Do any of you have that friend that always gives you a complicated answer to a simple question? You know that guy do y'all know who that guy is? It's like you somebody might ask you know we need to be prepared for how income Tuesday night Do we need to give away full-size Reese's peanut butter cups or full-size knickers bars and that guy's answer is always yes? I'm a fan of the yes answer But there's times in our life where we want simple answers right think about where the places that you go to in life And that you really want a simple answer when I go to the mechanic.
I want simple answer Does anybody like a complicated answer from mechanic nobody likes a complicated answer from the mechanic it's like it's complicated It's like I'm trying to figure out of what's going on it work when we ask somebody hey can this be done by date? We don't want a complicated answer. We want to yes or no when we're in school I mean I remember when I was in school and I was in school for a long time I was talking with somebody the other day. I managed to squeeze a four-year bachelor's degree into seven years And then I squeezed a three-year master's degree into five years and and somebody said you know and they tried to The classic Chris Farley line off the college for seven years And so my so we know people usually get paid a lot of money for this school for that long ago I certainly missed that boat But I can school always ask myself the reason I stayed in college for seven years I'll be very honest with you is because I was a dummy and decided to take my first math class on year five of college Like I always ask myself.
I'm gonna talk about my friends that are younger than me right now How many of y'all have been in school and said do I really need to learn this? Guys, thank you for your honesty. We've been right there before okay. We do I really need to know this already to learn this happens in school Um, it happens in relationships sometimes we ask somebody listen can you be there for this?
I just really need you to be there. Can you be there? Yes or no? I don't need something long and drawn out.
I realize I am and bad about this because I'm guilty sometimes of complicated answers And it's something that I think about a lot when I talk with folks when I talk with my friends But today we're talking about a complicated answer to a simple question for the last five weeks We've been in a series we call living at the edge and having conversations about what does it mean to have a fulfilled life instead of a full life Where is it full life or just jam-packed with the things that distract us the things that frustrate us the things that stop us from What matters most the things that stop us from the time with our family the things that stop us from having enough time at work to feel Like we're doing something accomplishing the thing that we realize we get ourselves in a stressful money situations that our full lives Have the ability to make things too full and a fulfilled life is very different from a full life One of the things we've also talked about though is that there's a spiritual dimension to our worries But there is a spiritual dimension to how we have anxiety about time about money about our relationships And today we're in this last a lap and we're talking about worry We're just gonna talk about worry that worry showed up so much We surveyed the folks here in this room before we did this series and we got back a gigantic response a very good Survey said the word that kept popping up more and more and more when we asked people to provide information was worried I'm worried I worry so much we're talking about worry today to finish this up But what we've realized over these last few weeks is this is that a fulfilled life means radically different expectations about what life will be full of and Today we're thinking about what does it mean for a fulfilled life to be full of fantastic things But first I want us to look about where worry entered the world about where the first time we hear about worry and how this worry affects us In Genesis chapter 3 verse 8 we've also realized this is first few chapters of Genesis give us so much information about where stress and anxiety stem from And how they affect us this we read in Genesis chapter 3 so the screen behind me or you can read your Bible Or you can go on your phone, but if you're going to make sure you check it on Facebook first But this is what it said I can use that every six weeks That's about how long that joke right last but this is what Genesis says They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze and the man and his wife hid themselves From the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. There's a larger story going on here So this can imagine what's happening so Adam and Eve they're there in the garden God made Adam He formed him out of mud and he breathed him into him breath of life And then he gave Adam a rolls to do and then realized that Adam was lonely and he created a man out of woman and then There's just this one rule They can't there's this tree of good and evil and God pretty much gives him open boundaries and says you can do however You choose and you can eat from everywhere but just one thing is just leave this tree alone and Adam and Eve have a hard time doing that and they eat from this tree and instantly things begin to change but just a few words this one verse Genesis 3 8 just a few words give us Such a huge huge picture of what's going on the first is interesting enough is did you know Adam and Eve aren't even named in this? This is a man and his wife They're not even named But we know is that of an Eve who willingly taken the weight of the world upon themselves It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil what what they were wanting was knowledge and by this decision They said you know what we think we can handle everything that we have been shielded from or protected from we think we can handle Responsibility of making all of our own decisions for ourselves We think we can handle the weight of having to manage this whole place on our own We we think we can take the weight of the world upon ourselves. We want to know things Think about that.
