able to say no to the constant movement is a good thing. I know there's a movement and I kind of agree with it in America where we say like school's not made for young boys, which is kind of true. But it's still good for young boys to learn to sit still. It's still good for them to learn to say no to every impulse that they have.
Speaker 2:Right as for Christianity, as for the calling of those of us who follow Christ, like we can't. Just we got to get better control over our tongue, over our lust, over our thoughts. There's a lot of go, go, go in our culture. You know like if you have your phone out, it's a distraction, it's like a boring proof machine. You'll never be bored on this thing. You've got the internet a bunch of apps, tons of colors. It's real fun If we say yes when a co-worker slits us or if a boss says something really critical of us in a meeting and we say yes to that first comment out of our mouth or that first joke that we have as a combat. You know, as you're scrolling through social media and there's a as there always is someone who's very attractive right and you linger, you go back, or you scroll over, or you like or interact in the post you done goofed up your algorithm. It knows that you're attracted to attractive people and it's going to feed you what you want Go, go, go, go.
Speaker 2:We have to learn to say no. First application is neurologically, just saying no actually helps you say no in other places. If you think of willpower as a muscle, it helps to flex it, to break it down and to build it back up, and so I would encourage you to fast. I mean quite literally. I would encourage you to fast if eating we have delicious food all the time, readily available. There's always an occasion to celebrate with dessert. You know you have to push back against that, and learning to say no to overeating, learning to say no to eating whatever you want, is a good thing to learn. But I would encourage you to say no in different ways to all the screens that are in front of us. I'm not demonizing screens. It's. My job is to do spreadsheets. But if you're not in control of yourself, it's going to bite you somewhere else, and so you know to raise some fears. Metta Facebook has more PhDs in psychology on staff than any major research university in America.
Speaker 2:If you think that your phone is a neutral device, it is not. They are designing their apps to get your attention. This is a common misunderstanding, I hear in the world of data. People are terrified about losing their data, which is a fine concern. But businesses don't just want all this information. They want your attention. They want your time, the thing that's most valuable to you. They want you to interact in their app in the way that they would have you. Some might call that manipulation, others say good business. Tomatoes are a model. Right, okay, fasting, fasting, saying no, saying no to the go go go of our culture sets you up for a more balanced and better life.
Speaker 2:My wife and I I think I've shared this before my wife and I sometimes have disagreements on my screen use. When I get nervous, I said I eat chocolate, but it's not fall. There's not some more makings all the time. So my typical go-to coping mechanism, my typical cope, is numbing myself with screens, guys that would like oh, I'm going to learn something and I do. Twitter, the people that I follow very informative, lots of graphs, super cool and some of the stuff not so great. My wife said to me Andy, sometimes I feel like you love your phone more than me, and I got super defensive because that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. My phone costs, you know, like a thousand bucks without the trade-in stuff and it's like honey. Yeah, I love you more than my phone. But let me get back to Twitter. The constant distraction had a relational cost there, right?
Speaker 2:So if the world is telling us to go, go, go, but we are supposed to say no and no and no, how do we get the strength to do this? Like, how do we actually? If you've ever been tempted by certain sins, you know it's like these are strong desires that we have. How do we fight them? How do you combat these desires? I'm going to skip to a different Bible passage. We're no longer in Galatians, we're in Corinthians. It's a different letter that Paul wrote, and Paul is trying to defend his ministry. Paul is trying to say why he does what he does, and so I'm just going to read it through and then we'll go back. So in verse 23,. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings, all the stuff that he's doing, all the ministry. He does all of it for the gospel that he may share in the blessings Analogies.
Speaker 2:Do you not know that in a race, this is verse 24. Do you not know that in a race, all runners run but only one gets the prize? Running in such a way as to get the prize, everyone who competes in the games goes into strict chaining. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. The self-discipline that athletes go undergo helps them to say no to other things. They have strict training so that they might get the prize.
Speaker 2:One of the most frustrating things that I hear in sports commentary is the classic cliche they didn't want it enough. I just watched them. They didn't want it badly enough. It's like it's possible. You know, the Raiders this year didn't like their coach, they fired their coach and then they put up like 63 points the next week. You know, out of spite, I think that happens, but all forwhelmingly these are professional, professional career athletes who have spent not hours or days or weeks or months, but years contemplating how best to hone their bodies, to do exactly what would be beneficial for their teams at the right moment, in the right way. I don't think players are leaving it up to willpower, you know, on a Sunday or whenever they play. That's what Paul is saying. Theyrunners run for the prize, wrestlers they're trying to get a crown. They're not just wasting their effort. They're being very intentional about success.
Speaker 2:Ashton Eaton is an American decathlete and helet's do an interview. Once. He said the craziest thing to me because we're the same age. He retired in 2017, so this is a while ago but he said the craziest thing to me. He said I haven't seen a movie in 10 years. And I said one, just one movie, and I started thinking about it. He's missed IMAX. They have Dolby Digital, atmos, speakers, the like, plush leather seats that fully recline. He missed all of that. There's been some great movies in the past 10 years. This guy not staying with the times.
