So last week, I kind of, I made a decision when we started the church a few years ago that I was always going to be vulnerable with y'all. Last week, I maybe remember me sharing something where I said I'm gonna need y'all's help, trying to get out of a practice of crashing and into a better practice of resting. And I shared with y'all my dilemma about YouTube and my iPad. Y'all remember this?
I said how I got into the bad habit of watching 45 minutes of YouTube for I went to bed in bed at night. Well, Monday morning, now Sunday night I did not watch YouTube in bed. Monday morning I was reading my Bible on my iPad, I got to do most mornings, and my iPad took the fall that has taken it 50 times probably. And it ended up completely destroying the iPad screen.
And so that helped out with my quandary. And I decided, you know what, I don't really need this. This maybe is a way that I can begin better practices about 12 hours later. I asked him, listen, we're not old iPad that we bought 10 years ago.
I'll tell y'all right now, a first gen iPad does not ruin anything. But I've got one for collectors, I don't maybe. But we get into these things that we worry about. And this series that we're in right now, I just called Living at the Edge.
And it's about living a fulfilled life versus a full life. Think about that. Think about what those differences are. Living a fulfilled life instead of a full life.
A lot of times our own actions, we end up creating a full life. And full lives have the ability and the potential to drain us. And so today we're talking about something that came up significantly in the survey work we did for the series. If you're not been here yet, we did a lot of hard work and we ended up about over half of our average Sunday morning attendance.
It gave us feedback on the places in their life where they feel like they need more margin. And the word that came up more than anything else was worry. How many of us struggle with worry? Do I have any professional warriors here in life?
Do I have anybody in here that there's nothing to worry about that will create something to worry about? My wife does that and I tell her don't get apocalyptic. But as I joke about her with that, I realize that I make the exact same statements and things in my own life that she does. We're all chasing something.
We are all chasing the things that will cause us not to worry. And what we're going to try to talk about this morning is just asking ourselves the questions on where do we find self-dependence? Where are the ways that we try to fix worry in our lives? And instead we find out as we're just depending on our self way too much.
Because you're saying worry has the biggest ability of anything to control us. And we can convince ourselves and trick ourselves to these are good things to worry about. So this is what happened. This is one of the reasons I'm glad that my op-hat died with YouTube.
Because anybody else here have a YouTube problem? Okay. Okay. I'm one of the rare ones.
Okay. This is the frustrating thing. They figured you out and they run commercials. And so in the commercials, if anyone else finds out the pre-roll commercials being very frustrating and very aggravating, there's a new one that I'm kind of glad my op-hat broke because I don't have to watch it all the time now.
But I managed to grab it. So this is one of the new pre-roll commercials that YouTube was showing me consistently until I broke my op-hat. Saving is absolutely cheap. Yeah.
What happens if you want to buy a house? That can be a big chunk of change. Good thing we're thinking about it now. You want to plan for things like inspection fees, closing costs, escrow.
When I'm in that mid-century modern, I want to strike while the iron top. If only we were born knowing how to plan for life's big expenses, start saving today. tia.org. See that makes me mad.
Because they trick you with cute kids. And some five-year-old saying the word escrow is going to be adorable every time. But we worry about that. I got a conversation this morning with somebody.
We're talking about folks at our age, I'm 37, what's the next 30 years going to look like? We worry. Our worry has the biggest ability to control us. I want to think about this one thing.
A fulfilled life is not about relief, but it's about release. The thing we choose to worry about, our prayer is that we will find relief from them. Instead, what it looks like for us to realize that we need to find release inside of them. We know our times are worries reveal our biggest hidden devotion.
It's the biggest place where we want to try to find the security in this dependence that we think we can fix things ourselves. But how many of us realize it's never good enough and we just get these new cycles of worry. What's interesting is, in all of our conversation and research, four people, I know a lot of you took this survey, 68 people took this survey. There's a couple of places for short answers.
What's really interesting is one question, one of the short answer questions, four people, exactly. Punctuation, capitalization. And I went back to Chexie, this was a glitch and it wasn't. Four people, their exact response to the question on what do you worry about the most, said worry less, comma, focus on family more.
Like that, exactly, to worry less, worry less, worry has its capacity to control us. We're going to look in the Gospel of Matthew to a story of a man who's interacting with Jesus. We're going to find our conversation this morning about release and not relief. So Matthew chapter six, it's going to screen behind me.
You can use your Bible or your phone as well, but I'll start in verse 24 and we'll read to the end of the chapter. This is what it says, no one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other. You'll be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money. That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food or drink or clothes to wear isn't life more important than food in your body more than clothing. Look at the birds, they don't plant or harvest or store food and barns for your heavenly father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are?
