Finding Your Flow State

I'm gonna get into this new series we're starting.

We got this beautiful backdrop here.

Look at this, isn't that nice?

Eden.

Isn't that beautiful?

Alright, our our our team built that.

Uh shout out to uh Lauren Shelton, all right, who took the lead on that.

Um but what we're gonna do is actually learn from Eden.

So we're calling it Eden talks, okay?

And you can say it a couple ways, and they both work, okay?

It's either like Eden talks or Eden talks, all right.

So it's like Eden is gonna talk to us, and we're gonna do some talks from Eden.

Either way, all right, we're gonna look at the first three books in Genesis.

I've uh I spent a lot of time studying this.

Uh I probably might have saturated my brain with a lot of information, so I'm really praying that the Lord will help me to synthesize this down in a way that's helpful to each of us.

So let's pray.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

Lord, help me today, Lord, to uh to steward this opportunity well, to speak your word to us as a collective, but I pray your spirit would just take these things that are applicable to us as individuals, and you would uh help us to see the things we need to see.

Give us the proper amount of conviction, the proper amount of hope.

Uh Lord, help us to ultimately come away with truth.

We love you, we thank you and praise you in Jesus' name.

All God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

Um, I'm gonna start off.

We're in Genesis 1.

This is the first book of the Bible written by Moses.

Um Moses uh wrote this book essentially, especially the first few chapters, to uh help us understand a little bit about God and ultimately, especially in Genesis chapter 1, to help us see the example that God is setting for us and ultimately how he's designed for our lives to work and to work best.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Okay, so like I would say we probably all have in common a desire to have a fulfilling life, right?

We get it.

It's going fast, it's fleeting.

And if you don't make the most of it, right, you could you could waste this one chance, this one life you get.

And uh, of course, over time we grow in hopefully wisdom and maturity, and you start to realize uh the foolish ways of your younger years, and you try to learn them the best you can as you get older, and we stack wisdom.

And so, what really Moses is trying to do is to take and to help us understand as early as possible, as early as possible, how God has set up for our lives to actually be fulfilling.

And so there's a lot of things that God does by himself in chapter one that really are set up as a model for us.

A couple of these concepts I talked about last year, so for some of this, this might be a reminder, but it's cool to recalibrate, right?

Some things are worth repeating.

We don't be overly redundant, but sometimes you gotta, you know, you can forget stuff, and so it's good to recalibrate.

So I'm gonna do a little bit, I'm gonna run it back a little bit from a message last year.

But in Genesis chapter 1, one of the things we see, very obvious, it's not hard to see it, is that as God begins to do work, he admires his work and he calls it good.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Look at this in uh Genesis 1 and 3, it says, God said, Let there be light.

So he creates light.

There was light.

Look at this.

And God saw that the light was good, and then he separated the light from the darkness.

You'll see this pattern is repeated over and over again in Genesis 1, seven different times.

God does something.

At one point, he names uh the ground land, and he calls the heavens, he calls it the sky.

And he's like, Yeah, that was good.

He says it seven different times.

In fact, the last time is in verse 26.

He says, Let's make human beings in our image to be like us.

Verse 31, God looked over all he had made, look at this, and he saw that it was very good.

So we see modeled by God, who didn't need affirmation, and he wasn't doing this for himself.

I really believe God was showing us what he wants us to do, which is we see God here fully integrating his victories into his psyche.

Think about that.

That's something I want to encourage you.

I think this is a lesson you and I need to take from God in Genesis 1, is to fully integrate your victories into your psyche.

Are you fully integrating your victories into your psyche?

God picks a project, does some work, completes the work, steps back?

That's good.

Gives himself a real good pat on the back.

Do you do that?

Are you fully integrating your victories into your psyche?

You know, as I took some time off, I realized that's one of the things I don't do well.

And I started to think about that in a deeper way.

And I actually came up with three reasons.

Maybe you and I have this these things in common, maybe we don't, but but most of the people that I know don't do this well.

