Refocused

R and R. Rest. Refocus. Refuel. That's what we need right now, right? I mean, it's been a tough, traumatizing two years for some of us more than others. And I've had one person after another tell me, René, what I feel like is I feel like I am tired on the inside. Well, the good news is the Bible has a lot to say about how to find some R and R for your soul. And that's what the series is going to be all about for the next couple of weeks. I am so glad that you could join us. Man, I'm with Trent. I love this church so much. And thank you for being a part of it. Thank you for joining us on the live stream to whether you're here in person or on the live stream, grab your message notes so you can follow along with the first week of R and R. And if you're joining us on the live stream, you can download these at TLC.org/notes.

But before we plunge into this, I feel like we got to celebrate what happened this past weekend. Look at these videos and pictures. I mean, what an amazing weekend. We were 78 people shy of 5000 people on the weekend. It was the biggest weekend we've had since covid and it felt like a homecoming, didn't it? I mean, one couple after another one family after another was telling me, René, this is our first time back in two years. It's so fun. I see a lot of new faces even today. People told me I came on Easter. I'm coming back and I feel like we got to really, really, really express our thanks to the volunteers, the choir members, the band members, the food volunteers, the greeters, the ushers, everybody who made the whole weekend possible, particularly the person who kind of ran the whole thing. And that was one of our pastors, Valerie Webb. So could you just put your hands together? Let's thank everybody who was a part of this amazing weekend.

Well, let's talk about some soul R&R. You know, I am so grateful that I'm going to be getting some extended R&R myself for three months in a row. One of the best things this church does for its pastors is every seven years, all of the pastors get the summer off. We get three months off. And so I'm so stoked that this is my opportunity to take part in that. And we're going to have some great stuff happening while I'm away. In fact, I almost feel bummed that I'm taking a sabbatical because of all the cool stuff that's coming up. For example, in a couple of weeks, Bethany Hamilton is going to be here live at Twin Lakes Church. It's going to be a fantastic, fantastic night. We're going to show her a movie and she's going to be here sharing a little bit and answering some questions. I hope you take advantage of that.

That same weekend, we're going to have Herman Hamilton start speaking. So Bethany Hamilton on Friday night, Herman Hamilton in the weekend services, he's going to start a three week series here at Twin Lakes Church called Your Best Life. It's going to be fantastic. And then later on that same day, we're going to be showing the musical Hamilton for a Hamilton weekend. That's not true. That part's not true. Later on this summer, we're going to have some acclaimed nationally known authors like Jeremiah Johnston. And then best of all, we've got our own TLC team kind of doing some of the stuff I normally do, both speaking, doing video divas, doing the newsletter columns, all kinds of stuff. And we have a great team here, don't we? It's going to be a fantastic summer, both for me and for you and for all of them.

But let's talk about R&R right now, some soul R&R. With two weekends left now before I begin my sabbatical, it's interesting how that focuses you, right? Because what happens is you go, what are the things I want to share these next two weekends? What do from my perspective, what are the most important things for Christians to know for you as part of Twin Lakes Church to know to kind of keep you propelled into spiritual growth for the next three months? What are absolutely, from my perspective, the most crucial things that I have to share? Now, I'm planning on coming back after sabbatical, but I've been thinking about it like this, like, like, what if these are my last two messages to this church ever? What am I going to talk about?

And I prayed a lot about it. As you might have heard, I had a week of hotel time given to me by God in Jerusalem when I tested positive for COVID over there. I had to be quarantined for a week. And so I prayed about this, thought a lot about this. Two more chances, two more sermons, two more weekends. What are the two things I really want to address? And two topics kind of bubbled up to the surface right away. From my perspective, the most crucial things I could share. And this morning, I want to talk about what I see is truly the single biggest challenge to Christians, to churches, to Christian growth in our country right now. It's the single biggest challenge facing our culture right now. And it's probably not whatever you're thinking it is right now.

Because this is a problem that is so universal that most people don't even notice it. This is a problem that permeates our society so much. It's like water surrounding a fish, right? You know, fish don't swim in the ocean going, "Oh, I'm all wet." They just live in the water. They don't even notice it. That's how bad this problem is in our culture right now. But it is robbing you of joy. It is stunting your spiritual and intellectual growth. It is making you stupider. It's tearing apart our churches. It's undermining our nation. And yet some of you are so addicted to what I'm going to address today that you're going to clench your teeth and resist every word I am about to preach in order to protect the habit that is destroying you. Are you ready to hear what it is?

