Unsubscribing from Noise, Subscribing to… What? A Review of ‘Sunday Service’

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:00:00] Hey, good morning. We are so glad that you are here this morning. As Josh said, no snow.
[00:00:06] I was hoping we could have a snow day, but there is none.
[00:00:09] And so we're grateful that you came out and that you are here to worship together.
[00:00:14] If you are newer to the West community, we're really grateful that you have chosen to spend your time here today.
[00:00:20] There's a QR code if you're worshiping with us online as well. We extend a very special and warm welcome to you.
[00:00:26] We invite you to scan the QR code, let us know that you're here, or if you're worshiping in person, there's a welcome station that we have, and there are greeters there to greet you, and we'd love for you to sign up to learn more about West.
[00:00:39] We will not inundate you with propaganda, you can choose whether or not you hear from us.
[00:00:44] We send out daily devotions, we send out a weekly What's Up with West, and we invite you to be a part of that, so we're grateful that you are here.
[00:00:54] We have a couple of special things coming up that we want to let you know about.
[00:00:58] First of all, there's a chili cook-off that we're going to have in a few weeks, I believe.
[00:01:04] And there's a pretty tough competition.
[00:01:07] There's someone that's won a couple of times and thinks he's a shoe-in for this year.
[00:01:12] And so I would like to see him defeated.
[00:01:15] And so I invite you all to sign up and make your favorite chili.
[00:01:19] It's a fun day, and proceeds go to Acres of Hope, which is one of the mission organizations that we are a part of and have been a part of since its inception, and you're going to
[00:01:30] hear a little bit more about that in just a second.
[00:01:33] Also, we are going to have subs with the staff.
[00:01:37] That is a way that you can find out more about West.
[00:01:39] If you've been coming to West over the last year and you've not attended one of these, we invite you to come.
[00:01:45] It's a non-threatening way to just hear who we are overall and learn more about what we are, who we are, what makes us tick.
[00:01:52] And so I invite you to attend that as well.
[00:01:55] Today we are talking about beauty.
[00:01:57] We're talking about how to unsubscribe from all the things in life and focus on the things that are most beautiful to us.
[00:02:05] And that also involves learning to be quiet and be still.
[00:02:09] And I say that as Naomi, who is getting baptized this morning, just spits everywhere.
[00:02:15] So that was just a little funny.
[00:02:17] Sorry, online folks, if you couldn't hear that.
[00:02:19] But it was a little distracting.
[00:02:22] But anyway, we're talking about stillness and silence and beauty.
[00:02:26] At the end of the message today, there is a video.
[00:02:29] On Friday afternoon, I sent out a text and said, what's in your photo reel that reminds you of beauty?
[00:02:35] I thought maybe we'd get five or six texts.
[00:02:38] we had like over 90 different pictures and I'm not a video maker and I refuse to ask Dave to do things with less than 24 hours and so I made the video for today if your pictures are not in it
[00:02:51] please do not get angry with me it means that my ADD just simply could not keep up with 90 different pictures in three different formats and I also don't know how to make videos so there's
[00:03:01] that. But thank you for that, and I really hope that you find today's message meaningful. There are so many things that are beautiful, and we get to talk about those today. And so now I have a
[00:03:15] special guest that I'd like to introduce you to. Her name is Amelia. She is a senior at South Iredell. She attends Williamson's Chapel, and she's going to tell you a little bit about why she's talking she's very passionate about acres of hope and she's um sponsoring leading facilitating
[00:03:34] a 5k which we would love for you all to be a part of you did the turkey trot now we want you to run for acres of hope and i'll cheer you on good morning church uh so yes i'm a senior at south

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:03:47] ireland like she said and i'm a member down at williamson's chapel united methodist church and over the summer my mom and I were blessed with the opportunity to go see Acres of Hope in person and if you're not super familiar with it it's a school in Nebby Uganda
[00:04:01] that houses feeds and educates kids of the surrounding area entirely for free and one of the things that I saw when I was down there that really stuck with me is one as a child that
[00:04:12] my family has sponsored for a long time his name is Ronald and he's the same age as me he and his friends have the same ambitions that my friends and I do they want to go finish high school and
[00:04:22] go to college they want to be businessmen doctors computer science engineers and beyond but without the money to make that happen it just can't happen so as a senior service project i've organized this 5k all of the proceeds will go to the trade school and college fund that acres of hope has
[00:04:41] if you want to sign up through this qr code or the link and this same flyer is on my church's social media pages i would love it if you guys would sign up and run and try to win it
