This summer, we have been studying the questions Jesus asked in Scripture. More than studying them, we are trying to personalize them for ourselves. We called this series The Simple Questions of Jesus because so many of these questions are simple to hear, but we are learning that “simple” doesn’t mean easy. It’s one thing to hear or read a simple question, but it’s not so simple to answer them for ourselves! But it is so good and helpful for us to slow down, get honest, and challenge ourselves to answer these questions of Jesus. Today, we begin a discussion on one of the most important questions to wrestle with in our time on this Earth. This question from Jesus is so big that I plan to spend my next few Sundays with you, working our way through just a few of the challenges we face in this as people. I have been stuck on this question lately, and believe it may be the most important question to answer in life. While it may be the most important, it may also be the hardest to see and process with a world that pushes against it in every way.
Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? NLT
Let’s talk about culture and the world we live in today before we dive into this essential question from Jesus. We live in a world full of people who are struggling right now. People who are struggling emotionally, mentally, and relationally. People who are busy, stressed, and exhausted. People who struggle to connect and relate to each other more than ever in a time when we seem to have more ways to stay connected than ever before. We are seeing people walking in major inner turmoil and loneliness and struggling tremendously on the inside, even if they project everything to be okay on the outside. We are seeing people fall into depression and anxiety, with mental health cases rising by the day. We are seeing people struggle to work through the realities of life, like adversity and challenges. We are seeing people struggle to walk in personal relationships with others more and more, and we know part of God’s design is that we humans do life with other people. People are really struggling right now. What is interesting to me is that as we seem to struggle more and more in our inner worlds, we are also seeing a growing awareness of mental health and self-care. It’s like we know there is a problem! We know something isn’t right, and we are looking for ways to fix it! We have a growing openness and awareness of mental health. We have new terms for mental, emotional, and social issues coming out by the day. I mean, did we ever hear of a mental health day 10 – 15 years ago? We see commercials for mental health on TV, and more and more people seem aware that their inner world needs to be worked on and are trying at some level to do so. But, while we have this general heightened awareness of mental and emotional health issues…inner world issues, and while we see and acknowledge that we have a problem as a people and that we need to take care of our inner worlds, it is getting worse, not better. We are living in the days of a mental health crisis that is only growing. I recently read that the fastest-growing disease in the Western World is stress. There is a restlessness of our inner worlds that keeps growing. We keep trying to find a way to calm it, but it’s only getting worse. We are aware there is an issue. We are more aware than ever before of how important our inner worlds are and that we must care for them, but nothing we do seems to fix the problem. The turmoil and restlessness keep growing. So, the question must be asked. Are we missing something? The answer is YES! We are missing something, which is that we are profoundly spiritual beings. This makes me think of a powerful quote from St. Augustine. It’s a quote that I can’t get my mind off lately.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” St. Augustine
We know there is a problem, but our problems go deeper than a practical fix or remedy. We are spiritual beings with a soul, and many of our problems are profoundly spiritual. There is no irony in the fact that we are struggling internally more today than ever before, in a time when, as a people in this world, we are choosing to distance ourselves from God. We pull away from God. We ignore the fact that we are spiritual beings with a soul. It’s not ironic that we struggle and become more restless as we distance ourselves from God. We must care for our souls. Our soul is the source of our lives, and if we ignore it, it can also become the source of our pain. So many of us in life and this room today are going through it. We are struggling. We are restless. We are hurting, and we can’t seem to fix it. We keep trying, but nothing is working…and it won’t until we accept this truth. We are spiritual beings with a soul, and we will stay restless until we rest in Him. Jesus’ question is describing the world we live in today. We may gain the world, but we are losing our souls. This is so important yet often ignored as we plow through life, trying to fit in, be successful, and navigate life on this planet. We can look great, but we are struggling because we are valuing things of today and devaluing the thing that matters most.
Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? NLT
Is anything more important than your soul? The answer is no. The challenge is that we live in a world that wants you to answer that question with a yes. This is what we will dive into together over the next few Sundays that I’m with you. It’s a massive topic that I want to spend some time on with you. We will work through some of the major challenges we face in life and our struggles as people. We are looking at four ways we may gain the world yet lose our souls. This is not a complete list, but these are four of the biggest and most challenging issues we face. Now, as you read over this list, you may think, “Come on, Sam, I’m living some of these things out, and I’m ok.” Well, you may look successful or like you are doing well by the world’s standards, but it is at a cost. There is so much more for you when you understand that nothing is more important than your soul, and you choose to care for and invest in it. So, let’s look at the list together and talk.
Four Ways We May Gain The World But Lose Our Souls:
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- Disconnection From Your Heavenly Father
- Pursuing Our Desires over God’s Desires
- Never Rest, Never Stop, Never Slow Down (next two weeks)
- People – Isolate, Us vs Them Mindset, Peer Pressure, & Hurts(Labor Day)
This list is small but covers a lot of ground. We will spend some time each week on the first two, which should tell you how important they are. Over the next two weeks, we will focus on rest, and the next time I am with you, on people. That will give us the chance to look at the importance of community and relationships and how we deal with and respond to the peer pressures, hurts, and challenges of life with people. But we can’t start a conversation about the importance of our soul without talking about these first two.
The first way we may gain the world but lose our soul is by not connecting to our Heavenly Father.
Remember that quote from St. Augustine we read earlier?
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” St. Augustine
We have been made by God for God. We are spiritual beings with a deep need wired into us by God to be with Him. We need Him in our lives; we are nothing without Him. Yet, so often, we don’t choose to step into this most important connection and relationship. We don’t engage Him, pray, read our Scriptures, or worship Him. We may do the church thing, but we don’t prioritize God in our daily lives, and our souls are drying up; we are empty and restless, wondering why this ‘Christian thing’ isn’t working as well as we hear it can or think it should.
John 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. 5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. NLT
Nothing is more important than your soul. Your walk with God is the source of life for your soul, and without it, your soul dries up. You may look successful and good on the outside, but you know and can feel the price you are paying on the inside. If this is you and you aren’t choosing to connect to Your Heavenly Father, Jesus would ask the question.
Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? NLT
The second way we may gain the world but lose our soul is by pursuing our desires over God’s desires.
This one is interesting and hits us in different ways. God wired us with a deep desire for fulfillment in our lives. We are spiritual beings with a soul, and our souls crave and desire God. The problem is the cravings of the soul aren’t the only cravings we have. We also have human desires and fleshly cravings, and the two conflict, pulling us in opposite directions. Our souls crave and desire God.
Psalm 84:2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. NIV
The challenge is that, as humans, we also have other cravings and desires that conflict with the soul’s cravings for God. We often confuse or replace our soul’s craving for God with other things. We could call it our appetite or fleshly desires. We may not even realize we are doing this at times. Yes, we can be selfish and want to live for ourselves at times, but often, it’s an inability to identify what we truly need and understand that there is a difference between our fleshly desires and our deep need for fulfillment that can only come from God. This is why we pour into our relationship with God; our fulfillment is only found in Him. Check this out in Titus. It describes the human condition without God, and look at this concept of being bullied around by our glands…doesn’t that describe the human condition well?
Titus 3:3 It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. 4 But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, 5 he saved us from all that. MSG
We have desires deep inside us; the soul craves God. Yet, often, we feel or know that there is something missing in our lives. We just look in all the wrong places to fill that void. We look at what feels good or fulfills our flesh rather than what our soul truly craves. If we walk through life and starve our soul cravings while we do our best to find fulfillment in everything our human desires want, we may find some fun along the way…we may look great to people, but Jesus asks the question.
Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? NLT
The next two Sundays, we will focus on the third way we may gain the world and lose our souls, allowing us to focus on Rest.
So often, we struggle because of the pace of our lives and ignore God’s command and design for our lives to rest. We will dive into this by looking at three important ideas inside the concept of rest. We will look at the difference between rest and real rest, the kind that God talks about. We will dive into a study I found on rest that discusses the difference between “good tired” and “dangerously tired.” Then, we will look at the challenge of stopping and why we struggle to slow down and stop moving, producing, and working, which will point to a theme that builds throughout Scripture on trust and selfish living. This is so important and a major reason we struggle on the inside. We may be gaining the world, but we are losing our souls.
