Hello, Life: You Are What You Love | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

If you were here this summer, uh some of my good friend one of my good friends, Carolyn Taketa, uh, she was a small groups.

Yeah, see, I told you.

Uh she was a small groups pastor uh at my previous church we worked together, um, and she really helped to mentor me.

She's a big sister to me.

Uh, she also would not tutor on horn, but now she's a leadership development coach, and she specializes in uh coaching uh Christian women in the workplace, specifically women of color.

So if you need some coaching, she's your girl.

Um the other thing is I forgot what I was gonna say now.

So here's what we're gonna do.

You're gonna stand up now, and you're gonna be really woman-friendly, and you're gonna welcome Carolyn Takeda.

That was great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please be seated.

Thank you for that plug, Robbie.

Um, if you do remember, I was here last uh July, and uh, you guys were so kind and welcoming to me.

And it was so cool.

I walked in this morning for the prep and I saw this slide for the teaching series, and the first one says Anya Lansa.

So I'm like, oh, it's already greeting me in Korean, my language.

I felt so welcome by that.

Um I am a first generation Korean American.

I came here when I was seven.

My last name is um Japanese, or one thinks I'm Japanese, but that's because I married a third-generation Japanese American, and it's such a joy to be um with you in a congregation where I see so many um Asian Americans and just diversity.

I don't get that in our former um church and our former place.

So this is a joy to be here with you.

I was thrilled when Pastor Ryan invited me to be part of this teaching series in the book of First John, where you guys have been doing a deep dive into what it looks like to live life that is truly life and to live in the light.

So let's pray and settle our hearts and get started.

Oh Lord God, thank you for your goodness to us.

Thank you for the life you offer.

Um, thank you for every person here that's made their intention and their time to create space for you.

Um God, we invite you, Holy Spirit, to meet us here.

I pray you would breathe life into the words I speak, that you would mediate them as they reach people's hearts, that you would open our hearts, open our minds so that we hear exactly what it is you have for us today.

Because God, we know you want to speak to us.

And as we draw near to you, Lord, we invite you into our hearts to draw near to us and say exactly what it is that you want us to know.

Okay, so open our hearts to you.

Help us to not be distracted by any of the worries maybe we brought in.

Um God, whatever is occupying our minds.

I just pray, Lord, that just in this next little bit of time that we'd be focused on you so that we become more like you, Jesus, which is our desire in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, raise your hand.

If you've ever heard the expression, you are what you eat.

Yes?

Yeah, everybody's heard this expression.

So if we took this expression literally, um I don't know what you would be.

I would be rice.

I rice has been a daily staple of my life growing up, of course.

And then um, it's probably the food I eat most often.

I love white rice, but because of health reasons, I now have to transition to brown rice.

Not as good.

But maybe for some of you, um you are what you eat means you're a burger or a salad.

Or here in San Jose, maybe you are um boba tea.

That might be closer to what you're used to consuming.

So this phrase, you are what you eat, what it points to is that if you eat certain kinds of foods and you crave certain kinds of foods, you're gonna become a certain, have a certain kind of body.

So, for example, if you love donuts and you crave donuts, your body's gonna look different than someone who loves kale smoothies and craves kale smoothies.

You're gonna have two different kinds of bodies.

So, similarly, this morning, I want you to consider the statement: you are what you love.

You are not what you know, you are not what you believe or profess to believe, but you are what you love.

What we choose to love is foundational to who we are and who we become.

So often in the church, and I was in vocational ministry for a long time, we assume that if we just know the right things, have the right theology, if we just understand the scriptures a certain way, that we would do the right thing and then we'd become like Jesus, and ta-da, it would happen.

But unfortunately, that is not the case.

Not everybody who knows the right thing or believes the right thing becomes more like Jesus.

So why doesn't it always work?

I think it's because we are not shaped so much by our thoughts or our beliefs as we are shaped by our loves, by our desires, our cravings, because God created us for love.

We were designed this way.

We were designed and created to seek after, to hunger and thirst after something and someone beyond ourselves.

