In A Rut

Well, thank you again, Mr. Kester, and once again, good afternoon, all of you.

We're having a wonderful Sabbath. It's, like we said earlier, certainly beautiful out. It's nice to see the sun. I was telling the person at the gym the other morning, it's been cold and dry here, you know, quite a bit, and I was telling him the other day how excited I was for the rain to come back. And then the other morning, I went in and I went... I was wrong. I wasn't excited.

I'm glad the cold's gone, but I wasn't excited for the rain again. So I guess I just can't be pleased. That's what it really is, I suppose. Well, brethren, between 1841 and 1844... 1884, rather. 1841 and 1884, it's estimated that 300 to 500,000 people left the relative safety of Independence, Missouri, for the uncertainty of the American West. The promise of greener pastures right here in the Willamette Valley, of which we call home, brought farmers, ranchers, miners, bankers, and a whole pile of other people over an arduous trail, deadly and dangerous trail, teeming with adversity for a four-month travel journey in a prairie schooner, navigating that Oregon Trail westward in order to reach their goal.

The trail was deadly. It was difficult. Some have actually gone as far as referring to the Oregon Trail as the United States's largest cemetery. That the extent of the trail itself is the largest cemetery. It's estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people died along the route during the 43 years that the Oregon Trail was fully operational in that sense, which is about 6 to 10 percent of the people who started on the trail.

The amount of adversity, the amount of things that they faced on the trail, made it a deadly and a difficult journey. It's actually been suggested that if grave markers were a little more permanent along the Oregon Trail, and if you were able to space them out evenly, that people would have passed a grave marker approximately every 50 yards or so. I don't know if you can imagine that, that whole length of that trail, every 50 yards, every half a football field passing a grave marker along the way.

But as a result of hasty burials, as a result of wooden grave markers, most of the burial locations of people along the Oregon Trail have been lost to history. Most of them have been lost to history. What we do know is that those that were successful, those that made it to the Willamette Valley, were instrumental in settling this beautiful place that we now call home. Now, there's a few places where a variety of artifacts of the trail still exist. Kind of an interesting thing. There's a few places where some of the artifacts that took place along the trail still exist.

Occasionally, as time went on, little parts that had been discarded by the pioneers that were coming across were discovered. Frequently, those things that were discarded were scavenged by somebody on the next trip. You know, they came along and went, oh, I don't have one of those. Throw it in the wagon. You know, so it was kind of this almost bartering along the side of the road in some ways. But a lot of stuff that, you know, wasn't necessarily desired got left there and was picked up. Some of it's in museums, some of it's in people's private collections, some of it's just been lost to the ravages of time.

But because that route was specific, because it was consistent, you can still visit many of the landmarks that were mentioned in the diaries of those individuals who wrote as they went along the trail. Chimney Rock, for example, is a very notable landmark along the Oregon Trail, Fort Bridger, another notable landmark, Soda Springs, and even our very own The Dalles, Oregon, right? The Dalles, Oregon, where they're having the June Invitational, is an area in which was a notable location and kind of, in a way, almost for many, the end of the roads, so to speak, as they got into the Columbia River Gorge and began to come down into the Willamette Valley.

That was the sign that they were almost home, that it was almost where they were going.

But those were landmarks that were pretty well known to travelers. More interestingly, to me, personally, one of the more interesting artifacts that remains from the trail, after hundreds of thousands of wagons passed over the pathway, are the wagon ruts that are still visible 140 odd years later in some of the places along the way. We could bring the slide up real quick. I want to show you a couple of examples of these wagon ruts. You know, not much to look at in that sense, but these are wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail. There's nine different places along the Oregon Trail where you can see these wagon ruts that are still visible. These are three of the more notable locations, one of which the one on the left is California Hill, which is in Brugel, Nebraska. It's just a long sloping hill where the ruts of the wagons, as they're coming up out of the low area, kind of dug into and made a little bit of a dip in there as those wagons passed. The one in the center is maybe a little more astounding. That's a rock formation outside of Guernsey, Wyoming. This is at Wagon ruts State Historic Site. So Wagon ruts State Historic Site there in Wyoming in Guernsey. And then this last one is one I would love to go and see, but I'm not 100% even sure where it is. All that they will say—this was in the Smithsonian, this photo on the far right, Smithsonian Magazine—all that they will say is that it is outside Biggs Junction in Oregon along the Columbia River Gorge. In fact, the part of the picture I cropped out to make it fit on the slide was the Columbia River Gorge and the Columbia River to the left of that. So it's remarkably close to the freeway, but you can see the ruts as they came down off the plateau, down that hill, down into the main area that we would call the Columbia River Gorge today. You can go ahead and pull the slide back off for now. From seeing those photos, you know, taking a look especially at the middle one, the rock formation there in Guernsey, you can imagine the kind of traffic that it must have taken to wear a notch in that rock like that. The amount of wagons and oxen and people that would have had to go over the top of that rock, over and over and over again, 300 to 500,000 people as they crossed in these wagons, as the oxen crossed, they wore this channel out of the rock. It's incredible to think how much change could take place from that migration of individuals. It's kind of cliche, actually, in a way, and the land certainly changed the pioneers who came out, but in many ways that constant stream of pioneers changed the land as well. You know, these ruts marked the path of the trail. These ruts provided a guide, so to speak, for the wagons that were crossing the United States. In some ways, these pioneers, especially those in the later trips, really only needed to nudge their wagons onto the path and follow the ruts all the way to Oregon. You know, I'm sure there were areas where it was a little less noticeable, but by and large it took some of the thinking out of it. It didn't make the journey any easier. It was still a miserably hard journey, but it took some of the thinking out of which way do we go here? Oh, the ruts are going that way. Follow the ruts. They head to Oregon. Ruts, at least in a metaphorical sense. Now we'll begin to talk about them metaphorically. They're defined as a habit or a pattern of behavior that's become dull and unproductive, but it's very difficult to change.

