In Need of Fresh Air

I'm starting a new series this week, and I think it's very good to talk about breathing again, okay? And in fact, why don't you do this with me real quick? One more time. Come on, everybody didn't participate. Come on.

Does that feel good? Get some good breath in your lungs, some fresh air. Maybe not so fresh in here. January is not the best fresh air season, is it? But there's something about getting breath in our lungs.

Just breathe, you know? Sometimes we just need to say, just stop and breathe, Leon. Just stop and breathe. And it changes things when we do that. In fact, in this culture, breathing exercises are real big.

Everybody's got breathing techniques and meditation and all these other stuff. Some are used good, some of them aren't so much, you know? But there's something about breathing in. Breathing in air. And sometimes we just need a breath of fresh air, right?

A breath of fresh air if we're feeling a little down, we're feeling a little stagnant maybe this season. And I've taught some of this in the past. Back in 2012, there was a book released by Chris Hodges of Church of the Highlands called Fresh Air. And I read that book, and it just really, really spoke to me and re-energized me. And I like to go back to that book, and you can look it up online.

It's called Fresh Air. And that talks a lot about different things. And I'm going to take it from my perspective and adopt some of his principles and kind of roll with that. But sometimes we just need to reset, to find out real meaning again. And all the craziest, we just got through Christmas, right?

Everything was busy. Everything was exciting. Everything was up. Everything was happening. And some of you have come into this year with a little bit of burnout.

Maybe you're feeling a little stagnant. Maybe you're spiritually in a slump right now. Maybe you're tired, and you need somebody to come in and breathe some air into you. You need God to come in and breathe some air into you. You need something to breathe some air into you, right?

You need to breathe again. And Paul starts out in 2 Timothy. I'm going to put a little water in me because my voice is about gone. Now, 2 Timothy 1.16, he gets visited by, there's this obscure verse.

You probably haven't read it. Maybe you have. But it's kind of thrown in here, and we don't really consider it. It says this, May the Lord bless Omnusiphorus and all his family because he invited me and encouraged me often. His visit revived me like a breath of fresh air.

Have you ever had somebody that just revived you with a breath of fresh air just by one word or one saying? Maybe you had the opposite effect. Somebody said something right before you were encouraged and after they said that, it took the air out of you, right? Maybe that's not the person you need to be speaking to. But he talks about this person who spoke these things.

That word revived is interesting because in Greek it means to put breath back into. It's like CPR. Literally CPR brought me back to life. Apparently Paul was feeling down. Guess what?

Paul was a giant in the Bible and he was feeling down from time to time. He was feeling spiritually stagnant. We're talking about Paul here and he was having a hard time. Guess what? You're not alone.

Spiritual giants face the same thing. But this man came into his life and he was revived. And my hope for this series is that you are revived. That you can take this message and the messages that follow and it just breathes air. We all need God to breathe air into us again in a season maybe we need to be breathed into.

Now, y'all have heard the phrase doldrums, right? You've heard the phrase doldrums. I'm in a doldrum. We're in doldrums. It's kind of a phrase that we use often when we feel like there's no wind, where there's no air in our lives.

You know, we just feel like everything's taken about. I'm just in the doldrums right now. I'm just not going anywhere. And everybody kind of feels that expression from time to time. Maybe you've said it recently.

But the doldrums is literally and most of you probably know that because you're smart people and you study history and things like that. But at one time, ships had sails on them, right? We all know that. Nowadays, you have engines powering your ships. Those of you in the Navy know that well.

You work on them all the time. But back then, you didn't have engines in your ships. So everything was about wind. It was about sails. And there was this area called the Intertropical Convergence Zone.

It's still there today. It's always going to be there. It's where the two hemispheres come together and it cancels out the wind. So the wind comes in, wind comes out, and there's no wind in this particular part. Any time a ship would sail into this area, it was trouble for them because there was no wind to put in their sails.

And a lot of people would become stagnant. They would stop there. There was no way to get information out because you didn't have radios back then. And a lot of people would die there. They would die in that place.

And for many of us, we may feel like we're in a place right now, if we don't get out, we're going to die. We're just depleted. Maybe it's your marriage. Remember when you first got married and how exciting it was? And maybe you're going through year after year after year and you just can't stand each other anymore.

And you're just trying to figure out how to get through it. Maybe that's where you are. Maybe it's your job. Maybe another. Maybe another time lasts time.

You started your job and you were super excited about that. It was like energizing and fun and it was new and now you're kind of in a place you haven't gotten an advancement in a while or you're trying to figure out your next steps and you just feel kind of stuck. You feel dry. You feel stuck. You know, where do I go with this?

