Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: All right.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Welcome to Analog faith in Digital Babylon. Last week, we started stepping into this study of how our devices shape us specifically, and we talked a lot about our attention. We talked about how our devices are designed and created for the word that would be used in the social world for engagement. But what really happens to us spiritually is that it grabs our attention. And what has our attention typically, is what shapes and molds our hearts when it comes to living spiritually. Being in this world and of this world, we have to be very wise in how we perceive and how we use and how we position technology in our lives, and specifically with our cell phones, with our tablets, our devices that quote, unquote, connect us to the world. Tonight, we're going to continue the conversation about how our devices impact us and form us and shape us spiritually, and we're going to move in the direction of the idea of contentment. And I just realized that I had another image that I was going to put in here, and I didn't do that. The one of Scrooge McDuck. Anybody remember Scrooge McDuck? Oh, good. My people. I forgot. We started off with millennials being the highest population here, so I'm among friendly faces.
Who was Scrooge McDuck?
[00:01:58] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Donald's uncle. That's right. We went with Family Ties on that one. I like it. And what were some interesting things about Mr. Scrooge McDuck, the wealthiest duck of them all? Absolutely. Sonny Birch said, with the right kind of conviction, there he is, the greatest duck I've ever known. That's not true. Duckhead had a pretty prominent role in my life for many years as well. But Scrooge McDuck was so wealthy that he had a massive tower full of gold coins. And to me, the most magical trait that this duck had was he could swim in gold coins, which is remarkable, because when I first started watching Scrooge McDuck, I couldn't swim in water, let alone gold coins. But he had so much money, he was filthy rich. Who were his nephews?
Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Just the most fun trio name ever.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: And they would always want stuff, and Scrooge would have this tension of having all this money, having more than enough, but he was also a little bit of well, to count all of his coins, you would have known exactly how much he had. I don't know if it's true that he was based off of a Christmas Carol, but it seems probably likely a little less than subtle in the name there. Scrooge McDuck was a symbol of affluence, and I think when we take a look around in the community we live, there is quite a bit of affluence and abundance. We live in an age, a digital age, and this digital age has brought in an age of access. And we've talked about this phrase before that access to excess does not necessarily yield holiness.
Access to excess does not bring about inerrantly holiness. In fact, if you think about it long enough, it probably is counter to holiness in many ways.
How do our screens shape? Inform us when it comes to being a consumer or being content? Anybody in here an app developer?
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: I saw one hand that went up and then quickly went, we are going to talk about your people tonight. We're going to talk about not just apps, but just talk about how ease of access plays such a prominent role in our life. And with all due respect to the industry and those of you that are wonderful at your jobs, we thank you very much. Now let's roast them. Just kidding.
What do you think of when you hear the term consumerism or consumer?
[00:04:29] Speaker D: Getting stuff for yourself.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: Getting stuff for yourself. Okay.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: All right. What else?
What else?
[00:04:47] Speaker C: Storage units.
Madison, Alabama. Storage unit. Tire shop, car wash. Capital of the world.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: If they ever had one of those in one facility, I feel like we could fund a new building real quick doing that. I'm just throwing it out there.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: If you got a hankering to go into a new industry, we have a lot of stuff, and we have to have a place to put our stuff. So we build places that their entire role is just to house stuff.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Anybody think of consumer reports? Anybody else have stacks of consumer Reports and TV Guide growing up? Because you get them in, you'd read all the articles or look at the pictures like, oh, that's cool stuff. You'd research stuff. Consumer reports was a magazine that was very popular in the 19 hundreds.
Your dad had it. Exactly. Not you.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: No, I got you.
Well played. They're very smooth.
When it comes to being a consumer, there is this sense of collecting. There's a sense of gathering. There's a sense of self.
Self centeredness is a little bit different than self centric.
Can anybody give me your thoughts on what's the difference in being self centered in your thinking and being self centric in your thinking?
And if you're with us online, feel free to comment there in the discussion. We've got some folks that are watching that and they will make sure and get my attention and we can engage you as well. So we'd love for you to join us online. What's the difference in self centered thinking and self centric thinking?
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Or is there.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Anybody?
All right, well, we got 35 minutes to come up with an answer. We can do it. Feel free to call on Chat GPT if you like. This is a technology friendly class.
