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How the Bible Rewires Your Brain The Science of Silence · truthunedited

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Speaker 1: You've tried this before, the whole life overhaul thing. Maybe
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Speaker 1: it was January 1st, or I don't know, maybe it
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Speaker 1: was just a random Tuesday at 2am, staring at the
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Speaker 1: ceiling because a doctor told you something that made your
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Speaker 1: stomach drop. Or maybe you just hit a wall and realised,
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Speaker 1: this can't keep being my life. So, you did what
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Speaker 1: we all do. You bought the books, the ones with
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Speaker 1: the bright yellow covers. You listen to the optimization podcasts
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Speaker 1: on 1.5 speed while sitting in gridlock traffic. And those people,
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Speaker 1: the ones who always seem to have a perfectly pressed
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Speaker 1: shirt and an immaculate kitchen, they told you the secret, right?
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Speaker 1: Wake up at 4 a.m., make your bed, drink the
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Speaker 1: lemon water, journal, visualize, just be better, be consistent. Look,
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Speaker 1: some of that is fine, but let me ask you something.
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Speaker 1: If having the right information was actually what changed people,
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Speaker 1: my goodness, wouldn't we all be saints by now? Most
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Speaker 1: of us aren't struggling because we're stupid. We don't lack data.
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Speaker 1: We struggle because knowing what is right and actually doing
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Speaker 1: it when you're running on four hours of sleep and
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Speaker 1: your kid is screaming are two entirely different universes. Paul
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Speaker 1: the Apostle, the guy who wrote half the New Testament,
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Speaker 1: admitted this. Read Romans 7. It's startling. He basically says,
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Speaker 1: the good I want to do, I don't do. The
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Speaker 1: garbage I hate, that's what I keep doing. He wasn't
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Speaker 1: talking about some hypothetical, distant unbeliever. He was talking about
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Speaker 1: the gut-wrenching, exhausting reality of just trying to be a
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Speaker 1: good person. There is the person you desperately want to be,
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Speaker 1: the one you picture when you're praying in church, and
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Speaker 1: then there is the person you actually are when the
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Speaker 1: Wi-Fi goes down, and you snap at your spouse. That's
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Speaker 1: why another motivational speech isn't going to cut it. You
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Speaker 1: don't need stronger willpower. You need your heart rebuilt. Read
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Speaker 1: the Bible carefully. Pay attention to the background noise. We
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Speaker 1: always focus on the fireworks. Moses at the burning bush.
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Speaker 1: David holding Goliath's severed head. Daniel walking out of the
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Speaker 1: lion's den. Paul getting knocked off his horse by blinding light.
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Speaker 1: Those moments changed history, sure, but they didn't form those men.
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Speaker 1: Character is almost always built in the dirt, in the quiet,
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Speaker 1: where it's incredibly boring and nobody is clapping for you.
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Speaker 1: Long before David ever smelled a giant's breath, he was
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Speaker 1: a lonely kid in a pasture singing to sheep. Long
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Speaker 1: before Daniel stood in front of lions, he was the
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Speaker 1: weird guy who went up to his room, opened a window,
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Speaker 1: and prayed three times a day. Every day, for years,
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Speaker 1: even Jesus, the eternal Son of God, didn't just casually
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Speaker 1: find time for God. The Gospels tell us He practically fled.
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Speaker 1: He withdrew to the lonely, desolate places. He wasn't reacting
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Speaker 1: to the chaos of the crowds. He was living out
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Speaker 1: of the quiet of His Father. If Jesus Christ needed
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Speaker 1: to escape the noise, to be alone with God, what
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Speaker 1: on earth makes us think we can survive without doing
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Speaker 1: the same? Maybe that's why we're all so universally exhausted.
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Speaker 1: We aren't out here robbing banks or living in open rebellion.
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Speaker 1: We still go to church. We still say grace over
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Speaker 1: our lukewarm takeout. We believe the right things. But somewhere
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Speaker 1: along the line, our days became shaped more by the
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Speaker 1: vibration of our Apple Watches than by Scripture. We are
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Speaker 1: discipled by breaking news, not the good news. The problem
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Speaker 1: isn't always the bad habits we've picked up. It's the
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Speaker 1: holy ones we simply let die of starvation. So, I
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Speaker 1: want you to try something. Don't think about changing your
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Speaker 1: life over the next five years. That's too heavy. Don't
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Speaker 1: even think about next month. Think about tomorrow morning. Tomorrow
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Speaker 1: morning before the blue light of your phone hits your
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Speaker 1: face in the dark. Before you see the first terrifying headline.
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Speaker 1: Before the anxiety about your mortgage... or your aging parents,
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Speaker 1: or your blood pressure even, has a chance to fully
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Speaker 1: wake up, what if tomorrow started differently? Not because you
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Speaker 1: downloaded a new app, not because you finally found the
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Speaker 1: willpower you've been missing since 2018, but because you chose
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Speaker 1: to anchor your morning the exact same way men and
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Speaker 1: women of God have done for thousands of years. Psychology
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Speaker 1: is finally catching up to something the Bible has been
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Speaker 1: saying for centuries. What you do every day is who
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Speaker 1: you become. Every time you doom scroll, you carve a
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Speaker 1: trench in your brain. Every time you choose quiet over noise,
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Speaker 1: you carve a different one. Proverbs says, As a man
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Speaker 1: thinks in his heart, so is he. Psalm 1 says,
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Speaker 1: The blessed person is like a tree planted by the water.
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Speaker 1: Trees don't explode into oak trees overnight. They grow agonizingly slowly,
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Speaker 1: almost invisibly, until one day a storm hits that should
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Speaker 1: absolutely rip them out of the earth. And they don't move,
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Speaker 1: because the roots are too deep. That is what biblical
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Speaker 1: habits do. They will not fix your life by next Friday,
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Speaker 1: but they will quietly, ruthlessly change the kind of person
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Speaker 1: you are. So no lists of seven tips for success today. Instead,
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Speaker 1: we're going to walk through a single day alongside the
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Speaker 1: people who actually knew God. We'll start at sunrise tomorrow,
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Speaker 1: and by the time your head hits the pillow tomorrow night,
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Speaker 1: I want you to realize something. These biblical heroes weren't
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Speaker 1: extraordinary people with superhuman discipline. They were deeply flawed, ordinary
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Speaker 1: people who just relentlessly did ordinary things in the presence
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Speaker 1: of an extraordinary God. Let's pray, and let's ask for
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Speaker 1: something better than a self-help book. Father, your word says
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Speaker 1: not to be conformed to this world, but to be
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Speaker 1: transformed by the renewing of our minds. That is exactly
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Speaker 1: what we need right now. We don't need another dopamine
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Speaker 1: hit of inspiration that we're going to forget by Thursday.
