The Chameleon Emotion

Seated, it is wonderful to have you with us here today. My name is René, another one of the pastors here, and since the Super Bowl is on so many minds, I want to start with this: Dion Sanders. Remember him? He won a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers. Well, recently Dion was on a show called Running Wild with Bear Grylls. Here's the deal with this show: they have a different celebrity every episode go on a kind of a survival trek with the host, this guy Bear Grylls. In between running long distances, camping in the woods, and climbing rock walls, they sit around campfires and talk about life.

Like this: watch this clip. Dion is the only man in history to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series. He dominated both sports for more than a decade, earning himself two Super Bowl rings and a spot in the Hall of Fame. So, out of all of the sporting moments, what was your greatest, you think? Do you ever think about those, or do you not really? Honestly, man, behind the veil, behind the mess, I'm really different than my public persona or public person is prime time. You know, so like even when you won the Super Bowl and stuff, when I won the Super Bowl, whatever my first Super Bowl, what did you do? I was the first one on the bus, first one to bed. I didn't even go to party. It was something missing inside, man. It wasn't fulfilling as I thought it was.

And it wasn't about the outward things because I had power, money, and sex, but it wasn't fulfilling. So you had all of that power, money, and sex, and it was just an empty feeling. Still empty. So what happened? That's when I went through my first divorce, in which the only things that I knew that truly loved me were my two kids. Now they're gone; now they've been taken away because you lost custody of your kids. It was devastating, and I went through suicidal thoughts, a suicidal period. I ran this car off the side of the highway and was at the bottom. I thought it would just flip; it didn't flip. And I was still there, and I was like, man, shortly after that, I had to just come to the Lord with my hands up and say, I'm done. I can't do it anymore. You got me. I give up. God, you take me.

So all of that power, money, and sex didn't give you what you wanted? There's emptiness. There's a great power to being able to achieve amazing things and yet hold them so lightly because you have something far more precious. That's it. And you know we share a faith together; it's like a backbone to me as well. All the achievements and the summits, they're nothing compared to something inside, and I totally see it in you. I stayed strong, and I never questioned God. It has to be something bigger than you that you're working for, that you're living for. God, if it's all about you, you've already lost.

Isn't that a fascinating interview? Really intriguing. Now listen, I don't know a lot about Dion's personal life, but he goes into even more detail in his autobiography, which he maybe predictably calls Power, Money, and Sex: How Success Almost Ruined My Life. He writes this: the Bible describes it in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes as a chasing after the wind, and that's exactly what it was like. I tried to buy myself something to make me happy, and I was even emptier than before. Nothing could possibly satisfy the hunger that was deep down inside of me.

Dion was experiencing something that we all can feel. In fact, maybe you have felt it recently about your own life, or your own job, or your own achievements, or your own college degree. Like, I worked so hard; I thought it would be so much more satisfying, and I'm still empty. I think that's worth talking about. So grab your message notes. Habits of the Heart is the name of our series based on the book Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley, and our key verse for this series is at the top of your notes. I'm also gonna put it on screen. It's from Proverbs in the Bible. Let's read this verse out loud together: Let me hear you: above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Here's the concept behind this series: at the beginning of every year, most people want to stop bad habits and start good ones. The problem is we often try to change ourselves internally when usually first we need to go deeper and work on what's internal that's causing the bad habits in the first place and keeping the good habits from happening. So far in the series, we've looked at guilt, which is overcome by confession. We've looked at anger, which is overcome by the daily practice of forgiveness. Now today I want to look at what I call heart toxin number three, which is greed.

But here's the problem: when I say the word greed, as Scott Sauls says, greed is actually a universal disease. Almost everyone in the world has it, but almost no one thinks they have it. You know, it's interesting in our current culture or pop culture right now. There's actually more criticism of greed than I ever remember there being in my life: greedy banks, greedy billionaires, greedy whoever; everybody's got their signs up. Now, sometimes outrage at somebody else's personal greed or systemic greed is very appropriate. In fact, it's biblical; the prophets in the Bible did it. The problem is it is so easy to spot greed in other people, other groups, other social classes—not me and not mine. Everyone thinks greed is a problem; nobody defends greed, but nobody thinks it's their problem.

