Counter-Punch Apathy

00:00:02

- [speaking foreign language], Crossroads.

00:00:04

I think I said that right, Andy.

00:00:05

- We have no way of knowing.

00:00:06

That's welcome to Crossroads in Serbian.

00:00:08

Hey, we actually had our first Anywhere Community member

00:00:11

join all the way from Eastern Europe.

00:00:12

Nikola, so great to have you from Serbia.

00:00:14

Crossroads is a church, some of us meet

00:00:16

in buildings like this one in cities all over,

00:00:18

but so many of us meet online and in homes,

00:00:21

bars, dorms, cafes all over the globe

00:00:23

as part of our Anywhere Community.

00:00:25

So great to have you guys.

00:00:26

- We are excited because we've got a message

00:00:28

from our very own Hannah Driskill,

00:00:30

and we've got awesome things to share with you

00:00:32

about the life of the church and what's going on.

00:00:34

But first, we're going to start with some worship.

00:00:36

So glad you're here.

00:00:37

Go ahead and stand or stay right where you are

00:00:39

and let's get going.

00:00:43

- All right. We're going to start by singing

00:00:45

of the joy that we believe God's given us. Sing with me.

00:02:46

- No matter what I face --

00:05:38

- Sing it out.

00:16:43

- Why don't you guys pray with me?

00:16:44

God, we're so thankful.

00:16:45

Thankful that You want to show up

00:16:47

in our lives in bigger ways.

00:16:48

And, God, we just ask that the words of that song

00:16:50

would be truer and truer for us

00:16:51

throughout the rest of our time, throughout our week

00:16:54

that we would want more of You and we'd see You show up. Amen.

00:16:58

Man, you can see behind me, we've got

00:17:00

our community pastor from our Oakley campus

00:17:02

where we're standing right now

00:17:03

talking about some things going on with his community.

00:17:05

I want to share with you about some that are happening

00:17:08

with our online and Anywhere Community.

00:17:09

So glad that you guys are here.

00:17:11

- Hey, uh, by the way, can we just take a second

00:17:14

to thank the crossroads music team.

00:17:16

I mean, so incredible.

00:17:18

And, you know, they don't just lead worship on weekends.

00:17:20

They write this stuff. - Yes.

00:17:22

- In fact, the last song that we just heard,

00:17:24

Where You're Wanted, just released this weekend.

00:17:27

And so we want to encourage you to check it out

00:17:29

wherever you stream music on the app, Apple Music, Spotify.

00:17:33

I don't know where you can stream music these days,

00:17:35

but you can check it out there for sure.

00:17:37

- That's right, and as the perfect articulation,

00:17:39

like, the whole reason our church exists

00:17:40

to help people experience more of God,

00:17:43

and we got to see that in a huge way

00:17:45

with 1200 women at the Ignite Conference.

00:17:47

A two day conference designed, LED and for Crossroads women.

00:17:51

It was incredible.

00:17:52

You might have been at the conference and be like,

00:17:54

"I want more. What's next for me?"

00:17:56

Or you might just be a woman wondering, "Man,

00:17:58

is there someone who could invest in me

00:17:59

or someone that I can sort of share my life experience

00:18:02

and the things God's done in my life with?"

00:18:03

We've got mentoring for Crossroads women.

00:18:06

You can get all the details at Crossroads.net/women.

00:18:10

Now all the good stuff that happens around here

00:18:12

happens as a result of people's generosity and faithfulness.

00:18:15

And not to put you on the spot,

00:18:16

although I'm 1,000,000,000% going to.

00:18:19

We were chatting before this, and he shared

00:18:21

a little bit of his story around being brand new

00:18:24

around here and giving.

00:18:25

I just want you to share that with these guys.

00:18:27

- Look, four years ago on this very stage,

00:18:28

my wife Scarlett, and I heard that if we want more of God,

00:18:31

we ought to invite God into more of our lives.

00:18:33

And so we decided to do that by inviting Him into our finances.

00:18:37

And, Andy, after 15 years of apartment hopping

00:18:40

and my wife being here for just six years, Scarlett,

00:18:43

we just bought our first house a couple months ago

00:18:46

and God showed up, Andy.

00:18:47

And we believe he can show up for you too.

00:18:49

If you want to find out more about giving

00:18:51

here at Crossroads, please go to crossroads.net.

00:18:56

- That's right. Love it.

00:18:58

Now we're in a series called Stand Firm.

00:19:00

We're looking at the idea that we are in a battle,

00:19:03

but that we're not fighting alone.

00:19:12

- Ring Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen.

00:19:16

- The fight isn't won out there in the spotlight.

00:19:20

It's in the shadows.

00:19:25

- Ring Announcer: The fight of our lives.

00:19:30

- When the time comes, you don't rise to the moment,

00:19:35

you fall to the level of your training.

00:19:37

- Ring Announcer: Six rounds, each different opponent.

00:19:43

- To defeat your opponent you need to know your opponent.

00:19:48

Your opponent wants you to be hollow.

00:19:58

RING ANNOUNCER: Round five. Stand firm against apathy.

00:20:05

Let the fight begin.

00:20:12

- Good morning, everybody.

00:20:13

I'm Hannah Driskill

00:20:14

and so excited to be with you all today.

00:20:18

Thank you for having me.

00:20:19

We've been in this series called Stand Firm

00:20:23

where we are just addressing that we have an enemy

00:20:27

whose sole purpose is to try to take us out.

00:20:30

And so we're going to talk a little bit about

00:20:32

how we stand firm against that. Let me pray for us.

00:20:35

God, thank You so much for everything that You are doing.

00:20:38

Thank You for how You have chosen to make

00:20:40

this place a place where You dwell.

00:20:43

Wherever people are on the spectrum of knowing You

00:20:45

or not knowing you, or curious about You

00:20:47

or seeking you, God, would you just meet us here?

00:20:51

Help me to be helpful and clear and dynamic and fun.

00:20:54

In Jesus's name, Amen.

00:20:56

And we are going to have fun today.

00:20:58

So our Lead Pastor, if it's your first week here

00:21:01

or if you remember last week, our Lead Pastor,

00:21:04

he talked to us about this tactic that the enemy uses

00:21:09

to appear like this giant lion.

