‍Vince Vitale [00:00:42] Hi friends! Hope you're doing really well and that despite all the distractions of this world, you've been able to focus this week on the things that matter most. You really helped Jo and me to do that by sending in such a wide range of deep and thoughtful questions, and we're very thankful for that. Remember, now you can also leave a voice message for us, and we'll try to include your question in your own voice on the show. A few years ago, Jo and I were at an open forum on the campus of UC Berkeley when a freshman came to the microphone and said, "I've always been more attracted to the idea that we make our own meaning rather than God making it for us. What do you think about that?" That's a perspective that many hold in this day and age. And today's podcast is Jo's response to that question through a talk she gave at a recent conference in Las Vegas. If you're interested in what makes life meaningful, and whether building a meaningful life is something that human beings can succeed at on their own, then hopefully this week's episode will be a valuable step on your journey. Here's Jo. 

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Jo Vitale [00:01:56] Back in January 2020, I found myself on an unexpected road trip; and the year before, Vince and I had gone through just a very, unexpected, devastating crisis. It was honestly a life altering experience. There was no part of our lives that it did not impact. Within a number of months, we found ourselves resigning from our jobs, selling our house in Georgia and two thirds of our possessions in a living estate sale, and then we set out on this six-day journey across America in our little Kia from Atlanta to San Francisco, with nothing but a couple of Carry-On cases, a Pack 'n Play, a stroller and various other items of baby paraphernalia in the trunk. And at the time, Vince joked, actually, isn't this the kind of thing you're supposed to do right off to college? Not around 40 with like two kids in the backseat- a one and a two-year-old. 

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[00:02:52] To be honest, at the time, we didn't really have a lot of jokes in us. We were just exhausted, and we were heartbroken, and we were desperate to find some kind of space to rest and to process and to begin to heal with God's help. And before we set off, one of my dearest friends in England, she sent me a gift which was a framed painting from Psalm 23 of just the words, "He restores my soul." But actually, it kind of got smashed in international mail. And so, when I opened it, the glass was still held in the frame, but it was completely shattered. And so, I was reading these words "He restores my soul" through the smashed glass. And I just thought, well, that says it all, doesn't it? That says it all. 

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[00:03:37] And so, we found ourselves driving west, mainly because the kind friend had heard that we wanted to take a season of sabbatical. So, he'd offered us an apartment in the Bay area where we could just come and stay for a couple of months just for a change of scenery. But we have no future plans, and it's this kind of wild feeling driving across the States with nothing before us but the open road and its wide-open sky. And it just felt like this huge metaphor for our life. For the first time in my life since kindergarten, I had nowhere to be. I had no next step, not a single meeting or event on the calendar. Nothing. It was a total blank space. And I remember thinking to myself as we set off on the road, we could just keep driving. We could just go. We could just fall off the map. We could just do it. And there was a part of me, to be honest, that was kind of tempted by that view. 

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[00:04:33] As daunting as the experience was, that six day drive it felt like one of the most pivotal, transformational experiences of my life because it's so rare that we ever just get the chance to stop and take stock of where we are. In my case, I doubt I would have even ever stopped if I hadn't been forced to. If there hadn't been this emergency stop but ahead of me this big dead-end sign, I probably would have just kept going and going and going. There was kind of some severe mercy to it, actually. Because we were given the gift of time and space to ask some really fundamental questions at a sort of halfway point in our lives. Questions like what kind of life am I building? Am I headed in the right direction or have I veered off course? Who am I today? And is it somebody who the little girl who dreamed of following Jesus would be proud of becoming? What was I made for? These are the kind of questions that typically we're just running too fast for. 

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[00:05:38] King Solomon puts it we're just chasing after the wind. Well, on the trail of that elusive one thing that if we could just get it, then finally our lives would feel complete. We're just running and running. And perhaps for some of you that have been your experience of the Christian faith as well. You were listening last night, and you were like, Jo, following is not my problem. I'm always following after God. My problem is I just can't seem to ever catch up to him. No matter how hard I run in the Christian life, he is forever just out of reach. I'm so desperate for him, but it feels like he is nowhere in sight. And if that's you, you're not the only one who has felt that way. I find it striking that even in the Song of Songs, we see the bride struggling at times chasing after her beloved. When she finally does work up the courage to open the door for him, she finds it's disappeared. 

