Analog Christian

You're in for a treat today. This is my third time listening to this message and it's been such a blessing to me. Our speaker today was a pastor over at Vintage Faith for about four years as the teaching pastor. He is now the lead pastor at Westgate Church up in Saratoga. He's also an author. He authored Analog Church a few years ago and then his brand new book Analog Christian just came out this week and he's going to be sharing with us from that book. Would you, Twin Lakes Church, help me in welcoming J. Kim.

Thank you guys. So good to be with you. I see some familiar faces which is really nice. Yeah, like Adrienne said, I served on staff at Vintage just right up the road for about four years and I just got to say, I say this every time I come here, I'm so grateful for this church for René and Val and the entire leadership team and all of you and the way you shine light into the darkness of Santa Cruz County and beyond. Thank you for being who you are. It really does make a difference and I can say that from firsthand experience, you know, having served here in Santa Cruz for several years.

Today, we're gonna jump into something that I just want to forewarn you right now. For a few moments, I think, there's a chance that some of us might feel like, who is this guy and why is he talking so much about the internet? I thought I came to church, you know, and like I want to open the Bible and talk about Jesus. Initially, I am going to talk a bit about the internet and the digital age and social media and all of that, not because that's what today is about, but rather because ultimately, and we'll get there together, today is about how God by his spirit is forming us into the sorts of people he longs for us to be and really to experience the sort of life I believe all of us long to experience.

We're gonna get there, but to get there, we will talk a little bit about the internet and the reason is, what I believe, is that ultimately the Spirit of God, what he really wants to do, one of the primary things he wants to do is again, to form us into a particular type of people and at the same time, what I believe is that we are formed by all sorts of things all of the time. Life is a journey of being formed into something, into someone and because of the digital age and the fact that we live in a time in human history where the internet and the digital culture and social media and news media online is so ubiquitous because it is everywhere, because it saturates our everyday lives, unless we live aware of its formative effects on us, we will inevitably be formed into a sort of people that we don't really actually want to become, which is why we're gonna talk a little bit about the internet.

And to begin there, I want to start by sharing a quick little story. In the 1940s, Camel Cigarettes, the tobacco company, Camel Cigarettes, they were one of the biggest tobacco companies in the world, one of the biggest cigarette companies in the world. They started experiencing a decline in cigarette sales and so they hired a company called the William S.D. Advertising Agency to come up with a new marketing campaign to pick up sales, to boost sales and the William S.D. Ad Agency developed a campaign called More Doctors. And this campaign essentially said, "More doctors smoke Camel cigarettes than any other cigarette." Now, they based this, what they said was that this was based on nationwide surveys of doctors.

In reality, what William S.D. Ad Agency did was they sent some of their employees to doctors' conferences, medical conferences around the country and these employees would walk out to the back patio where the doctors would come out and smoke cigarettes and they would ask them, "Hey doctor, what is your favorite cigarette?" as they were handing them a free carton of Camel cigarettes and these doctors would say, "Oh, Camels, Camels are my favorite." Now, this ad campaign changed everything. Camel cigarette sales soared through the roof. Now, you all laughed when I showed you this ad from like 70, 80 years ago because we know better now. There, I don't think there is a doctor on the planet that would tell you, "You know, smoking, if you want to get a little healthier, maybe try smoking a cigarette or two." Nobody would say that.

We know better now and I share this with you because I wonder if in 50 years we will look back and feel the same way about these. I do wonder if in 50 years we'll look back and we will marvel how in the world did we let 12-year-olds have these. Now, I don't say that to you to make you feel guilty. There are many of us in the room, many of us watching online who have 12-year-olds and we've given them phones. I totally understand no guilt. Today is not about guilt whatsoever. I also believe there are responsible ways to leverage technology. Here's what I would say. It is not the technology itself that is the problem. I have a deep love and appreciation for digital technology. I'm quite grateful for it in a number of ways. The technology is not the problem. I am the problem.

It is my use or misuse or abuse of any technology that is the problem. Think about a hammer. A hammer doesn't have a morality to it in and of itself, does it? But if I put the hammer in the hands of a really skilled person with good intentions, a hammer can be used to build something beautiful and wonderful, yes? But I could also put that same hammer in the hands of an unskilled person, maybe who has bad intentions and their misuse or abuse of the hammer can be used to absolutely destroy. The technology is not the issue. The issue is how we use or misuse or abuse the technology. And with digital technology, the real danger is if we are not intentional about how we use the technology, make no mistake, the technology will use you and it will form you and it will shape you into the sort of person that I don't think any of us long to become.

