France. I just wanted to tell you, this is what the kingdom of God looks like. There's people with Broncos shirts on it with the Raiders shirts on. I saw some earlier with Patriots and we had green Bay. That's what the kingdom of God looks like. Okay. I specifically didn't mention, but you're welcome in the kingdom and those of you who aren't wearing anything, they're like, this is so dumb. We'll see you there too. That'd be great, man. It's so good. I don't know how to get over like this is going to be exciting service. I'm talking to you the rest of the day. Oh man. Just the highlight really quickly. I don't typically do this, but one of the announcements was about North you . We've shifted some things with the only thing you need to really follow what a larger corporate conversation we're having, which we've been going through. This series has been so good for so many people. This kill the spider series and I'm talking about how to just take some next steps and some real life application that can do. We're offering a spiritual formation class that'll be following this up. That might be really interesting for a lot of you guys to look into. It's really just about getting extra tools in your tool belt and how to learn some of the practices of spiritual formation that kind of continue keeping you walking in a good place when it comes to just growing, pursuing God and what that looks like. So sideways highlights . Those are some new fresh things. There's tons of good stuff out there for you to check out. Like we've talked about many times, we're all about next steps, so we are in week five of the series called kill the spider, kill the spider. We've been focusing on the different webs that happen in our lives that really in prison , us that keep us away from other people that trap us and keep others out, including things like love to be given to us or love that we're supposed to give out to others, whether it be from God or each other and we're really good. A lot of times it just cleaning up like willpower. We'll clean up, we'll see a spider web . You'll clean it up, but you don't really go hunting for the spider to kill it or to attack it because the next thing you know it comes back up and you get frustrated and you're having to clean it all up again. So we've been focusing on some things, specifically the seven deadly sins and what that looks like. Cause we felt like he would find some common ground. So now we're in week five in two weeks we're finished cause that'll be seven. And we have an awesome thing plan, like a really big surprise that day. If you're trying to figure out which one you're going to miss, you shouldn't miss any of them. But still just good rhythms. That one makes sure you come to that one for sure. Whether they lose or they don't, you know you need, I told you it's going to happen. All that win or lose, you're coming. I'm with you. Hand in hand. So the 17th come here. It's going to be awesome. I don't, I'm not going to tell you what we're doing yet cause I don't know, but it's gonna be great. I'm going to figure it out. I've set the bar. No, but seriously been looking for this for a long time and it's going to be worth being here. So we started out this conversation in the new year with pride and how do we call it out? We gotta we gotta deal with it because it manifests in different ways in our lives. We need to recognize it and call it out. The second week we talked about greed and what that looks like and how we need to slow things down, how we need to not be so Swift to judge or to be right because there's these selfish desires that can come up within us that specifically are to hurt or to harm a deflate or condemn other people more than ourselves. Then we had a conversation about slothfulness or a CDF and how we deal with slothfulness or a CDN is that we're in community with people and community with God and that's a way that we deal with that mental health stuff. Also with just the different desires that we have or the spiraling that takes place when a CVA gets a hold of us. Last week we talked about envy and how many to celebrate, and I know many of you spent this last week celebrating something that you had not celebrated that should have been celebrated, somebody else, and that we needed to leverage what God has given us rather than being envious of something else. And I know some of you had a good week kind of just evaluating, taking a hold of what you have and making a plan for it. And so today I get to talk to you about the sin of lust. It's been a long week. This is going to be good. Lust, lust. I'm just saying less like no one wants to say like I have an issue with lust. Yeah, no one says that. And like many of these other ones, they kind of like intertwined with each other. And the other thing that you see is that they kind of show some of the same faces right there. They're all of the same breed. They just look different, right? In lust. I wanted to attach it specifically to a handful of things so we can all kind of unpack ourselves and see if this is something that we need to focus on or keep from happening. Lust. I want to give you this. Less is like an appetite. You ever been hungry? Yeah . Last is like an appetite. It's an appetite that will either