The Connected Life: Week 1

Well, good morning, let's do that again. Good morning. I'm

so glad you're here today. Let me tell you just

a little bit more about the family hope. What it

really looks like in real life is there is a

mother who her schedules insane for the next few days,

and she can't get a babysitter, and so if she

doesn't get somebody to take her kid for a couple

of days, she'll lose her job. She loses her job,

all kinds of other bad stuff happens. A mother or

a father might be struggling with addiction again and there

was a relapse, but they want to go and get

some help, but they also don't want the steak to

take their child. They just want to go get help.

So they need somebody take their kid for a few weeks.

And so you don't know if you're gonna be taken

for one day, three days, are for a couple of weeks.

But it's helping families who are at this crisis moment,

but they also don't want to lose their child. It's

for families who are overwhelmed parents. Could you've ever maybe

had like a couple of days with about the kids

to get your head straight again and see a lot

of us are blessed by having family. These are people

who don't have the options of bringing their children to

a grandparent. They don't have the option of, you know,

friends that they can trust with their children. So I'm praying,

just like when I asked you a couple months ago,

for us a step up and be a part of

this Buddy ministry that helps children with unique challenges. We

had about ten, eleven, twelve people step up and we're

starting to be able to help children with extreme challenges.

I'm hoping to see about five to ten families from

our church who'd be willing to go through the training

and be willing to say, yeah, if there's an we'd

be willing to take a child for a day or two. Well,

let's pray and we are a better ready to start

our new series called The Connected Life. And I'm praying

for you. I know that God wants to speak to

all of us today about this specific topic. Let's pray. God,

we give you praise today. We thank you for the

opportunity to worship you, the opportunity to seek you, the

opportunity to walk with you. And God, we just pray

now that you will speak to us in wonderful ways

in Jesus' name. Amen. Now let me start with something

that surprised me recently. So I've been reading in between

my classes. I've been reading a book called Ty Cob,

A Terrible Beauty. Now. Ty Cobb was a famous baseball

player from the early nineteen hundreds, and as I've been

reading through this book, I was actually pretty surprised about

some of the cultural things that were going on during

the time of his early career, and one of them was,

this is a huge deal during this time. And basically

it was this men couldn't stop fistfighting each other. So

this was a huge cultural problem in America. It's been

written about a lot, but basically, in the late eighteen

hundreds through the early nineteen hundreds, if you looked at

another man wrong, you guys disagreed about something, you had

some words, you would just go outside beat the living

tar out of each other, and then you would shake

hands and everything was cool. And this became a part

of the culture where yeah, that was something we just did.

So you would go to the bar, you look at somebody,

or you see somebody you didn't like, and you'd have

a good old fist fight. Now, now, think about this

when we look back at some of the I don't

know if you've ever read some Abraham Lincoln biographies, but

Abraham Lincoln actually used to be a pretty good fist fighter.

And he was like six foot four, six foot five,

and there would be times where he would be insulted

at one of his cases where he was a lawyer,

and he would say, all right, let's step outside. And interestingly,

Abraham Lincoln was known as a phenomenal fist fighter. He

knocked people out all the time. And so this is

a weird part, a weird era in our history. Now,

could you imagine I'm so glad that that is not

a problem in our era. I could not imagine preaching gentlemen.

Could you're not get in a fistfight this week? Gentlemen,

as we walk out into the parking lot, if someone

looks at you a little weird, please do not punch

them in the face. But that was an actual problem.

Matter fact, it's very fascinating they say that that actually,

you know, kind of faded away because of prohibition. You

think prohibition would have increased it. But men used to

hang out in the bars. Women were not allowed in

the bars. Prohibition happened, they opened up speak easies. Women

would go into the speak easies. Men would not fight

in front of women. Also, the men didn't want to

fight because they did not want to draw the attention

of the law. And so because of prohibition, all this

fistfighting stopped fascinating. Let me give you another example. In

the eighteen hundreds seventeen hundreds, duels were an actual thing.

And so if you were offended, and a lot of

times it was gentlemen, if a congressman, a senator, or

somebody who was a CEO, if they were offended by somebody,

they would say, sir, I will meet you that son

or what would they call that don I don't know,

I've never seen it. And they would say, and I

shall meet you on the field. And then they would meet,

and they would take ten paces and they would turn

around and shoot each other. And now this is a

real thing. We know that Alexander Hamilton, one of our

famous political figures, he died in a duel. This is

a big thing. Now. Could you imagine being a preacher

and having to say, guys, how about this week, you

don't shoot somebody now, So these are actual problems that

had to be addressed from the poolpit at different errors.