Maybe it's God. Even with God. We started on fire with God. Oh my goodness. God is so real.

He's done this miraculous thing and I love new Christians because they're so excited about Jesus. But there's going to be times where we're not going to be so excited. There's going to be times where it gets dry. This happens to spiritual leaders all the time. I talk to pastors.

This happened to me. There's times where you just don't feel God and you're like, where are you God? I'm tired and I can't feel you right now. I want to experience you. There are times when we all feel that way.

And what we do in those times is you do number one, you fake it. You start faking it. We walk around. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

But deep down inside, we're not anywhere. Deep down inside, we just don't feel hallelujah. Praise the Lord at all. We don't want anyone to see us though because we're tough, right? Or maybe that's not what Christians are supposed to feel like.

So maybe I just go along with it. Somebody says, hey, how are you going? You're like, I'm fine. I'm fine. We all do that, right?

We're not really fine though. We're polite. We're being polite. I'm a southerner. So, you know, our response is supposed to be, I'm fine.

You know, I'm fine. Because you don't want to burden people with things, but you're really not fine. So we fake it. In fact, in Jeremiah 6, 14, it says, they dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious. Talking about spiritual leaders.

They were trying to fix them and help them. And they were those leaders that say, I'll pray for you, but never prayed for you, you know? Like, I'll pray for you about that. But the last part of this verse, it says, and peace, peace, they say, talking about the people, when there is no peace. They say there's peace.

Everything's good, but there's no peace. And then what we do, we not only fake it, but we put it off. We dismiss it. We ignore it. And it just builds from there.

And when we ignore it, we think it's going to heal on its own, but it doesn't. It doesn't heal on its own. It doesn't get better when we just ignore it. It doesn't really make a difference. And then we wait until we completely collapse.

You know, we don't deal with it when the time comes, and then we just fall apart, you know? And then it's almost too late at that point because you're just in a mess. And Scripture says it's like a bitter root. In fact, Hebrews 12, 15 says, See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble or defile many. And interestingly, it ends with defile many because it doesn't hurt just you.

It hurts everybody. Around you, instead of leaning on the grace of God, we try to heal things on our own, and as a result, it doesn't help at all. And then, you know when somebody walks into the room and you know they're not in a good place, and then you feel it, and everybody else feels it? That's what I mean. When you get bitterness in your heart, whatever that might be.

And the interesting thing is, when you're in this stage and you put it off and it grows, and it becomes bitter, you start giving up. The third part is, you start giving up. Have you ever been there? I just give up. I'm done.

I've been there. I've been there with the church, to be honest. I'm done. I don't know if I can do this anymore. I can't do this life anymore.

I can't do this thing anymore that you called me to, Lord. It's just too tough. And I've seen this happen over and over again. I've watched people. I've watched even pastors.

They're just really, really hard places, spiritual leaders as well, where you just get to a place where you just want to give up. You want to give up. Some people want to give up on their marriage. I'm just done. I can't do this anymore.

It's not working. I give up on my marriage. Or maybe you give up on that job. You're like, I just don't want to do it. Sometimes it's church.

You just give up on church. And here's the interesting thing. When you give up and you start building that give up, you don't deal with it, then you start blaming everybody else because you can't figure out why nothing's happening inside of me because you've been doing all the right things. You've been going to church. You've been reading your Bible.

You've been praying. And what I've watched when people are going through this cycle, when they're in the doldrums and they're really needing to be empowered by God, they start blaming everyone around them for the reason they are where they are when it's really them. And they're trying to figure it out. Like, okay, I'll blame this person in church. I'll blame this thing.

And I get it all the time. I mean, that's just part of the job. If they can't find anything, oh, it must be the pastor. It must be that. You know, he's not feeding me enough.

He's not giving me enough. And we think that that's the process you're supposed to go through, the find fulfillment. But we give up. And Job did that. He said, where then is my hope?

Who can see any hope for me? Spiritual giant, the Bible, Job, he went through more than any of us. And he said, where's my hope? We know the ending of the story, but he was at a place where he was desperate. He was hurting.

It was deep. And we blame others, and we get angry. Two things, we get angry sometimes. We get depressed. And then the fourth place that we never want to get to is that place where we die.

Maybe not literally die, but we die emotionally. We die spiritually. We die morally. Sometimes it's even physical. Some people make decisions that they can never return from.

