Member Spotlight | Fighting Apathy

Throughout our “Personal Liturgy” series, we’re interviewing members of our church family
to hear how they are impacted by and actively fighting against the “joy killers” in their lives. This week we sat down with Vision and Teaching Pastor Adam Gibson as he shared with us how the gospel motivates him to repent against the natural drift toward apathy.

How does apathy show up in your life? 

I see apathy the most when the day is almost over and I am tired. My work day is full of thinking, reading and talking to people and my kids are young, loud and tiring. So once the kids are in bed, on most days I am exhausted. That's the place where I feel my indifference the most. At that point, I don't want to talk to anyone or have to think about anything at all. I just want to lie on the couch and turn my brain off. 

How has your understanding of the gospel specifically impacted how you deal with apathy? 

I love Jesus’ word for people stuck in apathy in Revelation 3. He describes them as being "lukewarm", neither hot nor cold. Then says: Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

Apathy often feels unavoidable to me. When I don't care, I don't care. And there is nothing I can do about it. Even if there was something I could do about it, I don't care enough to actually do it. But the truth is, Jesus has redeemed me, given me His spirit, and promised that I now have all that need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Because of this, I am able to "be zealous and repent" when I otherwise would've been stuck in my apathy. In other words, because of what Jesus has done for me, I am never a helpless victim of my own apathy. There is always something I can do about it. And in moving towards God and being honest with Him through prayer, I usually find my apathy lifting. 

What are practical steps or habits you practice to fight apathy in your life? 

Planning ahead helps with my evenings. If I can decide in advance that my evening, once the kids are in bed, will be spent on something productive, I am usually less inclined to feel like it's killing me to do anything other than lay on the couch. The problem seems to come when I have already attempted to "shut it down" for the night. From that point forward I perceive everything as a nuisance that prevents me from being able to shut off my mind. 

Where have you seen personal growth or victory in this area?

Prayer has always been an apathy killer for me. I find that talking to God about the things going on in my life helps me to have the appropriate amount of concern, neither worrying nor being apathetically indifferent.

For another great resource on apathy with lots of practical application, check out the Apathy sermon from our “What’s Killing Me” series. 

Resource Round-up | Apathy

Over the last three weeks, we’ve been examining how apathy is one of the biggest obstacles in our lives that keeps us from living the abundant life that God offers us. We hope that the sermons and “Personal Liturgy” journal challenges have been helpful in making you aware of where apathy may be stealing your joy as you begin to take steps to shift habits and practices from the “it depends” category of life to the “Spirit” category. If you’d like to dig deeper, here are a few resources specifically related to Apathy that we’d recommend. 

Book: Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren

Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices, and habits that form us. Warren sets out to show that every area of our lives is designed for communion and engagement with God. 

Book: A Theology of the Ordinary by Julie Canlis

This short booklet is comprised of three lectures that Canlis first presented to Whitworth University’s Academy of Christian Discipleship. After returning to America, Canlis was struck by how much emphasis many American Christians placed on being “radical” or “extraordinary” for God. In her lectures, Canlis meditates on the goodness (and challenge) of living our “normal” lives for God.

Sermon: “What’s Killing Me: Apathy”

In 2015, Midtown went through a series called “What’s Killing Me” which looked at the internal hang-ups and frustrations that most often steal our joy and ensnare us; we then examined how the good news of Jesus frees us from each one. 

An e-book was created to go along with this series and we’d recommend checking out the “Priorities Worksheet” and “Apathy Inventory” found on pages 28-29. There’s also a page of LifeGroup discussion questions that you could work through on your own (or with a friend) after listening to the sermon.  