00:21:11

He roars like a lion because he is fear.

00:21:14

He tries to use fear and anxiety to take us out.

00:21:18

You know, if fear and anxiety is on one end of the spectrum,

00:21:22

today we're talking about the other end of the spectrum,

00:21:25

which is I feel so tightly wound or I feel nothing.

00:21:29

And you know what?

00:21:31

I gotta follow the example of my Lead Pastor

00:21:33

when he was talking last week, he said that

00:21:36

if we have fears, we just need to address them.

00:21:38

So today together, we're just going to address

00:21:41

some of Hannah's fears.

00:21:43

That's what we're going to do on stage.

00:21:45

I recently learned about this phobia

00:21:48

that has not been officially accepted by the CDC as a phobia.

00:21:52

But it is real, you guys, because I have it.

00:21:55

It's called trypophobia, and it is

00:21:58

the fear of small, tiny like bumps and holes,

00:22:02

basically things that are clustered together.

00:22:04

So let me give you an example. I detest tree bark.

00:22:08

Like when people go on walks and they are looking,

00:22:12

"Look how beautiful the forest is,"

00:22:13

I'm doing my best to like speed past,

00:22:15

because I'm actually not interested

00:22:18

in staring at the tree bark.

00:22:20

And that sounds a little crazy

00:22:22

because this is an irrational fear. It is.

00:22:24

And so one of the ways it showed up a little irrationally

00:22:26

for me was I just recently discovered

00:22:30

that I shall never put in my body a sesame seed bagel.

00:22:35

Y'all who out there eating them,

00:22:37

y'all are crazy. Y'all are sick.

00:22:38

And you're like, "Why you pointing fingers?"

00:22:40

Because I recently was staring at that thing

00:22:42

and I realized it looks like tiny baby maggot food,

00:22:46

like, sitting on the top of bread.

00:22:48

All those seeds, it's all clustered together.

00:22:51

Like, what's weird about it, though, is

00:22:52

if you put a little sesame seeds nice and spread out,

00:22:55

I can stomach it, but just put them together all in one,

00:22:58

my gosh, the gag reflex is truly working.

00:23:02

I'm not. I wish I was joking.

00:23:04

The last thing,

00:23:05

I don't understand how y'all eat Dippin Dots.

00:23:07

Like, those tiny holes.

00:23:10

First of all, ice cream was already perfect

00:23:12

and they ruined it by giving it a pattern.

00:23:14

Nobody asked for that.

00:23:16

Yes, thank you. Nobody wants that.

00:23:19

And then this one's actually not trypophobia,

00:23:23

but it does garner and elicit

00:23:26

just ridiculous emotional response from me.

00:23:28

If you want to see me hot, you want to see me mad,

00:23:32

make my food touch on my plate. I'm sorry.

00:23:35

I'm really -- Listen, I'm sorry.

00:23:37

I know that someone in the back is like,

00:23:41

"Hannah, it's all going to the same place."

00:23:46

I just want to invite you to believe with me today

00:23:48

that it should all start in a different place.

00:23:51

You know what I mean?

00:23:53

Like, I want -- I don't want the peas touching the potatoes. No.

00:23:58

PB&J is fine, that's about it.

00:24:01

But this idea is not about today my pet peeves,

00:24:05

it's not about my emotional responses

00:24:08

and how inappropriate they are, and ill timed

00:24:11

because I will gag at a sesame seed bagel.

00:24:14

Please don't try me. Please don't.

00:24:16

Today is not about that.

00:24:18

Today is about what happens

00:24:20

when we actually can't place our emotions in a way

00:24:24

when we should be responding to stuff and we sort of just can't.

00:24:29

And that is apathy.

00:24:30

That's when we get this slow over time erosion

00:24:34

tells us we aren't responding when we're supposed to.

00:24:37

The way that apathy is described

00:24:40

by the National Institute of Health

00:24:42

is a state characterized by a lack of interest,

00:24:45

enthusiasm, or concern for things

00:24:47

that are usually engaging or important.

00:24:50

It can involve a feeling of indifference,

00:24:53

a reduced emotional response,

00:24:55

and a diminished motivation to engage.

00:24:58

And this is the chosen tactic of our enemy.

00:25:02

Because you know what?

00:25:03

Guess what the easiest way to get people

00:25:06

who have said they maybe are interested in God

00:25:08

or want to follow God not to do anything that's like God

00:25:12

is to just make them not feel an emotional response

00:25:15

to anything that they should.

00:25:17

And, you know, this is a personal experience for me.

00:25:19

This is not something that I was just dreaming up,

00:25:22

like, what do people need?

00:25:24

I can just preach at them and teach them because I'm so smart.

00:25:27

No, this is something that God

00:25:28

really brought to the forefront in my own life.

00:25:31

I have a bunch of siblings.

00:25:33

I have seven brothers and sisters.

00:25:37

And I grew up in a house where one personality

00:25:42

was just bigger than the next, you know?

00:25:44

In fact, my husband's first time coming to Christmas,

00:25:47

he thought I was a lot.

00:25:48

And then he was like, "Yo, it's seven of y'all.

00:25:51

That's -- it's just a lot happening."

00:25:54

And so emotional response is normal for us

00:25:58

to have big, big outbursts.

00:26:00

But I'll tell you a time where I didn't have

00:26:02

a big outburst with my sister.

00:26:04

Sam is probably, she and I are the closest in my family in age.

00:26:08

We're 14 months apart and Sam is a teacher,

00:26:11

so shout out to all the teachers.

00:26:12

It is, yes, give it up for them.

00:26:14

It's typical for Sam and I to talk pretty much every day.

00:26:17

If you don't have a sibling or a best friend

00:26:19

or anyone in your life who you talk to that much,

00:26:22

you're like, what do you have to say?

00:26:23

We don't have that much to say.

00:26:25

We just like each other.

00:26:26

And so it's typical for Sam and I to connect

00:26:29

pretty much every day.

00:26:31

And so this particular day, it wasn't uncommon

00:26:34

that Sam had texted me, except that I didn't see it

00:26:36

immediately because it was, I believe, a Monday morning

00:26:40

and I was on prayer.

00:26:42

And I worked full time at Crossroads

00:26:43

and so we pray together as a team.