Speaker 2:Being an athlete affords you a certain amount of self-control, because if you value that prize, you go after it. I don't like comparing athletes saying like, oh, he wanted it more at this moment or something like that, but you can look into their lives and see all the things that they are sacrificing in order to win a championship. This is kind of like the Christian life. Paul is saying we run the race to win the prize. We don't just have a temporal crown, though. We have an internal one and, if you missed, in verse 23, he says he does all these things for the sake of the gospel, to share in its blessings.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the prize for Paul verses 26 and 27. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. There's a goal. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. That's silly. Boxers punch people. No, I strike a blow to my body. I discipline my body and make it my slave so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
Speaker 2:What prize? We've hinted at the eternal crown, and I already mentioned it for the sake of the gospel, to share in its blessings. But we hear that and think Paul is carving out for himself a little bit of salvation, sharing the blessings of salvation. But share there doesn't mean to get a small portion of it, means to share, to share in its blessings, the reason why Paul, one of the most influential leaders of all time, persevered through getting beaten, getting jailed Prisons weren't that great back then Didn't get three square meals Shipwrecked.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine how terrifying that would have been in the first century? Wooden ship starts breaking apart in the waves and you're out in the dark. And Paul keeps going. He perseveres for the sake of the gospel, the good news that Jesus has made a way out for us, that we don't have to do anything to earn our own salvation. Christ's blood pays for us and now we have a new way in Christ that's filled with love and self-control.
Speaker 2:Paul pushes that message out of the dark and he's going to go on and on. Paul pushes that message so that you all, so that we all, might share in it. That's what motivated him. When he talks about being disqualified from the prize, then he's not saying, oh, I wish I would have tried harder so I could have earned my salvation, but I didn't, and so I'm disqualified. It doesn't make any sense to what Paul believes. What he's saying is if he lives in a certain way, ie without self-control, then people will look in his life and be like you hypocrite, and it will keep them from seeing the beauty of Christ. That's what kept Paul going. May that be a motivator for us in 2024. How we live our lives in the self-control that we display might be a means for other people seeing how good God is.
Speaker 2:Paul learned that the key to self-control is that it's powered by what you love most. The higher good, the deeper truth, the more beautiful what you trust most is like an anchor for your soul. Aa gets this right. It's 12 step programs. Step one admit that you have a problem. Step two find a higher power.
Speaker 2:When you're stuck in addictions, you are, by definition, unable to save yourself. That's what an addiction is, outside of your control. Praise God that when we look to a higher power as Christians, that we don't just find some weird being, but one who's devoted to us in love, One who found us worthy to die for. If you're struggling with an addiction, then, like I would encourage you, admit that you have a problem. But that's just the first step. Right, god is waiting for you with open arms. You don't have to be stuck in shame and embarrassment, especially not in the church. We're a bunch of people here. The reason why we're here is because of the common grace that God has given us, praise God, but to be more practical here, our self-control.
Speaker 2:We shouldn't just learn how to say no to things and practice and fasting, we also need to learn how to be love-powered, how to be joy-filled, and this will give us the one-two punch that we're looking for. This is the motivator for Paul and this can be a motivator for us. In fact, it was a motivator for Jesus In Hebrews 12,. Same thing happened in the Bible In Hebrews 12, same running metaphor. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that he hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. That should sound familiar. That's self-control, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Running metaphor, verse two fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Jesus is the finish line and he also has run his own race. He's gone before us. Well, how did Jesus run it?
Speaker 2:If we're supposed to focus on Jesus and the love that he brings and trying to clear a pathway in our lives so that other people might see how beautiful God is, then what did Jesus do For the joy set before me? Endured the cross, all right. Was the cross his joy. No, he scorned its shame. Was sitting down at the right hand of the throne of God. No, the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father. He has always existed with the Father and the Spirit. He had perfect unity and love before he came to earth. So why did God send His Son? For you, for the joy set before me endured the cross For you. For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son that whoever would believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For you, when Jesus is beaten and broken, humiliated. Crown of thorns, sarcastic robe put up on a cross. Put up on a cross for you. For you, so that when we get into those no situations, we don't simply have all right, let's get some gumption, let's white-knucklet.
Speaker 2:Today, I'm gonna say no to that donut. I'm gonna say no to you know cursing or whatever it is trying to get over. We can say I'm gonna say no because of how much I love God, who first loved me. When I was in counseling, I talked to the story about I'm pointing to my wife. When I was in counseling, I talked to the story about my wife and this screen time versus her battle. I said it's ridiculous. Don't you think that she should just like, never say that again? And he was like, well, why don't you try, you know? Saying you know, throwing your phone to the side and saying, honey, I'm so sorry that you feel that way. I will always choose you over my phone. I said I don't need to say that, I don't need to, I don't need to say that, right? And he said. And he said, yes, you do, you do. This can happen in our own lives.
Speaker 2:When you're in the battle, when you're in the battle, pull God into it, let him do the heavy lifting. Say God, god, I don't want this, I want you Every day. God, I don't want this, I want you. God, you are more important, more beautiful, more mighty, more glorious than all of these things. And I choose you and see how God fights his battles for you, see if the Spirit works on your behalf for the good of those who love him. Of course he does. Of course he does this 2024,.
Speaker 2:Be powered by love and say notice him, let's make glorious the name of Christ together. Let's pray, heavenly Father, lord, we thank you so much for your word. Lord, we thank you so much for what you've done for us for your church, god. We ask that you would help us to grasp, with your church, how much you love us. God, that you would work in our lives, habits and self-control. God, that we would say no to those short-term bursts of pleasure that we might gain you. Instead, lord, that you would help us to become better people, spirit-filled people, for your glory in Jesus' name Amen.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you so much for joining us today. If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church. We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person. Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry. It's because of you that this is possible. You can click on the link in the description to give now or visit Fierce Church for more information.
Speaker 1:If you enjoy this podcast, why not subscribe? Share it with your friends? Click on the share button, take a screenshot and share it on social media or wherever you would share such things. Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it. Don't give up. Hang on to Jesus. He won't let go of you. Jesus loves you so much and we love you. I hope someday we get to meet in person. Thanks again for listening.