How to Care for Your Soul

Your house.

We're not going to do anything weird like that.

We just want to record visit, send you a gift this week in the mail, and then um just give you some resources and put some resources in your hand to how you can help help you grow in your faith journey.

And so we'd love to have that opportunity to do that.

But as Brandon mentioned, we are continuing this series called Soulkeeper that we started uh last week, and I'm excited about this morning and what the Lord's ultimately going to do as we kind of look at what the soul is.

We did that last week, and then how do we need to care for our soul?

As I was thinking back about this uh message, I was reminded of um one of my favorite uh comedians, uh comedians slash actors, and this is a little old school, so um some of you people probably won't even know who this guy is, but uh one of my favorite kind of actors isn't comedians is Bill Murray.

You know Bill Murray, right?

Um I love Bill Murray.

I love him from his old days at Saturday Night Live to Groundhog Day to Caddyshack to Ghostbusters, like all of those movies are great movies.

I love them all.

Um but really probably one of my favorite movies that Bill Murray did was a movie called What About Bob.

Anyone know the movie What About Bob?

Um, two, three people, great.

Um well, What About Bob is early 90s, so 1991 is when it was uh released, and so some of you guys weren't even born yet, um, and so I totally understand that.

Um but it's a story of uh Bob Wiley, who's played by Bill Murray, and he is this neurotic, obsessive, compulsive, like any disorder you could pretty much have, mental disorder Bill Murray's character has.

And then there's Richard Dreyfus, and he's playing Dr.

Leo Marvin, and he's this famous, kind of successful psychiatrist, and he's coming out with a book, and so everybody is wanting his attention.

He's going on these interviews, and news media outlets are wanting to have him come on their show.

And he gets partnered up with Bill Murray's character.

And slowly but surely, as Bill Murray shows up, as Bob Wiley shows up at Dr.

Leo Marvin's family vacation for Labor Day, slowly Bill Murray's character drives Richard Dreyfus's character to being absolutely crazy.

So they trade one crazy for another crazy, and it's an incredible picture, though, I think, of what we're talking about this morning.

So here's just a small clip of this movie, and it will make more sense when we come back.

We have enough to feed the entire film crew here.

We have enough to feed the entire network.

Oh, great.

Not a vacation, not a vacation.

Why do I have to dress up for this show?

What do you mean you've already tried on everything you own?

I have.

All right, all right, gosh.

Probably gonna be a short interview I followed with just me and the family and my book.

Thank you.

Goodbye, Richard.

Thanks again.

Stop gonna Leo Marvin!

Oh my god.

Come on, hurry! Hurry, hurry!

Doctor Marvin Oh I really appreciate you.

Everyone in the car, come on.

Doctor Marvin.

Is this a bad time?

Oh the fail.

Who's that?

I don't know.

What are you doing here?

I I I thought you were dead.

Oh no, I told you.

Well, I fibbed a little bit, but don't be mad.

Bob, your behavior is completely inappropriate.

You're angry.

No, no, I don't get angry.

Well, you're upset.

I don't get upset.

Well, then let's have a little talk.

Bob, I do not see patients on vacation ever.

How many ways can I make that clear?

Now, what I'd like you to do is to get on this bus and go back to New York.

I can't.

I'm totally paralyzed.

I'm all locked up.

You got yourself here.

Barely.

Well, getting back will be therapeutic.

But can't we just have a little talk?

Bob, you are testing my patience.

Come on, I've come so far.

I'm babystepping.

I'm doing the work.

I'm babystepping.

I'm not a slacker.

Listen to me.

Check it out.

Look at it.

I'm in really bad shape.

Come on, please.

Please.

Give me, give me, give me.

I need, I need, I need, I need, give me, give me.

Please.

All right, all right, little.

So you see there in that clip, you have Bill Murray who's going crazy, and he's barely gotten to the family vacation.

Richard Dreyfus' character has nothing, wants nothing to do with Bill Murray, obviously, because he showed up on his family vacation.

But what I think this gives us an accurate picture of, and what we'll see in this morning's message, is that ultimately Bill Murray's character, Bob Wiley, would represent our soul.

And Richard Dreyfus's character, Dr.