What is self centeredness? If someone is self centered, give me a description.
Selfish.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: All right. What else?
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Focused exclusively on their needs. What was the answer back here?
Everything revolves around them, fails to see what's going on around them with other people.
I would say a selfish minded person sometimes even is aware of other people's needs, yet still chooses their own needs. And I think that's the biggest difference between the two. Self centric thinking is sort of out of ignorance. You think only of yourself, but there's not necessarily like a malicious or a selfish intent behind I can't really use the word in the definition, but we did. I think of it as pre marriage.
I never tried to be intentionally selfish in my thinking, but if I was hungry, I would go eat where I wanted to eat because it was just me involved in the process.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: I got married and had kids, and now it's roughly an act of Congress to decide where to go eat.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: I realized once I got married that I was very self centric in virtually every aspect of my life. Because I could be, I didn't have to not be. When I started having kids, I realized how very selfish then I had become wanting that life back in so many ways.
Self centric thinking. Sorry, let's move on quick.
Selfish thinking and selfishness is a very scary place to be spiritually because I think it is a mentality that is antichrist. Who did what selflessly gave of himself, right? So it is anti. His essence, his whole purpose for being here was to come and be a sacrifice. So if we are selfish in our thinking and in our living and in our being, then that's not a good place to be. Self centric thinking.
Self centric thinking is something that sometimes happens when we're ignorant of other opportunities around us. Does that make sense? That give clarity?
So when it comes to being a consumer and having really easy access to a lot of things, I think the tendency there is for the technology to cultivate selfishness, which is not where we want to be. In fact, and I won't call out our software engineer who boldly raised his hand and then quickly put it back down when he realized he was the only one, which he's not the only one. I know that for a fact. But I believe that when you look at your technology or apps. And in particular, tonight, we're going to talk a lot about Amazon, only because it's just ginormous and impacts so much of our lives.
Amazon's, their approach is to take away any hiccup in the road between the consumer and what they're trying to consume.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:56] Speaker C: The things that they're trying to sell.
Amazon has a ridiculous reach in our country and globally.
They want globally what they have. Here a few stats that were a little bit eye opening to me today. Amazon currently has over 200 million Amazon Prime members around the world. Nearly 74% of those are in the United States of America.
We like our stuff. We got to fill up all these pods and all these storage places. If prime subscribers were a country, where do you think it would rank in population?
Raise your hand if you what? I'm sorry? Eigth. Way to read the Internet.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: I was going to make it a game. Good guess or good knowledge? 8th most populous country on the planet.
That's ridiculous.
That's a huge company.
It would be the 8th biggest. When you think about a company then, that has that many folks that are paying, these are prime members. These are not just people that use Amazon. These are just people that actually pay to use Amazon.
When you think about a company that has that kind of access into the lives of that many people, I think it would be really difficult to stay completely true to virtue. Would you agree?
Just curious. How is Amazon a part of your life? How often do you think you purchase something on Amazon in a month?
It should have been a cahoot, so you don't have to actually you could be anonymous. All right, let's say if you purchase something on Amazon more than five times a month, raise your hand.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: This is roughly 30 days. Consecutively.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: All right.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: Five times.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: All right.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: If you purchase something on Amazon probably more than ten times in a month, don't think of it as once every three days. Don't worry about that. Not a big deal. Not a big deal at all.
If you go to Amazon to research something more than five times a month, raise your hand.
There you go. You're the people that have 37 items in your cart introduce you to someone else who lives in my house.
All right.
If you've never purchased anything on Amazon in your life, please raise your hand.
Okay, good. We're going to throw stuff at you.
Amazon is all around and it impacts our life. How has it changed how you, as a consumer purchase things?
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Easier to impulse buy.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: Easier to why is it easier to impulse buy?
[00:12:46] Speaker D: Because you don't have to go anywhere to get it. Just click on and it's there.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: That's right.
In 32 days. Two days.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:54] Speaker C: Yeah. That's a lie. Used to be back in the good old days.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: What else?
[00:12:58] Speaker C: Prime Ship keeps you from having. I sensed a little vitriol there, my friend. Yeah. All right.
You don't have to dress.
Open mic night.
That's good. Yes, sir.