rule you or you will rule it. That thing that suddenly stirs up in you that says you're hungry. You need something now. This is how you're going to get satisfied. This is, this is the only thing that will satisfy me. It's the thing that causes you to pull off the side of the road to get first, second, first dinner before second dinner later because you just feel like you're so hungry. You've got to have this or this just sounds so good. Less is like an appetite or wanting and so I'm going to unpack for you in the next 22 minutes what lust when it comes to our appetite and wanting can look. Many of us are where we are right now in life because of our appetite. Maybe unhealthy appetite. Many of us are where we are right now because of an appetite are one of our parents had an appetite. Your dad had an appetite. Your mom had. You're in debt because of an appetite that you had that you had to satisfy that lust in need and want. This appetite that's within you of wanting. Many of you are where you , where you are today because you have managed well an appetite or or someone else around you have managed well and appetite. Appetite is coming , all kinds of different forms. It was this little list progress, even appetite for progress and now I'm going to tell you real quick, these aren't necessarily all bad things. I had a conversation last week about envy of some of those things could be motivating. You're right. Motivation is a little bit different though. If it's to do good, right and not to do harm or to tear down another person right in place of so these things can be really great, right? Progress. We have an appetite for responsibility. We want to be more responsible. We have an appetite for respect and we want respect. We have an appetite to win, you know , and that's what you see. Like sometimes this appetite is just don't get fed enough cause there's just not enough trophies. There's not enough Superbowls. You have an appetite for love, for acceptance. We are acceptance freaks. Like we love acceptance. We need it like deep down as like we need acceptance. So much fame. Some of you have a huge appetite for fame and you've decided this is what I needed to be. I have a lust for being famous. I'm going to make a new viral video recognition to be envied. You know, I know somebody guys who's , who has a less to be envied by other people about what they're driving, who they're standing next to, what they look like. Or we just have a less an envy and appetite, a want for, for things, for stuff. So I want to give you some scripture that I'm going to use to kind of tease some of this out that I think will be really valuable for you. And it's in the new Testament. It's called first John. There's a book in the very beginning of it has been just called John. And then we got super creative and we're like, what do we call the other one? Let's call it first. It's very confusing. I know, but you put the first in the front. Okay. Whatever. Sorry. Okay. So first John and his chapter two 15 through 17 I'm going to read to you. Are you going to read with me quietly? The one from the NIV. That's the new international version of the version of the Bible. And then I'm gonna read to you from the message cause I think there's some really beautiful words and it's just the way it's translated. Okay. Same thing. Sorry. Quick little education. Here we go. Alright , so this is the first John two 15 do not love the world or anything in the world. Now some of you might be like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, that's so dramatic. You're going to see in just a minute, this isn't what we're talking about, about not loving anything in the world. You should love people, you should love art, you should love food creative. It's not talking about that. Okay? If anyone loves the world, love for the father, not for the father is not in them. So saying, Hey, if you're wanting lasting, needing like your appetite is so strong for the things of this world, then the love for the father isn't in you because you're just so concentrated on that. Not love of the father. Cause that's always any continuum for everything in the world. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life comes not from the father but from the world. Now it's not the creativity, the yearning, the movement, the appetite for things. It's the, it's the extreme. It's the lust like to a point where it becomes sin. That's from the world. It's the, everyone's telling you what you need real bad. We'll talk about that in a moment. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. The message puts it like this. Don't love the world's ways. Okay, don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love of the father. That's like those webs and those webs comes and we're just entrapped in all these things. We get the love of the father squeezed out and continues practically everything that goes on in the world, wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appeared. Portant has nothing to do with the father. It just isolates you. Again, he's webs, traps you from him, the world. And all of it's wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out. But whoever does what God wants is set for eternity. So wanting, wanting, wanting these appetites and these, once we have these crazy appetites in our life that can cause some serious issues. So to give you a quick story of wanting can create cause wanting doesn't allow you to see the other person. So I , um , I've been married for over 14 years now, three years into my marriage, you know , um , had one of the bigger fights, I would say that my wife and I had. Um , and this is how it goes here . This is Sherry . So, so I'm like doing my own thing, you know. Uh , we're young, we're married. Life is awesome. And , um, we , uh , we got our own place and I'm like hanging out with my friends, doing my own thing that normally do, hanging out with the boys. I don't remember what we're doing, but I was doing stuff all day and I kind of had a plan, right? I was knew exactly what I wanted my day to look like. I was going to come home, maybe she was going to be like making dinner and I was like, this is awesome. Married life is so good. And then, you know, maybe later we were gonna , you know, cause that's what I wanted and we were married only three months in, cause if you know this, do you have an appetite for two things, food and sex, there's nothing else. So this is how it goes. I come home thinking, Oh man, this is so good. I see Michelle and I'm like, Hey, what's going on? She's like, Hey. And I was like, how are you doing? You know, like looking at the day we're getting already, this is going to be best day ever. And um , and she does this. She goes, I'm fine. And I was like, you know, you find like, well, I'm heating it, I'm warming it up. You know , as guys we feel like we had to do, you seem to just recognize, come on girl, look at you over there. I see you. I see. So if you've been married for a long time, you realize that there's this, I think this is what happens. There's a weird language that women have and I think when the young women turned like 13 1415 they get taken away to some cave. So learn the language of the females. Oh my gosh. And I didn't know this. I'm three months in. I'm like, you know, you find it . And she's like, no. I said, I'm fine. I was like, I got it. You're fine. This is good. When we're going to eat, I got things to do. So I didn't realize that fine meant fine and fine was not a good thing. Fine was this, is this how it's going to be? You're just going to go do your thing all day and just come back home and just not hang out with me. And I learned what fine meant . Oh, what you're saying is you're not fine. Stay that first. Uh , and what I realized is I like how to plan. This is how I wanted things to go. This is how it's going to go and an appetite for this. And then all it was sudden was like, no, no, no, no. What you didn't realize, and I have this conversation in couples counseling all the time, marriage counseling is that I forgot that her love language was quality time and guess what I hadn't given to her. So she's going, Oh, you're funny. You think this is what's going to happen. You haven't put any deposits in the bank. And so that's what partly our appetites in our lust, in our wanting of things can do is we are unable to see the needs of another person and just ourselves and we fulfill us . The appetites are very dangerous appetite . It's this special thing God created them. God created them, but sin distorted them. He made us to like drive into one things and did need things and to be a part of things and to be creative and to make and to go and to adventure, but sin distorted them. You see it very early on in scripture. Then Genesis starting right away with the Bible, you see this where Adam and Eve were there and they had this desire, this want this lust for something that was just created in them and they were tempted by Satan and to take this fruit because it was going to be like, God wants the best for you. It's going to be what you need right now. And it's like, well it does look good. I am kind of hungry. And so she said, it does sound good to have all these things. I would love to have that and satisfy this need that I have right now. And her appetite coerced her to then partake immediately and then said, Adam, you should have some of this. And he said, whatever you say, you're naked, I'm going to do whatever you do. And it's fact. It's truth. Guys are all like, stop giving away the secrets appetizer also never fully and finally satisfied. They're never fully and finally satisfied. This is why you can Gorge yourself at Thanksgiving and four hours later you're looking for a snack, right? You, you filled yourself to the point of no filling anymore, but your appetite will never be fully and finally satisfied. I had a friend who really wanted this car really bad. I saved up money for it . It was a super awesome car and I remember he got it from me and he brought it over and he's like, dude, I just want you to check out a new car. Which was like, it's okay. It's another cool thing. He was like, yeah, cool. I want to look at your car. And so it came over and was like, look at this. There's buttons. And I was like, wow. He was like, Oh my gosh, look at the glove box. And I was like, Oh man. He's like, look, I was reading the owner's manual. I was like, who does that? Right? Wait around. He , he's like, look at the trunk. And I