Most of the people I know, like I'll just be straight with you.

I don't hang out with lazy people, I hang out with ambitious people, I hang out with people that answer the bell, the people that show up, that work hard, that have hopes and dreams, they're climbing a mountain.

And so people that are like that, like if you're like that, you have a tendency to not fully integrate victories for a few reasons.

And I'm gonna give you three reasons I came up with why I don't, and maybe it'll be you two.

The first is one of the first reason I don't tend to integrate my victories is a desire to be humble.

So in church, particularly, uh if you hang around church people, like pride is really bad.

Pride's, of course, we that it is bad.

We we don't want to become arrogant, we don't want to become prideful, but in an effort to stamp out, stomp out pride, often we don't step back and look at our work and fully integrate and go, I did that.

And that was really good.

And we see God over and over again going, that was good work.

It doesn't make you arrogant to look at the hard work you've done and the things you've accomplished and to add those into your life.

I know this is a touchy ground.

Like I heard a joke one time.

It was a uh a pastor who had a farmer in his church, and the farmer invites him over to his farm, to his house, and the pastor goes over to the farmer.

He didn't realize how much this farmer had.

He had the 10,000 acres, whatever, this huge amount of land, and and and he sees all this, he's like, Man, is this all yours?

And the farmer's like, Yeah.

Pastor said, Well, show me around, man, if you don't mind.

The guy takes him out and he shows them all these fields, man, perfectly straight lines that are plowed, and they've just done the harvest, so everything's been cut down.

And he's like, Where's the harvest?

You go in, they're in the barns.

He's like, This is all your land?

He's like, Yeah.

He said, Man, God has really blessed you.

He's like, Yeah, you want to go see the barns?

Yeah.

So they go to the barns and he built these massive barns, and and and and all the all the harvest was in, and all the hay was it were in bales, organized and stacked, and it's barn after barn.

And the pastor's like, This is yours?

He's like, Yeah.

He said, Man, God has blessed you.

So you gotta see the cattle.

He takes them out, he shows them all these heads of cattle and and all the fencing, and and then he takes them to the pins where the animals stay, and they're all cleaned out, they've been mucked out, they're clean, okay?

And he sees all of this, and the pastor's like, My goodness, farmer, God has blessed you.

And the farmer said, Preacher, with all due respect, you should have seen this place when God had it all to himself.

Can you say that in church?

We're afraid that if I integrate my victory, somehow I'm robbing God of his glory.

Jesus says, Sir, ma'am, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.

And then glorify your father in heaven.

Do you think God put man in the garden and gave him work to do and gave him this work and then wanted him to not fully integrate or her to fully integrate their victories?

I don't think so.

Okay, so so how do we do this?

How do we fully integrate our victories without getting a big head?

Without getting cocky, without getting too high on ourselves.

Well, the answer is in the text.

Let's let's look at this.

Um Genesis 2, 4 and 5.

It says, when the Lord God made that when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, so he made the earth and the sky.

Look at this.

It said, Neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth.

So it wasn't growing.

Why?

For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and look at this, there were no people to cultivate the soil.

So it God made everything.

He, here's how we keep from getting a big head as we integrate our victories, because it's not like I pick one or the other.

We we want to integrate our victories and remain humble.

How do we do that?

Well, first we recognize God created all of it, he is the omnipotent one.

None of this would be without him.

All I do is enter into his ecosystem and manage it.

He's given me a little bit of power.

I get to name some stuff, and you know, I get to discover some stuff, but it's all, every discovery is his.

And we're still discovering what he made all the way back then.

We're still finding new animals, we're still naming new things, we're still learning new things.

And so I recognize it's all from him.

Then it says God had not yet provided water.

So God's made everything, and God has to provide some things.

There are some things I can't open for myself.

There are some doors I can't open.

There are some I need resources, I need relationship, I need God to send the right person, I need God to send the money, I need God to send the opportunity.

Okay, so there are there's provision, things God still provides, but then it says he's entered with us into a relationship that the stuff doesn't grow unless you cultivate the soil.