Now we're not dealing with fist fights anymore. But each

generation has a battle. And here's the battle that has

engulfed our generation. This is this is this is our

fist fight. This is our thing that has engulfed us.

It's the battle of the screens. Okay, Now what do

I mean by the battle of the screens. Have you

been to a restaurant lately? What do you see when

you walk into a restaurant and you see a family

over there are the family talking to each other, like,

let me tell you about my day, pop, pap. No,

everybody's got a screen in their hand. Some of my

most romantic dates has been with my wife and a

candle and ESPN. We can't help it whether there's this

addiction to the screen. My daughter can't stand it. She

when we sit down at dinner at our house, she

will yell at She says, Mom, Dad, no phones at

the table. I mean, to be rebuked by a child

makes me want to bring back the fistfight. H But

here's what's going on. We isolate, we compare, we scroll.

We're not going around breaking people's noses nowadays, but we're

slowly losing our connection, our intimacy, presence with each other.

Every generation has a struggle. Every generation has this distraction.

Every generation has something that pulls them away from what

matters most. And I believe this is ours. Okay. We

have a focused problem, a connection problem, a presence problem,

and that's why this message matters so much today. And

here's what I want to do. I want to show

you a unique passage. Okay, we're gonna be looking at

second John. It's a very short letter, okay, written over

two thousand years ago. John was an apostle. John was

with Jesus. He's probably eighty five or ninety years old now,

and now he's writing this letter. He's in ephesis. He's

writing this letter to the people of the church that

he loves and cares about deeply. And it's a very

intimate letter. Now, let me break down this whole letter

for you. It has two points. Simply this, love each other,

love love, love, love each other. The second point, don't

be deceived. Okay, you know, watch out for false doctrines,

watch out for Satan, do not be to Steve. He

wants to still kill and destroy your life, so love

one another, watch out for the tricks of Satan. And

then at the very end of the letter, this is

what he says. All right, let's look at this Second John,

chapter one, verse twelve. He says, I have much more

to say to you. In other words, my message, my

letter is not complete. There's more content, there's more teachings,

there's more subjects to discuss. But he goes on to say,

but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead,

I hope to visit you and talk with you. Gonta,

pay attention to this. He goes, I hope to visit

you and talk to you. I don't want to use

paper and ink here, and I want to talk to

you face to face. And here's what I hope happens

as a result of our face to face conversation, that

our joy will be complete. And I love that. Here's

what he's he said, I have more to say to you.

I can't say it on a letter. Why because there

are some things that are too personal, too meaningful, too important,

and they need to be shared face to face. Now,

this word right here in the Greek for talk. It's

actually a pretty rare word, and it's the word that

it indicates that we don't want to just talk to you,

but maybe I want to talk to you about some

things that are going to make you uncomfortable. Maybe I

want to have a discussion with you about some things

that I want to confront you a little bit about.

Maybe there's some admonitions here, and so it's an uncomfortable talk.

And matter of fact, if we look at the Greek

construction of this whole paragraph, it indicates that there was

a struggle with John that he considered writing all these

things in the letter, and then he discerned, by the

Holy Spirit, no things that are this important need to

be discussed face to face. If I write it in

a letter, it could be taken wrong. Face to face.

There's a good chance we both walk away with joy

in our soul. Now again, John, he's long in years

in wisdom. He's learned that tough conversations are best in person,

with love and hope for a good conclusion. One weekend

for a sermon here, I was looking for a specific illustration.

So I'm searching all over the web and I find

it an illustration that I think will be perfect from

our sermon. And it's a story about Amos and Andy. Now,

I actually didn't know who Amos and Andy was. I

had heard of them, and I knew that they were

from the early nineteen hundreds, and I thought they were

kind of more in the category with like Laurel and

Hardy the Grouse, you know, the Marx brothers. I just

thought it was just, you know, one of those vaudeville things.

And so I take the illustration and I speak it now.

Next day, Barry Newborn, one of our most beloved elders

and teachers in our church, who also happens to be

a black man, reached out to me and says, can

we talk? And so when we got together, he asked me,

it was James, what do you know about Amos and Andy?

And I shared, I really only know their name. He

then shared with me that Amos and Andy were hugely

popular for their racial stereotypes. They often depicted black people

in negative, demeaning ways. I had no idea. I had

no idea. Here's the thing. He decided to come to

me face to face. Now, he could have sent me

a well deserved email that chewed me out. He could

have posted my sermon online, just that little part about

Amos and Andy, and then he could have posted it

and guess what the world would have done with that

racist pastor shares a story about Amos and Andy. This

was at the height of the cancel culture. He could

have deeply hurt this church and my ministry. Instead, he

assumed the best. He loved me, and I remember walking

away loving him and appreciating him so much more. Some

things are too precious for a screen. And see that

we often do the exact opposite today with our social

media and our texts and our emails. If we have

something negative to say, we hide behind a screen and

let me tell you something not helpful, not biblical. It

doesn't help the person on the other end become more

like Christ. It's useless, and it's an exercise of futility. Okay,

Real love happens face to face. Do you get that church?