00:26:46

And this particular day, I was on Zoom.

00:26:48

And if I'm being honest, when you're on Zoom,

00:26:50

you're just a touch distracted.

00:26:52

And so I think I was still getting dressed,

00:26:53

I think I was still getting ready.

00:26:55

I think I was walking out the door,

00:26:57

getting ready to drive in

00:26:58

and catch the last part of prayer in person.

00:27:01

And I got this text from Sam.

00:27:03

And so I didn't look at it immediately.

00:27:05

But when I did, I realized it was actually

00:27:07

to my family group chat and the text said,

00:27:11

"Will everyone, please pray.

00:27:13

There's an active shooter on site."

00:27:16

And I sort of had the response that I have

00:27:19

when I see that in the news, because unfortunately,

00:27:22

it is so common when you see it over and over,

00:27:25

the response that you get is just kind of dulled.

00:27:27

And so I had that same response.

00:27:30

When I see it on the news, I go, "Okay, yeah, '

00:27:33

that's a bummer. You know, praying for them.

00:27:36

You, God, just do something over there.

00:27:37

Okay. Moving on with my day."

00:27:39

And that's the response I had.

00:27:40

I am actually ashamed to say that.

00:27:42

And then about three minutes later, I was realizing,

00:27:47

"Hannah, did you just -- did you just realize

00:27:50

the text that you just got, it said that there is danger.

00:27:54

It said that there is in trouble."

00:27:56

And it is in this moment that I feel like

00:27:58

I got a cold drink of water splashed on my face

00:28:02

that said, "Wake up. You need to respond."

00:28:08

And I realized I'm on a call with a bunch of people who pray.

00:28:11

I should probably engage them in the prayer,

00:28:13

and I didn't do that. That was not my first response.

00:28:17

Now I'm not up here just to tell y'all how bad of a person I am.

00:28:20

I mean, I am, but God's still working on me. Oh my gosh.

00:28:23

And He's working on me.

00:28:24

But no, seriously, I'm not up here for that.

00:28:27

That moment really showed me

00:28:30

that apathy had crept into my life.

00:28:33

And it's a small little, little thing.

00:28:35

It's a tactic where I should have been feeling,

00:28:38

I should have been responding, and I couldn't.

00:28:41

And the Scripture came to mind to me for John 10:10,

00:28:45

where Jesus promises.

00:28:47

He says, "The thief comes only to steal,

00:28:50

to kill, and to destroy.

00:28:52

But I have come that you can have life

00:28:55

and have it to the full."

00:28:57

And it was in this moment that I went, "Whoa!

00:28:59

I'm actually not living to the full," because

00:29:02

something that should have affected me,

00:29:04

something that should have made me feel something,

00:29:06

you want to know the ways you're alive

00:29:07

is if somebody slapped you, you might feel it.

00:29:11

It didn't affect me.

00:29:12

So what was really going on?

00:29:14

See, apathy is a little bit like when you're on the toilet.

00:29:18

What, Hannah?

00:29:20

You know how if you did, we did a Digital Fast

00:29:22

a little bit, here's a little Easter egg.

00:29:24

A while ago, we did a Digital Fast,

00:29:26

and a lot of people gave up

00:29:27

reading their phones on the toilet.

00:29:29

Well, I didn't. I didn't, I didn't.

00:29:33

I was reading my Bible, but I still had that thing.

00:29:36

Here's what happens when you read your phone on the toilet.

00:29:39

You realize you've been sitting there

00:29:42

for way longer than you really supposed to,

00:29:45

and then you try to stand up

00:29:49

and your little toes don't work.

00:29:52

Your little ankles can't feel nothing.

00:29:55

What's really going on?

00:29:56

Well, your foot has fallen asleep.

00:29:58

That's if you felt that before you know what I'm talking about,

00:30:02

where your arm or your leg falls asleep.

00:30:04

It's like that because what's happening

00:30:06

is my nerves are not dead in my leg,

00:30:09

but the signal to my brain to make them work,

00:30:12

to make me feel something is blocked.

00:30:14

It's not working.

00:30:15

And that's how apathy works.

00:30:17

It's this slow erosion over time

00:30:20

where you just fall asleep.

00:30:23

And that's really what happened to me,

00:30:25

that personal experience.

00:30:26

I feel like God woke me up and said,

00:30:29

"You are not doing everything that I want you to do

00:30:31

because you've been half dead."

00:30:34

Just as our feelings are meant to move us to action,

00:30:37

just as our minds enable us to think

00:30:39

and our wills enable us to choose,

00:30:42

our emotions enable us to respond.

00:30:45

Turns out that we need them.

00:30:48

And so this half dead concept kind of got me to thinking,

00:30:51

you know what else is half dead?

00:30:53

And you know what else is half dead? Zombies.

00:30:55

And so I started to look into -- I know!

00:30:58

I started to look into zombies and it turns out

00:31:01

there's some really fascinating stuff going on.

00:31:03

Recently, my husband and I started kind of a movie night,

00:31:07

and it's just been really fun.

00:31:08

And you're like, "Hannah, I have movie night

00:31:10

all the time because I have Netflix,

00:31:11

and I even got that one that

00:31:13

I don't have to watch commercials on, Hulu."

00:31:15

Fancy. Love that for you.

00:31:17

But movie night is a big deal for us

00:31:19

because we have a one year old, and so it's important

00:31:22

we're spending time together.

00:31:23

It's a time where someone's not yanking on my leg

00:31:25

trying to get a veggie straw or whatever.

00:31:27

So it's a big deal that we can spend a time watching movies.

00:31:31

And so I've been reading and watching about movies,

00:31:34

looking at these zombie movies,

00:31:35

and I'm discovering some stuff.

00:31:37

And it turns out that the first zombie movie

00:31:39

was by George A. Romero.

00:31:41

And this was important because George wrote this movie

00:31:44

and filmed this movie called Night of the Living Dead.

00:31:47

And it came out in the late '60s and in the early '70s,

00:31:50

and it was a classic, not just because

00:31:52

it was the first time people were seeing,

00:31:54

like, half dead creatures, but also because

00:31:57

it was a commentary on the time.

00:32:00

See at the time if you were around during that time

00:32:03

or you've read about that time, well,

00:32:05

there was just unrest everywhere.