Sermon: “Proverbs: Wisdom and Sloth”

As part of our “Proverbs” series last May, we examined the characteristics of the sluggard and how his life is in direct contradiction to the life God has intended for us to live. As we’ve dug into how apathy prevents us from caring about the things God calls us to care about, we feel this sermon may be worth a re-listen as you reflect on where you are tempted to fill your life with “mindless consumption.” Perhaps the sermon will expose some “weights” in your life that you need to lay aside. You can check out the study guide questions as well if you’d like to dig a little deeper after listening to the sermon. 

Article: 12 Powerful Habits by Thomas Laurinavicius

This is a non-Christian response to the problem of apathy. In a roundabout way it describes that the things we do do things to us. Laurinavicius gives his best practices for structuring his life to fight agaight drift and apathy. While we would not wholly endorse everything in the article, you may find some helpful practical tips that you can apply to your life. 

Quote: “Shepherding Your Desires” by Skye Jethani

This is a quote from a daily email devotional called “With God” by Skye Jethani. 

Our consumer society has done a remarkable thing. It has convinced us that our desires are immutable and undeniable; that we are defined by longings and are powerless to change or resist them. With some desires this is true. I cannot deny my desire for oxygen—it is hardwired into my brain, but my craving for sugar is a physical and psychological desire that can be heightened or diminished. Our culture and the economic powers that propel it, however, want us to believe that every desire is hardwired; that we are mere victims of our appetites. 

This is important for those who are apathetic toward God. If we have bought into the culture’s message, then we are left hopelessly adrift lamenting our disinterest in God and wishing we could be more “spiritual.” In this condition, the most we can hope for is some divine intervention, a lightning bolt to strike us and awaken a desire for Christ that we are powerless to stir ourselves. 

The truth is, we have far more influence over many of our desires than we want to believe. We can choose to feed or starve them; to awaken or sedate them. When I remove sweets from my diet and eat more protein my craving for sugar diminishes. Likewise, I am more motivated to exercise when I’m part of a community committed to fitness. Learning to control appetites, delay gratification, and acquire new desires is precisely what allows children to mature into adults. We all possess this ability, we’ve just forgotten.

The same applies to our life with God. If you are not motivated to seek him in this season, consider what might awaken this desire. What practices can you add to your life? Which do you need to remove? Is there a community that possesses the qualities you want for yourself? Or consider reading the Gospels again and praying that the Holy Spirit would help you see Jesus more clearly and learn to desire him anew.

Sermon Recap | Lay Aside Every Weight

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

Hebrews 12:1-3

Lay Aside Every Weight

The Bible is clear that there are things in our lives that are contrary to what God has for us. Sins and Weights. Sins are overtly opposed to Scriptural commands and keep us from walking in step with the Spirit by leading us to love other things more than Jesus. 

But Hebrews also says to lay aside something called weights. Weights are things that are not explicitly sinful, but they do weigh us down. Weights are things that fall into the “It Depends” category.  They are not sinful in and of themselves, but for a particular point in life, they are not helpful for our spiritual health. 

Weights keep us from the joy Jesus has set before us.

Along with repenting of sin, developing a lifestyle of throwing off weights is monumental for our spiritual growth. 

Problem: We Really Struggle to Say “No” to Ourselves

We have a problem when it comes to obeying this command to lay aside weights because we exist in a culture where saying, “no” to yourself isn’t trained because it isn’t seen as valuable. 

So, our “say-no-to-self” muscles are extremely weak. They have atrophied so much that they can almost become non-existent, and when it becomes necessary for us to lay aside weights or sin, we can’t. 

In 1 Corinthians 6:12, Paul tells the Church in Corinth that all things not explicitly called sin are lawful for them, but not all of them are helpful. He continues in 1 Corinthians 10:23 by saying not all things build up. He’s telling them that they are asking the wrong question and that their focus is off. Instead of focusing on what is technically permissible, Paul challenges us to ask, “What might be helpful for me to lay aside in order to run the race set before me?”

An Unexpected Help

Jesus gives us the perfect tool to help us build up our “say-no-to-self” muscle: the spiritual discipline of fasting.