Real love face to face? Because when I share it

with somebody my heart, I'm inviting the Holy Spirit into

the conversation. And when the Holy Spirit is invited into

the conversation, there's a great chance that the Holy Spirit

is telling each one of us how to react, repent,

or change. So therefore, by the end of the conversation,

we have more joy because we are more like Jesus,

and we respect each other more. At the end of

the conversation, now, in today's culture, we might say something

like this, some things are too deep for a text,

too sacred for a screen. There are moments in life

that require presence. Now, let's talk about presence for a moment.

Presence is significantly more powerful than anything we can ever

send on a screen. And for some reason in our culture,

we've traded presence for a text. And your scripture points

out that anything it's really important to talk about is

better done face to face, especially if someone needs encouragement.

Presence matters. You know what I mean. You get bad news,

your life has flipped upside down, you're devastated. I've had

a couple of those moments in my life where my

whole life has been blown up. I'm devastated, and I'm

so thankful that I have friends like Andrew and Tim

who will just come of sit with me. My buddy Wes,

he's a pastor, but we've been for instance, our childhood.

I know of two different occasions that he drove a

couple hundred miles after my world got blown up and

he just sat with me. He found out what happened,

he says, I'm on my way, drops everything changes, his

preaching schedule, gets other people to cover for him, drives

a couple hundred miles, sits with me. Now he doesn't

have the answers, he doesn't have a solution, but he

has presence. And I think back to those things that

you know, maybe over a decade ago. And let me

tell you how a lot of people encouraged me. But

I don't remember the text, even though they were kind.

I don't remember the emojis. I don't remember those days.

Do you know what I remember? I remember the people

who sat with me. I remember those who gave their time,

their presence and their love. See, they gave me something

that you can't send through a screen. They gave me themselves.

And I think about that often, because again, in our

hardest moments, we don't need words on a screen. We

need people. We need someone to send with us in

our sorrow, that carried away with us just to be there.

And that's exactly the type of love that God has

called us to. And and I fear that the church

today we've forgotten about the power of presence. We forgot

about the sacredness of just showing up. Back in the day,

somebody had a baby, what do we do? Made a

cast role for some reason, people put peas in them.

You drove across town, you knocked on the door, you

walked in. You loved on them, prayed for them, you

held the baby, you said the baby's cute. Even if

it wasn't for the glory of God, you gave them

your presence. I still remember, as a little child, maybe

five six seven, in the summers, my grandparents had a

big old motor home and they love to travel around.

And sometimes we would go through Kentucky and Tennessee and

I would say to ma'am, I'm papa. I would say,

wherever we're going. They would tell me the couple different homes,

we're going to spend a few days there each. And

I would say, when are they expecting us. They're not,

We're gonna surprise them. Nowadays, if you did something like that,

you're like, you know, you're like cousin Eddie from a

Christmas vacation. You know, like, don't show up to somebody's

house in an RV. But my grandparents I remember specifically

showing up to this farm in Tennessee. We pulled up

and then the door opened as this old lady and

this old man we opened a door and she just

threw her arms out loud and she screamed with joy

and ran to my grandmother. We've forgotten the power of

presence and being relationships with each other. See, our culture

is trading people for a screen and the results are

not good. Let me just share with you some of

the shifts that have taken place in the last decade. Okay,

here we go. There has been a screen time explosion. Okay,

the average adult now spends seven hours a day on

a screen. Teenagers seven to nine hours. Basically, that's a

full time job on a screen. Loneliness is at historic levels.

One and three adults say they're lonely. Among young adults

is even higher. We're the most connected generation in history,

yet we're the loneliest at the same time, our phones

have increased our anxiety. Here's something interesting. And even have

a word for being separated from your phone, and they

say that seventy percent of people actually feel anxiety if

they're not around their phone at that moment. It's called

nomophobia being separated from somebody's phone. See, we panic more

over losing our phone than if we lose connection to people.

Something has to change in our culture. Social media has

caused an outbreak of depression. Heavy social media users are

two to three times more likely to experience anxiety and depression.

Teen girls, by the way, show the sharpest increase because

of smartphones. And I'm will say this, and I've said

this to a couple close friends of mine over the years,

and to some pastor friends if we've had some deep conversations.

