Man-Made Wilderness

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

Hi. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Carla Perry, and I’m one of the leaders around here. And we are in week two of a sermon series. And if you missed last week, I encourage you to go back and listen to the message that Pastor Virgil gave called Helter Skelter. See, because what we do around here is we take one message, and we divide it up into a collection of talks. And today, we’re talking about the Man Made Wilderness. Our sermon series is called Morning, Noon, and Night, and we’re reflecting on what it looks like to have the rhythms of a healthy soul. So if you missed part one, it bleeds into part two. Go back and watch it. So Man-made Wilderness is the title of our message today. And I know that that’s an oxymoron like an original copy or pretty ugly or awfully good. I mean, that’s all sounds crazy, right? So before we begin, though, when we get into the message, it is going to, by the way, make sense how we get to the end when we get to the end of it. But today, I need you all to humor me for a little bit. We’re going to pull out our phones. I know you all got them, so we’re going to pull out our phones. Look, the girls in the front row there really nervous now. So we’re going to pull out our phones. We’re going to scroll down and to the right-hand corner, and there’s this little icon. And it’s an airplane. And if you hit it, it stops all of the notifications from coming into your phone constantly. So we’re going to hit it. You can see mine’s already highlighted, and we’re just going to be presented together today with little distractions.

Everybody’s getting really nervous right now. I promise that if your kids need you in kid’s ministry, we will figure out a way to find you. So today, we’re going to begin in Mark chapter one versus non 313. And it says One day, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. And as Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart, and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. So just time out before we go on to the rest. See if you’re here today. And maybe you have received salvation. You’ve prayed that prayer, or you’ve asked Jesus to be in your heart, but you’ve not taken the next step of baptism. Well, right here in Scripture, we see that Jesus modeled baptism for us. We know that it is a step that we need to take. And if that is you today, all you have to do is stop out in the atrium to the right in the My People lounge, and one of our leaders there will be happy to talk to you more about your next step of baptism. So continuing on, it says, and a voice from heaven said, You are my dearly loved son, and you bring me great joy. This Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan for 40 days, and he was out among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him. Let’s pray. Father. Today I just thank you that we just get to take a time out. Father from distractions. Father, I pray for no distractions today. Father, I pray for your presence to be with us. And that, Father, what you have for us in this message would change our hearts and our minds as we leave here today.

In Jesus’ name, Amen. So what do these verses mean for us? What is the passage trying to say? See if you’re like me. I’ve always read this passage and thought, Golly, Jesus is got to go and endure some type of Hunger Games or a survivor moment out in the wilderness. For 40 days, Jesus was sent out to the desert to be tempted, and he was tempted as if it was a test of his endurance. This was my perspective. Well, why did Jesus? Why was he led into the desert? And see, I came across a different perspective while I was preparing for this message. And I want to share with you all today what that perspective was. So I think most of the time that we all think that Jesus was not happy about his time in the desert, in the wilderness, that he somehow found it to be terrible. But what if we look at Jesus, his time in the wilderness, just a little differently? What if, while in the wilderness, Jesus was forced to a place of weakness, not forced to a place of weakness, but rather he was led there for strength. What if the Spirit did not lead Jesus to the desert to be tempted, but he led them there because he was going to be tempted. See, Jesus was going to be starting a ministry. If three and a half years in the Spirit knew that Jesus needed time away from the Father, the Spirit knew that Jesus was going to have unthinkable things that he was going to have to face. And he knew that he needed those 40 days in the wilderness to feel his tank back up. And all throughout Jesus’s ministry. I think we can all see and go back and look through the New Testament where Jesus actually shows us and models for us repeatedly where he goes and he pulls away for him, said to himself, Look with me.