You know, our brains form these habits. They form these patterns of behavior in an attempt to make our behavior more efficient. The goal here by our body is to try to take the thinking out of it.

Habits are intended to save energy by reducing the decision-making burden that we face each day and freeing up mental energy for other tasks. So what our brain does, permission to nerd out here for a moment, what your brain does is kind of cool. Your brain creates neural pathways within a part of the brain known as the basal ganglia. Inside the basal ganglia, the basal ganglia is responsible for governing motion. I'm sorry, movement rather than motion. Emotion, we'll get there in a second, but it governs movement, it governs decision-making, it governs reward processing, and it governs emotional regulation. All four of those things are handled by the basal ganglia. Now, decision-making is also handled by your prefrontal cortex. That's what has the majority of your of your decision-making, but the basal ganglia has an aspect as well. And what happens is the pathways that it begins to build, these neural pathways, associate certain cues, certain triggers with certain behaviors in an attempt to automate the process. What your body is trying to do is reach a point where it can look at a cue and it can say cue behavior, cue behavior, cue behavior, stimulus response, stimulus response. What it's trying to do is make it so there's no need to think about it. There's no need to think about the decision. Instead, it is cue and response. When we feel x, we feel a certain way, x, well then we do y. When we see x, well then we do y. When we do x, then we do y. Basic biology, it's really kind of Pavlovian. At the end of the day, those of you that are familiar with Pavlov and his experiments, you know, ring the bell and the dog kind of salivates, it's not far off, to be honest, what your brain does to try to have efficiency and to try to have something that ultimately is automated. So your body automates these behaviors so you don't have to think about them, which can get us into all sorts of trouble.

Because as soon as you remove your prefrontal cortex, your executive function, you have potential for issues. You have potential for problems. But we realize, too, these automated behaviors aren't always negative. They're not always negative. Good habits follow a similar pattern of cue and response, and that helps us to build better habits in our lives. For example, when you go to get ready for bed, there's your cue, that's the trigger. You brush your teeth, that's the response. And the reward is, well, you have clean teeth. That feels nice, right? You can go to bed satisfied now. Teeth are clean, go to bed. When we have breakfast, there's the trigger, there's the cue. What's the response? Maybe we take our multivitamin when we sit down for breakfast, and then we know that we're satisfied. We've done one of our little check boxes for the day. When we wake up, there's the trigger in the cue. We go to the gym, or we study, or we pray, or we have whatever that response may be. All of these things are positive things in our life. All of them are good things, and they are good for us overall. And there are many more, many more good, positive habits that can take place. But at times, even our good habits can become something that becomes dull and unproductive. They become less meaningful, and they become what we might call a rut. They become something where we feel stuck in this rut. Maybe they don't bring us joy in the same way that they brought us at one point. They maybe become mindless, or we might even find ourselves just going through the motions. That we're just going through the motions. Man, we're sticking in that rut. We can actually take our hands off the wheel. We don't have to do anything. You ever been on the freeway before in those semi-truck ruts sometimes? Your car just bounces back and forth between the edges of the rut, right? But we can feel like that sometimes. We're stuck in this rut. Now, in talking with people over the years, I've had people express to me that they've experienced this feeling at times in their relationships with others. That they felt as though they were in a rut. It was a challenge. It was a struggle. I've had people express to me before that they felt this way in their relationship with God. That it reached a point where they felt like they were just going through the motions. That they were just checking the box, so to speak.

I don't know if you've been there or not. I've had people express that this sort of feeling has taken place in the workplace. They find themselves barely present. They find themselves checking the boxes at a job that used to bring them satisfaction and now no longer supplies joy in any way.

Sometimes this feeling of being stuck and this feeling of powerlessness that comes with that can lead to isolation. It can lead to withdrawal from social, you know, experiences and social situations, which only exacerbates the issue. The title of the second split today is In A Rut.

The second split title today is In A Rut. And with the time that we have left today, I'd like to explore this concept in our lives. I want to explore why we experience it, its spiritual effects, and what exactly we can do about it. Now, I want to let you know as well, this is actually a requested sermon. Turns out I do requests. So this is a sermon that someone requested and it asks to explore this idea of being in a rut and what that looks like and how we get through it. So I want to start today with a fundamental premise. I want to start today with a fundamental premise. And here's my premise. That God wants you to be happy within the confines of his way of life.

Okay? And I'd like to explore a little bit of the beginning. You can turn back here if you'd like. We don't have to, but we've gone through these passages quite a bit. But when we think about God's intent for mankind initially, he created mankind and he placed man within a garden of God's own creation. One of the things that we know about God is that God is an artist.

God is an artist. I mean, we look at what we can see today in the world around us today in the state that our world is in, knowing that the earth is going to be fully restored.

And we can see the beauty that's in it even now. Imagine the beauty of what God put into place in the garden of his own creation, the paintbrush stroke, so to speak, that he put in place to make this beautiful thing. God purpose built the environment that Adam and Eve found themselves in.