[00:04:52] or if you want to sign up and walk if you want to sign up and get a t-shirt and leave that's okay too there's also you're able to donate through this link as well but talking about t-shirts i currently have 65 people signed up and i only have 75 shirts
[00:05:10] so if you want a shirt you have to sign up sooner than later but thank you church and I hope that to see some of you guys there thank you and thanks for

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:05:20] organizing that so this morning we have the honor and privilege of celebrating the sacrament of infant baptism hello hello yes and so if you don't know this is my granddaughter and so they were taking bets as to when i would cry so i am hoping that they all lose it is a privilege to be able to
[00:05:54] do the sacrament of baptism with anyone in the united methodist church with infant baptism that's right we believe that it is a sign of god's grace that is with us long before we are ever born
[00:06:08] so i'm gonna cry and so and that grace follows us all our life and then we grow and we learn to follow jesus yeah and so uh we have water from the sea of galilee seven years ago west was we went to
[00:06:25] the holy land and some folks brought us water from the sea of galilee where jesus did his teachings and it is a privilege this morning to be able to use that water as we celebrate the sacrament of baptism.
[00:06:41] So brothers and sisters in Christ, through the sacrament of baptism, we are initiated into Christ's holy church.
[00:06:48] We are incorporated into God's mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through the water and the Spirit.
[00:06:56] All this is God's gift offered to us without price.
[00:07:00] So Lane and JT, I have some questions to ask you this morning And then because we believe that baptism is a public thing And you as their worshiping community and online community We would love your participation this morning as well
[00:07:16] To type yes in the chat room that you will agree with the vows So first of all, I'm going to ask Lane and JT their vows Do you promise to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness
[00:07:29] earnestly repent of your sin and vow to walk in the ways that lead to life and following Jesus if so please say we do do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior do you put your whole trust in his grace
[00:07:44] and promise to serve him as your Lord in unison with the church which we here at West and all believe that it is open to all people everywhere say we do and now to the church I ask you
[00:07:57] do you earnestly repent of your sin and do you vow to follow jesus in ways that lead to life if so please respond we do thank you and do you promise to nurture this child in the ways that
[00:08:12] lead to life and include her also in your care if so please respond we or i do oh come on give they gotta do it a little better than that so to what name is given this child
[00:08:31] naomi blake jones very good see the water naomi blake jones i baptize you in the name of the father ah and the son and the holy spirit knowing that the presence and love of god will follow you
[00:08:59] all the days of your life and you will be included in that love and in that care so usually we walk yeah that's right you fix your hair you're going to be a preacher i recommend
[00:09:16] other professions other professions so i want you to look out at these people i know you want to get back to the water but this is your newest member of christ holy church and that was with
[00:09:35] minimal crying let us pray gracious God we give you thanks for the sacrament of baptism we give you thanks for the presence of Christ in our lives we give you thanks for Lane and JT their family their friends that are here we give you
[00:09:50] thanks for this church that includes and loves all people and all means all thank you for giving us your love that carries us in and through this journey of life and we commit Naomi Blake Jones to your care knowing that you will hold her
[00:10:05] always through whatever encounters her in her life's journey. Thank you for her love and her life. Amen. We live in a time of short attention spans, like it's just a thing. So I would love
[00:10:26] for you to clap and online folks put in the chat room, how many of you sleep with your cell phone nearby. Like when you go to bed, your cell phone is within reach. Will you clap? How many of you
[00:10:45] make the conscious decision not to have your cell phone close by? So we're, I mean, a little heavier weighted with cell phones. Do you know that so many folks, the first thing that they do
[00:10:59] in the morning is to actually reach for their cell phone. And that is the worst possible thing we could possibly do to bring our souls stillness we're in the middle of a message series called
[00:11:13] unsubscribe reclaiming our life getting our life back and i want to show you a picture this morning so this is one of the images that you all sent on friday it is a beautiful beautiful bird i hate
[00:11:32] birds i shared that with you back in november so sorry to all of you there were so many bird pictures that you sent on friday and i just have to say i was like really another bird and so um
[00:11:46] actually and i'm i'm not kidding you all responded and i'm so grateful for all the pictures that you sent and they were just coming in so fast i couldn't keep up and then yesterday i was going