It's very sad. We go to places where we just feel like we die and we do everything we can to try to smooth it over, try to numb the pain or whatever it is when we're in this place, we drink it, smoke it, shoot it up, sleep with it, whatever we can do to numb that pain, that emptiness that we're feeling in those dry, dulls and seasons. And Paul said it best in 2 Corinthians when he said, we were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure. He was in ministry, he was working hard and there was a lot of pressure and they lost a lot so that we despaired even of life, even of life itself. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.

Paul was there too. Paul was at a place where he needed a breath of fresh air. But let me tell you, God wants to give you a breath of fresh air. What we need is the breath of God in us. We need God to fill our lives and this intangible force that refuels the soul, it gets us going, it puts wind back in our sails and we need God.

We need God to do that for us. But the question is how? The obvious question is, how do we do that? I'm glad you asked that because we're going to talk about that for a minute. And we're going to talk about a choice.

There's a choice. And there's always a choice. There was a choice in the very beginning. There's a choice now. Because that's where the problem really lies, is that we've made a choice.

And here's the choice that we've made. We've chose to manufacture artificial external energy to fill the emptiness. We've done more. We've read the Bible more. We've prayed more.

We're trying to earn brownie points with God. I'm going to serve more. And although all those things are great things, they don't fill what you really need in your heart. You cannot enjoy those things if you don't have what you need first. We do this with God all the time, right?

God, I'm reading my Bible. I'm going to church. I'm doing outreach. I'm doing everything I can do, God. I'm doing everything I can do.

And I'm still not feeling you. I don't understand this. Why is that? Because we're practicing behavior modification. Behavior modification.

And that's not what the gospel is all about. It's not about behavior modification. Think about your kids for a minute if you have kids or you're raising kids. What do we do with kids often? We tell them what they are to do and what they're not to do, right?

It's called behavior modification. And a lot of the reasons we go wrong with parenting, and when our kids get older and they steer away from God or... Is that a fly in here? There's something in here. It's a bumblebee.

Okay. Devil, get away from me. The reason that we go wrong with raising kids is because we're practicing do's and don'ts rather than something internally that's supposed to happen. And as Christian parents, we instead of focusing on, you know, how to help our children learn to love God and learn to have a relationship with God, we tell them, don't do that. Don't.

Do that. Don't do that. So we grow up thinking that's the way to God or that's the way to having a good life. So it's behavior modification, but the gospel isn't like that. It's a heart thing.

There's something internally that has to happen inside of us. There's something internally that has to shape out of us because out of that flows life. But if we practice the do's and don'ts all the time, we'll never add up. And Christianity will be terribly miserable if we focus on what I need to do, how I need to do it, and what gets God going. It's basically what we do.

Like, how can I earn God's favor? And there's a choice we have to make. There's this constant tension, constant tension between the do's and don'ts of this area and internal transformation, because that's what the gospel is about. It's about internal transformation. It's about being renewed from the inside out.

And we're dealing with that internal transformation versus external forces to control sinful behavior. And what happens is we always gravitate towards that, and we see that in Genesis. We see that happen in Genesis. And there were two trees. A lot of you know the tree, they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the bitter fruit or whatever you want, or the fruit of sin.

A lot of you have seen Genesis and that particular situation happen. But if you don't know, and I'm sure you do know because you're smart people and you read your Bible, there were two trees. There was the tree of life, and then there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gave Adam and Eve a choice. And here's what it says in Genesis 2, 9.

It says, in the middle of the garden were the tree of life, there you go, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then in verse 16, it says, the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, including the tree of life, which is really the area they needed to partake of. But you must not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will surely die. See, what they didn't know is that God was actually protecting them because they didn't have information about evil at this point. They didn't know good and bad.

They only knew good. They only knew God, in fact. All they knew was God. God. His presence and everything.

But the serpent obviously comes into the garden, tempts them, and says you can be like God. And guess what? When they did that, they did get a piece of God. Because God knew evil. But He didn't choose, He didn't want them, rather, to experience evil.

He didn't want them to know evil. But from that day forward came the problem. That from there on, throughout history until now, there's always going to be this constant struggle with the two different trees. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where I make a choice for that tree. Or the tree of life.

And Deuteronomy said it like this, chapter 30, verse 19. This day, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you a life and death. And how does He end that? Blessings and curses. Now choose life.

Now choose life. God has set two choices before us. And He asks us to choose life. So here's what I can do. Here's the two trees, okay?

The first point I want to make is I can do more, or I can receive what has been done. I can do more. I can continue the tree of knowledge of good and evil says I can do more. I can do more. I can pray more.