Read the reviews before you buy anything. And Amazon has reviews.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: Remember those Consumer reports?
Nobody has them on their desk anymore on their coffee table. Go to Amazon and you got to pay a subscription to Consumer Reports and all the hassle.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: What else?
[00:13:34] Speaker C: Yes, sir.
Price comparison very quickly. So in the off chance that you do go to Walmart, clearly very angry, and you go and you see something that you're interested in, you can very quickly then compare it to what's online.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Typically, what do you do if that's the case?
You get in your car, go eat dinner, and you buy it online. A lot of times, convenience has found its way, as I think, the most prominent pursuit in our lives.
When we're not thinking, when we're just kind of on autopilot, our pursuit then becomes the most efficient way to do something, the most inexpensive way to do something.
And convenience, we said at the very beginning, always comes with a cost.
The spur of the moment impulse buy is great when you're a window shopper, right? If you live in a big city or you live in a really small town and people walk up and down, if you're like, in Athens, where they have a city square, right? And there are shops that you can go and actually go into shops and feel like yesterday year, and it's wonderful. Well, there's window shopping that turns into impulse buying, but typically, if you have to interact with someone, you have to hand over money.
That's another little barrier. That's a little bit of a hindrance, a little bit of a bump, a little bit of resistance. You're probably going to buy less. And if you walk around the store, well, I guess it depends on who you are. You hold on to something, you realize, now I don't need it. Or by the end, you've got a full grocery cart full of food because you went grocery shopping hungry. Don't ever, ever do that, ever. It's not a good idea, especially with hungry kids. Don't do it.
When it comes to being online, there's no resistance. It's a click, and we don't feel the resistance there. There's not a guardrail there.
When it comes to living in a digital age, we're usually about a generation to two generations behind on realizing, hey, we need a guardrail, and we need it right here. I'll give you a perfect example.
Roughly, what, four months ago, in end of May 2023, the US. Surgeon General came out with a statement that said, social media is probably hurting our children. The recommendation was to not allow children to have access to social media until the age of 16.
Cool, man. Facebook became the Facebook.com when I was in college.
It's been a long time since I've been in college.
We've had a generation, almost two generations of lab rats running around that now have deep, deep addictions.
And they have a worldview that is now shaped and formed by convenience, digital convenience, as the way of life that they are supposed to choose, because at this point, it's almost the only thing they've ever known.
And now the Surgeon General says, by the way, we may want to pump the brakes. This might not be safe. I don't know if you remember in the late 1980s, 1990s, there was a really big ad campaign that came out against big Tobacco and said that also this is killing people. You should know that big old big old surgeon, almost as big as the actual label on the box, surgeon General's warning, this is known to cause cancer. This could kill you.
That research actually came out from one of the original attorney generals in the 1960s. I think it was 1964, was the first time we actually had academic journals saying, yeah, this is probably not good, but an entire industry spent a lot of money for decades trying to keep the public view of cigarettes is still something that was cool and something that was in every movie and every social part of life.
I'm not a tinfoil a hack conspiracy guy, but what I'm learning, the older I get and the more I mature in the faith, is that when it comes to life in this world, there is plenty more than meets the eye. And the greater the convenience, the greater the cost. Somewhere we are not called to a life of convenience. If you read through the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, where we see all of the literature that documents the life of Christ that we have available the inspired word of God, what God wanted us to know about his son and his daily life. There is nothing in those pages that would ever lead you to the conclusion that you were called to live a life of convenience. In fact, it is distinctly the opposite of that. It is quite inconvenient to live in this world as a spiritually minded person.
It is quite inconvenient. And that is exactly what we signed up for, because that is exactly what Christ died for.
The fact that we have access to these things, to this technology, to this convenience, does not mean that we need to wholeheartedly embrace it. And it doesn't mean that we should wholeheartedly shun it either.
Wisdom finds the balance between the two.
We don't have to have it. There are things that we can do very differently. If you don't believe me, just take an hour, hour and a half drive north. There's an Amish community not too far from here, just across the border in Tennessee that live a distinctly different lifestyle than everyone around them. It is possible, and now more than ever, you can do a lot of research on YouTube before you shun YouTube and all the electricity and then move out and live off the grid on your own.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: And then TLC or a E will come and make a TV show about you. It's a good cyclical thing.
