Counter-Punch Apathy

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- [speaking foreign language], Crossroads.

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I think I said that right, Andy.

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- We have no way of knowing.

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That's welcome to Crossroads in Serbian.

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Hey, we actually had our first Anywhere Community member

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join all the way from Eastern Europe.

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Nikola, so great to have you from Serbia.

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Crossroads is a church, some of us meet

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in buildings like this one in cities all over,

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but so many of us meet online and in homes,

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bars, dorms, cafes all over the globe

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as part of our Anywhere Community.

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So great to have you guys.

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- We are excited because we've got a message

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from our very own Hannah Driskill,

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and we've got awesome things to share with you

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about the life of the church and what's going on.

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But first, we're going to start with some worship.

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So glad you're here.

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Go ahead and stand or stay right where you are

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and let's get going.

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- All right. We're going to start by singing

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of the joy that we believe God's given us. Sing with me.

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- No matter what I face --

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- Sing it out.

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- Why don't you guys pray with me?

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God, we're so thankful.

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Thankful that You want to show up

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in our lives in bigger ways.

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And, God, we just ask that the words of that song

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would be truer and truer for us

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throughout the rest of our time, throughout our week

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that we would want more of You and we'd see You show up. Amen.

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Man, you can see behind me, we've got

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our community pastor from our Oakley campus

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where we're standing right now

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talking about some things going on with his community.

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I want to share with you about some that are happening

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with our online and Anywhere Community.

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So glad that you guys are here.

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- Hey, uh, by the way, can we just take a second

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to thank the crossroads music team.

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I mean, so incredible.

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And, you know, they don't just lead worship on weekends.

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They write this stuff. - Yes.

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- In fact, the last song that we just heard,

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Where You're Wanted, just released this weekend.

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And so we want to encourage you to check it out

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wherever you stream music on the app, Apple Music, Spotify.

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I don't know where you can stream music these days,

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but you can check it out there for sure.

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- That's right, and as the perfect articulation,

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like, the whole reason our church exists

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to help people experience more of God,

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and we got to see that in a huge way

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with 1200 women at the Ignite Conference.

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A two day conference designed, LED and for Crossroads women.

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It was incredible.

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You might have been at the conference and be like,

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"I want more. What's next for me?"

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Or you might just be a woman wondering, "Man,

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is there someone who could invest in me

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or someone that I can sort of share my life experience

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and the things God's done in my life with?"

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We've got mentoring for Crossroads women.

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You can get all the details at Crossroads.net/women.

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Now all the good stuff that happens around here

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happens as a result of people's generosity and faithfulness.

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And not to put you on the spot,

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although I'm 1,000,000,000% going to.

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We were chatting before this, and he shared

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a little bit of his story around being brand new

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around here and giving.

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I just want you to share that with these guys.

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- Look, four years ago on this very stage,

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my wife Scarlett, and I heard that if we want more of God,

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we ought to invite God into more of our lives.

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And so we decided to do that by inviting Him into our finances.

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And, Andy, after 15 years of apartment hopping

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and my wife being here for just six years, Scarlett,

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we just bought our first house a couple months ago

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and God showed up, Andy.

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And we believe he can show up for you too.

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If you want to find out more about giving

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here at Crossroads, please go to crossroads.net.

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- That's right. Love it.

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Now we're in a series called Stand Firm.

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We're looking at the idea that we are in a battle,

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but that we're not fighting alone.

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- Ring Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen.

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- The fight isn't won out there in the spotlight.

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It's in the shadows.

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- Ring Announcer: The fight of our lives.

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- When the time comes, you don't rise to the moment,

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you fall to the level of your training.

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- Ring Announcer: Six rounds, each different opponent.

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- To defeat your opponent you need to know your opponent.

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Your opponent wants you to be hollow.

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RING ANNOUNCER: Round five. Stand firm against apathy.

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Let the fight begin.

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- Good morning, everybody.

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I'm Hannah Driskill

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and so excited to be with you all today.

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Thank you for having me.

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We've been in this series called Stand Firm

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where we are just addressing that we have an enemy

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whose sole purpose is to try to take us out.

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And so we're going to talk a little bit about

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how we stand firm against that. Let me pray for us.

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God, thank You so much for everything that You are doing.

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Thank You for how You have chosen to make

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this place a place where You dwell.

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Wherever people are on the spectrum of knowing You

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or not knowing you, or curious about You

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or seeking you, God, would you just meet us here?

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Help me to be helpful and clear and dynamic and fun.

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In Jesus's name, Amen.

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And we are going to have fun today.

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So our Lead Pastor, if it's your first week here

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or if you remember last week, our Lead Pastor,

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he talked to us about this tactic that the enemy uses

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to appear like this giant lion.

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He roars like a lion because he is fear.

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He tries to use fear and anxiety to take us out.

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You know, if fear and anxiety is on one end of the spectrum,

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today we're talking about the other end of the spectrum,

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which is I feel so tightly wound or I feel nothing.

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And you know what?

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I gotta follow the example of my Lead Pastor

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when he was talking last week, he said that

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if we have fears, we just need to address them.

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So today together, we're just going to address

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some of Hannah's fears.

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That's what we're going to do on stage.

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I recently learned about this phobia

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that has not been officially accepted by the CDC as a phobia.

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But it is real, you guys, because I have it.

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It's called trypophobia, and it is

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the fear of small, tiny like bumps and holes,

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basically things that are clustered together.

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So let me give you an example. I detest tree bark.

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Like when people go on walks and they are looking,

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"Look how beautiful the forest is,"

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I'm doing my best to like speed past,

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because I'm actually not interested

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in staring at the tree bark.

