Summer Talkback Series - Matt Francisco on The Endless Anxiety of Discovering Who We Are
Download MP3Good evening. Welcome to Redeemer Community Church. Welcome to our 3rd talk back of the summer. Especially if you have not been to one of our talk backs before, a special welcome to you. And a quick explainer about what this is.
Jeffrey Heine:Our talk backs, it's about 30, 40 minutes of teaching, and we're gonna take a little break. And during that time, we want you to be thinking of questions. Questions for that second half of our evening that is the talk back. And the way that we will be submitting questions is actually with a a Slido. You can see up there, slido.com/talkback.
Jeffrey Heine:You can enter your questions there. So this is, an approved time of using your mobile devices, to, to send in some questions. You also get a chance to look at the other questions that are being submitted, upvote those, and we'll kind of give priority to that. But that's how we're gonna be submitting some questions. And so if you've been here, we're going to take a little bit shorter of a break in between the talk and the talk back time.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's because, at the end, we want you to stick around for a little bit, because you're you're not gonna have to run down the road, chasing mister Tasty because we're gonna have an ice cream man, right out front here ready to, to to gift you some, some tasty treats. So, so be sure to, to to make sure that to to budget a little extra time. If you if you don't want your children to have one, if you've got kids over there in in childcare, you just come out, enjoy, the tasty treats, and then pick them up, go to the parking lot, none the wiser. We're we're gonna have the music on mute, and so no one no one's gonna know. But, so that that's what, we're gonna be doing, the the talk, a little bit of a break, submitting the questions.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll do the talk back at time for some Q and A, and then ice cream. So, tonight we are excited to have Matt Francisco lead us in a discussion on exploring why so many of us feel such an ever increasing pressure to be living our best lives every moment. And how in such an increasingly distracted and confusing world, we begin to discover who we are and what we are for. And, Matt joined Redeemer's staff 8 years ago next week. He he joined us first as our college minister and now as our associate lead pastor.
Jeffrey Heine:Because we don't get a lot of opportunities for introductions in our Sunday gatherings, I'm gonna I'm gonna take this moment. No. I just wanna say, what an enormous impact Matt has had on my life. Not just as a co laborer in pastoral ministry, but as a friend, as a brother, and as a leader. And Matt has pastored my soul.
Jeffrey Heine:He has called out my sin. He has pushed me to grow, and he has believed things for me that I struggle to believe myself. And so I'm so grateful for his leadership here in our church family, and for the wise and thoughtful teaching that he's bringing to us this evening. And so what we're gonna pray for Matt, we're gonna pray for our time together. So let's pray.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh Lord, would you come near to us tonight that we might think deeply about who you are and who we are in light of who you are. So would you lead us to truth and would you try to transform us through it that we might believe all the more that you alone are God and that we can hope in you. We pray these things in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen. Would you join me in welcoming Matt Francisco?
Collin Hansen:Jeff, thank you for that, man. How are you guys? Great. I have been really excited to talk about the endless anxiety of discovering who we are for a long time. And over the last 2 weeks, a number of you told me that you were excited to come and hear this talk back, and when I asked you why you were excited, I got different answers from every single person that I talked to.
Collin Hansen:So I started to get pretty anxious myself about what I was gonna say, and I I'm thankful that the Lord, I feel like has brought clarity over the last few weeks. And I realized the absurdity of the task in front of me in 30 or 40 minutes talking about anxiety and identity. So the best use of our time, I thought, to start would be to tell you a nonsensical story about my favorite sporting event of all time. You guys ready? The 19, doesn't matter if you are or not, you're you're hearing about the 19 0 4 Olympic marathon in St.
Collin Hansen:Louis. So just to give you a little glimpse of the absurdity of this event, there was one runner who was chased a mile off course by wild dogs. There was a Cuban mailman who raised money and made it to the states and then gambled all of his money away so that he only had his male uniform left, and so he cut off shorts and he ran in it. He's running in his mail, mailman uniform. He gets hungry, so he takes a bite of an apple.
Collin Hansen:The apple is rotten. He feels sick. He throws up. He takes a nap. He finishes in 4th.
Collin Hansen:There are 3 previous winners of the Boston Marathon at this event. None of them finish. One of them makes it only 2 blocks. What went wrong? What's so terrible about this event?
Collin Hansen:There's a number of factors, but one, the runners, they are running primarily on dirt roads, and their trainers are driving in cars right in front of them. So just kicking up dirt and rocks straight into their lungs, just the way that God intended. Right? 2nd, marathon runners will tell you that an ideal starting temperature is somewhere around 45 to 50 degrees. And if it reaches 70 you probably should consider cancelling or rescheduling the event.
Collin Hansen:By the time these guys started running it was already 90 degrees, and that's before accounting for the humidity which pushed it well into the 100. But for my favorite reason, we're gonna turn our attention for a minute to the hero of our story, a man named Thomas Hicks. So Thomas is in the lead on this miserable course. He's 20 miles in and he starts feeling desperately thirsty. He turns to his trainers.
Collin Hansen:He asked for a drink of water, but they can't give him one. Why? Because there is only one water station on the entire course, and it's 12 miles in. And this is by design. Listen to this.
Collin Hansen:James Sullivan, who organized the 19 4 Olympics, and he's a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, he wrote, don't get into the habit of drinking water in a marathon race. Some prominent runners do, but it is not beneficial. And so the illustrious Doctor. Sullivan put one water tower out there and just decided to see what would happen. Instead of giving Hicks water, his trainers pour water on him, and they give him egg whites, and then because he's talking about how tired he's becoming, they give him strychnine, rat poison.
Collin Hansen:His heart starts beating faster, he runs a little bit faster for a little bit, so then they give him more egg whites and more strychnine. Once he starts complaining that he's going to die of thirst, they give him brandy because they're convinced that brandy is a stimulant. It is not. He drinks the entire bottle of brandy and so they give him another. There's a mile left in the race and he starts hallucinating, thinking that he's got 20 miles left to go.
Collin Hansen:And by the time he makes it into the stadium, he sees another man that he thought was behind him walking up to the podium to receive his gold medal. He collapses and he had lost £8 in just under 3 and a half hours. Before we go on any further, it should be noted that the man who was crowned champion, was also found to be a cheater later, that he had driven in a car for 10 miles. So Hicks gets his gold medal in the hospital. Beautiful.
Collin Hansen:Right? And the organizers and the trainers behind the 19 04 Olympics, believed that getting water during a marathon race would be bad for you. So Thomas Hicks, he didn't get water. He got brandy and rat poison, things that were actively killing him as he ran. And it can be pretty easy, to laugh or to be shocked at what happened during these games and poor Thomas Hicks, but we would be foolish to imagine that a 100 years from now people won't be looking back at some of the things that we believe and practice with laughter or in disbelief.
