What Do My Entertainment Habits Reveal About My Soul?

00:00:00.000 | (music)

00:00:04.000 | Today's question is about quarantine habits.

00:00:08.000 | We've all had a lot of time at home this year, and this is

00:00:12.000 | a searching question from a young woman who wants to know what her quarantine

00:00:16.000 | entertainment habits revealed about the state of her own

00:00:20.000 | soul. Here's her email. "Hello Pastor John, it has taken this

00:00:24.000 | period of total pandemic lockdown for me to realize that I don't read the

00:00:28.000 | Bible and pray when I'm stressed out. I had never noticed that

00:00:32.000 | all I do is eat, sleep, and watch movies in my most

00:00:36.000 | stressful times. This is exactly what I did in the first

00:00:40.000 | two weeks of quarantine. I thought it would change, but after months

00:00:44.000 | I still have found little time to commune with God.

00:00:48.000 | It's both scary, sad, and I'm really

00:00:52.000 | unhappy and tired. My question is this, if I went

00:00:56.000 | so long without communion with God in this season of

00:01:00.000 | anxiousness, does this mean I don't really love or trust

00:01:04.000 | God to begin with?" I'm going to break that

00:01:08.000 | into two questions. One is,

00:01:12.000 | I think the least we can say is that your

00:01:16.000 | experience in the last two months has shown that you do not love

00:01:20.000 | and trust God the way you should. And my

00:01:24.000 | question is, why would I say that? Why is there

00:01:28.000 | a correlation between eating and sleeping and movie watching and saying

00:01:32.000 | you haven't trusted and loved God the way you should? That's my first question.

00:01:36.000 | Why would I even go there? And the other question is,

00:01:40.000 | how would we go about discerning whether you

00:01:44.000 | don't really love and trust God at all

00:01:48.000 | and are not a Christian, not born again? How would we do that?

00:01:52.000 | So let's take these one at a time, because both

00:01:56.000 | are, you can see, really important. Heaven

00:02:00.000 | and hell important. So first question, why would I say

00:02:04.000 | that a young woman who devotes her discretionary time, especially

00:02:08.000 | stressful times, to eating and sleeping and watching

00:02:12.000 | movies, rather than say to solid

00:02:16.000 | reading, meditating, praying over God's Word

00:02:20.000 | and over rich food of good books that

00:02:24.000 | mature and insightful people have written over the centuries

00:02:28.000 | as well as other wholesome tasks, why would I say

00:02:32.000 | that such a person does not love and trust God the way she

00:02:36.000 | should? And the answer is, because loving God

00:02:40.000 | means that God holds a place of

00:02:44.000 | value in our heart, that it makes us

00:02:48.000 | want to know him better and enjoy him

00:02:52.000 | more and be near him in friendship and fellowship.

00:02:56.000 | Movies are not well designed to do that. In fact,

00:03:00.000 | most of them are well designed to hinder that

00:03:04.000 | and to undermine the very thing that the

00:03:08.000 | love of God implies, namely a passion to know him, a passion to

00:03:12.000 | enjoy him and be close to him. Movies do not have that effect.

00:03:16.000 | Therefore, defaulting to movies day after day

00:03:20.000 | is at least a sign that love for God is weak

00:03:24.000 | and probably growing weaker. John said in 1 John

00:03:28.000 | 5, 3 and 4, this is the love

00:03:32.000 | for God, that we keep his commandments

00:03:36.000 | and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been

00:03:40.000 | born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome

00:03:44.000 | the world, our faith. What this passage

00:03:48.000 | does is bring together the two things that this woman

00:03:52.000 | is asking about, love for God and trust in God, love and

00:03:56.000 | faith. First, John says, love for

00:04:00.000 | God, delight so much in pleasing God and being close to God

00:04:04.000 | that obedience to his commandments is not burdensome.

00:04:08.000 | And then he attributes that sense of

00:04:12.000 | burden, lifted enjoyment of God to the fact

00:04:16.000 | that we have overcome the world. In other words, that

00:04:20.000 | worldliness is not the dominant controlling

00:04:24.000 | force in our lives anymore. It has been

00:04:28.000 | broken, overcome. And then he explains, this is the victory

00:04:32.000 | that overcomes the world, namely our faith. So, in

00:04:36.000 | John's way of thinking, faith is the kind of

00:04:40.000 | reality that receives God. Faith receives

00:04:44.000 | God, receives all that God is for us

00:04:48.000 | in Christ, receives him as such a precious

00:04:52.000 | deliverance and help and treasure

00:04:56.000 | that the world loses its power

00:05:00.000 | to be the most attractive thing in our lives. So, love

00:05:04.000 | for God and faith in God are, in John's

00:05:08.000 | mind, overlapping or interlocking

00:05:12.000 | realities. Each one is part of the other. And the

00:05:16.000 | double effect of both, love and faith, together is, one,

00:05:20.000 | the power of the world to be our controlling treasure is

00:05:24.000 | broken, overcome, and two, obedience has ceased

00:05:28.000 | to be burdensome. It's not a burden to be told that

00:05:32.000 | you must be done with what you hate to do. It's not a

00:05:36.000 | burden to be told that you should indulge in what you love.

00:05:40.000 | That's not a burden, that's freedom. So, when this

00:05:44.000 | young woman indulges in the excitement of movies

00:05:48.000 | with more pleasure than she gets from the riches of

00:05:52.000 | God's Word, John would say there is a defect here

00:05:56.000 | in love for God and in faith in God. That's

00:06:00.000 | my answer to the first question, why would we suggest a defect of faith

00:06:04.000 | and love if she's just spending all her time eating, sleeping, and watching

00:06:08.000 | movies? Now, here's the more important question, the one she actually posed, I think.