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Speaker 1: We don't need another emotional high. We are tired. We
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Speaker 1: need you to shape our hearts. Teach us the quiet, boring,
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Speaker 1: beautiful rhythms that kept Daniel sane in Babylon, that kept
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Speaker 1: David alive in the desert. Form in us the kind
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Speaker 1: of life that actually seeks you when the doors are
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Speaker 1: closed and the screens are off. We ask this in
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Speaker 1: the name of Jesus. Amen. If you actually sit down
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Speaker 1: and look at the people who walk closely with God, David, Daniel,
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Speaker 1: the apostles, you start to notice this pattern. And it
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Speaker 1: sounds small. It almost sounds too simple. But they rarely,
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Speaker 1: they almost never let the world speak to them before
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Speaker 1: God did. The direction of your whole day is usually
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Speaker 1: hijacked by whoever gets the microphone first. Jesus did this.
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Speaker 1: Mark's gospel doesn't make a big, dramatic spectacle out of it.
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Speaker 1: It's just this throwaway line. Very early in the morning,
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Speaker 1: while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left, and
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Speaker 1: went to a solitary place to pray. I read that now,
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Speaker 1: and I just— I think about what was waiting for him
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Speaker 1: that morning. Sick people. Crowds. His disciples practically knocking the
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Speaker 1: door down with a hundred urgent questions. Every single second
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Speaker 1: of his day was literally of eternal significance, and his
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Speaker 1: response was to walk away from it all, to just
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Speaker 1: be with his father. Which honestly makes me feel terrible,
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Speaker 1: because my instinct is the exact opposite. When life gets crazy,
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Speaker 1: when the calendar is packed, the very first thing on
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Speaker 1: the chopping block is silence. Prayer gets squeezed into a
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Speaker 1: two-minute commute. I tell myself, I'll sit down and read
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Speaker 1: my Bible tonight when the house is quiet. But you
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Speaker 1: know how that goes. Later is a myth. By 9 p.m.
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Speaker 1: I'm brain dead, scrolling on the couch, wondering why I
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Speaker 1: feel so completely hollowed out. Jesus never did that. The
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Speaker 1: public stuff flowed out of the private stuff, never the
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Speaker 1: other way around. David got this. He wrote in Psalm 5,
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Speaker 1: in the morning, Lord, you hear my voice. I lay
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Speaker 1: my requests before you and wait expectantly. He waits. It's
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Speaker 1: not a grocery list. He wasn't just throwing a quarter
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Speaker 1: in a religious vending machine before rushing off to be king.
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Speaker 1: He was waiting for a relationship. And Daniel, we love
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Speaker 1: the lion's den story, but the courage didn't just magically
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Speaker 1: show up that day. When they outlawed prayer, what did
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Speaker 1: he do? He went home, opened his window, and prayed, quote,
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Speaker 1: just as he had done before. Those six words are everything.
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Speaker 1: The crisis didn't invent the habit. The crisis just revealed
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Speaker 1: what his knees had already been doing for years. That's
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Speaker 1: how God works. He builds you in the dark. Noah
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Speaker 1: building a boat in the dry dirt for decades. Joseph
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Speaker 1: rotting in a cell. We want the fireworks. but heaven
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Speaker 1: is usually doing its deepest work on a random Tuesday
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Speaker 1: morning when you're just trying to keep your eyes open.
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Speaker 1: Secular researchers are basically just proving this now. The first
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Speaker 1: thing you look at rewires your brain for the rest
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Speaker 1: of the day. So why are we shocked that we're
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Speaker 1: vibrating with anxiety before we've even poured the coffee? Before
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Speaker 1: we've said one single word to God, we've already swallowed
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Speaker 1: a week's worth of political rage, financial panic, and whatever
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Speaker 1: fresh disaster the news is selling. So imagine tomorrow, just tomorrow.
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Speaker 1: What if before you reach for that glowing rectangle on
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Speaker 1: your nightstand, you reach for your Bible? The bad news
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Speaker 1: will still be there. The doctor's appointment is still happening.
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Speaker 1: That awful conversation at work is still waiting for you.
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Speaker 1: But you walk into it carrying, I don't know, an anchor.
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Speaker 1: You've already met with your father. And please hear me,
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Speaker 1: this isn't about waking up at 4 a.m. to burn
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Speaker 1: incense for an hour. Some of you are up at
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Speaker 1: 2 a.m. feeding a newborn. Some of you are working
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Speaker 1: third shift or taking care of a parent with dementia.
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Speaker 1: God isn't sitting up there with a stopwatch. Five minutes
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Speaker 1: of just honest, quiet desperation for Him is worth more
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Speaker 1: than an hour of perfectly formatted religious daydreaming. Jeremiah wrote
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Speaker 1: lamentations while his city was literally burning to the ground.
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Speaker 1: And in the middle of the ash, he says, His
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Speaker 1: compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Every morning.
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Speaker 1: Before you have done a single thing right today, before
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Speaker 1: you've messed up, the mercy is just sitting there waiting
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Speaker 1: for you. You don't have to wake up and talk
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Speaker 1: him into loving you today. He already does. Maybe that's
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Speaker 1: the only habit you need to start tomorrow, before the
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Speaker 1: world tells you what to think. Just let him remind
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Speaker 1: you who he is. Let's pray. Thank you that we
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Speaker 1: wake up to mercy, not a scorecard. I confess that
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Speaker 1: the noise of my life is almost always louder than
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Speaker 1: your voice. Help us. Teach us that sitting with you
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Speaker 1: isn't a waste of time. Tomorrow morning, before the anxiety
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Speaker 1: kicks in, before the world starts screaming at us, let
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Speaker 1: the first word we hear be yours. Quiet us down.