He declared it good, and it was absolutely a blessing to man. The garden was built to meet Adam and Eve's every need. They had a close personal relationship with their Creator. That was God's intent to begin, right? We see Satan's deception. We see their subsequent sin. We see this ideal environment now break down. We see this ideal scenario break down into what we now know as life today. Adam and Eve were removed from the garden. Man spread throughout the earth. Man toiled in the soil by the sweat of his brow. And the land fought him at every step of the way, every step of the way. The relationship with their Creator was damaged, and we see wickedness prevail. And through it all, we see a promise in the latter chapters of Genesis 3. And you can turn there if you'd like. The latter chapters of Genesis 3. We see a promise that through Jesus Christ, God would provide a solution. Right? We see God tell Satan in this thing we've referred to before as the protoevangelium, or the first gospel, essentially, that there would come a time in which the descendants of man would crush the head of the serpent. That the serpent would strike his heel, and that ultimately the man would crush his head. And we see this promise here in the latter section of Genesis 3. Now we understand that solution, final fulfillment of that solution, to be the kingdom of God. Right? And there had been partial fulfillments along the way, but a final fulfillment upon Christ's return, beginning of the kingdom of God, along the end of the millennial period, the beginning of the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. And we see that time as being the time when the remainder of God's plan for mankind is brought to bear physically and spiritually. But brethren, what about our lives now? What about our lives now?

What about the lives of those individuals who have been called at this time, his ecclesia, whom he has redeemed with his blood? What is his intent for us right now? What is God's intent for us right now? Yes, we see a final fulfillment coming off in the distance. We see eternal life, promise to those who have, you know, entered into covenant with their God.

What about now? What about right now? Turn with me to John 10, please. John 10. If you would turn over to John 10. Christ is speaking here to the Pharisees at the latter part of John 9.

John 10. We're going to pick it up in verse 7, ultimately, but we're not going to get there just yet. We're going to build some background here before we get there. In the book of John, what we see is Christ speaking here to the gathered Pharisees. Okay, so this is a conversation that he's having with the Pharisees. You know, just prior to this, he's talking about the various issues that experience. He's talking about real vision, true blindness, what that looks like, what really seeing looks like, what really being blinded looks like. But then he gets into verse 10 and he begins to change his analogy. He starts to talk about a shepherd and he starts to talk about a group of sheep and he starts to talk about how there are individuals who are going to enter that sheepfold by whatever way they can possibly find to enter it anyway but the door, so to speak.

And what he says is he is the door. He says he is the door. He says the sheep hear the shepherd's voice. They know his voice and he calls him by name and he leads them out. And when he brings them out, he says in verse 4, he goes before them. The sheep follow him for they know his voice. He says they won't follow a stranger. They'll flee from a stranger. So he's using this illustration and the Pharisees don't know what it is exactly that he's saying and didn't fully understand. So now we pick it up in verse 7. John 10 and verse 7 says, and Jesus said to them again, most assuredly I say to you I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door if anyone enters by me he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. He says I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. Verse 10 again of John 10, I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. You know, Christ explained to the Pharisees as a part of the fulfillment of the plan of God communicated even Genesis 3, that Jesus Christ has come and he has come so that his sheep may have life. That is absolutely eternal life, 100% eternal life. But it's also a certain vibrancy of life today. He says that they might have life more abundantly. As his sheep, brethren, were not intended to just exist. We're not intended to just exist. We are intended through a deep relationship with our God as our Lord and Savior to live an abundant life. A life filled with abundance in the sense of emotions and in the sense of joy and love. Maybe not money, you know, maybe not money.

God doesn't desire that we experience addiction, negative habits, behaviors, or that we just languish in our life. The Greek word that's used for abundant in this passage, in this section in John 10, is prisos. It's G4053. And depending on the context of its usage, it can be translated in a couple of different ways. It can be translated as over and above, extraordinary, more or greater, or excessively. And so we could say that Christ essentially was saying that he came that they may have life and that they may have life that is over and above, that they may have life that is extraordinary, that they may have life that is more or greater, or they may have excessive life, or life that is excessive in that sense. Christ's statement is clear as we look at this. What is he telling the Pharisees? Through him and through him only can we have life. Can we even truly live, so to speak? William Barkley, in his daily study Bible series, in his second volume on the Gospel of John, writes the following. He says, Jesus came stating that he came that men might have life and have it more abundantly. The Greek phrase used for having more abundantly means to have a super abundance of a thing, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to know who he is and what it means is to have a super abundance of life. I'm going to pause there for just a second. How many of you have fruit trees at home? You ever have a fruit tree where one year, all of a sudden, that thing put on so many fruit, you were just like, what happened? Normally, it produces this many, this many, this many, the next year, bumper crop. You know, so many fruit, a super abundance of fruit.

It's kind of what it's referencing here in that sense. An excessive amount of figs.

Can figs be excessive? Yeah, I guess they probably can, right? Barkley goes on to write, when we try to live our own lives, when we try to live our own lives, life is a dull, dispirited thing. When we walk with Christ, there comes a new vitality, a super abundance of life.