As it turns out, Bruce Springsteen was right, everybody has a hungry heart.

And in our culture, we talk about, you know, sometimes someone will say, Oh, the heart wants what the heart wants.

And typically it's used to justify something not great for them, a relationship that may not be ideal, or something that they're craving that's not great for them.

And everybody else can see it, but not the person who's experiencing that emotion because their heart is leading the way to their action.

St.

Augustine, who's an African theologian and philosopher in the fourth century, he said that our desires are like gravity.

They pull us to what we want, they orient our lives.

It's your lives, it's your loves that govern your actions and your behavior.

So we want to be people who love what God loves.

Because we want that to be the orienting principle of our lives.

So we want to do what God wants for us, not just for his glory, but also for our good.

But it's not easy, right?

There's so many obstacles in the way of us following Jesus, and a lot of these obstacles are within us.

So as we turn to 1 John 2, you guys have been in this series, we're picking up right where you left off.

In 1 John 2, 12 to 17, Apostle John has a lot to say on this topic to help us love God more.

Um, so who is John first writing to?

And so in 1 John 2, you can pull out your Bibles, you can read on the screens.

I'm reading for the New Living Translation.

I'm writing to you who are God's children because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.

I'm writing to you who are mature in the faith because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.

I'm writing to you who are young in the faith, because you have won your battle with the evil one.

I have written to you who are God's children because you know the Father.

I have written to you who are mature in the faith because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.

I have written to you who are young in the faith because you are strong, and God's word lives in your hearts, and you have won your battle with the evil one.

Apostle John reminds us of this original intended audience.

It was intended for believers of all ages, all stages of faith.

He's using this lyrical style with this poetic repetition of past tense and present tense to talk to the beloved children of God.

He commends them for their faith.

Um, he tells them, reminds them of the spiritual victory that they've already experienced through Christ.

So this message in this letter is also for us.

Whether you are a brand new believer, whether you're not even there yet, and you're just seeking and checking out Jesus, welcome.

You're in the right place.

Whether you've been following Jesus for a long time and you have some maturity and some years, welcome.

This message is also for you.

It's for everyone, from the beginning to the elders and everyone that is on this journey of faith.

He's reminding us today of our identity.

We are all beloved children of God because why?

We know the Father.

That is the only qualification that matters.

We know Jesus was in the beginning with God, has victory over death and the evil one.

And by extension, through Christ's victory, we also have won the battle for eternal life.

John wants us to build on that truth and to continue to mature in Christ.

And so, how do we do that?

Well, the next section tells us we grow by paying attention to what we love.

So, my question for you this morning that we're gonna circle around is where has your heart been leading you these days?

The next section is the stern warning he has for all believers, all of us today.

So let's continue reading from verse 15.

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.

For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, pride in our achievements and possessions.

These are not from the Father, but are from this world.

And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave.

But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

Notice that John's not saying, hey, here's a list of things to do and not do.

No.

He's going to the heart of the issue: our motivations, our cravings, what inspires us, what moves us.

He's using the language of desire, of love, of longing, not of behavior modification.

So a couple decades ago, um, I have two daughters, and they're now in their mid-20s.

So this was a while back when I was a mom of preschoolers, and I had been a lawyer for a number of years and had taken a break to be a stay-home mom, and I had time, and I thought, oh, I'll go to this program and learn how to be a better mother, have more godly children.

Um but after about three sessions, I actually dropped out because there was kind of a premise to this program that I just felt this tension with.

And here's what it was.

Um, for example, the leader had shared that her kindergartner had used the cuss word.

And so she promptly washed her his mouth out with soap and she took away his favorite toy.

And um I, you know, no judgment about her parenting.

Maybe it works for him, it works for their um family.

But I think it just for me raised all these questions.

I thought, what was going on for this little boy that he felt like he had to use this word?

Where did he even learn this word?

What did he think it meant?

Um, what was he so frustrated that he couldn't figure out another way to say something?