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Speaker 1: Remind us we belong to you before we face anything else.
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Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, amen. Something weird happens when you actually
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Speaker 1: let that word get down into your roots. You don't
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Speaker 1: just think differently. You start reacting differently. The stuff that
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Speaker 1: used to ruin your whole Tuesday just doesn't. Someone cuts
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Speaker 1: you off in traffic or a kid spills milk all
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Speaker 1: over the floor you just mopped. And instead of snapping,
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Speaker 1: you actually take a breath. That isn't an accident. That
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Speaker 1: is the Holy Spirit doing open-heart surgery. But he usually
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Speaker 1: does it through a practice that you and I have
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Speaker 1: almost entirely forgotten how to do. Silence. Even saying the
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Speaker 1: word makes us twitch. We don't mind quiet for like
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Speaker 1: ten seconds. But true silence. The kind where the TV
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Speaker 1: isn't humming in the background, where your phone isn't buzzing
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Speaker 1: on the countertop, where there is no true crime podcast
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Speaker 1: filling up the empty air in the car. We are
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Speaker 1: terrified of it. We are so addicted to constant noise
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Speaker 1: that when it finally gets quiet, we literally don't know
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Speaker 1: what to do with our hands. But you read the Gospels,
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Speaker 1: and you realize Jesus wasn't afraid of the quiet. He
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Speaker 1: hunted for it. Luke has this verse, Luke 5, 16.
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Speaker 1: Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Don't read
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Speaker 1: past that too fast. It doesn't say he withdrew once.
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Speaker 1: It says he often withdrew. It wasn't an emergency cord
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Speaker 1: he pulled when he had a bad week. It was
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Speaker 1: his baseline rhythm. Think about the sheer crushing pressure Jesus
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Speaker 1: was under. Every town he walked into, there were sick
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Speaker 1: people grabbing at his clothes, broken people screaming for his attention.
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Speaker 1: His own disciples were constantly nagging him with questions. If
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Speaker 1: anyone in human history had a legitimate excuse to say,'
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Speaker 1: I am too busy doing God's work to sit in silence,'
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Speaker 1: It was Jesus. Instead, he treated it like oxygen. I
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Speaker 1: always try to picture the disciples waking up, rubbing their eyes,
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Speaker 1: looking at the line of desperate people already forming outside
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Speaker 1: the house, and realizing, Jesus is gone. He's just gone.
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Speaker 1: They have to go scouring the hillsides, looking for him.
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Speaker 1: And where is he? He's just sitting alone with his Father.
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Speaker 1: No audience, no miracles, no applause, just communion. That completely
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Speaker 1: wrecks the way I think about spiritual maturity. We measure
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Speaker 1: maturity by how much we are getting done for God.
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Speaker 1: Jesus measures it by our willingness to just be alone
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Speaker 1: with him. Look at Elijah. This guy had just called
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Speaker 1: down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. It was the
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Speaker 1: ultimate undisputed mic drop moment of the Old Testament. The
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Speaker 1: false prophets are destroyed. The nation is repenting. It's a
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Speaker 1: massive victory. And then Queen Jezebel sends him a death threat,
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Speaker 1: and this fearless prophet absolutely falls apart. He runs into
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Speaker 1: the desert, collapses under a bush, and begs God to
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Speaker 1: just kill him. Honestly, I love that that is in
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Speaker 1: the Bible. It proves that even the spiritual giants got completely,
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Speaker 1: completely burned out. Elijah wasn't weak. He was just human,
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Speaker 1: and he was empty. So he goes to Mount Horeb.
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Speaker 1: God shows up, but not the way Elijah thinks. there's
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Speaker 1: a hurricane-force wind, then a literal earthquake, then a fire.
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Speaker 1: But the text says God wasn't in any of that.
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Speaker 1: Then comes what the King James calls a still small voice,
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Speaker 1: a whisper. The God who literally invented thunder decided to
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Speaker 1: comfort a suicidal prophet with a whisper. Why? Think about it.
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Speaker 1: Because a whisper requires closeness. You do not shout at
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Speaker 1: someone when they are resting their head on your shoulder.
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Speaker 1: You whisper. God pulls us into the quiet because he
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Speaker 1: wants intimacy. But we keep filling every single empty gap
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Speaker 1: in our day before he has a chance to speak.
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Speaker 1: I'm not telling you to go book a cabin in
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Speaker 1: the woods for a month. You have a mortgage. You
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Speaker 1: have dentist appointments and toddlers and endless emails. But look
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Speaker 1: at how desperately we avoid the quiet. Have you noticed
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Speaker 1: what your hand does the second you are forced to wait?
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Speaker 1: You're in line at the grocery store. You're sitting in
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Speaker 1: the doctor's waiting room. You are waiting the final 30
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Speaker 1: seconds for the microwave to beep. Boom! The phone is
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Speaker 1: in your hand. We cannot handle five seconds of unoccupied time.
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Speaker 1: But some of the most profound moments with God happen
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Speaker 1: in the margins we are so desperate to fill. Mary
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Speaker 1: and Martha are the classic example of this Jesus shows
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Speaker 1: up at their house, and Martha does what any of
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Speaker 1: us would do. She panics and starts cleaning. She's checking
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Speaker 1: the oven, she's setting the table, she's serving, none of
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Speaker 1: which is bad, but Mary just sits on the floor
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Speaker 1: at his feet. To Martha that looked incredibly lazy, but
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Speaker 1: Jesus looks at her and says, Martha, you are worried
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Speaker 1: and upset about so many things, but only one thing
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Speaker 1: is actually necessary, and Mary chose it. He didn't scold
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Speaker 1: Martha for cooking dinner. He warned her that she was
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Speaker 1: letting her service replace her communion. And man, if that
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Speaker 1: isn't the warning for the American church today. We are
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Speaker 1: so busy doing things for God. We are on the committees.
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Speaker 1: We are running the carpools. We are leading the small groups.
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Speaker 1: And it's all good stuff, but we are slowly, quietly
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Speaker 1: drifting away from God's actual presence. We are exhausted from
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Speaker 1: serving a Jesus we haven't actually sat with in months.