Collin Hansen:The author David Foster Wallace, in his commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, he told this parable about, 2 goldfish swimming in a bowl. They come across another fish. The older fish says to the younger fish, How's the water today, boys? They don't know how to respond. They wait till the older fish swims off.
Collin Hansen:They look at one another and they say, What is water? And the point of Wallace's story is that the most important realities are rarely the ones like, Don't give a runner rat poison. They're usually the ones that are the hardest for us to see and to talk about. So my question for you tonight is, what are the cultural waters that you and I are swimming in, and how are they shaping everything else that we are seeing? And are those waters shaping our understandings about God, ourselves, our identity, what we are for, where the good life is, to be more in keeping with truth and reality, or less?
Collin Hansen:And maybe how would we even know? So tonight we're going to explore the endless anxiety of discovering who we are. We're going to talk about the maps that we've been given in our cultural context, and why they are faulty, and how they lead us to identities that are fragile. We're going to talk about how and where our true identities are found. But I want to begin by focusing on that word that likely grabbed your attention and maybe brought you here tonight anxiety.
Collin Hansen:A couple of weeks ago, our family went to go see Inside Out 2, and it was it was wonderful. I've got a daughter who's, about to turn 12 right over there and I could not handle it as a parent. I did my best not to cry throughout the whole movie. If you haven't seen it, the movie pretty brilliantly depicts Riley, a young girl who's now entering puberty, her inner emotional life. And Inside Out 2 focuses on her transition into puberty, which is depicted as a wrecking ball coming through her emotional headquarters.
Collin Hansen:And the emotions of joy and anger and fear and sadness, the stars of the first movie, they're suddenly forced to operate this not exactly improved new console that overreacts to their every touch, causing Riley to experience these incredible mood swings, which is all a prelude to the arrival of all of these new emotions led by anxiety. This nervous orange ball of energy whose hair even seems to be multitasking. But what's most interesting about this movie is the introduction of a new plot device: Riley's belief system. So Joy, who has been the leader of Riley's emotions for the first movie, she's taken certain memories of Riley's into Riley's core and helped her develop her sense of self. So that the the story that Riley tells herself about herself is, I am a good person.
Collin Hansen:That is the foundation of her belief. As you see, there are lots of reasons to validate this belief. She's kind to strangers, she loves her friends, she loves her family. But what about all of the memories and experiences that she's had that wouldn't affirm this identity or belief? It was revealed really early on that joy has been discarding them for years.
Collin Hansen:She's been kicking them to the back of Riley's mind, so this belief can remain undisturbed. But as the movie progresses we see just how fragile her belief system, her sense of self really is, especially once anxiety begins to take control. Now anxiety, it's not always bad, right? One of the things I shared a couple of weeks ago in my sermon on Psalm 42 is that our feelings are less reactions than they are predictions based on our past experiences and our present circumstances to make an educated guess about the future. So anxiety is a predictive protective emotion.
Collin Hansen:It's anticipating a potential threat and it can help us rightly understand danger or know that we need to prepare for a test or a difficult conversation. But anxiety becomes really problematic when we imagine threats that aren't actually real, or if we blow them out of proportion, or as Inside Out 2 shows us, when anxiety takes control of everything else. I think part of the reason that that movie has resonated with so many is because anxiety feels like it's taken over for so many of us, right? Or it's taken over our culture. We in the modern west seem and feel more anxious than ever before even as nearly every measure of the quality of life has improved almost unimpeded for the last 70 plus years.
Collin Hansen:I mean you probably know stats like these but I'm gonna share them with you anyway. Between 2010 and 2015, depression became roughly 2 and a half times more prevalent. And these increases happened across all races and social classes. A 2023 study of American college students found that 37% reported feeling anxious always or most of the time, while an additional 31% felt this way about half the time. This means that only a third of today's college students say that they don't feel anxious.
Collin Hansen:I think on the positive side, as a society we're way more willing to talk about mental health than we've ever been before because it has been so appropriately destigmatized. Praise God. There are more people today getting the help that they actually need. On the negative side, books like Abigail Shearer's recently released Bad Therapy present this fairly compelling case that a major cause of deteriorating mental health amongst young people in particular might be the fact that they never stop talking amongst each other about their mental health. Why would that be a problem?
Collin Hansen:Because when people hear over and over that mental health problems are common and that they might experience them, it becomes easier and easier to start to want to reflect on our own emotions and then begin to wonder if we need to interpret any negative thoughts or feelings through that lens. It becomes easier and easier to wonder if sadness is really depression or nervousness might be an anxiety disorder, if hurt or disappointment might be trauma. And this can create a sort of self fulfilling spiral. And while bringing anxiety and depression out of the shadows has been a blessing for so many, there is a very crucial difference between destigmatizing mental health problems and popularizing them to the point that we are actively searching our normal feelings for signs of disorder, and especially searching social media for confirmation of our suspicions. And I want to say before we go any further, if if you are here and you are struggling with feelings of prolonged sadness or anxiety or nervousness, please know that we would love to talk to you.
Collin Hansen:We want to be here. Your home group leader would love to talk to you. Our care team would love to talk to you. And if helpful, we would love to connect you to a wonderful trusted local counselor. But it would be just as unhelpful for me right now to offer you a checklist for yourself to see whether you have an anxiety disorder or whether what you're experiencing matches depression as it probably would be for you to go and search social media for it when you get home.
Collin Hansen:The main argument of this talk tonight is not social media is the devil, but I do think Jonathan Haidt does a pretty good job of that in his new book, The Anxious Generation. Highly recommend it. He pretty persuasively describes the devastating effects of what he calls the great rewiring that took place between 2010 and 2015. And one of the major insights of his work is that the only factor that seems inescapably causal and why so many young people are increasingly experiencing anxiety and depression and self harm is this tipping point moment where most young people had a smartphone with a camera that faced them that they could post then on social media. Because from that moment on social media was not merely a way for us to share and stay connected with our friends, social media became inescapably performative.
Collin Hansen:So that none of us can actually be our authentic selves on social media, we are all engaging in this endless exercise in brand management where success or failure, it comes from our likes or our follows or our lack thereof. That we are all being trained from an early age to endlessly and anxiously compare the relative success of our own brands to someone else's. And these comparisons, what we take from them, they begin to shape the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and what we believe about ourselves. I think Olivia Rodrigo captures it perfectly in her song Jealousy, Jealousy, which Isaac generously agreed to sing for us. So Isaac, it's your turn.
Collin Hansen:She says this, I kind of want to throw my phone across the room because all I see are girls too good to be true, with paper white teeth and perfect bodies. Wish I didn't care. I know their beauty's not my lack, but it feels like that weight is on my back and I can't let it go. Co comparison is killing me softly. I think I think too much about kids who don't know me.