Leo Marvin, represents who we are.

So we're the doctor, and our soul is the crazy kind of lunatic person that's saying, Give me, give me, give me.

I need, I need, I need.

And this is what the soul ultimately is about.

The soul is needy.

The soul is needy.

Our soul is so needy, and yet we don't time, a lot of times want to take care of our soul.

Just like Richard Dreyfus' character, he's saying, Go home.

I don't want to have to deal with you.

I'm on vacation.

A lot of times that's how we act when it comes to our soul, but our soul is in a desperate need for attention.

And it's crying out for attention.

It's crying out for some focus and some attention that's poured out on it.

And this morning, as we continue this series, we're going to understand this profound truth that you are the soul keeper for the care of your soul.

That you are the soul keeper for the care of your soul, that it is your responsibility and nobody else's to care for the condition and the health of your soul.

And we started this a little bit last week as we kind of broke down and recapped what the soul is.

And we said the soul is the center of who we are.

It's the deepest part of who we are.

And it's so important that we acknowledge and we take care of our soul.

And last week we looked at how that soul is really made up of three distinct parts.

It's made up of our will, our mind, and our body.

And we drew this kind of diagram last week.

It's made up of our will, our mind, and our body.

So that center circle there is our will.

And the will is uh simply how we make decisions, from little decisions to big decisions.

And uh our will hopefully would make the right decision all the time, but we know that because of sin entering in our lives and into the world, that a lot of times our uh will has been corrupted.

It's it's been uh uh kind of dysfunctional, and as a result, we go and we move in the wrong direction.

Our will has to be something that is um transformed.

Our will has to be something that is ultimately surrendered to the Lord.

Then there's our mind, and our mind is where our emotions and our feelings and our thoughts all lie.

And hopefully we were making the right, we're thinking on the right things and we're making the right decisions as a result, but oftentimes our mind has been corrupted by the things of this world, and as a result, in order to follow and obey the Lord, we have to renew our mind, is what the Bible says in Romans chapter 12, verse 2.

Romans 12:2

And then there's the body, and the body is our physical being, it's our physical self.

And as much as we need our body ultimately to survive, our body is also dysfunctional, it's also been corrupted by sin, and as a result, our body has to be retrained in order to uh kind of put to death uh the appetites and the desires of our body that oftentimes will lead us astray.

And so we said that these are the three things that make up our soul, and ultimately our goal is to try to get our soul to be in alignment.

We want our will, our mind, and our body to all be aligned, all be integrated as one thing.

So when our mind's going this way and our body's going this way and our will's going another way, we're never going to be at peace, we're never gonna have satisfaction, we're never gonna have joy, we're never gonna have contentment in our life.

It's only when we experience alignment with our will, our mind, and our body that our soul can find rest, and our soul can ultimately be at peace.

And last week we kind of introduced this a little bit by saying that the only way that our soul can be in alignment with our will, our mind, and our body is when we turn and we put our trust and our faith in Jesus and in him alone.

But we know that that's easier said than done because we have a soul and our soul is very needy.

Our soul is very needy.

Just like Bob's saying, Give me, give me, give me, I need, I need, I need.

That is our soul.

In every area of life, we are limited.

We are limited in the amount of time that we have in my physical stamina, in our money, in our intelligence, and in our strength, but our desire is limitless.

Kent Dunningham put it this way.

He said, We are limited in every way but one.

We have unlimited desires.

And when you think about it, there's so much truth in that.

That we are so needy and we have unlimited desires.

We're always wanting.

We're wanting more time, we're wanting more wisdom, we're wanting more beauty, we're wanting a thinner waistline, right?

We're wanting a YouTube, funnier videos on YouTube, like we're wanting more and more and more, and we're just constantly chasing after the things of this world, thinking that they're gonna ultimately bring us joy and fulfillment and happiness.

But what we discover is that as we chase these things down, that ultimately they don't bring joy and happiness.

Because the only thing that we can find our joy and our happiness in is in the Lord.

And so the problem for our soul is not that it's needy.

God created this need within our soul.

He wanted us to have needy souls.

The problem is not that we're in need, the problem is that our souls, our bodies, our minds, our wills are corrupted.