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Speaker 1: Even secular psychology is screaming this at us now. They're
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Speaker 1: proving that constant relentless stimulation absolutely fries your nervous system.
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Speaker 1: It spikes your cortisol. It ruins your attention span. And
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Speaker 1: intentional silence is the only thing that resets it. But
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Speaker 1: the Bible takes it a step further. The goal isn't
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Speaker 1: just an empty head. The goal is an empty room,
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Speaker 1: so you can actually hear the shepherd's voice. So tomorrow,
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Speaker 1: just try to find five minutes, I don't care where
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Speaker 1: it is. Maybe it's sitting in your car in the driveway,
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Speaker 1: gripping the steering wheel for five minutes before you walk
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Speaker 1: inside to face the chaos of your house. Just turn
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Speaker 1: the radio off, put the phone in the glove box,
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Speaker 1: and don't talk. Just sit there. Listen. Remember that verse
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Speaker 1: you chewed on in the morning. Take a breath. Let
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Speaker 1: the silence be uncomfortable for a minute and then realize
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Speaker 1: you aren't actually alone in it. There is this trap
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Speaker 1: we all fall into. We start to believe that spiritual
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Speaker 1: growth happens in a vacuum. You're sitting there in the quiet.
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Speaker 1: Your Bible is open. The coffee is hot. The house
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Speaker 1: is completely silent. And you think, wow, I am really
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Speaker 1: nailing this Christian thing. I am basically Billy Graham right now.
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Speaker 1: But then the quiet time ends. The phone rings. It's
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Speaker 1: a text from that one co-worker who always gets under
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Speaker 1: your skin. Or your toddler just painted the hallway with
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Speaker 1: a tube of toothpaste. Or your spouse asks you a
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Speaker 1: question with just a little bit of edge in their voice.
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Speaker 1: Real life starts. And that is the exact moment you
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Speaker 1: find out if God's truth actually made it down into
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Speaker 1: your chest. or if it just skimmed across your brain
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Speaker 1: Jesus said something so obvious that we completely miss how
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Speaker 1: terrifying it actually is he said out of the overflow
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Speaker 1: of the heart the mouth speaks your mouth is just
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Speaker 1: a bucket and when someone bumps into you, whatever is
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Speaker 1: filling the well of your heart is what spills out
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Speaker 1: onto the floor. If you're snapping at your wife over
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Speaker 1: how she loaded the dishwasher, that isn't really about the dishwasher.
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Speaker 1: The bitterness was already sitting there in your chest. The
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Speaker 1: plates just knocked it loose. Our words aren't the actual problem.
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Speaker 1: They are the evidence. This is why two people can
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Speaker 1: go through the exact same nightmare, and one gets incredibly
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Speaker 1: cynical while the other gets soft. It's about what was
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Speaker 1: in the well before the drought hit. Look at Barnabas.
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Speaker 1: I absolutely love this guy. He doesn't get the spotlight
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Speaker 1: like Peter or Paul, but his actual nickname was the
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Speaker 1: Son of Encouragement. Imagine that. Imagine living in such a
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Speaker 1: way that the people around you literally rename you because
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Speaker 1: you make them feel so safe and so hopeful. Not
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Speaker 1: because he was the loud, funny guy at the party,
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Speaker 1: but because you'd sit down with him for ten minutes
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Speaker 1: and walk away feeling like you could actually breathe again.
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Speaker 1: When Saul, the guy who had been literally hunting Christians
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Speaker 1: for a living, tries to join the church in Jerusalem,
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Speaker 1: everybody panics. Obviously, they are terrified. But Acts 9 has
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Speaker 1: these three words, But Barnabas took him. Everybody else was
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Speaker 1: staring at Saul's rap sheet. Barnabas was looking at what
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Speaker 1: God could do with his future. How many people are
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Speaker 1: sitting in the pew next to you on a Sunday morning,
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Speaker 1: just suffocating under some invisible weight, waiting for one person
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Speaker 1: to do for them what Barnabas did for Paul? The
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Speaker 1: writer of Hebrews says, Encourage one another daily. so that
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Speaker 1: none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Encouragement
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Speaker 1: isn't an Enneagram type. It isn't a personality trait. It
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Speaker 1: is a spiritual tourniquet. It keeps people's hearts from turning
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Speaker 1: to stone. And the reverse is just as true. James
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Speaker 1: doesn't pull any punches. He says the tongue is a
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Speaker 1: tiny spark that can burn down an entire forest. You
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Speaker 1: know this is true. You probably have a sentence bouncing
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Speaker 1: around in your head right now that some teacher or
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Speaker 1: parent said to you when you were twelve years old.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it was, I am so proud of you, and
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Speaker 1: it became the foundation of your life. Or maybe it was,
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Speaker 1: you are never going to amount to anything, and you
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Speaker 1: have spent the last thirty years exhausted just trying to
22:45
Speaker 1: outrun that one sentence. Words are heavy. God spoke the
22:50
Speaker 1: literal universe into existence with words, so of course ours
22:54
Speaker 1: carry weight. So I have to ask you, and honestly,
22:57
Speaker 1: I have to ask myself, and I don't always like
23:00
Speaker 1: the answer, if someone recorded every single word you said yesterday,
23:06
Speaker 1: what would they assume your heart is full of? Sarcasm, panic,
23:10
Speaker 1: constant low-grade irritation about the news, or would they hear gentleness, mercy?
23:16
Speaker 1: Don't answer that too fast. I'm still growing here too.
23:20
Speaker 1: The older I get, the more I realize my actual
23:23
Speaker 1: legacy isn't going to be anything public. It's going to
23:26
Speaker 1: happen across a sticky kitchen table. It's going to be
23:29
Speaker 1: a phone call with a friend who is falling apart.
