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All right, well good morning and welcome to the house.

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If we haven't met, my name is Greg.

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I'm one of the pastors here.

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I would love to meet ya, buy you a coffee or a soda

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or something like that, whatever you like,

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and maybe talk about your life.

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I'd love to meet ya, get to know ya, find out your story,

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and if part of that is if you wanna talk about Jesus,

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I like to talk about Jesus as well.

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I am a Cubs fan by genetics.

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It is mostly because my father was.

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If you wanna talk about the Cubs or baseball,

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I can do that, I don't actually know that much,

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but I do know a lot about Jesus,

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and so if you wanna do that, I am in.

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Today is the first Sunday in the church calendar

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of what is called Lent.

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Lent goes back 1,700 years.

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That's 1,700 years.

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If Advent is about the anticipation of the birth of Jesus,

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then Lent is about sharing the path

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that Jesus took to the cross and then to resurrection.

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Now when the church first started practicing Lent,

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it was 40 days of fasting that led up to Easter,

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but around the year 600, that 40 days became 46.

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Pope Gregory the Great, my nickname in high school,

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believed that Sundays should be feast days.

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Even though you were fasting on the way to Easter,

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that Sunday should still be feast days

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because Sunday is the day that we celebrate

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the resurrection of Jesus.

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Every Sunday is a repeating, a reminder

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that Jesus rose on the third day.

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He said this is a day that we should fast.

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We should not fast, but we should feast on these days.

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Since then it has come to be called mini-Easters.

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Each Sunday during Lent is to be considered a mini-Easter.

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It reminds me of what Jesus said

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when the Pharisees asked him,

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why aren't your disciples fasting?

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This is what he said, do wedding guests mourn

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while celebrating with the groom?

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Of course not.

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And so on Sundays, we still feast,

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even though during the week we fast.

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Pope Gregory expanded the 40 days backwards

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to include Ash Wednesday, which was this last Wednesday,

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giving Lent 40 days of fasting

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and six days of feasting.

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Now if you group Catholic or in a mainline denomination

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like Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist,

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then you've probably heard a lot of that before,

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but for others, maybe this is the first time

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you're ever hearing this.

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You have no idea what the concept of fasting is.

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And so let's talk about what that is.

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Fasting is the intentional choice

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to abstain from some thing.

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While giving God the attention,

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you would have given that thing.

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In the Bible, fasting is almost always connected with food,

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but it could be just about anything

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because there are so many things competing for our attention

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when we could be giving God that space.

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Christine Painter in her book about fasting wrote,

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we live in a culture that depends on distracting us

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from our true hungers.

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We live in a culture that depends, listen to that,

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our culture depends on distracting us from our true hungers.

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What we really want and need

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is being wallpapered over and over

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with ways of hiding what our hearts are truly longing for.

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If you've ever done a renovation

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and if you live in an old house,

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if you've ever done a renovation of that,

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you've ever thought like, you know what,

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instead of painting one more time,

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I think I'm gonna scrape down

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and see if I can't get to the original in 17 coats in.

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You're like, oh, I shouldn't have done this.

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You think there's only one layer of wallpaper?

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No, there's four.

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When we did our floors in our kitchen a few years ago,

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we found there is original wood underneath,

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but then there's tar with something

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that got put on top of that,

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and then there was plywood with another laminate

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on top of that.

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So while someday we wanna go back

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to the original flooring in our kitchen,

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we know the amount of work that it's gonna take

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to get all that tar off that original wood.

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During Lent, we fast not just to deprive ourselves

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of something, but to prepare ourselves

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to receive from God what we actually need.

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The point isn't just not doing something.

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Yeah, the point isn't just not doing something.

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The point is what you might find on the other side

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if you choose not to do that thing,

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even if it's just more time focused on God.

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Now in the Bible, there are three people

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who are recorded as having 40-day fasts.

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Okay, they are Elijah, Moses, and Jesus.

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Now for Moses, the other side of his fast

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is where he found the 10 commandments.

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For Elijah, what he found on the other side

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of his 40-day fast was an experience

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and meeting with the very presence of God on a mountain.

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For Jesus, on the other side of his fast,

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on the other side of his temptation, he began his ministry.

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He called his disciples, he healed the sick.

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He proclaimed the arrival, the kingdom of heaven.

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What might be under the layers of habits

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that we're covering our lives with

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that might only be uncovered if we stop

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for long enough to notice?