They're fallen.

There's sin that plays a role in our lives, and as a result, we move in the directions we shouldn't go, and we chase after the things that we shouldn't chase after.

One of the greatest examples of this is a guy named Solomon.

And Solomon is found in the Old Testament.

He wrote several books in the Old Testament, and one of the books he wrote was uh the book called Ecclesiastes.

And it's an incredible book, but it pretty much just shows that Solomon had all the wisdom you could ever experience.

In fact, he was known as the wisest man that ever lived, apart from Jesus.

And here he is, um given the king, being the king of Israel, and he's given anything you could possibly want.

He had chased after possessions and wealth and women and pleasure and anything you wanted, or anything your soul would possibly chase after, Solomon had experienced those things.

And in the book of Ecclesiastes, he's kind of writing about all of his experiences, and in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verse 9, he says this.

Ecclesiastes 2:9

He says, So I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me.

Anything I wanted, I would take.

I denied myself no pleasure.

I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors.

But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless.

Like chasing after the wind.

There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.

Now here's one of the wisest men that had ever lived, and he had everything that he could possibly want out of this world, and yet he gets to the end of having all of those things, and he says, it's empty.

It's meaningless, it's worthless.

It's like chasing after the wind.

It's a futile attempt to try to buy happiness and joy and contentment and fulfillment into our lives.

But this is what we do.

Maybe not on as great of a scale as Solomon, but we do the same thing in our lives as well, where we're oftentimes we'll chase after worldly endeavors, thinking that they're going to bring us happiness and joy, but they ultimately bring us emptiness.

And so we chase and we chase and we chase and we want more and more and more, and we come up empty time and time again.

And this is the soul.

The soul is needy and it's constantly looking to have those needs fulfilled and those needs met.

The Bible would call this worldly pursuit of earthly pleasures and tre and treasures.

It would call it uh idolatry.

Now, idolatry is not a word that we like to throw around.

It's something that we find more in the Old Testament, not the New Testament.

We don't talk about idols, and we don't think, honestly, that we struggle with idols, right?

Probably not many of us, you know, have a statue in our house somewhere that we bow down to every morning when we wake up and we give offerings and sacrifices to those things, right?

We don't do that, right?

We don't struggle with idolatry, is what we would think.

But idolatry is really the worship of any unworthy object.

It's any object that is not meet to the Lord, that is not the Lord, that any unworthy object is ultimately a form of idolatry.

And we oftentimes think that we don't struggle with idolatry, but idolatry is a natural part of the fallen nature of man.

Tim Keller says this.

He says, We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case.

The greater the good, and the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes.

Anything can serve as a counterfeit God, especially the very best things in life.

An idol is anything more important to you than God.

He said in another place, idolatry is the sin beneath the sin.

And so when you begin to think of it in that terms and in those ways, you begin to realize that there's so many things that we can put into our lives, things that we can chase after, worldly pursuits that we think are going to bring us joy and contentment, that ultimately leave us empty, that are ultimately idols.

I mean, when you think about it, think about money for a second.

Money is a great thing, money is a blessing from the Lord.

It can be used to do incredible things in this world around us, but it can also have a way of grabbing a hold of our hearts.

It can be an easy idol to take the place of the Lord in our lives.

So just think about it.

Think when you think about money often, when you're constantly checking your bank account, when you're constantly wanting to get more money, you fantasize about winning the lottery or coming into a big inheritance, you have a mental wish list of all the things that you would potentially buy if you had more money, then money might be an idol in your life.

If you're trying to find the joy and contentment and peace in your life from money, then that could be an idol in your life.

Same thing could go with power, where you don't feel like people respect you enough and you deserve more power and you think about how you can control others and how you can put things into place.

Man, that that could be another idol in your life.

Maybe you've uh this is I think a really big one for men.

I think oftentimes we kind of fall into this trap that work trumps everything.

And so maybe you've missed a lot of important family events, and you've done it all in the name of, well, I've had gotta work.

I gotta provide for my family.

And as a result, you've missed a number of opportunities and a number of important events with your family, all because you feel like you have to work.