Well, my time is up. Let's close in a word of prayer. We'll talk about this next weekend. No. Here it is. I'll phrase it in one word that may not even seem that bad to you at first, but then I want to explain it to you. The one word is this, distraction. Say that with me out loud. Distraction. You've heard of weapons of mass destruction, right? Well in our culture, we have what you could call weapons of mass distraction that are actually changing your brain so that you are losing your ability to think straight. The deluge of information coming at you on multiple channels, including these, including these, including your television sets. It's ruining your life. And it's starting to get the attention of researchers.

Here's some of what I found researching this sermon. Time magazine had a cover story a while back. Headline, distraction is the preeminent condition of our age. The article started, we are in a distracted, multitasking culture. Raise your hand if you would agree with that. That's pretty hard to deny, isn't it? The Atlantic had an article just this past week, and I love the headline of this, why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid. Yeah, why is that? I want to know. Well, the article theorizes this. There's evidence that social media apps have shortened our attention spans so much that we can't think straight and they are making us more irritable. This article quotes one social scientist who says these platforms are almost perfectly designed to bring out our least reflective selves.

The volume of outrage, consequently now, is shocking, a kind of twitchy and explosive anger. We're getting angry about all kinds of stuff and we're not even thinking about stuff. We're angry about we're just responding to memes and to tweets and to things people tell us that we should be outraged about. And then before the day's over, we're outraged about something else. Check this out. According to a new study from Microsoft of all companies, people now generally lose their concentration after eight seconds. Now, I assume they were doing this study so they could, you know, design the user experience for their own applications because they're like, wow, we got we only got eight seconds to snare people. But I want you to put this into perspective. Eight seconds means the average American now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Because they're holding steady at nine.

Now, just let this think in just a second here. And that means about half of you just went, what? There's a fish on screen. What did René just say? I wasn't paying attention according to this research. The medical journal Neuro image had a paper recently studying the effect of social media apps on the brain. They summarized a ton of research and the scientists concluded this in general activities that require sustained attention like reading math decision making impulse control. Yeah, these aren't important at all, right? Are being what? Stunted by this constant barrage of eight second long distractions. Now, here's how they know the scientists can now do real time brain scans that let them see activity in your brain. This is a brain that they call flooded. All the red areas are flooded with adrenaline and other stress hormones.

And what happens when you feel like you're under threat when there's a predator or there's a warrior after you? This is what happens to your brain. And what happens is you go into hyper threat analysis and rational thinking shuts down like literally the parts of your brain that have to do with rational thinking. They don't get activity in them anymore because there's a threat around you. So when somebody's brain is flooded, you can't even rationally argue with them or discuss anything with them. And interestingly, you become tribal. You seek out allies very quickly. Now it's me and my people against the threat in our world. Now, the flooded brain is not a bug, right? You might be going, how could God made us with a brain that does that? That's a feature, not a bug.

Because like when you're being attacked by a mountain lion, right? You don't have time to go now. What are all my rational options here? No, it's fight or flight. You know, let me see who can help me with this and let me just kind of attack. So flooded brain can actually be a gift of survival. God gave it to us. But here's the thing. In the last decade, the number of brain scans flooded as a baseline. That means when people come in to get their MRIs done, they're always in this flooded state has increased every single year. Why? Well, something happened. The Atlantic article talks about this about 10 years ago and that is online media and social media apps in particular learned how to do algorithms based on your likes. So they know what will distract you.

They know what will get your attention. And so they keep you constantly in a state of when's the other shoe going to drop? Maybe am I going to get a like or maybe is Russia attacking or maybe is there a covid surge or maybe did somebody dislike me on my social media feed? And this undermines your ability to focus and undermines your spiritual growth undermines the ability to think undermines your Christian witness because you're more irritable all the time. Scientists say this kind of brain produces poor decision making mood swings difficulty concentrating difficulty concentrating. Just kidding sleeplessness news feed addiction. Does any of this sound familiar to you right now? How'd you like to escape that? And addiction is really the word my wife showed me an article this week that said that a restaurant in Kent, England. Check this out is offering to knock 20% off their customers bills, but only if they're willing to lock their cell phones up in a tiny tabletop jail cell.

