Staycation | Default Settings | PART 3

Praising the Lord is not the default setting at birth. Once we have full awareness of our "default settings" we learn how to have joy in the everyday. Join us as we challenge ourselves to change our default settings. Series: Staycation, Speaker: Pastor Jim Groves, Scripture: Psalms 103:1-22, Mark 12:28-31, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 2 Samuel 6, Luke 21:1-3, John 7:38-39, Video: https://www.facebook.com/avalonchurch/videos/396231907999935/, Sermon page: https://podcast.avalonchurch.org/sermons/staycation-default-settings-part-3/, Sermon Notes: 2020-07-05_staycation-part-3_sermon-notes.pdf, Discussion Questions: 2020-07-05_staycation-part-3_discussion-questions.pdf, Notes: Psalms 103:1-22 NIV 1 Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— 3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. 6 The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. 7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel: 8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. 9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; 10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; 14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. 15 The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; 16 the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. 17 But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children— 18 with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts. 19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all. 20 Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. 21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. 22 Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, my soul. Default Settings – we know what these are (printers, for example) In 2005 the brilliant author and professor David Foster Wallace offered the commencement address at Kenyon College in Ohio in which he spoke about default settings: “Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. "It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.” He continued: “[And so] petty, frustrating [stuff] like traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines in the grocery store give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be [upset] and miserable every time I have to shop. "Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way.” Wallace followed that with a clear statement to the seniors gathered that it’s a matter of choice to do the hard work of somehow altering or getting free of the natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. Wallace, who was raised by parents who were atheists, spoke of one more default setting: “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the best reason for choosing a God to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on. The insidious thing about these forms of worship is that they are unconscious. They are default settings.” Our message series, Staycation, is subtitled, “Chasing Joy in the Everyday.” Three years after his commencement address, at the age of 46, David Foster Wallace committed suicide He found no joy in the default settings King David pens Psalm 103 with a full awareness of default settings. Look at how he begins: Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits (Ps 103:1-2 NIV) -- Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits (Psalm 103:1-2 ESV) “Bless the Lord” or “Praise the Lord” is not the default setting at birth Praise should be but is not very often natural David writes an exhortation to himself – and shares with us as an example The Hebrew word for bless is barak and has a distinct meaning of expressing joyful gratitude as an enrichment of God That is, the praise (how...