And in some cases, maybe you do, but in some cases you're choosing to do that.

And as a result, you think maybe one day I'll get to a place where I can take off and I can go to these things.

Maybe work's an idol in your life where you value it more than you value the relationships that God has put around you.

Maybe you consider yourself to be an honest person, someone that has good values, but at some point you're willing to push those values to the side and compromise your values as long as no one else will know about it.

Whatever that is for could be an idol in your life.

If there's any secret kind of sin in your life that you're willing to lie to protect, man, that could be an idol in your life.

If there's things that, if they were taken from you, if they were lost, if they were destroyed, it would absolutely crush you, it would devastate you.

Maybe that's an idol or that person is an idol in your life.

If the doctor told you to give up alcohol or cigarettes or red meat or salt or sugar or caffeine, please don't, Lord.

Uh because it was causing a health risk to you, and you find it next to impossible to be able to do that, those things could be playing a role, an idol idol in your life.

If there's anything that gets you, gets you away from following the Lord, that's an idol.

I think a great test of this is what do you wake up thinking about?

And whatever that is, if it's not the Lord, could those things be idols in your life?

And this is what our soul does.

Our soul chases after these things of the world.

Our soul is needy and it's constantly looking for someone or something to feel value in our lives, the joy and the satisfaction and the peace.

But we come up empty time and time again.

It's this it's that disordered loves leads to disordered lives.

Disordered loves, when we kind of switch things around and we don't put God in his rightful place, and instead we put worldly pursuits in that his place instead.

Disordered uh idols or disordered lives leads to disorder, or disordered loves leads to disordered lives.

And that's that's so true, right?

And this is what we were saying earlier that our mind, our will, our body, when they're disordered, when they're going in different directions, we're going to have a disordered life.

We're gonna go in the wrong directions.

We're not gonna be able to make the right decisions for life.

Romans chapter 1, verse 21 says this.

Romans 1:21

It says, Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused.

Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

Now Paul's writing here to the Romans, the church in Rome, and he's calling them out for their blatant idolatry and their sin and chasing after worldly pursuits.

And he's saying ultimately that their minds have been transformed.

Their minds are now, uh, it says, minds are becoming dark and confused.

They're utter fools for worshiping the creation rather than the creator himself.

They've chased after idols in their life, they put things in place that never were intended to be in those places.

These idols are deadly because they deceive, they distort, and they destroy our lives.

And all throughout the Old Testament, if you read the story, there's this love-hate relationship with idols where God's people love the idols, and they're talking about physical idols.

And as a result, God brings severe and catastrophic punishment and consequences upon them.

Anytime we chase after idols, destruction is imminent.

We're deceived, we're distorted, and they destroy our lives.

This is what idols do.

But oftentimes we kind of miss out on this idea that we're meant for so much more.

We're not meant to chase after these idols for our soul to be healthy.

The only thing that is going to truly make our soul healthy and find peace and contentment and joy is when we put our hope and our trust fully and completely on the Lord.

Listen to some of the psalmists as they wrote this.

Well, first Saint Augustine made this quote.

He said, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts or our souls are restless until they find rest in you.

What a true statement.

The psalmist said it this way, Psalm 42, verse 1.

Psalms 42:1

It says, As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.

I thirst for God, the living God.

When can I where can when can I go and stand before him?

Psalm 63, one, O God, you are my God.

I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you, my whole body longs for you in a this parched and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 84, 2, I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord.

With my whole being, body, and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.

Over and over and over, we read verses like this in the Psalms where they're talking about this complete and total devotion to the Lord, where they're saying, These things of the world are gonna leave me empty.

They're not gonna leave me satisfied.

The only thing that's gonna satisfy my soul, the only one that's gonna satisfy my thirst is going to be me chasing after the Lord, wanting the Lord so desperately that they're literally fainting at the thought of him.

This is what the Lord is after.

The Lord is after our hearts.

He needs to be put in his rightful place.

And it We need to understand that it is our responsibility.

It's not the church's responsibility.

It's not my responsibility.

It's not your community group leader's responsibility.

It is your responsibility and your responsibility alone to be the sole cake taker for the care of your soul.

That you're responsible for this.

This is your job.