What is the difference between rest and real rest?
So many of us know that we need rest. We also know that God commanded us to rest. And we may think, I do rest! But we aren’t experiencing the kind of rest that can restore our souls. We rest, but we don’t feel rested. That is why it’s important to understand what this real rest is and where to find it. You may think, I spend a week at the beach or chill out watching Netflix at night. I have a hobby that I enjoy…I do things to rest. But isn’t it interesting that we do those things and never truly feel rested? Jesus talks about something important in Matthew 11: there is a distinction between what we often view as rest and real rest for our souls.
Matthew 11:28 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. 29 Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” MSG
We live in a world today that has made it normal to be overworked, stressed out, and exhausted and has made it wrong to slow down, rest, and be healthy. Do you think that is a strong statement? Well, think about the conversations you have with people. We don’t compete over who is the most rested and healthy, do we? We seem to compete over who is doing the most and who is the most tired and overworked. Somehow, it has become a badge of honor to be tired, worn out, and super busy, and it is causing a lot of damage. We wonder why we can’t see or think straight, struggle internally, and see stress now being called the fastest-growing disease in the Western world. We live at a speed that we can’t sustain, and our souls are drying up as we exhaust ourselves with work, connectivity, and constant activity. Somehow, this has become a good thing in our culture today…so even if we aren’t tired and exhausted, we need people to think we are! Think about that! We place our hearts, minds, and bodies in a constant state of fast-forward. We know we are tired, and we know we need rest, but we must understand how to experience rest. Real rest…the kind that Jesus is welcoming us into, the kind that can restore our souls. This is the first thing we must understand. There is a difference between rest and this real rest Jesus speaks of. So, how we define rest is very important. Think with me now. Get personal here. How do you define rest? What is it? What does it look like? What is this real rest that Jesus talks about that can allow us to recover our lives and learn to live freely and lightly? We would all say, sign me up for that free and light way of living, but more often than not, our answer to finding refreshment and restoring our soul leads us away from the real rest Jesus wants us to experience. For many of us, when we think of rest, we will picture that week or two a year we get off work. We take a week off work and drive or fly to the beach or some vacation, but let’s be real. Do you come back rested and replenished? No, we seem to need a week to recover from that rest week! We come back more tired than we were when we left! Some of us may think of rest and point to a hobby we enjoy and have fun with, but that doesn’t seem to do it either. Some of us may binge-watch Netflix or other shows at night to disconnect a bit from reality, but that doesn’t seem to do it either. Some of us medicate ourselves, looking for relaxation, turning to alcohol or some substance to take that edge off, but the reality is, even if we find moments where the stress and noise of life ease up on us, it’s just a moment, and then it’s right back into the realities of life. It’s not fitting the concept of real rest that restores our souls. So, think this through: what do you turn to for rest? The follow-up question is this. Has that ever really allowed you to find real rest for your soul? Jesus is giving us the key to real rest here…the kind that can make a difference in our lives and our souls. So, before we move on, think about this: do you truly rest? Do you find real rest that recovers your life? Do you live freely and lightly? Are you experiencing the unforced rhythms of grace? Jesus explains that real rest is found in Him. It is not found in the dream vacation. It is not found in a bottle or substance. It is not found in the hobbies you enjoy or binge-watching TV. Jesus says, if you are tired, come to Him. Get away with Him. Watch how He does it, and He will show you how to take a real rest. There is a difference between rest and real rest, which can restore our souls. Once we understand that, we engage it rather than continue to live exhausted lives completely drying up on the inside. Jesus asks…
Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? NLT
Good Tired vs Dangerously Tired.
We just looked at the concept of real rest, which can help us recover our souls. It’s interesting because, as Christians, we are familiar with Jesus’ words. We have read those famous words from Jesus. But, even if we aren’t Christian or we are Christian but don’t engage the Scriptures (that’s another sermon for another day), we do understand that we need rest to be our best selves and for health. We know it, but we continue to plow through life tired and exhausted. I came across a study by Ruth Haley Barton on the difference between “good tired” and “dangerously tired.” There is a big difference between the two.