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And that sounds a little crazy

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because this is an irrational fear. It is.

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And so one of the ways it showed up a little irrationally

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for me was I just recently discovered

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that I shall never put in my body a sesame seed bagel.

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Y'all who out there eating them,

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y'all are crazy. Y'all are sick.

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And you're like, "Why you pointing fingers?"

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Because I recently was staring at that thing

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and I realized it looks like tiny baby maggot food,

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like, sitting on the top of bread.

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All those seeds, it's all clustered together.

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Like, what's weird about it, though, is

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if you put a little sesame seeds nice and spread out,

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I can stomach it, but just put them together all in one,

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my gosh, the gag reflex is truly working.

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I'm not. I wish I was joking.

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The last thing,

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I don't understand how y'all eat Dippin Dots.

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Like, those tiny holes.

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First of all, ice cream was already perfect

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and they ruined it by giving it a pattern.

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Nobody asked for that.

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Yes, thank you. Nobody wants that.

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And then this one's actually not trypophobia,

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but it does garner and elicit

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just ridiculous emotional response from me.

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If you want to see me hot, you want to see me mad,

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make my food touch on my plate. I'm sorry.

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I'm really -- Listen, I'm sorry.

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I know that someone in the back is like,

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"Hannah, it's all going to the same place."

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I just want to invite you to believe with me today

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that it should all start in a different place.

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You know what I mean?

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Like, I want -- I don't want the peas touching the potatoes. No.

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PB&J is fine, that's about it.

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But this idea is not about today my pet peeves,

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it's not about my emotional responses

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and how inappropriate they are, and ill timed

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because I will gag at a sesame seed bagel.

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Please don't try me. Please don't.

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Today is not about that.

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Today is about what happens

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when we actually can't place our emotions in a way

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when we should be responding to stuff and we sort of just can't.

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And that is apathy.

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That's when we get this slow over time erosion

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tells us we aren't responding when we're supposed to.

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The way that apathy is described

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by the National Institute of Health

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is a state characterized by a lack of interest,

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enthusiasm, or concern for things

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that are usually engaging or important.

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It can involve a feeling of indifference,

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a reduced emotional response,

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and a diminished motivation to engage.

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And this is the chosen tactic of our enemy.

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Because you know what?

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Guess what the easiest way to get people

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who have said they maybe are interested in God

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or want to follow God not to do anything that's like God

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is to just make them not feel an emotional response

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to anything that they should.

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And, you know, this is a personal experience for me.

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This is not something that I was just dreaming up,

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like, what do people need?

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I can just preach at them and teach them because I'm so smart.

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No, this is something that God

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really brought to the forefront in my own life.

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I have a bunch of siblings.

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I have seven brothers and sisters.

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And I grew up in a house where one personality

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was just bigger than the next, you know?

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In fact, my husband's first time coming to Christmas,

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he thought I was a lot.

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And then he was like, "Yo, it's seven of y'all.

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That's -- it's just a lot happening."

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And so emotional response is normal for us

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to have big, big outbursts.

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But I'll tell you a time where I didn't have

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a big outburst with my sister.

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Sam is probably, she and I are the closest in my family in age.

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We're 14 months apart and Sam is a teacher,

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so shout out to all the teachers.

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It is, yes, give it up for them.

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It's typical for Sam and I to talk pretty much every day.

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If you don't have a sibling or a best friend

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or anyone in your life who you talk to that much,

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you're like, what do you have to say?

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We don't have that much to say.

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We just like each other.

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And so it's typical for Sam and I to connect

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pretty much every day.

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And so this particular day, it wasn't uncommon

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that Sam had texted me, except that I didn't see it

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immediately because it was, I believe, a Monday morning

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and I was on prayer.

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And I worked full time at Crossroads

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and so we pray together as a team.

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And this particular day, I was on Zoom.

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And if I'm being honest, when you're on Zoom,

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you're just a touch distracted.

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And so I think I was still getting dressed,

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I think I was still getting ready.

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I think I was walking out the door,

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getting ready to drive in

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and catch the last part of prayer in person.

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And I got this text from Sam.

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And so I didn't look at it immediately.

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But when I did, I realized it was actually

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to my family group chat and the text said,

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"Will everyone, please pray.

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There's an active shooter on site."

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And I sort of had the response that I have

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when I see that in the news, because unfortunately,

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it is so common when you see it over and over,

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the response that you get is just kind of dulled.

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And so I had that same response.

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When I see it on the news, I go, "Okay, yeah, '

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that's a bummer. You know, praying for them.

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You, God, just do something over there.

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Okay. Moving on with my day."

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And that's the response I had.

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I am actually ashamed to say that.

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And then about three minutes later, I was realizing,

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"Hannah, did you just -- did you just realize

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the text that you just got, it said that there is danger.

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It said that there is in trouble."

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And it is in this moment that I feel like

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I got a cold drink of water splashed on my face

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that said, "Wake up. You need to respond."

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And I realized I'm on a call with a bunch of people who pray.

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I should probably engage them in the prayer,

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and I didn't do that. That was not my first response.

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Now I'm not up here just to tell y'all how bad of a person I am.

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I mean, I am, but God's still working on me. Oh my gosh.

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And He's working on me.

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But no, seriously, I'm not up here for that.

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That moment really showed me

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that apathy had crept into my life.

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And it's a small little, little thing.

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It's a tactic where I should have been feeling,

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I should have been responding, and I couldn't.

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And the Scripture came to mind to me for John 10:10,

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where Jesus promises.