This is what you have to be diligent about doing, caring for your soul.

John Ortberg, who we introduced and talked a little bit about last week, and Dallas Willard, two incredible men of God that did have done incredible things for the kingdom.

And Dallas Willard was an older man.

He actually just passed away not too many years ago.

But he had kind of become known as this professional at the inner life.

Like he just really focused on the inner life and being healthy from the soul level.

And John Ortberg's a younger pastor who kind of became a mentor of Dallas Willard.

And so John Ortberg's pastoring this church, and he's really concerned about the church and the direction that it's going.

He's concerned about their spiritual depth and growth.

And so he gets on a plane and he goes to where Dallas Willard is located, and he has a conversation with Dallas, and he asks Dallas, like, what do I need to do?

And Dallas looks at him and kind of pauses for a long while and then says this statement.

Let me read that one more time.

You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.

Now listen to how the rest of the story goes.

I was wondering what I need to do to make my church do.

I was thinking about a book that everyone should read or a program that everyone should go through or a prayer system that everyone should be committed to.

Yes, Brother John, he said with great patience and care.

I know you were thinking about those things, but that's not what you need the most.

The main thing you can give your congregation, just like the main thing you can give God is the person you become.

If your soul is unhealthy, you can't help anybody.

You don't send a doctor with pneumonia to care for patients with immune disorders.

You and nobody else are responsible for the well-being of your own soul.

I'm trying, Ortberg said.

I learned a long time ago that the importance of having a quiet time.

And when I read my Bible and do daily devotions, I do my best to start each day that way.

And Willard responded, I didn't say anything about having a quiet time.

He gently corrected again.

People in churches, including pastors, have been crushed by the guilt over the feelings or in the failure of having regular quiet times and daily devotions.

And then, even when they do, they find it does not actually lead to a healthy soul.

Your problem is not the first 15 minutes of your day, it's the next 23 hours and forty-five minutes.

Wow, I think that's a powerful message there.

Say that this soul care is not something that we do once a week on a Sunday morning.

It's not something we even do for 30 or 45 minutes or even an hour every morning when we wake up and we read the Bible.

Those are great places to start.

But this soul care goes far beyond that.

It's not just something that we do in a moment, but it's something that should embrace our whole entire day.

We should be the soul keepers in the care of caring for our soul.

Ezekiel 18, 4 says this.

It says, Behold, all souls are mine.

The soul of the Father as well as the soul of the Son is mine.

The soul who sins shall die.

Now, I'm gonna spend just a brief moment here.

Because I think we have this tendency where we maybe intellectually know that we are responsible for the care of our soul.

I think we understand that.

But I think a lot of times we don't respond appropriately to that calling.

So, in other words, we know what we're supposed to do.

We know we're supposed to care for our soul, but we just don't do it.

We continue to chase after their worldly pursuits.

We chase after our profession, our job, we chase after uh and try to fill voids in our life through relationships and family members and kids, and we try to get wealth and money and all the worldly pursuits that you could name.

And we chase after these things, but we think that this sentence here, that the soul who sins shall die, doesn't really apply to us.

But we have to understand that sin corrupts our soul and it ultimately brings destruction and destroys us.

And so we can continue to chase after those things, but in the end we will reap destruction.

See, we have this really great thing inside the walls of the church where we think that the words of the Bible apply to people other than us, right?

That you know, if other people live this way, this is the consequence that they're going to reap.

But we don't really think about that for our own lives and our own selves.

But we don't think that those things are true for us.

We think that we can spend without getting into debt, we think we can lie without getting caught.

We we can let our tempers fly and it won't damage our relational lives.

We we can have a bad attitude at work and get away with it.

We can avoid disciplining our children without getting spo them getting spoiled.

I can neglect the Bible and still know God, and the list goes on and on and on.

But it's in Galatians chapter 6 it says, Do not be deceived.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

God is not mocked.

For whoever whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

And so you can chase after the worldly pursuits, and you can go after more money, and you can go after more fame, and you can try to get as many followers on Instagram or on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever your platform of choice might be.

You can try to fill your life in the voids of your life with family members and with other relationships, but in the end, you reap what you sow.