We are in full control of the life that we choose to live. The job you have is not the job you have to have. The car you drive is not the car you have to drive. The homes that we live in, they're not the houses that we have to live in. But there is enormous pressure to deceive us into thinking that, absolutely, this is the way it is. Satan is a liar, but we forget he's a really, really good liar. What did Jesus say about the life that we are supposed to live? In Luke, chapter 18, verse 24, he says how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
Is Madison County. A wealthy county.
You bet you. By virtually every standard available, by every metric out there on a global scale. Shah on the scale of our country? Yeah. The scale of our state. Oh, yeah.
That's not the scale that we measured things by.
What is the purpose of the stuff that we have in our life?
Open question. What is the purpose of the things that you own?
[00:20:16] Speaker E: I think God expects us to use what he bless us with, to bless others, and to do what we can for, like our home, family, as far as teaching and training and all of that.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:29] Speaker E: I think it really all belongs to God.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: It all belongs we're his person.
[00:20:34] Speaker E: Then we need to be used as however he wants it used.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: That's right.
Our stuff is for Him because it's really his stuff.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: What else?
[00:20:47] Speaker F: I think some of it is also the fruits of our labor. So we're put on earth we have a job. Find your passion, whatever that is, your purpose on Earth. And there are things that we can enjoy because of the work that we've put in. So there's some things that may not always have a purpose, but I think in a roundabout way, it's all serving whatever our purpose here is, but also God's will in our lives to an extended will.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Okay. All right.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Just an accurate summary.
It is for whatever purpose God had put us here, and it is also for God's will.
[00:21:23] Speaker F: Yeah. I think of what Solomon has said, I guess both in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
I think about this stuff too sometimes. There's not always a purpose to some of the things that we have the opportunity to live a life and enjoy the spoils of our labor. But there's also what do we do with it. So we can waste it away or we can, like Ms. Gail said, use know, help other people know God's will in our lives, just what we choose to do. Just like with anything. It's nothing's necessarily good or bad it's what you choose to do.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Okay. All right.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: In a different approach, god just providing.
[00:22:00] Speaker D: What we need to satisfy our needs. Honestly, it should be rather than a fulfilling one. It's what we need live, exist right now.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Okay.
Do you think that you have more than what you need?
So what do we do with the excess?
This is a really hard question, and spoiler alert, I don't really have an answer, but I do think that the more we mature in Christ, the more we think about the line.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: How.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: We'Ve gotten so used to excess. We don't see it as excess anymore. That's really good.
What's that? It's what we need.
Why do we not see it as excess anymore? What changes?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:01] Speaker C: You get used to it.
[00:23:02] Speaker D: I think about for me, when I first got out of college and I made, like, $20, I thought that was so cool.
I'm in a full time position, and that's not a ton of money.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: That's lunch now, right? Yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker D: I was like, $20.
Yeah, you get used to that money.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: We just had a kiddo lose a tooth banner day $2 bill the tooth fairy brought him, we all agree, any amount of money there.
He found a quarter and a nickel downstairs yesterday. Well, the first one is $2. After that's, a quarter. Okay. So that's the current rate. Inflation, man. All right, back up. Don't judge me, Ms. Karen.
[00:24:01] Speaker E: Yeah, so I think, you know, when I was younger, it was more about acquisition and acquiring things.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: That's really interesting.
Yes. Right.
She said when she was younger, it was more about acquiring things and accumulating things. But as she's gotten older, it's more about downsizing.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: What do you guys think about that's? An interesting generational perspective.
[00:24:32] Speaker E: I think that we're all inconvenient equal necessity. So if we're inconvenient by something and we're convinced that that means and then that becomes.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: Oh, that's really good.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker E: Commercials are very bad.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: Right?
That's a really good observation. Wendell Berry is an essayist. He was a farmer for many, many years and has written lots of books that are really interesting. And one of the things he talked about is that when government is very successful, he put in the context of government, agriculture, and agroeconomy, those kinds of things. He said, when the government is successful at making you believe that the problem is also the cure, we've arrived to illustrate that there's an inconvenience here, that I now need this new object to take care of the inconvenience. Not to take care of a problem, not a solution to a problem, but to resolve an inconvenience. Social media is something that becomes very addictive by nature. Engagement is how success is measured. So we want full engagement. Engagement means your attention. And so if social media says you have a problem with something, well, you need to go to social media to gain the answer and to the solution, and it's cyclical here, keeping us trapped in this cycle of thinking. That's a really good observation. Yes, sir.