23:33
Speaker 1: That's what Jesus did. They drag this woman caught in
23:36
Speaker 1: adultery out into the dirt, holding rocks, and Jesus doesn't
23:41
Speaker 1: weaponize the truth to crush her. He uses it to
23:44
Speaker 1: shield her. When Peter betrays him three times, Jesus doesn't
23:48
Speaker 1: hold a grudge. He cooks him breakfast on a beach
23:51
Speaker 1: and asks, Do you love me? He never compromised the truth,
23:55
Speaker 1: but he never used it as a club either. Imagine
23:59
Speaker 1: if tomorrow, after you sit in the quiet, after you
24:02
Speaker 1: chew on that one verse, you walked into your kitchen
24:06
Speaker 1: or your office and just asked one question, Lord, How
24:11
Speaker 1: do I leave this person closer to you than they
24:14
Speaker 1: were five minutes ago? That alone would completely change the
24:18
Speaker 1: temperature of your house. Let's pray. Father, you spoke everything
24:23
Speaker 1: into existence, and then you handed us the power of words.
24:27
Speaker 1: We have been so reckless with them. Please forgive us
24:31
Speaker 1: for the careless, sharp things we've said just because we
24:33
Speaker 1: were tired. Forgive us for the encouragement we held back
24:37
Speaker 1: because we were too distracted. Do such a deep work
24:42
Speaker 1: in our hearts that our mouths just naturally start sounding
24:46
Speaker 1: like Jesus. Make us like Barnabas. Make us the kind
24:50
Speaker 1: of people that others feel safe around. Let our dining
24:54
Speaker 1: rooms hear more gratitude than complaining, more hope than fear.
24:59
Speaker 1: In the name of the one who spoke peace over
25:02
Speaker 1: the storm. Amen. So eventually, whatever is in that bucket
25:07
Speaker 1: spills over into your hands. Your words become your actions.
25:12
Speaker 1: And this is where the whole Christianity thing actually becomes visible.
25:17
Speaker 1: Not in here, sitting in a padded chair, listening to
25:20
Speaker 1: a message. Out there. There's this scene right before the
25:24
Speaker 1: crucifixion that completely messes with my head. We all have
25:29
Speaker 1: that famous da Vinci painting of the Last Supper in
25:32
Speaker 1: our minds. everyone sitting politely on one side of the
25:35
Speaker 1: table looking holy. But Luke tells us what was actually
25:39
Speaker 1: happening in that room. Hours, literally hours, before Jesus is
25:45
Speaker 1: going to be tortured and carry the sins of the world,
25:48
Speaker 1: his best friends are in the corner getting into a
25:51
Speaker 1: petty heated argument about which one of them is the greatest.
25:56
Speaker 1: They are arguing about kingdom promotions, while the cross is
26:00
Speaker 1: right outside the window. If I'm Jesus, I lose my
26:04
Speaker 1: mind right there. I interrupt the dinner. I flip a table.
26:08
Speaker 1: I give them a blistering lecture on how selfish they are.
26:12
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't yell. He doesn't say a word. He just
26:15
Speaker 1: stands up, takes off his coat, grabs a towel, and
26:19
Speaker 1: gets a bowl of water. It is almost impossible for
26:23
Speaker 1: us to grasp how incredibly awkward and uncomfortable this was.
26:27
Speaker 1: These guys walked around the Middle East in sandals. We're
26:31
Speaker 1: talking about cracked, blistered, filthy, calloused feet. Washing them was
26:37
Speaker 1: the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel job. It was the job everyone avoided,
26:41
Speaker 1: the task you gave to the absolute lowest slave in
26:44
Speaker 1: the house. And Jesus, the guy who literally spoke galaxies
26:49
Speaker 1: into existence, gets on his knees in the dirt. Peter
26:53
Speaker 1: absolutely hates it. He literally pulls his feet back.' Absolutely not!
26:58
Speaker 1: You are not washing my feet!' because Peter doesn't get
27:01
Speaker 1: it yet. He still thinks humility is weakness. He thinks
27:05
Speaker 1: the kingdom of God works like the Roman Empire. But
27:08
Speaker 1: real humility isn't insecurity. It isn't thinking you're garbage. Humility
27:14
Speaker 1: is having so much power, so much absolute rock-solid security
27:20
Speaker 1: in exactly who you are, that you don't feel the
27:22
Speaker 1: need to prove it to anyone. You can just pick
27:25
Speaker 1: up a towel. Jesus finishes, looks at them, and says,
27:29
Speaker 1: I've set an example, now you do it. Notice he
27:33
Speaker 1: didn't say, write a song about how humble I am.
27:37
Speaker 1: He said, imitate it. And that is terrifying, because it's
27:41
Speaker 1: one thing to get emotional over a story about Jesus
27:44
Speaker 1: washing feet. It is an entirely different thing to actually
27:48
Speaker 1: become the kind of person who naturally reaches for the
27:51
Speaker 1: towel when a mess happens. Paul gets this. Years later,
27:56
Speaker 1: he's sitting in a Roman prison, and he writes to
27:59
Speaker 1: the Philippians. He tells them to consider others better than themselves.
28:04
Speaker 1: And then he says, Let this mind be in you,
28:08
Speaker 1: which was also in Christ Jesus. Do you see the
28:11
Speaker 1: chain reaction here? Do you see how this whole day
28:14
Speaker 1: we've been talking about connects? You wake up and meet
28:17
Speaker 1: God before the world gets a hold of you. His
28:20
Speaker 1: word gets into your head. The silence lets it sink
28:25
Speaker 1: down into your roots. That changed heart starts changing the
28:29
Speaker 1: words that come out of your mouth. and those words
28:33
Speaker 1: eventually turn into hands that serve. It is always inside out,
28:38
Speaker 1: never the other way around. There is this woman in
28:41
Speaker 1: the book of Acts, Tabitha. We know almost nothing about her.
28:45
Speaker 1: She didn't write a book. She didn't lead a massive movement.
28:49
Speaker 1: When she dies, Peter walks into her house, and the
28:52
Speaker 1: room is just filled with weeping widows. And what are
28:55
Speaker 1: they doing? They are holding up the coats and the
28:58
Speaker 1: shirts she had made for them. Imagine that. Her entire
29:02
Speaker 1: legacy in the kingdom of God wasn't built on a
29:05
Speaker 1: stage or behind a microphone. It was literally stitched into
29:10
Speaker 1: a bunch of wool coats for women who had nothing.