Did he want his parents' attention so badly that he used this word?

I don't know.

I had all these questions about what was going on inside his heart.

And when it came to parenting back then and even now, I'm much more concerned about what's going on in my kid's heart than necessarily what their behavior is.

Of course, don't get me wrong, I'd like to see the correct behavior.

That's really important.

However, I think I didn't just want my children to do the right things, I wanted them to love the right things.

I wanted them to love Jesus and want to do what Jesus wanted to do.

And I saw parenting as this partnership between me, my kid, however the way God made them, they came, you know, with their own desires and their own ways, and then with the Lord to shape our children to be who God created them already to become.

And so, in focusing on their desires and who they were inside, I paid, I just felt like that that focus on the modification of their behavior, only God is part of the way there.

And I was just hoping and praying that they would love the right things.

And I think this is what God also desires for us.

Um, God is after our hearts, not just our behavior.

So Psalm 51, 16, 17 says, God doesn't want our burnt offerings or our religious acts, he wants our hearts of repentance and love.

This is why God gives us freedom, so much freedom, so much choice, so much agency.

Sometimes I wish God would just like zap me and then I just like do the right thing, right?

But he doesn't.

What he's after is a relationship.

He doesn't want a robot.

He wants to be in relationship with his beloved child.

God is never coercive, he's never gonna force you to do his bidding.

He's always invitational, always engaging, he's wooing, he's always compelling us by his love, by his goodness, and his faithfulness and his kindness and all of the attributes that we know him to be.

But we live in a world that is constantly competing for our hearts, it's constantly competing for our attention and our resources and our values and our time.

And so John gives us clear contrast in the next couple verses between the world and God and the different priorities, right?

So the message paraphrase, which is so direct, Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, it puts it super bluntly, and he says, Don't love the world's ways, don't love the world's goods.

Love of the world squeezes out the father, love for the father.

Practically everything that goes on in the world, wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important, has nothing to do with the father.

It just isolates you from him.

The world and all of its wanting, wanting, wanting is on its way out.

But whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

In this passage, the word world doesn't just refer to the material goods or money, but it's about our attitudes, our values, our priorities, both external and internal.

And so Apostle John isn't advocating that we just leave the world and go in a little commune or be in a monastery and reject the world.

No, he's saying this is how you live with the world.

This is how you battle the worldly cravings.

You center yourself on God's love for you.

The world, the word world here is also the same Greek word that Jesus uses in Matthew 16, 26 when he said, um, what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?

Is anything worth more than your soul?

Jesus points out that the stakes are incredibly high and has eternal consequences.

So John's warning us, don't just love, don't love the world, don't love the things of the world.

Why?

For three reasons.

It's not going to last.

You can't take it with you.

It separates us and isolates us from God.

And third, it ultimately will not give you what your heart is most desperately longing for.

Pastor and writer Tim Keller said that the human heart is an idol factory.

And he defined an idol as anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you, what only God can give you.

So it's when a good thing, a blessing, something good in our lives, our families, our relationships, uh, money, resources, our homes, our physical beauty, if you have that, you know, abilities, skills, brains, all the things.

Everything we have comes from the Lord, right?

So all the things.

But it's when those things become the ultimate things that becomes hazardous to our souls.

We know from James 1:17 that every good and perfect gift is from above, that it comes down from us to from the Father of heavenly lights to us who does not change, like shifting shadows.

James 1:17

So we want to be people who love the giver more than these good gifts.

And we know that God is so, so generous and so abundant with us.

So we can be grateful, we can celebrate, we can enjoy the good stuff that He gives us, the blessings, but always with an awareness that it won't have the central place in our heart, and to guard ourselves against making the good thing the ultimate thing.

So John identifies three types of cravings that are in danger of becoming ultimate things in us.

The NIV translation calls them lusts, which kind of captures more of that raw kind of visceral greediness of the word that entangles us and entices us away from God.

So in our culture, I think this would come in the categories of sex, money, and power.

