Make Room for God - Digital Minimalism

Hey everyone, this is Charlie from Encounterchurch Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will

change your life and now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

Ash and I have found that Bluey makes a great parenting strategy. Who's familiar with the TV

show Bluey? Such a great show. We found that whenever we're trying to explain something to the kids

and we can't get through to them, there's usually an episode of Bluey for that.

We put it on to address our particular problem. Whenever we need to have a chuck out, which

means we need to move on some of the clutter in our house and move it on to the bin or the

recycling bin or the op shop, we put on the episode Mr Monkey Jocks. Mr Monkey Jocks is an episode

where Bandit, Bluey's dad, thinks that the kids have too many toys, which as a dad is always

objectively true. There is no point in my life where I've ever thought, wow, my kids don't have

enough toys, which demonstrates how lucky and privileged and cluttered our lives are.

So Bluey and her sister Bingo, they make a chuck pile and they make a keep pile. Now at the end of

their sorting, they realize that in the keep pile is everything and in the chuck pile is a monkey

wearing jocks, which of course now that the kids have noticed this monkey wearing jocks, they now

want to keep Mr Monkey Jocks. And so the rest of the episode is Bingo and Bluey trying to prove

that Mr Monkey Jocks is special and shouldn't go to the op shop. And what they learn is this,

if everything is special, then nothing is special. That's not actually how that word works.

Clutter like kids toys leaves little room for that which is most important. Your most treasured soft

toy that was given to you by someone very close to you when you were born gets buried in a toy box

amongst 15 to 30 other soft toys that you barely like, barely play with and frankly you wouldn't

get if I made it. I haven't made anything disappear yet but I'm thinking about it. Clutter leaves

little room for that which is most important. If everything is special, if everything is important,

then nothing is. I wonder if you've noticed this in your life that when things are cluttered,

whether it be your house, your car, your bookshelf, your calendar, my bookshelf is especially cluttered,

your to-do list, your budget, even your friendships. When you try to cram too much in you realise that

there's not actually not enough room left to give the important things the attention that they deserve.

If you treat everything like it's as important as everything else then

there's nothing as important. That's not only not how that word works but we leave no space,

no margin, no room to give the truly important things the honour and the time and the effort

that they actually deserve. I wonder for you if you can notice that clutter in your life,

the stuff that's getting in the way of valuing that which is actually most important to you.

Today we're finishing up our series, our November series called Make Room where we've

looked at four spiritual practices that can help us make room for God in our lives.

We've looked at the Sabbath, we've looked at tithing, we have looked at fasting and today

we're looking at our fourth and last spiritual practice. In our teaching text today Paul is

in Athens, he's killing time, he's wandering the streets of Athens, he's waiting out the couple

of weeks until Timothy and Silas join him in the great Greek city and what he finds in Athens leaves

him deeply distressed. What he finds is idols, not just some idols, volumes and volumes of idols.

Everywhere he looks there are idols to God's statues which are being worshiped and venerated.

There's a historian which I'm not going to be able to pronounce his name, Peter Ronas.

He said that in Athens it's actually easier to find a God than it is to find a person.

For a city of about 10,000 people at this time Pliny the Elder tells us that there was upwards of

30,000 idols to God's in the city. That's one, that's three to every one person. The city is

literally cluttered with idols. It's like a junkyard for idols. If everything is important

then nothing is important. Paul knows the one true God. He knows that the true God isn't made

by human hands and he knows the one true God really hates idols. In fact it comes in at number

one and two on the Ten Commandments that God gives to Moses. Don't have any other gods before me

and don't worship, make any idols or worship them. So Paul, he's moved in his heart. He's distressed

at the idolatry of the city. He has to do something. This is the kind of person that Paul is. He just

has to do something about it. And so he goes to the temple and he starts to debate the Jews in the

synagogue and he goes to the marketplace and he starts to debate the Greek philosophers. He sees

that these people are worshiping everything and everyone's gods in some kind of desperate religious

sense hoping that at least one of these gods that they're worshiping will do something. We'll help

them. We'll make their lives easier. At least one of them would be true. It troubles him.