Our default response to fasting usually is, “Why? Why would I do that?” That response is clear proof that our culture has no category for “telling ourselves no” being a good thing.

The purpose of fasting is to draw your heart toward God and reinforce that He is what we ultimately need. By learning how to intentionally say, “no” to smaller things like a meal, we can grow the muscles we need to say, “no” to bigger things like weights, or sin.

Spend some time this week asking the Holy Spirit to help you identify weights in your life. Consider participating in Lent this year or simply choose a weight in your life to abstain from in order to build up your “say-no-to-self” muscles.

Sermon Recap | The Things You DON'T Do Do Things To You

We are always practicing to become the kind of people that we become. Just like the things you do, do things to you, the things you don’t do, do things to you too. 

A prayerless life is built one day at a time.
A life where the Bible doesn’t matter is built one day at a time.

Throughout our “Personal Liturgy” series, we are trying to push our habits into the “Spirit” category, believing they will have a long-term effect. Often, when we try to push in this direction and establish spiritual disciplines, we are met with resistance and difficulty. 

4 reasons we may struggle to implement discipline:

1. I’m just waiting for an epiphany. 

Galatians 6:7-8 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

When we think, “I’m just waiting on God to change me” we are taking a partial truth from scripture (that only God can truly change us) and using it to hide from our own sinfulness and laziness. 

“The (spiritual) disciplines are ways to position ourselves under the waterfalls of grace.” The epiphanies come as we position ourselves in a place to receive them. 

2. I shouldn’t need rules and structure. I don’t want to be a legalist. 

1 Corinthians 9:25-27: Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Paul says athletes discipline themselves. Discipline is saying “no” to some things we want now for the long-term benefit of choosing what is best. 

The desire to not be fake is a good desire, but doing something you don’t feel like doing isn’t being fake. Being fake is pretending to be something you’re not. There is no need to fake it when practicing spiritual disciplines. Every one of them is an opportunity to confess, “God, I’m not who I want to be and I want you to do something about it.”

3. I don’t feel like I really get anything out of it.

It’s interesting how often the Bible refers to spending time with God and listening to Him through His Word in terms of food:

Matthew 4: Jesus says man should not live on bread alone but on every word of God.
1 Peter 2: We should be longing to hear from God through his Word like a baby cries for milk.
John 6: Jesus says He is the bread of life. We are to feast on Him. 

We are to consistently gather with God’s people, sing, pray, study the Bible, and sabbath because God uses these like a healthy diet to shape us into a certain type of people. Realizing this shifts our perspective in a very healthy way: the point is eating and getting a healthy source of nutrition and life.

4. I don’t have time to sit down with God for an hour.

Be honest about your season of life and do what you can. If you’re not doing anything, doing something is better than nothing and whoever you are, there is a way to start to shift dots from “it depends” to walking with the Spirit. 

Here are a few potential starting points:

• Start doing the “Personal Liturgy” challenges. Put a reminder on your phone. 

• Place prayer/scripture prompts at a place in your house where you regularly deal with frustration or need a reminder that God is present. 

• Reorder the apps on the home screen of your phone. Consider setting your phone to grayscale.

Spend some time this week thinking and praying through what it’s going to take to shift those dots to the right and then make those changes! 

Sermon Recap | The Things You Do Do Things To You

Galatians 5:16-25

Apathy: not caring about the things God created you to care about

*You can be a very passionate, driven person and still be eaten up with apathy where it matters most." 

The word “neutral” sounds like it means, “having little to no effect on me” but this isn’t actually how life works—especially if you are a Christian. In Galatians 5, Paul shows us how life following Jesus actually works:

Galatians 5:16-17: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

According to the Bible, when you become a Christian, you have two natures inside of you: the flesh and the Spirit. The flesh is that natural, selfish, sinful nature you were born with. The Spirit is God’s spirit that Jesus gives us to remind us that God is for us, not against us. Galatians 5:17 tells us that once you’re a Christian, the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. When you become a Christian, not only do you have a new belief system, a new way of relating to God and others , and a new moral code, but you also get a new set of desires. At the deepest part of you, the Spirit will birth in you new desires that love God and want to trust and obey Him more than anything. Yes our desires will be at war, but the desires of the Spirit are what we really want now. 