[00:11:58] back through the images and trying to make sure that i included them all and i saw this one again and i was just struck by its beauty now back i shared with you after thanksgiving when my both
[00:12:11] of my kids and i got together in upstate new york there was this bird museum and my son had made this big plan for us to all go to the bird museum now the problem with that is none of us actually
[00:12:25] liked birds except for jt and andrew and so we ended up not going and then yesterday and as i was looking through your images they actually are not that bad this one actually is so beautiful
[00:12:40] i mean look at its head and look at the colors it's just fascinating and it caused me to wonder and i would hope that you would wonder with me this morning what beauty do we miss out on in
[00:12:54] life like how much beauty is around us that we just don't take the time to notice or to see i want to show you another image a few weeks ago i shared with you that i was going to take some time
[00:13:09] off and so tom and i have been planning this trip to belize and we've been planning it for a year we were going to just go for four nights and and just totally unplug i had this big plan that i
[00:13:20] was not going to take my work phone and i have a work phone and a personal phone and then on sunday night before we left monday morning i panicked i'm like i've got to take it it has my american
[00:13:34] airlines pass on it it has all the reservations on it that we're going to need like it has the app that we're going to need while we're there i have to take my work phone and so i had promised
[00:13:47] tom and myself and god actually that i was going to take some time and not be driven by tasks and things that were weighing heavy that i was going to take some time to recharge my batteries and
[00:14:00] my soul and reconnect with the things that matter beauty creation and this particular morning that the sunrise was out across the ocean my phone kept dinging and I had I found myself like looking at the phone looking at the Sun and trying to decide what was
[00:14:27] going to have my attention and in those moments I thought you know this is your decision and this is your choice and if you choose to miss out on the image that you see that beautiful sunrise shame on you everything at West is taken care of
[00:14:47] lots of volunteers and and the staff they all knew I was gone they had all threatened me not to take my work phone so the only pressure that was coming that morning was from me how much pressure do you put on yourself to be
[00:15:08] your best to achieve more to make more money have more friends be in the right group have a bigger house have a better car all those societal things that we think are so important and how many times do we trying to achieve and get
[00:15:29] those things how many times is that tied to our sense of self-worth it's so appropriate that the song before the message today is just the way you are if there is a message that the divine that God could give each of us it is that
[00:15:51] that we are loved just the way that we are but we feel like there's this constant need and drive for success and it is perpetuated by the use of our cell phone do you know that we reach for our phones somewhere between and there's
[00:16:17] so many studies on this so they say different things but somewhere between 96 and 144 times a day that's how much we reach for our cell phones that means we are checking our phones every seven to ten minutes. One of the things that we've talked
[00:16:38] about as a staff is that our phones are a distraction. And like if we're trying to do something like write devotions or write an AMP ministry or focus on small group curriculum or those types of things, like every time our phone dings, it distracts us. And research shows that it
[00:16:56] takes 25 minutes every time we're distracted to get back into that deep groove that we were in before the distraction happened. So that's some really crazy statistics because if we're checking it every seven to ten minutes and it takes us 25 minutes to get back to the depth of
[00:17:16] study, then what's that saying? That we're distracted way too much and we're not able to produce all the efforts and the outcomes that we are aiming for. Do you know why we check our phones? It's called a dopamine rush. When our phone dings, oh, somebody needs me. Somebody
[00:17:37] likes me. Somebody wants to talk to me. Let me see what it is. It's like a little high that we get every time our phone dings and so we become addicted to our technology and we
[00:17:56] keep reaching for it and reaching for it and so then what happens is we are visually saturated and spiritually starved our souls are empty but our minds are going a million miles an hour and it keeps us from seeing beauty one
[00:18:22] of the things that connects us that makes us whole is taking space to see the beautiful things that are around us when's the last time you thought oh wow that is really beautiful so many times we're so busy we just can't think that
[00:18:48] because we don't notice it I want to share with you a story about a gentleman who was so busy and so overwhelmed and his soul was so empty that he missed beauty his name was Elijah so there was a queen her name was Jezebel and the
[00:19:11] And the people of Israel, they were following different gods.