And his debates and his teaching that he does day to day, Saturdays in the synagogues in the

marketplace every other day, they start to create a buzz in the city and some philosophers take him

to the Aeropagus, which is the high council of the city where the new ideas were debated by those

who were reasoned and wise and leaders within the city. And he's asked to explain himself, what is

this new thing that you're teaching? Because it's new and interesting and Athens loves new and

interesting things. And so Paul has his chance to speak and this deep trouble he feels about the

idolatry of the city bubbles out of him. He says, I know, I've noticed that you are very religious.

And I was walking along, I found this one idol, which is dedicated to an unknown God. And the

commentator Craig Keener says that this statue was built a long time before Paul gets to Athens.

It was established at a time at a devastating plague. They had sacrificed and sacrificed to all

these statues and all these gods and nothing could, nothing happened. Nothing could take this plague

out of their midst. And so they decided in an act of desperation to build a statue to an unknown

God and to sacrifice to him. And when they do that, the plague vanishes immediately. Paul says,

I, you worship this God that you don't know, but I know him. And here's what I'm about to tell you.

This is what I'm here to tell you about this God that you don't know. He doesn't need your idols or

your temples or human hands to serve him. He created the universe, every grain of sand, every star

in the sky. How can he live here in a temple made by human hands? How can his presence rest upon

carved stone? How can we as people, how can we meet the needs of a God like that? You worship,

you worship all these gods. You worship them and your city is clotted with them. And God has allowed

this because you were searching for something. You were searching for him. But now he's calling

all people everywhere to leave behind their old ways and come to him. Paul says, God has a plan

emotion. He's given us a man who would put the world right and God has proved this to everyone

by raising that man from the dead. And Paul is just preaching now. Leave behind your God. Leave

behind your clutter. Turn to God, your religious clutter. Get rid of it. Turn to Jesus. He is the

one that you are really searching for in all your religiosity. He's the one you're really looking

for. In him, God did not come to rest on a statue made from gold, silver or stone as you think your

gods do. But here God came as a person. You're so close, but you're so far. But they don't love it.

In fact, they can't get past the resurrection of Jesus. They genuinely have no category for it.

But God does God things. Dionysus, a member of the governing council, no less, the elite of the

elite of the city becomes a follower of Jesus. And so does a woman named Demaris, who must have been a

woman of public significance, either in the church or the community, to A, be present in the

Arapagus at the time when Paul was preaching, or be worth Luke, who wrote the book of Acts,

recording her conversion by name. Paul in his preaching, he's trying to get them to see

that they are worshiping God's indiscriminately when they should be worshiping the one God

intentionally. You're worshiping all these gods and you're worshiping the one true God as well.

But if everything is worshiped, then nothing actually is. Jesus himself in the Sermon on the

Mount, which is in Matthew six says this, no one can serve two masters, either your loved one or

hate the others, you will be devoted to one or despise the other. You cannot serve both God and

money. Paul's like friends, you have 30,000 gods, that is 30,000 masters. You can't have 30,000

masters. That's not how that word works. You didn't know. And so God has been gracious to you.

But now you know, because I'm here to tell you, so clear out this religious clutter, clear out

this idolatry and worship the God that is actually important, actually worthy of glory and honor and

praise, worship the God who created and not the gods who had to be created. It might be easy to

look at the Athenians with their little gods made of silver and gold and stone and think that there's

maybe a little silly to believe that that was real. But my friends, idolatry is alive and well

today. Idolatry is alive and well. We might not have little gods made by human hands that we carry

around in our pockets or worship in our homes or go to the temple, but the idols still exist for us

today. They just look different. Tim Keller says, the big three idols, the big three of our Western

culture are sex, money and power. We might go and not go to a temple to worship Zeus, the most

powerful god in Greek mythology anymore, but people still worship power today. We might not carry,

we're not have a little shrine to plute us the Greek God of wealth in our house anymore, but

people still worship money today. We might not have a little, carry a little idol to Aphrodite,

the Greek goddess of sex and beauty anymore, but people still worship sex today. We worship something,

Tim Keller says, we make it an idol. When we make a good thing, something that is its

essence good. When we make it an ultimate thing. We say, if only I had sex, money, power, then,

then I would be okay. When we do that, we've made it an ultimate thing. We've made it an idol.