[00:26:19] Speaker D: And then there's no downside because, hey, I thought this out.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:29] Speaker D: And all that keep going all the time.
[00:26:34] Speaker C: Yeah. The lack of value and substance.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: So there's this idea of quantity over quality. Yes, sir.
[00:26:42] Speaker D: I think back to my grandparents.
My grandparents grew up being a Great Depression and for them it was almost like fearful.
They were afraid that they might need it and not be able to afford to buy it. Some of how we do our dictated by our upbringing and by the circumstances, if you have somebody financially, they.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: So Jesus said earlier in the Gospel of Luke, take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. Which Paul said, covetousness is what starts in I and ends with dollar tree.
This is the part where you finish the equation idolatry. Right. Covetousness is idolatry. So take care, be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. But if you've grown up in a life where you only have an abundance of possessions, then you feel like that is your life.
I've seen a couple of different responses to stuff. I've seen some people that have put very little value on stuff and so if something happens to it, no big deal, I'll move on quickly. I've seen other people that put a deep sentimental value on stuff and so they click all the things and they ascribe sentimental value to everything and so they keep all the things.
Both of those have their reasons for doing so.
I'm not here to judge you one.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Way or the other.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: My question is, how do we define wealth and how does loot 18 change how we live, how we accumulate versus use? The word stewardship has become a much more prominent word in my life over the last few years.
Particularly the more feeds malice you have to feed, the more crafty and clever you have to be at dividing out what is essential, what is necessary. We use the word essential a bunch about three years ago.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Who is essential? Who is not essential? It was all about trying to accurately identify what is necessary in our lives and in our businesses and in society and then that's how we navigated a really bizarre time. Did you have your hand? Yes, sir.
[00:29:01] Speaker G: I was just going to mention the comment about being influenced by your parents. My parents grew up in that depression and they didn't have a lot and they saved every single thing they ever had. And I gained some of that perspective in my own life. For example, this week I was cleaning out a shed and I ran across a sponge that I hadn't used in probably ten or 20 years.
And so I had to decide if I was going to throw that away or keep it.
And so I started to throw it away, and then I said, no, I'm.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Going to keep that right?
[00:29:31] Speaker G: I may need that tomorrow.
[00:29:32] Speaker C: If it's lasted 20 years, that's a good punch. That's a return on investment. That's good business there. Yeah, but you're right. There's this connection, and it's largely shaped, as we talked in the very first week, by what you experienced growing up. And so if your parents grew up in a depression, then that depression largely shaped how you will be as an adult. And sometimes it goes in the opposite direction because you were raised a certain way, you rebel against that right as you get older. So it has a huge influence one way or the other. In one Timothy six six through eight. Now, there is great gain in Godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. And Peyton, this gets to your comment, the essentials Jesus said in another place in the Gospel of Mark excuse me, Matthew. Go ahead and turn there to Matthew, chapter six. He talked about God supplying the necessities of life. Oh, yes, the bare necessities of life. Again, it's the life stage I'm in. Leave me alone.
Go ahead and open up to Matthew, chapter six. Before we get there, I want to read this quote real quick. We've created a digital world in which it is increasingly easy to imagine that reality is something we can manipulate according to our own wills and desires, and not something that we necessarily need to conform ourselves to. Now, this was not written in a spiritual context. This was observations about the digital age from a secular just from a worldly standpoint.
But the comment there is that in a digital world, it is increasingly easy for us to create a reality that is separate. Let's just jump in separate and apart from reality.
That's the challenge of digital spaces. When we completely exist in the digital realm, there is a sense of detachment from this realm, reality and true reality. Now, for the Christian, there's another alternate reality, not alternate true reality that we actually live according to, and that is the kingdom of God.
And Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. And John says, do not love this world, nor the things in this world, for the things of this world are passing away. Do not store it for yourself. Treasures, don't put your heart, don't invest in the stuff of this world to then be consumed by this world.