Believing and following Jesus is about letting God show you what is best in life and letting His Spirit grow new desires in you that want what is best. 

Galatians 5:18-21: But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy,[a]drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do[b] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

In these verses, Paul describes the kind of life that the flesh wants to pull us toward. The deeper you dig into this list, the more you realize how aptly it describes where human nature takes us apart from God. But in Christ, and filled with God’s Spirit, there’s a new life available: 

Galatians 5:22-25: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

This is what human life looks like when it is led by God’s Spirit to put the flesh to death. This is the test Paul gives us for how we will know if we’re allowing the flesh to pull us or if we’re keeping in step with the Spirit. 

So how, as Christians, should we think about all of the “neutral” items from the first chart? Biblically, the answer is: in light of the battle working between our flesh and the Spirit, nothing is neutral. All of the stuff that we think of as “neutral” must be reframed in a new category called “It depends.” 

Because the flesh and Spirit are always at war, pulling us in different directions, there’s not a biblical category for stuff having no impact on us. Instead of “neutral,” the Bible would say it depends on:

1. Why are you doing it?
2. How much are you doing it?
3. When are you doing it?
4. What effect does it have on you?

For many of us, the majority of our daily habits and rhythms fall into the “it depends” category which seems completely harmless. This is the precise American recipe for an apathetic Christian life. Without even knowing it, we have filled our lives with morally justifiable things that don’t cultivate any real spiritual life in us. 

The “Personal Liturgy” app this week is going to help us do some diagnosis of where we are spending our time. It is going to help us analyze our habits and realize where we might have been cultivating apathy without even realizing it. Be prepared to share with your LifeGroup this week as together we take a look at the “it depends” category in our lives. 

To learn more about the “Personal Liturgy” app, check out this short video where one of our pastors, Brandon Clements, walks through how to use the app:

If you don’t have a smartphone or would prefer to receive the challenges via email, you can sign up here: 

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Kidtown Family Challenge #1: Journaling

This past week we launched our “Personal Liturgy” series and talked about how we all have an order to our lives and the things we do are doing things to us. The habits we are practicing every day are shaping us into the people that we will become. 

Over the next five months, we are all together trying to create a personal liturgy that helps us become the kind of people that God has designed us to be. The Kidtown Team has been working hard to develop content for their own personal liturgy series called, “The Things You Do, Do Things To You.” The goal of this series is to help kids understand, value, and practice growing in their relationship with God. 

Each week, Kidtown will provide biblical instruction concerning healthy habits and corresponding tools to help kids practice these habits at home. For the first four weeks, Kidtown will be teaching the value of journaling. During Week 1 (January 21st), children decorated their own 3 ring binders at Kidtown to take home and use throughout the series. (If your child missed Week 1, please let a Kidtown volunteer know so that you can receive a binder!) 

Journaling Tips and Tricks: 

Time: Designate a time and space for your child to journal. It may be helpful for your family to choose the same time each day. You could designate it as “journaling time” for your entire family or if your child needs your guidance, it may be best to set aside a time for them that is separate from yours. 

Place: Designate a special place where your child can be creative. Have supplies on hand like crayons, colored pencils, stickers and glue. 

Attitude:  Let your child see you get excited about journaling. Encourage focus and creativity but don’t enforce too many rules concerning what your child journals. This should be enjoyable. Celebrate the scribbles! 

Preschool Tips- Children in preschool need lots of space on their pages to draw, color, and write. 