When we say, if only I had more influence, more control, if only I was more comfortable,

if only I had the latest phone, if only I had a new car, a better house with a big backyard,

if only I had that career that I was looking for, if only I was married, if only I had a family,

then, then I would be okay, then I would be happy. When we do that, we've made a good thing,

things that are good, an ultimate thing. We've made it an idol, a god over us. We've made that thing

a master. Instead of serving us, we serve it. Remember Jesus says, you can't have two masters.

You'll hate one, love the other. You're devoted to one, you'll despise the other.

You can't serve both God and money, but you can't serve both God in sex, and you can't

serve both God and power. Iters are alive and well in our day, and they're alive and well in you

and in me. Like the city of Athens, our hearts are cluttered with things that we worship that are not

God. For the people of Athens, their idols are on display and out in the open, but for today,

another person may never realize the hold that these things have on us,

because they're not out on display. They never know how much we fret and work and stress to gain,

control, protect and grow our money. They may never realize how much we think and grind and work

and obsess to gain success and influence over others, to be seen as something.

They may never know how much we think about getting into a relationship, getting married,

or having sex. Idols are alive and well and can be so easily hidden in our day,

and they are friends, a genuine barrier to the spiritual growth and life that we all want and

desire. The intimacy with the Father that is ours thanks to the work, the finished, complete work

of Jesus Christ. Jesus reconciled us to God and made us alive to Him. Again, He gave us a spirit

so we can walk with Him day by day once more. Jesus said that He came to give us life and life to

the full. How can we enjoy that when we have all this clutter in our lives and in our hearts?

All these idols, all these gods to appease aren't the true God in whom we live and move

and have our being. All these things vying for our attention and our worship.

These idols are genuine barriers to the spiritual life we want.

And we could do like a 10 part series on this, but I'm going to give you one today,

one area of our lives that we don't too often think about,

when we think about the clutter in our lives, and one thing that gets in the way of what God

wants to do in and through us and we don't even think about it. And that is our digital clutter.

That is the way that we use and consume digital content. I'm talking social media,

streaming services, video games, apps, podcasts, because the thing about digital clutter is it

can both be an idol for us and it can also facilitate our idolatry to other things.

We might not wander around our city and see idols to God's, but today we carry around the city in

our pocket. The city comes to us through our phones and through our streaming services,

promising the world, if only you do this, get this product, live this kind of way, then

you'll be okay, then you'll be happy. But idols always over promise and under the liver,

because they're counterfeit. They're not real. They're not true. They can't deliver on what

they promise because only God can truly do that. In fact, the big three idols of our age, sex, money,

power, they mostly come to us through our digital devices. There are apps for all of these things,

apps for hookups, apps to make money, apps to literally quantify your following,

your influence over people. There are video games and TV shows and podcasts and YouTube channels,

which glorify these things. And these devices themselves can even be a symbol of power, success

and money. Got a big TV, must be successful. We carry around these idol making factories in our

pockets. We put these idol making factories in our homes. And all this does is clutter our hearts

and it clutters our lives. Do you know that the global average screen time per day,

this is including the third world and Western culture is six hours and 40 minutes a day,

six hours. So let's take that and let's say, okay, well, that leaves about 17 hours a day

on average left once you've had your screen time. And if you work or study each day,

that's about eight hours. So we've got nine hours left. And hopefully you sleep at least seven

hours or you're going to be grumpy. So that leaves you about two hours a day, two hours a day of

margin for cooking, eating, cleaning, budgets, exercise, brushing your teeth, playing with your

kids, hanging out with your friends, working on your lawn. And I haven't even, this is an important

thing. You need margin to get that lawn gone well. And I haven't even mentioned praying,

reading your Bible. Two hours won't cut it for doing all of these things well in a day.