was like, Whoa. It's a truck . But for him, I mean this was the thing that he wanted and it's such an appetizer . All I could think about was this car, right? And then he got it and like read everything about it was just like eating it up. It was so good. And then a couple of months later I was like, Oh man, how's the glove box? And I was like, what? And I was like, Oh man, do you still love your car? And he's like, Oh yeah, I dunno . There's other cool stuff out there cause you're never fully satisfied. It just changes and there's something else, right? And you make these decisions. That's also why it's called buyer's remorse, right? You sit on it and we're gonna talk about that in just a moment. The other thing is appetites always whisper now and never later. They always tell you I need it right now and not later. I need to have this because this is what's going to make me feel good. This is what's gonna make me feel like I'm , I'm , I'm needed, I wanted, I'm okay . This is what's going to feel some sort of need that's in me, this wanting. It's all about me and it never ever, ever whispers later. It always says right now, right now, and your response to your appetite will determine your life. That's a really big thing to grasp. Our response to our appetite determine the life that God has planned for us. Some of you have been hurt by your appetite, by a decision you made a need that said now and I need to take this now and you couldn't wait until later and you partook and it has shifted the entire trajectory of your life because you let that appetite scream and yell at you. There's this thing that happens when it all gets fired up to this system . Now I'm going to go into teacher mode. This is psychology one Oh one there's this thing called impact bias that when we get all fired up and like something takes place around us and that one starts coming up real hardcore, the appetite is rear enough in our stomach. We have this thing called impact bias and it takes a simple appetite and magnifies it out of proportion, right? It's like what the stores do. It's like what Costco does, right ? You've been in Costco and there's like three things you went there to get and then you saw something you're like, I never knew that existed or that even needed it, but I need it now. Oh, it cost that much. No big deal. It's Costco and then you walk out and you're like, well , it just happened . It's impact bias. That's what commercials do, right? It's a thing that says, Oh my goodness, I'm gonna die if I don't have it. Right. There's a story about this in the old Testament, a guy named Esau, Jacob and Esau. Esau was an older brother to Jacob. You can look it up later and check it out. It's in Genesis and Esau was the older brother, so he was, he had a life like prepared for him. He was supposed to get the inheritance and the blessing and this much, and it's like this beautiful thing. It was supposed to happen and he came home from being outside one day and his brother, his younger brother was cooking and he said, Oh my gosh, it smells so good. I am starving. I am so hungry right now. And he said, can I have some of that soup? And so like a good younger sibling does realize is , Oh, I have something to negotiate with, right? He says, yeah, you can have some of the soup. Give me your birth. Right. Which is like what? It's like so extreme. And so it was like, what are you talking about? I'm so hungry. I'm going to die. I'm starving. It's not true. Right. You've been around your kids. How many things are your kids? My kids die every day. Like I'm going to , God, I don't have this. And it's like, that was not what I meant. I was looking backwards in the calendar to see if it had happened before. Geez . Wow. Well take that one out of the online thing. That was a little rough. Okay. Anyway , so it was like, I'm going to dive and we'll get this, and then what'd he do? He ended up selling his birthright or gave it away for a bowl of lentil soup. It's not that good Lindell soup and gave away his inheritance. Everything was changed. History. His name was actually supposed to be in their lineage. That starts in the first page of Matthew that shows where the lineage of Jesus, his name was supposed to be on there, but guess who's is on there now? His younger brother Jacob. Why soup? Cause there's appetite a hundred percent but how many times is it like messed up where we're supposed to be because we have this thing called impact bias that just wrecks everything. We also have this thing in our mind that's called vocalism. It focuses our minds on one thing and blurs out everything else, right? There's tons of , you can think of. You can think of that one thing. Heard that one person in seventh grade, whatever it was that nothing else was going on. You remember what the air smells like. You know like the song that you're playing in your head, whatever it is, you're thinking of a thousand things. I'll let you be with your thoughts, but you've had a milk . Our mind focuses in a blurs out. Everything else around there blurs out any kind of flashing lights that says, no, no, no. And we are so focused on the thing. If we're not careful , um, our wanting and our lusting replaces our worship, are wanting and lusting can replace our