I can read my Bible more. I can give more. I can serve more. I can do all those things. And that's what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil says.

That's what we've been conditioned to do as a society, right? Is to do. We've got to do good. We've got to do good. But you will never feel fulfilled.

Or you can receive. This is it. You can receive what our loving Savior has already done for us. Here's what John said. John said, you diligently study Scripture because you think that by them you possess eternal life.

This was what Jesus was saying. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, saying, you know, they're good. They testify about me. They're the story of me. They tell you who I am, but yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

So you've put all your effort into understanding the Scriptures, Pharisees. You know all the rules. You know all the obligations. You know all the duties. But you do not know the one who truly gives life.

Because you can't work that way. You can't work from the other side. It only happens from the inside out. And the goal of Christianity isn't to learn and memorize all the Bible. The goal of Christianity is to know the person of Jesus Christ.

The person who saves your soul. The person who loves you. That's the goal of Christianity. To know Him more. To experience Him.

Not just know about Him, but to experience Him from the inside out. Second thing is we can try to earn God's approval. I've got to get... God, I've got to make this... Decisions so that God can love me.

We think that God's like this cosmic kindergarten teacher and the task's up on the board there and, you know, you remember little golden stars in kindergarten class? Did y'all have that or was it just me? You know, you got like a number of stars, you got a treat by the end of the week. That's how we see God. So many people see God like that, that God is just looking at them saying, you're doing wrong and you're doing right.

You've got this number. I'm pleased with you today, but that's not, that's what people think. But God, God, listen, God knows every sin that you ever committed and still likes you. If you're living in sin right now, guess what? He still loves you.

He still likes you. He still likes you. I mean, he went after Adam, remember? Adam was running from him, hiding from him because of his sin. Guess what Jesus, or God was doing rather.

God was walking through the garden and he was looking, where Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? Why are you running away from me? Why are you hiding, Adam?

Come to me. This is what Romans 5.8 says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners. Remember that. We were still sinners.

He died for us when we were still sinners. Christ died for us when we were still sinners. We receive God's love or we obey him out of duty. We receive God's love or we obey him out of duty. See, here's the deal.

If you obey him out of duty, you're never going to enjoy serving him. I'm just going to be honest. I remember growing up, going to church, every Sunday, two times on Sunday. How many of you are Sunday morning, Sunday night people? You remember those days?

Wednesday night as well. You know, you had your three days a week. I mean, every time the church door opened, you were in church, okay? That was just part of it. We just thought that was an obligation.

That was a duty. That's what I thought. But I never enjoyed it. Why? Because I thought it was a duty.

I thought it was some kind of thing that you had to do to earn God's favor. This is what we do as Christians. It wasn't enjoyable. In fact, you know, you go to church and all you would hear about in your Sunday school class or among, you know, whatever is what to do and what to not do. This is what you should do and what you should not do, you know?

And well-meaning, and there's important information in that, but when I started from that standpoint, it just wasn't enjoyable. And there was a lot of people in the church it wasn't enjoyable for either because Sister Susie was over there like, praise God. Amen. Praise Jesus. She had the most sour face in the church.

There's a lot of mean people in the church. Let's just be honest. You know, they're just sour and they're not enjoying church. They don't enjoy it because they've made it out of duty. Out of duty.

Out of duty, they've approached God. Hearing the teachings, praying for hours, reading, you know, reading the Bible all the way through. None of that. If you do that out of duty, it's not enjoyable. It's not enjoyable at all.

Thank you. And it makes it really hard. You can't do it. I can't do it. You can't do it.

None of us can do it. None of us can work hard enough. None of us can serve in church hard enough. None of us can read the Bible hard enough. We just get drained.

We get depleted because we start from the external when we need to go to the internal. So I can either do it out of duty or I can do it out of delight. That's my third point. We can hit that tree. We need to obey Him out of duty or we obey Him out of delight.

Delight. John 14, 15 says it. This is it right here. You see both trees in this one scripture. This is the choice you need to make because some of us live on one side of this comma and some of us live on the other side.

John 14, 15. If you love me, you will obey what I command. If you love me, you obey what I command. Now all of us look at that. That's a wonderful scripture.

And every bit of it's true. But it depends on what side we're sitting on that determines how we see this scripture. And some of you are on the right side of the scripture. The right hand side, that is. You will obey what I command if you love me.

If you really love me, you would obey me. If you really love me, you'll work harder. If you really love me, you'll do this. You'll do this with everything that's in you. You will work super, super, super, super hard and never get anywhere.