Collin Hansen:I'm so sick of myself I'd rather be, rather be, anyone, anyone else. If that doesn't gut you and if you haven't experienced that, then God bless you for having a dumb phone. The performative life that we live online is killing us all slowly because it doesn't teach us how to discover who we are, it only teaches us the versions of ourselves that are most likely or least likely to get the affirmation that we're seeking. And it's teaching us how we stack up compared to other people. Young people today are are spending roughly 7 hours a day on their phones, and roughly 5 hours of that time is spent specifically on social media.
Collin Hansen:By 2022, the number of teams who describe themselves as online almost constantly had hit almost 50%. And girls who say that they spend 5 or more hours each day on social media, which once again is now the average, are 3 times as likely to say that they are depressed as those who are never on social media. This is an epidemic, guys. I don't know any other word for it, and it's one that has to be addressed and and one that can't merely be addressed on an individual basis. It's gonna take a collective effort.
Collin Hansen:But while Jonathan Haidt and others, they offer some helpful potential solutions to our social media problems, for the remainder of my time tonight I'm going to argue that even if every smartphone on the planet blew up tonight and every social media platform disappeared, which praise Jesus wouldn't that be beautiful, we would still remain endlessly anxious. Because smartphones and social media may have greatly amplified our anxiety, but they are not its only source. We are inescapably anxious because we do not know any longer who we are and we don't even know how to find out. In our cultural moment, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish what is narrative and what is fact, Or even have a moment quiet enough, long enough to truly contemplate the important questions of life. Who are we?
Collin Hansen:What are we for? What is life meant to be about? In other words, I don't think that we can separate our current mental health crisis apart from our current crisis of meaning. And how did we get here? How have we lost meaning of all things?
Collin Hansen:Eugene Peterson, in his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, shares this story about this woman who came to him for pastoral counseling and she was working on a piece of embroidery when suddenly it hit her. She said, that's what's wrong with my life. I have no frame to hold me together. All of my thoughts and actions are loose and sloppy. I need a frame.
Collin Hansen:And before roughly 1500, every person's frame assumed the realities of God and the supernatural. So that there was virtually no one, at least in the west, who could possibly imagine a world without God. I mean how would they have explained where things came from or justify any moral values? How would you be able to find meaning in life or how would you face suffering and death? But as the philosopher Charles Taylor has demonstrated over the last 500 years a really decisive permanent shift has occurred.
Collin Hansen:And the most fundamental shift that Taylor describes has been this slow growing suspicion that the material world is all that there is. So that now most of us live within reality practically like it is a fact. That everything has a material cause and therefore meaning and happiness must be found in this life, because there can't be anything beyond it that we should consider. But alongside that shift, coupled with it, there have been a number of other radical foundational shifts of belief. There's been a a new understanding that human reason is sufficient enough to understand everything that we experience in the world and to explain it.
Collin Hansen:There's been a new understanding of freedom where the emphasis is now entirely on an individual's freedom, over and against any obligation that a person might have to a god, a nation, a history, or a tribe. There's been a new view of morality that has developed, where there are no absolute ethics because we can't take anything to be divinely given. So all of our morality and ethics are culturally bound, they are culturally a firm a firm commitment to one another's freedom. And there's a new view of identity where now we must take an inward turn in order to discover who we are. In fact, that's the only way that we can figure out who we are.
Collin Hansen:And these shifts have given birth to a culture of what Taylor describes as expressive individualism, where our default operating assumption in the cultural water that we're swimming in is that human flourishing, the best of all possible societies and cultures, is one where everybody is absolutely free to pursue and express outwardly that which they feel and desire inwardly. And we've talked about this before but we see this in every single Disney and Pixar movie that there is. Right? Where the, main character who is far too young, they're separated from their families and their communities, usually because their parents are so gifted at dying. And then and only then, once the parents are conveniently killed off, these people can discover, these children can discover who they are.
Collin Hansen:And because, and only because, that child is true to themselves, who they discover themselves to be, they overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds. The princess is saved. Summer returns to the island. Right? And in this aspect Inside Out 2, as good as it is, is pretty typical.
Collin Hansen:But what is incredibly interesting about how Inside Out 2 talks about the formation of Riley's sense of self, It's so subtle but it's so fascinating. If you were paying attention, you'll notice that Riley's entire belief system consists of I statements about herself. There is no reference whatsoever to tradition, to family, or of course to religion. Why? Because implicit within the cultural waters that we're swimming in is the convictional belief.
Collin Hansen:This belief take it for granted that family, that culture, that history, and religion cannot help us discover who we are, what we are for, or what it means to live the good life, they are actually only hindrances and obstacles to be overcome. You and I are left then to figure out who we are all by ourselves. We're told that no one is there to help us. In fact, no one can help us, and anyone who tries to help you figure out your identity, especially in the name of family, culture, history, or religion, is actually trying to oppress you, to prevent you from becoming the you that only you were created to be. Because we believe in our culture that there is a certain way of being a human being that is only my way, and if I don't figure it out, if I'm not true to myself, then I'm going to miss the point of my life.
Collin Hansen:I'm going to miss what being a human being is for me. But this idea that we can actually figure out who we are and express ourselves by ourselves is an illusion. None of us actually operate that way, especially on important issues. We don't form opinions about health care, or the war on, the war in Gaza, or euthanasia or politics or sexuality in isolation, much less the meaning of life. We do these in conversation.
Collin Hansen:We're always taking in others opinions, we're always listening, we're always responding. Our identities likewise are always formed in dialogue. And we know this, especially when we look at children and how much of a child's identity is shaped by what they hear or what they don't hear from their parents or their caregivers, right? It's why part of what Heather Parker shared a couple weeks ago was so powerful and painful. In our fallen world, the fallen world, our flesh and our frailty, they shape our identity and they inform our intimacy.
Collin Hansen:We don't really ever grow out of that dialogue that shapes our identity. The only thing that really shifts is which voices we deem acceptable to listen to, to be in dialogue with, to help us discover who we are, what we're for, or what the good life is. Nietzsche's famous madman I'm sorry I had to bring up an existential existentialist at some point. There's this famous moment, where Nietzsche's madman screams, God is dead, and we have killed him. I think far too often, that has been labeled like a moment where Nietzsche was triumphing over what had happened, but he was really trying to drive a reality.
Collin Hansen:Like if you're saying that you've moved past tradition and religion, you have to understand that you have undone every possible source of morality and meaning. And the only thing that's left for you to do is to realize that you have to act as God yourself. You have to be the creator. All that's left then is what you feel. But how would I even figure out which feelings are the real me?