[00:19:16] They were being tempted to worship different gods.
[00:19:18] And Elijah's like, there's one God, Yahweh, the one God that is present with us all, the same God that led our people, our ancestors out of captivity.
[00:19:30] And this is the God that you need to follow.
[00:19:32] This is the God that you need to worship.
[00:19:34] And so Elijah had basically led a revolt against all these other gods and was very successful and so then ahab reported to jezebel everything that elijah had done including the massacre of the false prophets jezebel immediately sent a messenger to elijah
[00:19:54] with her threat the gods are going to get you for this and i'm going to get even with you by this time tomorrow you'll be as dead as any of those prophets now imagine how that must have felt
[00:20:07] after he'd done exactly what he'd been told by god to do like and he won the war and then the very next thing is they come back at him and they're like you're gonna die we're going to
[00:20:18] kill you we are out to get you when elijah saw how things were he ran for dear life he ran far into the south of judah he left his young servant there and he went into the desert
[00:20:32] another day's journey. He came to a lone broom bush and collapsed in its shade, wanting in the worst way to be done with it all, to just die. Enough of this, God. Take my life. I'm ready to
[00:20:51] join my ancestors in the grave. And exhausted, he fell asleep under the bush. Suddenly, an angel shook him awake and said, get up and eat. And angel does not mean people with the fluffy white
[00:21:03] wings. Angel means messenger from God. So a messenger from God, someone comes to him, wakes him up and says, get up and eat. He looks around and to his surprise, right by his head were a loaf
[00:21:16] of bread baked on some coals and a jug of water. He ate the meal and went back to sleep. Then the angel of God came back, shook him awake again and said, get up and eat some more. You've got a long
[00:21:27] journey ahead of you he got up ate and drank his fill and set out nourished by that meal he walked 40 days and nights all the way to the mountain of God when he got there he crawled into a cave
[00:21:41] and went to sleep then the word of God came to him so Elijah what are you doing here and Elijah responds I've been working my heart out for you I've been working my heart out for the God of
[00:21:55] angel armies the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant destroyed our places of worship and murdered your prophets I'm the only one left and now they're trying to kill me then he was told go stand on the mountain at attention before God and God will pass by a hurricane wind ripped
[00:22:19] through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God but God was not to be found in the wind after the wind came an earthquake but God wasn't found in the earthquake and after the earthquake there was fire but God wasn't in the fire and then
[00:22:42] here's our answer for today after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper when Elijah heard the quiet voice he muffled his face with his great cloak went to mouth of the cave and stood there and a quiet voice asked so Elijah not now tell
[00:23:02] me what are you doing here and Elijah said I've been working my heart out for you because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant destroyed your places of worship murdered your prophets I'm the only one left and now they're
[00:23:20] trying to kill me and then God gave him a plan he tells him to go back the way that he came and he gives him very specific instructions of what to do and he does it and he doesn't end up murdered he doesn't still sit with those
[00:23:45] feelings that he had when he first went under that bush and just felt like his world was completely falling apart and he was ready to give up have you ever felt like completely and totally just giving up and like your life had no
[00:24:02] worth and you were not worthy so many times it just seems like stuff keeps piling on top of us like one bad thing will happen and then another bad thing and then another bad thing and pretty soon we end up carrying all these bad things we feel like we
[00:24:27] have to carry it all alone and we forget that there is a space and a place to take those things that are heavy and burdensome and put them in someone's care other than our own you know social