The average smartphone user today uses their smartphone on average three hours a day. The average smartphone user today unlocks, opens their phone on average 150 times a day. Now you're sitting there thinking to yourself, what lunatics are opening their phone 150 times a day? Do an exercise tomorrow. Keep tab on how many times you actually unlock your phone and you will be shocked. The average social media user today, if you do the math and sort of map out how long in an average lifespan the average social media user will spend on social media, the average social media user will spend five years of their life on social media. If you are the average Instagram user, you will spend more time on Instagram than in college. And so no wonder we are being formed by our digital devices.

And maybe this isn't you, maybe you're sitting here today and you're like, okay, I get it, but Jay, this isn't me. And if it's not you, one, you are in the minority, two, kudos to you, well done. But three, if this isn't you, this is certainly someone or probably many someones in your life that you care about deeply. If it's not you, then someone you care about deeply is being formed by the digital age. Because the reality is most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, most of us are addicted. You ever have that feeling where you're in line at the grocery store or the DMV and you're, you know, the B word, you're bored? And what does your hand do? Almost as if it has a mind of its own. It's just like, oh, here I go, here I go. Just this world of digital escape, right? You've been there, yes?

You know, the word addict comes from a Latin root word that was used in the Greco-Roman world, the time of Jesus. It was a legal term described when a court of law would judge that a particular individual was now property belonging to another person. In essence, a slave, that word that from which we get the English word addict, that word was used to pronounce that judgment. In other words, an addict is a slave. And in the digital age, many of us, and if not us, many people we know, love, and care about are slaves. We are enslaved to our digital devices and social media and news media online and dangerously many of us don't realize it. Now the dangerous mental, emotional, physical even, and spiritual effects of our digital addictions, of our digital enslavement, a lot has been written about this. You can just Google it.

You can watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I mean, a lot has been written about this, but you don't really need to go there because again, for most of us, our own personal experiences tell us how dangerous and detrimental in many ways our misuse or abuse of digital technology has been. We experience personally at a deep level in our own lives, things like self-centric despair, and comparison, and contempt. Years ago, when Jenny and I were first married, shortly after getting married, we tried having kids, but we ran into infertility. And if anyone in the room has ever faced infertility, you know how uniquely dark that cloud is as it just kind of looms large over your life.

And an interesting thing happened. We had several friends, friends we love, friends who were in the same stage of life as ours, who had gotten married basically around the same time we had gotten married. And I was on Facebook at the time and I would see over and over again, these pregnancy announcements from my friends. And these are people I love, people who have never done anything wrong to me. And this was this wonderful, beautiful gift in their life that God had given them a new life to steward. And I should have been celebrating with them, right? Cheering them on. You know what I felt? Contempt. I felt contempt toward them. They had done nothing wrong to me. And yet all I could feel was contempt because I was comparing my life, how come we don't have kids, to their good fortune. And then that contempt led me to despair, self-centric despair.

Because I started just, all I could do was think about how much my life felt like it was lacking something. And it was this like endless spiral vortex. I found myself going down. This happens all of the time. And it's not just despair, comparison, and contempt. It's things like impatience, right? Again, we don't know what to do with boredom. You know what I'm saying? Like some of you in the room are too young to remember this, but there was a time you guys, when we would wait in line at the DMV with nothing to do and nothing to see. And you're all thinking like, "What are you talking about?" You know, there was a time when you would have to sit and just be with your thoughts and be bored. That was a thing to be bored.

And you know, that sounds barbaric now, right? Like I'm looking at the young people in the room, you're like, "You neanderthals. How did you live that way?" What's really interesting though, is that boredom is like not that fun initially, but boredom often is the pathway to unlocking your imagination. And I think today we've grown so impatient and we end up living these thin, shallow lives because we're never bored. We always have something else to see. There is entertainment at the ready to distract us. We live in a distraction culture. And if you are perpetually distracted, you will never go deep. It's a problem. So we grow impatient. And because we grow impatient and because we are shallow, because we're constantly distracted, never going deep, never thinking deeply, we jump to hostility anytime someone isn't perfectly aligned with us.