00:32:07

You had wars going on,

00:32:08

you had the social fabric changing in America,

00:32:11

some for the better, some for the worse.

00:32:13

You had just so much going on when people felt

00:32:16

that their way of life was threatened,

00:32:19

that it was a problem.

00:32:21

And so it makes sense that art would be a response to go,

00:32:24

"There's just so much chaos going on

00:32:27

that I actually just need to disengage."

00:32:30

See, it was much easier to watch a zombie apocalypse

00:32:34

than to experience and live the apocalypse

00:32:36

that was going on around.

00:32:39

And it sounds like I just described 2025,

00:32:41

so I can only imagine -- I didn't.

00:32:44

I described the '60s and the '70s.

00:32:46

Everyone was interested in disengaging,

00:32:49

just taking a little bit step back.

00:32:52

And these movie classics kind of birthed

00:32:54

all the ones that we know about.

00:32:56

So Dawn of the Living Dead, that was kind of the next one.

00:32:58

Of course you have World War Z.

00:33:01

Many of you spent countless hours watching

00:33:03

The Walking Dead.

00:33:05

You've got the recent 28 Years Later,

00:33:07

you've got The Last of Us.

00:33:09

These classics are classics

00:33:11

because people want to watch them.

00:33:13

They want to engage.

00:33:16

You know, but the idea of being half dead is not new.

00:33:20

See, it's a risk that's been at effect

00:33:22

for humans for a very long time.

00:33:25

In my deep biblical study of this for this,

00:33:28

I was watching a movie.

00:33:31

And this movie is like a modern zombie movie.

00:33:35

It's called The Gorge.

00:33:37

And they don't actually refer to

00:33:39

the people in the movie as zombies.

00:33:40

They refer to them as the hollow men.

00:33:42

And so I got curious, who are the hollow men?

00:33:45

And it turns out T.S. Eliot wrote this poem long ago

00:33:48

describing what it must be like to live in a world

00:33:52

but not be able to fully experience the world.

00:33:55

I'm going to read that a little bit for us now.

00:33:57

It says: We are the hollow me

00:33:59

We are the stuffed men

00:34:01

Leaning together

00:34:03

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

00:34:06

Our dry voices, when we whisper together

00:34:09

Are quiet and meaningless

00:34:11

As wind and dry grass

00:34:13

Or rats' feet over broken glass

00:34:16

In our dry cellar

00:34:17

Shape without form, shade without color,

00:34:21

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

00:34:24

Those who have crossed

00:34:26

With direct eyes into death's other Kingdom

00:34:28

Remember us - if at all - not as lost

00:34:31

Violent souls, butonly

00:34:33

As hollow men

00:34:35

The stuffed men

00:34:37

Now this poem is artsy,

00:34:38

and I don't go around reading T.S. Eliot.

00:34:40

If you do, love that for you.

00:34:42

But that's just kind of a little bit highbrow for me.

00:34:44

So I don't typically pick up that book.

00:34:46

But I love this because I think it gives a voice to apathy.

00:34:50

It doesn't start out, you know,

00:34:52

as this big, big thing in our life.

00:34:54

It starts out in a moment.

00:34:56

It starts out when, you know, we're sitting on the couch

00:35:00

and we know we should go to that group.

00:35:02

We know we should engage in community because we need it,

00:35:04

but we kind of just go, "Whatever."

00:35:07

It starts out when we recognize

00:35:10

our partner and I are just not connecting.

00:35:13

But instead of saying something and dealing with it,

00:35:15

we go, "Get to it tomorrow, next week, next year."

00:35:19

We settle into that lifeless marriage.

00:35:21

We settle into that pointless relationship.

00:35:23

It happens when we see our kids kind of go on a path

00:35:27

that's really down destruction,

00:35:28

and instead of addressing it and being bold,

00:35:31

we kind of just die to it a little bit and go,

00:35:33

"Someone else will take care of that."

00:35:36

See, that's how apathy works.

00:35:37

And over time, it eventually gets to this voice

00:35:40

where you go, "Well, my voice, just like the T.S. Eliot,

00:35:43

it's dry and cracked, it's meaningless.

00:35:47

If I say something now, it's going to affect nothing.

00:35:49

The response that I want to have, I can't have."

00:35:52

And that's how apathy works. And it's a tactic.

00:35:55

It's not the enemy, it's a tactic

00:35:56

that he's using to keep us stuck.

00:36:00

And just like any zombie movie,

00:36:02

just like any zombie video game,

00:36:05

it's important that we recognize the characters,

00:36:07

we recognize how did this person get infected?

00:36:10

What happened to them? Where were they?

00:36:13

That's really the storyline.

00:36:14

So we've come up with our own characters today

00:36:17

because I think many of us get infected

00:36:19

in one of three ways you might identify.

00:36:22

Now, the first way that you might start to feel

00:36:25

like apathy is creeping in.

00:36:27

I call this persona the Modern Stoic.

00:36:31

Now, when I think about the Modern Stoic,

00:36:33

the modern Stoic is someone who, for them,

00:36:36

feelings have just not been convenient to access.

00:36:40

They've maybe been learned through learned experience

00:36:43

or taught by even a parent or guardian,

00:36:45

they're just not available.

00:36:47

And when I think about the modern day stoic,

00:36:49

I think about my dad.

00:36:50

My dad is awesome.

00:36:51

He and I have a great relationship.

00:36:53

He's a very funny guy.

00:36:55

But growing up he had two modes.

00:36:58

He had good and not good,

00:37:01

and you just did not want to catch my man on a not good day.

00:37:04

You didn't. I didn't know what was going on.

00:37:06

And as I grow up, I learned, well, you know what?

00:37:09

He had a childhood that really didn't lend itself

00:37:13

to be available to tap into any feelings,

00:37:15

because he had a lot of responsibility.

00:37:18

And then as he grew older, like I said,

00:37:19

I've got seven siblings.

00:37:21

When you got eight mouths to feed and to raise, guess what?

00:37:24

It's a lot more convenient to be doing rather than feeling.

00:37:29

And so he starts in this place.

00:37:30

I think if I had to describe him, he might say,

00:37:33

"Feelings have a corner

00:37:35

and they just need to stay over there.