So you think he designed with all of his power, and he still brings provision, but you have to answer the bell and you have to cultivate the soil.

You think he wants you to cultivate the soil, have the stuff grow, sow it, reap it, harvest it, and not integrate the victory?

Come on.

Come on.

You need to fully integrate your victories.

I I was uh I as I was studying for this, a friend of mine reached out to me and told me some bad news about a leader that I really admire.

Man's in his 60s, mid-60s, about 65 years old.

Without getting into too much detail, this is a person who, in my estimation, and my point of view, has lived a big life.

A man of sterling reputation, a guy who's helped a lot of people, he's done a lot of good.

Okay, he's he he his name means something.

He's his family's all proud to say, I'm related to this guy.

And so this guy's done a lot.

Well, it comes out that basically, with all of the bigness of his life in private, he's doing all these frivolous, stupid things that have now robbed him of a life of work, a life of reputation, a life of greatness that now crumbles.

And if I even told you the stuff, it's like, oh, dude, for that, like the valuation isn't even close.

Your life's work, your name, your reputation, generations to come for this.

Now, you've seen this before.

This is not a new story.

It happens all the time that you go, like, why would someone do that?

Well, the short answer is that people often, even who have had many, many victories, big lives, end up making short-sighted, foolish, frivolous trades.

And I I don't want to oversimplify it, but I I'll bet you, at least in part, it's due to the fact that all those victories in their lives, they never took the time to integrate them and look at how big their life was becoming.

So if no, it doesn't matter how many victories you've attained in your life, if you don't integrate them, you're unaware of them.

And so your life might be way cheaper than you think it is.

And you you you think it's cheap.

You you think it's cheap, but it's actually more valuable.

So you've cheapened it because you didn't take the victories and integrate them.

If you would integrate them, your life would grow and you would see, oh no, I got too much life to give up for that.

I'm not gonna make that silly trade.

I don't think he did, and I think probably part of it was he was the type of guy who didn't want to be arrogant, didn't want to be like, oh, I just give God the glory, give God the glory, give God the glory.

Okay, cool, yeah, give God the glory, but integrate the victory.

You don't have to do one and not the other.

Think about the parable of the talent, right?

Parable of the talents.

God gives one guy two and one guy five, and the guy two goes two to four and five to ten, and and and he comes back to the man and the parable, both men, one had four now and one had ten, and he says, Well done, you.

Well done.

Why would he say that?

He wanted at the same time that God gets the glory, he wants you to integrate the victory.

There's nothing wrong with hearing, well done, good and faithful servant, for you to look in the mirror in your own eyes and go, well done, good and faithful servant.

I think often in our fear of becoming prideful, and sometimes it becomes a false humility, but we don't stop and let the victory fully integrate into our psyche.

You're winning more than you think you're winning.

You have to allow yourself to do it.

How do we do it?

Well, look, look at this.

Look at this.

So God gives them this opportunity to cultivate the soil, and he gives them an important job.

Look at this, verse 7.

Here's the key right here.

This is the key to integrating the victory without getting a big head.

So the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and he breathed the breath of life in his nostrils, and the man became a living person.

We never graduate from the tension between the fact that I'm from the dust, but I have divine breath in my lungs.

That's that that's the tension.

You just you can never get over that.

You have to live in that every day of your life.

I'm I'm I'm I'm from I'm dust.

I'm dust.

I'm a human being.

I'm getting achy.

I'm on a bell curve.

Okay, I'm aging, my metabolism's slowing down.

I know my limitations.

I know the answers I don't have.

I've stared at the problem and I can't come up with it.

I've put up great energy and great effort and it got worse.

I I know my limitation.

I can't be two places at once.

I can't be all things to all people.

I'm not scalable.

I'm not, okay.

All these things you recognize I am dust, but I have divine breath in my lungs.

I'm of the dust.

Adams created out of the dust.

He's created out of the dust.

He has God's breath in his lungs.

You've got to sit in that tension all your life.