Collin Hansen:I don't know about you guys, but I am an absolute mess of contradictions all of the time. My memories and my longings, they're never monochromatic. Right? All of my joy is tinged with a little bit of sorrow. My hope is tinged with cynicism.
Collin Hansen:And how I feel, my feelings are never static. I may feel this way today, but tomorrow I may feel something different, and it might depend on what I ate or how I slept. Are you beginning to sense why we are so anxious? We're so inescapably anxious trying to discover who we are in a world like this because in this cultural context our identities are inescapably fragile. We're told we have to figure out on our own who we are, and that task is impossible.
Collin Hansen:And when our sense of self is dependent upon an inherently fragile story like Riley's I am a good person, we become increasingly anxious then to protect that story. And that's how concepts like trauma and harm and safety, they inevitably begin to creep beyond the physical to the psychological, so that we no longer protect, sorry, we no longer expect protection from authorities merely from physical violence, crime, and preventable accidents, but also protection from ideas. Because every interaction with an opposing worldview may be the moment where that sword drops upon us, where words really do violence to our beliefs about who we are, what we're for, and what it means to live the good life. And once our own fulfillment becomes the most important thing in life, every other person around us, they become a means to our self fulfillment, where they become an obstacle. Every association, every relationship, every friendship is reduced to a means to an end.
Collin Hansen:Everyone around us becomes less than human. They exist only for us. Martin Luther said it well when he said that sin is man curved in on himself. And this curving in on ourselves, it flattens and it narrows our lives. It makes us so much less concerned with other people or about society as a whole, and it robs us of meaning.
Collin Hansen:So it is no wonder that we are anxious. We are anxious because our identities are inescapably fragile. But not only are they fragile, this map laid before us of expressive individualism is faulty. After every Super Bowl, one of my favorite things to do is, yes, go watch the best commercials of all time, But I really love watching these $7,000,000 failures. I want to find every list of what everyone thought was the worst commercial.
Collin Hansen:And my favorite terrible Super Bowl commercial of all time was one by Yellowtail. And if you don't know what Yellowtail is, Yellowtail is the wine that's so bad only college students think that it's wine. Right? There is so much to hate about this commercial. It opens on this hotel rooftop and there's a man in a yellow suit and he, approaches this woman, who is drinking white wine looking like she is having a great time because she is talking to a kangaroo who is also drinking this terrible white wine.
Collin Hansen:And this folks man, he looks at the camera and he says, this is a kangaroo. Thank you. If you see this kangaroo at a party, you know it's a good party because at Yellowtail, we believe in fun. And then the scene cuts to this kangaroo who's now, barbecuing and flipping burgers for all of friends. Everyone is dressed in tuxedos appearing to have the time of their lives.
Collin Hansen:Then they go to this beach scene and finally they move to this last scene of the mercifully short commercial. And back on the rooftop the spokesman says, lastly, a yellowtail, we believe in this. And then what happens? The kangaroo, he slips on his stunna shades and he starts playing some Euro trash techno music, scratching and djing. What is that?
Collin Hansen:This ad is so bad. Right? And so many people had to approve it before it got a $7,000,000 budget. But I don't want you to miss something incredibly important. This ad is selling you something, and it's selling you something beyond an undrinkable wine.
Collin Hansen:Right? It's selling you a particular version of who the advertisers think you are, what they think you want, what they think you're made for, what they think the good life or human flourishing is. And maybe Yellowtail's picture is a little too over the top and too ridiculous for you, maybe your version of the good life is a little more along the lines of what Miroslav Volf and others have called the Walgreens vision. Volf said this, he said, maybe you remember the old slogan, Walgreens at the corner of happy and healthy. Many of us would say that's where the good life is found.
Collin Hansen:Whatever else it might be, the good life is happy and healthy. And long too. Long is important. After all, if the experience of happiness is good, then a longer experience of happiness is better. You need all 3.
Collin Hansen:Long, happy, healthy. It's a slogan for a peculiar peculiar that word's hard. An odd modern version of a life worth living. Then again, it's not a hard sell. After all, who wouldn't want a long happy and healthy life?
Collin Hansen:The Walgreens vision is the grass fed organic burger on the Good Life menu. Compared to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, it's so sensible. You're not asking for anything extravagant. No helicopters or yachts or 50,000,000 Instagram followers or a kangaroo that likes white wine. The server praises your selection, giving you a look that lets you know that your virtue signaling has not gone unnoticed, then again, your server was always going to praise your choice.
Collin Hansen:After all, in our world, all choices, we assure one another, are excellent ones. I don't know about you, but that rings true to what I hear day in and day out. But are all of our choices excellent ones? Is every way that you spend and live your life equally worthy of praise? Yes.
Collin Hansen:Every person is made in the image of God. We're gonna get there. But none of us pretends that a child dreaming of becoming a teacher or a doctor or a firefighter and a child dreaming of becoming a nazi stormtrooper are equally worthy options, do we? Some identities are better and worse. Some choices are better and worse.
Collin Hansen:But how do we even figure out how to discern what would separate one from another? If you could imagine our cultural waters having a plane flying over, it. The motto dragging behind would be, you do you. But you do you only leads to anxiety because we always feel like we're falling short of however great our life could possibly be. We know we're never fully who we're supposed to be, even if we project otherwise.
Collin Hansen:Because our identities are fragile because our map is faulty. How do we live in light of the truth? What is truth? That was Pilate's famous question to Jesus, right? And Jesus emphatically says, in John 14, I am the way.
Collin Hansen:I am the truth. I am the life. How do we discover what truth is, who we're for or who we are, what we're for, and what the good life is in our cultural moment, in our digital anxious age? On one level, everything else I'm going to say to you tonight is probably going to strike you as profoundly obvious. But that doesn't make it any less profoundly challenging.
Collin Hansen:At the beginning of the institutes, the theologian John Calvin famously wrote, nearly all the wet sorry. Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists in 2 parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. We must understand God and we must understand ourselves. If we are not accidents, if we are not alone in the cosmos doomed to construct our own identities and figure out our own moralities and meaning, but we have in fact been created and created with a purpose, then we're only going to truly discover who we are and what we're for and where the good life is to be found in dialogue with our creator, the one who designed and made us. And he hasn't left us alone to figure it out.
Collin Hansen:He has invited us into conversation with him. He has given us a book. He has given us his spirit and he has given us his people. Praise God that there is a better story than the one we are told in our culture. Tune in July 31st to hear Josh Chutreault talk about a better story on our last talk back.
Collin Hansen:And under the guidance of God's word, by the power of his Holy Spirit, and alongside his people, we must do three things. We must learn who God says he is and who we are. We must grow in love through personal worship and devotion. We must live out our faith inside a community that knows us and loves us. I'm gonna touch on these very briefly, but first, we must learn who God is and who he says we are.