Can all of your worries add a single moment to your life? I'm going to read that verse again. Can all of your worries add a single moment to your life? And why worry about your clothing?
Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing. Solomon and all of his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for the wildflowers that are here today and turn to the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.
Why do you have so little faith? So don't worry about these things saying what we eat, what we drink, what we wear. These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly father already knows your needs. Seek the King of God above all else and live righteously and he will give you everything you need.
So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today. Now this passage is kind of, I get nervous about it. And as we were getting ready this morning, I realized the second to the M word, the money word comes up, some of you have all right brooks, I'm going to talk about it.
Maybe this is the Sunday, I should have gone to the camp. Taking advantage of the fact that opening gun weekend for kids, also learned if you're a veteran, you could get early a week of hunting in this week. Some of you right now are like, he said money, he said worry, I'm nervous, we should not have come this week. It's also, I've heard this before that makes more sense to me than I read the gospels, but if you want to know why people decide to kill Jesus, it's not that hard when you listen to the words he says.
Like sometimes it can be a little off-putting, like did he really just say that? Not so much in Matthew, but in a lot of times Jesus ends up sounding like a jerk. And he says, this is shocking, like what was going on here. In this passage it makes some of us like, it makes it sound so simple.
Like I've got real problems in my life, you're talking about wildflowers. I'm trying to get into my wildflowers in my heart right now. But our anxiety has the ability to keep us divided. That's the passage I'm talking about.
This passage is talking about divided focus, about divided lives, about divided soul. This is no one can serve two masters in the original language. This is no one can be a slave to two masters. No one can serve one, no one can serve two things absolutely.
Our worries, our nervousness, our anxiety over provision has the capacity to divide us. No matter how good we might think that we're working on that. Verse 25, Jesus says that is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life. See these next verses, it's easy for us to read into this and I think it's simplistic and he's trying to give us this opposite view and we all need to start wearing sack cloths and be poppers and give everything away and a tent in a field.
We go to that dark place, we get apocalyptic with this passage. It's like you're asking me to do all these crazy things, it's impossible to do. Jesus is trying to communicate to us. I want to give you a pathway to a world where different things matter.
To where numbers add differently. To where provision looks different. To where me having the things that my family and me need to thrive is functioning off a dramatically different equation than what it's like when I feel the need to be absolutely self-sufficient. Jesus is saying I've got a different world.
And the answer to that world is not living with nothing in the middle of nowhere. Jesus talks about food and drinking clothes. It's whatever is required, whatever is needed for us to be functioning, for us to be thriving, for us to be in a place. What Jesus is talking here is about what does it look like for us to begin expressing dependence upon God.
It's easy for us to allow folks to take care of like an ancillary issues in life. Am I right? Something doesn't matter that much to you, it's easy to farm off. Anybody ever been called a control freak before?
Or a micromanager? When something matters to us a lot, it's really tough to let go. To let somebody else. And think about what's the toughest thing, what's the thing that stresses us about the most?
Is us providing for ourselves or us providing for those we love in our family. It's a tough thing for us to be willing to let even that deep part of us go. And the first step that Jesus is talking here is just by finding the freedom to release ourselves from self-dependence. That's true freedom.
The freedom to say I'm not going to worry about the things that worry me the most. I'm going to pray and live in a world where there's that little anxiety in my life I can turn over the most important things to someone else. Jesus is telling us here, he's like I want to teach you about a different type of abundance. Verse 33, he says to seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and he will give you everything you need.
So all this we can think about just greater clarification. What does it mean to understand the kingdom in this way and the way that Jesus is talking about here. And actually there's a story later on in Matthew and it's another one of those awkward stories that makes us feel kind of bad. It's like the other piece of the Bible in Matthew that you want to throw something out when I read it out loud.
Trust me, you can go get your phone out. You can chunk it out. This is what it says Matthew chapter 19. Someone came to Jesus as the question, teacher what good deed must I do to have eternal life.
Why ask me about what is good Jesus for? I'm not one who is good but to answer your question if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments. Which one is the man asked? In Jesus reply, you must not murder, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not testify falsely, honor your father and mother, love your neighbor as yourself.
I have a bad all these commandments the young man replied, what else must I do? Jesus told me if you want to be perfect, go and sell all of your possessions and give them unto the poor. You will have treasure in heaven and then come follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sad for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, I tell you the truth, it's harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. I'll say it again, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle and for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. I tell you the truth, the kingdom of God. Our internal division can keep us from seeing the greatest things in the world.