I don't really need to say much about this, right? Just look at Twitter, Facebook, anytime there's any sort of hot button cultural issue. It is a hostile wasteland. And we forget that our allegiance is not to a political ideology or a particular worldview or way of life. Our allegiance primarily as followers of Jesus is to Jesus our King. We forget that the path to human flourishing does not run through Washington DC or the White House. It runs up a mountain to a hill called Calvary and an empty tomb. We forget this. And then when anybody says anything that doesn't align perfectly with our particular opinion or ideology or worldview, we just rage against each other. And you know what outrage culture tells me? It tells me that we have believed the lie that we have to create a human utopia in and of ourselves.

There's no need for rage when you understand that the path to human flourishing has already been paved. That Jesus has already answered every question. That we know how the end of the story goes. Yet we live in an outrage culture. And eventually we are so exhausted by all of this, we just find ourselves recklessly indulging for a respite from the exhaustion. And the internet is at the ready with a plethora of options in which to recklessly indulge. I share this with you because here's what I know about you even though I don't know you that well. This isn't the sort of life you want. It's not the sort of life you long for. And yet for many of us here we are. We have more access to more information more quickly than any other humans before us. And yet we find ourselves more discontent, fragile and foolish than ever before.

How do we get here and how do we get out? 2 Peter chapter 1, the writer, Peter, he says this. He says that his divine power, God's divine power, has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Now if Peter ended his words there I would suggest to you that the internet is more than enough. Because in the digital age through the internet we have more access to more knowledge, more information, more data, more know-how than any other era in human history before. But Peter doesn't end there. In other words, knowledge is critically important but knowledge, knowing stuff, is not enough if you want to experience a godly life. If you want your life formed into Christ-likeness.

Peter continues in verses 4 and 5 and later in verse 10. He says through these he, God, has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may what? Participate in his divine nature having escaped the corruption of the world caused by evil desires for this very reason make every effort. And then he repeats himself in verse 10. My brothers and sisters make every effort to confirm your calling and your election. There's this big grand word in Christianity called grace. That the grace of God is what saves us and that is absolutely true. And that it is the grace of God because it is not a wage or a transaction. In other words, grace is only grace if it is unearned. If you could earn it, it would not be grace and that is absolutely true. Yes? We are saved by the grace of God.

But I think we have misunderstood what the Bible means when it says that we cannot earn the grace of God. We've misunderstood that idea to mean that grace demands nothing of us. It's as if we get a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory called heaven when we die. When we receive God's grace and I hold onto that ticket, I fold it up, put it in my back pocket, live my life. I do me, you do you, you just live your life and then when you die, you get to pull out the golden ticket of grace and go to heaven. That's what many people think. The late great Dallas Willard put it beautifully. He says grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.

In other words, if and when we understand the gravity and the weight and the actual cost of the grace that we have received. In other words, that God's grace is ours to have because his son died on a cross for you. When you understand the weight of the gift you have received, effort, participation is the natural response. If we believe that God's grace is a golden ticket I fold up and put in my back pocket, a part of what that means is that I am living totally unaware or ignoring the fact that that ticket was given to me by the blood shed on a cross. A life given so that I might have life. Now, what does any of that have to do with technology?

If living a godly life, in other words by God's Spirit being formed into Christ-likeness, demands effort and participation. Not to earn God's grace, you cannot earn it, but as a response to his gift of grace. If it requires effort and participation, then we have to pay careful attention to how technology affects that process. So I want to spend a couple of moments talking about what I call technology's de-formational trajectory. And to do this, I want, I'll use an example that the writer Andy Crouch, who's become a friend, brilliant guy, I first heard him use this example and I thought it was so helpful.

This example though can be applied to any technology, like literally any technology in human history, but let me use the example of transportation technology to show you technology's de-formational trajectory. About 5,500 years ago, maybe 6,000 years ago, something like that, if you wanted to go from point A to point B, the only transportation technology available to you were the two feet beneath you. And then at some point, about 5,500 years ago, out in modern day Kazakhstan, they think some heroic person stood on a field and looked out and saw a wild horse, and they thought to themselves, I bet if I jump on the back of that wild beast, I could go from point A to point B much quicker than just my own two feet. And thus was introduced horseback riding.

Now has anybody in the room been horseback riding? Okay, I've never been and I probably never will, although I just, I did ride Adrian's e-bike just a moment ago, so I might get one of those. But they're awesome, by the way, if you've never, it's like so cool, it's all I'm thinking about now. Anyways, I'm comparing my life without an e-bike to yours and I feel content. So what I've heard is that riding horses requires a lot of strength, a lot of skill, a lot of practice if you want to do it well. Yes? Right? It's not easy, you know, it's not like natural, it's not intuitive. Now, so again, transportation technology, big giant leap forward, it requires a lot of strength, a lot of skill, a lot of practice, a lot of participation.