Good Tired – is when we put in a good day’s work, go home to relax and recover, and then return rested and ready for the new day. This is inside of God’s design; we work and rest.
Dangerously Tired – is when we push too hard for too long. Dangerously tired is when we never seem to recover.
According to Ruth, symptoms of being dangerously tired include irritability, getting stuck in anger or sadness, and pursuing escapist behaviors like binge-watching shows or drinking too much. When you are dangerously tired, you lack the ability to rest even when you have space for rest. You become very negative, or a deep inner restlessness takes over your life, and you may not even be able to take care of basic human needs like showering or making appointments, and the fear that, if you let yourself cry or scream, or fight…you might not stop.
Do you read those symptoms and realize some may describe you? You know it’s wild, but for some reason, we have made it a badge of honor to be empty and dangerously tired. But this isn’t what God desires for us. Not only was that not what God desired or designed for us, but think about that mindset that somehow it’s normal to live a dangerously tired life, and it looks lazy or crazy for someone to be healthy, refreshed, and peaceful. So, if you are reading this today and you are living a hurried, rushed, dangerously tired life, you know what the answer is…it’s that real rest, the kind that restores your soul. You won’t find that in a bottle; it’s not found in binging Netflix, and it’s not even found on your next dream vacation. You know where real rest is found, where you need to spend your time, and with Whom. The question then becomes, why aren’t you doing it? You need to personalize this question today. Why aren’t you willing or open to engaging in this real rest that can restore your soul? It’s amazing that we walk through life exhausted and unwilling to come to Him to find rest for our souls. We refuse to do what He asks while being sucked into this weird contest of seeing who can be the most dangerously tired, and we wonder why we struggle with our inner worlds today. Listen to God speaking through the prophet Isaiah here.
Isaiah 30:15 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it. NLT
Let’s go back to those symptoms of being dangerously tired. Do you read them and realize they describe how you’ve been feeling? You know it’s wild, but for some reason, we have made it a badge of honor to be empty and dangerously tired, but that isn’t what God desires for us. So, personalize this today. If you are dangerously tired, deep down, you know what you need! It’s that real rest that Jesus says we will find as we come to Him. The question is not if we know we need rest. We know we need it. The real question is, are you willing to do it? So, are you? If you are great, but if not, there is an important follow-up there. Why aren’t you willing to stop, slow down, and engage in this real rest? If you feel weak and dangerously tired, your strength will come in settling down in complete dependence on God. It’s found in quieting all the noise and coming to Him! If you feel burnt out, empty, and dangerously tired, it’s time to realize the only way through life is a deep connection to our Heavenly Father. It’s not a badge of honor to be stressed and exhausted. Those aren’t positives. They are signs that you, a child of God, live outside God’s design for you! My encouragement for you today is to make some new choices. Listen to God’s Word and find time each day to unplug from this world and engage Him! In a recent podcast episode, I used this quote and really like it.
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…Including you.” Anne Lamott
I love that quote, and it is so true! But I would add something to it. It’s more than just unplugging and then plugging back into life. We are spiritual beings with a soul. We are created by God to be with God. So, taking a week off work or shutting the phone off for an hour is an awesome decision, but we must not only unplug from this world, but we must also plug into our relationship with God…that is when we will find real rest for our soul…in that personal connection to Him. That is when we lose the restlessness we can never seem to calm down in our inner worlds. There is a reason we are struggling in this world today. There is a reason we walk through life tired and worn out, burnt out on religion. There is a reason the world around us has made it normal or good to be dangerously tired, overworked, stressed out, and crazy or weird for us to be healthy and rested. There is a reason we see people searching for solutions to this deep inner restlessness we all face. We turn to vacations, escapism, material possessions, science, and research, and nothing is working…and nothing will because we ignore the soul. We need to find this real rest that Jesus is welcoming us into. If you are dangerously tired, it’s time to remember we are spiritual beings with a soul created by God for God, and until we come to Him, we will continue to struggle. We may look good to people here in this world. We may get a lot done, but Jesus would ask,
“What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?”
Next week, we will continue to wrestle with this question, looking at why it is so hard to stop working, stop moving, and engage in this real rest and the key to us finally being able to do so.