Look how Paul sits in this tension in 2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 7.

He said, God, for the God who said, Let there be light in the darkness, so this is 2 Corinthians, Paul is referencing back to creation.

He said, For the God who said, Let there be light in the darkness, he has made the light shine in our hearts so that we can know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

So he's saying the same God that created light in the sun and the earth, he's saying it's the same God who is behind the gospel of Jesus that brings light into our hearts.

Verse 7, now look at this.

Now we have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing a great treasure.

Again, that's another way, that's his other way of saying that you're sitting in the tension between I've got, I'm I've got dusty flesh, but I have divine breath.

You've got dusty flesh and you've got divine breath.

So integrate your victories.

Here's one of the things I realized uh while I was on my break.

I thought about some changes I want to make in my life.

And uh one of them is I want to do better on my Sabbath day.

So you you see, um uh one of the things, one of the disciplines that God introduces in Genesis 2 is the idea of rest.

It says in uh verse uh 3 of chapter 2, it said God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because it was a day when he rested from all the work of creation.

Right?

So at some point he's working, working, winning.

It is good, it is good.

He gets to that last day and he stops and doesn't work at all.

What do you do on that day?

So here's how here's the change I'm making.

Maybe this will help you.

I Mondays are my Sabbath rest day, right?

Because today's a work day for me.

Monday I take off.

What do I do on my Sabbath day?

Well, I I let my body wake me up, I sleep in a little bit, I take my wife to breakfast, and then I do what I feel like doing.

Well, here's what I often end up doing with days like today, right?

So if I if I'm not intentional, here's what I'll do tomorrow.

I'll wake up, I'll take my wife to breakfast, I'll sit there and I'll start thinking back on today.

And I'll start thinking not about the victories, what I could have done better, what I should have done better.

So I'll say, you know, I could have reworked that, man.

I should have said that different.

I could have put that there.

Second service, I don't remember, was it second or third service?

I think I could have said this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'll start talking about all the things.

I'll start critiquing and trying to refine and get better so that I can.

And then I'll start thinking, because I got six days, I'm gonna do this again.

So I start telling, hey Shaylin, I think I'm gonna, you know, often I'll derail our conversations into what I think I might want to talk about in the next week, and then I start working on the next thing.

I'm changing that.

I'm gonna add some intentionality to my Sabbath in line with Genesis 1, which is this.

I'm gonna take Mondays.

I'm gonna I'm gonna save Tuesdays for critique.

Because don't take that from this message.

Yeah, we don't ever critique ourselves.

Oh, excuse me.

Yes, we do.

Yes, we do.

Okay, we absolutely are going to evaluate, but that's on Tuesday.

From here on out, Mondays are to fully integrate the victories.

This is what we did well.

This is oh, I like how that went.

Oh, hey, I heard this testimony.

We're gonna fully integrate the victories because often we don't integrate victories.

Why?

We're afraid of becoming prideful.

Or number two, number two, the second reason we tend to not integrate victories is because we we're immediately engaged in the next project or activity.

I don't have time to celebrate.

We just did, I got another one in six days.

Yeah, we just got the goal, but there's a new hourglass that's been turned over, and so we got a new, we got a new deadline.

We gotta hit this next thing, we gotta go, go, go, go, go.

Can you imagine a life, a certain kind of robbery of your life that would come from just you complete the project, throw it, throw another trophy on the pile, and just go to the next thing, and never stop and fully integrate your victory in your life, it has gotten so much bigger than you even know.

But you didn't put it in your psyche, and so you might trade it for something frivolous and foolish.

The third reason that I tend to not do this is because it doesn't feel like we're winning.

Like it feels like the victory isn't worth celebrating.

Like, all I did today was keep the kids alive.

Woo-hoo! Should I celebrate that?

Set off fireworks?

I didn't create the heavens and the earth, I just kept the kids alive.

I mean, listen, we gotta say this because all the time we're looking at the scripture, and we have to look at it in light of our culture and the world we're in, right?