And then in the late 19th century, the German engineer Karl Benz creates the first commercially viable automobile. This automobile was really like more machinery on wheels than it was a car, the way you and I think about a car. It was like levers and pulleys and there's no power steering, you're like cranking with all your might to turn this thing and you're shifting all the gears manually and you got to like pull and push with all your strength. And so it's a different, it's a giant leap forward in transportation technology. It's a different type of strength and skill, a different type of practice and participation, but it is strength and skill, it is still a lot of practice to drive one of these.

And then in 1939, both Cadillac and Oldsmobile released publicly for the very first time, the very first automatic transmission vehicles. You see where this is going, right? This is how technology works. Now to drive one of these Chrysler's or one of these Cadillacs or Oldsmobiles, you still need strength, skill, you still need to participate with the car, you still need to practice, but it doesn't require as much strength and skill. The car does the shifting of the gears for you. You see how the trajectory of technology works, yes? Nowadays, what we have are what are commonly called the computational car. Actually, when I taught this, gave the same teaching last night, I went out in the parking lot after the 6pm last night and an older gentleman pulled up in his Tesla Model X and he was like, "I got one of these. Thank you for not making me feel guilty. It's awesome." And I was like, "No, I'm with you. If I could afford one, I would have, I would take one." So don't feel guilty if you drive a Tesla.

If you have a spare, I'll give you my number, you know? So a Tesla is a computer on wheels. Like if you were a dad and you want to teach your kid how to work on an engine on a Saturday morning and you grabbed your toolbox and some old dirty rags and a wrench and you walked out there, but you had just bought a Tesla, you would pop the hood and you'd realize, "Oh, the hood is the trunk." So you close it, so you go to the back and you pop the back. You're like, "All right, son, we're going to spend Saturday working on the old car." And then you would pop the back of the car, you'd look at that little computer box and you'd say to yourself, "Never mind, there's nothing to do." And you just like go back in the house and watch a football game or something. Like there's no work to be done on a Tesla. It's a computer.

And in fact, when you get into the car, you can punch a few buttons and say a few words and the car will just take you where you want to go. You know what I'm saying? Okay, my kids, God brought us through this season of infertility and blessed us with two beautiful children. I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. And I often think about my seven-year-old. Her name is Harper. Thank you. And I just think, okay, in nine years when she's ready to get her driver's license, I do wonder if I say, "Harper, let's go out in the car and I'll teach you how to drive." I do wonder if she'll look at me and say, "Dad, why?" Like, why? I don't need to drive. I just get in the car. I tell her where I want to go. And it takes me there, right? With the advent of self-driving cars. I wonder if she'll just sit back. Like her mode of driving will look something like this, where she just like sits back and is on her social media and the car just kind of takes her where she wants to go.

Okay, now, why does any of this matter? I could do this same exact exercise with literally any technology. Because technology by its nature is designed to increase convenience, accessibility, automation, and ease. And this is a wonderful thing, you guys. Especially like with cars, what the data tells us is this might make our roads more efficient and safer. This is a wonderful thing. I love that I can magically push a few buttons on my phone and there's groceries at my door. It's like an incredible thing, right? What an incredible thing. So this is not like technology is all bad. This is actually really good. But what we have to understand is that as convenience, accessibility, automation, and ease increase by nature, strength, skill, participation, and practice decrease. That you cannot detach these two realities. They are one and the same.

The more comfortable, convenient, accessible, automated, and easy something is, the less strength, skill, participation, and practice it requires of you. And again, this is wonderful when it comes to ordering our groceries or driving our cars, but this is no way to form a life. This is no way to form the deepest parts of who you are. This would be like asking the question, I want to get really healthy physically. So I'm just gonna watch as many CrossFit videos on YouTube as I can. While I stuff my face with Cheetos, I'm gonna watch CrossFit videos. And you know what would happen. You would know everything there is to know about CrossFit, but you'd be so unhealthy. So it is with your life. You cannot automate spiritual growth. You cannot technologize or make more accessible or easier your growth as a Christian.