[00:24:45] media is a great tool for connection and i love digital presence and like digital ministry it was so cool i checked the chat room out in the hallway in between the songs and the videos and one of the
[00:24:59] folks that was on our holy land trip that actually got the water from the sea of galilee is in our chat room this morning having no idea that there was going to be a baptism she's a part of our west
[00:25:14] community even though she lives a couple of hours away. So many of our digital folks don't live anywhere near here but still call West their community and their home. So there is power in media. Please don't hear me diss it completely. But when I'm talking about those things that like
[00:25:34] can happen to us and add up on us, add up in our lives and in our minds, I dare say and challenge us that a lot of them come from social media. I joke that Facebook could be called fake book.
[00:25:53] At Christmas, you know, we were talking right before Christmas that we don't put out there, well, today sucked. We don't say all the bad things that happened. We only show one another our highlight reels. And do you know what happens in our minds when we see one another's highlight
[00:26:18] reels over and over again? There's this thing called rumination. It's a psychological thing, like we look at other people's stuff and then we start ruminating, like on our own inadequacies, like why don't I have that? What did I do wrong? Or this is what's wrong with me.
[00:26:40] And it becomes so self-deprecating, and it becomes so damaging that we end up forgetting that we are loved just as we are, and we start trying to prove a little more.
[00:26:57] What is your identity anchored in?
[00:27:04] And could it be anchored in knowing that you are enough, and that achievement and success does not define you?
[00:27:17] a relationship grounded in love and being who you are authentically and wholly yourself that's what defines you i want to show you some thoughts that we have that roll through our brain this is what happens when we doom scroll am i enough you ever had fomo
[00:27:47] fear of missing out i would challenge us this morning that the way to combat these feelings of inadequacy and not enoughness would be to learn to slow down and to feel years ago when i was the associate pastor at williamson's chapel we did a lenten lent the 40 days before easter
[00:28:17] it's a time that we are very intentional about looking at our lives and looking at the things that are in the way of us being followers of Jesus. And so for that Lent, we did a spiritual
[00:28:30] disciplines study. And for each of the weeks, we talked about a spiritual discipline and meditation and Sabbath. Those are spiritual disciplines. Sabbath means to have a day and keep it holy it doesn't mean we have to like back in the 2,000 years ago like
[00:28:54] they did nothing like sundown the night before there was no power no nothing and they just read scripture I recognize that in our lives today that is just not realistic but Sabbath a time of rest a time of doing the things that bring you
[00:29:14] joy and peace a time to be still I often believe that if I'm going to ask as your pastor you to do something I need to do it myself so each of those seven weeks we were supposed to practice one of the disciplines I really did not
[00:29:34] enjoy the fasting week so we probably won't do that one here but there was a week that it was about stillness and quiet back then my day off was on Thursday and the senior pastor had off on Fridays and so on Thursdays I'd
[00:29:58] always just stop by the church office just to say hello it didn't have anything to do with saying hello I was scared I was gonna miss something I had FOMO and then if I wasn't like they finally said you know look a day off
[00:30:17] means you're not here so stop coming so then I would find that and back then I mean Williamson's Chapel was a huge church there were like 1,200 people so what I would find I would do on those Thursdays is I'd go to Target for an
[00:30:33] hour or two then I'd go to TJ Maxx and then I'd go to the Harris Teeter right across the street from the church. Guess what happens when you're the associate at a 1,200 person church and you go to, back then, very few stores around here, not like today,
[00:30:53] you run into church people. So I got my church fix. It didn't have anything to do with my devotion to God. It had to do with my insecurities and needing that affirmation.