00:37:37

I've learned how to control them."

00:37:39

That's what the modern day stoic

00:37:41

is not interested in feeling the things

00:37:43

that actually might get them to respond to a new place.

00:37:47

Then there's a second persona.

00:37:48

This persona has compassion fatigue,

00:37:51

and we're going to call them the fatigued feeler.

00:37:54

And now this person I identify with,

00:37:57

because maybe you're the person, you're the strong friend.

00:38:00

You're the person everybody comes to.

00:38:02

You're the bold friend.

00:38:03

You're the person in the family that everybody's leaning on.

00:38:06

And after a while, it's kind of like

00:38:08

when you first see that commercial,

00:38:11

you know that commercial where they're asking you

00:38:13

to donate because the dog has one leg

00:38:15

or two legs or three legs. Yeah.

00:38:17

You know, you hear that Sarah McLaughlin song playing, yeah.

00:38:21

The heart is just melting that first time.

00:38:23

You see all those cages piled up and you said,

00:38:25

"I didn't even know they made that many cages."

00:38:28

And that first time your heart is moved, you know,

00:38:31

you are settled in, that girl's like,

00:38:34

"If you would just give the cost of a grain of rice,

00:38:37

$0.30 a day," and you pull out $0.30 a day.

00:38:41

You know, you're like, "I want to help

00:38:43

that poor black eyed cat. I want to help that cat."

00:38:47

No, but seriously, that fifth time you see it, you go,

00:38:50

"Okay, that's just the black eyed cat.

00:38:52

Moving on with my life."

00:38:54

It's kind of like that.

00:38:55

It's like that first time the feelings were natural.

00:38:58

They were emotional. They were --

00:39:00

They had a healthy place.

00:39:02

But over time, apathy seeps in, creeps in,

00:39:06

and you just stop responding to the things

00:39:09

that should move you.

00:39:10

And then the last one, this is the person who,

00:39:14

for them, apathy stuck in and they started

00:39:17

to sort of live a half life

00:39:18

because life just sort of started to life.

00:39:21

And this is the repeatedly disappointed person.

00:39:24

This is the person for whom they had their hope up once,

00:39:27

they had their feelings up once,

00:39:29

they had their emotions up once,

00:39:31

but it sort of just kind of came to bite them in the butt.

00:39:35

This is a friend of mine who is close to me

00:39:37

because he said this, and he was very honest with me

00:39:39

and I appreciated that.

00:39:40

He said, "Generally, if I'm honest,

00:39:42

I tend to be more apathetic,

00:39:44

almost 99% of the time just genuinely don't care.

00:39:49

And it's because I've dealt with so much disappointment

00:39:53

that what's going to happen is going to happen,

00:39:56

so why bother?"

00:39:58

See if for the other two categories,

00:40:00

dealing with feelings is difficult or distressing.

00:40:04

For this category dealing with feelings is detrimental.

00:40:08

It's to the point where if I engage

00:40:10

with what's really going on in my heart,

00:40:12

if I let God in to that part,

00:40:14

if I address the stuff that's really happening,

00:40:17

I might just get let down and I don't want to do that.

00:40:20

But it leads us to living this half life,

00:40:22

to walking around like however zombies walk.

00:40:25

I want to do this, but that's a mummy, right?

00:40:29

That's not it. I don't know how zombies walk,

00:40:32

but that's kind of how we walk around, like limp.

00:40:34

We walk around not able to fully be alive.

00:40:38

And you know what?

00:40:39

Just like, because apathy creeps in over time,

00:40:42

because it's a slow erosion.

00:40:44

No matter what's going on, I can only imagine

00:40:47

that however you got there.

00:40:49

I know for me, over time, it could be because

00:40:52

maybe somebody you grew up with weaponized feelings.

00:40:55

Maybe you're accustomed

00:40:57

to people manipulating your feelings

00:40:59

and so you just go, "No, I got a strong arm that.

00:41:01

I'm never going to be able to engage.

00:41:03

It's not going to go well for me."

00:41:05

But I got news for us, and it's not that great,

00:41:08

it's that apathy is stealing full life from us.

00:41:13

And we were made for full life, for range of emotion.

00:41:17

Yes, for highs, yes, for lows,

00:41:19

and to depend on God throughout it all.

00:41:23

See, God is a feeler.

00:41:26

See, in the Bible -- I didn't come up with this idea

00:41:30

because I was like, "Man, maybe feelings

00:41:32

were my mom's idea because she's a woman."

00:41:34

No, that's not what happened.

00:41:36

God made feelings.

00:41:37

They were His idea.

00:41:39

The Bible references God having an emotional response

00:41:43

over 200 times in the Bible, depending give or take

00:41:47

what scriptural reference or version you're using.

00:41:50

In every expression of God, so God the Father,

00:41:54

God the Son, God the Holy Spirit,

00:41:56

in every single expression there is a reference of emotion.

00:42:02

And if you've ever heard or seen the feelings wheel,

00:42:05

which is just a wheel to help people identify where they are,

00:42:09

there's all these layers.

00:42:11

And we're not going to get into those layers today.

00:42:13

But if you zoom in on the core,

00:42:15

there's seven core feelings where everything sort of starts.

00:42:19

And outside of the ones that God is incapable of feeling,

00:42:23

like fear or surprise, four out of seven,

00:42:27

there's a direct scripture correlated

00:42:29

to Him feeling that in the Bible.

00:42:32

So happy, delighted, regretful, angry, upset, disconnected.

00:42:39

That's all there.

00:42:41

Now why would God make us like feeling creatures?

00:42:45

Why would God make us as people who need to feel?

00:42:48

Because He needs us to respond, that's why He made us like that.

00:42:54

In the words of Elie Wiesel,

00:42:55

who is an Auschwitz Holocaust survivor, he said,

00:42:58

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

00:43:02

The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.

00:43:07

The opposite of faith is not hearsay, it's indifference.

00:43:12

The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

00:43:17

And if we can go around feeling indifferent to everything,

00:43:20

then guess what? We'll never properly respond in a way.

00:43:24

We'll miss opportunities that God puts

00:43:26

right in front of us to connect with people.

00:43:28

We'll miss the moment where He wants to take us

00:43:31

to a new place because we just can't feel it.