This is why we find ourselves so much in despair, comparing, feeling contempt, and impatience, hostility, forgetfulness, outrage, and recklessly indulging. So what is the solution? Paul in his famous words in Galatians 5 says that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the anecdotes to so much that ails us in the digital age. To become people of love instead of self-centric despair, joy instead of comparison, peace instead of contempt, patience instead of impatience, kindness and goodness instead of hostility, faithfulness instead of forgetfulness, gentleness instead of outrage, and self-control instead of reckless indulgence.

We can talk hours and hours about each of these, but I want to ask a simple question today. How do we do it? Like that's the life I want. My guess is that that's the life most of us want, but how do we do it? It's not easy. It requires again effort and participation, practice, the exerting of strength and skill. Galatians 5, Paul continues and he says, "If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit." That phrase "keep in step" in the original language is a single Greek word and it was a Greek word that was used primarily as a military term. It was a word that was used to describe the Roman army, which was the fiercest fighting force in the known world at the time.

The Roman army was undefeated in battle because they had this methodology. They would always configure themselves in these fighting formations. They would battle in alignment in these impenetrable formations. And the Greek word used to describe these sorts of formations, this sort of alignment between the soldiers, that's the word Paul uses here to describe a life of keeping in step with the spirit. In other words, to keep in step with the spirit is to align ourselves with the spirit of God, to walk through life in union with God through disciplined action and effortful participation. It's not just about good intentions or about knowing how to do it. It's about actually exerting strength and skill, discipline, making real changes in our lives.

And we do this a number of ways. In fact, there's lots of ways right here at Twin Lakes that you are invited to do this. This is why you are invited to join and to sing together, to sit under the teaching of God's word together, to join a small group or to serve or to give. Right? These are all ways in which we actually with strength, skill, participation, and practice live in alignment with the spirit of God. But I also want to give you, very specific to the digital age, just a few maybe helpful suggestions to again live in alignment, to keep in step with the spirit in the digital age. A couple of suggestions for you.

One, practice digital Sabbaths. Andy Crouch recommends one hour a day, one day a week, one week a year. Is there one hour a day, every day when you can shut it all off? Email, text, smartphone, laptop, Alexa, TV, iPad, everything. And just be human with God and with one another. Is there one day a week for our family, this is usually Saturdays, where we shut everything off and Jenny and I will usually take the kids for a short hike, then we'll play in the backyard and the front yard with our neighbors, and we'll try to cook a good meal. No TV, no phones, and it's beautiful. It's like breathing clean air for the first time in a long time.

Is there one week a year where you can do this? I was just texting with René, as many of you know he's been on sabbatical and he was just texting me a couple days ago about how he's been off his phone for most of the sabbatical and how reinvigorating that's been for him. Another suggestion I would suggest to you, another helpful practice, cultivate patience by going slow. Drive in the slow lane. That's an actual thing you guys on the highway. There is a slow lane for most of us. You know we think the speed limits are just like nice suggestions or something. Or pick up a hobby that will take you a long time. You know maybe get a 5,000 piece puzzle. Or Trent, some of you know Trent, the worship pastor here who's just up here, he's going to be up here and again in a second. You know he built a boat a year or two ago. You guys know that?

I saw it on Facebook. Actually at the 6 p.m. last night I was like, "Or go talk to Trent and go build a boat." And I said, "Trent, how long did it take you to build that entire boat?" He was like, "Yeah, two months." I was like, "Okay, don't go talk to Trent. He's too gifted. Find someone who's bad at building boats where it takes them like a year. Go do that." You know? But do something that brings you life and is invigorating and exciting but requires you to go slow. Another really practical thing, delete things from your phone. You know what's a fun game? It's to see if you can delete one thing from your phone every single week. Just try it. Like literally delete it and don't add it back. Just delete it. Social media, maybe even email if your work allows. Delete it.

And then finally ask yourself why really. Why? Like every time you go on digital technology, just ask yourself very quickly, mentally, "Why am I really going on this?" Why? And the answer will be really clarifying most of the time. If it's 10 a.m., you're in the office and you're about to go on your laptop. It's like, "Okay, why really?" "Oh, because I have a job. They expect me to respond to emails and do my work." Great. Easy answer. Go. But maybe you're going on your laptop at 10 p.m., right? It's like, "Why really?" "Oh, well, I mean sometimes it's like, "No, like I have a deadline. I got to get this done." But often it's not that. It's like some other reason. And if you're honest with yourself, you'll very quickly get to the point where you realize, "I don't actually really need to go on right now."