And it's only when we live with Christ that life becomes really worth living, and we begin to live in the real sense of the word. And so life, in that sense, begins with God in our calling. It begins with God's intent for us, that we live a vibrant life, that we live a life of abundance in that sense. Now, I'd venture a guess that most, if not all of you, have been hiking before. I won't ask for a show of hands. I'm going to guess most, if not all of you, have been hiking before. If we could bring up the next slide here real quick, if that's the case, then I'm going to guess that you've probably come across a sign that looks like this. In no uncertain terms, this sign says, do not leave the trail. It does not want you to cut the shortcut between the switchbacks. It wants you to stay on the main trail. And the reason for that is because it doesn't take much for new trails to get worn in. You know, if you've been to Silver Falls before, this is frequent at Silver Falls in that section with the switchbacks. There's a section there with the switchbacks, and some people don't want to walk all the way down to the switchbacks, so they cut right up the hillside. And enough people see that. Eventually, they keep cutting up the hillside, and pretty soon you have a path that now is present and is there that is now off of this path. In urban areas, you might see something that says, keep off the grass.

Right? Again, the reason that these signs are there is it doesn't take much for a trail to get worn into the ground. In fact, slide three, if you want to go ahead and bring that up, this is an example of what is called in the planning business a desire trail. And these are architects and engineers' worst nightmares, because there has been a very purposefully planned walkway, and someone went, yeah, I'm not walking on that. I'm going to cut the corner. And so they cut the corner, because it's a space that allows them to get somewhere faster. They don't want to walk at all. It's an alternative trail. It's off the intended path. It's an unofficial footpath that is utilized by pedestrians to get around. And they are the bane of architects. They are the bane of planners and designers who typically will plan these walking paths based on design, space, and sometimes aesthetics. You know, they want a beautiful sweeping concrete path. And then everybody goes, I don't want to walk all that. Right to the end spot. And don't worry about it. Now, what's interesting is most planners lately have begun to do what was done at Michigan State University. I don't know how many of you are familiar with what happened at Michigan State University, but Michigan State University had all their buildings, and they built the big grassy quad in the center of the space. And instead of paving footpaths, they left it alone for two years.

And they just let the college students walk wherever they wanted to walk.

And then they took an aerial photo, and they paved over all the walking paths.

They determined that those students had determined the closest, easiest, fastest way to get the most efficient way to drill a rut in, and then they paved it. Slide four is an aerial photo of Michigan State University. No one could plan this, because it was planned from the ground. It was planned from the ground, not above. So all of those walking paths represent the shortest way from one point to another, at least the first five or six people, because then everybody else just followed the open path that was already there. And they've paved it now, and ultimately they have walking paths that are set up in that way. What it's led to is a whole random-looking crisscross of paths through Michigan State, and they wore ruts into the ground as they passed that section again and again and again. Well, why do I bring it up? Why do I mention this? Because, brethren, it turns out this is how it works in our brains in a lot of ways, too. What I want you to imagine by way of analogy is I want you to consider your brain to be one of those large, grassy, open fields on a college campus. Got a bunch of kids over here kicking, playing hacky sack. Got a kid? I'm just kidding. You don't have any kids playing hacky sack in your brain, but no Frisbee. None of that. Not out there in the quad, right? But think about your brain as one of these grassy fields on a college campus. Your brain is always looking for the most efficient way to get to the various buildings on campus. Your brain is always looking for the most efficient, almost automated way that it can get to those various places. And each time you walk a certain path, each time you utilize a specific neural pathway, your brain has a certain plasticity that remembers that path. And then the next time it comes up, your brain goes, oh, I know how to get there. This is the way you get there. This is the path that you follow. It's like walking that grass over and over and over and over and wearing a rut right into the neurons of your brain.

Before long, what happens is when your brain sees, hears, smells, tastes a specific cue, your brain automatically navigates you to that part of your brain that takes you to that location and you experience cue response, aka a habit. You experience a habit.

Now, some habits can be positive. They can absolutely be positive. But unfortunately, for us as humans, it seems we tend toward those that are most damaging to us. Unfortunately, it seems as though we tend towards the habits that are most damaging to us. And as we understand, habitual sin can get between us and our relationship with God. Let's go over to the Book of Colossians real quick. Book of Colossians. If you turn over to Colossians 1. In Colossians 1, the Apostle Paul is addressing heresies that cropped up in Colossae. And it was likely a type of syncretism. It was likely a blend of Greek philosophy and maybe some aspects of Christianity. But whatever it was, it appears, based on the writings in Colossians, that it seemed to be undermining the divinity of Jesus Christ, that people were beginning to question the divinity of Jesus Christ. And so, Paul, as part through Colossians begins to establish the divinity of Jesus Christ. He begins to establish these things, because that's critical. That is a foundation that we have to be building upon, right? So, in the introduction of the letter, though, what he does is brings to bear the purpose of our calling. So, Paul establishes the purpose of our calling in the first part here of Colossians 1. So, Colossians 1, and we'll pick it up in verse 9. We're going to read it through verse 14.

Colossians 1, verse 9. The Apostle Paul writes, he says, For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Verse 10. That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. Verse 11. Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power for all patience and long suffering with joy.

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. Notice verse 13 and 14. He has delivered us from the power of darkness, and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. You know, as often happens with Paul's writings, you can just feel Paul imploring with his words. I mean, he is so expressive in his writing. You can just feel him imploring with those in Colossae here as he writes. This letter is no different. He is imploring those in this congregation in Colossae to walk worthy of the Lord, to live their lives worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to live their lives worthy of the plan that God put into place of Christ giving up his divinity, you know, coming down to earth, dying for mankind, to live according to that. What does that mean? What does it look like to walk worthy? What does it look like to walk worthy? Paul goes on to explain. He says, in part, that they should endeavor to fully please him, that they should be fruitful in every good work. Fruitful in every good work.

