The Passions of the Soul | Acedia

So friends, our teaching scripture this morning comes

from Psalm 91 in the New Living Translation.

It says those who live in the shelter of the Most High will

find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

This I declare about the Lord. He alone is my refuge, my place

of safety. He is my God, and I trust Him,

for He will rescue you from every trap and protect you from

every deadly disease. He will cover you with His

feathers. He will shelter you with His

wings. His faithful promises are your

armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors

of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day.

Do not dread the disease that stalks in the darkness, nor the

disaster that strikes at midday. Though 1000 fall at your side,

though 10,000 are dying around you, these evils will not touch

you. Just open your eyes and see how

the wicked are punished. If you make the Lord your

refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will

conquer you. No plague will come near your

home. For He will order his angels to

protect you wherever you go. They will hold you up with their

hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.

You will trample upon lions and cobras.

You will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet.

The Lord says I will rescue those who love me.

I will protect those who trust in my name.

When they call on me, I will answer.

I will be with them in trouble. I will rescue and honor them.

I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.

This is the word of the Lord. Hello, I am Carl, we met earlier

about the work day thing. Seriously if you're going to

come out I would love to hear from you, especially if you have

things called skills. I don't like ripping weeds is

not a highly technical gardening task, but it could be that I

take out native species or something if you don't watch me.

So the Gauntlet Throne. I need your help.

Let's start with another little chunk of prayer so that I can be

ready and you can be ready. Deal.

OK. You know, I'll be mostly quiet.

I don't know. Shout out if you need to.

Holy Spirit. Calm.

All right, You guys good. It's quick for me.

I don't know. We're all right.

All right. We had a little silence earlier,

so I'm going to hope you're OK. If it wasn't long enough, you

know, text me. Not right now.

So OK, this is a series on the passions, right?

We started a couple weeks ago. Jared introduced a series.

He did a great job. If if you're new to the series,

like this is your first time here in a couple of weeks or you

just been totally zoned out the whole time, fair.

I get it. You might have heard of like the

seven deadly sins. This is like an earlier

iteration before that happened. So the passions comes from a

list from a vagarius. We'll be quoting from him a lot

today. I forgot to look up how his name

is pronounced. Did I do it right?

Vagarius sounds good. OK, looking to the rest of the

teaching team. So.

But yes, passions, right? So what are they?

Passions, Jared's talking about are desires or attitudes.

These things are made by God. OK, So in Christianity, desire

is not bad. Some of you learned different

where you grew up. You were like secretly like a

little Buddhist and that's OK. But but we, we desire things.

God gives us healthy desires, gives us healthy attitudes and

things like that. But these desires and attitudes

can become disordered. And we talk about the passions,

we're talking about disordered desire, disordered attachments

and attitudes. These are oversized reactions.

When we don't get what we want or when we overvalue something,

we make something bigger than it really should be in good order.

OK. But again, this is a very

Christian thing. We believe in transformation,

right? That we can, by God's grace, he

can work on us if we make ourselves available to take

these outsized passions and bring them into the correct

focus. So then we have these godly

attachments, desires and attitudes.

So that's, that's the whole series.

That's what we're doing with this passions series.

The passion that we're exploring today is acedia.

Everybody knows the word acedia, right?

I didn't, I, I had never heard of it until we started the

teaching team series. And so I immediately was like,

well, I want to do that one. I don't know what it is.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word was like

super obsolete in 1930, like by 1930, like we're done with this

word forever kind of thing. In fact, the primary references

at that time that they're using because the English like to hold

on to old things, right, were from like the the 13th and 17th

century. Even then now when the world

wars came, suddenly we had a use for the word again.

We'll get to that in a minute. So it came back into some

fashion as a way to deal with some of the terrible malaise

that came from the world wars. And then at scene of resurgence,

as we have in recent modernity begun to re engage as a whole

church with the monastic tradition because the word

acedia has a a strong link to monasticism.

OK, so if I had made slides, they would say this Acedia, what

is it? Do I have it?

What do I do about it? Acedia, what is it?

Do I have it? What do I do about it?

A quick side note, I wrote a whole section about why we

stopped using the word acedia, why it went out of fashion that

I'm like super interested in. But when I finished the sermon,

it was a three-part sermon and they did not give me 3 weeks so

I had to cut that section. But I just have to tell you

about it if you ever want to talk about it.