We are called to a different reality. We did an entire series at the beginning of this year on the Book of James, and you remember the title of that sermon series was You Have Called Me Higher. We have been called to a higher reality of living.
When we settle for the stuff of this world, we do that. We settle and we begin to conform ourselves. So Matthew, chapter six in verse 25.
Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns. And yet your Heavenly Father feeds it. Are you not of more value than they?
Right before this, he said, you cannot serve two masters.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:32:46] Speaker C: And that word mammon, there's a lot of controversy of what that actually means.
Wealth is in that discussion. You cannot serve this pursuit of money and this pursuit of God, or this pursuit of wealth and this pursuit of stuff and this pursuit of worldliness and this pursuit of God. You can't do both.
How we view our stuff is vital. How we define the words want and need are vital.
It's important because if we say we want something excuse me. We say we need something, but it's really a want, then we're deceiving ourselves based off what we just read. If it's a need, what will God do?
He will supply it. Philippians, chapter four, verses eleven through 13. Paul says, I have learned to do what? To be content, whether I have a little or have a lot. This was the original inspiration for JLo. Used to have a little. Now I have a lot. No matter where I go, I know where I came from. Jimmy from the block.
I'm pretty sure that's where it came from.
Paul understood a wide spectrum sorry, I lost several of you. There a wide spectrum of life circumstances. His point there is the circumstance does not impact the faithfulness. Think about Acts Chapter 16.
Paul has divided from his original missionary buddy. And now Paul and Silas go off on their journey. This is a second missionary journey. He wants to go to Asia. Holy Spirit says, Nah, I'm going to go to Macedonia. I got plans for you there. Meets Lydia. Sell her a purple. Has wealth.
She's converted her and her entire household. And her household now becomes a church building because it's big enough to house people.
He keeps going, and he finds himself falsely incarcerated. And at midnight, in the middle of the night, he and Silas are singing out loud for all to hear. Elf reference. In the midst of that, there's an earthquake. All of the chains fall off. All of the prisoners are free to go. What do they do?
They stay.
What happens? A man's life is saved. A Bible study happens among him and his entire household. And now we have the Philippian jailer. Circumstances did not impact the faithfulness of Paul. Whether he was falsely incarcerated or whether he was living a life just making it big, selling Coleman tents. It's a tent maker. Either way, he was good because he was with God and he knew that God would provide whatever is needed. You fast forward towards the end of his life, he appeals to Caesar. He's on his way to Rome because God says, I need you to testify on my behalf in Rome to Caesar. He is the prisoner again and the armed guard that are with him on this boat are wigging out because there's a storm. And Paul says, Listen, you keep throwing stuff overboard. That's ridiculous. Listen to me. You will be saved tonight if you do what I say. Because God has promised me something. And regardless of my circumstance, even on a boat in the middle of a storm, I'm confident in who my God is. I'm not confident in my circumstances. That's not where it comes from. That's not where my joy comes from. It comes from God and from God alone. Speaking of joy, Marie Kondo has done a phenomenal job of creating an empire based off of sparking joy. Never met her, I assume she's lovely, her shows are very peaceful.
But the idea of sparking joy is not necessarily where we need to be when it comes to spirituality. So sorry, Marie Kondo, you're wrong.
What I mean by that, she's delightful, so I can't really be that hateful. But what I'm trying to say here is the idea of a spark is a brief, momentary it's that impulse fight that's a spark of something. What we are trying to do is to cultivate joy and to cultivate contentment.
To cultivate something we've talked about this analogy is to mend the soil in gardening. That's not just dump the bag and go.
That's thinking through what the soil needs, providing that nutrients, mixing it together, creating an environment that is ripe for growth, creating a place where healthy roots can be established.
How do we cultivate contentment in our lives? It may be that we don't need the Amazon app on our phone. If it is not cultivating contentment in our life, we can easily send supplies to people in need across the globe, which is fantastic.
But if the other, however many thousands of hours in the day we're sitting there and we're going through and really I do I need that. That would be great. I need that. Oh, that would be super nice. I need that. If it's not cultivating contentment, or better yet, if it's not cultivating the fruit of the spirit, then it's not something that needs to be in our lives. How does social media cultivate the fruit of the spirit?
