Never Enough | Week 2

a number of years ago, I we moved, my wife and I about ten years ago, and we only moved 342 yards away. Bought a house on the next street over. But a great house, had a backyard that was nice, but the people that lived there, they never quite finished it. And

we got blessed. Our in laws just wanted to bless us. They go, hey, we wanna give you some money so you could finish the backyard, do what you want with it. And so then we proceeded to wait two years before we did anything. But not because we were lazy, because we'd moved into houses before and

immediately did a backyard and then realized why did we put the tree there instead of there because the way the sun goes is like you just you you wanna live it a little bit to figure out what you really think you want.

And so it became time, and my wife just says, it's time. I wanna get this done. Because she's a design person.

She actually designed the way the whole campus looks, and and she did a great job. And and and no formal training, but yeah. So in this moment, she's, like, wanting to get it done. So she came up with a vision of what we wanna do, went and looked at stuff. But my job was I had to find the people and make sure it got done.

And so once she was done designing, it's like I I had a lot of work to do. And I was okay with the way it looked, but

I was okay with, like, you know, wanting to do this too. So did all this work, and then finally, you know, waiting for guys to get there, rearranging, making sure someone comes back and finishes a job and does it right, all that stuff. Finally, I'm sitting there one day in the afternoon, got there early, they're finishing it, job's done. I'm super excited. I let her know. She comes home and I'm just pumped to show her. I go, this is awesome. I love it.

And I show her around and and and, you know, I did all this. Was kinda half wanting some Scooby Snacks too. Like, look at all the work I did. But she she looks at everything and she's standing there and she does this. She goes, That

was it. That's all she said.

That's the book of Ecclesiastes. That's the series we're in right now. This book that Ecclesiastes means the preacher, the one who speaks to the assembly.

It's written by a guy named Solomon, the third king of Israel, King David's son. He was a man that God gave great wisdom. He's the wisest man who ever lived. Weighed him the wealthiest man who ever lived, and he used all of his wisdom to do something stupid. And that was he decided to try to do an experiment to find out what under the sun When he says under the sun in the book, he's talking about anything in this world's perspective, from our point of view,

what can we go after that will ultimately bring fulfillment and satisfaction for the longings we have in our heart. And what he discovered was nothing under the sun can ever fulfill that.

And and and that's because, as chapter three said, we talked about last week, God planted eternity in the hearts of men and women. Meaning he planted in us eternity. Meaning we have a longing for the eternal. We have a longing for the presence of God. We have the longing for things that go beyond

anything in this world. We were made for more, so we always want more. So no matter how much you have of success, of pleasure, of of of these things in the world, it'll never be enough, and that's the problem. The desire for more isn't the problem.

The desire is when we try to fulfill the eternal longing with the temporal things. We will never get happy. And what he's saying is over and over again, he tried all the things that we're talking about and and we'll be talking about, and it's the same things we run after today still. And every time he did it,

he came to the conclusion of, He went after this. And what we're seeing here is a lot of stuff we think we don't relate, but it's the same things. He just had a bigger budget than we do. That's it. He just had a bigger budget. We go. And today, what we're gonna see is this this big idea of of pleasure over presence

is never enough. Pleasure over presence of the a relationship with the eternal God through Jesus Christ,

if you if you run after the good things before that and over that, it'll never be enough. And what do mean by pleasure? The good things in life. The things that make you feel good. The things that make you comfortable. The things that and that's what he opens up with is the first thing that we're gonna be talking about. And I wanna read chapter two verse one through 11,

And then kinda take it apart and show us these four things that that he kinda talks about and how we kinda struggle with it too. And how we might be running after these things. And you're wondering why your life keeps coming to these moments where you're like, that's it? That's it. I really thought this would mean more.

So here we go. Chapter two verse one. I said to myself, come on, let's try pleasure. Let's look for the good things in life. But I found that this too was meaningless. The word for meaningless means of, this vapor. It's something that's real, but it can't be held.