In fact, I was thinking, in over 30 years as a pastor, I've heard everything you can imagine—a lot of stuff I hope you never imagined—confessed to me in privacy in my office. Yet never once that I can remember in over 30 years of ministry have I heard, I have something to confess to you. My problem is greed. Not once. In fact, I would say especially here in Santa Cruz County, in the broader Bay Area, where the cost of living is so sky-high, probably a lot of us in this room or watching on Facebook Live or over in the venue right now are thinking, how can I possibly be greedy? How would it be possible for me to be greedy? I have to scrape together everything I've got from my retirement, two jobs, and another part-time job just to try to make ends meet. I don't have enough money to be greedy.

So I want to take some time to establish greed is not just something that you can point to in corporate America or the top one percenters that puts it very conveniently outside of my world, right? It's something latent in all of us. Our key verse today is in the gospel of Luke, and it's got a fascinating line in it. Here's the context: a man comes to Jesus and says, hey, my dad just died, but my brother kind of snuck around all the rest of us, and he's hoarding a hundred percent of the inheritance. So tell my brother to share my dad's estate with me. Jesus says, first, who made me a judge over you? You know, take it to court. And then second, he says, let me just give you a warning: you're fighting over your dad's estate. You think that's what's gonna make you happy? You think that's what's gonna solve all of your problems and anxieties if you just get your hand on some of that money? He says the problem isn't the estate of your dad; the problem is the state of your heart.

Then Jesus said to them, Luke 12:15: Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. And I love this verse because of how he says all kinds of greed. Greed actually has all kinds of disguises. There are all kinds of things you can be greedy about—about your money, that's obvious, but also about your house, about your time, about your attention. This is why I call greed the chameleon emotion because it has disguises. It's so hard to see in myself. Here's how sneaky it is. Somebody said greed creeps in cleverly disguised whenever you start thinking, what I have is not enough. Very subtle.

In fact, I was thinking how could I summarize what the Bible talks about and what the deal is with greed, and I came up with this: I think it's the idea that life equals upgrading. That is where I'm going to finally find fulfillment and satisfaction—upgrading my house, upgrading my looks, my hair, my clothes, upgrading my neighborhood by moving to a better one, right? Upgrade my furniture, upgrade my car, upgrade my college degree. And this is so sneaky. Let me just make it very personal for me. Personal example: you know, some of the most popular shows right now are home makeover shows. Anybody ever watch one of these home makeover shows? Laurie and I love these; we watch them all the time. It's like half of what we watch in our house. It's half sports and half home makeover shows. I feel like Chip and Joanna Gaines are personal friends of ours.

But these shows can make you feel like, is it really possible for me to be happy with our stupid kitchen counter? What we need is a kitchen island, right? Obviously. And you start to think—and again, I'll just make this personal for me—when my home finally looks like the home in the West Elm catalog, then I'll be happy. Or if I finally have all the clothes I want in the Patagonia store, they're so expensive, but I forget I only get them on a good sale, then I'll be happy. Or when I finally have the latest tech from Apple, a new iPhone, then I'll be happy.

Now, I would suggest deep down we don't actually want the stuff. If you think about it, what we want is how we imagine people who have these things feel. People who live in a place like this must feel better than I feel. They're more peaceful, and they're calm and they're serene. And when people come over, they have a sense that they're accepted and valued because of how much other people love their kitchens, right? Now, I'm not saying, of course, it's wrong to get a new kitchen or clothes or whatever. I'm saying it's all about asking, why do I imagine I need this upgrade?

There's kind of a running joke in our family: every time one of us says, you know, I think I need a new whatever, you know, shoes or shirt or whatever, somebody adds, yeah, then I'll be happy. And it's kind of an in-joke reminding us all to ask ourselves, do I have then I'll be happy syndrome? You know, and I think this is Jesus' point. He's saying to that guy, don't think when I finally get that inheritance, then I'll be happy. Then finally my unhappiness and all my other problems will at last be solved.