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[00:06:32] I rose to open for my beloved, and my hand dripped with mud fingers flowing with mud on the handles of the bolts. I open for my beloved, but my beloved had left. He was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him, but I didn't find him. I called for him, but he did not answer. Maybe that's been your story. You felt like you have called for him, but he didn't answer and it's left you wondering, is there anyone out there to answer? Or is it time that I just stop waiting around and take my life into my own hands? After all, isn't that what everybody else is doing? You find whatever works for you and then you just build a life around that. That's the question, isn't it? Is it working for them? What is it that makes life work? 

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[00:07:20] In 1946 Viktor Frankl, otherwise known as prisoner number 119,104 at a Nazi concentration camp, he penned his bestselling memoir, Man's Search For Meaning. And in it, Frankl argues that actually the difference between those who survived in the camps and those who died primarily came down to one thing and one thing alone- meaning. Those who felt like they had it and those who didn't. And observing society at large, Frankl diagnoses the problem this way. He says people have enough to live by, but nothing to live for. They have the means, but no meaning. And I think one characteristic that appears to be true of human beings in a unique way is that amongst all of the animals, we are meaning seeking creatures. Our difficulty is in knowing where to find it. If you need heat, you light a fire. If you're thirsty, you drink water. If you need directions, then my father-in-law would say, you just get on the Google Maps. It's probably not on planet Earth. 

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[00:08:25] How do you find meaning in your life? It doesn't help that every person you stop to ask along the way is pointing you in a different direction. Some say it's in what you do. Others say it's who you are. Some people say it's about achieving your desires. Others say it's about surrendering desire. Some say help others. Others say help yourself. Some say it's a destination. Others say it's the journey. Some say you need to look outside of yourself. Other people say, no, it's within you. Whether you think meaning is something to be found within or without, in being or in doing, in striving or letting go, the consensus seems to be that at the end of the day, it's up to you to determine what your life is about and to live accordingly. You and you alone are the arbiter of meaning in your life. I am the captain of my fate. I am the master of my soul. 

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[00:09:14] Back in 2018, I had an agnostic freshman at UC Berkeley frame the question this way during an outreach event that I was involved in; he said, "I've always been more attracted to the idea that we would make our own meaning. What do you think about that?" It's a good question, isn't it? If the freshman had asked that same question to Jesus Christ, I think he might have responded with a parable that he liked to tell. Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had a foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand. The rain came down, streams rose, the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. 

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[00:10:11] In this parable, Jesus is showing us two men who built their lives on very different foundations. One is on the sand; the other is on the rock. You know the thing about the rock is it's solid, it's unmoving. The design of the house is configured to the structure and the contours of the rock. The rock shapes you. You don't shape the rock. But sand is malleable. Sand can be moved and molded and shaped and prodded. Sand could be one way one day and another way another day. Who wouldn't want to work with sand? Today we live in a world of sand artist, identities, sexuality, gender, feelings, truth, beliefs, real versus artificial intelligence. Everything is fluid. Today it might look one way, but who's to say tomorrow it can't take another shape. The only contours defining your life are the ones you set for yourself. That's the message of today. 

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[00:11:08] In the words of William Shakespeare, a man clearly ahead of his time perfectly encapsulates the spirit of our age, "And this above all else to thine own self be true." In other words, your life is a DIY project; do it yourself and do it for yourself. Culturally, it's not hard to see how we got here, is it? Because in the minds of so many today, what alternatives do you have once you take God out of the picture, which so many have? Then all you're left with is a purely naturalistic explanation for the universe. And according to naturalism, there is no meaning out there to find. Science has explained it all the way. The universe is nothing more than time plus matter plus chance. And if that's true for the universe, then unfortunately that holds true for you as well. How is it possible to talk about your life having any kind of meaning if you're nothing but a cosmic evolutionary accident? 

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[00:12:06] In his bestselling work, Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Harari puts it this way, "As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without purposeful goal. Hence, any meaning that people inscribe their lives is just a delusion. In other words, you're a creature who's just driven by DNA. You don't even have the freewill necessary to make meaningful choices. You actually don't even have the ability. Love, joy, peace, freewill, justice, purpose, all the things that actually we care about in life, according to Harari, they are just illusion. Apparently, we never outgrew our Barbie dolls after all. We actually grew into them our entire lives and nothing but this long game of make-believe. 

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[00:12:57] But here's where things get really awkward. Because even if the naturalists are saying that as humans everything is a delusion, there is no meaning, they still say we have to trick ourselves into believing it anyway because it's a delusion that we rely on for our survival. I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? If you don't find life meaningful, why stick around to see it through? In other words, we need to delude ourselves that our lives have meaning because if we see them for what they really are, meaningless, we won't be motivated to live. In the words of the atheist Christopher Hitchens, "It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it's not, in fact, possible to live one's everyday life as if this was so." 