How many times have we painted ourselves into a corner because we want to know things We think a new position at work that these is gonna open up new doors What we find is instead of just new responsibilities that drive us is crazier as our old responsibilities might have And with these new responsibilities come new stresses or there might have been like when you're still in school and you're making decisions on what to do What class to take and I still regret the decision I made and in my junior year of high school But did not take it out for two instead of take business math and be a library helper for four hours a day Like that really worked out well for me. I learned I read every single issue of cosmopolitan from the entire 1980s that year I was that but I know I can do some own I want to know things We don't realize that oftentimes that creates an incredible burden in our lives and all the while This is going this is what just amazed me. I thought about this one verse for about four weeks now I'm gonna spare you from all of my pages of notes of what I've thought about and research and looked at but This is the biggest part about it all the while so this is going on so I have an even make this decision They have the whole encounter with the serpent they eat this fruit They really what's going on the first thing we wasn't they got no clothes on You know any clothes on you got to do something about it We've all had that like weird show up somewhere naked dream like what am I gonna do they think leave I had a roommate in college or a friend of my college who had a house of the fig tree in front of it No, I think we think I'm gonna do the job So all the while I haven't even scurrying about trying to take care of the situation it says God is on his evening walk in the gentle evening breeze so while Humanity has made the willful decision to take the world upon our shoulders God is on walk still in need at peace And he's walking and there's a couple of different words in Hebrew for walking and we've talked about this before but this idea of walking is not just He's ambulatory going from here to there, but this is this idea of everyday living. He's doing exactly as he should be He's God himself is living fulfilled in the entirety of his purpose.
He's living into a pattern of conduct He's doing like this is this like when you hear we pure people use that term like our Christian walk Like this is where this idea comes from my God is in the middle of doing exactly what he should be doing We're just taking an evening walk and even more interesting is this idea of the cool evening breeze In the previous chapter we find that God has created Adam by forming him out of the dirt and Breathing life into him and the word in Hebrew there for for this breath is Ruach. It's the word for spirit and We realize that God is walking around in the evening Ruach That's the word in Hebrew that all of eating the air in Eden that comprises the oxygen Completely around this whole place this whole world is this creative powerful breath of God which breathes humanity into existence That the world is literally filled with the creating love of God is the air is the thing that sustains this humanity that Jesus Is that God has created and so in the middle of this this this great disaster for humanity? We still see God completely being God at the same time Now they're hiding they're trying they're literally attempting to get around the everyday normal presence That's what this verse is like God being here and all this incredible energy that makes up what God does is an everyday normal occurrence in this place So here Adam and Eve trying to hide from the everyday normal presence of God they think they can get away from it But we also see this is no matter what has happened no matter what has gone on in this world That the presence of the Lord has the ability to remake into to reset things And so the rest of this book that we carry around with us the rest of this book is a story of this dance of God Remaking and resetting is this a story of humans attempts to take control of worry Because we see Adam even worrying here for the first time hiding It's a story of humans ability to control worry, but God's singular ability to actually give control So this is a story of when humans traded fulfilled in for full Where we traded in the fantastic for the worrisome But I want to think about that though that a fulfilled life is full of fantastic things So we fast forward to a story of remaking during a time of remaking in Matthew chapter 11 It's an encounter that Jesus has with the disciples of John the Baptist we find it in verses two through five This is what it says John the Baptist who is in prison heard about all the things the Messiah was doing So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus or you the Messiah we've been expecting or should we keep looking for someone else? Jesus told them go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen the blind see the lame walk the lepers are cured The deaf here the dead are raised to life and the good news is being preached to the poor Fantastic things blinds plantable seeing lame people walking lepers being cured deaf hearing Dead raised to life fantastic things So first John the Baptist kind of got himself into a little bit of a pickle Herod the reigning governor He called himself a king, but he really wasn't keen He was appointed by Caesar Herod had decided that he really liked his brother's wife more than he liked his own wife So Herod forced his brother to divorce his wife So Herod then married his brothers ex-wife and brought him into his home as his wife Well John being the prophet the man of God and oddly enough had the ear of Herod told Herod that wasn't acceptable That wasn't a good thing to do that he was condemning himself according to the laws of old Israel And so Herod's new wife his ex-sisterin law now his wife really didn't like that a lot And so she had John imprisoned and Herod was terrified of John because he knew John to be a man of God But did not know what to do we find out later on and another gospel story that Herod was tricked into having to behead John But John the Baptist sitting here he is in prison.