Paul says in Romans 12, 2, don't be conformed to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And so when we we look at this, like, think about we do live in a world, when I say victories and wins, we are in a competitive, athletically driven, zero-sum game, winners and losers.

It only matters if you get the W or the L.

We're always comparing our win to somebody else's win.

So why would I celebrate this when I've got there's always a reason to not integrate your win, right?

You're a teacher, you got 20 students, 18 of them are going to hell in a handbasket.

Two of them are listening.

Two of them are listening.

There's only two that are listening.

The one's really taken to this thing.

So why am I gonna celebrate one and a half when I got 18 over here that are they don't listen to a thing I say, they hadn't turned in one project.

Okay, I'm wasting my.

Why would I celebrate the two when celebrate the two?

Integrate the victory.

It's

It's what God's given you to cultivate.

Celebrate things like you had dinner with your family.

That's a win.

Whoa, it doesn't feel like a big one.

Yeah, yeah, you won at work.

Somebody won bigger, that's fine.

You won.

You got to integrate the victory of the thing you executed.

You know what?

I finished.

I followed through.

I got a personal best.

I got out of bed and I didn't feel like it.

I was depressed and I put my feet on the ground.

I answered the bell.

Integrate it.

But often we don't integrate these things because we don't think they're noteworthy and it doesn't feel like winning.

But it is.

And you've got to you gotta have your Sabbath and you have to have your time that you slow down and you you fully let what God did through you to get fully to you.

Let it get to you what God did through you.

Otherwise, you've not integrated it.

So we see God integrating his victories.

He's looking at his work, he's saying it is good.

He wants us to do the same thing.

The second thing, though, that we also get from this that I find interesting is what I mentioned earlier is this relationship between dust and the breath of God, the dust and the divine.

And I think often we miss so many things that are divine because of the limitations of our flesh and the dust.

And I think this is a big takeaway from Genesis 1 and 2 is that we as human beings, we have these two things going on at the same time.

We have to learn how to live with them together.

I remember I was on a mission trip.

Uh, I took a group of people from our church on a mission trip one time to the nation of Haiti.

We went to Haiti.

I'm just gonna be honest, it was a hard, hard trip.

It was hot.

Uh it was we did a lot of physical labor.

Um, the place that we stayed in had no AC.

Okay, so we slept in mosquito nets.

You had to get a bunch of shots before we went, and then we had to wear this stuff called DEET, which is basically like uh industrial strength mosquito repellent.

So it's like shrink wrapping yourself, so your pores are completely clogged like plastic, and but you're sweating and it can't get out, so you're breaking out like you're in seventh grade.

Okay, and then the place we, like I said, they didn't have uh electric, so they ran on a generator, but the generator cut off at 4 a.m.

So you in the generator you're sleeping in a mosquito net with a fan that's about this big, just blowing on you, and then it cuts off at 4 a.m.

So the fan stops immediately and just begin sweating.

Welcome to missions.

I mean, anybody feel called?

Anybody feel called?

So I'm gonna be honest, I'm on this trip and we're trying to do good, and we're at this orphanage and we're helping and we're trying to encourage the missionaries, and I wanted to go home.

Just being straight up.

I wanted to go home.

I was tired, I was ready to get a good shower, I was ready to sleep in my own bed, I'm homesick, I want to go home.

In Haiti they speak Creole, which is kind of a version of French.

I didn't know what anybody was saying, I didn't understand any of the language, I learned just enough to be dangerous.

And the second to last day we go to a church to have church, and the whole thing's in Creole.

I'm sitting there sweating, full of deep.

I just want to go home.

We get up to sing the last song, and they're singing something in Creole.

To this day, no clue what it was.

Looking at one of our team members, it was uh it was one of my friends, Shannon, who I met, her and her husband at the front desk of the fitness club when we started the church.

It was our first ever mission trip.

After that trip, she ended up leading a bunch of trips, and I remember standing up, and we're all homesick, and we're all hot, and all of our flesh is dusty.