worship because we can have this impact by us and be so focused on that, that begin to worship it. That this is what I want. So this is what I need so bad. This is what this is going to give to me. So when I start talking about some more science, but how some ways that we can kill this spider quickly and then we'll unpack it more later this week on our podcast. Um, how many of you have heard of a neuropathway? Okay, handful of you. So here's a quick education. We have these things kind of really all our body really quickly in our brain. I'll just stick up their , um, called neuro pathways and our minds constantly creating them in gray matter, white matter, et cetera. Uh , which is a little like path of information. Just shoot stuff off simply. We, here's the real life. We create marrow pathways. Um, we call them a lot of times that they're just the regular ways you drive home, right? You have the same way you go, you don't even think about it. You just go there. Um, or shortcuts. That's what I want to talk about. As you're leaving today, you're driving, you look up on the Hill, you'll see little worn down path in the grass where coyotes or animals have kind of made this squiggly line cause they're going the same way all the time. Or you'll see it in like , um, outside of stores and you're not supposed to walk through that area, but everyone has walked through it, right? And it's worn down. And so what essentially has been done is you've created a new neural pathway , a shortcut. And so when we get into this season of wanting and lusting, we can start to create new neural pathways where in the beginning it's difficult to make a decision, right? We have difficulty because we know, we know, we know, we know if we really thought about it, there's going to be impacts that might not be that great for us in our future, but we decided to take the shortcuts and then it becomes easier and easier to walk down the path because there's a path there and there's a shortcut. So how do we create new neural pathways or how do we get rid of the neuropathways that have been made right in neuropathways in you and spiritually altogether do a lot of Rubio things. That's why physical therapy works so well. It's retraining your body is creating those neural pathways again, that new about these new rhythms and systems. So what rhythms and systems can we all put in our lives to make sure that we kill the spider of appetites wanting less? So it's these three things I want to talk about. Pause perspective and light. Pause perspective in light. The first way that you can do this is what you want to do is you want to stop walking down that road. So before you walk on that path that's been beaten down. That's a shortcut. You need to pause. You need to slow down and what's going to happen if we can retrain ourselves, what happens in those paths? The grass starts to regrow there and it becomes harder to go back that way and you have to refine it again. So pause, slow down and pause. You can see all throughout scripture that anytime temptation was taking place, pause happened when it ended up being in a healthy , um, uh , outcome. Jesus did it. Jesus was tempted, right? Jesus was tempted to do a couple of different things and we learned from him that he paused, he slowed down. It's kind of like the whole sleep on it for a night, just like I talked about earlier, like sit there. If you're getting ready to make a decision, positive, decide is this really worth it? Is it going to do something good for someone else's , going to do something good for myself? Have I actually taken care of my wife's needs before I'm concerned about taking care of my needs to go back into my original story with you. The second is perspective. When you pause, look for perspective perspective. Can be, do I really need that? You know, it's like putting something in the shopping cart, just kind of walking around with it for a minute and then putting it back cause you realized I don't really need that. Right. Um , perspective also things is like really powerful things that will smack you upside the head. Like that's someone's daughter, that's someone's mother, that's someone's , uh , grandson. Um, use whatever you need to when it comes to perspective , uh, and in your thoughts of wanting, needing and give yourself perspective. And then how's it gonna affect my life tomorrow when I wake up and then light, you need to bring it into the light. Um , the kill the spider of less . You gotta bring it into the light. So what does that mean? Um, I had an apartment in college and I had a window that faced to an alley. It was super gross. It was all dark. It's all contrast back, trash back there. There's people going back there and sticking things in their arm. There's people going back there hooking up and doing whatever and their car. It was like the place, you know I'm talking about like we've heard of things, know these things. That's like where that happened and for some reason, I don't know why, I guess it just came time to the city decided to clean it up and they spent like a week cleaning up all the trash. They repainted the size, they put some trash bins back there, some big ones, and then they installed life. Guess what? Never happened back there again. They