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He says, "The thief comes only to steal,

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to kill, and to destroy.

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But I have come that you can have life

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and have it to the full."

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And it was in this moment that I went, "Whoa!

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I'm actually not living to the full," because

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something that should have affected me,

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something that should have made me feel something,

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you want to know the ways you're alive

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is if somebody slapped you, you might feel it.

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It didn't affect me.

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So what was really going on?

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See, apathy is a little bit like when you're on the toilet.

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What, Hannah?

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You know how if you did, we did a Digital Fast

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a little bit, here's a little Easter egg.

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A while ago, we did a Digital Fast,

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and a lot of people gave up

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reading their phones on the toilet.

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Well, I didn't. I didn't, I didn't.

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I was reading my Bible, but I still had that thing.

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Here's what happens when you read your phone on the toilet.

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You realize you've been sitting there

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for way longer than you really supposed to,

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and then you try to stand up

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and your little toes don't work.

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Your little ankles can't feel nothing.

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What's really going on?

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Well, your foot has fallen asleep.

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That's if you felt that before you know what I'm talking about,

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where your arm or your leg falls asleep.

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It's like that because what's happening

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is my nerves are not dead in my leg,

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but the signal to my brain to make them work,

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to make me feel something is blocked.

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It's not working.

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And that's how apathy works.

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It's this slow erosion over time

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where you just fall asleep.

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And that's really what happened to me,

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that personal experience.

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I feel like God woke me up and said,

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"You are not doing everything that I want you to do

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because you've been half dead."

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Just as our feelings are meant to move us to action,

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just as our minds enable us to think

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and our wills enable us to choose,

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our emotions enable us to respond.

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Turns out that we need them.

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And so this half dead concept kind of got me to thinking,

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you know what else is half dead?

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And you know what else is half dead? Zombies.

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And so I started to look into -- I know!

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I started to look into zombies and it turns out

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there's some really fascinating stuff going on.

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Recently, my husband and I started kind of a movie night,

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and it's just been really fun.

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And you're like, "Hannah, I have movie night

00:31:10

all the time because I have Netflix,

00:31:11

and I even got that one that

00:31:13

I don't have to watch commercials on, Hulu."

00:31:15

Fancy. Love that for you.

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But movie night is a big deal for us

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because we have a one year old, and so it's important

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we're spending time together.

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It's a time where someone's not yanking on my leg

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trying to get a veggie straw or whatever.

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So it's a big deal that we can spend a time watching movies.

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And so I've been reading and watching about movies,

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looking at these zombie movies,

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and I'm discovering some stuff.

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And it turns out that the first zombie movie

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was by George A. Romero.

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And this was important because George wrote this movie

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and filmed this movie called Night of the Living Dead.

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And it came out in the late '60s and in the early '70s,

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and it was a classic, not just because

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it was the first time people were seeing,

00:31:54

like, half dead creatures, but also because

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it was a commentary on the time.

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See at the time if you were around during that time

00:32:03

or you've read about that time, well,

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there was just unrest everywhere.

00:32:07

You had wars going on,

00:32:08

you had the social fabric changing in America,

00:32:11

some for the better, some for the worse.

00:32:13

You had just so much going on when people felt

00:32:16

that their way of life was threatened,

00:32:19

that it was a problem.

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And so it makes sense that art would be a response to go,

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"There's just so much chaos going on

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that I actually just need to disengage."

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See, it was much easier to watch a zombie apocalypse

00:32:34

than to experience and live the apocalypse

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that was going on around.

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And it sounds like I just described 2025,

00:32:41

so I can only imagine -- I didn't.

00:32:44

I described the '60s and the '70s.

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Everyone was interested in disengaging,

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just taking a little bit step back.

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And these movie classics kind of birthed

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all the ones that we know about.

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So Dawn of the Living Dead, that was kind of the next one.

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Of course you have World War Z.

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Many of you spent countless hours watching

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The Walking Dead.

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You've got the recent 28 Years Later,

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you've got The Last of Us.

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These classics are classics

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because people want to watch them.

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They want to engage.

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You know, but the idea of being half dead is not new.

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See, it's a risk that's been at effect

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for humans for a very long time.

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In my deep biblical study of this for this,

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I was watching a movie.

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And this movie is like a modern zombie movie.

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It's called The Gorge.

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And they don't actually refer to

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the people in the movie as zombies.

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They refer to them as the hollow men.

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And so I got curious, who are the hollow men?

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And it turns out T.S. Eliot wrote this poem long ago

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describing what it must be like to live in a world

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but not be able to fully experience the world.

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I'm going to read that a little bit for us now.

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It says: We are the hollow me

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We are the stuffed men

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Leaning together

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Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

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Our dry voices, when we whisper together

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Are quiet and meaningless

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As wind and dry grass

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Or rats' feet over broken glass

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In our dry cellar

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Shape without form, shade without color,

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Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

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Those who have crossed

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With direct eyes into death's other Kingdom

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Remember us - if at all - not as lost

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Violent souls, butonly

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As hollow men

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The stuffed men

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Now this poem is artsy,

00:34:38

and I don't go around reading T.S. Eliot.

00:34:40

If you do, love that for you.

00:34:42

But that's just kind of a little bit highbrow for me.

00:34:44

So I don't typically pick up that book.

00:34:46

But I love this because I think it gives a voice to apathy.

00:34:50

It doesn't start out, you know,

00:34:52

as this big, big thing in our life.

00:34:54

It starts out in a moment.

00:34:56

It starts out when, you know, we're sitting on the couch

00:35:00

and we know we should go to that group.