Dusty flesh.

And they begin singing this song that we don't understand, and this girl stands up, she's a little girl from Haiti, and she just reaches and grabs Shannon's hand, and I got a view of she's holding hands of Shannon, who is worn out, flesh is saying, go home.

She begins to cry.

And I begin, and I'm watching this happen, and I'm like, whoa.

Like, isn't this how it works?

You've got this flesh that's like selfish and it just wants a comfy bed, and it just wants to get, and my flesh was just saying, go home, and my spirit was saying, stay here.

My flesh just wanted to be somewhere else.

My spirit didn't want to be anywhere else.

Because so often in this life we become aware of the dust of our flesh, but we have eternal supernatural breath going through our lungs.

Friend, I want to encourage you.

Don't let the limitations of the dust of your flesh keep you from feeling and seeing and recognizing and experiencing the divine breath that's coming through your mind.

Don't let the limitations of who you can't be and what you can't do, and where you can't go, and what you can't figure out, and that you don't have any more to give.

Don't let that blind you from an awareness of the divine that's pumping through you.

That's transcendent.

We live in that tension.

So let's think about this.

What's a fulfilling life look like?

God creates Adam.

So you have God, He gives Adam life, and he gives Adam work.

He says, I'm gonna make this dependent on, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna create everything, I'm gonna provide what you need, and then I'm gonna give you work.

And watch this.

I I love I love reading stuff on psychology and other kinds of sciences because I love watching human beings discover the stuff God's made the whole time.

So even like when I look at like brain, uh like neuroscience and some of that stuff, sometimes Christians get weird about science.

They're like, oh no, it's science, it's bad.

It's like, no man, these guys are finally, they're like Adam, they're putting names on stuff God's head the whole time.

It's like, you know what I'm saying?

Adam's like, hey, I'm gonna call that a duckbill platypus, whatever.

He came up with a name, he didn't, but you know what I'm saying?

But but it's like we're coming up with stuff even in neuroscience now that hasn't been discovered the whole time.

We're still discovering.

And so uh I found this thing is for the Hungarian American psychologist.

I really want to respect my man, so I looked up how to pronounce his name because it's a long one.

It's uh it's Mihai Chik Sint Mihai is his name, okay?

And and and he's the one that coined and did a lot of, has done a lot of work and led in the concept of flow state.

Flow state, state of flow.

Essentially, what is flow state?

Flow state is when you take the talents or the gifts God's given you and you work at them and you work hard at them and you do them and and you do it so good that you actually get into a state of mind, it's like it's pure joy.

It's actually, he he gives like these seven different um elements of uh flow.

First is complete concentration, right?

You you have certain work, you you're just so locked in, like everything's going, you know, like bombs are going off around you.

You don't even know because you're completely locked in.

Um clear goals and progress.

Number three, look at this, it's intrinsically rewarding.

It's like it's re like you might not even get anything for it, but you're like, it's intrinsically rewarding.

It just keeps you in there.

Often we pick careers or we pick jobs or things that we're gonna do based on the extrinsic rewards.

How is this going to affect my income?

How is this gonna affect uh you know my social status, whatever, the title that you want or position of power, whatever.

But the work itself, you get certain things, you get in a state of flow, it's actually rewarding just to be there doing the thing.

God made that, by the way.

That was God's idea.

Uh Mihai, chick sent mi hai did not make that up.

God did.

All right, um, it's it's a loss of self-consciousness.

So maybe you're self-conscious in environments.

Ooh, how do I look?

What do people think of me?

Whatever.

You get in this environment, you lose all self-consciousness, you're locked in in what you're doing.

Another one, time distortion.

When you're doing this, you don't even know, you're like, it's dark out.

You're doing this work, you're like, what time is it?

Oh my goodness, the time got away from us.

Why?

You're in your flow state, okay?

This is this is you're in the right garden doing the right work.

You're cultivating the soil God's given you to do in the garden you're supposed to be in.