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[00:13:40] The result of this kind of thinking is that people think there's no meaning out there to find, and so they wind up working so hard to come up with their own meaning, to generate meaning, to fashion something out of their lives that they can point to and say, see, my life meant something. I was worth something. But as we're relearning in the world right now, happiness is actually a lot more elusive than we first thought, isn't it? The pursuit of happiness is a really appropriate phrase because we never arrive, do we? It's just a pursuit. And look at team culture that there are so many ways to entertain ourselves today more than ever. And yet all it seems to achieve is that we grow tired of pleasures quicker. We're just bored younger. The famous hedonist Oscar Wilde once said, "Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure, it gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train,". 

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[00:14:37] And reflecting on just how unhappy the pursuit of happiness has made everyone, Emily Esfahani Smith, she argues in her recent bestseller, The Power of Meaning, crafting a life that matters, that the real antidote to depression isn't actually happiness, it's meaning. And then she identifies what she calls four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, transcendence, and storytelling. Even at first glance, there seem quite compelling to me. I mean, those resonate with us, don't they? All four of those things, we look at that and we think, yeah, I want that, I want those. Like belonging, it's incredible to belong to a family, especially an Italian-American family. I've discovered the first week that I met my mother-in-law, by day three, she cornered me in the kitchen and she threw her arms around me for this huge bear hug. And she said, Jo, "You're like Miss America. And I never called any of Vince's other girlfriends that." High praise indeed. Thank you. 

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[00:15:37] Even within the best of relationships, is it fair to ask another person to carry the burden of anchoring your sense of meaning, to be a pillar, to prop up your self-worth, bearing the weight of your world? I don't know if you have met someone whose entire life seems to revolve around somebody else. Sometimes it's a spouse, sometimes kids, but it's actually awkward and uncomfortable to see, isn't it? Because there's a sort of unhealth to it that ultimately leads to unmet expectations and resentment. What pressure do we put on another person in a relationship when we make them our sole reason for living. And what pressure do we put on ourselves when we have to spend our whole lives trying to convince somebody else that we're worth loving because we need them to need us or our world will collapse. 

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[00:16:30] And even if you're in a healthy relationship, even the ones that don't buckle under that kind of pressure, we're still left with that deep down, sinking fear that one day you'll open your eyes and that person isn't going to be there anymore. Even love couldn't conquer death, right? One way or another, every relationship is headed for heartbreak. Our belonging comes with an expiration date, so perhaps we'd be better off building our lives on the pillar of purpose. Maybe purpose has a longer shelf life. In today's search for purpose, it often takes the form of social activism. Everybody has a cause, and some of those causes are righteous. Some of them are really good. But the trouble with putting your ultimate purpose in causes is that even the most just of causes rely on unjust causes. They rely upon the character and the conviction of fallible human beings, and those are some pretty shifting sands to build on. 

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[00:17:29] This is a problem that the atheist philosopher John Gray recognizes in his essay called Humanism in Flying Saucers, which I think is just the best name for an essay ever. Try and get flying saucers into something you write, I dare you. But in it he argues with brutal honesty that to put your ultimate hope in humanism and the progress of humanity is as irrational as founding a religion on flying saucers. And he writes this, "Civilization is natural for humans, but so is barbarism. And so, for modern human, the solution is simple. Human beings, we've just got to be more reasonable in the future." But what these enthusiasts, for reasons have not noticed, is that this idea that somehow humans are suddenly going to be more rational one day, it requires a greater leap of faith than anything in religion, because it requires a miraculous breach in the order of things. The idea that Jesus returned from the dead is not as contrary to reason as the notion that human beings will one day in the future be different from how we have always been. 

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[00:18:28] I find that an astonishing statement, especially from an atheist. It's a greater leap of faith to ground your hope in the progress of humans than it is to put it in God. Why? Because how are we supposed to fix the world when we can't even fix ourselves? And fix it for what if there's no ultimate purpose to life, if we're nothing but dying mammals and a dying universe that's only growing colder and darker, then, frankly, why bother? You'll still die. They'll still die. No one will remember. No one will care. It doesn't mean anything to the universe. It's hard to have a purpose when you're saying that ultimately everything is purposeless. No wonder people wind up disillusion with causes or with unjust causes. And instead, we wind up looking to transcendence instead. I find this really interesting. That a while back, The New Yorker published an article titled Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty. And it highlights this resurgence in New Age spirituality among millennials. 