It's not about us not having anything, it's not about Jesus saying I want my folks to be like Baroque driving like a Fred Flint stunt car or having a ride a bike everywhere. He's saying I want you to understand abundance in a radically different perspective. I want you to understand what it is like to take advantage of what you have in a radically different perspective. Jesus tells this young man, he says if you want to be perfect, this word perfect is actually a different word.
He says it's not about the wholeness, it's not lacking in any way, shape or form. What Jesus is really saying is if you want to have everything, you need to have nothing. Our language doesn't come across as easy, but an original language which Jesus tells us is if you want to have everything, you must have nothing. If you want to have it all, you need to be willing to give it all.
So abundance perspective is drastically different. In the kingdom of God, it's a tough story. But think of that, the paradox to become whole, we have to be willing to empty ourselves. To stop worrying, we need to be willing to give up everything we worry about literally.
To say you can come into every single piece of my life, even the pieces which I feel like I need to hold tightly and control no matter what. This isn't about relief, but it's about release. Relief is when we want someone to come in and just simply fix our problems. The only problem I've noticed, this is my own life, when I have to have somebody come in and I'm a proud person, I don't like to do this very often.
When I have someone come in and fix something for me, now I'm going to probably get myself in that pickle again. Because I've just found relief. I've just fixed something. I didn't actually solve it.
Release is when we realize what it takes to have us never in that situation again. And the solution isn't us going outwards and solving. There's this tension in these passages. There's tension across all this stuff.
Anytime we talk about worry and money comes alongside of this because the thing that more people say they worry about than anything else in our survey work was money. I worry about money. I worry about retirement. I worry about money for my kids to go to college.
I worry about money. Money is the cause of some of our greatest worries. And that's why these conversations that just go hand in hand, but Jesus doesn't want us to liquidate things. If we liquidated, we would have nothing to help others to be part of the healing of nations.
We wouldn't have the ability to go part and be alongside of God's mission. We would be so focused on our own subsistence. This is not about us not having. This is about us having and going.
If we want to be fulfilled, if we want to live a complete life, we need to reorder our minds about the ways that we think about what gives us and what steals. And what steals our own sense of security. What gives you a true sense of security? And what steals your sense of security?
And nine times out of ten, I've found that I have to look internally in my own life to do that. So two things to think about is we try to internalize this. The first one is this. What are we chasing?
What are we chasing in our life that gives us true security? What are we chasing in life that gives us false security? It's about us finding that relief from self-dependence. So this rich young man or the young ruler in some translations, he falsely thought that his completeness was tied to his consumption.
He didn't get the fact that Jesus was telling him to get everything he needed to be willing to lose everything. You know, forty percent of y'all in the survey said I consistently wish I had more money. And all the places where there are short answers who come into play, I did not hear a single silly answer. There's not a single person that said, you know, I really just want a sixth car.
There's nobody that said, well, I think I need three boats. It was a, I need to make sure that my family can do the things that we feel like we need to do. The money piece of this is central. We think back to these words of Jesus that we will be able, we will not be able to find security when our hearts are divided.
This is about us just simply saying I will let you go into every single depth of who I am. A lot of times when we talk about giving, the church one of the things I often say is that giving is one of the toughest parts of discipleship. Because it's not tied to the fact that it's our money, it's tied to the fact that it's our security. That's this ability we have to fix things, this ability we have to not have problems.
My dad told me a story just a few weeks ago that when I was a kid, he was living in New Orleans, going to grad school, and mom was living in Alexandria, and he finished his last class for his doctorate degree, and we should drive him back to Alexandria in my mom's 1965 Mustang. This was in the mid 1980s, that was not a classic car, it was an old junky car at that point in time, it wasn't old enough to be cool yet. He got pulled over in some tiny little town between Baton Rouge and Alexandria, and the police officer shook him down for his last $10. He said, how much money do you have on your son?
Give me $10, don't write you the ticket. He freaked out how he literally lived in Pineville at the time, and he knew that no matter what, if you've ever been to Pineville, it's just one big hill. He knew that he could make it to the top of that hill, he could put that Mustang in neutral, and get the last three miles of the drive home. And he literally lived on dawn drive, and dad said the last three quarters of a mile, he put it in neutral, and he just ran a couple stop signs and was able to pull in, that was absolutely no gas.
See, is this 2017? Our perspective on security has completely changed, because most of us carry one or two or three or four or five things in our pocket made out of plastic, that in theory can fix everything. But many of us know that that action of fixing ends up hurting. It's not about money, this is about security and worry, and us having the ability to fix things ourselves.
Jesus, in older translations, he says, doesn't say money, or he says, mammon. Some of you might be familiar with this, he grew up King James kind of church, like, no one could love both God and mammon. When Jesus said mammon, he's actually ascribing a deity to this. He's speaking of it literally as it is a false God.