Let's get coffee and talk about why it went out of use.

That will placate my word nerd and we can move on.

OK, so acedia from the Greek, who knows the prefix A without,

not without. And then who knows the word

kados? No one kados is care.

So without care, no care, don't care.

That's acedia in the most literal Greek expression and I

had usage in regular Greek language.

In the Iliad, Homer uses it to describe soldiers that do not

care about a fallen comrade, right?

They're just, he died and they just leave him there.

Who cares? So we're we have some usage in

regular Greek life, but it finds special use in monasticism.

If you look through the Bible for the word acedia, you will

have a bad time. The word acedia is not in the

Bible at all. So we're going to turn to the

tradition of the church here to the monastics to to get a sense

of what they were using the word for that the form us today in

the series. So yes, Evagrius, like I said,

he makes these lists of passions in the 4th century.

He's calling them the 8 evil thoughts, which sounds like a

really great children's book to me.

Look at some of you and make it happen.

And Acedia is something that when he writes it down, he

didn't make it up. He's he's bringing it together

at on the list. But it was already in use in the

monastic communities that had been happening in the deserts.

So what what they called it is the noonday demon.

Maybe like Aya novel there, but very interesting.

And it actually comes from, believe it or not, the teaching

text that we use today. Now, you might have said, Carl,

I've listened very carefully because you're very tuned in.

They did not say noonday demon. I would have remembered so the

early church mothers and fathers that the text that they're

working with got to remember the New Testament is not like fully

canonized for a minute. And so we're working with a

document called the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek

language translation of the Old Testament.

OK. And I'm going to read you an

English translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old

Testament. And this is what we're going to

have. So in Psalm 91536, you shall not

be afraid of terror by night, or the arrow flying by day, nor the

evil thing that walks in darkness, nor of calamity and

the evil spirit at noonday, the noonday demon.

So when Avagrius is talking about these 8 evil thoughts,

he's playing fast and loose in an interesting way with sort of

a literal sense of a like a demon, a tempting spirit, but

also like a bad thought or a bad desire.

And we're sort of interchangeably moving through

these things. Does it make sense to you that

have you ever had a thought that it's like this feels like a

temptation thought? Like maybe this is kind of maybe

it's kind of a thought, maybe it doesn't really matter how

literal we are. That's what what kind of space

we're in here with the noonday demon.

But he describes it in this fashion.

The demon of Acedia, also called the Noonday demon, is the most

oppressive of all demons. That's a bold claim.

He attacks the monk about the fourth hour. 4th hour is noon,

so we're we're tracking and besieges his soul until the 8th

hour. First of all, he makes it appear

that the sun moves slowly or not at all.

So here for a modern we're saying he keeps staring at that

clock and are those hands moving backwards, what is happening and

that the day seems to be 50 hours long.

I love how caddy this like 50 hour day.

Then he compels the monk to look constantly towards the windows.

Hey, what's going on outside to watch the sun?

Has it moved to jump out of the cell?

So if you're not familiar monastics, well, bedrooms called

itself. So we'll come back to that.

That's where they stay and study and and and rest and stuff to

watch the sun, to see how far it is from the 9th hour to look

this way and that. Further, he instills in him of

the the demon instills in him the monk, A dislike for the

place just to say the monastery and for the state of his life

itself, a dislike for manual labor and also the idea that

love has disappeared from amongst the brothers and there

is no one to console him. OK, are we coming home to a

feeling? Now I'm stuck in this place and

you know what? Now that I notice it as the day

drags on, do you remember how nobody cares about me anymore?

And like people used to talk and be nice to me and now they don't

and no one cares and no one takes care of me.

And also how much does it suck to hoe the garden?

OK and should there be anyone during these days?

So in a period of of the CD attack who has offended the

monk? This to the demon uses to

further his dislike of the place.

Wasn't Samuel such AI won't say swears bad man this morning to

me. So rude.

He leads him on the desire of other places where you can

easily find the wherewithal to meet his needs.

Pursue a trade that is easier and more productive.

Man, if I could just get out of this monastery I used to be a

sail maker like that was awesome.

I could make a living at what am I doing here.

He adds the demon that pleasing the Lord is not a question of

being in a particular place for scripture says that divinity can

be worshipped everywhere. That's right, man, I learned

like we worship in spirit and truth.

Why am I even here and I could I could do anything anywhere.