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Might be on the other side of that fast for us.

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So that is where the name of this sermon series comes in.

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You want to put that up for me, Liam?

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Desire paths.

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Desire paths.

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A desire path is something that we are all familiar with,

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but we never knew the name of it.

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Okay, we've all seen one of these, right?

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Put up the next photo.

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We've all seen one of these, we've been in a park,

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and we saw that, right?

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You probably made one.

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The landscaper hates you.

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That is called a desire path.

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A desire path is a shortcut.

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The path of least resistance.

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I remember being a kid and going places with all my friends,

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and there was always a shortcut.

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Check out this. This is a map of where I grew up, okay?

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So that circle in the top, that red circle in the top,

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that's where I grew up, where my parents currently live,

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and I lived about two and a half blocks from Wharton Field House.

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There was Browning Park right next to it.

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There was a big field there.

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There was a parking lot.

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We got lots and lots of trouble there.

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And any guesses on how we got to Wharton Field House from my house?

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Yeah, show the next one, Liam.

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Yeah, like that.

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Yeah.

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So I would go out my backyard, through the neighbor's yard,

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down onto the street, down to my friend's house.

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We would jump over the fence of his backyard,

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go through the yard of the other person's house,

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and then the only reason we wouldn't cut all the way through those other two

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is because all of those houses were up on hills.

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And so we would have had to like go up and then down and then up and down,

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and it was just less energy to actually go down to the corner

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and find our way around.

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Some colleges are famous for paving all of the desire paths

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that pop up around their campus.

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Instead of fighting, they just go along with it.

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But there's a problem with paving desire paths,

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because someone will always desire something else.

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There's an artist named Chas Hutton that illustrates this problem really well.

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Let's put that one up, Liam.

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So on the top left of this image, everything's good.

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That sidewalk is a great shortcut.

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That was probably a desire path to start with,

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that they turned into a sidewalk thinking that they were helping.

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But what if you're at the corner, at the top right?

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You just walked across the street from the other side.

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The fastest way is to actually cut through.

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A lot of the city wants to discourage that, so what do they do?

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They put a bench there.

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We're going to block your way.

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Use the sidewalk we gave you.

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But the path just moves.

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It dips down and around it.

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Why would we? We don't want to sit.

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We're just trying to get somewhere.

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So then the city puts in a trash can, again, trying to block the desire path.

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So let's put up the next one.

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So then, boom! Ah, bush!

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We're going to put up a whole hedge.

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That'll stop them.

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No, because kids like me would have been like, I can jump through that.

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That's just in my way.

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Oh, they gave us a new obstacle. How awesome.

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And then finally, finally, you see in the bottom left,

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the city has been beaten into submission, and they paved the desire path.

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They give the people what they want.

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But then look at those last two squares.

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The people say, ah, turns out this is where we want to walk.

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Because that's how desire paths work.

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Sometimes we hope and we pray, and God paves the path that we've been hoping and praying for.

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He gives us exactly what we have been asking for,

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and then we find ourselves cutting new desire paths,

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hoping God will change the landscape again.

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Isaiah reminds us that all we, like sheep, have gone astray.

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Each of us turned to our own way.

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The rest of that verse reminds us of what Lent is moving towards.

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It says, and the Lord laid on him the iniquities of us all.

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There's something about fasting that's saying for this time,

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I will not make my own way.

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Because his word is a lamp to my feet, a light into my path.

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I will intentionally avoid the paths that I have made for myself.

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And I will only travel on the paths that God has paved.

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So these next six Sundays, we'll discuss the opportunities that we have to fast during Lent,

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whether it's from food, sex, smoking, spending, or the way that we speak.

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With the time that we have left today, the desire path that we're starting with this week is this.

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Do me a favor. Everyone get out your phone.

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Some of you are like, easy, I already have it out.

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I'll give you a second. Everyone get out your phone.

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Alright, everyone got it. Now hold it up.

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Everyone hold it up if you're able, hold it up.

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Now everyone look around. Could you have imagined 15, 20, 30 years ago,

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everyone in a room having one of these?

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No, no, no, no, there's no way. There's no way.

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Now, now take that phone and turn it off.

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And I don't mean put it on silent. I don't mean put it on vibrate.

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I don't even mean put it on airplane mode.

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I mean turn it off.

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I'll give you a second.