00:35:02

We know we should engage in community because we need it,

00:35:04

but we kind of just go, "Whatever."

00:35:07

It starts out when we recognize

00:35:10

our partner and I are just not connecting.

00:35:13

But instead of saying something and dealing with it,

00:35:15

we go, "Get to it tomorrow, next week, next year."

00:35:19

We settle into that lifeless marriage.

00:35:21

We settle into that pointless relationship.

00:35:23

It happens when we see our kids kind of go on a path

00:35:27

that's really down destruction,

00:35:28

and instead of addressing it and being bold,

00:35:31

we kind of just die to it a little bit and go,

00:35:33

"Someone else will take care of that."

00:35:36

See, that's how apathy works.

00:35:37

And over time, it eventually gets to this voice

00:35:40

where you go, "Well, my voice, just like the T.S. Eliot,

00:35:43

it's dry and cracked, it's meaningless.

00:35:47

If I say something now, it's going to affect nothing.

00:35:49

The response that I want to have, I can't have."

00:35:52

And that's how apathy works. And it's a tactic.

00:35:55

It's not the enemy, it's a tactic

00:35:56

that he's using to keep us stuck.

00:36:00

And just like any zombie movie,

00:36:02

just like any zombie video game,

00:36:05

it's important that we recognize the characters,

00:36:07

we recognize how did this person get infected?

00:36:10

What happened to them? Where were they?

00:36:13

That's really the storyline.

00:36:14

So we've come up with our own characters today

00:36:17

because I think many of us get infected

00:36:19

in one of three ways you might identify.

00:36:22

Now, the first way that you might start to feel

00:36:25

like apathy is creeping in.

00:36:27

I call this persona the Modern Stoic.

00:36:31

Now, when I think about the Modern Stoic,

00:36:33

the modern Stoic is someone who, for them,

00:36:36

feelings have just not been convenient to access.

00:36:40

They've maybe been learned through learned experience

00:36:43

or taught by even a parent or guardian,

00:36:45

they're just not available.

00:36:47

And when I think about the modern day stoic,

00:36:49

I think about my dad.

00:36:50

My dad is awesome.

00:36:51

He and I have a great relationship.

00:36:53

He's a very funny guy.

00:36:55

But growing up he had two modes.

00:36:58

He had good and not good,

00:37:01

and you just did not want to catch my man on a not good day.

00:37:04

You didn't. I didn't know what was going on.

00:37:06

And as I grow up, I learned, well, you know what?

00:37:09

He had a childhood that really didn't lend itself

00:37:13

to be available to tap into any feelings,

00:37:15

because he had a lot of responsibility.

00:37:18

And then as he grew older, like I said,

00:37:19

I've got seven siblings.

00:37:21

When you got eight mouths to feed and to raise, guess what?

00:37:24

It's a lot more convenient to be doing rather than feeling.

00:37:29

And so he starts in this place.

00:37:30

I think if I had to describe him, he might say,

00:37:33

"Feelings have a corner

00:37:35

and they just need to stay over there.

00:37:37

I've learned how to control them."

00:37:39

That's what the modern day stoic

00:37:41

is not interested in feeling the things

00:37:43

that actually might get them to respond to a new place.

00:37:47

Then there's a second persona.

00:37:48

This persona has compassion fatigue,

00:37:51

and we're going to call them the fatigued feeler.

00:37:54

And now this person I identify with,

00:37:57

because maybe you're the person, you're the strong friend.

00:38:00

You're the person everybody comes to.

00:38:02

You're the bold friend.

00:38:03

You're the person in the family that everybody's leaning on.

00:38:06

And after a while, it's kind of like

00:38:08

when you first see that commercial,

00:38:11

you know that commercial where they're asking you

00:38:13

to donate because the dog has one leg

00:38:15

or two legs or three legs. Yeah.

00:38:17

You know, you hear that Sarah McLaughlin song playing, yeah.

00:38:21

The heart is just melting that first time.

00:38:23

You see all those cages piled up and you said,

00:38:25

"I didn't even know they made that many cages."

00:38:28

And that first time your heart is moved, you know,

00:38:31

you are settled in, that girl's like,

00:38:34

"If you would just give the cost of a grain of rice,

00:38:37

$0.30 a day," and you pull out $0.30 a day.

00:38:41

You know, you're like, "I want to help

00:38:43

that poor black eyed cat. I want to help that cat."

00:38:47

No, but seriously, that fifth time you see it, you go,

00:38:50

"Okay, that's just the black eyed cat.

00:38:52

Moving on with my life."

00:38:54

It's kind of like that.

00:38:55

It's like that first time the feelings were natural.

00:38:58

They were emotional. They were --

00:39:00

They had a healthy place.

00:39:02

But over time, apathy seeps in, creeps in,

00:39:06

and you just stop responding to the things

00:39:09

that should move you.

00:39:10

And then the last one, this is the person who,

00:39:14

for them, apathy stuck in and they started

00:39:17

to sort of live a half life

00:39:18

because life just sort of started to life.

00:39:21

And this is the repeatedly disappointed person.

00:39:24

This is the person for whom they had their hope up once,

00:39:27

they had their feelings up once,

00:39:29

they had their emotions up once,

00:39:31

but it sort of just kind of came to bite them in the butt.

00:39:35

This is a friend of mine who is close to me

00:39:37

because he said this, and he was very honest with me

00:39:39

and I appreciated that.

00:39:40

He said, "Generally, if I'm honest,

00:39:42

I tend to be more apathetic,

00:39:44

almost 99% of the time just genuinely don't care.