And then he tells a story about someone who got everything he ever wanted. It says, then he told them a story. Jesus is always telling stories; I love it. Then he tells him what's been known as the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12, and it starts like this: the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. He doesn't give one thought to maybe somebody else could use a little bit of my excess, which, as you know, in the Bible, they were supposed to do: provide what they referred to as the second harvest for the poor. So he said, this is what I'll do: I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I'll say to myself—it's so funny, isn't it?—and I'll say to myself, you clever guy, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, you fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. You don't know when you're gonna die tonight. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? And Jesus adds, this is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God. So question: why did God call him a fool? Think about this because that's strong language. Why was this man a fool? Well, I want to suggest it's not because he had stuff. Nothing here even hints that Jesus called him a fool because he was rich. Jesus himself never made a universal indictment against wealth in the Bible. Abraham was wealthy and righteous. Job was, in his era, the wealthiest man in the land and the most righteous man on the planet. It was not because he had stuff, and it was not because he saved stuff. The Bible's not against storing stuff. If you remember the Bible story from Genesis, Joseph was commended because he told the Pharaoh to build silos to store his excess grain—exactly the same situation as in this story.

The book of Proverbs says that wise people know the state of their flocks, and they are prepared and they save, and they don't just spend everything they've got, and they save up for the lean years. So he wasn't a fool because he had stuff or because he saved stuff. So then why was he a fool? Two reasons. First, because he focused on his stuff to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. In fact, check this out: his little soliloquy, his monologue, has 58 words in English; 13 of them, about 25%, are personal pronouns. Me, myself, and I are his favorite words. He's so busy saying me, myself, and I that he forgets to say us and we and them. And again, this is so easy for us to fall into when it comes to our stuff. But most of all, this man was a fool because he actually put his hope in his stuff. He thought this is what will bring me security, and that's the lie of greed.

In fact, I want to prove to you that this is a consistent message in the Bible. For the rest of the message, I want to go to a few verses in 1 Timothy 6. That's another part of the Bible because these verses are like an explanation of the meaning of this parable. In these Bible verses, a guy named Paul is writing to the Christians in a city called Ephesus, and that was a very wealthy city in those days. He says, 1 Timothy 6:17: Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant or to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God. And again, as you see, the problem is not that they're wealthy; the problem comes when they put their hope in wealth.

Andy Stanley calls this the migration of hope. Your hope migrates from God to wealth. This is gonna make me secure and give me identity and bring me honor. Really, this shows that the core of greed is actually a dollar tree, which is simply seeking from anything else what I can only find in God. Seeking from anything else what I can really only find in God. Does that make sense? And when I do that, when I make anything else kind of like this is the key to security, this is where I'm going to find my identity, my purpose, that is soul-shattering because everything else except for God will let us down, as Dion talked about in that clip.

In fact, look at these verses also from 1 Timothy 6. Paul says those who want to get rich, you know, focus on getting rich, fall into temptation and a trap into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money—the Bible does not say money is the root of all evil; a lot of people misquote it. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. Man, he uses some intense words there, doesn't he? Harmful and ruin and destruction. It can lead to grief and agony.

You already heard Dion's story, but this is everywhere. A woman named Madeline Levine is a psychologist right here in the Bay Area, and her expertise is teenagers. She wrote this in a San Francisco Chronicle article, and I really wanted to quote this because this is not some pastor; this is a Bay Area psychologist writing in the San Francisco Chronicle about us and our families right here and right now. She says, it was 6:15 p.m. Friday when I closed the door behind my last unhappy patient of the week. I slumped into my chair, feeling close to tears. The 15-year-old girl who had just left had used a razor to incise the word empty across her left forearm. In what therapists are fond of referring to as an aha moment, I realized that with a single raw word, empty, she had captured the dilemma of many of my teenage patients.

She asks, why are the most advantaged kids in this country running into unprecedented levels of emotional distress? 22% of adolescent girls from financially comfortable families suffer from clinical depression. This is three times the national rate of depression for adolescent girls. Is there something about such factors as privilege, high levels of parental income, and expectations that can combine to have a toxic effect? We have to examine the culture of affluence that surrounds ourselves and our children, and we have to be acutely attuned to our own issues and our own happiness or lack of it. Wow, I think this is exactly what Paul is talking about. If we're not careful, affluence can pierce us with griefs.