00:06:12.000 | It seems to me that she is saying, "I went so long without

00:06:16.000 | communion with God in this season of anxiousness.

00:06:20.000 | Does it mean that I never

00:06:24.000 | really loved and trusted God to begin with?"

00:06:28.000 | And here's the way I'm rephrasing that. How would we

00:06:32.000 | go about discerning whether you don't

00:06:36.000 | really love and trust God at all?

00:06:40.000 | How would we decide if you're not truly a Christian,

00:06:44.000 | not born again? And here's my answer.

00:06:48.000 | It's relatively simple. I would not spend

00:06:52.000 | much time analyzing the failures of the

00:06:56.000 | past two months, or even a more distant memory

00:07:00.000 | of conversion and whether it was real or not. I think that kind of

00:07:04.000 | introspection and past experience analysis

00:07:08.000 | by and large does not produce the hoped-for outcome,

00:07:12.000 | namely assurance of salvation and peace of mind.

00:07:16.000 | Our hearts are simply too deceptive. Our memories

00:07:20.000 | and our powers of assessment about the past experiences

00:07:24.000 | are too limited to see what we need to see. So my

00:07:28.000 | answer is, repent now

00:07:32.000 | with great seriousness about the failures of the past.

00:07:36.000 | Name the sins and problems that you see. Tell the Lord

00:07:40.000 | how you feel about that. Renounce unbelief and

00:07:44.000 | lovelessness and disobedience and worldliness, and then

00:07:48.000 | make a decisive turn away from the past toward

00:07:52.000 | the future, the future of the next five minutes and

00:07:56.000 | five months and five years and five decades and five centuries

00:08:00.000 | toward that future, and believe Him,

00:08:04.000 | trust Him, and love Him henceforth. Now I'm

00:08:08.000 | taking my cue with that answer from 2 Peter 1.10.

00:08:14.000 | Be all the more diligent to confirm your calling

00:08:18.000 | and election, for if you practice these things

00:08:22.000 | (so he's talking about what to do right now and henceforth into the future)

00:08:26.000 | if you practice these things, you'll never fall, for in this

00:08:30.000 | way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal

00:08:34.000 | kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In other words,

00:08:38.000 | the confirmation that we are truly called

00:08:42.000 | and truly elect, truly the children of God, truly

00:08:46.000 | Christian, happens, the confirmation happens

00:08:50.000 | by stepping into the future with faith

00:08:54.000 | and obedience. Assurance of salvation does

00:08:58.000 | not primarily come from the analysis of the past,

00:09:02.000 | but from the God-given earnestness of present

00:09:06.000 | and future faith and obedience. So my

00:09:10.000 | word to our young friend is, turn away

00:09:14.000 | from the failures of the past two months, turn away

00:09:18.000 | from speculations about whether your love and faith

00:09:22.000 | was ever real, turn to the Lord of mercy,

00:09:26.000 | Jesus Christ, and turn to the future

00:09:30.000 | and walk with him boldly,

00:09:34.000 | joyfully, into that future with trusting

00:09:38.000 | him and with loving him. Well said.

00:09:42.000 | There's an important little footnote I think to put on this episode. It's something I learned from you,

00:09:46.000 | Pastor John, and really find helpful when we talk about entertainment. You alluded to

00:09:50.000 | it at the beginning of this episode, and you've said it for years, and I just want to make it clear

00:09:54.000 | as we conclude here. But the problem with entertainment is not necessarily that our

00:09:58.000 | movies and our TV shows are inherently sinful

00:10:02.000 | or celebrate sin or show no consequences for sin. All of

00:10:06.000 | that is a problem, a big problem. But the most pervasive

00:10:10.000 | problem with entertainment is that it presents a worldview in which God

00:10:14.000 | is obsolete and he's presented as irrelevant

00:10:18.000 | to our lives. Yeah, or to say it with more precision, he's

00:10:22.000 | not presented at all. I mean, it's

00:10:26.000 | the absolute void. I used to say back when people read

00:10:30.000 | newspapers that you open the Star Tribune and you go page, page,

00:10:34.000 | page, page, page, and here's a whole section on business, here's a section

00:10:38.000 | on leisure, here's a section on travel, here's a section on sports, a whole

00:10:42.000 | section on sports, zero section on God. Not one

00:10:46.000 | paragraph on God. I mean, the most important reality

00:10:50.000 | in the universe gets zero attention in the newspaper.

00:10:54.000 | Same would be true of most movies, or, like you say, if he

00:10:58.000 | does get presented, it's presented in a way that does not

00:11:02.000 | inflame our love for him, but questions his reality

00:11:06.000 | and his usefulness. Yeah, that's good. That's good. As John Newton says,

00:11:10.000 | "The top headline on every newspaper every day should be, 'The Lord Reigns.'"

00:11:14.000 | Amen. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today.

00:11:18.000 | If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor John

00:11:22.000 | in your favorite podcast app, Spotify, or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.

00:11:26.000 | And to find other episodes in our archive, or to submit a question to us,

00:11:30.000 | do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:11:36.000 | Well, what is God seeking to accomplish in my

00:11:40.000 | suffering? It's a question Pastor John set out to answer from 1 Peter

00:11:44.000 | 4:12-19, and it's a word

00:11:48.000 | we all need to hear. That's up next time. I'm Tony Ranke.

00:11:52.000 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:11:54.000 | [no audio]

00:11:58.000 | [no audio]

00:12:02.000 | you

What Do My Entertainment Habits Reveal About My Soul?

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