He's talking about it in terms of idolatry, which is us giving something else the ability to give us security and power in life. What are we chasing? Jesus came to set the captives free. And part of setting the captives free, affering us from slavery to sin and death, is freeing us from the anxiety and the worry over us chasing something, all times.
Next thing is just this, what are you stewarding? Every other sermon so far in this series, we've gone back to this first couple of chapters of Genesis. We realize this original way that we're created to live and to function and to work, and we see that Adam is given the role of being a steward overeat in by God that we are created to be stewards. We are created to love and to care and to create and to form and to cause things to happen.
And the beautiful thing is even when sin entered this world, our desire and our ability to be stewards did not go away. It's that essential to who we are, is men and women, essential to who we are, is humans. And the best way for us to fight the empty spaces of worry in our life is to simply fill them with Jesus. And when our minds turn to anxious thoughts for us to turn them instead of what we feel he's calling us to do, that when we're worried about time, we ask ourselves the questions like, I did last week, how am I wasting time in a way that's not stewarding anything?
I'll tell you what, I do not need to watch 50 minutes of barbecue videos on YouTube at night, because I'll get fatter. Alright, for a while it was skydiving videos, and then if my eyes reach a terminal velocity that's on parachute, you cannot simply overcome. Or the truck videos where the two big trucks are trying to tuck to the Chevy versus the forward, it's like I do not need to watch that. When we're worried about having enough time, we ask ourselves the question, am I simply making the most of my time?
When we're worried about resources, we ask ourselves, am I giving enough resources for me to not feel self-dependent? Are my eyes being opened to invest in places where I can make a difference? For many of us worry and anxiety simply simply simply feel that we're alone in the world, and about placing ourselves in positions where we can steward new things happening in many different fields that we find that emptiness is being filled with something dramatically different. At the level that we can, we need to be investing in this new world.
With our talents, with our prayers, with our service, with our abilities, with our skill sets. We also think about what relationships we have. Where can we go into places where we can be a non-anxious presence? I remember when I first started ministries, when my mentor told me, you're number one job is to not ever be anxious.
Am I responsible if you've ever met me before? Some of you all know this, like in 2008 with the stock market crash, I got terrified and I'd watched red dawn too many times, and I started hoarding shotgun shells in water. Every time we went to Walmart, I got about to get chills. I'm still kind of cutting off those chills, I think.
What does it mean for us to be a non-anxious presence? How can we think about this? Think about what does it mean to cause the kingdom by you simply being the non-anxious presence of Christ. Some of you might say, Chad, my office is crazy right now, or where I work is crazy right now, everyone's terrified about something.
Well, here's the thing, if everyone's terrified about something, you just need to be, it's like getting chased by an alga, you need to be the second slowest. Think about what it would mean if you simply became the second for most anxious person in the place. And for some of us, that's a win. What does it look like for us to realize that we have the ability and the privilege and the call in our lives to be not warriors?
And the answer to finding the space of not worry is simply to insist upon pushing Jesus into those spaces that used to be occupied by our worry. That's tough for some of us. That's really tough. Some of you are saying, Chad, you don't know what my anxiety is like right now.
You don't know what my medicine is right now. You don't know about the two hours I spend a week in my counselor's office right now. You all tell you right now that worry might be the biggest spiritual battle that any of us ever have to deal with. Where's an old blues singer?
Sometimes it's a knife fight, a phone booth. This is the deepest level of discipleship that we have is to literally hand over our anxiety about everything that Jesus completely. Because we've been trying to fill it. We've been trying to just handle it by being full.
And that's not being fulfilled. Are you praying for relief? Or are you causing relief? That's the question for us to think about this morning.
And what Jesus offers us is dramatically different from the way that we would choose to fix it ourselves. It's a holy spirit. Help us find these places of release. Help us to know what it's like to put a nail in the things that we've worried about for years, for some of us for decades.
Jesus, there's things in our life that some of us that are worried might be the thing that defines us the most. We're tired of that label. We're tired of that stigma. Jesus, some of us, we hear about this freedom.
We read about it in scripture. We sing about it in songs. And we just don't know if it's true or not yet. And God, I'm praying for my friends that have that emotion right now.
Jesus, I'm praying for you to just help them take a baby step in deeper. For us all to release just enough anxiety to feel what it's like to let you come in. That when we say Jesus is big enough, we grow in our understanding about that, about how we experience you. And what I'm praying for, whatever worry is sitting on all of our hearts, this morning for us to find the true freedom and fulfillment that you have promised us.
Who would cover over us in your love? Help us to see what it's like to live with every single part of ourselves open to you. And we pray. Amen.