Where's the word is hoeing holy like he joins these suggestions

with the memory of his close relations and of his former

life. He depicts for him the long

course of his lifetime. The demon right the hey, you're

going to be in this self forever, doing nothing while

bringing the burdens of asceticism before his eyes.

Don't you love getting up in the middle of the night to pray?

Don't you love bearing with these rude, irritating brothers?

And he deploys every device in order to have the monk leave his

cell and flee the stadium. So Acedia for Vagius is this

really important demon that yet seems to be some of the most

banal, right. If you think about the seven

deadly sins, lush and gluttony and greed and wrath, they they,

they're like the big deal ones. This one becomes sort of sloth

over the years. It's like, you know, when you

want to, you don't want to hang out like it doesn't seem like a

big deal. And yet for a Vagius, it is

because, unlike so many of these other passions, this strikes at

the root of the willingness to do anything in particular.

All the other passions are more particular to a particular slice

of life and desire. This strikes at the the center

of all energy and capacity to do anything right.

And it has a particular importance that it finds its

home here in the monastic. Being a monk is hard.

You guys, I don't know if you know, but like living in a cell,

the same routine every day, being under strong authority.

You have a rule of life, you have vows.

Like it's a hard life. And so it's easy to see how one

would become distracted in some other tellings of this, There's

a a student of a vigorous called John Cassian.

He talks about how how monks will think about different

monasteries, like, oh, we wouldn't do that one monster.

It's so much better than this monster, which I love like for a

month, Like that's as good as it gets, like totally better

monasteries. So there's a ton of writing

about this in the monastic community all the way from a

vigorous in the 4th century all the way up through.

We'll talk about Aquinas later. We'll talk.

We're we're skipping over Gregory the Great.

We're skipping over mostly John Cassian.

Let's jump ahead to sort of a 20th century expression of this

Acedia concept. OK, so this is Roberta Bondi

from To Love as God Loves. I am sponsored today by Inner

Varsity Press or whatever Roberta Bondi says it is.

It is a great book, though. In fairness, Acedia is restless

boredom that makes our ordinary tasks seem too dull to bear.

Nothing seems right, life has lost its savour and it all seems

like somebody else's fault, so that the only alternative is to

leave everything and go off somewhere else.

We may experience it as a restlessness that makes us hate

our jobs. Some experience it as a boredom

with a marriage that they may seek to cure with affairs.

Others change residences at periodic intervals.

Or, and I love this this this book is from the 80s, but it

feels modern to me, take up dangerous hobbies.

Like so bored. It's time to start, I don't

know, parasailing or something. Maybe that's not dangerous and

I'm going to hear from the parasailing community or go out

and spend money. And I love this.

I think that that Roberta is correct.

Whatever the attempted solution tried, however, the result is

the same. Restless boredom with life.

You cannot cure acedia by doing cool stuff.

It doesn't work. Can't cure a bad marriage with

an affair. Can't cure a bad job with the

good job. Now maybe a little bit, we'll

talk about that restlessness, listlessness, boredom, unease,

discomfort with what is before you.

And I think I wanted to be clear.

One of the things that I think is lost in the sloth, laziness,

translation of this is acedia of the the working out.

The churning of acedia can be expressed in activity or

inactivity. Either way, Kathleen Norris in

Acedia and Me says much of the restless boredom, frantic

escapism, commitment phobia, which I think is great, and

enervating despair that plagues us today is the ancient demon of

Acedia in modern dress. So mostly I've been telling you

stories about this thing. It's really hard to pin down,

and I think that's why in part I said I wasn't going to talk

about transition of the word, but why we haven't held onto the

word it. It holds a lot of concepts

within it. Andrew Crislip says none of the

modern and medieval glosses convey the semantic range of the

term. The monk.

The seal says the word is so pregnant with meaning it

frustrates every attempt to translate it.

But what is it? What is acedia?

It is when faced with the the realities, the life that is in

front of you, a discomfort and incapacity to stick with it and

be in that and a desire to find a way out.

We're going to talk a little bit more about boundaries at the

end, but apparently I'm talking about it right now.

Don't misunderstand me to say that you've got to stay in a

dangerous or bad situation here. When I'm talking about

perseverance and I talk about staying, it does not mean

staying in a place that is that is bad for you.

Vital to understand. And in point of fact, staying or

going in many ways is not the thing.