The number one mistake I made as a parent when

I look back, here's my number one by far, here's

the worse mistake. I gave my daughter a smartphone before

she was mature enough to have it. And I may

tell you some weeknd point at the time I gave

her the smartphone to about six months to a year later,

and we basically lost our child to depression for the

next few years. I still remember the day she came

to me and she handed me this phone and says,

she said to me, don't let me have this back.

It was destroying her life. So parents, I mean, you

do with that what you will. But I'm telling you,

when I look back, and people ask me, when people

ask me an awful lot about parenting. I say, this

is the worst mistake I ever made, and see the

results or not good. Something has to change, and I

believe that it's us, the Church that can redeem this.

The church. We could show the world that there's a

different way to live. And I love all the cultures

represented at our church and the Arabic church. Last weekend

was Orthodox Easter, so they're a week behind us when

it comes to Easter. On Friday, they spent seven hours

together in worship services and eating. I'm down for six

hours of eating in one hour work, No, but it

was price blit in half. And then the next day

they did five hours. On that Sunday because it was

Orthodox Easter, they were off by the middle of the day.

Most of them had found themselves in another one's home.

They all hung out and had community. They're not exchanging

and when you get to know the Arabic people in

our congregation, their relationships are phenomenal, phenomenal. Another lesson I'm

learning is from the Latino people. They're teaching me how

to love deeper. If they find out that I'm sick

or have an injury or anything like that, I can

almost guarante that some type of Latino food is going

to show up my door with a hug and a prayer.

They know how to love, and I think God has

brought us together in this unique situation. God wants to

teach We were gonna teach them some things, but there's

a lot we need to learn from them about relationships.

And I want us to begin to claim some of

this Bacca. There's real power in the presence of others

when we struggle. Now again, I think we've forgotten about

the power of presence. Now, let me be clear, I'm

not trashing digital communication. We have a church online, we

communicate through mass text, we use social media and significant

ways we believe in technology. Technology can connect people, can

help people grow spiritually. But hear me, texting in our

screens should be a supplement, not a replacement. Let's remember

here that God didn't just send his word. God sent himself.

Let's look at this. In the beginning, was the word,

and the word was with God talking about Jesus was God.

The Word became flesh and made us dwelling among us.

So that's incarnation, that's presence. See, whenever God wanted the

world to know that He loved us. God did not

suppress them. Clouds out and shout down from heaven. Hey,

everybody love you just want you know that. I got

a number one best selling book coming out soon. It's

called The Bible. You're gonna love it. Now. He sent

himself and he dwelt among us, because that's love. Love

doesn't just send a word or a text word. Love

sends themselves. See what happens. We get bored at home,

and I think that's the big thing. We are anxious

or lonely. What do we do. We reach for our

phones and we scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and what do

we see? Everyone else is so happy and they got

perfect vacations and perfect families, perfect perfect lives. This week's

a good week to preach on that, because everybody just

went on vacation and I was like, Dad, looks amazing.

I was really happy for you. I wasn't jealu because

I hate the sun. And but we do we do

we We don't post. I didn't notice anybody posting the

moment your child freaked out and threw the ice cream

cone down. Uh, those are the pictures I want to see,

by the way. But it was always like you and Mickey,

Like you know, we show these picture perfect lives. And

by the way, I'm guilty of this. Let me show

you a picture from a time before this was me

catching a huge bass. I spent five minutes going through

all my bass pictures not to show you the perfect bass.

But it was Wendy that day, and that was the

only picture that did not show my belly roll. So yeah,

I mean, I've given up. But but but back in

the day, I cared about those things. And that's what

we do. We try to create this perfect image and

then and then other people we scroll on it. We

see other people's perfect images, and here we are. We're

at home and our pajamas, eating our second bag of chips,

and our feet is full, but our soul is so empty.

There's got to be something more. Again, we are the

most connected society in history at the same time the loneliest,

the most isolated, the most anxious, and we feel it,

but we don't know how to fix it. Here's the truth, Jesus,

and I'm gonna tell you something. Jesus did not come

to this or liw with us, Give his life for us,

live a perfect, sinless life, Die on the cross for

our sins raised three days later, so that we as adults,

as followers of Christ, can spend a third of our

life scrolling on a screen. He had a greater purpose

for us, and I believe that again, this is one

of the biggest tools of distraction that keeps us from

intimacy with God, intimacy with people. And we have to

acknowledge it and we have to solve it. See, God

again created us to be connected to Him, to people,

and we were created to depend on God and depend

on each other. Let's look at how the early Church started.