Oxford Language Dictionary defines fruitful as producing good or helpful results, and they said, or productive, or productive, that fruitful means producing good or helpful results, and or being productive. And so Paul is saying that they should be productive when it comes to good works.

They should be productive. They should be fruitful when it comes to good works. Those good works being externally focused actions toward others, externally focused actions toward others, and that through that process they should bear much fruit. He goes on to say that individually they should be growing in knowledge. They should be strengthened through Christ's might, preparing for those times when they need that patience, when they need that long suffering, so they can approach those things with joy, recognizing what it is that God is doing in their life, that through that hardship he is building strength in them. And why is that so important?

Why is that so important? It's because of what's in verse 13 and 14. That is why it's so critical. Because Jesus Christ has delivered us from the power of darkness, He has conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, or at least in this case God has done that through Christ, in whom we have redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins.

Brethren, we have been delivered from the power of darkness. We've been conveyed into the kingdom of the Son, and as through that we have redemption. He's brought us back from sin. He's bought us back, redeemed us from sin, from wickedness. Through His death we have life. And as we saw in John 10, that is a life that is intended to be abundant. It is a life that is intended to be intentional. It's a life that's intended to be purposeful. Jesus Christ died so that we can live.

We need to recognize that and understand what that means day to day. What we find instead is that our bodies can sabotage that process by navigating us through life on autopilot.

That our bodies can just put us through life on autopilot. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. I've been working for a bit now on breaking a phone habit.

I've been working for a bit now on breaking a phone habit. This phone is an unfortunate necessity in my line of work. It's one of the deals where I have to have this on me 24-7.

I cannot go anywhere without it because when that phone call comes in at two o'clock in the morning, I'm the guy on the other end of the red phone, so to speak. They always ask that question with the president. Who do you want to answer on that phone? Well, it's me, and I'm pretty groggy most of the time. But it's always present. It's always there. It's always present. It's always there. Now, the danger of something like a cell phone is that it provides an instant escape from stress, from boredom. There's entertainments right at your fingertips. As I've used my phone over the years, I have managed to wear a habit into my neural pathways that follows the following habit loop. Go ahead and bring up the habit loop slide real quick because I want you to see what a habit loop looks like. This is how habits are built, is in a habit loop. And you can maybe read that from where you're at. Probably not. But it consists of a cue. It consists of a craving. It consists of a response, and it consists of a reward. And over the past few years, I've managed to wear a path into that grassy green spot in the middle of my brain regarding this cell phone. And that looks like the following. The cue. I need a break from what I'm working on. My brain hurts.

My craving. I want to be entertained. So my response? I mindlessly scroll memes or funny videos for laughs. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Call it doom scrolling. That's one term that is used for it. I think they call it brain rot, too. I don't know. Something like that.

I'm not in on the in crowd. The reward? I get dopamine from laughter. I get dopamine. And I get a break from stress. Right? I get a break from whatever it was that was stressing me out. Now, you know, it's not that big of a deal, right? At the end of the day? Well, what I've noticed, and hence the reason for me taking a stronger push against it over the last little bit, is that I'm finding at times I will go to pick the phone up to send a text or to send an email and I find myself automatically the second I pick this thing up scrolling, memes, and funny videos. The response has become the cue. When I pick this up, scroll funny videos. And then I'll get 30 seconds in and go, okay, yeah, text. I'm supposed to text somebody. Okay, send the text.

Right? That's a problem. That's a problem. So the act of picking up my phone is ceased to be the response. Instead, that's now become the cue to the behavior. And again, after 30 seconds, I'll be like, oh yeah, I actually picked my phone up for a reason. Turns out. So now we have a problem because time potential is just slipping through my fingers. And that is not what God has called us to be. Let's go to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5 doesn't mean we can't take breaks. Breaks are needed. Got to have them. You know, it doesn't mean that we have to be doing something related to, you know, growing spiritually every second of every day. But what it does mean is we have to be very careful about the pathways that get worn down in those parts of our brain. Ephesians 5, in this particular book, you know, Paul's addressing a number of issues with those in Ephesus, and he's coming into this section where he's going to begin to address marriages, and he's going to begin to address relationships. And he kind of, in verse 15, gives everybody a warning here as he's coming into that section. He says, see that you walk circumspectly. Ephesians 5, in verse 15, he says, see that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. He says, redeeming the time because the days are evil. He says, therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. And that's verse 20, 21. So he admonishes those in Ephesus to walk with wisdom, to walk circumspectly, to redeem the time, to buy it back from loss, to purchase back the time, understanding what the will of the Lord is. But then he goes on to explain one example that he prohibits, and that is drunkenness. He says, being drunk with wine, crossing that line into drunkenness, and he identifies this particular action as dissipation. He says, this is dissipation. Well, what is dissipation? In our modern vernacular today, in the way that we use the word today, dissipation means something is broken up, it's scattered, or it's vanishing. So for example, clouds can dissipate. Fog can dissipate. Ultimately, momentum can dissipate. It can be broken up, it can be scattered, it can ultimately vanish.

But in the older etymology of the word, in the way the word used to be used many, many, many years ago, dissipation referred to a prodigal or otherwise out-of-control lifestyle, that it was a life of dissipation. And there's that sense in this Greek word of that. In fact, the Greek term for dissipation is asosia. The Greek term for dissipation is asosia, and it's defined as luxury, dissipation, debauchery, or wastefulness. Wastefulness.