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[00:19:28] According to a 2017 Pew Research poll, 30% of Americans believe in astrology. While a report from IBISWorld found that Americans spend $2.2 billion annually on mystical services like tarot readings and palmistry. Since its launch in 2017, the astrology app Co-Star has been downloaded 20 million times. And apparently by-- this is crazy-- 25% of all 18- to 25-year-old women in United States have the astrology app Co-Star. What does that tell us about the rising popularity of the New Age? I think it tells us that for a generation that has constantly been told to take charge and to build your lives as DIY job, only to suddenly find yourself in a world that feels like it's spiraling out of control- climate concern, pandemics, global wars, inflation, fears around AI, heightened political division, misinformation on social media, anxiety disorders and a loneliness epidemic. 

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[00:20:35] I mean, people are experiencing no stability to their life, so they're grasping at straws. They may have rejected Christianity because they believe the cultural lie that it's harmful to be a Christian because they've been told that there's no meaning out there to find, but they're still desperately searching for a secure place in a grander story. The crystals or the universe. Whether it's the stars that we're looking towards, it's cold comfort, isn't it? Because they're never talking back. There's no response. And I guess that a twinkling of light in the darkness, maybe that seems better hope that no light at all. But it's not much to go on, is it? And it's the same longing for transcendence that spills over into our human desire for storytelling. The award-winning poet Muriel Rukeyser, she once noted that the universe is made of stories, not atoms. 

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[00:21:34] We're story creatures, aren't we? There's nothing we desire more than to be part of something bigger than ourselves. It's why we're so often motivated by activism because we want to play a part in a grander story, don't we? We want our lives to have stories to tell, and we want to testify that we've lived, we've achieved, and that we meant something once. We all want to mean something once, don't we? And yet, for all of those heroic stories, for all of those stories of triumph and overcoming, how many more end in defeat and tragedy? A few years ago, I was speaking at a formal event at a women's country club-- actually it was the Dallas Country Club, but it was a women's event. And it was this event where every single women there they just looked so put together and so fantastic. And it was easy to look up on this roomful of women who just-- they had hair up to here. They were gorgeous. 

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[00:22:31] I just looked at them and it was so easy to assume their lives must be perfect. Their lives just must be perfect. So, it's kind of something of a shock when at the end of my talk, as we moved into the Q and A, women immediately stood up and she said into the microphone, "Jo, you're speaking about human trafficking as if it were an international problem. But I was trafficked here in the city of Dallas for over 20 years and the people who put me into it with my own parents." And then later on she rolled up her sleeve to show me the rope bands where she'd been tied up, and to show me the cigarette marks where people had just put them out on her, and then the scars where she tried to take her own life. And then after she said that, she said, "What does the church have to offer to somebody like me? What does the church have to say to somebody like me?"

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[00:23:26] Building the story of your life requires you to be the lead character in a heroic story. That is a really exclusive plot of land, and it's reserved only for the most fortunate. Most people do not have that luxury. We don't get to be the hero. And if our lives are based on nothing apart from the stories that we have to tell, of all the good times we had, then ultimately all we will ever amounts to are the things that other people have done to us and the things that we've done to ourselves. That's rarely a story that ends in happily ever after, is it? In these words attributed to the American writer Henry David Thoreau, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and die with their song still inside them.". 

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[00:24:12] Belonging. Purpose. Transcendence. Storytelling. Each one of these are significant components of what makes a life. But are these pillars strong enough to prop up a life even when the storms come? My husband met a student a while back called Dylan who commented that life is like a movie, but the problem is the credits never roll. And you think that you're finally going to resolve things and it'll all get tied up in a perfect bow, but then suddenly something else just comes along, doesn't it? That thing is resolved, but then the next problem comes. Dylan's language sounds a lot like the Greek myth of Sisyphus who was doomed by the gods to spend his days just rolling this giant boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down again and have to start all over again. That was his life. It was described as a life of never-ending defeat. 

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[00:25:01] And one of the earliest proponents of make your own meaning movement, the 19th century atheist veteran Russell, he called this act of building your own life without any reference to God, a free man's worship. If you don't have God, you're free. You're a free man to worship. But according to Russell, in order to experience this freedom, we first had to accept that man is the product of causes that have no prevision of the end their achieving. In other words, you are a random accident. And that man's origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his love and his beliefs, they're outcomes of accidental collocations of atoms. In other words, they are delusions and that there's no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. 