00:43:36

And this is true all the way back to the Bible days.

00:43:39

We have a great example of what it was like

00:43:42

to kind of grow apathetic.

00:43:43

And we see that in the Old Testament

00:43:45

with the Book of 1 Kings with King Uzziah.

00:43:49

He's also known as Azariah.

00:43:51

Now God had in His mind that he was going to have a theocracy,

00:43:55

which was just him governing His chosen people,

00:43:58

the Israelites in the Bible.

00:43:59

And He was going to tell them, "Hey,

00:44:01

here's are the rules of engagement.

00:44:02

Here's how I want you to operate.

00:44:04

Here's what I want you to do."

00:44:05

He was pumped, and for a while that went really great.

00:44:08

He had these judges in place that was helping with that.

00:44:11

And then the people decided, "Actually, God,

00:44:15

we're not interested in that.

00:44:16

We would love a king."

00:44:18

Okay. And so because God is cool and awesome

00:44:21

and He gives us choice, He was like,

00:44:23

"That's a bad idea, but here you go."

00:44:25

And so He gives these kings to us.

00:44:28

Now the Bible talks about how most of those kings were bad.

00:44:33

That's why it ended up being a bad idea.

00:44:35

And this one king in particular, Uzziah,

00:44:38

is who we're going to look at today

00:44:39

to help us understand what was going on.

00:44:42

Now, why does the Bible call these kings bad.

00:44:46

Is it because they were born bad?

00:44:47

Is it because they, you know, are just so evil

00:44:50

and they were like murderers or something?

00:44:52

No, no, no. Some of them were,

00:44:53

but that's not what they had in common.

00:44:55

Every king that was described as evil, excuse me,

00:44:58

or bad in the Bible had a couple things in common.

00:45:01

We're going to go into it.

00:45:02

The first one was that they were unmoved by the words of truth.

00:45:07

So their forefathers had had access to what was called

00:45:10

the Book of the Law, which was just the rules of engagement

00:45:13

for how to connect with God,

00:45:15

how God wanted to connect with His people.

00:45:17

And that was the truth, and they just refused to hear it.

00:45:20

They ignored every everything that happened before them.

00:45:23

They said, "I don't like that. I'm not going to do that."

00:45:26

And they decided that the truth was not good enough.

00:45:30

And I think this is where apathy first starts,

00:45:33

where we disconnect from the truth of who God is

00:45:36

and who He made us to be.

00:45:38

We start to think a little bit differently

00:45:40

about our identity, and apathy can

00:45:42

get really easily creep right in there.

00:45:45

Because guess what? We're not walking

00:45:47

or believing in the truth.

00:45:49

And the truth is God made us to respond.

00:45:51

God made us to have joy.

00:45:52

God made us to have peace.

00:45:54

God made us to rely on Him, to need Him.

00:45:57

Yes, to cry. He made all of that.

00:46:00

And so the truth, they just ignored it.

00:46:01

They were like, "No, I don't need that. I don't need that."

00:46:04

And then the second thing that sort of was true

00:46:07

across the board is that there was false idols,

00:46:11

false gods in place.

00:46:13

And all of these guys would set up

00:46:15

these wooden images, most likely.

00:46:17

And they were hollow in the middle, a lot like this.

00:46:19

They just were filled with nothing.

00:46:22

And there's countless times in the Bible where God's like,

00:46:24

"I cannot believe you are worshiping an empty God

00:46:28

because I'm full. I can't believe that."

00:46:31

And you know, what was so interesting

00:46:33

is just like what they were worshiping they became.

00:46:36

They became what they were worshiping.

00:46:38

And I think that's true for us.

00:46:40

I think over time,

00:46:42

if we worship empty things, we'll become empty.

00:46:47

If we worship things that make us feel disconnected

00:46:49

and apathetic, we become disconnected and apathetic.

00:46:54

Is success and money inherently wrong? No.

00:46:56

But if it sits on our heart and says

00:46:58

we will lay down our life to that, then it's wrong.

00:47:01

Is marriage and singleness inherently wrong?

00:47:04

Of course not.

00:47:05

But if it sits on the throne of our heart,

00:47:07

if it says you can have all of me instead of God,

00:47:11

then eventually we will become empty.

00:47:14

See, that's the risk of apathy.

00:47:16

That's how it sneaks in, is when we start to

00:47:18

not believe the truth of God,

00:47:20

and when we start to worship things that are not God.

00:47:23

And so this is what was happening.

00:47:25

See, King Uzziah started out like us. He was a feeler.

00:47:29

He was responding to the things of God.

00:47:31

Him and God was dapping it up.

00:47:33

They was like, yes, they loved each other.

00:47:36

It was hanging out.

00:47:38

And then eventually the Bible says,

00:47:39

over time he was led to his destruction.

00:47:42

Here's how it's described in 2 Chronicles 26, it says:

00:47:46

But when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction.

00:47:50

Now he actually wasn't doing a bunch of evil, bad things.

00:47:54

It was because he started to rely on himself

00:47:58

that he became laxed

00:47:59

and uninterested in the things of God.

00:48:02

And the Bible often will use the word proud

00:48:05

to describe also a hard heart.

00:48:08

So he became hard, his heart was hardened.

00:48:12

He became unable to feel.

00:48:15

And sometimes in the Bible it would just say, like,

00:48:18

it led to destruction and they never tell you

00:48:20

what the destruction was.

00:48:21

You just assumed they were destroyed.

00:48:23

And then if it's like the movies, then God, of course,

00:48:25

struck them with some lightning and then, you know, it was over.

00:48:28

But that's not what happened in this story.

00:48:30

In this story the Bible gets really explicit

00:48:33

about how Uzziah was destroyed.

00:48:36

The Bible says that he became a leper.

00:48:39

Now, a leper is a disease that's not new.

00:48:42

It has a new name called Hansen's disease.

00:48:44

And because of my disease and phobia,

00:48:46

I just cannot show y'all a real picture

00:48:48

because basically, it's sesame seed bagel action

00:48:51

happening all over your skin.

00:48:53

It's like tiny little bumps and white pus.

00:48:56

Oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

00:48:58

White pus filled bumps just like everywhere and boils.

00:49:04

And it's really tough to look at.