Now, the places that it's used in Scripture, we see it in a couple of spots. It references a lifestyle and opposition to God with out-of-control living. One of those is drunkenness in this example. Another is the example of the prodigal son who slipped into out-of-control living, was no longer in control, and was wastefully living his life. Something you probably already know about Greek words is if you put an A in front of a word, it negates that word.

Okay? It negates that word. So—it puts the opposite, essentially, of that word in place. So asosia begs the question, what is soja? What is that? If asosia is the opposite of soja, what is soja? Well, soja, or sojo, is the root word to save or to deliver.

Asosia is the opposite of saving or delivering. And it's through this idea—this concept that we get the idea of wastefulness, allowing your life to just slip through your fingers, so to speak.

The prodigal son, in his example, was startled to see his money gone. You know, he woke up and he went, what do you mean I'm broke? Where'd all my money go? It turns out I spent it. Very prodigal living. Right? We see the example here in Ephesians 5, the idea that this drunkenness is a wasting of time. It's a wasting of potential. It's a wasting of a calling that God has provided. And then instead, as Paul is advocating here, we should redeem that time. We should buy it back. Now, my phone usage isn't fundamentally any different than someone suffering from a smoking or an alcohol habit or a drug habit. Yeah, it's different triggers. It's different responses. But ultimately, the neural mechanism is the same. It's the same. Go ahead and put the slide back up of the Q-craving response kind of habit loop. You can kind of see that example again. I have worn a neural pathway into my brain that connects a Q with a craving, with a response, and with a reward. And my body has automated now my desire for a brain break and for entertainment with a specific behavior in an attempt to make things more efficient for me. Thanks a lot, self. Great. Thank you for that. But that way, I don't have to think about what I do. I don't have to spend the energy thinking about it. My body just does it for me. These habits—go ahead and pop that off—these habits can take a lot of different forms. Unfortunately, they can have a significant impact in people's lives. You know, is me scrolling my phone inherently sinful? No.

No, it's not. Is it beneficial? No. No, it's really not. It's really not. Paul brings to bear that spiritual concept in 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 23. Feel free to turn there. I'm just going to reference it. But as he's writing to the church in Corinth on the concept of idolatry, on the concept of eating meats offered to idols, that's the context. He brings to bear a spiritual principle that we need to keep in mind when we consider all these sorts of things.

And that is, as Paul writes, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify. You know, the behavior itself might not be inherently sinful, but we have to ask ourselves the question, is it building up?

Is it edifying? Is it building up, or is it wasteful? Is it something that's building connection, strengthening relationships, or am I wasting opportunities for those things? It may not be sinful, but is it expedient? Is it something that's expedient? Paul goes on in verse 24, he says, let no one seek his own, but each one the other's well-being. Each one the other's well-being. Our focus, brethren, needs to be on the needs of others. Paul would actually go on later in this letter to famously write that if his eating of meat caused his brother offense, that he would never eat meat again.

Again, spiritual principle here. Do our patterns and habits of behavior, even those which are not sinful, do they cause offense to others? Do they build up, or do they waste? Taking the time to reflect, taking the time to consider these things, to look at specific triggers, specific cues that we have in our lives that maybe lead to behaviors that we don't necessarily want, is one of the first steps in identifying solutions.

So let's say now we've identified habits and behaviors that we want to remove. Now what? What do we do now? You know, it's amazing. Brain research, recent brain research, has shown that the paths that you've worn into the grass of your mind, so to speak, those neural pathways, they're not permanent. Your brain can be changed. In fact, your brain is quite plastic, not the material, but like plastic in the sense that it can change. It can shift. It can become something else. In that sense, it is literally possible to teach an old dog new tricks, right?

You can go through the process of building neural pathways. Neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to grow and change with time, and that brain remains plastic and capable of change right up to the very end of our lives. The old myth that you're too old to learn a language or you can't learn to play an instrument, it's false. It's actually false. You can learn those things, clear up to your older years.

Now, you may not have the same efficiency and effectiveness as someone who's between three and six years old, but you can get there. Cutting trail takes work. Cutting trail takes work. Walking new neural pathways causes the old neural pathways to become unused. As those old neural pathways become unused, they begin to grow over with vegetation.

They begin to not be as noticeable. Now, they're still there. That's why attics relapse. That's why people relapse is because the path is still there. But if you can make that path overgrown with lack of use and make it less obvious to where the new path is the one that you can see, you have the capability of cutting new trail in your brain, so to speak, building new pathways. So, to break out of the loop, if you want to bring that slide up one more time, that final slide, to break out of this loop, it involves hijacking this loop.

It involves hijacking this habit loop. And what that means is that you need to identify the triggers and cues, the rewards, and alter the routines. Again, the reward for most is dopamine. And so, if you can hijack this loop, if you can substitute triggers and cues, manage those. If you can trigger the routine or change the routine, if you can find a healthier way to obtain the dopamine that your body's looking for at that moment in time, you can alter and change this loop.

You can break this habit and start something new. So, for example, if my trigger cue is stress and the need for a brain break, my routine is to reach for my phone and to scroll memes and funny videos, and I change that instead to something else that brings dopamine.