The posture of the heart and the mind in the staying or in the

going is what we're going to talk about.

Jesus, I think is tempted in the desert with acedia, right?

So some of you who grew up in the fish may remember after

after being baptized, Jesus goes off into the desert and fasts

for a long time before going off to do the rest of ministry

right. And he goes through a series of

temptations from the devil's, what the text talks about.

Maybe somebody in one of the Sermon on Gluttony, we'll talk

about that passage. I don't know.

But the last, the last temptation of Christ, that's a

different thing. But in this particular sets of

temptations in Matthew 4/8 through 10, this is the last one

in this section. Again, the devil took him to a

very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the

world and their splendor. All this I will give to you, he

said. If you will bow down.

And worship me and Jesus said to him, away from me Satan, for it

is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only then

the devil left him and the angels came and attended him.

It's important, I think, to understand what it, what's

what's at stake here. It's I think in a plain reading,

you just get a sense of like, oh, the devil's trying to get

Jesus to bow down to him. And, and that, that, that that's

the thing. And it doesn't even really feel

particularly tempting. If you're God, why bow down to

the devil? Just like jog on, we're done

here. Like, what are we doing?

Where's the real temptation? Right.

And here's where I think the temptation is an Acidia based

temptation. What Jesus knows is in front of

him is an incredibly hard road to be a a homeless wanderer

teaching people who are mostly not going to get it, people who

are mostly in it for the miracles, right?

Mostly in it for the food and things like that.

With disciples that he chooses that are really not going to get

it and are going to be terrible to each other.

And things bickering about who's on the right and left.

And at the end of it, the reward is death on a cross.

And that does not sound like a super great way to bring the

Kingdom of God, right? Seems like a dumb idea.

Boring is maybe not the right word, but there's a dullness to

it, A hardness to it. And So what?

The real temptation is here. It's like, hey, I, I'm the

devil, I'm the Prince of this world.

Why don't you skip all of that crap and be the king Now you'll

save people, you'll help people out.

Now, today, you can do this. Now be the king, be the good

king. I'll, I'll let you run

everything. So there's a temptation to get

out of the churn, out of the hard stuff, out of the dull

stuff, out of the terrible stuff and skip ahead.

That's the temptation of a seed. It's like, hey, why are you like

in this thing? Why don't you just kind of round

it, Skip ahead, get out of it. Jesus turns to Scripture, the

truth of God and perseveres. And when he does, the devil

leaves him and he is cared for. More on that later.

Do you have a sense now for what acedia is making sense?

Some kind of, I know it's narrative, it's broad, it's

meant to be, it's a vague old Greek term, but I think we've

got something. OK, so next question, Do I have

it? Do I have the Acedia?

I miss that. This is a little silly.

I, I am a child of my age and Zoolander is a big movie for me.

I love him. Zoolander, he says.

I'm getting that black lung pop. That's what I was thinking

about. Oh, I wrote this.

Do I have it for some of you? You know right now that this is

something that you struggle with.

When we were talking through this stuff, it was resonating

with you. It was hitting beats for you.

It makes sense. You're like, yeah, I, I, I had

it a while ago and you just kept talking.

I know that to be the case because when I was preparing for

this sermon, I was like, I got the Acedia pop, which is great.

It's like couple weeks ago I didn't know what ACD was.

Now I got it. I struggle with the CDA.

It's not the same as depression. I know because I've had that.

It's not the same as laziness. So I got that too and I want to

point this out. Maybe a small fraction of you

will be wondering about this. It's not the same as ADHD, OK,

Like when you read some of these descriptions, I cut some of them

out. They're like the figures is like

they don't even want to read the scripture for 10 hours at a

time. It's like, well, it's not the

same as that. But there is an interplay

between all of those things. And if you're a person that

struggles with all of them, some of them you're going to find

they talk to each other and they go back and forth and push you

from 1:00 to the other. But they're not the same as

Acedia itself. For me, looking at like how

Acedia comes home, for me, it's like not so much about dullness

or boredom as like a deep discomfort with the way that

things are. And for me, I can be avoidant in

the way I pursue relief in Acedia.

We have the best technology in human history.

For Acedia, there is like more content available to you

instantly on your device than you could watch in 1000

lifetimes. Like unending stream and they're

always making new stuff. For me, it's it's the YouTube or

Reddit that is my go to when I, when I just shut off and not

deal with what's in front of me or more insidious in many ways,

the way I manifest an active so as called escape from Assidia is

flights of fancy imagination. Oh man, I'm going to I'm going

to go and do this and it's going to be so great.