00:39:49

And it's because I've dealt with so much disappointment

00:39:53

that what's going to happen is going to happen,

00:39:56

so why bother?"

00:39:58

See if for the other two categories,

00:40:00

dealing with feelings is difficult or distressing.

00:40:04

For this category dealing with feelings is detrimental.

00:40:08

It's to the point where if I engage

00:40:10

with what's really going on in my heart,

00:40:12

if I let God in to that part,

00:40:14

if I address the stuff that's really happening,

00:40:17

I might just get let down and I don't want to do that.

00:40:20

But it leads us to living this half life,

00:40:22

to walking around like however zombies walk.

00:40:25

I want to do this, but that's a mummy, right?

00:40:29

That's not it. I don't know how zombies walk,

00:40:32

but that's kind of how we walk around, like limp.

00:40:34

We walk around not able to fully be alive.

00:40:38

And you know what?

00:40:39

Just like, because apathy creeps in over time,

00:40:42

because it's a slow erosion.

00:40:44

No matter what's going on, I can only imagine

00:40:47

that however you got there.

00:40:49

I know for me, over time, it could be because

00:40:52

maybe somebody you grew up with weaponized feelings.

00:40:55

Maybe you're accustomed

00:40:57

to people manipulating your feelings

00:40:59

and so you just go, "No, I got a strong arm that.

00:41:01

I'm never going to be able to engage.

00:41:03

It's not going to go well for me."

00:41:05

But I got news for us, and it's not that great,

00:41:08

it's that apathy is stealing full life from us.

00:41:13

And we were made for full life, for range of emotion.

00:41:17

Yes, for highs, yes, for lows,

00:41:19

and to depend on God throughout it all.

00:41:23

See, God is a feeler.

00:41:26

See, in the Bible -- I didn't come up with this idea

00:41:30

because I was like, "Man, maybe feelings

00:41:32

were my mom's idea because she's a woman."

00:41:34

No, that's not what happened.

00:41:36

God made feelings.

00:41:37

They were His idea.

00:41:39

The Bible references God having an emotional response

00:41:43

over 200 times in the Bible, depending give or take

00:41:47

what scriptural reference or version you're using.

00:41:50

In every expression of God, so God the Father,

00:41:54

God the Son, God the Holy Spirit,

00:41:56

in every single expression there is a reference of emotion.

00:42:02

And if you've ever heard or seen the feelings wheel,

00:42:05

which is just a wheel to help people identify where they are,

00:42:09

there's all these layers.

00:42:11

And we're not going to get into those layers today.

00:42:13

But if you zoom in on the core,

00:42:15

there's seven core feelings where everything sort of starts.

00:42:19

And outside of the ones that God is incapable of feeling,

00:42:23

like fear or surprise, four out of seven,

00:42:27

there's a direct scripture correlated

00:42:29

to Him feeling that in the Bible.

00:42:32

So happy, delighted, regretful, angry, upset, disconnected.

00:42:39

That's all there.

00:42:41

Now why would God make us like feeling creatures?

00:42:45

Why would God make us as people who need to feel?

00:42:48

Because He needs us to respond, that's why He made us like that.

00:42:54

In the words of Elie Wiesel,

00:42:55

who is an Auschwitz Holocaust survivor, he said,

00:42:58

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

00:43:02

The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.

00:43:07

The opposite of faith is not hearsay, it's indifference.

00:43:12

The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

00:43:17

And if we can go around feeling indifferent to everything,

00:43:20

then guess what? We'll never properly respond in a way.

00:43:24

We'll miss opportunities that God puts

00:43:26

right in front of us to connect with people.

00:43:28

We'll miss the moment where He wants to take us

00:43:31

to a new place because we just can't feel it.

00:43:36

And this is true all the way back to the Bible days.

00:43:39

We have a great example of what it was like

00:43:42

to kind of grow apathetic.

00:43:43

And we see that in the Old Testament

00:43:45

with the Book of 1 Kings with King Uzziah.

00:43:49

He's also known as Azariah.

00:43:51

Now God had in His mind that he was going to have a theocracy,

00:43:55

which was just him governing His chosen people,

00:43:58

the Israelites in the Bible.

00:43:59

And He was going to tell them, "Hey,

00:44:01

here's are the rules of engagement.

00:44:02

Here's how I want you to operate.

00:44:04

Here's what I want you to do."

00:44:05

He was pumped, and for a while that went really great.

00:44:08

He had these judges in place that was helping with that.

00:44:11

And then the people decided, "Actually, God,

00:44:15

we're not interested in that.

00:44:16

We would love a king."

00:44:18

Okay. And so because God is cool and awesome

00:44:21

and He gives us choice, He was like,

00:44:23

"That's a bad idea, but here you go."

00:44:25

And so He gives these kings to us.

00:44:28

Now the Bible talks about how most of those kings were bad.

00:44:33

That's why it ended up being a bad idea.

00:44:35

And this one king in particular, Uzziah,

00:44:38

is who we're going to look at today

00:44:39

to help us understand what was going on.

00:44:42

Now, why does the Bible call these kings bad.

00:44:46

Is it because they were born bad?

00:44:47

Is it because they, you know, are just so evil

00:44:50

and they were like murderers or something?

00:44:52

No, no, no. Some of them were,

00:44:53

but that's not what they had in common.

00:44:55

Every king that was described as evil, excuse me,

00:44:58

or bad in the Bible had a couple things in common.

00:45:01

We're going to go into it.

00:45:02

The first one was that they were unmoved by the words of truth.