I mean, they kind of fit into the same three things that most people, if they're going to blow up their marriage or an institution or their political career or whatever, tends to come down to these three things.

And so the first is a craving for physical pleasure, the lust of the flesh.

And this is about self-gratification, sexual desires, it's about comfort and luxury.

It's the principle in our culture of, you know, if it feels good, do it.

If you want it, you go get it.

Like there's just basically it's satiating whatever appetites, physical appetites we have.

Um, and then the second one is for craving for accumulating material possessions.

Um, the NIV calls it the lust of the eyes.

It's when we see something and we want it.

It's a materialism of coveting what we see and a jealousy for other people that have it.

And when we see it, we feel like we gotta have it.

This is pretty much the Instagram of a life concept, right?

We see it, we see what they have, then we want it.

It's that comparison.

And so last summer for 4th of July, my husband and I were invited to a friend's house to watch the fireworks.

And this friend lives in this huge house on top of a hill.

Um, it's really more like a compound.

It's just really fabulous.

And she had redone the whole place and it was beautiful, had 360 views of the fireworks, so it was stunning.

Um and as we were driving away, I turned to my husband and I said, Wow, you know, I was a little green with envy, and I said, Wow, what would it be like to live in a house like that?

And he said, It'd be a lot to clean.

And I was like, Yeah, true, but okay, he she probably has a cleaner, so I don't know how valid that is, but it burst the bubble for me, and I was like, You're right, I love our house.

What was I thinking, right?

You kind of almost kind of come to yourself, but it's that comparison, it's that it robs us of our contentment because we see somebody else that has more, they got the promotion, they have a nicer thing, whatever, they have a better relationship, whatever it is, it it draws us.

Um, and that comparative mindset is that craving for more.

And the third one that John identifies is the pride in our achievements.

Um, and Ivy calls it the pride of life, and this is the craving for status, for power, for admiration and control, for prestige, for impression management.

We care a lot about what people think of us.

And this one is a lot more subtle than the first two.

I think for me as a first generation immigrant, as a Korean American, like this is almost embedded into my culture of um wanting to and being told that we must succeed.

Um, education is a super high value, achievement is a really high value, you keep climbing the ladder, and part of it is because we are trying to achieve, quote, the American dream, right?

Um, to be at a certain place that doesn't feel like we've made it, but uh we know that that we've made it stage only lasts so long.

Before then there's a next hill to climb.

And you don't have to be an immigrant to know that there's always the next thing, the next thing, the next thing to go after, to hustle after, to control, to try to have people admire you for, and to be happy.

And then there's just this constant drivenness towards more is so toxic to our soul.

And uh here in the Silicon Valley, you know better than anyone else how these algorithms work.

Like you guys create these things where you know this our social media feeds, our news, everything we see is constantly telling us what you have isn't enough.

Who you are isn't enough.

And that is just a lie.

That is not what Jesus says.

Um, and we it keeps wanting us to compare our messy insides with people's perfect outsides, and we look like we're lacking, so then you know, it feeds us then here's what you need to you know match up, and it just keeps going on and on.

So, have you been struggling with any of these three cravings?

I know I have, and I do on a regular basis.

Um, and so if you also are struggling with these, then welcome to being human.

Since the beginning, since the beginning, our human nature has been tempted by cravings for the world's shiny things.

This started with Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:6.

Genesis 3:6

The woman saw that the tree was beautiful, its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her.

So she took the fruit, ate it, and then she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too.

Let's notice what happened here.

One, she saw that the tree was beautiful, a craving for what she could see.

Two, the fruit looked delicious, a craving for the physical appetite.

It's a yummy treat.

Three, oh, she wanted to be wise like God.

She was craving the power and control and something to be something she was not.

This also then shows up in the New Testament really early in the book of Matthew, when we see Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

Jesus had been praying and fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, so he's in a really vulnerable time, he's exhausted, he's starving.

And here Satan appears to offer these three worldly cravings.

He offers him bread to satisfy his hunger, physical comfort.

He offers a material wealth, everything you can see, this all can be yours, he says.