He's locked up And think about this John and I don't want to imagine what a first century Palestinian prison is like I Just can't imagine it's a very good place to be John is here Is that the place where worry has taken over in his life? Chaos is raining all around him and he's hearing these stories of Jesus He's hearing stories of his cousin of this person that he had already had interactions with in public And so he sends his disciples he sends his followers says listen you need to go ask him some questions and finding out I find out what's going on And Jesus's ministry is all about fixing and the answer he gets is not a simple yes or no answer to the question He was wanting he's want to know are you the anointed one or you this promised Savior that we've been expecting for hundreds of years That's who I've been telling people you are But I need you to throw me a bone here and let me know what's going on pretty sure John was wanting a simple yes or a no Instead you got this story of fantastic things my friend JD put it this way in this passage He said it's not what you have thought it will be and it's more than you can ever imagine Fantastic things go back to John and tell him what you've heard and seen the blind see the lame walk the lepers are cured the death here The dead are raised to life and the good news is being preached to the poor You look up fantastic in the dictionary gives you two definitions Um, it's an adjective that a lot of us we tend to use it's one of my favorite words to use my if I type in FA into my phone It automatically realize I'm typing in fantastic The first definition is extraordinarily attractive the second definition is imaginative or fanciful Remote from reality and many times when we think of something that's remote from reality We instantly think about that in a negative space. We think about that's impossible We need to automatically discredit this and not think about this, but if something is fantastic It's it's remote from reality in the most positive way in a way that we can't begin to imagine And the story doesn't tell us how John reacted the story doesn't tell us what happens when the disciples of John go back to John And I'm pretty sure I saw this in a Sunday school cartoon as a kid All right, maybe on a flannel board yonder those you grew up in like old-fashioned churches the flannel boards Or like that eight and a half by eleven like paintings in a Sunday school Okay, anyway, I'm just imagining like they like talking like on their tiptoes like through like bars in a window Hey John this way says it's crazy Makes no sense But John has a choice He can choose to live in a world that creates worry or he can choose to live in a world in which Jesus's presence brings an Entirely different hope of reality to our existence See Jesus is not always active way that we expect him to act Jesus's solution to our worry It's typically drastically different than what we would come up with on our own John Jesus is telling John This is what happens when I am here This is what happens when my presence is part of your everyday reality Jesus telling us that fulfilled life is full of fantastic things So how do we live a life that lives in God's world? How do we live a life that makes decisions based off of seeing things and the way that Jesus tells us they are and Against us seeing things in the way that our worry and our chaos tries to inform what's going on The first is just that we have to follow intentionally.
I mean John the Baptist we see two different stories when Matthew chapter 3 He's telling Jesus. I'm not good enough To baptize you and Matthew 11 the story with this morning John is asking Jesus. Are you good enough? Let's think about that change right there At one point I'm not good enough for you and now I say are you good enough to pull this stuff off?
See real following is gonna look like real life Think of stories that women in my life and other people's life when things happen that we can't understand or explain on the good Somethings and the bad side of things I think it is win phrase that I've uttered myself I've heard other people utter but it's this I'm kind of freaked out right now I don't really know what's going on when we say that we express that that emotion especially when we're brave enough to Express that to somebody else we're saying listen I need you to kind of be the strong one here right now I'm a little I'm not in the state of mind. I need to be in Before we wrap my head around this. Can you be the stable one right now? And oftentimes that's what we're just simply asking Jesus.
Hey listen Can you be the stable one right now because I know I'm not? We're falling intentionally we realize that it's gonna be different the recreation and our own life It tends to get a little bit messy And messy is the space of fantastic things I think of stories we read this summer about the seven signs of Jesus y'all when she's like spits on the ground and makes Mud and like plasticity all over somebody's face. That's not a well contained polite event is it? You're the story of the crippled man at the pool of a seta and he's attempting to throw himself in and we thought about it What does it look like if someone who's crippled does not throw themselves in this like 20 foot deep pool in time?