The phones literally have to be padlocked inside for the entire duration of their meal. Now, here's the amazing thing. The owner says about a third of the customers one third turn down the offer. You could get 20% off. Nope. Got to upload my food capture to my Instagram followers man for 20% off. You could lock up my children. This is crazy. But we're so distracted. It's all just an addiction. Somebody once said if Satan can't tempt you he'll distract you. So listen if distraction is the problem and by the way, people are saying oh there's so much there's so much tribalism. There's so much division. There's so much anger. There's so much whatever and there is a lot of that stuff right? That's all a symptom. All symptoms. This is the underlying cause of it all. So if that's the problem then what's the cure?

Well obviously if distractions the problem then attention is the cure right learning how to give sustained attention learning how to and here's the first R in R&R how to refocus. Well the Bible has a word for that. Meditation. Check this out. There's another study called the meditative mind a comprehensive meta-analysis of MRI studies. Now this is not done by some religious, you know, journal. This is done by the National Institutes of Health and they found that when people are in the meditative mind and the way they define meditative mind is they're praying or meditating for 20 minutes. That's not very long for just 20 minutes a day any time during the day. Their brain scans completely change. It gets the red out and it's associated with relaxation. Better memory longer attention spans compassion. Isn't that interesting and emotional control. Now wouldn't you like to get more of that into your life?

You know one of the most interesting findings in that study is that all of these benefits continue even when you're not meditating. Hours after your little 20 minute meditation time you're still relaxed. You still have a better memory longer attention. Your compassion level is still up. Man, how can we get more of this into our lives? Let's talk about it and then we're going to do something a little bit different today. We're actually going to do this. And I'm so passionate about this and I chose to talk about this as one of my last two messages before sabbatical because this could literally change your life like for life. This could give you a foundation for every trial you go through. This could turbocharge your spiritual life, but there's some obstacles when you talk about meditation and I know that because let's be honest here the term meditation. Some of you love this, but some of you it just kind of weirds you out.

First of all, it seems hard like I have to do something on a mountaintop somewhere. I don't have time for that. I don't know how to do it right. Like you're thinking it seems suspiciously new AG and self-helpy right. Well first the word meditation simply means focused attention and just learning to do that alone would be a huge relief right now. Combine that with focused attention on God and you have something super powerful and it's very biblical. Did you know that the Bible's references to meditation are the oldest references to meditation in all of the world's religions? And I want to take you to one of the oldest in the Bible. We're going to look at the first three verses of Psalm 1 today very quickly little context for you. The Psalms were sort of the meditation book for ancient Israel and this first Psalm is sort of like the gatekeeper to the rest of the Psalms. It's saying welcome to the book of Psalms. Let me just tell you what's going to happen to you if you do what is contained in the rest of this book of the Bible called the Psalms.

You get that idea and it starts like this. Blessed is the one who walks not on the council of the ungodly nor stands in the path of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he what meditates day and night. Watch this. He will be he or she will be like a tree planted by streams of water that brings forth its fruit in its season whose leaf does not wither whatever he does prospers some amazing promises in those three verses given to people who meditate. So let's look at some of the scriptural benefits of meditation and then we're going to talk about some simple ways to do this that I know you can do not just like later on today or tomorrow but like right now in this service we're going to practice this.

All right. So let's look at some of the benefits of meditation. First it says happiness. It says blessed is the one and blessed means happiness deep joy meaningfulness wholeness peace fulfillment. And then second momentum gives you forward momentum to your day. It says blessed is the one who walks not in the council of the ungodly nor stands in the path of sinners nor sits in the seat of the scornful. Now why doesn't he just say blessed is the one who doesn't do what bad people do? Right. That would be easier and easier way to say this why all this walk stand sit stuff. He's talking about life patterns walking sitting standing in the patterns of this world letting yourself keep company with people who are ungodly or sinners or kind of scornful cynical mocking right sarcastic people right. Are you hanging out with us? Are they influencing you now back in those days when this was written about 3000 years ago in order to be influenced by somebody you had to hang out with somebody right.

You had to walk stand and sit actually physically with them these days. You don't have to do that anymore. In fact, what do they call people on social media who have an impact on other people's lives through their posts influencers right. And so you can walk and stand and sit in the path of somebody you've never met and you never will meet in your life but you can kind of live their lives as you follow their Instagram post of their tweets of the TikTok post or whatever because you're letting them influence you now who is influencing you their life patterns are going to give you momentum to go that direction. And this is saying when you when you establish a different daily life pattern when you start to hang out with the Lord spiritually your momentum is going to be positive because you're developing a new pattern in the right direction. So it gives you momentum. It gives you happiness and then third stability stability.