Next slide. We got it. There we go. Before it says, it marked chapter 135 before daybreak. The next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. See, Jesus knew in the morning. I’ve got just a little bit of time carved out, so I’m going to go. I’m going to spend some time with my father. I’m going to get my tank filled back up. And then, in Matthew 1423, it says after sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. See, Jesus, he had. We already talked about how his ministry was hard. And I imagine that after a hard day of work, he’s out feeding thousands of people, performing miracles, healings sick people, that he comes back and says, I am depleted. I need to get off into the wilderness. I need to spend some time with my father first. And then we see that Jesus doesn’t just pray in the morning and at night. We also see in Luke chapter five, verse 16, that Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. So Jesus knew that he had to find his man-made wilderness, where he could go, where he could gain perspective and wisdom. And the message in a sentence today is that you can’t have a quiet soul without solitude. And guess what? I would say that you can’t get solitude without first going into the wilderness. See, the wilderness? It’s going to be where you and I, we fight, we get our tanks field, and we’re going to gain strength. We’re going to get clarity. We are going to get wisdom, just like Jesus did and Pastor Virgil. Last week, he talked about the heartbeats behind a healthy soul and that in order to do that, you and I have to learn to calm and quiet ourselves.

And you and I, my friends, have got to find a way into our man-made wilderness. So now we know how Jesus did it. Right? We see it in the New Testament all throughout. But what about us? How can you and I find our man-made wilderness? Well, we’re going to get to that in just a moment. But before we do, I think it’s important for us to take a moment and look at the distractions that keep us from going into the wilderness. There’s a guy by the name of Jim Collins, and he says that we live in a cacophonous age. Now, that is a wired ad practice. You all practice it with me. Cacophonous age. Look, we’re having, like, grammar. License and search today. So he says that cacophonous age is afoot, an age full of swarming insects, noise, and interruption, buzzing about emails, text messages, cable news advertisements, and cell phones, ringing, meeting, wireless connections, and social media posts. And I’m sure that the list can go on and on. But he says that we run the risk at the end of the year, having accomplished little of significance each year slipping by and a flurry of activity pointing nowhere can somebody say ouch. See, I believe that this chaos all started on June 19th, June 29th, 2007. Does anybody know where you were on June 29th, 2007? You should look. The girls in the front row are trying to tell me that maybe they weren’t born. You should know where you are because it may just be the most pivotal moment in our current world history. On June 29th, 2007, from the stage at Apple, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. That, my friends, was a significant day. See this thing right here? It literally gives us infinity in our pockets.

We can learn how to bake a cake; we can use YouTube whatever we want to figure out how to do, right. I mean, everything is there. We can figure it out. You can do your banking. You can do your financing. Everything is on this app. And what’s funny is I can remember growing up. For those of you that are my age or a little older, that the teachers would say to us, the math teacher, you better learn how to do that without a calculator because one day you won’t have one. Well, we showed them, didn’t we? Because now all we got to do is say, Hey, Siri, what’s two plus two? Oh, my phone’s telling me. See, I was checking with you all to see if you put your phone on airplane mode. But no, for real. I found out by doing this that if I put my phone on airplane mode and I’m still connected to the Wi-Fi series still works, we are always connected. See, we didn’t know at the time, in 2009, seven, whatever year it was, what endless access to information would do to us. We could have never predicted what was to come. And I won’t be Labor. All the points in the reasons that Pastor Virgil gave us last week about why this is so incredibly divisive. But isn’t there good stuff on it, too? I mean, like, there’s good stuff on there, right? But see, that’s the trick because sometimes too much of a good thing can actually be a bad thing. See, some of you may say, Oh, I’ve got great stuff on my phone. I deleted all my social media. I only listen to Christian podcasts. I only listen to my worship playlist on my Spotify. But this is what I would say to you.

Oftentimes. Isn’t listening to too much of that. Not good for us. See, isn’t it, Tom, that sometimes we just need to carve out space in our lives from this device, and instead of someone telling us how much God loves us, we actually need to go and experience it for ourselves. See, on Instagram, I get to control who I follow, and I follow some pretty amazing Christian leaders on Instagram, and they will post great things, beautiful quotes, and great things from Scripture. And I find myself scrolling, and I’ll read something, and it’ll say, Oh, that’s so nice. God loves me deeply. Jesus has plans for my future. And then, guess what I do. I just keep on scrolling. But what would it look like if, at that moment, I take that moment captive and I actually sit down, and I actually feel the love that Jesus has for me in my own life? See, at some point, it’s time to not listen about how to live a better life. Sometimes it’s time to just go live the life. And the issue is not always the type of content that you and I take in. It is the amount. It is now possible, more now than ever in the history of the world to take for this device to have constant noise and background in our life from the time we wake up in the morning until the time that we put it down or we don’t, and we fall asleep with it in our hands. Or don’t elbow your spouse on that one. 2007. It changed our lives forever. So there’s this book that Pastor Virgil referenced last week, and it’s called Digital Minimalism. And the author talks about how your brain and my brain when receiving information like a TED Talk, a podcast, or even an audible book, that your brain can not disengage the social side of who you are.