No wonder we find it so difficult to do the most basic things that Christians have done for 2000

years to worship and glorify God, let alone do anything less basic. No wonder we find it so

difficult to steward this gift of relationship with him. We just don't have the time. We have so

little margin. And one of the primary reasons today is because we are lives are fueled with

those digital clutter. Much of it is just not that important. Not really. Social media, it's

actually not very important. You still find out that you will still find out if you get rid of

your social media, the most important things that are happening to those around you, because they

will tell you. And if you don't find out without social media, you're really close enough to that

person to genuinely know. You can still share the cool stuff that's going on in your life.

You just have to share it with people face to face individually. And if it's not worth sharing

individually, then maybe it wasn't worth sharing in the first place.

People might make fun of you for not knowing who Sabrina Carpenter is. But seriously, who cares?

Seriously. Streaming content, it's not very important. You won't lose anything by not

being up to date with the new IT TV show that everyone's watching. It does not benefit your life

or your relationship with God or the mission of God or the calling God's place in your life.

To rewatch the office, to rewatch Grey's Anatomy, to rewatch Friends all the way through again.

Which if you look at the website, bingeclock.com, which is a very confronting website,

you can find out that Grey's Anatomy, every time you watch Grey's Anatomy, that has cost you 13 days

of your life. You will never get back. Every time you watch the office, that is three days and 21

hours of your life that you will never get back. Every time you watch through the Friends, that

costs you four days and 18 hours of your life, you will never get back. Video games really

aren't important at all. Unless you are sitting together with your friends or your mates on the

couch, playing together, connecting with each other over this game, is there really anything

redemptive about it? What good does it bring you? To your friendships, to your relationships with

to God? What good does it bring you to completing that 50 hour game? What does it teach you? What

does it give you? You give it all this time and attention and it gives you nothing in return,

but a little hit of dopamine. It's just not important, that important. It's just a big time

sink. I'm not just saying this like as someone, a judge who has never picked up a control in your

life. I say this as someone who has a teenager sunk a thousand hours into Skyrim. A thousand hours.

That is 41 days of my life. I will never get back. 41 days. At the end of my life, do you think that

I'm going to wish that I had 41 more days? 41 more days with my kids? 41 more days with Ash?

41 more days to serve Jesus? Skyrim took a month of my life and more and I have nothing to show for it.

This is what I'm getting at. It's just all clutter. It's just clutter. What benefits

your life with God? What benefits your family? What benefits your community to these things

truly bring you? Probably very, very little if we're honest. We fill our lives with this digital

clutter. Clutter leaves little room for that which is most important. Some of you might be thinking,

Tim's being a bit old man raging at cloud right now. You are the oldest person ever,

raging against the youths and their technology. I'm not raging against the digital world.

A lot of it is good and redemptive and beneficial. I love it. I love the possibilities. I love how

efficient technology can make our lives. I have AI managing my calendar right now. It's amazing.

I love how movies and TV shows can articulate beauty and wonder and the gospel. I love how

smartphones allow you to not get lost, to capture precious moments and to get you the help you need

when you need it. I love the access to information that we have. There are so many good things about

the digital world when it's used in meaningful, redemptive, beneficial ways for your good and for

the life of the world. Then it's not clutter. It's something intentional. It's there for a purpose

instead of serve you and to serve God. But there is little good about the digital clutter in our

lives because we end up serving the clutter. When I look at people and I see them wasting their time

scrolling socials and playing video games and binging content and when I look at my own life

and the time that I've wasted doing the same things, I feel simultaneously convicted and distressed.

I can feel convicted by this text in Acts because my heart is a city cluttered of idols, struggling

to find room for that which is most important. And I also feel how I think Paul felt wondering

those streets of Athens. Seeing the idols in the city isn't our lives. Isn't our time worth more

than the clutter we fill it with? Didn't God have more for our lives in mind when He created us

than filling our lives with all this meaningless digital clutter? So what do we do with it?

How do we clear that away to make room in our lives for that which is most important? To make

room in our lives for God? First we have to understand that much of this actually isn't our fault.