It says here they devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching

and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and a prayer.

Now that breaking a bread. That's not just talking about

the Lord's supper. It's talking about just regular mills. They

devoted themselves. They just hung out. They shared everything. They

make daily. They ate together, they worshiped together, they served together,

they celebrated together. They weren't watching life, they were living

it together. And it was revolutionary. The rich with the poor.

The Jews hung out with the gentiles, all right, the

free ate dinner with the slaves. See the early Church,

they didn't just believe in Jesus. They belonged to him,

and because they belonged to him, they belonged to each other.

But today we settle for this imitation. We look at

screens instead of looking face to face. And I think

we need to push back. And the question today is this,

what if we opened our homes again. Our schedules are lives.

Let me give you, guys, an assignment. Okay, I know

you love coming to church and getting an assignment. I

got some assignments for you. Okay, but I know you

can do this. Here it is, this is your big

application this week. This week, do not just text someone,

call them, let them hear your voice, Listen to theirs.

Number two, don't just pray for someone, pray with them.

Somebody at work tells you this, this that's going on,

or you're in a social situation, say hey, can I

just pray for you? Number three, don't just say you care.

But if something's going on in somebody's life that's in

relationship with you, show up, be present. See John thirteen

says it's a new command. I give you love one another,

and I have loved you, so you must one another.

And it says this by this everyone will know that

you are my disciples if you love one another. Now

think about this, How will the world know that we

are disciples of Jesus Christ if we love one another? Okay,

So that's how the world, our witness is shown by

our relationship with each other. So let me be clear

as I close this down today. Do not destroy your phone.

Everybody hear that. Do not destroy your phone, Just don't

let it own you. See, if your feet is full

but your life feels empty, God has something better for you.

You're gonna have to intentionally push back against the culture

and push into the heart of God. And this has

to be face to face. So this week, be aware,

put your phone down and looks on my to eye

because let me tell you something, you matter more than

anything that's on a screen. I'm going to close with

this and this is really hard for me to share Thursday,

but you know, this is what happened. First of all,

this Connected Life series has been on the books for

a long time, okay, but last month one of our

former students is one of the students that I was

extremely close with for a couple years until they graduated out.

They had recently divorced their life had some struggles and

they posted online that they were lonely. I saw it,

and I felt that Nutch I should reach out. But

then the excuses started coming, Well, we haven't talked in

a long time, they don't even go to church. They

don't want a preacher calling them. This might be awkward,

and if I'll be just to be a one hundred

percent honest, it felt like it was just easier to

do nothing, just keep scrolling, move on, and that's what

I did. About two weeks after that post, I saw

another post where they had passed away at forty one.

They died alone, and they weren't discovered for three days.

They died in pain, and they died alone. And let

me tell you someone, I saw that. It wrecked me

for three or four days. I was just wrecked, not

because you know all that happened, but because I knew

I saw it, I felt it. I talked myself out

of it, and I just knew that I had disobeyed

the Lord. Now I can't go back, but I can

go forward differently. Let me tell you something, and the

reason I'm telling you this today is not to shame You're,

not to guilt you, but to wake us up because

there are people all around us who are hurting quietly,

people who are putting messages on it in a subtle way.

They're sharing with people that they're hurting. They're lonely, and

there's just hopeing someone notices. And here's the thing. They

don't need more content, they need people to show up

in their lives. Church. I believe that we can be different,

that we can start moving towards a different way to live,

you know again, not just delay, not just you know,

but to make that call to knock on the door,

to show up, because some things are too meaningful for

a screen. They have to be face to face. And

I want to tell you something right now, someone is

waiting on the other side of your obedience. Here's what

I wanted to do as we close up today, I

want everybody to grab your phone out. I know you

got them, grab your phone out. Don't worry. I'm not

gonna have a step on them. This isn't the eighties.

Throw the record now, everybody, grab your phone out. Here's

what we're gonna do. That phone in your hand, like

John said, love one another, don't be deceived. That phone

can either be used for a tool, of ministry are

something that the enemy can use as a weapon in

your life to get you to zone out, to get

you to fill your life up with something other than

true relationships. For some of you, that screen brings porn

in which brings about all kinds of other things in

your life. Our phone can either be used for the

glory of God or it can be used as a

tool of satan. So here's what I'm gonna do. I

want you to take your phone before the Lord. I

want you to talk to the Lord about your phone.

And I want those of you maybe you need to

repent for the way you've used your phone. Some of us,

the ultimate goal today is to rededicate our phe to

the glory of God and say to the Lord Lord,

I will use this for your glory. Let's take some

time and pray.