February 22nd, 2026 - "Wilderness Survival Guide: The Examen" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: All right, Methodists.

Can I get an amen?

Amen.

Amen.

That's what I'm saying.

Thank you all so much, Brenda.

Thank you.

I got to watch y'all's faces while she was singing.

That was the best.

Welcome to First United Methodist Church here in downtown Bentonville.

My name's Michelle Morris.

You may have forgotten me.

It's been a while.

I'm the lead pastor here and it is a joy to welcome you in worship.

We are starting a new series today called The Wilderness Survival Guide,

and we'll be spending this Lenten season in the Psalms as a result.

So I'm gonna invite us now to just prepare our hearts as we hear now this word from

Psalm 1 39, Lord, you have examined me.

You know me.

You know when I sit down and when I stand up, even from far

away, you comprehend my plans.

You study my traveling and resting.

You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways.

There isn't a word on my tongue, Lord, that you don't already know completely.

You surround me front and back.

You put your hand on me.

That kind of knowledge is too much for me.

It's so high above me that I can't fathom it.

Where could I go to get away from your spirit?

Where could I go to escape your presence?

If I went up to heaven, you would be there.

If I went down to the grave, you would be there too.

If I could fly on the wings of dawn, stopping to rest only on

the far side of the ocean, even there, your hand would guide me.

Even there, your strong hand would hold me tight.

If I said, the darkness will definitely hide me, the light

will become night around me.

Even then, the darkness isn't too dark for you.

Nighttime would shine bright as day because darkness is

the same as light to you.

Examine me, God, look at my heart, put me to the test, know my anxious thoughts.

Look to see if there is any idolatrous way in me.

Then lead me on the eternal path.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

I love a good self-examination tool, and I happen to be in one of those

fields in which we get a lot of tests.

So I'm gonna give you a quick rundown.

This is a self-examination tool presentation of Pastor Michelle.

I am an eye on the disc, a blue green on the Berkman with strength finders.

I'm an achiever, strategic learner, responsibility, communication.

Myers-Briggs.

I'm an ENFJ or an ENTJ.

My f and t are very close.

They're, so I test both.

I'm an Enneagram one.

When I take a spiritual gifts test, I test as an apostle and a teacher, and in

gospel discipleship, I'm marking Johanna.

I realize that last one I made up the test, so it's a little bit

cheating, but I am Mark Johanna.

Now, for some of you, this may have sounded like a foreign language.

What do all of those things mean?

Some of you though now feel as though you know me better than

however many months or years we have been relating to one another.

I have just trusted you with a tremendous amount of self-disclosure, and I'm gonna

trust that you won't weaponize it because when, oh, somebody laughed back there.

Hmm.

Who do I need to watch for?

Because that's an improper use of those kinds of tools, right?

A proper use of them is for someone to learn something about their strengths,

to learn places where they need to grow, and also to learn where to say

that I'm not gonna be good at that.

I need to find someone else that can help me.

I've been thinking a lot about self-examination and I, I've really

reflected that it's made up of two pieces.

You need both self-awareness and self-reflection to

create good self-examination.

Self-awareness is an in the moment perspective.

It is observational.

It's recognizing what is happening in this space and then monitoring

your reaction in that moment.

And self-awareness is absolutely critical for leadership when they survey the

skills that are required for leadership.

15% of those skills have to do with IQ or technical ability.

85% have to do with emotional intelligence or self-awareness.

And when they have surveyed the top performers in leadership, the ones that

are absolutely the best at leadership, 83% of them are high in self-awareness.

Self-reflection, on the other hand, is more of a past and future position.

It is interpreting something that has happened to learn from for the future.

It is making meaning out of a moment, making meaning out of event.

And I would say that self-reflection is absolutely critical to

a life and discipleship.

We must critically reflect.

And especially do so when we are in the wilderness.

Because when we are in the wilderness, if we are not asking good questions,

if we are not reflecting, if we are not learning from moments of the past to help

impact the future, then we will fall prey to the temptations of the wilderness.

It's the difference between those who wandered in the wilderness and eventually

quit asking good questions, and they ended up making a golden calf and.

Falling to idolatry versus Jesus who went into the wilderness intentionally

self-reflective, and was able then to resist Satan and Satan's temptations.

My friends, we are in the wilderness right now.

We are in the wilderness as a society, and I'll be honest and

tell you that in this moment.

The last thing I really wanna do is some in-depth self-examination.

Yeah, because everything feels like a test right now and everything

feels like something I would rather not reflect on too deeply.

We are full of anxious thoughts, like the Psalm says, we're struggling with

shared trauma and social disrupt.

We have increased isolation and disconnection.

Did you know 62% of adults in this country now describe themselves as deeply lonely?

62%.

We have compassion fatigue.

We've been told so often that we need to care about things that we've

run out of the ability to care.

And then there's just life.

Just life.

Just trying to make it through life.

And we have.

Piled on so much chronic emotional exhaustion and stress that now

85% of workers in this country classify as burned out 85%.

We are in the wilderness.

So when we are in the wilderness.

How do we manage this?

How do we survive in the wilderness?

How do we get out of the wilderness?

Well, you have to find the wilderness experts, right?

And if I was solely turning to these self-examination tools,

then that's turning solely to me.

And I will tell you, I'm not finding a whole lot of hope these

days and being in Enneagram one or a bluegreen on the Berkman.

It's not helping, right?

It's just creating more navel gazing.