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[00:26:00] In other words, it's all purposeless, and the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried under the debris of a universe in ruins. Now, all of these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation get this unyielding despair, the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. Wow! That's a free man's worship, by the way. And my question for Russell would be, like, what firm foundation? Belonging, purpose, transcendent storytelling, he has smashed every one of those pillars. There are no safe spaces left. There is no home for the soul to inhabits. Here we tell people to go out and build their own lives, but with what scaffolding. We've left with nothing to build with and no ground to stand on. Russell is calling this freedom. But freedom at what cost? 

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[00:27:04] The French existentialist Albert Camus once commented that the literal meaning of your life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself. So, what are you supposed to do when the literal meaning of your life just isn't enough? We're told to go forth and make our own meaning, but it clearly isn't working. The 2023 CDC report on teen anxiety strikingly demonstrated the rates of loneliness, depression and suicide in the United States today are shocking. And tragically, we're seeing generation after generation becoming all too familiar with unyielding despair and there's no firm foundation at all. It is crumbling sand. I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore, and I hold with in my hand grains of golden sand. How few yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep while I weep. While I weep. Oh, God, can I not cross them with a tighter grasp? Oh, God, can I not save one from the pitiless wave. 

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[00:28:05] Is all that we see but a dream within a dream? Is it all just a dream within a dream? That's Edgar Allan Poe, encapsulating that desperation of so many, this desperation of you spend your life building sand castles out of sand, only to watch the storms of life roll in and wash them all away. Before we go any further, I just want to press pause here for a couple of minutes, and I want to give you the chance just to step back for a second with your notebook and with the Lord and just to take stock for a minute of your life. And I want you to do it through the lens of two questions. Number one, what pillars have I been building my life on? Where have I been looking for meaning? What pillars have I been building my life on? And number two, is it working? Is it working? Just spend a few minutes just reflecting on that. You can write it down. You can just pray if you want, whatever's comfortable to you. But we just spend some time on those two questions. Where am I finding meaning? And is it working? 

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[00:29:13] We live in a world, don't we, that tells us you are all you have. There's nowhere else to look. You are all you can count on. Your best bet is just to cross your fingers and hope you don't get flattened by the boulders that come running down the hill. You my friends, what a soul crushing lie that is, isn't it? A lie that warps the very essence of who we were made to be. A lie that makes us feel naive and childish for longing for something more solid to stand on. Longing for a life that won't fall away like sand collapsing beneath us. What if it's possible that that longing that you have within you is not a lie, but it's the truest thing about you. What if meaning was not something that you made, but something that you were made for? 

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[00:30:05] According to Christianity, it is completely natural to have desires that nothing in this world can satisfy because you are made for a life greater than anything this world has to offer. No matter how we feel constantly disappointed, no wonder that we are feeling this way as a culture, as a generation, because there is this profound mismatch between what we are settling for and what we were meant to live for. It's not that we've aimed too high. We've been way, way, way, way too low. A longing, transcendence, purpose, storytelling. Perhaps these aren't pillars of meaning so much as they are signposts to meaning. Perhaps our longing for each one of them acts like a compass, orienting ourselves to the only one who can actually give any substance to those longings. Because in Christianity alone, we encounter a God who purposed you to play a unique part in the greatest story ever told. A story of belonging, of pursuit, and homecoming. It's romance between the transcendent God of the universe and the people that he made in love, by love and for love. 

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[00:31:17] C.S. Lewis puts it this way. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because they cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea. We're in the slums and we could be at the beach. We are far too easily pleased. About six years ago, I was sitting, staring at the blank walls of my house. And the walls went blank because I had just moved in, I'd been there a couple of years. But they were blank because I hadn't fully settled into this idea that actually I was going to be in America for the long haul. So, I think some stubborn part of my brain was holding out hope that if I staged this silent protest and just didn't hang up any pictures in our house, that maybe the Lord would send me home to England. It was kind of a subconscious act of rebellion. 

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[00:32:13] I just thought, you know what? So long as there aren't pictures on the walls, never mind if I have a green card, never mind if my zip code is in Georgia, as long as I don't put the family photos up on the wall, then it's more like we're visiting. It's more like we're on vacation, right? But once those photos are up well that means we're home. That means we're home. No more denial. But as I was staring at the blank wall that day, I felt the Holy Spirit convict me that actually it wasn't only in our physical home that I was holding out. Spiritually, I was leaving some walls blank as well. And he challenged me with the question, Jo, when are you going to start inhabiting your faith? When are you going to stop acting like a visitor, always with one foot out the door, afraid to [inaudible] the furniture like you're a guest and actually settle in and make yourself at home? 