And when he's talking about me, it's not like, well, we should just all dip depressed. A lot of people read this book, they're and like, it's so depressing. I go, no, no, no. He's not saying that life is useless in that sense. It's meaningless

if you run after things under the sun to try to fulfill the eternal longing of what we're built for. It won't do it is what he's saying. So I said, laughter is silly. What good does it do to seek pleasure? After much thought, I decided to cheer myself with wine. And while still seeking wisdom, I clutched at foolishness.

In this way, I tried to experience the only happiness most people find during their brief life in this world.

I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and by planting beautiful vineyards. I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. I built reservoirs to collect the water to irrigate my many flourishing groves. I bought slaves,

both men and women, and others were born into my household. I owned large herds and flocks, more than any of any of the kings who had lived in Jerusalem before me. I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces.

I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I had everything a man could desire. So I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me. Anything I wanted, I would take.

I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was also meaningless, like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere. He basically went,

Trying to chase the good life and fulfilling it with all these things that I thought would make me content. Didn't work. Didn't work. He just had a bigger budget than us, as I said. And what we see here is the issue isn't what we enjoy. It's what we expect it to do. That's the problem.

It's not what we enjoy. We don't really have a pleasure problem. We have a presence problem. And and and and what he just said here, there's basically four categories of pleasure that he talked about. Good things, good life that he went after. And what happens when you go after the good things God has given us,

but you make it the God thing, we twist it, we go never enough, we go more and more and more, we exaggerate it, and we turn it into something very bad. It ends up owning us. It destroys us. In other words, what he started off is taking the things God had given him, and and he went after it. He chased it. If you notice,

he did four things. He medicated, he accumulated, he manipulated, and he fornicated.

Those are the four things he did. And what he did was he took a good thing, something like, you know, food, drink, you know, a little wine here, and and he medicated himself with it. He then took the money and the resources God given. He just I'm gonna accumulate more and more and more and more. He then bought slaves,

meaning he manipulated and subjugated people for his own his own use. And then he said he had many concubines. He had everything a man could desire. He took sex, which the way God gave that to us is a gift in a certain context, in a certain way to be experienced,

and he fornicated. He just took turned it into a, an act of gratification for himself. See what happens is we'll take a good thing and we put it in the place of the God thing and we think this is the ultimate, this is what I need, and it will never be enough and we'll take it to the extreme.

And the reason God says don't go there is not because he hates us and doesn't want us to enjoy good things. It's because he goes, because that will end up owning you, and that will destroy you, and it will never give you what you think it's gonna give you. That's why you keep going more and more and more. That's

the point. So what does that mean in everyday language for us? Four things that, like I said, he's saying we struggle with these same things, that when we seek pleasure over presence, we just seek good things. We'll actually try to use God to get the good things

instead of just the presence of a relationship with Jesus to begin with.

And the first one is we'll use pleasure to escape. That's what he said. He said, I used wine to cheer myself. The Hebrew word there for cheer means to stimulate the heart temporarily. It's meaning I wanna not feel bad and instead feel something good even if it's only gonna be for a moment.

That's really what we run after. A lot of the things we chase that end up being more unhealthy is because we are running after we're running away from something bad. We don't wanna feel this way. I just wanna feel something. And when we make feeling good the ultimate goal, we will make really, really dumb decisions

to get there. And it's empty because we're trying to escape. And some of us, we're trying to escape pain. There's real because like we said last week, there's a time for everything, chapter three talks about. And there are times that we go through tough things.

There's times when life is boring. There's times when life is hard. There's times when and and and sometimes we just we instead of seeking the presence of God, the one who loves us, we seek to stimulate our heart immediately, even though it doesn't last.

And the problem is you have to get more and more. There's never enough, never enough. And if we don't deal with our pain, we'll try to drown it or distract ourselves from it

instead of going to the presence of God who is the answer. Now how do you know when you're doing this? Just think about what are some things that you run to that in and of itself might not be bad, but if you keep running to it, it gets worse. And that is that that you go as your first move instead of going to God.

What is it? I mean, you could think, he said wine. It could be, yeah, alcohol maybe. I gotta drink every day to feel good after I get home from work. It's drugs. You think, oh, those are bad things. Well, what about just mindlessly watching entertainment, scrolling, you know, food?