Collin Hansen:We are not defined by what we believe about ourselves. We are not defined by what we have, but instead we are defined by who God says we are in his word. And our creator has said that for anyone who is in Christ, your identity is not fragile whatsoever. It is permanent, as permanent as his character. You, our Lord and God has said, are the apple of his eye.
Collin Hansen:He rejoices over you with singing. He would move heaven and earth to have you. He would call you his bride, a people for his own possession, a royal priesthood. Jesus's brothers and sisters. And we can securely build our lives and our identities on the solid rock of Christ, entrusting ourselves wholly to the one who was and is and is to come because he does not change as the shifting shadows.
Collin Hansen:Our maker, the only one who knows who we are and what we are for, is also our redeemer, the one who loved us enough to ransom us at the cost of Jesus's own blood so that he might be our God and we might be his people forever. And what does this wondrous redeeming God say about what it means to live the good life? What we are to do in this life? Jesus tells us that he came that we might have life abundant, full of joy and life and meaning. Jesus is also asked which is the greatest commandment in the law in Matthew 22, and Jesus told him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Collin Hansen:This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these 2 commandments depend all the law and prophets. So in God's word, what does it look like to pursue the good life? It's very simple, but the outworkings of these two statements will impact every single area of your life.
Collin Hansen:You are to love God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and you are to seek to love your neighbor with the same prayerfulness and affection and dedication and commitment that you love yourself. But here's the thing, you know as well as I do that it's not merely enough to know these things right. I doubt that I'm telling you anything that you don't already know and it's not enough to simply repeat them over and over to ourselves in the hopes that we might one day believe them. But for most of us it's not primarily a knowledge that we need to grow in but it's our love because our loves, as Saint Augustine famously said, have have become disordered. That we love things in the wrong order, so we must grow in love of God through personal worship and devotion.
Collin Hansen:James k Smith, he makes this really compelling case in his book, You Are What You Love, that our loves are much less like affections than they are like chosen habits. Or as the reverend doctor Jeff Heine has famously said, we can only set our affections on those things that we set our attention on. A task that is incredibly difficult in our day and age. Right? Because everything in our world cries out to us.
Collin Hansen:It demands our attention. You can't even pump gas anymore, right, without having a commercial blasted in your face. In some historically unimaginable way, it is not only possible but quite common for us to spin from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep engaged in some form of media. We are not set up for success, but that does not mean that we are left without hope. I want to encourage you to set your attention on the things that you desire to set your affection on, to grow in understanding who God is and who we are based on the firm foundation of God and his word.
Collin Hansen:In other words, I want to encourage you as much as I possibly can towards the hard habit of habit formation. Make a plan to set aside regular time with God alone in his word and in prayer and in meditation where your phone is nowhere near you. Set an alarm. Go to bed at the same time. Keep a Sabbath.
Collin Hansen:Cultivate a space where you are listening regularly to God. Do whatever you have to do to slowly build these habits and watch the Lord grow your love for him and your security in yourself. You are not loved anymore for how well you succeed and you are not loved any less if you fail, and you will fail. So give yourself grace because God has already given it to you. Our loves have grown disordered, and one of the best steps to slowly reordering them is to plan to set our attentions on things that we desire.
Collin Hansen:And lastly, I want to encourage you to do the hard work of habitually living into community where you are known and loved and led to live in light of the truths of who God says that he is, what he says about who you are, and how then he's called us to live. In other words, I just want to call you to live as you know you were created and redeemed to live in fellowship. Here, maybe with the members of your home group or if you're not a member here, I would encourage you to investigate membership at the church where you can ask the kind of questions that you need to ask and know that you won't be judged because you're already loved, where you can work out what you believe in honest community, where you can be listened to and listen to others, where you can pray over others and be prayed over. I want to encourage you to find a regular place to serve, to figure out what it looks like to love your neighbor, a place where you serve so regularly that you're missed when you're not there. And I want you to make showing up on Sunday for worship a near non negotiable in your life.
Collin Hansen:I'm gonna spend a brief moment focusing on that and then we'll be done. How could showing up on Sundays be an antidote to the endless anxiety we experience in trying to discover who we are. Because when we gather on Sundays, we gather to remember and we gather to remind one another of who God is and what he has done and what that means. We gather to participate in worship of the God who loved us enough to die for us, and we gather in protest against any other narratives about who we are or what life is for. As we proclaim God's word together in responsive reading, we are reminded that we are those who have a God.
Collin Hansen:We only speak because he has first spoken to us, and we remember that we are not islands unto ourselves but we have been united together as family. We remind one another of where truth is found. As we recite the creeds, like we're going to recite the apostles creed this Sunday, we're rooted into and we celebrate our history that we're not on a historical island either. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. Yes, our cultural context is unique but we're not left to figure out everything on our own.
Collin Hansen:We stand in a great tradition of saints who have tested God, his character, and his word and they have found him trustworthy. They have found him to be a good father. As we sing together, we confess all of the faulty ways that we have looked for, for meaning and for purpose and for identity. We confess our own inability to fix ourselves and we firmly affix our hope in Christ alone. And then we sit under God's word preached, and we're reminded that our feelings, they're important, but they're not our final authority.
Collin Hansen:God and his word are. And we promise to help one another submit to God's authority in his word because in his words are life. And then we are sent out from this place, reminded that our mission is not merely to personal fulfillment. Although in God's presence, there is fullness of joy, but we are sent out for the good of others and the world for the redemption of all things, to invite other people in to the question, is the life that you're living worth pursuing? Is it giving you what you hoped it would?
Collin Hansen:Come and see, could this man be the Christ? And in an age marked by anxiety, we gather to remember and remind one another that we are not who we say we are. We are who God has forever said we are, his beloved children, and that meaning is not found within us, but within the God who made us and redeemed us, so that our hope is not that one day we will finally arrive at the good life or understanding who we are, but that one day heaven itself will arrive on earth and we will be swimming in the love of God forevermore. So gathering in corporate worship isn't merely a yes to the God who saves, although it is, but it is a resounding and furious no to the lies that echo in our cultural mountains around us. And our songs and our prayers, they're a foretaste of what is to come.
Collin Hansen:Even as we practice them, they shape us for our future home. So this habit of pursuing God in his word and in prayer and in community, it's slow hard work. But as we lean into these things together, the God who made us and loves us, he begins to reshape us and he plants us securely on the foundation of who we are in him, where abundant life is found and what is promised to us in the good news of the gospel. I'm gonna pray for us and we're gonna take a break. Thank you, guys.
Collin Hansen:Father, you made us and so we turn our attention to you. God, help us reorder our lives that you, by the power of your spirit, might reorder our loves. And we're here because we wanna know you. We wanna know who we are. We wanna know what you've created us to be.