Um and then third, he offers him an exercise of power.

Have the angels come down and save you, he says.

And Satan tries to tempt Jesus with the same three types of things that he uses on us, especially when we're vulnerable.

So Jesus understands our struggles.

If you ever think, oh well, Jesus doesn't know, because you know he's God, no, he has also experienced and didn't give into temptation, but he's experienced the struggles of being human.

It is part of our human condition that we get, bless you, that we get drawn into the lies about God.

Um and I think the bigger problem isn't just that we like the worldly things, is that we get drawn into these lies, these false narratives about what the quote good life looks like.

Satan, who the Bible calls the father of lies and the deceiver, he's not just dangling these goodies in front of you.

Um, he's planting seeds of doubt.

He is trafficking in lies about the father and giving.

You false narratives that isolate you away from God's love.

Satan's lies to Eve is the same essential whispers that he uses on us.

And maybe you've heard some of these whispers in some of your dark moments.

It's things like him saying, Hey, God doesn't really care about you.

He doesn't really love you.

That thing you did, that is really awful.

He's not gonna forgive you.

God's not enough.

You need to go get more for yourself.

Or you can't trust God.

Look at what he's not giving you.

Or you can control your own life.

You can have what you want.

Um you can biohack the whole thing.

And ultimately, the lie is that you don't need God.

So, what is the message the world has been telling you these days?

They're all versions of this.

If I have X blank, I will be happy.

You can fill in what that blank is for you.

But here's a few to try on.

If I have lots of money, I'll be happy.

If I have the cool job and career I want, I'll be happy.

If I'm married, I'll be happy.

Or if for those of you who are married, if my spouse changes, I'll be happy.

You know, if people admire me and envy me, I'll be happy.

If I can do whatever I want, however I want, wherever I want, then I will be happy.

That is the lie.

And so if I have blank, I'll be happy.

This is this is the lie, but it's underneath our craving.

The craving is just layer one.

Layer two is underneath what is the version of the good life you have bought into.

Recently, um, I'm currently working as a leadership coach now, and recently I was coaching an Asian American woman, and she was struggling with overwork and burnout.

Um, and she we focused initially on a work-life balance, how to have better communication and boundaries with her supervisor, you know, things like that, important skills.

But as we continued to coach and be with her, it was clear that there was something else going on underneath behind the hustle and the overwork and all of that.

There was this anxiety and stuff.

So as I continued to work with her, eventually what came out was that she had put all this emotional weight attached to her work.

Um the work was representing status and her self-image and how she saw herself, how she wanted other people to see her as a successful professional, how she wanted her parents to feel glad about the American dream that she was living out for them to make their sacrifices worth it.

Like it had a lot of emotional weight that had nothing to do with her job per se.

So once she was able to identify the craving underneath the actual issue, she was able to have the courage to let go and to choose.

Okay, I can have this kind of life, this hustle, the nonstop, the overwork, the exhaustion, um, or I can have this life, which is sustainable and I have time for myself and for my family and for the things that matter most.

And I think it comes down to these choices, and we have to become really clear and honest with ourselves about what is the craving underneath the craving?

What is the lie that the world is telling about the good life?

Because we know everything in life is temporary.

So if you get a new job, new car, whatever, it'll just satisfy you just for a little bit, and then there'll be that hunger for more, and then you'll go on more and more.

And so verse 18 reminds us that you can stop that, that whole craving lust, because anyone who does the what pleases God will live forever.

That is the answer.

Um, so how is it that he's calling us to live?

When Jesus was asked what is the most important thing, he replied, The most important commandment is this listen, O Israel, the Lord our God is the one and only Lord.

And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

The second is equally important: love your neighbor as yourself.

No other commandment is greater than these.

We were made to love God.

This is our gravity, this is our true north.

And the further we're to get away from that center, the more we're gonna feel disconnected and distracted and struggle, chasing after the things that will never satisfy us.

But when we use, when we allow Jesus' love to compel us, when we experience and taste and see his goodness, we'll be captured more and more by his love.