All kinds there's lots of stuff that we'll do to try to escape. And a lot of them, it's not the thing itself that's wrong. It's when we try to get something out of it it'll never provide, it gets exaggerated. We try to escape. And when you do that, how you determine that is the thing you run to, is it an event or a pattern?

Does that just happen? If that's my pattern and now you feel emptier after, not better, you're missing out. You're not pursuing the presence of God. And here's the problem with that. We try to escape the pain when Jesus came to remove the cause.

He's the answer. But we still try to do this. The second thing we do that he talks about is when he started to say, I tried to find meaning by building.

I try to find meaning by building. As we use possessions and and things we do, accomplishments, to build an identity. We we will use these possessions including accomplishments to build an identity. Now in this day and age, it's what kings did. They built things. He built homes and gardens and all these projects.

Some were public projects. Some were his own homes and stuff. And a king of that time to prove your worth, to show how great you are, to prove you built these things to prove who you were. And you know what? I don't think kings are the only ones that do that. I I think we do as well.

We can't build as large a homes with this budget, but we start to say the things we have, we're building an identity. We wanna be seen. It's we work really hard. And he even said doing that, he called it toil.

And the Hebrew word there for toil is not the good kind of work where you feel like, I was tired, but in a good way. Job well done. It's the toil that meant exhausting, draining, impossible to sustain, grinding you down, and destroying you. Toil. He

discovered that if you're building stuff to be seen as something, if that's where you're finding your identity, it's a never ending job that is exhausting. Exhausting. And you think, how do I relate? I haven't built huge projects, but if I sit there and think I find my identity in what I do and what I have,

I gotta work really hard to make sure I keep that. I have to keep toiling, toiling, toiling. Because if I find my identity in that, what happens if I lose my job or lose my business or lose my house or lose my health or you know? What happens when something doesn't go right? If you found your identity in that, now what am I?

Now what are you? There's fear involved with that.

And usually, when you have to do that, that's what pulls us back. It's why we're not generous people. It's why we don't like to serve people because that's stepping outside. I go, no, I gotta protect my identities and all this stuff. So I gotta do what it takes to protect my identity. That is exhausting.

Let me give you a practical example you wouldn't even think of. Moms.

Being a mom is hard. Dads, too. Being a parent. But I know moms are going feel this even more so.

It's hard being a parent. It's very difficult. I joke about it all the time. But I love being a parent. It's a gift from God. Even though sometimes it's a gift you wished he gave a receipt to so you can trade it in for a better gift.

See, that's what I mean. I love kids. I don't don't get me wrong. My kids love me. I love them. It's been a blessing. I love my kids. All I'm telling you is parenting is grandparenting is more fun. That's all I'm saying.

But a lot of moms and dads, but especially moms, some of the reason you are extra exhausted and almost feel guilty

about how you're parenting

is because you find your identity in being a mom. Yes, it's hard being a mom. But what's really overwhelming you is when you say, Who are you? I'm a mom. And even if you make it through that toil, you'll regret having missed out on all the joy you could have had because you were too worried. And then they move out.

So you regret, and now they're gone. Now what are you? The problem that's overwhelming many of us parents in this room is not how hard it is to be a parent. It's how excruciatingly overwhelming and unsustainable the toil is of having an identity as being a parent. Kids are a blessing.

It's a gift. It's a joy. It's a calling. It's a wonderful relationship. It's all those things, but it's not who we are. That's not our identity. Our identity is found in Jesus Christ and what he made us to be. And when we find identity through these other things, it will let you down and it becomes a burdensome toil

and you lose the joy. You think the joy is lost just because it was hard. But man, there's lots of things that are hard that we celebrate and go, that was good. If you want to get in shape, a hard workout. You're like, that sucked. It was so awesome. Parenting should be the same way. It really should be.

But if you're overwhelmed and feeling guilty, it's it's it's because you you you're trying to make it who you are, and it will fail you every time. Because here's the problem. If our worth is tied into what we have and what we do, It's not only we'll never have enough, we will never feel like we're enough.

And that's the toil. That's the toil. When we need achievement to feel valuable and validated, we never enjoy the process.

And in Christ, identity is received. In Christ, our identity is received. It's not achieved.