We cannot expect to have a healthy soul.

We cannot expect to have alignment in our will, our mind, and our bodies and continue to chase after worldly pursuits.

Every single time we will come up empty.

Every single time we will be destroyed and we will face the consequences of those actions.

We must come to a place where we understand that those people will reap what they sow.

And so, what are you sowing into your life?

Are you experiencing abundant life?

Are you experiencing the joy of the Lord?

Are you experiencing the peace that only God can bring?

Do you have alignment with your will, your mind, and your body?

This is what we've been called to be about.

And the choice is yours because you're the soul keeper of your soul.

You're the soul keeper of your soul.

So, what happens when you chase after the things of the world?

You chase after the wrong things, what do you ultimately reap?

What are the things that come into our lives as we chase after sinful or worldly pursuits?

The first thing we do is it's a soul without a sinner.

The soul without centering on God is easily thrown.

James 1, verse 6 says, Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea, that it's blown and tossed by the wind.

James 1:6

Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything that they do.

So, in other words, you chase after the worldly pursuits, you go for that.

But in the end, you're going to be easily thrown.

You're going to be like a wave in the ocean and the wind comes and blows and it just blows it back and forth.

That you'll have no kind of center, you'll have no kind of foundation, you'll have no place where you run when things get difficult.

And this kind of lifestyle, it might be okay when difficulty level is at level one, right?

When life is at difficulty level one, everything might be okay.

But let's just be honest, level one is not oftentimes in our lives, right?

It's normally like level 10 or level 20 or level 100, right?

That's the difficulties that we face.

And when difficulties come your way, if you're not centered in the Lord, it's gonna really show.

And you're gonna be wavering back and forth.

You're gonna be blown and tossed by the wind.

When you are have a soul that's not centered, you're gonna give in to temptations that are worth resisting, and you're not gonna make sacrifices that are worth making.

You're gonna have a hard time making decisions that bring life to the people in your life and to the people around you.

A soul without a sinner is easily thrown.

A soul without a sinner also feels consistently and constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances.

When our soul is not centered in the Lord, then we live lives of vulnerability where we never truly feel safe because we know that we've built our lives on this kind of shifting and sinking sand.

And so when we build our lives upon that thing, we're always afraid that we're gonna be found out.

We're always afraid that the sin that we've tried so hard to stuff deep down inside and no one else knows about that it's actually going to come out.

And we can never live with confidence, we can never live at peace because we're always worried about what might come.

We're vulnerable to people and circumstances.

And we have to turn to the Lord.

We have to make him be the refuge for our soul.

So in the middle of the storm, we're at peace because we have refuge with the Lord.

A soul without a sinner lacks patience.

If I'm constantly in a hurry to be somewhere else, it's an indicator that my soul has not found its home.

We are not content with this life, and as a result, we are always hurrying to the next thing, and we can't slow down.

Our fear is that if we slow down, we're gonna miss out on something.

But a soul that is centered on the Lord can have rest.

That's what he promises in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened, heavy laden, and I will give you rest for your souls.

This is the promise.

But the soul that's not founded in this will lack patience, constantly having the fear of missing out, constantly having to run from one place to the next place, never wanting to slow down long enough to actually evaluate the conditions of our soul.

A soul without a sinner finds its identity in externals.

We talked a little bit about this last week, that there's the internal life and there's the external life, and a soul without a sinner is focused only on the externals.

How do they identify themselves?

It's based on their career, it's based on their family, it's based on what they've accomplished or how much money they have.

And the problem with that is that if those things disappear, your whole identity disappears with them.

And you're no longer you, right?

Because your identity has been totally placed on the externals, and externals come and go.

Our physical appearance comes and goes, our titles come and go.

Important friendships that we might have come and go.

And when they do, we lose our whole identity.

A soul without a sinner finds its identity in the external.

But here's the promise: the soul that comes alive, the soul comes alive when it's centered on God.

How do we have life?

How do we have the abundant life that Jesus has promised us, promises us in the gospels?

We do that when our life is centered upon him.

When he is our soul focus, when we're chasing after him above everything else.

That is when we can have peace.

That's when we can have contentment.