But that doesn't mean that it isn't our responsibility. This digital clutter is literally

designed to do that. It's designed to clutter our lives. Social media, video games, streaming services

are designed to grab and hold your attention for as long as possible because that's how they make

money. Columbia Law Professor Tim Wood calls this the attention economy. It's the sector of business

that makes money and it does it in a myriad of different ways by keeping, by gathering

and keeping your consumer's attention and then they repackage it and sell it to advertisers.

Because big business has worked out that your attention is actually the most profitable thing

about you. So they do their best to keep you watching, keep you watching those shows, keep

you watching those reels, keep you playing those games and they package your attention and they

sell it on. An ad stuck between, wedged between reels on Instagram or TikTok is like the most

basic example of this. You're watching, oh there's an ad, watching, watching, oh there's an ad.

Google and Facebook, just two examples, they've made billions, extracting what they call eyeball

minutes. Eyeball minutes. They've extracted it from the general population and it is quite

significantly more lucrative than extracting oil. So sobering reminder, how many wars have been fought

over oil, how many men and women and children have died over oil and your eyeball minutes are more,

far more lucrative than oil. Where there is money to be made, there are people who are trying to make

more of it. And so you better believe that millions and millions of dollars are being poured into

attention engineering. Working how to get more of your attention because your attention is the most

profitable thing about you. So these industries, they use the levers of behavioral addiction.

And there's two that might be helpful to highlight. The first one is this, intermittent positive

reinforcement. It just means just enough hits of good feels to keep you locked in. Another example

is you win enough of the slot machines to keep losing. And the second one is the desire for

social approval. Desire to feel part of something connected and not to be ostracised, not to be

disconnected from that, to stay in the community. Ever noticed that buzz feeling you get when someone

likes what you've posted? Ever noticed that reels don't end? Ever noticed that most people think it's

weird to not have social media today, even though social media has only been existing for like 15 years?

Ever noticed that video games don't really end anymore? They have more and more social elements

to them? They give you those little satisfying check boxes that you can tick off? Ever noticed that

they let you skip the recap and they let you skip the credits, but they never let you skip the ads?

Ever noticed that you can now watch Netflix with people, but you're actually not with them. You're

just watching at the same time. Different rooms, different houses. These are intermittent positive

reinforcement and the drive for social approval. You better believe these are at play. And this is

not our fault. People are making a lot of money off behavioral addiction to these things and they're

literally engineering the profit, their products to do so. But that does not mean that it isn't our

responsibility. We have been given this one beautiful life to lead. We've been in family and

friends and skills and passions and loves. God has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and

He's set us in the kingdom of His Son Jesus. We have each been given a unique part to play in God's

unfolding plan to put the world right. Nobody else gets to live your life. Only you do.

And it's our responsibility to steward that life that we've been given to the glory of God and for

the life of the world. God might want you to use you to not just reach people, but cities. And not

just cities, but nations. God might want to use you to bring mercy and justice and compassion,

not just to people, but to cities and not just to cities, but to nations. But we've got to create

enough space in our life to give Jesus a yes, to participate in what God wants to do in your life. How

will you become the kind of person who can reach cities and nations and people when all our margin

time is just given to TV? You're asking God to work around you and not work with you. Here's the deal.

The digital clutter in our lives will set its own limits unless we set it for them. It will keep

pushing the line, encroaching the margin we have in our lives unless we tell it where it ends. If you

don't decide, I'm only going to watch one episode of this show tonight, then you will probably watch

three. If you don't decide that I'm only going to look at this app for 15 minutes, you'll realize that

you just lost an hour of your day. If you don't decide, I'm only going to play this game for an

hour and you'll realize suddenly that it's 1 a.m. and you have to be up at 6 tomorrow. You set its limits

or it will. In our Make Room series thus far, we have recommended the practice of Sabbath, tithing,

fasting, and today I want to recommend the spiritual practice of digital minimalism to make room for

God in our lives because digital minimalism can be the antidote to this encroaching. It's really a

tyranny and a way of taking responsibility of it and stewarding our lives. At its heart, it's about

digital intentionality, making intentional decisions about how you will use technology based on your

most deepest values. Carl Newport on his book called Digital Minimalism, which is a great book,

based on three principles. Clutter is costly. Too much stuff, too many apps, too many services.