And see, there’s this social side of you that happens. And as you’re beginning to hear this great and wonderful speaker talk. There’s a social side of you that thinks you’re speaking to a real, actual friend. And so here you and I are in this moment, and we’re listening to Craig or Shale or the Bible recap host share with us what God is saying to us. And we think we just experienced an intimate moment with them. See, we’ve replaced conversation with humans with one-way digital voices. And this next part, it doesn’t really go in my message, but I’m going to get on my soapbox for a moment, so I just need you to bear with me. See the podcast host of Proverbs 31 Ministries. She’s not showing up to give me encouragement. Max Lucado, he’s not showing up to pray with me in my darkest hours, And the host of the Bible recap that I listen to often does not know my kid’s names. She doesn’t know their fears or their hopes, or their dreams. But you know who does? I’ll tell you. It’s Amanda. It’s Hillary. It’s Rene. It’s Stephanie. It is Vivienne. It is Tanya, Terry, and Sherry. Those women, they know what’s going on in my life. They show up to pray with me and to pray for me. And they love me fearlessly, my friends. And you can not find community in your podcast or your favorite YouTuber. You find community and true authentic relationships inside of the community in the local church. That’s how Jesus designed it. And if you’re here today and you are not part of a life group, I’m not here to rake you over the coals and make you feel shame or bad about it. I’m here to encourage you because I know what I’ve experienced in my own life and that it can be life-changing for you.

If you were here today and you didn’t have a life group, there is a mob. People party upstairs in the atrium, go up there, and see some of our leaders. We would love the chance to connect with you. Y’all knew I was going to get that life group plug-in right somehow. So you may be asking, well, what does this mean for you and me, Carla? I mean, I don’t have a wilderness in my backyard like Jesus often found. I don’t have a mountainside I can climb up. I live in an apartment complex. Well, let me ask you this question. Can you survive temptation like Jesus did at your current level of distractions? See, I know that I can’t see Satan thought that he could single out Jesus and that he could use solitude against him, but Jesus used solitude to his advantage. And Jesus knew that the task at hand was way too important to be clouded with all the distractions that we see all over this world. See, I think that what we have to do our part is we have to model and do what Jesus modeled for us. We have to find our own man-made wilderness. And how do we do that? Well, we’re going to talk about it. There’s three ways that I want to share with you today that I have found for my own life. Some of you may have others, just like Gentry talked about, but for me, the first one is being in motion. You’re like, What does that mean, being in motion? Well, let me ask you this. How did Jesus get from the river to the wilderness? He walked. He didn’t call up Uber and say, come get me, drop me off for 40 days, and come back and pick me up.

No, he walked. He walked into the wilderness. That was part of the process. It was him slowing down. It was him walking with his arms, swinging his blood, beginning to pump. I imagine that he began to breathe in a little bit deeper, and he got himself to a quiet place before he got to the wilderness. There’s a guy by the name of Eugene Peterson, and he gave us the message version of the Bible, and it says this. The virtual elimination of walking by the automobile has more than physical consequences, for it also diminished spiritual perceptions. We get there faster, he said, but we experience less. See, I want to share with you all a personal experience that I had from walking during the pandemic. Does anybody remember that? During the pandemic, I really struggled with worry and anxiety. And so what I would do is I would get up in the morning, get outside, and I would go for a walk. I would pop my AirPods in. I would listen to worship music sometimes. Sometimes a great podcast. But a lot of times, I would listen to my Crime Junky podcast. Anybody else? Yeah, the guys are all thinking, What’s that? So anyway, so I’m out on this walk this day. And I just remember I was thinking about the worry that I had for our life group ministry here at Eastside during COVID. I worried about what it would look like with groups meeting on Zoom. I worried that people would get Zoom fatigued and they would just completely say, I’m done. I’m tired of being on Zoom or Google Meet. I worried that our live group leaders would throw in the towel and say, I am finished. This is more than I signed up for.