00:45:07

So their forefathers had had access to what was called

00:45:10

the Book of the Law, which was just the rules of engagement

00:45:13

for how to connect with God,

00:45:15

how God wanted to connect with His people.

00:45:17

And that was the truth, and they just refused to hear it.

00:45:20

They ignored every everything that happened before them.

00:45:23

They said, "I don't like that. I'm not going to do that."

00:45:26

And they decided that the truth was not good enough.

00:45:30

And I think this is where apathy first starts,

00:45:33

where we disconnect from the truth of who God is

00:45:36

and who He made us to be.

00:45:38

We start to think a little bit differently

00:45:40

about our identity, and apathy can

00:45:42

get really easily creep right in there.

00:45:45

Because guess what? We're not walking

00:45:47

or believing in the truth.

00:45:49

And the truth is God made us to respond.

00:45:51

God made us to have joy.

00:45:52

God made us to have peace.

00:45:54

God made us to rely on Him, to need Him.

00:45:57

Yes, to cry. He made all of that.

00:46:00

And so the truth, they just ignored it.

00:46:01

They were like, "No, I don't need that. I don't need that."

00:46:04

And then the second thing that sort of was true

00:46:07

across the board is that there was false idols,

00:46:11

false gods in place.

00:46:13

And all of these guys would set up

00:46:15

these wooden images, most likely.

00:46:17

And they were hollow in the middle, a lot like this.

00:46:19

They just were filled with nothing.

00:46:22

And there's countless times in the Bible where God's like,

00:46:24

"I cannot believe you are worshiping an empty God

00:46:28

because I'm full. I can't believe that."

00:46:31

And you know, what was so interesting

00:46:33

is just like what they were worshiping they became.

00:46:36

They became what they were worshiping.

00:46:38

And I think that's true for us.

00:46:40

I think over time,

00:46:42

if we worship empty things, we'll become empty.

00:46:47

If we worship things that make us feel disconnected

00:46:49

and apathetic, we become disconnected and apathetic.

00:46:54

Is success and money inherently wrong? No.

00:46:56

But if it sits on our heart and says

00:46:58

we will lay down our life to that, then it's wrong.

00:47:01

Is marriage and singleness inherently wrong?

00:47:04

Of course not.

00:47:05

But if it sits on the throne of our heart,

00:47:07

if it says you can have all of me instead of God,

00:47:11

then eventually we will become empty.

00:47:14

See, that's the risk of apathy.

00:47:16

That's how it sneaks in, is when we start to

00:47:18

not believe the truth of God,

00:47:20

and when we start to worship things that are not God.

00:47:23

And so this is what was happening.

00:47:25

See, King Uzziah started out like us. He was a feeler.

00:47:29

He was responding to the things of God.

00:47:31

Him and God was dapping it up.

00:47:33

They was like, yes, they loved each other.

00:47:36

It was hanging out.

00:47:38

And then eventually the Bible says,

00:47:39

over time he was led to his destruction.

00:47:42

Here's how it's described in 2 Chronicles 26, it says:

00:47:46

But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction.

00:47:50

Now he actually wasn't doing a bunch of evil, bad things.

00:47:54

It was because he started to rely on himself

00:47:58

that he became laxed

00:47:59

and uninterested in the things of God.

00:48:02

And the Bible often will use the word proud

00:48:05

to describe also a hard heart.

00:48:08

So he became hard, his heart was hardened.

00:48:12

He became unable to feel.

00:48:15

And sometimes in the Bible it would just say, like,

00:48:18

it led to destruction and they never tell you

00:48:20

what the destruction was.

00:48:21

You just assumed they were destroyed.

00:48:23

And then if it's like the movies, then God, of course,

00:48:25

struck them with some lightning and then, you know, it was over.

00:48:28

But that's not what happened in this story.

00:48:30

In this story the Bible gets really explicit

00:48:33

about how Uzziah was destroyed.

00:48:36

The Bible says that he became a leper.

00:48:39

Now, a leper is a disease that's not new.

00:48:42

It has a new name called Hansen's disease.

00:48:44

And because of my disease and phobia,

00:48:46

I just cannot show y'all a real picture

00:48:48

because basically, it's sesame seed bagel action

00:48:51

happening all over your skin.

00:48:53

It's like tiny little bumps and white pus.

00:48:56

Oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

00:48:58

White pus filled bumps just like everywhere and boils.

00:49:04

And it's really tough to look at.

00:49:06

And in the Bible, they thought this was a skin disease

00:49:09

because of course it was manifesting on the skin.

00:49:12

But it turns out it's not just a disease,

00:49:14

it's a slow growing bacteria that over time

00:49:19

changes how your skin looks.

00:49:21

Because what's really is affected is your nerve endings.

00:49:25

And over time, you lose the ability

00:49:28

when you have leprosy to feel.

00:49:30

You lose the ability to feel pain.

00:49:32

You lose the ability to have a response

00:49:35

if something is burning you.

00:49:36

Now, when someone asked me what superpower do you want to have,

00:49:40

you might go, "I would love to be Deadpool.

00:49:42

He can't feel anything and that sounds awesome."

00:49:45

But it turns out that as humans,

00:49:48

when we don't have superpowers, we need to feel

00:49:50

because feeling helps us.

00:49:52

Like, if a rat is chewing off our toe, for example,

00:49:57

it will be great to, like, move our toe out the way.

00:49:59

Or if we start to get burned and we have an infection,

00:50:02

it will be helpful to feel so that we can address that.

00:50:06

See, but with leprosy, the reason I'm getting so graphic

00:50:09

is because Uzziah was most likely the closest thing

00:50:13

to a real life zombie that I've ever seen,

00:50:16

because his face would have been covered in white.