could see it stayed clean. It looks good cause light was shining on it. So for those of us who have these dark things going on and that's friends, the best thing I can tell you to do is to shine light on it, call it out, which means maybe having a conversation with someone else just for accountability. Hey, I struggle with this. I need you to know so it's in the light and you can help me deal with it. Now, for those of you who might have someone that wants to tell you about what's going on with them and bring it to the light, you need to pause, get some perspective and live in the light with them. You follow that? That's just for some of my friends who might just have someone that God's saying, Hey, get your stuff in the light and let's keep it there because that's where it stays so good. That's where as how you're really going to kill it. The last bit of light, I'll give you real fast right now is this a beautiful thing that God did. We learned from him from Jesus's is they memorize scripture all the time. They specifically memorized the old Testament. The Hebrew literature is the Torah, a little boy from when they were little, so when they were older, they memorize this stuff and when Jesus was tempted, not only did he pause, he was able to pull way back into his mind, scripture, things that were on his mind and on his heart and to bring it forward and it's to speak to him. Let me give you a quick example of this. For like real life. You can, you can put scripture on your heart and in those midst of pausing, I'm telling you right now, if you live in that, that's that whole idea of spiritual formation. I talked about. I'm going to go to , um , that's what it's going to come up. Um, I , I listened. Maybe it's that you need to stop watching whatever you're watching, but it's really good. But is it, is it doing what it needs to do? Maybe you need to stop listening to what you're listening to and listen to something else. Um, I know for me, I listened to a lot of worship music , um, mostly just during the day and it's just in the background. And I have specifically had times where my mind has wandered to something, some appetite, and it's bothersome, but it's , um, it's so beautiful. I'm so blessed by this guest with, popped into my head, some worship song just on repeat this one line that says like, ah , I paused. Thank you God. Just for that blessing in my mind to clear it out so I don't hurt myself or hurt somebody else. Um , and I don't hurt you. So I thought that was so fast. There's so much that we can unpack with this. Um, but I'm done. Okay for today. You have to go get your kids and go see if they're going to, when we did it, you made it through and we'll pray for you to see that's what you came for. You just want a special. Um , okay, so a couple of things real quick before you get all your stuff for yourself, cause I just want to hear this. Some of you in here , um , need to pause. You need perspective and you need lights. Hm . Full circle. You need a pause because you feel dead. You feel lost or you feel broken and you need perspective. There's nothing so dead in your life that God cannot resurrect it again. There's nothing so lost that he cannot find it and there's nothing so broken. It's still as you still feel broken, that he can not begin to mend if you give it to him. And all of his light. It's him who does the transformative work. So if you're in here today, do not leave this place without taking a step into there and letting him do what only he can do in the midst of this, would you stand with me if this is you, I have a journal. We wrote this journal, it's 21 days. Hundreds of people have gotten this and I'm saying, Hey, I'm going to follow up with you in 21 days. I am chasing cause I didn't think so many people were going to do this, but I am so stinking grateful that I'm getting to walk along with you because there are people that are taking next steps and this is a great next step because it changes everything. When you say yes to Jesus, when you pause, get perspective and take it into the light, your life can be transformed and some of you, you're ready. So today, here's your next step. Take this. It's going to give you some really great next steps. Um, and I've already heard great stories from people I've talked to and testimony about that. Some of you are like, I don't know if I'm really there yet, but I mean I'm interested. I'll check it out. This is for you. I'm going to give this to you as a gift. I'll follow up with you. Go on a journey, figure out what next steps you're being invited to. You . Don't leave here without that. If you just need somebody to pray with you, we have people who love to pray with you at the front of the room. Um , thank you for your generosity and the impact that's making in the kingdom here locally and around the world. And if you're new with us, we'd love to see you again. It's going to be great. A couple of weeks, something awesome is going to happen. Make sure you're here for it. Um , and go see our new friends team. So let me send you off with this blessing. You can already probably guess what it is, maybe this week. Pause, gain perspective and see how we can be in his beautiful light. I love you also very much. See you next week.