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[00:33:03] Perhaps that resonates with some of you as well. That yes, outwardly everyone looks at your life and is like, yes, she's building her life on Christ. You live in the right spiritual zip code, a sign on your doors says Christian. Looks so good. It's in good upkeep on the outside. But if people actually walked into your house of faith, if they stepped inside your spiritual life, what would they see? What would they see? Would they see signs that your faith is a home that you are inhabiting, that is lived in and well loved? Or is it more like a show room. Just how bare the walls? Begs the question, why doesn't it? Why do we hang back like guests instead of really making ourselves at home? And I think a lot of this comes down to our misunderstanding of Jesus' words in Matthew chapter seven. "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against that house yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock." 

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[00:34:05] I think we hear these words of Jesus and we freak out, don't we? Because as anyone who's ever undertaken a renovation project knows building projects takes so much work. Things always go wrong. It always takes way longer than they told you it would, and it always cost you far more than you budgeted for. I think it was [inaudible] who once said the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it's been found difficult and left untried. No offense to Jesus, but that just sounds like a lot of hard work. Hearing your words and putting them into practice, that sounds exhausting to me. I'm tired just thinking about it. Honestly, I can barely muddle through putting up a tent. Don't even get me started on assembling children's toys or Ikea furniture. What hope do I have of following your directions or building the kind of life you want me to build according to your precise and perfect measurements and holy specifications? I can already tell you I'm not up to that task. I'm doomed to fail. 

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[00:35:10] And so, to be honest, I'd rather camp out here in my shabby tent on sand and get soaked because then at least I'm making myself miserable than rather than have to face disappointments as well as you kicking me out of the house for doing a poor job, and then I'll be right back where I started anyway. I'll be on the sand. So, I might as well stay here. That sounds too hard. But I think when we read Jesus' words that way, we have fundamentally misunderstood him. Jesus isn't giving us random instructions to follow as some sort of arbitrary test to see if we can take direction before he determines whether or not we are worthy to share a life with him. He tells us to put his words into practice because it is in the living out of those very words that we actually find the life that we were looking for all along. he life. It's actually in his words. 

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[00:36:01] Do you remember when Jesus has that that really sad interaction when loads of his people who are following, they bulk at some of its hard teaching and they turn away and they leave him. And he turns to his disciples and he says, "Are you going to leave me also?" And Simon Peter responds, "Lord, to whom else will we go? You have the words of life." Your words are not a hurdle for us to jump over before we can cross the finish line and then actually find what life, your words literally are life. When I hear what you say and I put it into practice, I come alive. And even better than that, the primary reason for this isn't because of what I'm achieving or proving, but because when I choose to do what you say, to do life your way, I suddenly find that you are right there with me in all of it, doing the lion's share of the work, carrying the heaviest burdens and swooping in to catch me whenever my feet start to slip. 

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[00:36:55] That is, after all, what it means to build a life on the rock, isn't it? It means that you're building your life right where Jesus is. He is the Rock, and therefore he will be present for all of it. That is the whole point. And just look at how Jesus spells it out for us at the Last Supper, right before he goes on to face death for us. He says, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And a little while the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. And on that day, you will know that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." Couldn't be any clearer, could he? All we have to do is signal to him Jesus, I want to build my life on you. I want to live by your words. And he not only shows us that we already have the love of the father and the love of Jesus, but he promises us that by the power and presence of His Holy Spirit, God is literally coming to make his home with us. 

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[00:38:01] How does it make you feel, the thought of God moving in with you? Does it excite you? Is that exciting to you or do you think, ugh, no more personal things. It's important. Ask yourself that question and just confront whatever the honest answer is there because it tells us a great deal about who we think God actually is. If God is like a CEO to you, some cosmic divine boss, that God is only going to inspire panic. It's bad enough having an annual performance review. Who wants to wake up in the morning and find their boss living in their house, standing over their shoulder and micromanaging every move they make and offering critique all the time. Would be a nightmare, wouldn't it? But what if God doesn't want to be your CEO? What if his desire is to be your father? 

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[00:38:54] When I was a teenager growing up in London, I once visited the church of a pastor that I massively respected. He and his wife were leaders of a denomination in the UK, and they were my absolute role models for what it looks like to follow Jesus Christ. So, after the service, I was really surprised when me and my friends were actually just spontaneously invited to lunch at that pastor's house on the Sunday. And I was so overcome with hero worship during that time that I was really scared of making a bad impression. And in my nervousness, I think my hands maybe were shaking a little, but while I was helping myself to the bowl of cabbage in the middle of the table, I was so jittery that I accidentally dropped the spoon. I took the spoon and this whole heap of cabbage kind of went flying off the table, kind of sailed across the room and landed on that perfect pristine white carpet. 