It says you'll be like a tree planted by streams of water. Now, what's that all about? This was written in what country was the book of Psalms written for? Israel, right? Israel has an arid climate much like California. And so like this tree that's in the Judean wilderness that we saw there in that arid climate a tree not planted by a stream can't be sure of always being, you know, green and fruitful because a tree not planted by a stream depends on the rain falling on it, which as we know around here in California is inconsistent. And that's like a believer. Follow me here like a believer who always depends on stimulation just falling on him or her the rain falling on them. They happen to hear a great song at church, a worship song that moves them or maybe a good sermon at church or maybe they're reading a good book or they hear a great worship song of the radio. That's rain and the rain happens to fall on them and they blossom and rain is great. We're grateful for rain. But rain doesn't always happen.

And so when the rain doesn't happen to fall on you, you weather up spiritually. But if you're like a tree planted by a stream of water like these trees that I also saw there in Israel that have put down the roots into an underground aquifer near Bethlehem, there's a spring underground in the city of Bethlehem that has not run dry for over 3000 years. A tree like that is going to bring forth its fruit in its seasons. There's still going to be seasons. Every life has seasons, ups and downs. But this tree doesn't die whose leaf does not wither because it's tapped into an underground stream of life giving water. You see, that's what meditation does for you. Gives you stability. And then finally, this is going to surprise some of you. It brings prosperity. It says whatever he does, what? Prospers. Now, that's not necessarily prosperity the way we tend to think about it. You know, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz or whatever? What it means is whatever you do is going to have beneficial effect. And whatever happens to you is going to have beneficial effect. Now, that's quite a promise. No matter what happens to you, there's ultimately going to be a benefit. You'll prosper from it. That's right. Soul prosperity. These are all very powerful promises. That is what focused attention brings you. And we just saw this backed up by science, didn't we? In that article about how the brain scans change when people pray or meditate for just 20 minutes.

So listen, if you're sitting there going, I don't want to do meditation. I've tried it before. I don't like it. I'm just I'm ADHD. I can't do this kind of meditation thing. What you're saying is I know the Bible commands it. I know science backs it. I know that Jesus in the Bible needed it, but I'm still not going to do it. I mean, frankly, the Bible tells us to do this because it's going to give you your absolute best life ever. And I've personally experienced this. I'm going to share that in just a couple of minutes. Now, some of you might be going, yes, I'm convinced René absolutely signs back to the Bible. She says that Jesus practiced it. But how do I do it? What's the fuel for meditation? That's a great question because you could be meditating on your worries, right? Or on the war in Ukraine. You could meditate. You could focus your attention on that. So what do you meditate on?

Very quickly, the Bible says first meditate on the Word of God. It says in his law, he meditates day and night. And this is very important because there's a lot of material and meditation that's not primarily based on meditating on scripture, even in Christian circles. Actually, I heard a sermon at a camp where the speaker said, just open your mind and let whatever comes in flow. And whatever you think of next, that's God speaking to you. Problem. How do you know if you don't start with the Word of God that what you happen to be imagining is true? First, you need to let the Word of God nourish you and then your imagination can be shaped by the truth. And then I can meditate very powerfully on the wonder of God. Psalm 145:5. Let's read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you focus on this verse out loud together. Here we go. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty. What's the glorious splendor of God? Is that attributes? You think about God's love, his infinite love for you. You let your mind be kind of blown away by the fact that God is omnipresent. That means he's closer to you right now than anybody else. And he's equally present way out in Alpha Centuri. That's mind-blowing. And you think about God's forgiveness and his grace. All of his act. That's the majesty of God.

And then third, I can also meditate on the works of God. Look at the rest of Psalm 145:5 and on your wondrous works. Now, what are God's wondrous works? Well, his blessings in your life that he gives you that those are his works. His redemptive works in your life and throughout history, but also his works in creation. Man, around here, you're 10 minutes away from a hike in something stunning. And you can meditate on the redwood trees or just on the sky or on the majestic waves that we have around here. These are all evidences of the creative majesty of God. So let your imagination be formed by the Word of God, the wonder of God, the works of God. Doesn't that sound good?