[00:31:15] you don't have to be a pastor to wrestle with those desires to be needed and wanted and the desires to be enough and so many times we use our phones and the distractions of life to keep us
[00:31:33] from hearing those voices that just keep going over and over in our heads telling us those very same things you're not enough why don't you do more why aren't you more why aren't you like
[00:31:46] everybody else Elijah had just kicked everybody else's butts I mean he conquered it all he was the man and then I mean you know hello it's the time of war so you can't just expect them to be
[00:32:07] like, oh good, of course they're going to go after him. But he was so exhausted that he didn't have any gumption in him anymore to fight the fight. And so he proclaims that he wants his life to be
[00:32:22] over. He is suicidal. He is having what we would call today suicidal ideation. And a voice comes to him that says God is going to provide for you here is food the journey is long
[00:32:41] ahead and a couple of times we see that God gives Elijah exactly what he needs and then he goes on a journey for 40 days and nights and then he comes to the space and he's ready to hear god and we read in kings first kings that hurricane winds come by
[00:33:15] but god was not found in the wind and an earthquake happens and he still can't hear the voice of god in the earthquake and then fire happens and he can't find the voice of god in
[00:33:34] the fire he only finds the voice of God and the guidance that he needs in the quiet whisper will you allow yourself to combat those voices in your head telling you you're not enough and you're not worthy by being willing to wrestle with
[00:33:59] them in the quietness because when we allow ourselves to be quiet that is when we hear God speak the stillness that we live in removes the noise that we use to avoid not other people but ourselves stillness will remove the noise we use
[00:34:31] to avoid those voices in our head because it is in the stillness that when we remember who we are and whose we are we will find god i'm going to give you three actually four
[00:34:52] examples right now the first one these are three things that you can do this week to help you hear that stillness if you drink coffee over your cup of coffee pause and notice the steam coming up
[00:35:15] off of the cup and pause and just listen the next time you're driving stop worrying about what messages that you're missing and just focus as we should be on the world around and the next
[00:35:38] time you sit at a stoplight annoyed because you've sat through it three times to try to turn left on 150 maybe pause and be grateful for a few moments that all you have to do is sit
[00:35:59] and then lastly look at the people that you love when i looked through uh my photos everybody was like oh wait till you're a grandma i'm like yeah right i'm not one of those people
[00:36:15] that like i'm not a good babysitter lane and jt call other people before they call me i am their last resort but dad gum i love naomi and i love still my other grandchild and yesterday i
[00:36:32] facetimed seal and when i said hey it's your mimi it had nothing to do with me but she smiled so i took it look in the eyes of those people around you look them in the eye and see
[00:36:54] the beauty that they give God places so many people and things and spaces that are beautiful in our lives thank you for sending pictures of your beauty take a

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]
[00:37:14] look at some of what you sent let us pray gracious God there are so many

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]
[00:44:03] beautiful things that exist in and among us may we learn to see may we learn to be still may we remember that your voice comes to us in the stillness and the silence of all the world's noise and the noise that we create within ourselves watching everybody
[00:44:26] else's highlight reels god help us to see the beauty of you the beauty within ourselves and god let that heal us and make us whole we give you thanks for being a god of beauty and wholeness
[00:44:47] in christ's name we pray amen so she's back this is a sign of beauty and when we look in the eyes of those that we love that is a sign of beauty when we were in i can't even remember where we
[00:45:09] were where did i say we went please thank you uh that was don't that was just a couple weeks ago I learned to turn off notifications on my phone.
[00:45:20] I know.
[00:45:22] And I haven't turned them back on yet.
[00:45:25] I check it for work, but I've not missed a thing.
[00:45:29] Don't let technology steal you of your joy.
[00:45:33] Go in peace.
[00:45:35] Amen.