15-minute walk. Next time I feel like I need a brain break, get up from the computer, put my phone on the side, so I'm like, okay, I gotta take it with me because I have to have it with me all the time, but go for a 15-minute walk with it in my pocket, get some fresh air. The result is dopamine. What I needed, it's a break. What I needed, but it didn't waste a bunch of time. It didn't end up taking something and making it something that was not valuable in the least bit. There's a lot of options. Each one is unique to the individual. Everybody's different. It requires self-reflection. It requires breaking it down into if-then statements to try to help us identify what's going on, to help us understand what we're doing, and then be able to brainstorm those solutions.

If I feel this way, then I do this. Instead, you can say, when I feel this way, I will do this instead. But then comes the hard part, brethren. Then comes the really hard part. You actually have to do it. You actually have to do it. You actually have to go through the process and actually cut that new trail. You have to actually go through and walk that new path, apart from the alternate path, so that you cut a new trail in that. You know, it's interesting. They've said, research has shown it takes as little as 15 passes on a patch of grass to cut a trail.

So 15 people walk the same trail. It takes only 15 passes for there to be enough of a trail cut that more people will begin to follow it. Now, it's probably a little more than that to build a habit. I know they say 21 days. I think it's actually a little less than that. But it doesn't take a lot to get those things established. But to begin to wear a desire path, so to speak, that consistency is important.

But the moral of the story is, you can change the pathways in your brain. But what that means is that even our good habits can be altered if we don't stick with them. Right? Even our good habits can be altered if we don't stick with them. And what makes it challenging about habits is, building new habits is challenging because our bodies naturally resist the development of a new habit.

They don't want us to do additional energy expenditure. Your body's trying to go with the least amount of energy expended to get the job done. And so it doesn't want to go through that process. But there's a few things that you can do to be successful. Firstly, you can start with incremental change. You know, sometimes a lot of people want to change 15 things at once. There's too many things at once to try to change. It's just too much.

Your body can't—it doesn't have enough willpower, literal willpower, to be able to do that many different things. So start small with small incremental changes. Be patient and give yourself grace. This is hard work. This stuff is hard work. It's difficult. Be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace and recognize every positive choice that you make is a vote for your better situation.

Right? That's one vote you've cast for a better situation. The other piece is you want to create an environment that is supportive of your desire to change. Let's say that your trigger is, I'm tired after a day of work.

I want to park in front of the television for the next four hours and eat a carton of ice cream. Sounds kind of nice, actually. But, but, if you structure your environment in such a way that there's never ice cream in your house, it's going to be very difficult to sit down in front of the television for four hours and eat a tub of ice cream, right? You'll have to find something else to eat instead of ice cream. The other thing you can do is track your success, right? You want to keep track of where you're having success. You want to see those things because sometimes it's not immediate.

Sometimes it requires just a little bit of being able to see it. The other thing you can do is, I don't know if you've heard of it before, if you're aware of it, but you can stack habits. You can stack habits. You can make a habit connected to another habit that you already have. I was having a very hard time taking my vitamins and supplements each day.

I would just forget about them. And I, for me, I would leave them on the counter because I could see them on the counter. And I knew as soon as I walked by, I gotta take my vitamins. Well, my wife likes to have, I don't know, something she calls a clean kitchen. I don't know what that's all about, but she wants to have a clean kitchen. So the vitamins would get moved into the cupboard, and those are out of sight, out of mind, and I wouldn't think about it.

And then I'd forget to take my vitamins, and then, you know, I didn't have all my vitamins. So what I found was I stacked it with another habit. Every morning when I get up, I get a cup of coffee, and I make a protein shake before I go to the gym. So I stuck my vitamins right next to my protein. And so when I reach in to grab my protein, I grab my vitamins, I make my shake, I take my vitamins, and put it all back, and then I go do my study, and whatever else before I head off to the gym.

So that habit stacking, that connection, enables me to use an ingrained habit to make a new habit. And you can stack all kinds of habits like that. There's all sorts of things you can do, but it connects those two things together, and one ingrained behavior then triggers the next. So we can build positive habits by being able to connect those triggers and those cues together.

But there's one last question we haven't addressed, and we'll address this here as we close today. What if even those positive habits aren't bringing us joy anymore? What if even those positive habits aren't bringing us joy anymore? We feel like we're just in a track. We are drudged.

We're going through the motions. We're letting that rut just guide us along in a specific way. We're mindlessly following the track that we've placed ourselves on. We're all similar to the identification of cues and triggers of habit forming.

It's going to require some self-reflection, too. It's going to require us to ask a question of why do I feel stuck? What specifically is causing me to feel stuck? And then there's a second question that I want to ask I want you to ask yourself. Are my current feelings actually true and accurate? Am I really stuck or do I just feel stuck?

Because there are times in which your body, due to emotional fatigue, maybe even symptoms of depression and other things, can lead you to feel like you're a much greater failure than you really are.

And so we can feel very negative about things. We can feel very challenged about things and feel like we're just stuck and we can't get happy. And well, if I can only do this, I could be happier. If I can only do this, I could be happy. Sometimes we have to go through and acknowledge these things and identify these things to be able to break out. I'm going to give you seven very quick things to break yourself out of a rut and then we're going to conclude and we're going to be done.

The first of those things is acknowledging that you're stuck or acknowledging that you feel stuck.