Often people pick the wrong garden for its extrinsic rewards that they think it's gonna get, and they miss the flow of what God wants them to do in their garden.

Uh, another is a balance between skill level and challenge.

So, in other words, the challenge itself is it's a challenge, but like I can do it.

It's a challenge, but I can do it.

It's hard, but oh man, no, I can do it.

In fact, you're it's motivating.

Some of you, if you look at your life and you look at the work you do, the challenge is demoralizing because you might be in the wrong garden.

Often when you're in the right garden, it's a challenge, but I can't wait to get at it.

I'm chomping at the bit because it's it's the garden God's put you in.

It's this it's the soil you're supposed to cultivate.

God made this up.

Another one, uh another element of this is action and awareness merge.

In other words, you do things almost on autopilot, like you're just doing it, you don't even know how you did it.

People asking you, how'd you do that?

I don't even know.

I don't know.

It's hard for me to explain it.

I don't know where'd that idea come from?

I don't know.

How did you pull that up?

I don't know.

How did you know to do that?

I was in the flow state.

God designed this, so he puts Adam in the garden, he creates and shows how omnipotent he is, he provides what he needs, and then he gives him work.

In his work, he's designed to be in a state of not 24-7, but to be doing work that you can flow and do, to fully integrate victories.

Okay, so so to take time to Sabbath and to step away, whether it's at the end of the day or the end of the week or end of the season, you step back and you're like, Man, I did that work, I was losing track of time, man.

I'm just I'm just good at it, man.

It's just working.

I'm uh we did good work, and you you integrate the victories, and then, oh, and then, oh, I'm gonna end here.

Genesis 2, look at this.

Genesis 2, verse 15.

Genesis 2:15

It said, The Lord placed man in the garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.

But the Lord warned him, You may eat freely of each fruit of every tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So he's saying, Hey, there's this thing over here, it's not for you.

That's not for you.

But don't worry, I'm not gonna let you get bored, because I have work for you to do.

That's not for you.

Don't go after the thing that's not for you, but this is for you, and so you're gonna be in a flow and victories, and then look what he says after this.

He said, and uh, if you eat its fruit, you'll surely die.

Uh but look what he says before that.

He says, You can eat the tree, eat the fruit of the tree of every garden, of every tree in the garden, right?

Like eat all the strawberries and apples and bananas, like eat the fruit, get some fructose, get some natural sugars, like it tastes good.

It's gonna energize you.

It's what it's gonna taste good, like eat some of the fruit of your labor.

What what do I do then?

Well, then I go flow again, and and and I'm tired after flow, and so then I'm gonna integrate my victories and I'm gonna eat fruit.

So I'm in relationship with God.

We're walking in the garden together.

I'm in right relationship with God.

I got work to do where I flow, I integrate my victories, and I'm eating the fruit, and then it says this God just completes it.

Verse 18, he says, The Lord said, It's not good for man to be alone, I'll make him a helper.

And he creates relationships.

So, what does a fulfilling life look like?

It's like what God sets up in the garden.

You're in a relationship with him, right relationship, walk with him.

He doesn't leave me or forsake me everywhere I go.

I do work, I flow, I'm I'm still discovering new things.

I mean, think about this.

Adam ends up getting distracted by the thing that's not for him.

My man, you didn't name all the animals, you still haven't discovered stuff in the ocean.

You ought to be figuring out a submarine right now.

There, you see stuff lying in the sky.

There's no, this is not a boring life.

It's like, oh, I wonder what that is.

How are we gonna get up there?

There are so many discoveries for you.

If you do the work in the garden God's made for you, you keep doing that, it will not get boring because there's so much more to be uncovered.

We're still figuring it out.

So you flow in the work God's given you, you fully integrate your victories, you eat some of the fruit of your labor and you're in right relationship.

So, what happens here is we're gonna leave it.

We'll pick it up next week.

Adam and Eve, which represents not just marriage and romantic relationships, but relationships uh in general.

And so we're gonna look at how this thing goes sideways and then how we get it back.