Collin Hansen:God, so guide us we pray, now and in the days ahead, into life and life abundant in you. Pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright. Hey, everybody. If you wanna start making your way back to a seat, Matt and I are gonna go ahead and start chatting. If, if while we're talking, if you wanna take some time to finish submitting a question or to, to look over questions and upvote them, But I did just want to start off as a, as a die hard Disney guy. I feel like I've got to stick up for the Juggernaut franchise.
Jeffrey Heine:Mhmm. Because they've done so much for me.
Collin Hansen:And no one else will.
Jeffrey Heine:Right? Right. Who will stand up for them? I do I do think too, the early Disney and The Jungle Book. Mhmm.
Jeffrey Heine:And how the whole theme of The Jungle Book is that Mowgli doesn't belong out there on his own. He doesn't belong in the jungle. Wow. And so the whole journey for Mowgli and the the and, you know, the the people, his friends in the jungle, is that is that he needs to make his way back to the place where he belongs, which is with the people. And, you know, the moment where he, like, sees the little girl, and he's like, oh.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, that's different. And, and and that the whole theme, like the songs, like the bare necessities and all that stuff, like, I can just first taste of that? I'd love to. Actually would.
Collin Hansen:Yes.
Jeffrey Heine:But this idea, like, he started it's it's a oh, yes. You can live out here. It's it's kinda like, later. It's the Hakuna Matata. Like, we can just live out here and be free.
Jeffrey Heine:Right? But the whole arc of The Jungle Book is that, no. The bare necessities are not going to be what you need. You have a people, and it's not this in the jungle. And and he has to make his way home.
Jeffrey Heine:And and so when I pair that, as I often do with John Calvin, and a nice white yellow tail, when when I when I pair that with Calvin, and I hear Calvin say, you know, the the the knowing of the Lord and this place of knowing ourselves, I do wonder if he we still hear that individualistically. Mhmm. And I'm not sure if that's how he meant it. I'm not sure if he meant the I and the thou, but the we and the thou. Like, we have to understand man before God.
Jeffrey Heine:And this endeavor of, I've gotta find out my place rather than the human place Mhmm. Before God. So that shift, do you think that we misread that? Do you think that we misapply that call to, we have to know the self, and we we kinda read a a more enlightened postmodern version of the individualistic self versus the the us before God? What do
Collin Hansen:you think, Jeff? I already know. No. I think that that is an excellent question. I think what you're saying is incredibly interesting, and I would love to ask old Johnny one day when I meet him.
Collin Hansen:Up until that day, I think having a, thinking through it in a both and approach, but primarily leaning on the God and we understanding of self as understanding man's place before God. I think one of the helpful shifts that we've experienced over the last 500 years, you know, we can, I didn't mean in any way to say, like, we should revert back to finding ourselves as cogs in the machine of a particular culture or tribe or nation? I think that there's been some beauty in the individual emphasis because I think the Lord our God sees us all as individuals, but he also sees us all as a part of people that he has created and redeemed. I think we put way too much pressure upon ourselves now to discover, like, who we particularly are as individuals, all of our strengths and weaknesses and desires. And what is more foundational is what is common to anyone who is created in the image of God and redeemed by Jesus's blood.
Collin Hansen:Like, that's the foundation of of who I am and who you are, and that is infinitely beautiful. And that ought to be the lens through which I discover anything else that is particular about myself. Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:So back to Mowgli. No, but he it wasn't until he started to see his actual people, like his community, that he started to understand who he actually was. Yeah. Because he thought maybe he was a bear, and he thought that he could he could live in these different environments, but it was when he started to see the other that is also self, that he started to understand self, and then be drawn to that community. So the extent to which, I can when you are hitting on community towards the end, like spending time in community, that it's in hearing from my brothers and sisters that I actually start to do the work of finding out who I am.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. And that regulates my self understanding, rather than it just being this massive pursuit full of anxiety, because I have to figure out who in the world I am as this isolated entity.
Collin Hansen:No. Absolutely. I I feel like, one of my favorite times in our home groups are times of confession, and, I think for most ordinary humans, that initial vulnerability, here are my failures and my frailties, here are all the ways that I'm falling short, here's my sin, is terrifying, and it is. It it it's always painful, but the beauty of of being prayed for and then also that you are adopted, that you are a co heir with Christ, and there is nothing in the past, the present, or the future that could possibly change that. I know we've talked about this some before, but, I don't think we can I think we can form our own identities in isolation any more than a baby can learn language in isolation?
Collin Hansen:That I can tell myself 10000 times that God loves me, but there are times that it's really, really hard for me to believe it. But when somebody else tells me, it's like it's God's gift by his spirit in this community that I'm meant to live in, like, oftentimes, I begin to believe it. Mhmm. The truth hasn't changed. Just my ability to receive it and my understanding of who I am before God changes as I am in dialogue with others who are also trying to understand what God has done and what that means.
Jeffrey Heine:And kind of in that same vein, there was a question that came in. When it comes to community, people that we are in community with, or potentially a a friend or a family member, who is dealing with anxiety, maybe in in the general sense or or or, maybe something that would potentially live more in the diagnosable, expression of anxiety. How do we relate to them and how do we help them If when we see, whether it's a brother or sister within the the faith family or a biological family member, where we're saying where we see in them that anxiety, how do we speak into it?
Collin Hansen:I think that is a deeply caring question, and I want to begin to answer it and also acknowledge, I don't wanna do the disservice, to any of you, in particular, the person who asked this question of acting like, there is a simple script that you can follow in every situation you encounter someone who is anxious. Like that person's individual story and what they're experiencing, they all matter really, really deeply. But I think even that question, and I really would love to hear your thoughts, Jeff. It betrays what I would say is the most important piece. Like, that person so obviously has a heart of compassion of, like, wanting to enter in and love and be present.
Collin Hansen:And I think that simple presence of not trying to immediately fix, but helping someone know that they're loved, that they're heard, that you're not going anywhere, and that you're there for what they might need now or in the days ahead, whatever that might look like, is maybe the most profound gift that you could give. I think when there are, cases that that are more difficult or complex, I mean, I'm so thankful for our care ministry here at Redeemer. I'm so thankful for the relationships that we have built with so many wonderful local counselors, where people can help unpack, what may be at the root of some of those things. And if there are, physiological things that can be addressed to be a means of God's grace to you. I don't know.
Collin Hansen:I'd love to hear what you thought, what you think.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, before I get into that, there's a question that kind of loops back into it as we're talking about seeking different types of treatment and and help and that is, the question reads as this, where is the line between anxiety being a spiritual issue and it being a chemical imbalance treatable with pharmaceutical intervention?
Collin Hansen:This may be obvious to all of you, but I am not a licensed professional counselor.