Now remember, you are the soul keeper for the care of your souls.

It's no one else's job.

It is your job and your job alone.

And so how are you doing with caring for your soul?

Is your soul centered on the Lord or is your soul chasing after the things of this world, thinking that it's going to bring peace to your soul, and you come up empty time and time again?

There's a lot of miserable people, there's a lot of miserable Christians out there that are chasing after worldly pursuits, and they come up empty time and time again, and as a result, they're miserable.

But those that center their lives upon God, that's when the soul really comes alive.

And so, how do we do that?

How do we care for our soul?

How do we make Jesus the center of everything that we do?

How do we do that?

Do we just stay in the four walls of this building and you know just pray constantly and read our Bible, just become monks and nuns, and like that's just kind of how we have to do it if we're gonna center our lives upon the Lord?

I hope not.

There's a vow of celibacy in there.

I don't want to take that up, right?

So, how do we do that?

How do we care for our souls?

There's a guy named Brother Lawrence who wrote a book called Practicing the Presence of God.

And in it he talks about how we need to cultivate a holy habit of thought.

And I think this is such an important piece to us living out the Christian life.

The holy habit of thought was where Brother Lawrence believed that he could invite God into everything that he did, and his presence could be enjoyed anytime.

So Brother Lawrence thought of himself being with God in everything that he did.

They ran errands and the Lord was with him.

He cooked meals and the Lord was with him.

He scrubbed pots, the Lord was with him, and they went through all of life's difficulties together.

Brother Lawrence saw that there was this partnership there, that the Lord was with him wherever he went.

It wasn't just when he came into a building on Sunday mornings.

It wasn't when he just opened up his Bible maybe in the mornings, or maybe when he said a quick prayer before a meal, but the Lord was with him in the mundane, everyday parts of life.

What would happen if we invited the Lord into our mundane lives?

Where we we didn't just think about the Lord when we're in spiritual kind of communities and in spiritual context, but rather we thought about the Lord in every waking moment of our lives.

Where we invited him into the mundane things of life.

Teachers, as you go back to back to school tomorrow from fall break, and you got primary school teachers, and they're having to wipe the noses of little kindergartners and take them to the bathroom?

What if you invited the Lord into that?

Or maybe you're having to go to your workplace and you're having to kind of just do some seemingly dead-end job that you just don't have any joy, you don't have any passion for, and you're just having to go through the motions because you need a paycheck.

What if you invited the Lord into that process?

What if you're at home and you're having to parent and you're having to do homework and you're having to do all the things that come along with that?

And you invite the Lord into that.

You're cleaning the house and you're scrubbing a toilet, and you're like, Lord, you're with me in scrubbing the toilet.

What if you did that?

How would that change our lives?

How would that change our perspective?

Would our souls be then centered upon God and God alone?

Does that mean that we would never get distracted?

Of course not.

We would always be distracted, but every distraction is an opportunity for us to come back to the Lord and to put him as the center of our lives.

And this is a constant practice that we have to cultivate in our lives.

If we're going to ever have alignment in our soul with our will, our mind, and our body, and if we're ever going to have Jesus at the center, then we've got to become people that focus on the Lord, invite him into our everyday life, how would that change us?

Remember, you're the soul keeper of your soul.

So what are you doing to care for your soul today?

What are you doing to care for your soul this week?

What are the practices that you're putting into place that you are caring for your soul and making sure that it's not chasing after worldly things, but it's chasing after the right thing.

That it's chasing after the Lord.

What are you doing?

This is our responsibility.

The words of Dallas Willard, again, arrange your days so that you experience total contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.

That's the goal.

That's what we need to seek after, that's what we need to strive for.

We need to be people that set our minds' attention and our hearts' affections upon the Lord.

That we put him at the center of everything that we do.

And as a result, we experience deep contentment, joy in our lives, and we have confidence in every interaction we encounter.

That's what we're striving for.

And that's what the soul that finds its residence, center in the Lord, eventually gets.

Doesn't mean it's always easy, doesn't mean that life always just throws us, you know, softballs and it's just easy.

But it does mean that the Lord is with us in the midst of all of it.

And we can have peace even in the most difficult times and circumstances of our lives.