We're going to move to New York City.

I'm going to live in Sesame Street, right?

Start making lists of things that will fix my life.

You know when I buy my 2 channel preamp for my computer?

Oh, then I can really record, right?

Lists and lists ideas, writing it all out of all the great and

awesome things I'll do. And then I don't do any of it

anyway. So the noontime demon wins

twice, getting me to be so-called active while actually

changing and doing nothing. I don't even really flee, which

is in some ways a mercy. So you can leverage laziness

against yourself sometimes. But what it's all about is never

really sitting with what I'm really feeling and what's really

happening, doing anything to avoid that.

And definitely not inviting God into any of it.

That's I think a great hint for you if you're trying to

determine, am I going through a discernment process?

Am I like considering what is good or am I lost in the CDA?

Who's invited to the party in the heart and mind?

Just you and your resentments or is God in there too?

By the way, God is happy to come to a party with you and your

resentments. You don't have to kick the

resentments out to invite God. Super good with it.

Don't be afraid of that. But when it's just you and your

your parts that are trying to escape, probably acedia.

This is where I wrote down about boundaries, context, so you can

blow off steam sometimes, you guys, I'm not saying like if

you're not studying or working every hour of every day, you've

got the acedia and you're in big trouble.

Scroll a little bit. Take a minute, like, chill out,

have some fun. You know, you can leave places

sometimes, whether that's to get out of a bad thing or to go to a

new thing. Maybe God says I want you to go

live on Sesame Street. So far, no.

The key is your posture in it. Is it something that has a sense

of of peace and invitation? Is it something in the terms of

resting that brings genuine rest and new energy?

I find in the CD of moments scrolling, it's like a stasis,

right? It's just like time freezes.

I went in anxious and then I wasn't anxious for 30 minutes

while I was watching YouTube and then I'm anxious again.

Like nothing really changed. So that's not useful.

Steam release, right? We want to look for things that

are genuinely restful, genuinely connecting to God in our

circumstance. God, God does know where you're

at in these things. He knows you and he will like

help you with these things. And if you find yourself as a

person saying, I genuinely don't know, Carl, if I'm like in a

place of discernment or blowing off steam or what's going on,

this church is really this, this church has been working on how

to do discernment together for decades.

Like we have been working on this stuff and we we've got

resource. So hit us up.

We'd love to help. All right, so some of you, this

is making sense. This is hitting for you.

There might be some of you here who have been nodding.

I have no idea what I'm talking about.

In your heart, God bless you. We'll get to your passion in a

minute, I promise. But if this doesn't make sense

to you, that doesn't mean check out.

Not that you would. Everyone's looking.

It's fine, but but it's an opportunity to learn what you

can so you can love the rest of the community.

Well, right. And when, when we get to yours,

that one went for you and the people that don't get that will

listen and learn. And this a community thing.

We we do this together. I've been talking about this

solo a lot, but we work on it as a, a church body.

Amen. All right.

If you're on the fence, if you're like, some things make

sense, some things don't. Look for the ways in which you

find yourself unable to engage in the good work in front of

you, the good thought in front of you.

Look for the ways you distract yourself with activity or

inactivity rather than deal with thoughts that are hard,

uncomfortable or boring, and see if anything makes sense to you.

OK, So what, Zidia? Do I have it?

What do I do about it? I so loved Jared's picture at

the beginning of the series about getting a massage.

Now I have to clarify, I personally loathe the concept of

massage. A stranger touching me is like

somewhere around getting shot. I think would be.

I've never been shot and I have been touched by strangers, so

I'm not sure but but as a concept, I love it, right?

When you get a massage, you don't do the work.

The good stuff that happens is not your stuff.

This, this business does not get the job done, right.

So there the work is being done to you, but you have to schedule

the massage. You got to show up for the

massage. You got to get on the table,

right? So I love this picture when it

comes to letting God do the work, we do the work of showing

up. So here's some ways you can show

up for the massage. When it comes to Acdia, there's

a great list. So Thomas Aquinas writes about

this later on in I wrote it down, 13th century.

And then Evangrius had a list too, of how to deal with Acdia.