Jeffrey Heine:Cut the mic. So,
Collin Hansen:I am not going to attempt to answer that question, but I will say, a little bit in the in the vein of what I tried to share in my my sermon a couple of weeks back that we are whole people, and it is almost impossible to separate what is emotional, physical, and spiritual because we're not really supposed to. Like, not completely. And I would say if you have those questions, once again, like, there are people here maybe in your home group, maybe your leader, maybe your elder, maybe our care team, maybe me or Jeff or somebody else that you know who would love to talk through that with you, but I feel like that that question, should I seek medical treatment for my anxiety is best answered by a professional. And I I know you guys know this. I wanna be careful here.
Collin Hansen:I have benefited incredibly, from therapy, personally. There have been seasons in my life where I have been aided by medicine. I think that those can be gifts. Right? I don't think therapy or medication is like exercise or, good nutrition.
Collin Hansen:That it may not be for everyone in every season, and I think we have a tendency right now to overprescribe. So walking through that question, not in isolation, but with people who know you and love you and are gonna be with you and are unafraid to tell you the truth, and then wrestling with that question alongside a a trusted counselor Mhmm. Or psychiatrist. That'd be my thought. I don't know.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. I'd say some anxiety benefits from medication and all anxiety is spiritual.
Collin Hansen:I like that. That
Jeffrey Heine:because every part of us, it it's spiritual in the sense that it all has to do with God. Like, everything is theological, everything is spiritual, every everything is to be before him, with him, and and under his his care. And there have been times where, yeah, my my anxiety has, has benefited from medication, such as this morning when I took the pills. As an example.
Collin Hansen:But
Jeffrey Heine:but it's always spiritual. Like, it it never it never it might not always need a doctor's care, but it always needs the Lord's. And Yeah. And then it also needs his people. And, and so to the to the question about, like, how we would relate to someone that we see going through that, don't presume that that person understands that they're in that.
Jeffrey Heine:They're experiencing it and sometimes the chaos of experiencing it like, there was a time when, when I I was not in a good place, and my wife, Jess, said to me, she's like, are are you okay? And of course, I was like, yeah. I'm fine. I'm I'm fine. I'm gonna keep saying that until it's true.
Jeffrey Heine:And she said, you know, I often see that you're not okay before you do. And that is a kindness of being seen. That's that's loving of, like, oh, I see you, and I see that you're not okay. And and even just the general question of, like, how are you doing? And then when they give their short, quick, like, of course, I'm fine.
Jeffrey Heine:It was like, oh, but it didn't really seem that way. It seemed like the you're caring a lot right now. Something seems different, and I was just wondering. I think those kinds of things are so we we might be afraid to say something like that because it it might seem accusatory, like the person might read it that way, and I would say more often than not, the person's gonna read it that they're being seen and that someone cares enough to say something. And so I would encourage you to take the take the risk to say something and invite that dialogue rather than, like, oh, I don't know if it's my place to meddle in that.
Jeffrey Heine:Nah, it is. If, like, if if it's real community.
Collin Hansen:Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:It is your place for that. And and if you don't have the relationship where you could say something like that, then I think that that tells you the other place to put your time and attention is to work on the relationship to where it could be one of those places where you could say those things. And that could be your own vulnerability, sharing your own struggles and things like that, and then it's like, oh, this is this is a place where we have those kinds of conversations. Moving on to some more questions. Y'all you all asked very good ones.
Jeffrey Heine:Denny said that if I don't ask his question, he's gonna raise his hand, and that is a very analog way for us to do this. But it did have to do with who played in the 1982 World Series. So that is,
Collin Hansen:the Cardinals won the 82 World Series.
Jeffrey Heine:That's fantastic.
Collin Hansen:It's not important. Graham, is that correct? Oh, come on. You're from Saint Louis. Ish.
Collin Hansen:Not really.
Jeffrey Heine:My follow-up question is how tall are you? As an add on to that, I'm 5 11. Do you think you're taller than me?
Collin Hansen:Yeah. I am definitely taller than you. That's interesting. Not by not by like a a really noticeable difference, but I I mean, in our general relationship, I've always looked down on
Jeffrey Heine:you. Oh, that's been felt. It's been felt, but also unnecessary. I know this is a great one. How do we find the balance of helping our kids know their value and their worth, and have confidence, while also understanding their sin and their brokenness?
Jeffrey Heine:Good grief.
Collin Hansen:That's such a good question. Yeah, man.
Jeffrey Heine:Figure it out.
Collin Hansen:Why didn't you go take Michael Coggins' parenting class? Whoever asked that question. That's that's so good. Okay. We are a church that teaches reformed theology, which is not that important if you don't know what that is.
Collin Hansen:But, generally, what it means, we believe that we are saved by, grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. Like, that that is a core piece. And because of that, like, we talk often about the fact if you're saved by grace alone, that that means that your sin has separated you to such a degree that you couldn't do anything to fix your relationship with God. It was irreparable. Christ did everything, and the only thing you have to do is believe.
Collin Hansen:I think that truth that we are sinners separated from God is incredibly important, and those of us like myself who did not grow up in a reformed tradition and then came to that theology, if I could say it, have a tendency to talk about it too much. Like, Jesus talks very explicitly about sin, right, so often, and we need to talk about sin and how it separates us from God. Jesus? Like, they are all over him. To the point that his disciples are like, hey, get out of here.
Collin Hansen:Get out of here. Get out of here. And he's like, hey, guys. Guess what? If you don't, like, receive the kingdom like this kid, you're not even coming in.
Collin Hansen:They're like, oh, okay. Well, we'll let we'll let the kids come. I think kids, primarily I'm not gonna attempt to, mark out a balance. Jeff's gonna do that here in a second with proportion. Primarily need to know that they are infinitely loved.
Collin Hansen:I mean, when when our kids are, there's a little, like, back and forth that we do when I'm I'm disciplining our kids sometimes. And this is really weird because one of my kids is sitting right here. Well, we'll say, like, towards the end of it, is there anything you could do to make me love you anymore? I'll say no. Is there anything that you could do to make me love you any less?
Collin Hansen:I'll say no. Do I all I love you the same always no matter what? Yes. How much do I love you? And then, you know, big arms.
Collin Hansen:How much does God love you? Bigger arms. And I think that foundation, it's like, yeah, we gotta talk about sin a 100%. You cannot understand what it means to be in a relationship with God unless you understand that you have done something to reject God as king in rebellion and that he had to do everything, die on a cross to save you. But I think Jesus's presence with the children should mark the majority of the way that we talk and interact with our kids.
Collin Hansen:Love, delight, play, instruction. I don't know. So 5050, 6040, what do you got, Jeff?
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. I don't think that as you said, like, we we won't properly articulate the love of God without talking about sin, because that is how do we know that God loves us? We know that he loves us because he sent his son. Why did he send his son? Because we need rescue.