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[00:39:41] And still you can see my face I'm still mortified thinking about this moment. I turned beetroot red and I began kind of sputtering apologies, but I was cut off mid grovel by the pastor who just smiled back at me and he said, oh, don't worry, we like to do that sort of thing all the time here. And then, I kid you not, he reached over with his hand, grabbed the giant clump of cabbage from the bowl, picked it up and started flinging it around the dining room. And I looked over his wife's and like, she's going to hate it. But she was there smiling and beaming too in the midst of-- I don't even know what was in the cabbage, but it was all over the white carpet. I don't know who cleaned that up afterwards-- hopefully him. But it just blew my mind this moment, just this one act of silliness and hospitality immediately put me at ease. And I realized I didn't have to be anything other than myself to be welcomed. 

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[00:40:38] There was no need to pretend or to perform, that actually they really meant it when they told me to make myself at home. Whenever I think about what it means that God wants to make his home in us and for us to build our lives on him, that's the story that comes into my head. Because sometimes even though the distance between us is somehow incomprehensibly vast, so beyond us, God has himself shown that he is not a terrifying cosmic CEO who's just waiting to point out our mistakes and make us crawl around on our hands and knees, picking up whatever mess we make of the carpet. He is God the Father. He tells us to make ourselves at home. And often that does mean making a mess, doesn't it? He's a God who says, I don't want to leave you orphans. I will come to you. I in you and you in me. 

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[00:41:36] That is the life that Jesus is offering us when he tells us to build our lives on the Rock. There is no question about it. God wants to live life with you. But it's like when we move in together the only hold up is us. We are the hold up. And I think sometimes we can fool ourselves by wishfully thinking, well, if I only I had a better relationship with God. If only we were closer. How I wish that could be the case, but he is just so far off. He's so far away and we're talking like we're the committed ones and he's the flaky one. Whenever we talk like that or we think like that, we're deceiving ourselves. We're actually deceiving ourselves because the truth of the matter is God is exactly as close as you have allowed him to be. And your intimacy with Jesus remains at the level at which you have set it. If he's at the arm's length, it's because we have put him there. 

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[00:42:34] And why do I say that? Because Jesus makes it 100% clear that he is all in. I don't know what the cross means if it doesn't mean that. Which means if he seems far off, it's because at some point or another, we've held out our hands and you said stop, come no further. Close enough. When he was urgently knocking on the door, we were still lying in bed debating of whether we really wanted to let him in. If our actions have been communicating to God that we don't actually want him to come in, is it so surprising that he might read us correctly and actually give us a bit of space so that we could experience for a while what it's like to be without him, and to actually learn for ourselves that really isn't what we want at all. Sometimes we think we want that and then we feel the distance like, oh, that is not what I want. Once we made that choice, when we come to him for life, he is always ready and waiting to be found. 

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[00:43:30] Just look at what comes next in chapter five of the Song of Songs, right after the bride is running around frantically, dramatically calling out that the beloved is missing and she's desperately searching everywhere for him. And her friends show up, good friends, and they ask her, well, where's your beloved gone? Where did you leave it? Where did you see it last? Most beautiful of women, which way did your beloved turn that we may look for him with you? We'll help him find you. Where is he? And you know what she says right away? She says, oh, my beloved has gone down to his garden. To gather spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved's and [inaudible]. He browsed among the lilies. How classic is that? How classic? She is running around. She's bemoaning her situation and crying out; I can't find my beloved! I'm calling out, he's just not here! How can he leave me this? Then [inaudible] her friend says, well, where is he? She's just like, oh yeah, he's in his garden. 

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[00:44:19] Like, what? I worked the melodrama before. The moment she pauses for a second to think about where he is instead of just panicking, she knows. She realizes she knows where he is. He's where he always is. He's going about the work of making all things new. That's what he does. That's where God is. He is always in his garden. He is planting, watering, pruning, nurturing, growing life. He hasn't abandoned her. He hasn't given up on her. He's just as much hers as he ever was, just as he claims her as his. But he's just getting on with the work of growing their garden because he's invested enough in their life together that he keeps on planting and weeding and working even when he's having an off day and lying in bed being, like, I just can't be bothered today. At the same time, he doesn't put himself beyond her reach, does he? He makes sure to stay in exactly the right spot so that if she wants to find him and join him, she will know where to go. She'll know where to go and she will find welcome there. 