And everything else kind of will fall into place.

You seek the kingdom first, and then everything else falls into its rifle, rifle place.

So here's an example of what this might look like.

And my daughter Sarah works from home in the city, and earlier this year she announced that she was gonna adopt a cat.

And we said, What?

We are dog people.

Okay, dog people, yes.

Yes, thank you.

All right, cat people?

Okay, we have some cat people, okay.

So, yeah, all right, so not to cause a uh you know a pet war, but we've always been dog people.

We have a dog we love, best dog in the world.

And I was like, What?

You're allergic to cats.

I'm allergic to cats.

Why would you be getting a cat?

She decided she's getting a cat.

So meet Jojo, her cat.

Okay, yes.

So the yes, she is cute.

Um, so but here's what I found fascinating.

In the six months that my daughter has had this cat, everything has changed about her life.

She has now spending money on this cat, not on other things.

Um, this cat has everything.

Um, it has, you know, this premium food, pet insurance, heating pads, it even has a bubbling water fountain with a sensor on it.

I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, but also kind of cool.

Um she spends her time differently.

In between meetings, she would be scrolling, and now she said, I don't scroll on social media much or on TikTok.

I just want to be with Jojo.

So I play with Jojo in between meetings.

She doesn't go out at night, she hangs out with Jojo at night.

Um, she's just reoriented her life towards this cat because she doesn't want to leave this cat alone.

Um so we see more pics of this cat than we do of our daughter.

Um, and I was visiting her last month, and Sarah likes her room neat and clean.

This there's cat fur everywhere, and she is okay with it.

I'm like, wow, this is such a transformation.

It's changed her relationships.

Um she now is bonded with coworkers, they also share cat pics, it's a thing.

And then she now, when friends visit her, she tells them, I have a cat, you're gonna have to love my cat.

So look at this picture, how much she loves her cat.

So, yeah, so she provides.

I I did ask her permission for the picture, but this is this is their relationship.

She loves this cat.

She's become a cat evangelist.

Several of her friends now want cats of their own.

And so basically, my daughter's love for Jojo has transformed her from a dog person to a cat person.

Because her love is like it's a magnet, it's pulling her away from these other things, the other priorities, into something that she wants more than TikTok or other things.

And so I think in a similar way, because we are what we love, um, we will consciously and subconsciously orient our lives toward you know what makes us what pleases our souls, what satisfies us.

So, what makes us want to love God more?

I mean, you guys can give a million reasons.

We have a million reasons, but here's just a few.

We love God because he first loved us.

He died for us, he saved us, he chose us from the very beginning of time before you were even created.

He adopted us as his sons and daughters.

He is our creator, our provider of everything we are and everything we have.

And I think in summation it would be Acts 17, 28.

In him we live and move and have our being.

He is everything.

So, how do we then orient ourselves toward this love and have this become our center?

Well, one of the first questions I ask new coaching client is what is your here and what is your there?

And this question gets at where are they stuck?

Where are they not being able to move forward?

Um, and what is the issue they need to work on to get to there.

The there is the life they envision for themselves.

It's the vision of the good life they have for what they want.

And here's the gap in between, right?

And so I want to ask you today, where is your here with God?

And where's the there that you'd like to be at?

I'd like to propose that the there is that we put God at the center and we make him our anchor.

So here's some self-examination questions for you to consider.

Um, and these are on your sermon notes so you can look at them later as well.

What are your loves?

Um, and where's God on that list?

What's the worldly things that you've been craving lately?

And what lies about the good life?

Are you tempted to believe?

What are how are your desires shaping your heart and your values, your time?

You know what?

A kind of an interesting little exercise you can do next time you watch, you know, any media piece, you can look at and ask yourself, hmm, what is this thing telling, saying is defining a good life?

Like what is this thing trying to say about what the good life looks like?

If you start doing that little exercise, the lies will start becoming obvious.

It's gonna be mostly about stuff we have, stuff we can own, stuff we can step over with people to get.