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If you need help from your children, they'll help.

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Robin's over here like, I don't think I've ever turned this off.

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Now let me ask you a question. Because I heard a little gasp over here.

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How did that feel? Great. It felt great for some of us.

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For some of us were like, don't you tell me what to do with my phone.

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Someone was like, oh no, that's some church hurt right there,

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pastor tell me what to do with my phone.

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I was looking for a reason to leave this church. That's it right there.

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All right, but let's be empathetic now. Does anyone need a hug?

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Anyone? Good?

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I found a story about how a teacher decided to keep track of all the notifications

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that her class got during one period.

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One class, one period, 801 notifications.

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In a book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, he says,

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when you add it all up, the average number of notifications on young people's phones

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just from the top social and communication apps amount to 192 alerts per day.

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And when you add the dozens of other apps for which they have not turned off

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push notifications, the number of interruptions grows higher.

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He says every notification is an off-ramp for what their brains were engaging in.

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Think of all the energy that has to be used just to re-engage

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with the thing that you were already doing.

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Notifications are a distraction, but it turns out even just this is a distraction.

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Research shows that if this is even just visible on the table

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when you're in a conversation with someone, it doesn't even have to be your phone.

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If a phone is visible on the table or anywhere during a conversation with someone,

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research shows that the quality and intimacy of that social interaction goes down.

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So if you turned off your phone, the next step is put it away.

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Put it out of view.

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Put it in your purse. Put it in the flap of your hoodie whenever you got to do.

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And again, think about how you're feeling,

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how many of us are thinking about how many minutes there are left until we get to turn it back on.

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Most of the people in this room are adults.

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If as an adult you felt the twinge of fear or anxiety or worry,

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the countdown, the thought about turning it off and when it would come back on,

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for half of a sermon, think about how our children are feeling,

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about how their brains, how their emotions, about how their bodies are dealing with the same thing.

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For those of us that are tempted, maybe we didn't actually turn it off.

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J.C. mentioned this verse in his sermon last week.

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No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

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And God is faithful.

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He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,

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but when you are tempted, God will always provide a way out so that you can endure it.

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Sometimes the way out that window is the power button.

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During Lent, we're looking at the paths we have made for ourselves.

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If there is anything we have made for ourselves, it is phones and devices.

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And we're asking, is fasting from that path God's way to something better?

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Christine Painter again, she says, fasting is ultimately a paradox of emptying out to be filled,

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paring back to receive a different kind of feast, one that nourishes our true hungers.

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She says, our fast is an act of discernment of the habits that keep us from this rich feast available to us.

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These phones, these phones of ours, but really also devices in general,

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they are not the richest feast available, but we consume so much of them.

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If we're being honest, we know that social media in particular is not just a junk food, it is a poison,

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especially to our youth.

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The last show that pre-teens spend around 40 hours a week on their phones and devices.

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If you have a full-time job, their full-time job apparently is their device.

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For teens, 13 to 18, it goes up a little bit to 50 hours a week, but let's be honest,

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it is not that much better for those of us that are adults.

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The most time that we spend on devices is in large part because of how social media apps have used our brains against us.

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Look at this graphic. This is called the Hooked Model.

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This is what social media apps have used to addict us to the dopamine dependency

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that our phones, games, social media apps in particular, create.

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It manipulates the way that our brains use dopamine to get us to be addicted.

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The first step is just the trigger. This is your notification.

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It's the ding. It gives you just enough information. A ding.

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Your brain sends you a little hit of dopamine. Oh, oh, there's something.

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It gives you just enough to get you to step two, which is the action.

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Because if you got a notification, what do you have to do? You have to tap on it.

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Because why? You want to know what it says.

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The tap, the action gets you to the third step, which is the variable reward.

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It's called variable rewards because they want to disappoint you most of the time by design.

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I'm not making this up. I am not making this up.

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They have found in research with lab rats that when they learn that if they push a button that they get a treat,

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that they've learned that the dopamine in their brains goes crazy if they don't give you a treat at least nine out of ten times.

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Because they just keep pushing the button and their brains get overloaded with dopamine

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until they become addicted to what they're doing and then they get another reward.

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And it's rewarded and then it's not.

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And it is the disappointment that causes you to seek and hope for the bigger hit.

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It turns into this dopamine dependency that our brain has that eventually trains us to be so invested

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that we move to step four, which is investment.