And I worried. And I worried. And I worried. But on that day, I promise you, it was like, God just hit the pause button because I had no clue what I was listening to. He hit the pause button in my Spotify app, and it was like his voice was in my ears. And he said, Carla. You have a pride problem. What? Lord, I pride myself on not being a prideful person. What do you mean? I have a pride problem. I couldn’t believe that he just said that to me. And so I thought, this isn’t from God. And then God said to me, Why are you really worried about the life group ministry at Eastside? Is it really because it’s going to just diminish and void all the work that you have done? Or is it because you’re afraid that if it all comes crashing down, you’re going to look like a failure? I have to tell you, at that moment, it was as if I was punched in the gut. It was also in that moment on that walk that I realized that my anxious thoughts were self-inflicted. Because, see, instead of telling God what my worries were, instead of going to him and saying, Lord, I’m worried about this, instead of spending time on my walks trying to gain wisdom and perception from him, I filled my mind with other things that were not good. And it was at that moment that I said, I’ve got to move out of the way. I have to start giving God my care, and my worries are. I have to tell him every day so that he can take my anxious thoughts. That everything changed for me and changed, I believe, for the history of this church.

Because, see, our life group ministry didn’t tank. Our life group ministry grew, and it flourished. And because of people like you that chose to lead and shepherd through that, we are now approaching almost 800 adults in the life group, and that is not because of anything Carla Perry did. That is everything because of what God did. Three men and women like you. So the second way that you can create your man-made wilderness now is by nature. Now, nature, I believe, is where God likes to show up and show off. I think a lot of us can agree that there are some beautiful places across this world that will absolutely take your breath away. Well, I go to a place once a year in Montana called Refuge, and this is a picture from the back of it. And there’s this little room there that’s all glassed in. And I guess we would call it a sunroom, but I don’t know that it’s a sunroom in Montana, especially when I’m there in February. But here I’ll look at this picture, and I can imagine myself sitting out overlooking the wide open plains, seeing the snow-capped mountains in the sky, touching the mountains, and see it’s in those moments, my friends, where I remember, and God shows me I can do this. I created this. Just think about what I could do in your life. What about, like, people? How many of you are, like, people out here? Anybody? Not very many because they’re already there sitting in the rain. Have fun, friends. Hope you all are sitting in the rain, enjoying nature and God when it rains a little bit. Yeah, well, there’s this cove that my husband Brad and I found, and it’s down a little creek, and we just like to go here and anchor down.

And this place is so peaceful. And guess what? We don’t need airplane mode because there’s no cell phone service. And our kids, they don’t have a choice but to disengage from the distractions of the world around them. And it’s there that I will tell you that we’ve had some of the most peaceful conversations. I’ve experienced solitude in a way that I can’t even begin to explain to you. But I do also know that, like Cumberland’s man-made, it’s my man-made wilderness. So for some of you, maybe it’s not like maybe it’s not Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon, but what about, like, Reba? I mean, like Reba, if you go out there in the evenings or in the mornings, sometimes in the mornings, you can see the fog just sitting above the water, and it’s beautiful. If you’re an animal lover like me, you can take a loaf of bread and feed the ducks and just sit in nature and experience God in nature. For some of you, it’s the Pinnacles and Maria. Now, I don’t know about you all, but I do not find God hiking up that mountain. Embrace you. I promise you that. You’re not going to hear me experiencing the wilderness and the quiet there because I’m going to be saying some things I probably should not be saying by the time I get to the top. But for some of you, the pinnacles are where you get to experience the wilderness because it does have beautiful views. What about your back porch? Maybe it’s your back porch where you just see it. My grandmother used to love to see it in her backyard, on her swing, and just listen to the birds chirp and just look at the flowers as they blew.