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[00:45:26] Back in January 2022, at the end of that six-day journey across the country, just as we were arriving in the Bay area, we still just had no concept of what life looked like moving forward. Like, what do we do now on the side of the road? What do we do? And for a moment I felt so lost. Kind of having a beloved moment, I was like, where has my lover gone? Where are you Jesus in this moment? And will the world ever stop spinning enough for me to find you again? Will I simmer down enough in the panic to be able to think clear-headedly about where you are? But you know what? As the days turn to weeks, turned to months and the shock and the shaking began to wear off, once I stopped just looking at the wreckage and instead started looking for my beloved, the more I realized that actually although in human terms so much about our lives had changed, in the most fundamental sense of all, absolutely nothing had changed. 

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[00:46:27] Everything we actually needed, truly needed for life remained intact. Yes, sure the sand had shifted our employment, our house, our community, our location, our understanding, our future. Everything about the landscape looked different. The sand had moved dramatically, but at a more fundamental level, we were absolutely rock solid because our lives were established on the rock. And in that sense, we were as alive as we had ever been, and perhaps even more so, because when we were clinging in that moment to the rock, we were clinging tighter than we'd ever clung before. We were holding on for dear life, and we had everything we needed, we found, because we had him. We had Jesus. 

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[00:47:11] In the words of Corrie ten Boom who knows far more than most of us about what it means to really go through the storms of life, you don't know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. [Applause]. And I know-- yes. Yeah, that's right. Anyone else been there? Raise a hand if you've been there. Yeah, that's right, isn't it? I know that there are people in the room here today who you've lost more than I've ever lost, and you've been pounded by storms that I have never had to endure. There are things you've been through that I have no idea what it's like. But I also do know that Jesus' words hold true for you today as well. Because I live, you also will live. Your life is anchored in mine. It is a guarantee. When I'm raised, you're coming with me. Those sitting here thinking, I'm tired of watching it all get swept out to sea. I want to build my life on Jesus, but I'm just not sure where to start. I just encourage you don't panic. 

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[00:48:23] Don't panic. You don't need to run out the door and start running down the street, frantically searching for him. God hasn't grown tired of you. He hasn't left you. He's right there. And he's working in his garden. He's going about the business of making all things new, and he is ready and willing to plant seeds of new life in you today. And Jesus invitation to build your life on him, it isn't a demand you have to have it all figured out. You don't need to come to him with like some 10-year building renovation project or landscaping plan for God to take you seriously. He's going to direct the work. He'll provide the seeds. You just have to start building a life on Jesus. And you can do that today. I think sometimes we think about, oh, a life like a lifetime, that's so big. But you don't need to start there, do you? You can just do it day by day. 

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[00:49:14] Don't worry about your life, just start with today. Today has enough trouble of its own, says Jesus. Don't worry about tomorrow. Start today. When you wake up in the morning and come to him ready to listen to his voice and just ask of him, Lord, what needs tending to do this morning? Where are you watering and what are you looking to prune? What's in bloom and ready to harvest today? Direct my hands. Would you just direct my hands today in your work, in your service? And then gradually, if you let him direct your hands and your feet and your steps, those seeds, they will start sprouts. And before you know it, you're no longer living day to day to day. But you look behind you and you find that actually you've been building a whole life on the rock. Maybe the best thing about that experience of taking that [inaudible] was looking back and realizing, oh, we have been building our life on the rock. 

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[00:50:09] We aren't just making it up, this thing is solid. It's actually solid. That was really encouraging to me. Author Annie Dillard puts it, how we spent our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And whatever you do with your days, that's what you do with your life. We sometimes think about, well, one day I'll get to it. One day I'll start living my life. No, that's today. There is no life but today. You don't have a living tomorrow. Yesterday is gone. You only have today, so live your life. Just live your life. Every morning we get to wake up with Jesus. We have that moment, don't we? Right at the start of the day, there's always this split-second where you have a choice. What is my day going to be today? Either I'm leaning into God or I'm leaning out. Either it's about him or it's going to be about something else and it wouldn't be any good. 

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[00:51:00] We get to choose every morning I'm going down to my garden. Today, I choose to be with my beloved. And so, day by day, life starts to bloom around you. And one day you suddenly realize you're no longer staring at blank walls any more. But there are these pictures spanning your house, your house of faith, of the life that you have been building with Jesus. And they are bursting with memories, telling a story of this faith inhabited and this life in bloom. And you're no longer looking at God's promises through shattered glass because you realize that, actually, all along, even when I didn't see it, even when I didn't feel it, even on the bad days it wasn't good, you were restoring my soul. He restores my soul.