Jeffrey Heine:Why do we need rescue? Because of sin. It's like we we don't even get to the to marvel at the goodness of God's extravagant love without seeing our desperate need. And so it it is talking about the same thing. Like, in that like, where Martin Luther would say, if if you're talking about repentance and you're taught not talking about the overwhelming love of God, then you're probably not talking about repentance.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. And and if you're talking about sin and it's not immediately, like, moving in and out of focus with the the extravagant love of God, then we're not really talking about sin, because sin has to do with the rejecting of God's love and then him overwhelming us with his steadfast love and mercy. So it it's talking about the same thing and talking about it in its fullness.
Collin Hansen:Wow. It's really good, man.
Jeffrey Heine:So I'll kinda do this as 2 parts, that way you can kinda move from one to the next. What is an example of a way that you have experienced a more truthful identity by leaning into the spiritual disciplines? And then the follow-up of, I think it's easy to say, today I'm going to start blank, but the follow through is the difficult part. Do Do you have any recommendations for how to combat this? So, kind of tying the spiritual disciplines there of like getting into it, but then the benefits that you've seen in finding that truthful identity through the spiritual disciplines.
Collin Hansen:Yeah. I'll start with the second one first. I think one of the things that I really wanted to emphasize towards the end is take the next step forward and then give yourself grace. That is crucial. You're not a failure, if you took a step forward and then the next day you failed to take the next step forward, you still took a step forward.
Collin Hansen:Right? My encouragement would be simply like, if that's you, tonight, you set a reminder in your phone for tomorrow or you block off in your calendar in your phone 20 minutes to think about a plan for the next day or the next 2 days. And then you text someone in your home group saying, I wanna I wanna do this. Whether or not you do, you know, in the next day and say, will you please ask me? Like, did I spend 20 minutes reading the bible and praying?
Collin Hansen:Will you please ask me tomorrow afternoon if I did it? I think that's the beautiful thing about community. Like, Galatians 6, we, there's this really interesting difference in phrase that sometimes gets lost in our our translations. I'm not going to nerd out for too long, but we are called, to bear one another's burdens. Like, we are called to help one another grow up towards, intimacy with Jesus as if we need each other because we do.
Collin Hansen:Like, you're not meant to pursue Jesus on your own. You're just not. You're not going to do it is what's gonna happen. So my encouragement would be, make a simple plan, tell somebody about the plan, ask them to ask you about the plan, and give yourself grace about it. And then keep trying to do that until it slowly but surely becomes a habit.
Collin Hansen:And there are plenty of people who have written excellent books about spiritual disciplines. One of my my favorites was written by a guy named, David Mathis. I think it's excellent. But maybe just as helpfully, in light of that question, pick up something like atomic habits. It doesn't have to be a Christian book.
Collin Hansen:Like, how do you think about organizing your life? And not that you have to perfectly follow that every moment, but one of the things that, James Clear says so well is like, what are you actually aiming for? You're aiming for like 1%. Like 1% difference. And over time, that stacks up in an incredible way.
Collin Hansen:And I I would say, if I'm gonna be really vulnerable and honest for a moment, okay. So the all of God's word is true, but there are particular truths that hit me because of, the way God made me, but also my story in a particular way that may not hit you in the same way. But there are probably other verses that you cling to, and this is is really deep. I told this story to our home group leaders probably 6 years ago. But one of the defining moments of my childhood, I was on a baseball team.
Collin Hansen:We made it all the way to the championship game after losing the first game. This team had beaten us like 12 nothing in the first game of the tournament. So we had every expectation to lose. We come back and we win, then the next day, I'm not very good, but I am in the right place at the right time and I hit a walk off, like game winning, tournament winning hit. We have a pizza party to celebrate because that's what you do when you're a kid.
Collin Hansen:And our coach hands out these trophies, and they all say 2nd place on it. And I look at it, and I'm like, what is it? We won. I was like, oh, you thought we were gonna lose, so you went ahead and got the trophies made. And and it seems so silly.
Collin Hansen:Right? But, also, like, what an idiot. Why did he hand out the trophies? Just hand say, like, I gotta get them to you next week. Right?
Collin Hansen:Leave them in the car. Coach Schlosser. Yeah. Yeah. Go look him up, man.
Collin Hansen:Names. But what that did to me was confirm something that I already sort of believed, that people don't believe in me and and I'm gonna disappoint people. Maybe I'm good at a first impression. With the more you get to know me, the less you're gonna love me and care about me. Like, I'm I'm just gonna be like, oh, you're less than I thought you were or I hoped you were.
Collin Hansen:And because of that, like, that shaped a lot of my identity even after, you know, Jesus opened my eyes to understand who he who he is. But there are there are truths like the ones that I quoted tonight. Those are precious verses to me. Like, Zephaniah 317 that God rejoices over me with singing. I don't think I'll ever get over.
Collin Hansen:Like, when I really sit and think, like, God loves me so much that he sings, and then he's already told me in that Romans 8 passage that I that I quoted that that neither things present nor to come can change his love for me like I start to believe that I that the one who actually knows and made everything she's like you're not a disappointment to me like I'm going to spend eternity with you getting to know you more and more so I can you don't have strength to understand how high and how deep and how long and how wide my love is But in eternity, you're gonna get, like, a little bit more and a little bit more. Sorry. That's a piece that's really shaped me. Like, I know that God is is does not find me, less interesting than he used to or less desirable that he moved heaven and earth that I would be his forever. And when I believe that, I go out into the world and in in a lot of strength and humility, but I struggle to remember it often.
Jeffrey Heine:I think that's a good place for us to, finish for the evening. Let's thank Matt for all that he has given us this evening. That's fine. Do you wanna pray for us, and then, and then we all go get some ice cream from the ice cream man? But thank you again, Matt.
Jeffrey Heine:Let's let's thank the Lord for this time. God, we are grateful that you write our story. We are not the authors or the finishers of our faith, but you are Jesus, and that your story redeems all of our stories. And so we take comfort in that, that identity is not something for us to piece together, but to receive from you. And so I pray that each one of us here this evening, and all who might listen to this in the future, would posture ourselves in front of the throne of Jesus and receive our identity in him, and believe it.
Jeffrey Heine:Oh, Spirit, help us to believe the things that are so unbelievable, the things that our own lives, actions, choices seem to be in opposition to. May we receive with gladness and with confidence who we are because of who you are, Jesus. We pray these things in your name. Amen. Thanks for coming.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't forget about the next one. The date,
Collin Hansen:July 31st. Josh Chitra I don't know how to say his name. He's a professor at Beeson talking, about telling a better story.
Jeffrey Heine:Yes. So we will see you then. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell your enemies.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll see you.