And it's wild because they're, you know, hundreds and hundreds

of years apart, like over 1000 years apart.

The lists are really like common.

Now, Aquinas might have been copying, I don't know, but but

OK, we'll match up the list. Sorry, let's take a deep breath.

Some ways to show up for the massage for acedia #1 for

Aquinas, he says reorder your thoughts.

Vaguerous here says meditate on Scripture, right?

Which for you know a hardcore monk, that's how you reorder

your thoughts. Do not attach your thoughts to

worldly things. Focus on God with daily prayer.

Passions towards worldly things are not in and of themselves

worthy of blame or praise. Just having a passion, a desire.

That's OK, Aquinas notes. It's disordered passions that

are the danger. So one thing you can do, if you

can get your head together a little bit, however that works

for you. Reading scripture can be great

if you have a good access to scripture.

If you don't, you can work on that.

Sometimes it's just sitting down and thinking.

Some of us are verbal processors.

Talk to a a friend, get your thoughts out there to where we

can move. Unjumble them a little bit. 2 I

love this so much. The modern church forgets about

the bodies #2 take care of the body.

Vigorous Here he just says physical labor because for a

monk like the GM is the whole peas and things, that's what

they do. So but Aquinas a little bit more

broad the the needs of our body can tempt us to sin.

The cure is to give the body what it needs, no more, no less.

So what's great about this one is sometimes you can trick

yourself into doing it when you're really lost in your mind.

Sometimes for some of us, we can have no sense.

No, there's no way I'm going to get my thoughts under control.

There's no way I'm going to get my emotions sorted out, but I

might be able to get myself to go on a little walk, right?

Maybe I can do that. Maybe I can do a little chore,

you know, maybe I can trick myself into doing a little

something with my body that will begin to bring the heart and

mind in line. Maybe I can trick myself into

drinking a glass of water. There are options here.

So it's vital that we take care of the body to avoid these

things. And also the body can be a hack,

a kick start for dealing with the mental emotional part.

It's actually a YouTube has a great video on this from the

pandemic talking about dealing with the body of sort of a hand

crank to getting your systems working properly.

CGP Grey 3 rejoice in God's gifts.

This was just Aquinas. This is a strike against false

humility. So it's easy to compare

ourselves unfairly to everyone else's holiness, material wealth

or status. So we, whether we want to put

ourselves above or below, we love to compare ourselves to

others. And either we can like flog

ourselves. I'm just the worst, you know, or

we can say they're the worst because they're so rich or

whatever it is makes us contemptuous of our own lives,

contemptuous of the lives of others.

It's a false humility. I mean humility.

So we, we want to learn gratitude.

Anybody in 12 step knows about this, right?

We want to find the ways which we be grateful for what's

actually in our life. It goes in line with reordering

our thoughts, but it's a particular flavor when it comes

to being grateful. This next one, Oh my goodness,

just from a vaguerus here, he says tears.

I love tears. Evagrius views tears as a vital

part of the Christian's fight against acedia.

In exhortation to aversion, Evagrius writes Sadness is

burdensome and acedia is irresistible, but tears shed

before God are stronger than both.

Sadness is burdensome and acedia is irresistible, but tears shed

before God are stronger than both.

Monks should pray for tears as a sign of repentance.

Make use of tears to obtain the fulfillment of your every

request, for the Lord rejoices greatly over you when He

receives prayer accompanied by tears.

Acedia over time produces callousness in the heart, Right?

Well, I can't. All I can think about is how I

don't want to be here, how boring it is, and how I want to

escape. How I dull myself with

inactivity or run away inactivity.

What I do is I care less about everyone.

Ah Kados, I care less about myself.

I care less about God. In tears, crack loose a little

bit of care. Cry the most self in Dalton

tears. You want to cry because at least

you're showing some care for yourself and the Lord will meet

you in that. And then cry tears for your

brothers and sisters who suffer and let your heart be taught in

that and know that you cry with our Lord who cries.

Amen. Last one from the list.

Be steadfast and you're resistant.

What am I supposed to be done? I'm so sorry.

Tomorrow, how many OK, it's we're going going long file

complaint at the office. Vegas talks about perseverance.

Aquinas teaches that some sins are overcome by avoidance.

Others, like acedia can only be come overcome by perseverance.

Right. So there are some things in the

seven deadliest, right? The passions that you can avoid.

Like we're just going to stay away from that.