But again, the problem isn't exactly affluence. As Oz Guinness puts it—and Oz is an interesting guy; I had a chance to meet him when he came here to Twin Lakes Church as a guest one time, just a guest attender. I couldn't believe I was seeing his face out there. He is the heir to the Guinness beer fortune; he's a billionaire by net worth, and he's a Christian minister. He says he spoke in San Francisco at a conference, and after he spoke, he was just surrounded by Silicon Valley tech millionaires. He said every single one of them had a question that amounted to this: having too much to live with and too little to live for.

See, for true happiness, you need three things, I think. This isn't in your notes, but if you want, you can jot it down somewhere: a sense of identity—this is who I am—and a sense of destiny, of purpose—my life means something, it's going somewhere—and a sense of security, like I know I'm gonna be okay. And you cannot find that in dollar bills or the houses they buy or anything else. It has to come from something bigger than all that. And I believe this can only really come from knowing that God made you and loves you—that's your identity—and God has a plan for you—that's your destiny, your purpose—and God even sent his son from heaven to save and guide and take care of you all the way until you're in heaven on the new heaven and the new earth—that you're cherished by him—that's security.

So, how do I get there? How do I combat greed in all of its disguises? Well, I'm gonna wrap up with this. There are two habits that are so simple: do these, and greed's back is just broken. And not just money greed—greed in all its disguises. But these two things really have to be habits, so much a part of our daily life that they're part of kind of our spiritual DNA. We do them almost without thinking; they're so habitual. And you've heard of them before, but it's tough to make them habits. But I want to tell you how. Number one: develop the heart habit of gratitude. Gratitude—a daily habit. Now, here's the thing with gratitude: we all practice gratitude, but usually, you know, it's when we dodge a bullet. You know, the CHP didn't see me speed by—thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, right? The test came back negative—thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And those spontaneous moments of gratitude are great.

But only when gratitude is a daily habit do you start seeing God's daily gifts all around you, and you become content and not always wanting more. Like Paul says, do not put your hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but put your hope in God. How do you do that? Here's the rest of the verse: who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. That's one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. Did you know that God richly provides you with the stuff you have in your life, and he doesn't want you to live all sour, like I am so sober I am not even going to have joy in my stuff? He wants you to enjoy everything you've got. Enjoy it!

So do you, or have we all grown immune to the joy now because we're looking for more later? Do you remember what enjoyment—really enjoyment of what's in front of you—really looks like and feels like? Well, let me kind of remind you. I want you to watch this baby's hilarious reaction to his first ever taste of ice cream. Like, let go! I love that look! Gratitude, right? That opens your heart—that kind of enjoyment of what's right in front of me. When gratitude is a habit, right, that you do every day and not just dodged a bullet, thank you, God, then what happens is you richly enjoy stuff that's right in front of you. What's right in front of you every single day? What do you get every single day? How about sunsets and sunrises, right? Or around here, we get to see the ocean if you want to every day, or the forest floor, or the smiles on baby's faces, like my two grandsons, for example, here in this photograph.

But gratitude opens your eyes to wonder, and it makes you content, and you get enjoyment. That's why the Bible says give thanks in all circumstances. That means a daily habit. All for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Hey, raise your hand if you really want to be in the center of God's will. Anybody want to be in God's will in your life? It's unanimous, right? Well, on the authority of Scripture, here's the will of God for you: that you develop a daily habit of giving thanks. How do you do that? Well, I want to suggest something: every morning as a habit, the moment you realize you're awake, thank God for three things that you have in your life right now. First thing in the morning, three things, the moment you realize you're conscious. Oh, thank you, God, for this and for this and for that. I am telling you that completely changes your whole entire attitude. That's just a start.

Then the second habit to combat greed flows out of the first: develop the heart habit of generosity. Generosity—and this is all related. The more gratitude you feel, the more generous you'll feel. Back to 1 Timothy 6, Paul says next: command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous, willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. Right? What Dion said that he was missing even after the Super Bowl—life that's really living.

Check this out: there's a book, Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending, by two Notre Dame researchers, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, and I love this. They say if you think money doesn't buy happiness, then you're not spending it right. Watch this: thanks to decades of research, we now know what kind of spending does enhance our happiness—spending money on others. From giving to charity to buying gifts for friends and family, reliably makes us happier. So ask yourself one question every time you reach for your wallet: Am I getting the biggest happiness bang for my buck? Right? The biggest return on investment for my money—that's another way of saying the life that is truly life.