I'm not getting out of myself very well, so if I turn and look

at external voices, I'm also not finding a lot of hope there either.

A lot of the external voices that are around us that are

shouting and crying and.

Creating all of these crises or just crying crises or drawing

attention to our crises.

In some cases, those voices benefit greatly from continuing

to keep us in the wilderness.

They benefit greatly from keeping us anxious, from keeping us

afraid, from keeping us worried.

It's a little bit like if you needed some advice about wilderness survival

and you went to a someone who owned a Wilderness survival store, they're going

to tell you you need a lot of things.

Right?

But do you really, no.

I know who the missing voice is.

I know.

I am not listening enough to God.

God is the best at surviving the wilderness.

God will provide for us in the wilderness and God will

lead us out of the wilderness.

But how do we connect with God?

How do we hear that voice?

That may be one of the spiritual questions I get asked more than any

other as a pastor, is How do I hear God?

How do I know if God is speaking to me?

And there's no one clear way.

But I can tell you that almost always what's not happening is

we're not giving space to hear God.

We're not really even trying.

And so that's the purpose of this Linton series.

We're gonna go through seven different spiritual practices that are different

ways of opening ourselves up to God, of creating space for us to hear.

God.

We've already looked at fasting.

If you came to Ash Wednesday, we're gonna look at Ignatian

Imagination, music at Davina, movement in Nature Sabbath, silence.

And today we'll do the examine.

Now, those sound foreign to us right now.

You'll learn about them and they're different from each other because

it's likely that some of these are not gonna resonate with you.

Maybe most of them are not gonna resonate with you, but if one of them does, then

you found a way to connect with God.

It's going to involve all of us being pushed out of our comfort zone

a bit here, trying something new.

It's going to challenge us a little bit, but quite honestly, how comfortable

is the zone we're in right now?

Right?

I'd enjoy being pushed out of this comfort zone for a little while,

and to recognize that what I really have is a soul longing, right?

A deep soul longing, and in order to meet that soul longing I have to.

Connect with God, which involves paying attention and

making meaning out of moments.

So hopefully as you came in, you were handed a copy of your

wilderness survival, how to examine.

You have fasting on the back here in case you missed Ash Wednesday.

If you didn't, there's extras here and there's extras at the back.

Um, but this is basically how you do it.

This is how you practice the examine, and it is suggested that you do this

before you go to bed, right before you go to bed at the end of the day.

Also, you might want to add another one at midday, like around lunchtime, okay?

So you can practice it twice, but definitely at the,

towards the end of the day.

So what you do is you make some space to settle and become present.

Find a quiet space, get some breath.

Then you invite God in, ask for light, lift up a prayer, ask the Holy Spirit to

help you see the day, and then you give thanks and you, you wanna name two to five

specific things that happen in the day.

And they don't have to be huge things.

They can be, you know, like I was so excited that my friend called me today.

I'm so grateful for that.

And then you review the day, and this is where that self-reflection,

self-awareness comes into space.

First, you ask where you felt close to God.

Now, you may not recognize that when we've spent a lot of time with distance

between us and God, you may not recognize where God has shown up in your life.

So let me tell you a, a tip on how to do it.

Ask yourself, who is God to you?

Johnna, when she talks about this on the video, she says that God is.

Anywhere that she finds faith, hope, or love, that's God for her.

For me, I know I've encountered God when I feel peace, so I'm looking for peace.

Okay, so ask yourself, who is God for you, and then identify those moments when that

feeling showed up, and then notice where you felt pulled away or you felt pressure.

Pay attention to that movement, to what gave you life or consolation and what

drained you or created desolation, and ask what's underneath that reaction

and then take it to God, confess, hand it over, not in a way that opens

your, this is not a place of judgment.

This is a place of release.

You're giving it over to God, so you release that.

You ask for healing, for wisdom, for reconciliation as you receive God's grace.

And then look ahead to tomorrow.

I don't go to bed a lot these days.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, I kind of think, oh, what are we

gonna have to deal with tomorrow?

Right?

What I need to change my perspective.

I need to look ahead to the gift that the day is going to be.

And then close a trust with just a simple prayer.

And the prayers that are given on the sheet are examples.

You might find something that's more meaningful to you, that works better,

is more in line with your voice.

Do that.

Okay, this will have the effect of reorienting our day instead of

centering around ourselves, or instead of centering around all these voices

that are capturing us right now.

It centers us around God and our relationship with God and how God is

drawing close to us, and it will have the effect of restoring joy and wonder.

We'll still have issues, we'll still have things we have to deal with, but

within them we will find joy and wonder.

There's one test that I've recently taken, self-examination test that I

didn't know how to share with you all because it's a 360 degree evaluation.

I asked several people from the congregation to do an evaluation

with me, as well as people that I've worked with in the past and some

of my colleagues, and then I had to do a self-examination as well.

I had to reflect on myself, and I don't know how to boil it down for you all.

It's such a fuller picture of who I am than any of those things.

It's not a number or color.

It's a whole lot of things, as comprehensive as that one was

though, trust me when I say that.

God knows you better than any test you could ever take.

God is in front of you and behind you.

Beside you, beneath you, above you, within you.

And knows all about you and loves you and seeks to be in a relationship with you

and seeks to restore you and set aside those worries and anxieties, there is

no darkness that God can't drive out.

That's what I want for us, that recentering.

That peace.

So may we all pray this lint and invite God to search us and know us,

to examine our hearts and to search for us, and find us in this wilderness

to be our rescuer and to put us on the path that will get us home.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

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