And that's why if you're single in the room and you think having an identity to be married and having kids, you put both of those together, you feel like you're not really what you're supposed to be until you get married and have kids. That's not true. That's not your identity. That's just something you might wanna

achieve in your life. It's a good goal. It's a blessing. It's a gift. It's work. But it's not an identity. It doesn't lessen your value. It doesn't change who you are in Christ. If you're single or married. See what I mean? Does that make sense? That's what it's talking about. When we do that, we miss out.

And then that leads to the third one that often when we have these first two, we naturally end up doing this third one is we leverage people instead of loving people.

He said he bought slaves, and others were born into his household. That shows you how far away from God he He subjugated human beings for his own pleasure. Whatever it was all they were is a tool to accomplish what he wanted. That's it. And you're like, what a horrible person. But you know what? We don't have to own someone

to leverage them for our good only. That's what he's doing. It the the system is slavery. We still do this same principle, especially if we are thinking

that how life should be lived. What I really need is that, yeah, believe in Jesus, but all these things under the sun is what life's really about and I'm trying to I'm turning them into idols. See, God's not against pleasure. He's opposed to idols because he knows they fail us. And

so the problem is if you look at it that way,

I don't have an effect. I want you I will use people to get what I want because I am working so hard to keep my identity. I'm working so hard to run after things and I need resource to run after the things that give me pleasure to escape. I'm working all that. And I will use a relationship to do the same thing. I want this relationship to be an escape from my pain. I want this relationship to give

me the ultimate happiness. I want that person to do this for me. And that it turns up in marriage all the time. When we leverage people instead of loving people, basically what we're saying is we use people and we relate to people only for the value they bring us. All of our relationships become transactional.

And the most brutally sad example is marriage. When you get two married people like this, it's hard to be married. Being married is hard. It's harder if you think the other person is responsible for your happiness. It's harder, basically, John Wayne said, if you're stupid.

Because it's gotta be pretty stupid if you can look at another human being and say, you're responsible for my happiness. You're gonna get let down all the time. Ask my wife. I probably make her happy 30% of the time.

70% of the time, I'm actually doing for her what marriage is supposed to be. It's not supposed to be to make us happy, it's to make us holy. It's to make us holy. And here's the weird thing, when you seek holiness, happiness usually follows. You seek happiness, you miss holiness,

and you will have a really spotty record on getting happiness. Like I said, 70% of my time, I give my wife the ability to become more like Jesus. She's forgiving. She has patience. She's loving. She's merciful. I go, see what a good job I'm doing? That's

kind of manipulative way of looking at it, but you know what I'm saying. But if you think that person is supposed to be responsible for my happiness,

you're gonna have a lot of moments where you're like, But when you understand what it is, it doesn't become as much of a toil. It becomes the good version of hard work. You see, we leverage people. And you know who actually and because when you try to control, control feels like strength, but it exposes insecurity.

See, when we try to control because leveraging someone because you're trying to control them because you're trying to get something, it's not being strong. It's being insecure because this isn't working. I need this from this person. And you know who are some of the worst people at doing that? Pastors. What I do.

It's very tempting in the calling I have to turn this into my identity because it's so related. My identity is not to be the pastor of this church.

My identity is to be the son of the king of kings and the lord of lords and to live out faithfully in his presence to receive his love and let his love saturate my soul to the point that I will follow him and become like him and then experience Zoe, true life, like John ten ten says.

And in doing that, I do that. Well, being a pastor is I'm leading people to become disciples to do all those same things. So I it's really easy to combine those. I think being a pastor is the easiest job to start finding your identity in.