00:49:06

And in the Bible, they thought this was a skin disease

00:49:09

because of course it was manifesting on the skin.

00:49:12

But it turns out it's not just a disease,

00:49:14

it's a slow growing bacteria that over time

00:49:19

changes how your skin looks.

00:49:21

Because what's really is affected is your nerve endings.

00:49:25

And over time, you lose the ability

00:49:28

when you have leprosy to feel.

00:49:30

You lose the ability to feel pain.

00:49:32

You lose the ability to have a response

00:49:35

if something is burning you.

00:49:36

Now, when someone asked me what superpower do you want to have,

00:49:40

you might go, "I would love to be Deadpool.

00:49:42

He can't feel anything and that sounds awesome."

00:49:45

But it turns out that as humans,

00:49:48

when we don't have superpowers, we need to feel

00:49:50

because feeling helps us.

00:49:52

Like, if a rat is chewing off our toe, for example,

00:49:57

it will be great to, like, move our toe out the way.

00:49:59

Or if we start to get burned and we have an infection,

00:50:02

it will be helpful to feel so that we can address that.

00:50:06

See, but with leprosy, the reason I'm getting so graphic

00:50:09

is because Uzziah was most likely the closest thing

00:50:13

to a real life zombie that I've ever seen,

00:50:16

because his face would have been covered in white.

00:50:19

He would have legitimately been half dead

00:50:21

because he could not feel, and he would have had

00:50:23

infected holes all over his body.

00:50:26

Now that's a zombie.

00:50:28

Now, in every single king situation

00:50:32

where God would call them evil and unclean

00:50:34

and they were punished, did they all become lepers?

00:50:37

No, of course not.

00:50:39

But I think Uzziah is an example of becoming a leper

00:50:42

because unlike all the kings, even though all the kings

00:50:45

didn't have leprosy of the skin, they were at risk

00:50:48

and had what you and I sometimes get,

00:50:51

which is leprosy of the heart.

00:50:54

See, the heart was hard, unfeeling, covered in disease,

00:51:00

with big holes in the middle of it.

00:51:03

Sometimes that's what's happening to us,

00:51:05

where God actually needs us to respond to injustice around us.

00:51:08

He needs us to to respond to suffering,

00:51:11

not out there, but like in our own families.

00:51:15

And we can't. We're like leprose, hard hearts.

00:51:22

And in that there enters a different king,

00:51:25

a king who's going to help us figure out how we foil this.

00:51:27

His name is Josiah.

00:51:29

And Josiah was a young king.

00:51:32

And so he had a lot of fervent spirit.

00:51:35

And, you know, I love that he was young because he hadn't --

00:51:39

The empathy there is, he hadn't yet had a lot of life

00:51:42

to make him feel apathetic.

00:51:44

And God uses that, see as Josiah gets a little bit older

00:51:47

and he decides, "I gotta get the people back to God.

00:51:50

They've turned away.

00:51:52

They've been doing their own thing. I gotta restore."

00:51:54

And so one of the things that he starts to do

00:51:56

is he sends a bunch of people to the temple,

00:51:59

which is where you encounter God.

00:52:01

And so people go to the temple, they're working for the king.

00:52:03

They're sweeping, they're dusting.

00:52:05

They're just figuring out how to

00:52:06

get the walls back up and everything.

00:52:08

And they find the book of the law. They find it.

00:52:12

And the Book of the Law is how we engage with God.

00:52:15

And they run back to the king, and they go,

00:52:18

"King, we found the Book of the Law,"

00:52:20

and they start to read it.

00:52:22

And the Bible says that this is what Josiah did.

00:52:25

It says in 2 Kings 23:

00:52:28

When the King heard the words of the Book of the Law,

00:52:32

he tore his clothes.

00:52:34

Now let's last pause.

00:52:36

This is a manly man. This is like a hurrah kind of guy.

00:52:41

He is in charge.

00:52:42

He is not being dramatic and erratic right here.

00:52:45

This is the king of the nation

00:52:48

and he looks like a complete fool.

00:52:52

Why is he having this response?

00:52:54

Why is he getting naked in the street?

00:52:56

What is going on?

00:52:57

Well, that's a common response, for sure, of grief.

00:53:00

But he was honest enough to let his emotions show.

00:53:04

He was honest enough to to recognize,

00:53:07

"Yo, something's not right."

00:53:10

And it's this type of emotion, it's this level of emotion

00:53:14

that doesn't just let him stay there and manipulate people.

00:53:16

That's not what it's about.

00:53:18

He doesn't just stay there so they can go,

00:53:20

"Woe is me, King. You know, how can we help you?"

00:53:22

He's not getting attention.

00:53:24

It moves him to action.

00:53:26

It gets the people of God unstuck.

00:53:29

And so much so that God responds.

00:53:31

Here's what he says

00:53:33

to the prophet who's responding to the king.

00:53:35

It says:

00:53:36

But to the king of Judah,

00:53:37

who sent you to inquire of the Lord,

00:53:39

this is what I want you to say to him,

00:53:42

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:

00:53:44

Regarding the words that you have heard,

00:53:47

because your heart was penitent, soft,

00:53:51

and you humbled yourself before the Lord,

00:53:54

when you heard how I spoke against this place

00:53:56

and against its inhabitants,

00:53:58

that they should become a desolation and a curse,

00:54:01

you have torn your clothes and wept before me,

00:54:05

I also have heard you, declares the Lord.

00:54:10

The intensity and the honesty

00:54:12

that Josiah has before God moves God.

00:54:17

God actually wants to engage our emotions

00:54:19

because they move Him.

00:54:22

Just like any connection, just like any, any relationship,

00:54:26

when we come to God, honest, with a soft heart, it moves Him.

00:54:32

So for some of us, maybe that prayer is,

00:54:34

God, I just want to know You.

00:54:36

But for some of us it's, God, deliver my son

00:54:39

from that addictive behavior.

00:54:42

For some of us it's, God, saved my marriage.

00:54:44

For some of us it's, God, I want to be married.

00:54:47

God, show me what to do as an empty nester.

00:54:50

He needs us to be engaged because He needs us to respond.

00:54:56

I'll prove it to you.

00:54:57

In Romans 12 it says:

00:54:59

Let love be genuine.