Elementary Tips- Elementary students need wide ruled paper and a section for drawing. Depending on your child’s age and creativity, he or she may put more effort into drawing than writing.  Older children may prefer simply writing about their day or how they are feeling instead of drawing.  

Each week, Kidtown will provide daily journaling prompts located on their homelinks. (All homelinks are also available online here!) These prompts will challenge students to direct their thoughts towards God during their journaling time. 

We love that our entire church family will have challenges each week to go along with the series. The Kidtown challenges will be similar to the adult “Personal Liturgy” challenges (which can be found here) but will be customized for kids. You know your child best. If any of the recommended tips and tricks are not helpful, feel free to use your own strategies.  We hope that these resources will serve as a great launching pad for new family rhythms and habits that will lead us into the life we were made for. 

Sermon Recap | The Life You Were Made For (And the Things That Ruin It)

The word ‘liturgy’ describes the rituals or practices of the people of God as they gather to worship. But what we often don’t realize is that we all have a personal liturgy. 

You have an order to your life and the things you do are doing things to you. 

The habits you practice every day are forming you into a certain type of person. The small decisions you make in an ordinary day of your life have enormous impact on the quality of your life. The things you do do things to you. Your habits and practices shape who you become. 

According to Jeremiah 17:5-8, two types of life are possible for us and the things we do in the ordinary rhythms of our daily existence will largely determine which type of spiritual life we are experiencing.

The Blessed Life: Humans were designed to get resources and nutrients from God. There is a life available to us when we walk with God in such a way that we are never moved from the life and nutrients that make us thrive. 

• Jesus is the model of the Blessed Life. He depended on the Father perfectly. He existed with a settled disposition of fullness and joy that was not lacking in anything. Jesus stayed connected to His Father in a such a way that when the very worst circumstances came for Him—when the heat and drought came—He did not wither. 
• Jesus invites us to this Blessed Life. Jesus invites us into what He had (John 7:37-39). Jesus came to put the blessed life inside of us so that the river of God’s spirit could live in our hearts and we could experience a vibrant spiritual life that feels like a tree planted by water. 

The Cursed Life: The cursed life is characterized by the desert. As a society, we lack purpose, hope, and joy. We have intentionally cultivated life in the desert without even realizing it. 

• 5 Enemies Contributing to the Cursed Life (that particularly tend to attack Americans’ lives):
  • Apathy: not caring about things God created you to care about
  • Distraction: being unable to focus on God and others because your attention is taken by less important things
  • Self-Reliance: living your day-to-day life depending primarily on your own strength and resources
  • Cynicism: a posture of skepticism that leads you to doubt God’s presence and activity in your life
  • Self-Absorption: being preoccupied with your thoughts, feelings, desires, and concerns above all else.

These five spiritual enemies will be focus points in our series for us to fight against together. If it is true that we have unknowingly cultivated these things into our lives, then we have to start working against them. We have to fight them. 

For the next five months, we are all together trying to create a personal liturgy that puts these enemies to death and helps us become the kind of people God designed us to be. 

Each of the five sections in our series will help us to intentionally fight against one of the five spiritual enemies. Each section will have a daily challenge that we will all do together in order to practice becoming people who are transformed by God. Research says that it takes about 21 days to start a new habit so we are praying that a lot of these challenges that we do together become habits we do over the long haul that lead us into the life we were made for. 

To help us keep up with these daily challenges, we created an app for the series. The app is called “Personal Liturgy” and for the next 120 days, it is going to have a specific and daily challenge for us to complete. 

Our challenge for the first few weeks is simply to journal every single day to fight apathy in our souls. It’s to start a simple habit of opening up the app and honestly answering the questions for each day, and training ourselves to think more deeply about our lives so we can intentionally engage with God. 

To learn more about the “Personal Liturgy” app, check out this short video where one of our pastors, Brandon Clements, walks through how to use the app:

If you don’t have a smartphone or would prefer to receive the challenges via email, you can sign up here: 

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