It just diminishes the benefit that each of those things bring. If everything is important,

nothing is important. Optimization is important. To get the most out of something, you have to

actually decide how you're going to use it. To get the most out of something, you need to use it

intentionally and not indiscriminately. And that act of doing something intentionally is

actually deeply satisfying to the human psyche. We find it far more satisfying to do something

intentionally than to do something accidentally or indiscriminately. This means we make our intentional

decisions and decide when we're practicing digital minimalism why we are using something, how we

will use it and how we won't. That means setting limits like for Facebook, it is only useful for

work. So I will check it once a day for 15 minutes and I will only have it on my desktop computer.

That's intentional use. It limits the clutter. And this kind of digital intentionality, it clears

away that clutter in our lives and makes use of those surfaces like Facebook in an optimized

and more satisfying way. It allows them to be tools and not idols because we have been intentional

with them. So I want to challenge you today. If there is nothing redemptive about something in

your life, digital or otherwise, get rid of it. Clear it out. And by redemptive I mean this.

If there is nothing good for you, good for your relationship with God or good for others in it,

then it is just not worth your time. Your time is too precious for that. And if you're bristling at

the thought of setting limits around your digital life, ask yourself why? Am I making this thing

an ultimate thing? If I only have this, do this, don't do this, if I only get to this many followers,

if I only can get this new thing, then I will be okay. Because if it is an ultimate thing,

then it is lying to you. It is promising what it can't deliver. It is like the idols in the city of

Athens and they need to be cleared away so we can make room for the true living God in our lives.

So for everyone's favourite sermon segment this week, Hanley Homo. I want to invite you to have a

digital chuck out. Chuck out one piece of digital clutter. I want to challenge you to do this.

Find something and it should be pretty easy. It just has no redemptive value. Something that has

become a barrier and you can notice it has become a barrier to your life with God. Because unless you

have been super intentional about this, it is probably at least one thing you can easily chuck out to

make room for God. Put a limit around it. Something that is facilitating the idols of your heart

or something that has become an idol in itself. This is just Hanley Homo, every time we do this

sermon segment, it is just one step, one small step towards more intentionality about how we

follow Jesus. This is a digital intentionality that can make room in our life for God to have a

digital chuck out. That might mean you are getting rid of a social media account, a video game

console, one of your streaming services, a game on your phone, you might even get rid of your TV,

get rid of an app. What is one thing? We are going to take two minutes now and I ironically want you to write it in your phone.

What is one thing you can easily clear out in your life from your digital life that could create

room for God in your life? See this spiritual practice of digital minimalism, it is being intentional

with our digital choices and it helps us to make room for God in our lives. There are three ways I want to

point out to you that it will help us. Firstly, it helps us to make room for us to see the idols in our

heart and the idols of our city for what they really are. To make room enough for us to see them for

what they really are and to become like Paul distressed enough to do something about them. If we are so

distracted and cluttered, how can we see them for what they really are? The second thing is that they help us to

make room to notice what God is already up to in a place and also in our own lives. You know, I really

wanted Paul to see that one idol to an unknown God while he is killing time in Athens. He sees one idol in a city

that has 30,000. What do you have seen if he had the same kind of digital clutter in his life as I do today?

I think I would just be wandering around with my head down looking at how to get good coffee. That is what I

would be doing for two weeks while I am waiting for Timothy and Silas. I think if it was me, I would miss the

idol because I have been too distracted by all this clutter and distracted by these things that seem urgent and important

but really aren't. Slack and emails and games and social media, catching Pokemon for Judah? Maybe catching

Pokemon for me too, I don't know. I think I would miss it. One idol in 30,000. That leads me to the third point.