Maybe it’s your front yard. This photo was actually taken in my house. We have believable sunsets in our house. And sometimes, when I go out in the evenings, I see this sunset, and I’m reminded of what an artist our father is. See, the point is, is that you can experience God in nature. Where is it that you find your man-made wilderness? So far, we’ve learned that we can create our man-made wilderness in motion and, too, in nature. And the final way that I think that we can experience God is in solitude, solitude. That’s become a really scary word for our culture and our world. When you all agree, you’re thinking, Oh, where’s this going? See, there’s always some kind of incoming noise coming into your brain. Into my brain. And I’ve spoken, and I’ve ministered to people, and I’ve encouraged them to take time to just spend in solitude. And they say, I just can’t do it, Carla. I cannot sit still for 10 seconds, let alone a few moments. Well. I would say to you that solitude is important. See, I can remember when I was a kid, my family, they used to pay me, or they tried to pay me to stop talking. They would start out at 30 minutes. And that didn’t work. And then we would get down to 5 minutes. And let’s just say I never got rich off that. I don’t like solitude either, but I think that it’s important. And some of you are saying, Oh, I do solitude. I get my Bible out every morning. I pull up my phone, I hit my worship playlist, I do my devotion, I get my Bible out. And I would say to you that that’s actually not solitude. Do I believe that it’s important for us to read our Bibles? Absolutely.

Do I think it’s important to listen to worship music and pray? Absolutely, I do. But it is not the same. And as I was preparing for this message, I started wondering why. I wonder what the difference is between silence and solitude. And C, silence means to prohibit or to prevent from speaking. Solitude, however, is the state or the situation of being alone. C In silence. We can fit in all day long, friends. We can scroll Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok. You can do all kinds of things on this device and never speak a word all day long. But in solitude, you sit in the quiet with no distractions. Look at this quote by Anne Lamont. I laughed. She says.

” My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I don’t want to go in there.”

I know, right? Some of you are saying, Carla, that’s my problem. I do not have good thoughts. I don’t want to go sit in solitude because I don’t want to know what is inside of my mind. I would say to you that I think it’s imperative for all the anxieties and worries that we face today to sit in solitude. It helps your relationships. See, it’s clear that our lack of solitude in a man-made wilderness is a distraction from what God wants in our lives. And how can you and I ever find God if you’re always listening to something or someone else? How did we become so uncomfortable with solitude? So we’re going to try a little experiment for a few moments. I’m going to ask everybody to just put everything down in their hands. You don’t need it for the next few moments. And we’re just going to actually practice solitude in the worship service today. Okay. Some of you were thinking, Oh, no.

So they’re going to turn down the lights just a little bit. Alex is going to stop playing the keys, and we are going to experience what it feels like to be in solitude for just 30 seconds. Here we go. All right. See. Was that so bad? You’re like, Yes, it was awful. I just want to turn my phone back off airplane mode. Please get this over with. We’re almost finished, I promise. See? I promise that if you all begin to implement solitude in your life just a little at a time, you will begin to love solitude. Maybe if you just try it for 30 seconds every day this week or the next week, you could get to 60 seconds. See, I think that if we could all get to a point where we could experience maybe 10 minutes a day in solitude, it would actually change our lives. We live in a world so full of distractions and anxiety. And I want to leave you with this today. I believe that Satan wants to distract us from the temptations and the lies. He wants to distract us with so many things in this world. Jesus, He’s different than Satan. Jesus wants to lead you in motion on a walk to give you calm in peace. Maybe it’s in nature that he wants to spend time with you. Or maybe it’s in solitude. Or he’s going to reveal something to you that could change your life forever. Just like Gentry shared friends, we are all trying to go into this world. We’re trying to make something out of ourselves before we go find our man-made wilderness. So I’m just asking you. What is it? What does it look like for you to enter your man-made wilderness? Let’s pray, Father.

I just thank you today. I thank you for. And thank you for your grace. Thank you. Give us. Father, I thank you for the reminder of solitude and how important it is. Father. I pray that as we begin to challenge ourselves through this sermon series, we see what it looks like to have rhythms in our life to create a healthy soul for ourselves. Father, I pray that. You would help us to do that. Father, I pray that you will quiet and calm our spirits today. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.