29:13
Speaker 1: And heaven looked at that, stopped the presses, and said,
29:17
Speaker 1: Write her down in the eternal record. I look around
29:21
Speaker 1: our churches, and I wonder how many Tabithas are just
29:24
Speaker 1: sitting quietly in the back row. The people who drop
29:27
Speaker 1: off the casseroles when a family is grieving. The guy
29:31
Speaker 1: who quietly shovels the driveway for the elderly woman next door.
29:35
Speaker 1: The ones who serve without ever taking a selfie to
29:38
Speaker 1: prove they did it. The Internet does not care about
29:42
Speaker 1: those people, but heaven throws a parade for them. So
29:46
Speaker 1: tomorrow afternoon, you've done the morning quiet, you've let the
29:50
Speaker 1: word in, you've guarded your mouth. Just ask one question
29:54
Speaker 1: before the day gets away from you. Father, Who can
29:58
Speaker 1: I quietly serve today? It doesn't have to be massive.
30:03
Speaker 1: It might just be folding the laundry your spouse left
30:05
Speaker 1: on the chair without sighing dramatically about it. It might
30:09
Speaker 1: be putting your phone in another room so your kid
30:12
Speaker 1: gets your actual eye contact. It might be looking at
30:15
Speaker 1: the teenager, scanning your groceries, who has been yelled at
30:19
Speaker 1: by three different customers today, and treating them with shocking,
30:24
Speaker 1: unearned kindness. Do not underestimate those tiny moments. History remembers
30:29
Speaker 1: the sermons, but God remembers the towels. Let's pray. Father,
30:36
Speaker 1: thank you for a Savior who didn't just stand on
30:38
Speaker 1: a cloud and lecture us about humility, but actually got
30:42
Speaker 1: down in the dirt and showed us. I confess that
30:45
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with being noticed. We want the applause. We
30:48
Speaker 1: want the credit. We want the position. Forgive us. Please
30:52
Speaker 1: give us the mind of Christ. Slow us down enough
30:55
Speaker 1: tomorrow to actually see the people we usually look right past.
30:59
Speaker 1: The tired, the lonely, the invisible. Teach us how to
31:03
Speaker 1: reach for the towel. We ask this in the exact
31:06
Speaker 1: same name as the one who washed feet. Amen. Look
31:10
Speaker 1: at the trajectory of the day we've been building. You
31:14
Speaker 1: wake up and give God the microphone first. His word
31:18
Speaker 1: rewires your mind. You sit in the uncomfortable silence until
31:23
Speaker 1: you can actually hear him. That changes the words that
31:27
Speaker 1: come out of your mouth. And those words turn into
31:30
Speaker 1: a towel in your hands. If you actually live a
31:33
Speaker 1: Tuesday like that, you're going to arrive at the evening
31:37
Speaker 1: carrying something entirely different than you usually do. Or at
31:41
Speaker 1: least you should. because if you're anything like me, this
31:45
Speaker 1: is exactly where the wheels tend to fall off. How
31:49
Speaker 1: many of us start the morning with all this hope,
31:52
Speaker 1: reading our Bibles, feeling anchored, and then go to bed
31:56
Speaker 1: carrying a massive, suffocating bag of guilt? We wake up
32:00
Speaker 1: expecting God to move, and we end the night staring
32:04
Speaker 1: at the ceiling, replaying a highlight reel of every single
32:07
Speaker 1: mistake we made since breakfast. This is why this next
32:11
Speaker 1: habit is is probably the most overlooked discipline in the
32:14
Speaker 1: entire Bible, learning to end the day with gratitude instead
32:19
Speaker 1: of a panic attack. By the time the sun goes down,
32:23
Speaker 1: you aren't just physically tired. You are carrying heavy, invisible luggage.
32:29
Speaker 1: You're carrying that slightly passive-aggressive conversation with your boss. You're
32:34
Speaker 1: carrying the fact that you snapped at your kids. You're
32:37
Speaker 1: carrying that low-grade hum of anxiety. about a medical test
32:41
Speaker 1: next week. Bedtime is when the distractions finally run out,
32:46
Speaker 1: the TV is off, the house is completely quiet, and
32:50
Speaker 1: suddenly your brain starts violently opening up all these filing
32:55
Speaker 1: cabinets you manage to keep shoved shut all day long.
32:58
Speaker 1: Have you noticed this? Why is it that a financial
33:01
Speaker 1: problem that feels totally manageable at 2 p.m. suddenly feels
33:06
Speaker 1: like an apocalyptic nightmare at 10.30 p.m.? Regret and fear
33:12
Speaker 1: just get louder in the dark. David knew the 10.30 p.m.
33:16
Speaker 1: doom spiral. He didn't write the Psalms at some cozy
33:19
Speaker 1: writer's retreat. He wrote a lot of them in caves,
33:22
Speaker 1: smelling like wet sheep, while people were actively trying to
33:26
Speaker 1: murder him. But woven into all that trauma is this
33:30
Speaker 1: stubborn habit that refuses to let the dark have the
33:33
Speaker 1: last word. Psalm 92 It is good to praise the Lord,
33:38
Speaker 1: proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night.
33:42
Speaker 1: Do you see the difference? Morning and evening require two
33:46
Speaker 1: completely different kinds of worship. Morning is about mercy. God,
33:52
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything yet today, but I need you.
33:56
Speaker 1: Evening is about faithfulness. God, I lived a whole day.
34:01
Speaker 1: I messed parts of it up. Life threw things at
34:05
Speaker 1: me I wasn't expecting. But you held the line. You
34:08
Speaker 1: stayed constant. Instead of laying in bed asking, what did
34:12
Speaker 1: I accomplish today? Or where did I fail? You literally
34:16
Speaker 1: force your brain to ask, where did I see God's hand?
34:20
Speaker 1: Paul did this while chained to a wall. He writes
34:23
Speaker 1: the book of Philippians from a Roman dungeon. He's probably freezing,
34:27
Speaker 1: eating garbage, waiting to see if he's going to be executed.