Well, when you find your identity in it, guess what? It needs to be going well. Otherwise, I'm a loser. What's my identity? And we had that happen. I had one time back in 2009

when the when the economy, the whole housing market collapsed. This was like foreclosure capital of the world. I don't know if you lived here back then, but this area was booming and growing. We started the church in o two. We got up over a thousand people. It was just going crazy. We bought this land by 2004,

and within two years, we had the land. We already had a sign on the land by 2004, future home of. Also, when you get to 2009, we we were getting ready to build. That was a little while, but it was like and then we couldn't get loans. It got everything got shut down. And then all of a sudden, the church actually shrank because this area shrank. Every week, there was a family saying, bye, we're moving to Texas because apparently God loved Texas at that time and that was the only party so it wasn't

the only place that wasn't affected by all this. The only bummer is you had to live in Texas. So, actually, I like Texas, but they it was it was nuts. And and and the problem was our giving went backwards,

and and we couldn't build the building. But not only can we even build the building, we had to lay people off. And we only had, like, 14 staff people at the time. And we we had to we had to say, we we can't have your job anymore. And

and it was really weighing on me and I needed to talk to the church about it. I needed to kinda say the truth to us about here's where we're at. And and here's the issue. What I got up and said was absolutely biblical. I didn't say anything wrong. It had nothing to do with what I said.

It had everything to do with what was in my heart when I said it. I didn't even let it out in my voice. But what was going on in my heart was everything I was trying to say, even if it was the right thing to say, it was for all the wrong reasons. I was frustrated.

I was mad. I was mad that most of the people in our church still had their jobs. They still had the same house payment. Nothing had changed in the economy. Just the economy had changed. But out of fear of what's going on around,

they started pulling back what they're giving. Well, I might not have enough. It's the same ad from top. I won't have enough. I can't have enough for me, so I'm not gonna give. So we're going down and I got frustrated.

So I used the truth because it was more about my identity and more about my fears and my insecurity of, wow, if this starts going backwards, what does that say about who I am?

And so in my heart, I said the right thing, but what I was really trying to do is leverage people to do what I wanted them to do because right now, you weren't making it pleasurable for me to be a leader right now. I had made it about me. And all that did is even though I said the right thing is,

I didn't feel like a leader. I didn't feel the joy. I didn't feel the peace of God saying, hey, I know this is hard. You said the right thing. Because you know what I'm called to be? Is faithful.

Faithful to saying what God wants us to hear. But when I make it about me and get my identity involved, even when I do the right thing, it doesn't alleviate the fear. It's more like, if they don't do this, then who am I? It destroyed the joy of being a pastor and the peace I could have had even in a tough time. I missed out.

And I feel bad about it. I got up, like, when I realized that a few months later and I apologized to the church. And they're like, what? I don't even know. It's like, hey, it was all me. Because my job is not to say, hey, I am not trying to say stuff to get something from you.

I just want to present what Jesus says that says he wants something for you. And so do I. It's so easy to get sucked into this. It's so easy to get sucked into this where we start leveraging people, any kind of relationship. Ask yourself, are you loving people or leveraging them?

How does it play out? Because in the end, the fourth the last thing he shared was kind of summing it up. He opened up, we use pleasure to escape, and then shared these other two things. And then he finishes it by saying the bottom line of it is this, we follow desires

hoping it will satisfy us. And that's what he said in in verse eight. And then again in verse 10, goes, I had everything a man could desire. And then he said in verse 10, anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. He took delight. And again, that word for delight is sensory pleasure, quick, intense.

Desire itself isn't bad, but desire is not the destination. When you feel really strongly that you have to run after something, even if it means running away from what God's asked you to do, especially with the good things he's given you. I've given you this. I want you to manage it. And enjoy it.

And you're like, well, I'm not gonna manage the way you want because I want that.

That strong desire is not the problem. It's what you think it means. You think it means, if I desire it, I should go for it. No. It's a signal. It's telling you that something else is competing to be Lord of your life. And it means you're lacking the very presence of Jesus

in your life. What do mean by that? It's like, why still go to church? It's different. We come to church. If you read your Bible, yeah. Or do you? It's if we turn even being a Christian into some, like, doing the task. In other words, we try to leverage God, and we turn our relationship with God into a transactional thing

when we run the wrong way. We come to church, we go, I I did these things, so now I think God should give me these things. And that's why in in in Ecclesiastes three eleven, he said, God planted eternity in our hearts,

but we still don't understand what he's doing from one moment to the next. You know what he meant by that? It's not that we have we we don't we wanna see everything. What he's saying is,

I have this longing. I have this desire. I I think this is the need. We go after things under the sun because that's our perspective, and then we pray to God. We come and serve him, and we're like, I don't understand. I'm doing what he said. Why isn't he giving me the things I want?