And so maybe you need to take steps of faith this morning and you need to put your faith and your trust in Jesus for the very first time.

Maybe for some of us we've been chasing after worldly pursuits, we've got hidden in dark and deep sins in our lives that no one else knows about, that we're willing to compromise values, we're willing to chase after all of these worldly things.

And this morning we need to come to a place of just repentance.

Or we say, God, I've been chasing after the wrong things.

I've been chasing after my career, I've been chasing after money, I've been chasing after a relationship, whatever it might be.

And this morning, Lord, I want to come back to you and I want to cultivate a relationship with you on every hour of every day in my life.

And Lord, I want to see what you can do in the midst of that.

I want to experience the deep contentment and joy and confidence that only you can bring.

So maybe you need to repent of something this morning.

For some of you, like I said, maybe you've never put your faith and your trust in Jesus, and today would be a great opportunity to do that.

Where you've been chasing after the things of this world, thinking they're going to bring joy into your life, and you come up empty time and time again.

You're like Solomon.

You know that you're coming up empty.

It's meaningless.

It's like chasing after the wind.

And this morning you're coming to the revelation that you need Jesus in your life.

And so there's no magic formula, but one of the things we say here, it's admit, believe, and confess that we admit that we're sinful, that we believe that Jesus died for us on a cross, that he rose again on the third day, and then we confess him as our Lord and Savior.

And when we do those things, from the bottom of our heart, that begins a relationship with Jesus.

It's not the end of it, it's not the finish line, it's the starting line for us to begin our relationship with Jesus, and we strive to live in obedience after that.

And so maybe that's the step that you need to take.

And if it is, we'd love to have a conversation with you.

If you're watching online or even here in the room this morning, you can text the word start to follow to 97000, and that will let us know that you're making that decision, and we'll follow up with you this week and give you resources on how you can do that.

But for the rest of us, who maybe we have our faith and our trust in Jesus, but somewhere it's gotten off the rails.

Somewhere things have gotten skewed, and we've allowed idols to pop up in our lives.

And today we need to turn from the idols and we need to come back to the Lord.

We need to practice his presence in everyday life, and we need to put our faith and our trust solely on him.

And when we do that, we can arrange our days so that we're experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in everyday life with God.

You are the soul keeper for the care of your soul.

You, nobody else.

So, what are you doing to care for your soul?

How are you going to experience the peace that only God can bring?

There's no more important endeavor for us to try to go on than to be in the Jesus to be the center of our lives.

So, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus.

I thank you so much for who you are and uh Lord that you're a God that we can build our lives upon.

I think that so often the enemy comes into our lives and he tries to get us to believe the lies that something in this world is going to bring satisfaction and joy, Lord.

But we know time and time again, Lord, from personal experience that we come up empty.

We can have more money in the bank now than we've ever had in our lives, and we can still feel empty.

We can get into that relationship or finally get the guy or girl of our dreams, and we can have get married, and we think that, man, now I've finally arrived, and we come up empty.

And we think that the other things are the problem, but really we're the problem.

Because we've allow our soul, our needy soul, that's constantly saying, Give me, give me, give me, I need, I need, I need.

And we've allowed those desires to be filled by junk.

And so, Lord, we just repent of that this morning.

Whatever that might be, just right now, as you're just praying, just confess that to the Lord.

What are some of the idols that have popped up in your life that you need to just confess to him right now?

Christian life is about repenting and believing.

We do that over and over and over again.

So we repent of our sin, we turn away from him, and then we turn towards something.

We're turning away from sin and we're turning towards the Lord, and then we're believing in him with everything that we have.

So, what idols do we need to repent of this morning?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to do that.

Give us the courage to put to death the sinful tendencies that we chase after.

And Lord, I pray that you would give us life.

The life that only you can bring, the peace that only you can bring, the confidence and the joy that only you can bring as we build our lives upon you.

Lord, I pray that as we leave here in just a few moments, Lord, I pray that you would give us direction on how we need to spend our days chasing after you and making sure we care for our souls.

Lord, give us the wisdom and the guidance we need to do to do that.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you for your word and for your truth and for who you are.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.