34:31
Speaker 1: And he writes, rejoice in the Lord always. How do
34:36
Speaker 1: you write that in a dungeon? Because his gratitude wasn't
34:39
Speaker 1: anchored to his circumstances. And let me be really, really
34:44
Speaker 1: clear about something, because the church gets this wrong all
34:47
Speaker 1: the time. Biblical gratitude is not toxic positivity. It is
34:53
Speaker 1: not pasting a fake smile on your face and saying,
34:57
Speaker 1: everything is awesome, God is good, while your life is
35:01
Speaker 1: literally burning to the ground. That is fake. Jesus didn't
35:05
Speaker 1: even do that. He stood outside the tomb of his
35:08
Speaker 1: friend Lazarus and he wept. He sobbed. He didn't pretend
35:13
Speaker 1: death was fine. Real gritty gratitude can exist in the
35:17
Speaker 1: exact same breath as real gut-wrenching grief. Look at 1
35:22
Speaker 1: Thessalonians 5.18. Give thanks in all circumstances. Don't misread that.
35:28
Speaker 1: It does not say give thanks for all circumstances. We
35:32
Speaker 1: do not thank God for cancer. We do not thank
35:34
Speaker 1: God for abuse. We do not thank God for divorce
35:38
Speaker 1: or war or suicide. Those things break the heart of God.
35:43
Speaker 1: But in the middle of that hell, we can still
35:46
Speaker 1: thank Him that He hasn't left the room. Psychologists are
35:50
Speaker 1: just now writing books about gratitude journals because they realized
35:54
Speaker 1: it lowers your cortisol and helps you sleep. That's great.
35:58
Speaker 1: But we aren't just tossing good vibes out into the universe.
36:02
Speaker 1: We are directing our thanks to a specific Father who
36:06
Speaker 1: does not change. So tomorrow night when you hit the pillow,
36:09
Speaker 1: don't ask what went wrong. Ask, Lord, where were you
36:14
Speaker 1: faithful today? Maybe He just gave you the restraint to
36:18
Speaker 1: keep your mouth shut in a meeting. Maybe He reminded
36:21
Speaker 1: you of a verse when you felt like you were
36:23
Speaker 1: going to snap. Write it down. Get a cheap notebook
36:26
Speaker 1: for your nightstand and literally write it down. Because our
36:31
Speaker 1: human brains are like Velcro for trauma and Teflon for grace.
36:35
Speaker 1: We forget His goodness in five seconds. You have to
36:38
Speaker 1: train yourself to remember. Let's pray before we get to
36:41
Speaker 1: the last one. Father, thank you for the grace that
36:45
Speaker 1: I was totally oblivious to today. Thank you for protecting
36:49
Speaker 1: me from things I won't even know about until I
36:51
Speaker 1: get to heaven. Forgive me for being so obsessed with
36:54
Speaker 1: my own failures and so fixated on my own fears
36:59
Speaker 1: that I completely missed what you were doing right in
37:02
Speaker 1: front of me. Tonight, shut down the anxiety. Turn off
37:07
Speaker 1: the highlight reel of my mistakes. Teach my heart how
37:11
Speaker 1: to speak the language of gratitude, because even on my
37:15
Speaker 1: worst day, you have never once abandoned me. In Jesus' name. Amen.
37:21
Speaker 1: So by the time your head finally hits the pillow tonight,
37:25
Speaker 1: there is really only one question that's going to determine
37:28
Speaker 1: whether you actually sleep or whether you just stare at
37:32
Speaker 1: the ceiling fan for four hours. It isn't going to
37:35
Speaker 1: be about how much you got done. It isn't going
37:38
Speaker 1: to be about whether you cleared out your inbox. The
37:41
Speaker 1: question is brutally simple and incredibly hard. Did you actually
37:46
Speaker 1: hand tomorrow back to God? It sounds like a bumper sticker,
37:51
Speaker 1: but most of us don't hold tomorrow in our hands.
37:53
Speaker 1: We hold it in our heads. We lie there in
37:57
Speaker 1: the dark, playing 4D chess with conversations that haven't even
38:01
Speaker 1: happened yet. I do this constantly. I've caught myself literally
38:06
Speaker 1: holding my breath in bed because my brain is already
38:09
Speaker 1: sitting in tomorrow's 10am meeting. Or I'm in the waiting
38:13
Speaker 1: room for a medical test, rehearsing what I'm going to
38:16
Speaker 1: say to the doctor. I'm exhausting myself trying to live
38:20
Speaker 1: a Tuesday that God hasn't even created yet. And I
38:24
Speaker 1: know you do it too. Maybe it's the grandkids. Maybe
38:28
Speaker 1: you're looking at a retirement account that took a hit
38:31
Speaker 1: and doing panicked math in the dark. Maybe it's the
38:34
Speaker 1: terrifying silence of a house because you're suddenly living alone.
38:39
Speaker 1: Or maybe you are staring at a glowing phone screen,
38:42
Speaker 1: waiting for a text from a kid who walked away
38:44
Speaker 1: from the faith and just won't return your calls. Those
38:48
Speaker 1: thoughts are heavy. They are suffocating. God doesn't ever look
38:51
Speaker 1: at you and say, just pretend it's fine. He just
38:55
Speaker 1: asks you to stop trying to carry it by yourself.
38:58
Speaker 1: Look at David. This blows my mind. Psalm 4. He writes,
39:03
Speaker 1: In peace I will lie down and sleep. When he
39:07
Speaker 1: wrote that, he wasn't on a vacation. He was literally
39:11
Speaker 1: running for his life. He had buried children. He was
39:15
Speaker 1: carrying the massive heavy guilt of his own moral failures,
39:18
Speaker 1: and he says, I'm going to sleep. Why? Not because
39:23
Speaker 1: the problems vanished, not because he had a bulletproof five-year plan.
39:27
Speaker 1: He slept because God is who he is. is. That's it.
39:32
Speaker 1: That is the entire foundation. Think about the disciples in
39:36
Speaker 1: the boat on the Sea of Galilee, Mark 4. This
39:40
Speaker 1: isn't a gentle spring rain. These guys are seasoned, hardened,
39:44
Speaker 1: professional fishermen. They know this water. And they are absolutely
39:49
Speaker 1: convinced they are about to drown. The wood is splintering.