I mean, it's it's going to be obvious that's not gonna sound very godly or things that Jesus wants to orient our lives towards.

We're gonna be spending a little time in communion in a few minutes, and I want you to use this time to do that self-reflection and to think, okay, where am I at?

Where is my here with God and where is the there?

And allow your desire to start pulling you, allow God to start pulling you toward the life that he envisions for you.

So it's like Google Maps, when you make a wrong turn, what does it say?

It says, recalibrating now, make a U-turn if possible, right?

Well, with the Holy Spirit, the U-turn is always possible in your life.

We call this repentance and confession.

And God welcomes this, invites us to always make this turn.

When we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness.

1 John 1 9.

You guys studied that the first week.

God will always meet us exactly where we are, where you are right now, with his grace, with his forgiveness, with his love, with his delight, no shame, no judgment, no blame, just where you are now.

Um and we know that he wants to be with us.

Best-selling author James Clear wrote Atomic Habits on the premise that every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.

So if you want to become someone who loves God and loves people, then you're gonna need to orient your habits and your life towards that goal.

So here are some practical steps.

And I apologize, I don't have them on a slide, but um, hopefully one of these will pop at you and you'll go, okay, that's the one I want to do, and want to start here.

These are bite-sized.

We start with bite-sized habits.

We always want to do things that we can do, not set ourselves up for failure to try to do a lot more that we can't do.

So let's start here with bite size.

Remember, what you feed will grow in your life, and what you starve will die.

So habits you don't want to indulge in and stop craving, it will die if you stop feeding it, right?

So we so first habit, it would be to ask God to increase our love for Him.

We need God's help.

It's kind of ironic.

We can't even love God without God's help.

Like it is a gift of faith, it's a gift from the Holy Spirit, right?

So if we want to love God more, tell him.

Tell him I want to love you more.

Or maybe in my really, really honest moments, I may even be like, God, I want to want to love you more.

Like I'm not even there yet, but I want to want to surrender more.

And you can have those very honest conversations with God.

The second thing is to pay attention to your triggers for your cravings.

Sometimes when I'm, you know, when I'm extra hungry, where you're tired, where you're lonely, where, you know, something really bad has happened, we're gonna be more vulnerable to those subtle whispers from Satan telling us of what things to crave and what things to chase.

So just be aware of what those things are.

Make your unconscious stuff a little more conscious, surface those things.

Um, and understand like what is the craving?

Why am I having this craving?

Get curious about it.

Don't judge it.

Go, okay, I'm having this craving.

Okay, what is that about?

And and as you explore it, you'll see there's a message underneath, a message that says what's gonna bring you life, and it's and then you can pivot.

Oh, that message, not true.

I know God loves me, I know he has my best interest, I know he's for me.

Then you start doing the third thing, which is to marinate in God's word.

God's word is truth.

And Jesus battled the temptations when Satan came at him, he battled it with the word of God.

So start memorizing really simple verses, like the Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need.

Psalm 23.

Or there's therefore no condemnation in Christ, Romans 8.

Whatever verses speak to you, write them down, put in your phone, put it on a pretty picture somewhere, um, just to remind yourself.

We need these constant messages because the world is relentless with their messages, so we need to dial up the messages that we hear from the Lord.

And I use the word marinade in scripture because it's what it's like.

You need to tenderize our hearts.

Um, on my homepage, this is a little bit silly, but it helps me.

I have a plug-in that opens up every time and it greets you, and you're supposed to put in, you know, hello Carolyn.

But I I changed Carolyn to um hello, beloved child of God.

And I have this message there, it it pops up all the time because I'm on my computer, and I need to be reminded that before I am anything else, I am a beloved child of God.

And that informs then how I answer emails, it informs my anxieties about any number of things.

Um, it informs my perfectionism that thank God I'm in a recovery for, but it still informs that sense of not enough.

I remember, oh no, I'm a beloved child of God.

I'm not enough, but God is more than enough.