Now, let me just dig a little bit deeper into how to do this. And I really want you to hear me on this. Nobody's got one way, but it's the way. In fact, a huge problem I see is making one way of meditation into a formula, a technique. This is kind of like it almost comes across like the magic formula for getting your God buzz on, right? But the point isn't the technique or the system. The point is just give yourself a focused opportunity to know God and different things are going to work for you that may not work for me or somebody else. But let me just give you one tip that kind of opened this up for me, doing some word study on the Hebrew word for meditate. It comes from the Hebrew word for ruminate. You know what ruminate means, right? To chew slowly like a cow chewing its cud.

What are cows doing when they are doing that? I was hiking in Scotts Valley yesterday. It looked like all the cows in the pasture were chewing gum. Well, cows have four stomachs, four, and they chew the grass and it goes down to stomach number one. Gets just a little bit, back up, chewed some more. Down to stomach number two, a little bit more digestion. Back up again, chewed on some more, four times. I know that sounds gross, but people, that's how you get ice cream. And that's what ruminate is. You take a thought and you chew on it a little bit. You send it down to the subconscious level where it kind of gets digested. Then you think on it again a little bit more and then send it back down again over and over again. It's how you savor a thought. And I have learned how to do this in the last couple of years in a deeper way than I ever have before in my life.

I'll tell you the story. Two things happen to me at the very beginning of the very first COVID lockdown back in March of 2020. It changed my life and this is why I'm so passionate about this topic. This is the best thing I ever did for my own personal spiritual growth. Two things. First, I ran into Mark Littlefield to a tense church here at TLC. We were both out on East Cliff getting some fresh air, jogging, and I said, "Hey Mark, how's it going?" And he told me, "Great!" I said, "Great, why?" And Mark told me about his then new habit of praying through the Lord's Prayer every single morning. Now back in 2020, two years ago, I already shared with some of you, I tried that the next day, but I want to give you an update. I have been doing that for two straight years every single morning since I met Mark and I love it.

Now, here's the way I do it. The moment I realize that I'm conscious in the morning, I mean the second I realize I'm awake, before I whip this out to check on my newsfeed or the news headlines or social media or texts or emails or phone calls on it, or all the distractions every eight seconds, before I even touch that, before I even make coffee, if you can believe it, I lay there in bed and I pray through the Lord's Prayer from memory. You might want to try this and to make it accessible, because some of you might be going, "I don't know the Lord's Prayer. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know where to find it in the Bible." Look at your message notes and look at the back page. I put it right there just in case you don't know it by heart. And by the way, if you do this after about a week, you're going to know this by heart. This is how Jesus taught us to pray. So when we do this, we're thinking the thoughts of Jesus after him.

Now, the way I usually do this is after every phrase, I stop and I ask myself, "Okay, what am I praying for here? Like our Father in heaven?" Wow, God is not the CEO of the universe or something. He's my Father, my Father, and He loves me like a father. Sets the stage. "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." "Your kingdom come, God, and that's when I pray for you. Crane." "That I pray for our nation." "I pray for us as a church." "I pray that we would behave not in the ways of this world, but as ambassadors of His kingdom." "Give us this day our daily bread." And I ask, "Okay, what is it that I'm actually praying for?" "What is the daily bread I'm asking for today?" And what I ask myself is, "How will I even know if God answered this prayer?" "What am I asking for?" Probably not a loaf of bread. What's kind of the daily task that I help with? And I say very specifically, like for example, "Lord, I need to get a rough draft of my sermon done by noon." And Lord, one of my kids seems a little bit discouraged. Help me to be encouraging to that child by 3 p.m. today. And I mean like I am very specific because otherwise, how could I praise God for answered prayer?

And then forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And I think, "Okay, what debts do I need forgiveness for right now?" And, you know, what debtors have I been maybe clinging to? And do I need to release and forgive emotionally right now? Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What temptations am I asking for deliverance from? And I'm very specific. Now, I don't want to just talk about this. Like I said, I actually want to do this. So what I want to do is give you just a couple of minutes where you pray through the Lord's prayer with a beautiful view of the wonder of God and nature right here in Capitola. So let's do this for a couple of minutes and then we will reconvene the message. I hope you enjoy this.