39:53
Speaker 1: The boat is filling with water. They are screaming over
39:56
Speaker 1: the wind. And Jesus is asleep on a cushion. I
40:00
Speaker 1: have to stop and put the book down every time
40:02
Speaker 1: I read that. The storm was real. The danger was
40:06
Speaker 1: completely real. But so was his peace. He wasn't sleeping
40:10
Speaker 1: because he was ignoring reality. He was sleeping because he
40:14
Speaker 1: trusted his Father more than he feared the water. and
40:18
Speaker 1: then years later you see Peter do the exact same thing.
40:21
Speaker 1: Acts 12. Peter is on death row. King Herod just
40:26
Speaker 1: murdered James, and Peter is scheduled to be executed the
40:29
Speaker 1: very next morning. If it's me, I'm pacing a hole
40:33
Speaker 1: in the dirt floor of that cell. I'm sweating. I'm
40:37
Speaker 1: bargaining with God. I'm hyperventilating. But an angel breaks into
40:41
Speaker 1: the prison, and what is Peter doing? He is in
40:45
Speaker 1: deep REM sleep. The angel literally has to smack him
40:50
Speaker 1: on the side to wake him up. How on earth
40:53
Speaker 1: do you sleep the night before your execution? Because somewhere
40:58
Speaker 1: between watching Jesus sleep in the boat and sitting in
41:01
Speaker 1: that Roman cell, Peter finally learned the lesson, tomorrow belongs
41:08
Speaker 1: to God. That is the hardest lesson to learn, especially
41:12
Speaker 1: if you have spent your entire adult life being the
41:16
Speaker 1: responsible one. Parents, grandparents, we hate this. We want to
41:22
Speaker 1: fix it. We want to shield our people from the pain.
41:26
Speaker 1: We love them so much, but if we aren't careful,
41:29
Speaker 1: that love quietly mutates into control, and control inevitably mutates
41:35
Speaker 1: into anxiety. Paul says in Philippians, Do not be anxious
41:40
Speaker 1: about anything. Present your requests to God. Notice he doesn't say,
41:45
Speaker 1: Stop caring. He says, Drop it off. And this is
41:49
Speaker 1: the part we completely blow. We get on our knees,
41:52
Speaker 1: we pray, we hand God this massive heavy bag of worries,
41:57
Speaker 1: and then we pick it right back up before we
41:59
Speaker 1: even say, Amen. We get back into bed and immediately
42:04
Speaker 1: start stressing again. What if tonight was different? before you
42:09
Speaker 1: fall asleep, literally open your hands in the dark. Put
42:12
Speaker 1: your kids there. Put your marriage there. Put your blood
42:16
Speaker 1: pressure and tomorrow's meeting and that unanswered prayer right there
42:20
Speaker 1: in your open hands. And then leave them. Not because
42:23
Speaker 1: you don't care anymore, but because your father never stopped caring.
42:28
Speaker 1: Doctors say we need sleep to reset our nervous system. True.
42:32
Speaker 1: But sleep is also deeply theological. Every time you close
42:37
Speaker 1: your eyes, you are forced to confess something incredibly humbling.
42:41
Speaker 1: The universe does not require your participation to keep spinning.
42:46
Speaker 1: God will keep your kids breathing. He will keep the
42:49
Speaker 1: earth rotating. He will handle tomorrow's problems while you are unconscious.
42:55
Speaker 1: Look at the rhythm we've built today. You wake up
42:58
Speaker 1: and meet God before the world gets a hold of you.
43:01
Speaker 1: You let His Word rewire your head. You sit in
43:04
Speaker 1: the silence. Your words change. You reach for a towel
43:09
Speaker 1: and serve somebody. You end the day by counting his
43:12
Speaker 1: faithfulness instead of your failures. And then you just go
43:17
Speaker 1: to sleep, knowing tomorrow is his problem. You don't have
43:21
Speaker 1: to do it perfectly. Abraham didn't. David didn't. Paul didn't.
43:27
Speaker 1: Tomorrow morning when your feet hit the floor, God is
43:30
Speaker 1: not asking you to commit to a flawless ten-year plan.
43:35
Speaker 1: He's just asking if you'll walk with him until dinner time.
43:38
Speaker 1: Give him today, and then tomorrow, by his grace, you'll
43:42
Speaker 1: give him another one. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank
43:46
Speaker 1: you for being in the incredibly ordinary, boring, exhausting moments
43:50
Speaker 1: of our lives. You aren't just the God of the
43:53
Speaker 1: burning bush. You are the God of the kitchen table,
43:57
Speaker 1: the God of the 2 a.m. feedings, the God of
44:01
Speaker 1: the hospital waiting room. Please forgive us for constantly chasing
44:05
Speaker 1: the fireworks and completely neglecting the daily quiet faithfulness that
44:09
Speaker 1: actually shapes a life. Rewire us. Teach us to go
44:14
Speaker 1: to you before we go to our phones. Plant your
44:17
Speaker 1: words so deep in our guts that it's the first
44:20
Speaker 1: thing that comes out when we get bumped. Make us
44:22
Speaker 1: people who heal with our words. Give us the courage
44:26
Speaker 1: to grab the towel and serve people who can do
44:29
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing for us. And tonight, Teach us how to
44:33
Speaker 1: count your faithfulness instead of rehearsing our anxieties. I want
44:38
Speaker 1: to pray specifically for the person listening right now who
44:42
Speaker 1: is just bone tired. the one carrying a weight they
44:45
Speaker 1: can't even talk about, the parent staring at the ceiling
44:49
Speaker 1: worried sick about a kid, the widow who still isn't
44:53
Speaker 1: used to how quiet the house is, the husband watching
44:56
Speaker 1: his wife slowly slip away. Draw close to them right now.
45:01
Speaker 1: Be thicker than the air in the room. Remind them
45:04
Speaker 1: that your mercies are actually going to be sitting there
45:07
Speaker 1: waiting for them when the sun comes up. Keep our
45:11
Speaker 1: eyes locked on Jesus— Help us look a little bit
45:13
Speaker 1: more like him, just one Tuesday at a time, until
45:17
Speaker 1: we finally see him face to face. We ask this
45:21
Speaker 1: in his name. Amen.