Um, so whatever helps you, that's a little tool that helps me, but whatever helps you, immerse yourself in God's word and God's truth.

The fourth is to practice gratitude and contentment.

If you dial down the comparison with the world and with other things, you can dial up your gratitude.

They really kind of um balance out each other, right?

So the anecdote to uh having being having comparison and competitiveness is actually to just dial up your gratitude.

Thank God for all the things, so many good things God's given you.

Put it, have a gratitude journal, put in a note, but just rest your heart on all that God is and what he's given.

And the fifth thing is to invite the Holy Spirit into every part of your life.

And that is about prayer.

Prayer isn't so much because God needs our information.

He already knows, he knows all of it, right?

He's omniscient.

Um, so he knows it.

But it's really, prayer is really about giving God access to your heart and to your mind.

So invite the Holy Spirit all day long, as you drive to work, as you hang out, as you take breaks, as you um play, whatever it is you do, invite God in to do that thing with you and to notice when God shows up.

So you just show up and God will meet you there.

You will you will get to taste more of God as you become more and more aware of God's presence in your life.

So we invite him in and show up.

And then finally, ask a friend to help you.

Stay centered on Jesus.

As a former small groups pastor for a long time, I just have to say, you know, we need relationships.

We cannot follow Jesus alone.

So hopefully, in your small group or in a trusted Christian friend, you have someone who knows you and is known by you, where you can share the struggles.

Hey, I'm really wrestling with craving this.

And I know it's not good for me, but this, you know, help me, pray for me, uh, remind me, hold me accountable.

We need those kinds of relationships in our lives.

And so hopefully you have people that kind of stir that up in you.

Um, and we know emotions are contagious, so if you're with someone who's praising God and who's living in a similar way that you want to go, you're gonna be influenced by that.

And conversely, the other thing.

So we want to make sure that you have a community around you that centers you on Christ.

And I'm gonna invite the worship team back up as we prepare for a time of worship and communion.

And communion is such a great physical, tangible way for us to engage in this time of confession and repentance.

So wherever you are with God, whatever your here is today, in this moment, I want to invite you to take time as you take the bread and the wine, as you remember Christ's sacrifice on the cross for us and the life he offers us.

I hope you'll take a moment to confess the things that are tangling you up right now, that are have kind of pushed God off-center and reorient yourself back to your true north, to God's love, to the love that nothing can take away, and to the life that is eternal forever.

And if you would like to confess to someone else, there's a prayer team in the back that I invite you to go and be prayed for and be prayed with.

Um, and to just allow God's presence to minister to you as we sing these songs and these words.

If you feel like I want this to be true for me, then sing them out loud.

If you're not quite there yet, it's okay.

You can just, I don't, you can that's all say, give me Jesus, right?

And then you kind of go, Yes, I do want that.

I'm not there yet.

God help me.

Help me, help me.

Like that is the prayer.

That is a prayer that God will always, always answer.

So I'll close.

Um, oh, one last thing.

I just want you to know, reorienting your life to God's love is not a one and done.

That would be much easier.

It is a daily, daily act of picking up our cross, of following Jesus, of battling our cravings, and choosing, choosing to set our hearts, our intention, our desire on the only one who can satisfy us.

So this final quote from St.

Augustine says, We were made for you, God, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, may we find our rest, our peace, our hope, our joy, our love, our freedom, all the things, Lord, that make life worth living.

May we find all those things in you who never changes, who are faithful through all time.

God, we honor you.

We want to give you glory, but Lord, we get in the way sometimes.

And you know our hearts, you know each and every heart here.

You know what entangles us, you know how messy our insights are.

And yet, and yet, Jesus, you call us your own, you call us beloved.

So, Lord, meet us in this space in the next few moments.

God, thank you for the cross, thank you for your sacrifice.

God, change us, change our hearts, reorient us back to center, to back to being anchored in your love and knowing that that is the most important thing about us and about our lives.

So, God, work in our hearts.

We need you, we want more of you, Lord.

And we submit ourselves to you.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

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