Because we want things that he knows isn't good for us. And we want those, so we're leveraging God. I did this so I can get what I want from you. Instead of, I get life from him, I sit in his presence. Do we read the Bible because it's a checklist? When we we turn it into toil.

Man, you know, pastor kept saying, I should read the Bible. I should read the Bible. But you know what? It's it it I get it. I get it. I learned more and read and studied the Bible more when I wasn't in Bible college than I was. Because the second you make it a class and you make it a requirement to me, I'm a rebel.

I was reading my bible every day before I went off to bible college. I'd read like 10 chapters a day. I got in class, we need to read six chapters a day of first Samuel in my old testament. Six chapters a day of first Samuel? No way. I'm like, I got mad. I was like, that was less than what I was already reading.

I get it. And that's the thing. If your approach to being in the word of God is that's just a task that I know God wants good Christians to do and I'm a bad person if I don't, you're gonna hate it. But if you understood

that this book is the very word of God that reveals who the living word of God is, Jesus. And that it says that it is powerful. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit. And it says when you read it and open it in faith and say, I wanna meet you here in your word, Lord, it says the Holy Spirit will illuminate

your study and your reading. Illuminate means he'll bring it to life to you. So you're not studying a textbook. God supernaturally transforms it into you are now sitting in the very presence of Jesus, and you are having a conversation by reading it, letting it speak to you, and then you pray back to him. This

is the sword of the spirit. It is the only spiritually weapon God gives us. This is the very thing that cuts through bone and sinew and then to the very soul. Do you see this when you go to, I guess I should read the Bible to be a good guy? Or do you go, I am now sitting in the presence of the God who created me,

And I am learning who He is, how much He loves me, and what He's called me to be. You have to look at it differently.

Otherwise, we'll run after all those other desires thinking that they're gonna do something or leverage God and still say, I'm gonna be a good Christian, but what I really want is all of these desires. And then when God doesn't give them to you because He loves you more than you love yourself,

you get confused or hurt or mad.

You see, Jesus is the presence we were made for,

and he is now the presence we live in and live through and live from. Everything else is because we're not addicted to pleasure. We are exhausted from asking it to do what it will never do. That's where you're worn out and tired. It's not that God's abandoned you. It's not that He's made life too hard.

It's that we are exhausted from trying to make things that will never work, work. We need to come to that moment and deal with the because the means we are putting pleasure over presence. And that's the real problem. Because when my wife sat there and said, I went, what?

I was like, what are you talking about? Because I was kinda hurt. I was like, I did all this work. I thought you'd be so excited because you've really wanted this. And now your answer is, And right when I said that, she got that look on her face like only a Clint Eastwood can get.

I'm like, uh-oh, I'm gonna fight. And she didn't even say, she started to go, what are you talking about? And I'm like, oh no. And I realized, I said, this is this is bad. And I and I did what a wise husband should do in this moment. I just backed away, didn't break eye contact.

And then my kids came out, and I did that. I felt like Chris Pratt in Jurassic Park surrounded by velociraptors. And I'm like, okay, this was a bad idea. Went back in, kids back up, went in, closed the door, and ran upstairs.

And what I learned is, it was just kind of good stuff for you guys on side note, is sometimes we are fix it people and we're really bad when we wanna fix it but we're horribly bad when we thought we did fix it and then they react and then we're mad and we try to fix that. That was a really bad idea.

Back off. It's like judo. Don't attack. Use the back. You have to pull them in. It'll work. Trust me. Either that or my wife's just better than all of your wives. I don't know. But I've I left it alone. And then she came to me an hour later.

She goes, you know what? I'm sorry. I I really did have a problem. And that's why when I said what, there was a problem I realized I had. I go, really? What is it? She goes, well, it starts with you. I'm like, oh, great. I'm all Admiral Akbar. It's a trap.

Yeah. You know, I was like, I've I'm not even now I go, what do you mean? She goes, no. No. I don't mean it in a bad way. It starts with you and the way you handle things in these moments.