Beginning with the recognition of, you know what? Yeah, I do feel stuck. But not stopping there, identifying why you feel stuck. What exactly is it about my current situation that's causing these feelings? What exactly is it about my current situation that helps makes me feel stuck? Am I actually in a rut that I didn't intend to be in? Like my life is taking me in a totally different direction that I didn't anticipate and I'm on a totally different track that I didn't want?

Or am I just in a routine that I can't feel like I can get out of? Because the answer to how to get out of those two things is very different. Both involve a change, but there are different answers at the end. The second piece, acknowledge that you feel stuck point number one. Point number two, ask God to help you identify the issue that you're experiencing. Ask Him to show you what the issue is, to help you to understand a godly solution to that scenario. What is it exactly, God, that I need to do here to be able to take care of this? Point number three, you have to take care of yourself. And what do I mean by that? You need to make sure you're getting enough sleep. You need to make sure you're getting enough sleep. Roughly eight hours a day for most adults is the recommended amount of sleep. Parents, I'm sorry, but that is the recommended number of sleep. I know you're not getting it currently, but that's what they say. You need to be ensuring that you're getting adequate exercise. Roughly 30 minutes of moderate exercise, like walking each day. You need to make sure you're getting enough water. You need to make sure you're getting balanced nutrition. Sometimes the feeling of being stuck, the feeling of things being off, is your body trying to tell you that something's out of balance. That you're not getting enough sleep. You're not getting a decent enough nutrition. You're not getting enough water, right? Those things can help you kind of get into a spot where maybe not getting enough exercise, you can feel a little bit better. But if that's not the case and you're still feeling stuck, you need to ensure that you're connected to God in prayer and in study. Now it's possible, and it's very possible, that if you're feeling as though this is the place where you're feeling a rut. And I've had people tell me before that in prayer and study it feels like they're just checking a box. Yeah, please God be with this person. Please do this. Okay, check, check, right? If that's where you're finding yourself, my suggestion would be look for ways to practice true religion outwardly. Look for places you can serve—widows, serve orphans. Get out of your own self-thought process and start focusing outward, because that's going to help you recognize why we do what we do, and that's going to enliven that aspect of your life again. Point number five. If that still doesn't work, you still feel like you're stuck in a rut. Be spontaneous. Everybody loves routines. We all sit in the same chairs every day. We all go to the same things and do the same things. But if you have a specific schedule that you keep, change it up. Take a dance class. Go out there and learn how to tango, or I don't know, what other dances are there. I don't dance. Go take a dance class. Learn a musical instrument.

Learn a new language. Do something unplanned that takes you out of that daily routine. Go try a different kind of cuisine. Take up a hobby. Do something—unless you have too many hobbies, in which case your wife will say, just don't listen to that part. But take up a hobby. Take up something that kind of bumps you out of that kind of standard thing. Point number six, recognize when a rut is not a rut. Sometimes a rut is not a rut. Sometimes a rut is something more. If you're experiencing low energy and fatigue, less interest in daily activities, struggling to find pleasure in life, little to no motivation, productivity, feelings of inadequacy, it could be something more than just a rut, quote unquote. You could be experiencing depression. You could be experiencing dyzymia, which is like a milder form, quote unquote, of depression, where life just feels gray, right? You could be experiencing one of those things. That's not a rut. That's a brain chemistry situation, right? Or a behavioral therapy situation. Last point, point seven, get help. If that is your experience, and if that is what you're dealing with—I've said this before, and I will say it until my dying breath—it is not weakness to admit that you need help. It is not weakness to admit that you can't do it yourself. If you are struggling, if you need help with any of these things, reach out to someone, someone for help. Sometimes, even just that little bit of outside perspective, just that person who's not seeing it through your own eyes, is able to provide you with something that you might not otherwise catch. In conclusion, brethren, Jesus Christ came to this earth to redeem His people. You know, that redemption wasn't just eternal life that was coming in the kingdom. He came so that we can have life now. He came so that we can have life more abundantly, not just existing, but thriving as a result of the calling of God and the truth that we've been given. As humans, we have to keep in mind our bodies have been purposefully designed, which means that that habit loop that's in there that drives us so crazy was put there, which means we need to learn to work with it. We need to learn to work around it. We need to learn to make it work for us.

We need to understand how it works, because that process of saving energy by making automated processes can help us in some ways. Just like the paths that are worn in college campus quads, we can wear pathways into our brain through repeated use. These pathways become convenient trails for ourselves to follow when we have less energy to make decisions. Stress, low blood sugar, exhaustion, a number of other factors can cause these pathways to activate more frequently, somewhat ironically, making it more challenging for us to make better choices in the very moments when we need it most. So ensuring that we can manage those triggers, managing stress, managing blood sugar, managing our sleep, all those things can help fight off these other things.

You can change these pathways. You can change these neural pathways. You can remove old habits. You can create new habits through hijacking habit loops that drive these behaviors.

All it takes is nudging your wagon off the track and going another way. With God's help, you can navigate yourself to whatever destination you're wanting to go. Sometimes, even the act of nudging our own wagon off of that beaten path will inspire others to do the same. They will see the tracks leading in a different direction, and they will follow. Brethren, God does not want His people to just exist. He doesn't want them to settle for mediocrity. God's way of life is one of vibrancy. It's one of joy. It's one of love. God desires us to feel these things, to experience these things, to share these things. So let's redeem the time. Let's ensure that we're living a life worthy of God's calling and not allowing the time and the potential of that calling to dissipate, ensuring instead that we're working towards living more abundantly. Brethren, you can do it. You can do it. And God is in your corner.