Fighting Apathy

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

      Apathy is something we all struggle with from time to time. In the midst of the challenges of life, in the monotony of it, of things not going our way, things in which we're trying to control or move, and they don't, we get to this place where we just say, I want to give up. We disconnect in our emotions.

Maybe the severity of things. There's overwhelming to us, but we get to that place of apathy when our emotions are disconnected. When we're asking ourselves what's the point? We wanna figure out how do we fight against it. Because apathy steals from our faith and it steals from our life. And so we wanna have a sense of here's what I can do to fight back against it.

And what we're gonna look at today gives us three ideas. One, we wanna rest in God's goodness. Two, we want to remember the value of faith and three, we want to constantly seek renewal. And we'll see this through the prophet Isaiah because the people of Israel have become apathetic. They're like, Hey, God, why don't you see us? Why don't you listen to us? And God through the prophet, Isaiah says, "no, don't you remember who I am? Don't you know that I am the eternal creator? Don't you know that I'm the one who has created the ends of the earth? The everlasting one." and this is an important point I think for us, is that when we are feeling that sense of apathy, we're looking at the world and we're like, this thing's just broken.

It just doesn't work. It should be tossed away. And this is where the value of faith really comes in. We wanna remember that God is god of spirit, that God is not like Santa Claus, but that God is eternal. God has created all things that God donates life is the life force for all that goes on, and that the beauty and the goodness, and the truth and the love that exists in the world, that those are all signs and symptoms of God's energizing of this world.

You know, if we take a step back and we get to the place where we're just saying, Hey, what's the point in all of this. We're in some ways sort of giving ourselves up to the idea that the world is beyond hope. That it is perhaps nothing more than accident that is both terrible and beautiful all at the same time.

But if we believe in goodness. If we believe in beauty, if we believe in love, then faith makes so much sense that this world is not God, but created by God, sustained by God and loved by God. And what God has shown us in the person of Christ is that God will renew it, bring it back to its best version of itself.

We'll restore all things, and we've been given a sign and a. A kickoff and a, a preview of that in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. So as you're going through your week and the brokenness, and the challenge and the struggle, have you to that place where you're just feeling a sense of apathy, your emotions are shutting down your disconnecting. Remind yourself of your faith and remind yourself that there's goodness and beauty and wonder all around.

Take a moment and maybe stop. Look a little bit deeper at a flower that's in your yard. Really look at it. See its intricacies and its wonder, and be amazed that it exists. Notice the twinkle in someone's eye. Notice how you feel when you're with people that you love and you feel connected to, and really just rejoice in that and that'll help you fight against that apathy, that, that sense of what's the point in all of this?

The second thing that God tells Israel through prophet Isaiah is that they are to rest in him. That even youths and kids that they grow tired. You know, my son, when he was young was just full of energy, just climbing all over the place, flips all kinds of stuff. But as he would get tired, especially when he was in his car seat just before he was about to fall asleep, he would just start a rant. This grumpy, hangry rant about how that's a dumb truck and this day is dumb, and his car seat is stupid and he just doesn't like anything. And then the next thing you know, he's snoring. Out. The cool thing about God is that God never runs out of energy. That God is eternal energy, always bringing the world towards its end of renewal.

And so for you and I, some of the thing that we want to do is we wanna learn to rest in that energy. Now, resting in God's energy is a little bit different than we think. It's actually an active thing, not a passive thing. It's active in two ways. One, we're resting at it, meaning we're trusting that what has been revealed in the person of Christ is the future.

That evil and sin and brokenness and death will be defeated and that those are the enemies of God. And so in that way, when we rest in God's energy, we're resting that God will ultimately bring the world to his fruition.

But the other way we rest is it's an active rest. An act of rest like we see with Christ in Jesus' ministry of seeking and saving, the lost of bringing justice, of loving, of being a servant in sacrifice.

It's a similar kind of energy that we see in Martin Luther King Jr. In his dream and his desire for racial reconciliation in the midst of death threats and all kinds of tiresome and scary things against his life, he had this sense of he was resting in God. And what that did is that it propelled him in his work.

And so there was a sense of purpose and passion in his rest. And so we wanna do the same thing. So the question for us is in what places do we need to rest in God right now? Maybe it's resting in the value of your relationships. Of your marriage of parenting. And so it gives you that sense of, you're like, I'm not sure where it is now, but I'm gonna rest in this future of renewal and I'm gonna keep loving and serving and being kind and seeking reconciliation.

Maybe for you in the midst of our country right now there's all kinds of things going on and you're like, ah, and the way you're gonna rest is the promise that God's future, and you're gonna rest by being active and pursuing truth and beauty and justice.

Final thing that God says to Israel to help them fight their apathy is that they want to be a people that constantly renew their strength.

In the passage of Isaiah 40, it talks about putting the strength on again, just in the same way that we renew ourselves by drinking water or eating food, or going to sleep. It's a daily activity that renews us. Well, we wanna be those same kind of people that we seek renewal in God's strength. And I think we can do that in three ways.

First, we wanna train our vision, and this is what spiritual practices are all about. Whether it's going to church, listening to this sermonette, maybe reading the scriptures, doing some prayer on your own. Getting together for some conversation. These activities help us train our vision, not on the what's the point? This is all meaningless, but on this reality that God is love and that God has revealed that love in the person of Christ, and we'll bring it to fruition. So the way we get daily renewal is to renew our mind and renew our memory of who God is and what God has done and what God will do.

Second, we wanna be people who weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The reason we can weep with a sincere sense of sorrow and sadness is because brokenness is real and we can hate it, and we can wrestle with it. And the reason we can rejoice is because we believe that the goodness, beauty, wonder, magic in the world is what is the ultimate reality. And so we can renew ourselves by engaging in both of those.

And then finally, what we want to do is we want to commit to just living and growing in love in our day to day. You know, a lot of times when we think about the world and its grand escape, it actually encourages us towards apathy because it's too big. There's too many things we can't control. It's all of this is out there.

It. But what we can do is we can choose to be people who grow in love in their homes, their neighborhoods, their workplaces, their church, over and over and over again. Doing that hard work of choosing truth and justice and love and kindness. And so I would encourage you towards that as you're fighting apathy just commit to loving in the day to day. 'cause that takes a lot of the other stuff away. And it's something that you can engage and do, and you'll see the senses as you love, and as you experience that, you will experience the strength and renewal of God. All of us fight apathy in our life, but it's something that we don't have to give into.

We can remember that the value of our faith, we can rest in God's eternal energy and we can go to that well day after day seeking renewal.

I hope this is helpful. Have a great week, and we'll see you soon.