When it comes to a gift that we got that we got to use and we got to do this, just the way you handle it is is something I'm amazed by, but it it almost makes me mad at you because I I don't handle it that way.

And I go, well, what do you mean by that? And she goes, well, it's just that you're so much like a dog with its head out the window when it driving in and down the street in a car. And then I was like, what? And I'm like, that doesn't sound good. You know, like, I'm a stupid dog.

Know, slobbering all my swallowing bugs. I mean, not realizing that we're probably heading to a vet or or or or the or the beauty shop as my mom used to take our dogs to when I was a kid, you know, to get them all washed. And I'm like, are you kidding me? She goes, no. Don't mean that. I mean the brilliance of a dog. The smart is that they just enjoy what was given.

They don't try to find deeper meaning in it. They don't try to get something out of it other than the fact that I get to stick my head out the window right now and that's I'm enjoying it for what it is. You do that. God gives us a gift. You don't turn it into something else. I go, what are you trying to say? She goes, I do.

I was trying to find purpose in pavers. I was trying to find an identity in infrastructure. I was trying to find my

design through my designing. That's what she was trying to do. She admitted that. She went and thought about it and realized, why does this stuff bother me? And she goes, when I looked at that and I saw it, in my mind I thought it would be so much more impressive

and I knew that in my heart this declares to everybody who I am because I design stuff. And I go, so you were sad that you wouldn't impress Joanna Gaines? And she goes, no, I'm sad that it couldn't impress me because I thought more highly of myself. So when I looked at it, I said, this represents me? This is what I am?

And I didn't know what to do in the moment, so I just went, because it conflicted me. So what I'm saying is I wish I could be more like you

and just be a dog with my head out the window and just enjoy for it is. Which one are you? Do you take the things God has given you and use them the way you wanted? Enjoy them, but use them right and don't make them into something they're not. Because when you do, we don't trust God.

We won't trust him with our time, our money, or any because if we make it about those things, we have to hold on to those things. We won't just trust God, and then we miss out and it becomes toil. It's so exhausting. That's really why you're worn out and tired and frustrated. It's why I get that way.

And here's the beauty of it. This happened years ago. Just a couple weeks ago on on on after Easter, my family all lives all my kids live near us. Got these grandkids. They all come to our house on Sunday afternoons mainly because we usually pay for all the food. But

I don't care. I'll bribe them. No. And we have a pool with a slide, you know. And they all come, and it's awesome. Well, after Easter services, I was like,

So everyone comes over, we eat, everyone goes out in the backyard. I sat on the couch. I go, I'll be out there in a few minutes. And a few minutes turned into a long time. I was just like I literally was just staring. I didn't even have the TV on. I'm just staring at the wall where the TV is and and didn't wanna do anything. And then I looked over and I started watching my whole family out our big window.

And I'm thorough having fun, and then I saw my wife. She's throwing my grandkids around and laughing and enjoying this backyard the way we made it look.

It's serving its purpose for what it was to be enjoyed, not to be her identity. So she enjoyed it. And all I could think of is I looked at her like, wow. She's out there going

go, I get it now what she was saying to me. She looks like a dog with her head stuck out the window. A much more beautiful dog than me. But I understand what she meant now.

Nothing changed. The backyard still looked the same. There's still other things she would like to do in our house.

But it's not controlling her and defining her anymore.

How about you? You can either have a life filled with one after the next. You can go from then there's a then there's a because now you're getting angry. Then there's a depressed and end your life like Solomon with the ultimate I really wasted all those years. Or you can sit in the presence of Jesus, find life from that.

Lean into his purpose in your life, And then take the things he's given you and use them the way he did, and then take the pleasures and the good things he gave you and enjoy them for what they're meant to be. In other words, just lean into the life like Psalm has said in the end,

and just roll down the window, stick your head out the car, and be like, this is awesome. That's your choice. That's your choice. Father God, I thank you. I thank you that that you love us more than we love ourselves. So I have a simple prayer for all of us.

Let us sit in your presence and understand your love and be saturated with it at such a level that we can drive through this life with our head stuck out the window, even if it means we're stopping at the vet along the way. Because we love you, and we know how much you love us. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

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