Shifted gears from Amazon real quick.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:39] Speaker D: I think of people like Sandra Moore. I know every Sunday she goes on and posts pictures all around the world of people that have been baptized and spreads. That good news. The joy of that I think there are positive ways to use that social.
[00:37:57] Speaker C: Media to do that. The communication of things that we would not otherwise know about is instant and global. We can literally go into all the earth in ways that we've never been able to do before. And thanks to Starlink, we can get even more countries and more places.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:12] Speaker C: It continues to advance. What else? What's another way that it cultivates fruit of the Spirit? Yes, sir.
[00:38:21] Speaker D: Facebook.
So it allows access even if you don't have access to church building, whether you just can't leave your house or like me last week when I go to work, it gives you the ability to still be part of your church.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: That's right. Flattery. The teacher will get you everywhere in this class.
[00:38:45] Speaker G: What else gives me the opportunity to work on patience?
[00:38:48] Speaker C: It gives you the opportunity to work on patience. Well, bubba, voting is coming right around the corner, so get ready to flex that muscle real quick. I want to go over a few questions that I think are helpful when deciding whether something, whether it's an app, whether it's social media, whatever it is, if it's cultivating contentment, how does this cultivate the fruit of the Spirit of my life? Very first place to start, we know the fruits of the Spirit, the evidence that the Spirit of God is with us, that we are growing in Christ. Does this cultivate that, does this make me more effective in the kingdom? If so, how so? How can I use this, especially when it comes to being a consumer, how can I use this to share with other people? How does this purchase or how does this moment, how does this mindless scrolling? How does this make me more like Christ? Would God consider this a need or a kingdom resource when it comes to purchasing? That's a really convicting question to ask.
And I do think sometimes he gives us the opportunity to kind of share our own ideas there, to choose what we desire. What job should I take? What job do you want? Maybe as a place to start.
Maybe that's what it comes down to. If you can glorify God wherever you are, is there a benefit to glorifying God here or here? There's not a clear answer. Then maybe it's just where do you want to work?
It's difficult, I think, to discern sometimes when we're in pursuit of God's will, but we don't always know if it's our own heart playing tricks on us. Because Proverbs tells us that our hearts, they have their own mind sometimes that aren't always centered on God.
Which is why spending as much time as possible sorry about that in God's journal.
You ever thought about the Bible as the journal or the diary of God? He gives us insight into how he relates and loves his people. He gives us insight into what his vision for our lives is going to be and is. Sometimes we approach it as a history book or as a list of do's and don'ts. And there's some of those elements maybe to it, but I think it's more about the character and the essence of who our Creator is, which in turn, then is the character and the essence of who we are to become.
If we're not asking deeper questions about the stuff in our life, then I'm afraid that we might be. As Brandon was saying, we're just starting to kind of blend in because it becomes so loud over and over and over again, and eventually it's normalized.
Remember the definition of the word normal? That has to do with frequency.
It has nothing to do with right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, holy or unholy. It's just frequency.
You can grow up in a home where physical and emotional abuse is normal. It is not holy. It is not helpful. It is not healthy, but it is frequent.
We live in the midst of a world that is not holy and it is loud and it is nonstop. And if we plug into that world all the time, then that is what we're going to hear resonating. And eventually Scripture is no longer going to sound distinct again. Back to Brana's. Comment. What is meant to be set apart is very slowly, sometimes and very subtly going to be something that is very, very common, and that is the opposite of the life that we are called to live. We are not called to convenience. We're not even called to easiness. In fact, he says it's just the opposite. If they hated me, why would they not hate you as well?
I hope that these questions and these verses will give you some things to think about and contemplate this week. Find time to discern. Create space to not be consumers, but to be people who think deeply about what God has given us. Let's pray, and we'll be dismissed. Father, we're thankful for the opportunity to gather in Your name tonight. We thank you especially for the wisdom You've given us, for the direction You've given us to follow. Help us to become wiser at discerning Your will for our lives. Help us to become wiser in how we spend our money, our time, and invest in our relationships. Help us to become better stewards of everything in our lives because it all belongs to you, and it is for Your glory. We love you, and we thank you so very much for continuing to transform us into the image of your Son. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