Didn't that feel good? Didn't you need that? You know, when I talked to Mark about this, he said, "You know, it's weird, René, because all I do is pray through the Lord's prayer and sometimes it goes by, it's three minutes long." And he goes, "Sometimes I look at my clock and I've been praying for an hour." And he goes, "I don't even know how that happened." He said, "I always used to hear about, 'Well, you've got to have extended prayer time.' And it never worked for me." But he goes, "This is like almost a miracle. And I have found exactly the same thing." In fact, just this morning, I woke up at just before six, like 5.45. And I did my routine, praying through the Lord's prayer this way. And the next time I looked at the clock, it was seven in the morning. You know what I mean? Like an hour and 15 minutes went by. Why? Ruminating, chewing the cud.

Now I've been doing the same verses for two years. That's what I mean when I say ruminating. I thought, "I'm going to do this for a year and then I'm going to find some new verse." But it's still got juice, you know? Now the second thing that happened to me, like the same month that I ran into Mark there on Westcliff, or Eastcliff Drive rather, was I happened to be reading a book about the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. It was about the last year of his life. It's called "Death of a King." I highly recommend it. But in the book, the author talks about how MLK Jr. started a habit of daily in the morning, as his meditation, praying through the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23. So I thought, "Well, if it's good for Dr. King, it's good for me too." So I added that to the Lord's Prayer, and I do both of these from memory every single morning, first thing, in bed.

And I prayed through these things. I think, "Lord, I want to develop this kind of character, love and joy and peace and patience and kindness." And I asked God to grow these things in me because really this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus, right? To grow in the fruit of the Spirit. That's what it's all about, to grow in Christ-likeness. And then I end with a recognition that this is a picture of Jesus. Because this is how Jesus is to me and to you. He's loving. He's joyful. He's faithful. He's patient. He's kind. And after I wrap up with that, you want to follow Jesus when you see Him in this way. You know, it's interesting. One of my favorite but obscure verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 3:18. It says, "And we all," watch this, "who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory." What the Apostle Paul is saying here very poetically is, what's the best way to be made Christ-like in your life? It's not about trying harder. It's about contemplating the Lord.

And as you contemplate Him, as you see the face of Christ in these verses, it changes you. I mean, you know, it's not magic. It's incremental change, but it really does change your imagination. You forget about yourself. You forget about your worries. You forget about the headlines. You forget about your performance. And you become lost in wonder. So I want to give you a meditation challenge for my sabbatical. Take the first 20 minutes of each day and meditate in order to develop a pattern that you keep. And if you do this just over the next month, I know you'll be starting a habit that will change your life. And listen, I say 20 minutes. Maybe you start with three or five. You probably will miss several days. Big deal. Don't give up. This is about starting a pattern, about focusing on the Lord.

Now, before we wrap up with another time of meditation, I really want to emphasize this is not some legalistic thing. Meditation is not about getting God to bless you. You're not meditating to earn any brownie points from God. It's about refocusing on how God already blesses you. Does that make sense? Because we miss that. And meditation is not about getting God's attention in some kind of superstitious quid pro quo, transactional legalistic model of religion, like, look at me, God, I'm sacrificing my time for you. I'm being so good today. I'm meditating for 20 whole minutes. Now you got to pay attention to my prayers and answer them, right? It's about letting your attention be captured by God. Listen, God loves you so much that he gave his one and only son. So you could have everlasting life and abundant life right now. And as you let your imagination just be captured by that instead of every eight seconds. What about the Will Smith Oscar slap? Yeah, I still got to think about that mistake. Somebody made a month later, even though it doesn't really affect my life. Now put that away and think about something that is so important on a cosmic level. Free yourself. Free your mind, free your soul from the distractions and into abundant life.

Let's pray together, then let's do it again. Bow your heads with me. Lord, I pray that this begins or renews a lifetime habit that changes us from the inside out. Thank you so much that you're not a God who's far away. You're a God who wants to come close. In fact, the whole purpose of the cross was so we could know you. And if that was the whole purpose of that, if you want us to move into relationship with you, then certainly when we open our hearts to you in this way, you are going to come near to us. So teach us to develop a habit that swims against the tide that every app creator and every news source and every social media influencer wants to distract us. And God is going to take your supernatural power to help us to swim against the tide and to focus on you. So give us the power to do that. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's relax. Let's refocus before we leave with some meditative time and then a final closing song.