You know, several years ago, some friends of mine, we were in San Francisco. We were there to celebrate a good friend of ours. And we saw this origami shop. And I'm not really into origami, or I wasn't at the time. But it looked like a cool shop. So we all walk into this origami shop. And right at the front of the shop is this big, large glass case. And in that glass case was the most mesmerizing origami piece I've ever seen in my life called the Rujin 3.5. It's this dragon. Now here's what you need to know. This origami piece, it's not like a small paper crane. It's big. It's a large origami piece. And so I'm mesmerized by this thing. So I asked the store owner about it.

And here's what I come to find out. In traditional origami, there are no cuts. Meaning you cannot cut the paper. You simply grab a piece of paper and begin folding. The Rujin 3.5, which was developed by one of the world's best origami artists, a man named Satoshi Kamiya, the Rujin 3.5 is a single, unadulterated, large piece of square paper. Not a single cut. Not one. Most origami artists, they will publicly display, publicly share online what is called their crease pattern. And a crease pattern is basically the pattern for the origami piece. And this is the crease pattern for the Rujin 3.5. Every line you see is a fold of paper. You can go on YouTube and look up Rujin 3.5 tutorial and the tutorial videos, which are sped up, are 12 to 14 hours long.

Now here's what's really crazy. Every single one of us in this room could create the Rujin 3.5. Every single one of us. You could take this, print it on a large piece of paper, and just start folding. Let me ask a question. How many of you will actually do the Rujin 3.5? Nobody. Nobody. Because nobody cares. No one cares about origami. You're not going to do it. Get out of here. Who has the time? I don't care. But what about your life? What about your actual life? You know, a few years ago, when my daughter was three and my son had just been born, my daughter was playing on the floor with her newborn baby brother and she was leaning over and hugging him.

And I did what every good dad does. I pulled out my phone and I started snapping photos. And I got this perfect shot of my daughter kissing her baby brother on the cheek. And I was like, this is it. I got my Instagram Facebook winner of the year. So I start adding the right filters. I start cropping the photo. I start thinking about what I'm going to write. It's got to be like really thoughtful and poetic and kind of spiritual, but not too spiritual because I got to get the love from the non-Christians on my Facebook and Instagram too. And so I'm thinking about all of this, looking at this digital image of my children when my actual human child tugs on my pant leg. And so I look past the digital image of my daughter to see my actual daughter.

And with sadness in her eyes, she looks up at me and she says to me, daddy, no more email. Because in her three short years of life, she had experienced so commonly her dad physically present, but absent in every other way, usually checking email. And I share that story with you not to make you feel guilty. Because I know you many of you can relate, right? I share that with you to simply ask a sobering question. Is that the life you want? Like at the end of your life, do you want those you cared about most to look back and say, man, he sure was good at email. Like at the end of my life, I don't want my daughter to say to others about me, you know, my daddy, you know how many Instagram followers he had? What a life.

You know, my daddy, he had a ton of people on Twitter that really like retweeted him a lot. What a hero. I don't want that. At the end of my life, I want my little girl to say my daddy when he was with me, he was really with me. My daddy loved me. Our house was a house of joy. My daddy put on display the peace of God in a chaotic world. My daddy was patient with me. My daddy was good. He was kind. He was faithful to mom and to God and to our family. He was self-controlled. He was gentle. That's the life I want. That's the life you want. And it seems impossible, but it is possible. It is right there in front of you. All you need do is fold your life one fold at a time into the life of the Spirit of God.

It will not happen overnight. It won't happen in a week or a year. It will happen slowly over the course of your life, but you can make those folds love, joy, choosing peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, little by little every day, unfolding your life into the life of God's Spirit as he bears fruit in you. And you will find someday that God has crafted in and through you by his Spirit a life that you could not have imagined for yourself. Amen. Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for your Spirit with us and in us, cultivating slowly over time the life we long for. We ask that in the midst of all of the digital distractions and all that pulls and tugs at us, our allegiance and our affection in the digital age, we pray that today by your Spirit, you would help us to make one little fold into the life you have for us, that we would choose today to live the life of love just a little bit more today than we did yesterday and a little bit more tomorrow than we did today. And that by your Spirit over time, you would cultivate in us the fruit that you offer, that our lives would be fruitful lives in the way that we all long for. We surrender these lives to you and ask that you do that work in us. We love you and we thank you. We pray these things, Jesus, in your name, amen.