00:50:19

He would have legitimately been half dead

00:50:21

because he could not feel, and he would have had

00:50:23

infected holes all over his body.

00:50:26

Now that's a zombie.

00:50:28

Now, in every single king situation

00:50:32

where God would call them evil and unclean

00:50:34

and they were punished, did they all become lepers?

00:50:37

No, of course not.

00:50:39

But I think Uzziah is an example of becoming a leper

00:50:42

because unlike all the kings, even though all the kings

00:50:45

didn't have leprosy of the skin, they were at risk

00:50:48

and had what you and I sometimes get,

00:50:51

which is leprosy of the heart.

00:50:54

See, the heart was hard, unfeeling, covered in disease,

00:51:00

with big holes in the middle of it.

00:51:03

Sometimes that's what's happening to us,

00:51:05

where God actually needs us to respond to injustice around us.

00:51:08

He needs us to to respond to suffering,

00:51:11

not out there, but like in our own families.

00:51:15

And we can't. We're like leprose, hard hearts.

00:51:22

And in that there enters a different king,

00:51:25

a king who's going to help us figure out how we foil this.

00:51:27

His name is Josiah.

00:51:29

And Josiah was a young king.

00:51:32

And so he had a lot of fervent spirit.

00:51:35

And, you know, I love that he was young because he hadn't --

00:51:39

The empathy there is, he hadn't yet had a lot of life

00:51:42

to make him feel apathetic.

00:51:44

And God uses that, see as Josiah gets a little bit older

00:51:47

and he decides, "I gotta get the people back to God.

00:51:50

They've turned away.

00:51:52

They've been doing their own thing. I gotta restore."

00:51:54

And so one of the things that he starts to do

00:51:56

is he sends a bunch of people to the temple,

00:51:59

which is where you encounter God.

00:52:01

And so people go to the temple, they're working for the king.

00:52:03

They're sweeping, they're dusting.

00:52:05

They're just figuring out how to

00:52:06

get the walls back up and everything.

00:52:08

And they find the book of the law. They find it.

00:52:12

And the Book of the Law is how we engage with God.

00:52:15

And they run back to the king, and they go,

00:52:18

"King, we found the Book of the Law,"

00:52:20

and they start to read it.

00:52:22

And the Bible says that this is what Josiah did.

00:52:25

It says in 2 Kings 23:

00:52:28

When the King heard the words of the Book of the Law,

00:52:32

he tore his clothes.

00:52:34

Now let's last pause.

00:52:36

This is a manly man. This is like a hurrah kind of guy.

00:52:41

He is in charge.

00:52:42

He is not being dramatic and erratic right here.

00:52:45

This is the king of the nation

00:52:48

and he looks like a complete fool.

00:52:52

Why is he having this response?

00:52:54

Why is he getting naked in the street?

00:52:56

What is going on?

00:52:57

Well, that's a common response, for sure, of grief.

00:53:00

But he was honest enough to let his emotions show.

00:53:04

He was honest enough to to recognize,

00:53:07

"Yo, something's not right."

00:53:10

And it's this type of emotion, it's this level of emotion

00:53:14

that doesn't just let him stay there and manipulate people.

00:53:16

That's not what it's about.

00:53:18

He doesn't just stay there so they can go,

00:53:20

"Woe is me, King. You know, how can we help you?"

00:53:22

He's not getting attention.

00:53:24

It moves him to action.

00:53:26

It gets the people of God unstuck.

00:53:29

And so much so that God responds.

00:53:31

Here's what he says

00:53:33

to the prophet who's responding to the king.

00:53:35

It says:

00:53:36

But to the king of Judah,

00:53:37

who sent you to inquire of the Lord,

00:53:39

this is what I want you to say to him,

00:53:42

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:

00:53:44

Regarding the words that you have heard,

00:53:47

because your heart was penitent, soft,

00:53:51

and you humbled yourself before the Lord,

00:53:54

when you heard how I spoke against this place

00:53:56

and against its inhabitants,

00:53:58

that they should become a desolation and a curse,

00:54:01

you have torn your clothes and wept before me,

00:54:05

I also have heard you, declares the Lord.

00:54:10

The intensity and the honesty

00:54:12

that Josiah has before God moves God.

00:54:17

God actually wants to engage our emotions

00:54:19

because they move Him.

00:54:22

Just like any connection, just like any, any relationship,

00:54:26

when we come to God, honest, with a soft heart, it moves Him.

00:54:32

So for some of us, maybe that prayer is,

00:54:34

God, I just want to know You.

00:54:36

But for some of us it's, God, deliver my son

00:54:39

from that addictive behavior.

00:54:42

For some of us it's, God, saved my marriage.

00:54:44

For some of us it's, God, I want to be married.

00:54:47

God, show me what to do as an empty nester.

00:54:50

He needs us to be engaged because He needs us to respond.

00:54:56

I'll prove it to you.

00:54:57

In Romans 12 it says:

00:54:59

Let love be genuine.

00:55:02

Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

00:55:06

Love one another with brotherly affection.

00:55:08

Outdo one another in showing honor.

00:55:11

Do not be slothful in zeal, but fervent in spirit,

00:55:15

serve the Lord.

00:55:17

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation,

00:55:21

be constant in prayer.

00:55:24

Contribute to the needs of the saints

00:55:26

and seek to show hospitality.

00:55:28

Guess what, y'all, that's just not possible,

00:55:30

that list is not possible if you're not engaged.