00:55:02

Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

00:55:06

Love one another with brotherly affection.

00:55:08

Outdo one another in showing honor.

00:55:11

Do not be slothful in zeal, but fervent in spirit,

00:55:15

serve the Lord.

00:55:17

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation,

00:55:21

be constant in prayer.

00:55:24

Contribute to the needs of the saints

00:55:26

and seek to show hospitality.

00:55:28

Guess what, y'all, that's just not possible,

00:55:30

that list is not possible if you're not engaged.

00:55:33

All the people that we hero, not just in scripture,

00:55:36

but all the people we love.

00:55:38

The Martin Luther King's, the Mother Teresa's,

00:55:40

the Wayne Gretzky's even, those people that we love,

00:55:44

their emotions moved them to respond.

00:55:49

God wants to move us to respond in love,

00:55:54

indeed in truth and justice.

00:55:58

In Ezekiel 36:26 is a promise,

00:56:02

because when I was going through that apathetic moment

00:56:06

with my sister and the Lord really showed that to me,

00:56:09

or I believe that God really brought that to my attention.

00:56:12

I had this moment where, like, I'm like,

00:56:14

"I don't know what I'm going to do because

00:56:16

I don't even know where the apathy snuck in.

00:56:19

I'm not even sure where to place it."

00:56:21

The good news is we don't have to strong arm ourselves.

00:56:25

We don't have to do it ourselves.

00:56:27

We don't have to pull up our bootstraps and go,

00:56:29

"I guess, well, because the preacher said to feel again,

00:56:32

I'm going to do it." No.

00:56:34

We get to believe the promise and God says this to us.

00:56:37

It says:

00:56:38

I will give you a new heart,

00:56:41

I will give you a new spirit to put within you.

00:56:45

I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh

00:56:48

and give you a heart of flesh.

00:56:50

He wants us to have a heart

00:56:52

that responds to the world around us.

00:56:55

He actually wants you to deal with your heartbreak.

00:56:59

And I know for some of us, I'm not -- I'm not foolish,

00:57:01

I'm not naive, it means we're going to have to

00:57:03

face some stuff and surrender.

00:57:07

God is inviting us to feel again.

00:57:10

Across all of our sites we have our bands coming up.

00:57:13

And they're just going to engage us in a moment right now

00:57:17

where I think God actually might want to speak to us

00:57:19

about where we've gotten apathetic,

00:57:21

where we've chosen to only be half alive,

00:57:24

where we've chosen to just not engage with a full life,

00:57:28

where we rejected His promise.

00:57:31

And the only, the only challenge here is to not disengage.

00:57:37

The only challenge here is to just stay locked in

00:57:41

because God is inviting us to feel again.

01:01:20

- Yeah. God is inviting us to feel because He is a full God

01:01:25

who is the exact opposite of apathetic.

01:01:30

See, He's so anti apathy that when He looked at dark

01:01:34

He said not good enough, light.

01:01:36

When He looked at absence of love,

01:01:38

He said, "I gotta go get love."

01:01:41

When he looked at you,

01:01:43

He said, "It's not enough to be separated.

01:01:44

I need to send My Son. I have to do something.

01:01:48

I have to respond."

01:01:49

And so He sent His Son to die a death that He did not deserve,

01:01:53

to feel all of the pain that we feel now

01:01:56

and that we would ever feel, He took it on.

01:01:59

He took it on because He was so interested

01:02:02

in getting us to move, to act and to be free.

01:02:06

See, He wants us to love not just in action,

01:02:09

not just in word, but in action.

01:02:11

He needs us to feel.

01:02:13

So the courage that you need this week,

01:02:15

what do you need courage to face?

01:02:18

What do you need courage to lean into?

01:02:22

What do you need courage to step into

01:02:24

so that the enemy can stop stealing from you,

01:02:28

so that you can wake up to a full life.

01:02:32

He's more for you. John 10:10:

01:02:35

I've come that you can have life to the full.

01:02:39

And when we feel that's no longer an aspiration,

01:02:43

but it's a possibility, it's a reality that's available to us.

01:02:49

And so, Father God, would You help us to feel.

01:02:51

God, I don't know what that means for many of us.

01:02:54

Some of us it means we need to just have a conversation.

01:02:59

Some of us it means we need to accept You for the first time.

01:03:02

Some of us need to run and hire someone that we can talk to.

01:03:07

We need to step into community.

01:03:09

God, whatever it is, whatever it is, would You meet us in it?

01:03:16

Would you break our hearts

01:03:17

for the thing that is breaking Your heart?

01:03:21

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

01:03:26

- Man, that song, Hannah's message, I just love it.

01:03:30

It's a message that I need to hear,

01:03:31

and honestly, I've never heard in church.

01:03:33

Like, the idea that God gave us our emotions

01:03:36

and wants us to use them, not to be slaves to them,

01:03:39

but to feel our emotions in a powerful way

01:03:42

and to let God meet us in those places. It's awesome.

01:03:45

And I just, I know, I know from talking to you guys

01:03:49

that that probably just hit a certain note with many of you.

01:03:53

And man, we'd love for you not to be alone

01:03:55

as you process and think through this.

01:03:57

- In fact, we'd love to pray for you now

01:04:00

or whenever you like prayer by going to hit

01:04:04

any of the chat boxes that you might find.

01:04:05

Crossroads.net, if you're on the app,

01:04:08

or just email us Anywhere@crossroads.net, right?

01:04:13

- That's right, that's right. Yeah.

01:04:14

We also have our monthly nights of prayer.

01:04:16

We actually do these on Zoom, but I promise you,

01:04:18

they're like the most incredible Zoom call you've never heard of.

01:04:22

7 p.m. eastern some of our trusted, vetted

01:04:25

prophetic prayer team would love to pray for you.

01:04:27

And I can pretty much guarantee you

01:04:29

you will hear from God in a powerful way.

01:04:32

I encourage you get the details on that

01:04:34

at crossroads.net/anywhere and join us there.

01:04:37

Guys, thank you so much for being with us today.

01:04:39

We'll see you next week.

Watch, Listen, Read

Get Connected

Come Visit

Get Support

GO | Change The World

How to Fight Fear and Win

Counter-Punch Apathy

Recent Series