So how do I do this? How do I make generosity a habit? Well, there are really two ways. First, make a plan to systematically incorporate generosity into your life. My little sister and I were taught from the time I can remember: always give away 10%. That's not a magic figure; it's just super easy to figure out. And so for us, it became like muscle memory, just a discipline, a habit—planned, proportional giving. That plan part I never wrestled with. But let me show you what I struggle with: the spontaneous generosity. I heard somebody say every day, pray, God, give me opportunities to be generous, and then look for the opportunities God gives you every day. That means generous in any way—generous with your attention, generous with your time, generous with your assumptions about other people's intentions, and of course, generous with your assets. Pay for somebody's lunch, give somebody a ride. The happiest people I know in this room, the happiest people I know in the world, are the people who both have planned percentage giving as a part of their life as a habit and spontaneous daily giving in their life as a habit. Generous people are just full of life.

But that spontaneous part—that's where God has had to work in my life, and I'm learning to enjoy it. You see, generosity is not just about finances; it is all pervasive. It's a way. Gratitude and generosity go together; it's a way you look at life. Let me give you one last verse in the Bible, in Matthew 6. There's this long section where Jesus is talking about greed and generosity, right? That's his theme for like a whole chapter: give to the poor, don't be greedy, you can't serve both God and money, and so on. Then right in the middle of all that, he drops this little nugget: the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, then your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.

Now, to be honest with you, when I came across this one saying, I was always like, what? You know, thanks, it's very helpful, Jesus. Not that makes no sense; it's a non sequitur. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with everything else you've been talking about—living generously? Then I discovered this: the original Greek for healthy implies generous, and the original Greek for unhealthy implies stingy or selfishly indulgent. So here, with the original nuance, what Jesus in this expression seems to be saying is: the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are generous, your whole life will be full of light. But if your eyes are stingy, your whole life will be dark. And doesn't that ring true? If I see the world and all my stuff and the people around me through generous eyes, I've been just given all this stuff as a gift, I'm looking for ways to be generous with it, my life is just gonna be full of light. It's gonna be happier, full of joy. But if I look at the world around me through stingy eyes, that's the only scarcity and fear, then my whole life is gonna be darkened and greedy.

And that, to me, is the bottom line. Do I see the world with generous eyes or with stingy eyes? But you know where this has to start? Seeing God as a God of generosity—generosity who so loved the world that he gave. I started with Dion talking about how he had all the power, money, and sex but was empty. And then he talked about how at the prime of it all, he drove his car off a cliff in a suicide attempt. He survived a 30-foot drop with almost no injury, and he says that was the moment he quite literally hit bottom. He got home very shaken, and here's the way he writes about it in his book. He says, I got up that night, and I opened my Bible to a passage that said, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew they were meant for me, and at that precise moment, I was delivered. I put my trust in Jesus, and I asked him into my life.

Now, why does he say he was delivered from a life of emptiness? Because that prayer is about removing yourself as the center of your life and putting God at the center. Saying, Lord, just take me, take my life, take my stuff, and let it be an offering to you. That's a prayer of freedom, and I want to give you a chance to pray that prayer right now. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer together.

As we prepare our hearts for communion today, maybe you're not sure if you've ever placed your complete trust in Jesus as your Lord, or maybe you're suspecting that you're a Christian, but maybe your hope has been migrating a little bit. I'm gonna give you a chance to place your trust in Christ right now. I know God is speaking to hearts right now. What is it that you need to surrender to God and say, God, take this; I give it to you. Do with it whatever you want. I want to just urge you to do that, to pray a prayer of freedom today. I'm gonna pray a prayer; the words aren't magic; it's about the intent of the heart. But if this reflects where you're coming from, silently in your heart, pray these words after me: Lord, I give you my life right now, today. My hands are up; I just surrender it to you. And I choose to place my trust not in my stuff or my status or my success but in you. Thank you for dying for me on the cross. Help me to understand that more and help me to live only for you. In Jesus' name, Amen.