But others of you, this is where we need to be. We need to be on the other side of it. If you love me. See, what God is saying is, if you love me, if you really love me, if you love me, obeying me is not a problem. Doing what I've called you to do is not a problem.

Serving is not a problem. Reading your Bible is not a problem. Praying is not a problem. All that is enjoyment when you love me. When it starts there with, you love me, there you go.

And I love the example of marriage when we see this. Because the thing about marriage, after you've been married for a while, it can become duty. You feel like it's duty and you need to earn love. And, you know, there's this example of, if you know the show Fiddler on the Roof. We got any Fiddler on the Roof fans?

There's this beautiful scene. I don't know if it's beautiful or not, but it's very inspiring. And it kind of shows, to me, it shows the love of God. If you don't know the show or the play, there's this Russian Jewish guy from the early 1900s. He has five daughters and the tradition was you picked, you had a matchmaker.

That's where you get matchmaker and matchmaker. You know, you got that song, and you got the matchmaker to come into town, and they would match you with somebody. That was the duty of the father to make sure to pick the man for the woman. Well, the daughter finds somebody else, and she falls in love with him, and he's just struggling with that. Tradition!

You know, it's like tradition, and there's this whole song about tradition, and why we do it, and this and that. But there's this one scene where he starts thinking and analyzing, wait a minute, my wife was picked for me. Does she really love me? And although I'd love to sing you the song, I'm going to play it for you. How about that?

Love. Do you love me? Do I what? Do you love me? Do I love you?

Well, with our daughters getting married, and there's trouble in the town. You're upset. You're worn out. Go inside. Go lie down.

Maybe it's indigestion. Uh, no, Golda, I'm asking you a question. Do you love me? You're a fool. I know.

But do you love me? Do I love you? Well... For 25 years, I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow. After 25 years, why talk about love right now?

The first time I met you was on our wedding day. I was scared. I was shy. I was nervous. So was I.

But my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other. And now I'm asking, Golda, do you love me? I'm your wife. I know. Do I love him?

For 25 years, I've lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. 25 years, my bed is his. If that's not love, what is? Then you love. I suppose I do.

I suppose I love you, too. Change a thing. But even so. 25 years. And that's that's the question guys when you look at this scene I see God all in it and what God is asking each of us is do you love me well I go to church I pray I read my Bible and I serve today you know we're singing that and God's like no no no no do you love me all that's okay I know you care about that but do you love me well you know I I stayed married I what you got your commandments down and blah blah blah and yada yada no no no no I'm asking you do you do you love me the first breathing principle you need to know is that you need to fall in love with Jesus real Jesus fall in love with the real Jesus give him your life give him your I mean let him it's a relationship see this is where it goes this is what the gospel is all about God's like do you love me I gave my life for you I gave my son for you you can't go anywhere until you get that part right first do you love Jesus let's pray father we allow your Holy Spirit Holy Spirit of the living God to just take your place right now I hear your voice I hear your voice saying do you love me do you love me do you love me speaking to hearts today do you love me we have a choice what is that choice Lord our choice is perhaps those of us who are believers and who have been following you for 25 years or more doing the work we want to return back to the simple message of your heart God for us that your son Jesus was enough I don't have to live I don't have to live I don't have to live but I can enjoy you Jesus I can enjoy your presence I can enjoy serving you I can enjoy doing all the things that I do in your service because I love you so Lord revive our hearts revive our lives today God I pray that for everyone in our church Lord under the sound of my A voice that needs a breath of fresh air that you would just return to breathe it back into them, Jesus, just like you did, Father, when you breathed the breath of life into Adam.

Breathe it back into us, Lord, in the name of Jesus. And those who don't know you, perhaps those that don't know you, maybe you're here today with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, maybe you've never given the one who loved you and loves you, even in your sin, even when you're removed from him, even when you're separated from him. He loves you now and he's speaking to you. Will you come and make home with me? Let me come into your heart and have a relationship.

If that's you today, is there anybody here that just gently raise your hand and just say, I want Jesus. I want Jesus. Amen. I want Jesus. Amen.

I want Jesus. I want Jesus. I want him to be my all and all. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Put your hands down and pray this, Father. I may have gotten it wrong for a long time. I may have thought it was about how much I did and I shouldn't do. But today I release in the freedom of the tree of life. I take from the fruit of the tree today and I commit my life to you.

I give my love and my devotion to you today, Lord. Come into my life. Forgive me of my sin. Make me like you. I ask this in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Amen.