We're just not going to be in that area.

There's no avoiding acedia. Acedia will come to you, will

come to your root. And so the only way to deal with

it is to go through. The only way out is through.

OK. So perseverance, it's vital.

What they said as a saying back in the day was stay in your

cell. Your cell will teach you

everything. And so many of the writings are

about like, don't leave. Don't, don't leave yourself for

a minute. Don't run off.

Don't leave the monastery. Just stay.

So there's a lot to be said here for a spiritual staying.

Again, don't over read me in terms of you have to not change

anything about your life like but a spiritual staying in one

place. Like I said earlier, it's not so

much the exact things that you do.

It's the way in which you do them.

A posture of in the heart and mind inviting God.

And I want to make it clear, just as with the massage, I, I

just said persevere. No one will succeed on your own.

You can't persevere by yourself through the cedia.

It is irresistible, right? Even when you're but I cried

everything like you said, girl, you're just not going to make it

on your own. These are good tools.

Use them. But we have to find the key to

perseverance. The only way to do it is to take

our tears and our struggles and our suffering and our boredom to

our God who loves us as a father, who loves us as a

mother. And it's the hardest thing to

do. I think taking these kinds of

things, these unbearable things to God is like doing a trust

fall into not knowing if anyone is there.

You can't see God. You have had times when you took

things together. It felt like nothing happened.

So it's terrifying. I'm going to take this to God.

It's hard to do, but he. He does show up in ways.

He doesn't fix it. He just suffers with you.

He goes through it with you. I want to return to our

Scripture again with this in mind of looking for the ways we

can persevere with God and we get Psalm 91 again.

So here I am. I'm in untenable circumstance.

I'm uncomfortable, I'm bored. I'm more than uncomfortable, I'm

in agony. Those who live in the shelter of

the Most High will find rest, real restorative rest, in the

shadow of the Almighty. This I declare about the Lord.

He alone is my refuge, my place of safety when I'm feeling under

attack, when I'm feeling like I can't live with what's in front

of me. He is my God and I trust Him for

He will rescue you from every trap.

Who's in the trap? You found your you have no

hands. You find yourself in life

trapped. You found yourself with a

figurative or real deadly disease.

He will rescue you next slide. Do not be afraid of the terrors

of the night. How many of us have lived

through racing? Terrible thoughts in the night,

though? The arrow that flies in the day,

someone who's coming for you do not dread the disease that

stalks in darkness malaise or and he says our noonday demon.

The disaster that strikes at midday halfway through the day

when you're just like, what the hell am I doing though 1000 fall

at your side, 10,000 are dying all around you.

These are harrowing words for living through something that is

killing many. These evils will not touch you.

Next slide. Just open your eyes and see how

the wicked are punished. If you make the Lord your

refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will

conquer you. So does it say no evil will

touch you and you will always be fine and nothing bad will ever

happen? It says conquer.

No evil will conquer you. If you can rest in God, you will

not be conquered. No plague will come near your

home, for he will order his angels to protect you wherever

you go. I take that to mean we can, in

practice of this perseverance, find ways to have a sense of

God's presence with us all the time.

They will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt

your foot on a stone. You will trample upon lions and

cobras. You will crush fierce lions and

serpents under your feet. Probably mostly.

Don't take that one literally, but know that in God's presence,

in our suffering, we can defeat. Lethal.

Enemies of the heart and mind. All right, Lord says I will

rescue those who love me. I will protect those who I

trust, who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will

answer. I will be with them in trouble.

I will rescue and honor them. The Lord honors us.

I'll reward them with long life and give them my salvation.

Next slide, one more. No.

OK, well, I think I have it here.

No, that's it. Sorry, friends.

Let's let's stand, let's have the band come on up Parker,

you're welcome. You have stuff the the

invitation for prayer today is vivarious.

If you are sensing in you that the Sicilia thing has some

purchase and you would like some help with that, maybe just

naming it with another person and inviting someone together to

invite God into that, please come for prayer for that.

If you're feeling really overwhelmed by particular strife

in your life, please come get prayer for that, whether it be

physical, mental, or emotional. If you're feeling a strong

resistance, if this kind of made you mad and you wish I would

have shut up a long time ago, if you're up for it, come and get

prayer for that. See what God meets you in that.

There might be some some resistance happening here today.

God loves you and He wants to meet you in these struggles and

He will. Amen.