And now they've got to without working legs try to climb out of this pool That's not neat and nice and contained the space of following Jesus is messy The second thing we need to do is we need to live intentionally that word intentionality It's a buzzword now I mean how many times have you heard someone talk about being intentional or intentions like in the business place like this is this is a Hot buzzword right now like I ran a search in the Harvard Business Review Journal just The usage of intention you hear it talked about a lot What's interesting enough is the whole idea of being intentional came from a guy named St. Anselm he lived in about 1000 AD and he was writing I tried to philosophically argue Humans belief in God and it ultimately came down to it's just an assumption of what's around you That a Christian that we might not always have the framework in our head of the experiences or we might fuck We're not smart enough I don't have the understanding to argue the validity or existence of God But we've instead chosen to live with the state of assumptions that he is here and he is doing things And I'm going to experience those things at the level that I have the ability to experience those things one of the oldest ideas of Christian faith But how can we expect Jesus to drastically reframe our own understanding of what we're supposed to be doing if we're not expecting him to walk And expecting him to work in our lives I think so many times that's that the hitch up that gets us frustrated We're simply not anticipating or expecting him to do anything and we get frustrated when we don't see it You know we often think that relief from from worry is remote But what if we're simply just looking in the wrong direction And we've been missing all the fantastic things going around us because we're looking too small We're looking just in one place that we think is should be the number one important place That our Intentionality is us living with expectation that we will be experiencing God We follow intentionally we live intentionally the last thing is this that we love intentionally The gospels you just was I was talking with some folks They were trying to trick him to find out the greatest commandment and he simply says it's this it's to love God and to love others When we love intentionally it's us choosing to live in a world And when we choose to live in this world that God is talking about we will always air to the side of love The living in God's world is not airing to the side of frustration or anxiety or anger that it will always go to the side of love And Jesus himself saying to love your neighbor as yourself We've talked about for loving your neighbor as yourself means understanding that means I want your life to be as awesome as I want My life to be if we love intentionally that we have to think about self-care so much of what these last four or five weeks have been Have been about us realizing that we do not take care of ourselves and in our attempts to take care of ourselves and make a full life that We end up laying waste to the things around us But self-care is us realizing that this is this is the things I need to do in life This is how I reset myself. This is how I find a new form of recalibration They've time with my friends or time with my family is the most important thing to me And then I'm gonna make the time to be with them Self-care is very important the second thing is our care and our love for our friends and our family That's something that more often not I really wish that we had some the same data set from 20 or 30 years ago And just in conversation with folks who are typically older than the average person at Foundry What I found out is that most people at that point in time when they were when they were in their in middle age They were most focused on work They wanted more time for work more time for work more time for work And we found out was that people that you all that all of us are not concerned about time for work and having enough money The number one concern we had was time to be with our friends and our family that that's something that's very important to us That's a loving intentionally Saying this matters to us. I'm gonna make the time for this There's also a level of care for the stranger For the people that we have no earthly idea who they are but realizing we're called to love them One over the last couple of months we've begun a partnership with the zero street shelter Maybe I'll know there's only overnight shelter in Monroe right now and us with the Wesley Foundation are providing one meal a Month at night for them.
You can tell you all the hardest part about us serving with the zero street shelter is You've heard of preacher drive about ministry. You know what the hardest part about us doing that is I'm not lying here. They only take six people and it's really hard to turn like 15 or 20 people down When that six people slot is full Now and Johnson talked about that how we thought we're sorry we're full already This is their rules on our rules like six people can go in to serve like that sounds silly, right? But y'all love others well every time we've had a big ask you all have loved others well Just a couple of months ago when hurricane Harvey came through we had no problem raising tons of money and tons of supplies to bring down there because you all love others well We love intentionally by watching and loving ourself in our relationship with Jesus We love intentionally by caring for those that matter the most our friends and our family But we also love intentionally by caring for the people that we might not ever meet in our life If a filled life is full of fantastic things We've all had those John moments we've all had those moments we've come to God and we've asked a complicated question We said I need a yes or I need a no and the answer that ability to change us the most is when Jesus whispers words to us That says this is a life that's full of fantastic things.
I need you to open up your eyes and to see this around Step one where we begin to say I can't handle this anymore. I'm kind of freaked out I need you to be stable from here right now And we find out that the blind see and the lame walk the deaf here The leverage occurred and the dead rise again The gods vision for this world is bigger than our vision for this world and he cannot wait to show us what that looks like Let's pray Jesus. We just asked forgiveness for when we think things are too small sometimes We pray that the things that you have whispered to us that you have cared for us You've showed for us you realize that those are our whispers of a world sometimes that we just can't understand yet You're overwhelming patient with us But usually I'll have worries and you have worries that they have the ability to consume and to overtake us And just me come to you right now. We we lay those worries down because you're big enough The cross is strong enough to bear the weight of whatever we have that you desire Anticipate us being part of a life that's filled with the creating the loving breath of God around us You offer that life to us here now, but also for eternity to come Jesus We put those down right in front of you right now pray for us to give us the strength to empty ourselves for worries Every space that we empty in our life is space that we are creating for you to come and to fill up To fill with love to fill with care to fill with the authority that comes from your father Fill with power over everything that it causes us You wrap us in your love.
Thank you. Shimme pray