00:55:33

All the people that we hero, not just in scripture,

00:55:36

but all the people we love.

00:55:38

The Martin Luther King's, the Mother Teresa's,

00:55:40

the Wayne Gretzky's even, those people that we love,

00:55:44

their emotions moved them to respond.

00:55:49

God wants to move us to respond in love,

00:55:54

indeed in truth and justice.

00:55:58

In Ezekiel 36:26 is a promise,

00:56:02

because when I was going through that apathetic moment

00:56:06

with my sister and the Lord really showed that to me,

00:56:09

or I believe that God really brought that to my attention.

00:56:12

I had this moment where, like, I'm like,

00:56:14

"I don't know what I'm going to do because

00:56:16

I don't even know where the apathy snuck in.

00:56:19

I'm not even sure where to place it."

00:56:21

The good news is we don't have to strong arm ourselves.

00:56:25

We don't have to do it ourselves.

00:56:27

We don't have to pull up our bootstraps and go,

00:56:29

"I guess, well, because the preacher said to feel again,

00:56:32

I'm going to do it." No.

00:56:34

We get to believe the promise and God says this to us.

00:56:37

It says:

00:56:38

I will give you a new heart,

00:56:41

I will give you a new spirit to put within you.

00:56:45

I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh

00:56:48

and give you a heart of flesh.

00:56:50

He wants us to have a heart

00:56:52

that responds to the world around us.

00:56:55

He actually wants you to deal with your heartbreak.

00:56:59

And I know for some of us, I'm not -- I'm not foolish,

00:57:01

I'm not naive, it means we're going to have to

00:57:03

face some stuff and surrender.

00:57:07

God is inviting us to feel again.

00:57:10

Across all of our sites we have our bands coming up.

00:57:13

And they're just going to engage us in a moment right now

00:57:17

where I think God actually might want to speak to us

00:57:19

about where we've gotten apathetic,

00:57:21

where we've chosen to only be half alive,

00:57:24

where we've chosen to just not engage with a full life,

00:57:28

where we rejected His promise.

00:57:31

And the only, the only challenge here is to not disengage.

00:57:37

The only challenge here is to just stay locked in

00:57:41

because God is inviting us to feel again.

01:01:20

- Yeah. God is inviting us to feel because He is a full God

01:01:25

who is the exact opposite of apathetic.

01:01:30

See, He's so anti apathy that when He looked at dark

01:01:34

He said not good enough, light.

01:01:36

When He looked at absence of love,

01:01:38

He said, "I gotta go get love."

01:01:41

When he looked at you,

01:01:43

He said, "It's not enough to be separated.

01:01:44

I need to send My Son. I have to do something.

01:01:48

I have to respond."

01:01:49

And so He sent His Son to die a death that He did not deserve,

01:01:53

to feel all of the pain that we feel now

01:01:56

and that we would ever feel, He took it on.

01:01:59

He took it on because He was so interested

01:02:02

in getting us to move, to act and to be free.

01:02:06

See, He wants us to love not just in action,

01:02:09

not just in word, but in action.

01:02:11

He needs us to feel.

01:02:13

So the courage that you need this week,

01:02:15

what do you need courage to face?

01:02:18

What do you need courage to lean into?

01:02:22

What do you need courage to step into

01:02:24

so that the enemy can stop stealing from you,

01:02:28

so that you can wake up to a full life.

01:02:32

He's more for you. John 10:10:

01:02:35

I've come that you can have life to the full.

01:02:39

And when we feel that's no longer an aspiration,

01:02:43

but it's a possibility, it's a reality that's available to us.

01:02:49

And so, Father God, would You help us to feel.

01:02:51

God, I don't know what that means for many of us.

01:02:54

Some of us it means we need to just have a conversation.

01:02:59

Some of us it means we need to accept You for the first time.

01:03:02

Some of us need to run and hire someone that we can talk to.

01:03:07

We need to step into community.

01:03:09

God, whatever it is, whatever it is, would You meet us in it?

01:03:16

Would you break our hearts

01:03:17

for the thing that is breaking Your heart?

01:03:21

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

01:03:26

- Man, that song, Hannah's message, I just love it.

01:03:30

It's a message that I need to hear,

01:03:31

and honestly, I've never heard in church.

01:03:33

Like, the idea that God gave us our emotions

01:03:36

and wants us to use them, not to be slaves to them,

01:03:39

but to feel our emotions in a powerful way

01:03:42

and to let God meet us in those places. It's awesome.

01:03:45

And I just, I know, I know from talking to you guys

01:03:49

that that probably just hit a certain note with many of you.

01:03:53

And man, we'd love for you not to be alone

01:03:55

as you process and think through this.

01:03:57

- In fact, we'd love to pray for you now

01:04:00

or whenever you like prayer by going to hit

01:04:04

any of the chat boxes that you might find.

01:04:05

Crossroads.net, if you're on the app,

01:04:08

or just email us Anywhere@crossroads.net, right?

01:04:13

- That's right, that's right. Yeah.

01:04:14

We also have our monthly nights of prayer.

01:04:16

We actually do these on Zoom, but I promise you,

01:04:18

they're like the most incredible Zoom call you've never heard of.

01:04:22

7 p.m. eastern some of our trusted, vetted

01:04:25

prophetic prayer team would love to pray for you.

01:04:27

And I can pretty much guarantee you

01:04:29

you will hear from God in a powerful way.

01:04:32

I encourage you get the details on that

01:04:34

at crossroads.net/anywhere and join us there.

01:04:37

Guys, thank you so much for being with us today.

01:04:39

We'll see you next week.

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