It helps us to make room for God to use us because Paul has this room. His life is uncluttered because he sees the

idolatry of the city and he sees it enough to be distressed to do something about it because he notices this one

idol among 30,000 to the true God. He has an opportunity to preach the gospel, not just in the marketplace but in the

heart of the city of Athens. People come to know Jesus. These people clear out the clutter of idols in their heart and their

idol worship and they are set free. If we unclutter our lives of all this digital destruction and we make room for God,

we can make room to see the idols of our city and see the idols of our heart, to notice what God is up to in our hearts

and in our city, to be used powerfully by God to set people free, to set cities free, to set nations free. For God to

continue to set us free from the idols of our own heart. Clutter leaves little room for that which is most important, for that which

is actually important. Chances are you have heard all of this and as we hear most sermons go, yeah, I should totally do something

about that. Or maybe you're thinking, wow, isn't Tim just a grandpa? Talking about technology back in my day. But ultimately,

we tend to not do much or anything about it at all. Or maybe we do for two weeks but then nothing ultimately changes. In a sense,

it's understandable because it's easier to let the clutter build up than to build a wall around and protect it. It's hard to live

intentionally. And for some of us, we're genuinely addicted to these things and that provides a huge, and produces a huge barrier to

change. Shouldn't that also provide and create in us a huge urgency and necessity for us to deal with these things? I feel like I'm

talking like Ryan Gosling from the notebook because my presiding question is this, what do you want? What do you want? Do you want to

look back on your life and realize that you wasted all this time, years, precious years of your precious life on clutter, things that

actually aren't important? Or do you want to look back on your life and say, I gave it my all. I ruthlessly pursued God. I made room

for Him to do what He wanted in me and through me. And you know, it was hard, it was a sacrifice, but it was worth it. I don't know about

you, but I would prefer the latter. You know, I'm driven to work and work at getting rid of the clutter, getting rid of the idols in my

life and throwing off everything that hinders me so that I can run the race for the resilience that God has marked out for me because I

desperately want to be used by God. A couple of years ago, we had to write a vision statement of what we wanted our lives to be.

What we wanted our ministry to be. When we got to the end of it, what we wanted that to have looked like. And in that, I wrote this.

I want there to be people who at the end of my life can say, I got to meet Jesus because of you. Because of what you did. Because of the sacrifices you made.

And not because I want some vain narcissistic glory for those things, but because if people can say that, then my life meant something of internal

significance. That meant that I got everything out of the life that God had for me. I left nothing in the tank. I got to the finish line with

nothing left. I spent it all. I made the most of it. And God could use me because I was ready and I was willing and I was intentionally shooting my life.

I made room for him. But I'm not there yet. I know you guys aren't there yet either. It's a journey. God's with it, on it with us.

But friends, make room for him. So this is a God who made room for us. We had separated ourselves from God,

and we had estranged ourselves from him. And there was nothing we could do to reconcile ourselves to God. Our sin meant that we could not be with God forever.

There was no room for us. Our sin left no room. So God out of his love and grace, reconciled us himself through Jesus.

Jesus carried our sin and its result death to a cross and he died with it, claiming victory over sin and death for us all. His life was laid down so that there could be room for us to be with God once more.

And there is room for us because we are hidden in Christ. We are with Christ. We are in Christ. If God has made room for me, surely the least I could do is clear out the clutter in my life to make room for him.

And this is the utter irony of this sermon today. We will arm and arm about the drasticness of giving up, give video games for God, but God did not hesitate to give up his very son for us.

We can't give up sex for God, but God gave up his very son for us. We struggled to give up our money to God, but God freely, painfully, expensively gave his son for us.

We worry what we will lose if we step off social media, but God was willing to lose his very son for you and for me.

We pursue our wants, our desires, our ambitions, but God has pursued us. That is the good news of the gospel.

And he did all of this because he loves us. He loves you and he loves me. Paul says this in Romans 8.32

Since he did not spare even his own son, but gave him up for us. Won't he also give us everything else? Friends, you never lose when you bet it all on God.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message. If you felt challenged or need prayer, we would love to hear from you on Instagram, at Encounter Henley. Or if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website, EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.