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This is where the trigger becomes internal.

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Jonathan Haight wrote,

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Once your own feelings are enough to trigger a behavior that gets variable rewarded, the user is hooked.

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At this point, the app does not have to send us a notification anymore.

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I've been there. I've been there.

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I go to the bathroom, close the door, get going.

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What's the first thing I do? It's not because I had a notification.

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It's because my brain goes, oh, I wonder what's happening there.

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Oh, I wonder if that happened. Oh, I wonder if this. Let me see what's going on.

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I wonder if someone said such and such. Oh, I wonder if someone liked. I wonder if this. I wonder if that.

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Have you ever noticed that in your notifications, especially on something like a social media app,

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that most of the notifications, you're like, I don't care.

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That's the variable reward.

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Training you to keep looking and looking and looking for the reward you're looking for

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so that you will become so invested that your own brain becomes the trigger.

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They're all the same. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok.

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I remember when Pinterest was just a place he went to pin some good ideas.

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But they have all started doing this.

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They are all designed to addict us to dopamine.

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In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote this.

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The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it.

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The real cost of a thing is the amount of life that is required to be exchanged for that thing.

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We're adding up what social media is costing us.

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It's costing our kids.

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How much life are we exchanging?

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What's the total?

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Because we know that social media increases anxiety.

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We know that it decreases the quality of sleep.

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We know that it increases depression.

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We know that it decreases self-esteem, especially in girls of a certain age.

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We know that it increases body image issues.

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We know that it decreases focus.

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We know that it increases social isolation and cyberbullying

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and decreases in-person and social interactions.

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So what do we do?

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We fast.

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I think that when we find that we are worried that we can't live without something,

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we have to intentionally choose to live without it.

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To find if there is actually a healthy way to live with it.

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We fast during Lent.

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We choose a desire path that we will stop walking.

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To see what God might have for us instead.

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Christine Painter, again in her book about fasting,

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reminds us that fasting is an invitation into authentic freedom.

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Freedom from the things that weigh us down or keep us constricted.

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Fasting helps us remember our true hungers.

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So listen, at the risk of decreasing the intimacy of this moment,

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this phone has a flashlight on it.

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I use the flashlight on this phone almost every day.

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This phone can be a really great tool sometimes,

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but the apps on this phone are not the lamp to my feet.

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They are not the light to my path.

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As a church, we don't post online very much.

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We post about the Tuesday night activity.

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We usually post Friday or Saturday about what's coming up on Sunday.

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But during Lent, we as a church, we are going too fast from posting throughout the week.

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And we're only going to post on Sunday the live stream on a feast day.

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Some of you are wondering, what about you, Greg?

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I deleted all the social media platforms from my phones.

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From my iPad, I signed out online.

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I would like to say that I have been free and clear since Tuesday night.

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I intend on fasting from these things for the entirety of Easter,

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even of Lent, even on feast days for myself,

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because I don't know that I want to spend my time catching up on a Sunday.

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Because it won't just be 20 minutes.

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It'll be like, oh, I missed everything from this last week.

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That scroll is endless.

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While I am not a teenager, even though I act like it sometimes,

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my brain is not affected like a teenager.

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It does not mean that my brain is immune from the tricks that they have, right?

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That's true of all of us.

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I hope that some of you will join me.

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I hope that some of you will join the church.

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And take this seriously.

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Think about what life you are paying to give so much time

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to something that is designed to addict you.

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And we can trust that God will give us the desires of our heart when we hope in him.

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And we can trust God with the desire paths that we have had,

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that he knows what to do with them,

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whether they are those that are meant to be paved,

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or if they are those that we need to let the grass grow back

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and enjoy a beautiful field.

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So spend this next week thinking about whether to fast from this.

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And let's see what God has for us on the other side.

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Amen?

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Let's pray.

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God, there's a reason that your scriptures say that blessed is he who meditates on my word

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day and at night.

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I pray for every one of us right now that is itching to turn our phone back on,

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that your spirit would help us.

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Not because we are flawed.

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Not because it's sinful.

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But because this phone, this device is not something that is meant to make us feel this way.

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I pray that this length that we learn whatever we have in our hands,

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whatever we have in our lives, whatever desire paths that we have been walking,

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they are not better than the path that you have for us.

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By your spirit, would you help us turn our hearts and open our eyes to the light

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that you have for our path.

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In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.