Chasing the Wind 6

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Chasing the Wind, Episode six. I tried success, what happens that you'd get there? Look, success is is the problem. It's good, but asking success to prove that your life mattered is So we're going to start with a phrase that everybody has said. When I finally when I finally graduate, when I finally get married, when I finally move out of the parents' house, when we finally have children, when the kids finally sleep through the night, when the kids finally go to school, when the kids leave the house. Apparently children are involved in a surprising amount of our happiness planning. When I finally get promoted, when I finally buy the house, when my boss finally retires, When I finally make six figures, when I finally publish a book, and when I finally sell a book, When the church finally grows, when I finally retire, when I finally learned how to play golf, When some and somewhere beneath all of those sentences is a quiet promise, when I finally get there, I'm gonna feel like I've arrived. I'll be whole, I'll be enough. Well, Q got there so he can tell you what's there, and that's what makes you dangerous but very very very entertaining. Welcome to Gospel Rant Podcast to doctor Bill Senord YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Sinyord. We're free wherever you get good podcasts and of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us grow is by leaving your comments below. Thank you for that. Also, thanks for making Gospel Rant Podcast one of the top ten percent in the world and the top sixty Christian podcast in Colorado. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps listen to regularly hear about God's love for the unlovable me, love me, unlovely me, unworthy me, unlikely me, and you, if we were just a little bit honest. I want to get right into it. After this brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. Well, let's go back to Ecclesiastes too. In the last session, we looked at Q's pleasure experiment. I hope you enjoyed that. Oh my goodness, let's look at the list again. It isn't just hedonism, it's accomplishment. I undertook great projects. And then he starts listing the resume, houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, reservoirs, agricultural holdings, servants, livestyle, silver gold, entertainment. This guy isn't sitting by a pool eating grapes. He's building things with his name on it, So let's modernize it. Q has a real estate portfolio, multiple businesses, investment accounts and stock, gold and bitcoin, an award winning vineyard, a landscape architect, staff, private music venue, and apparently an extremely complicated personal life. And then his assessment AF the experiment is ongoing. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. There he is. Q's not lazy. Q is crushing it well. Success it feels good. Let's not lie about it, right, No guilt trips here. Success ain't all bad, and Q admits it. My heart took delight in all my labor. They a love that, because scripture doesn't force us into some artificial achievement is worldly positioned. No, Finishing something feels wonderful, getting the degree, opening a business, making that first sale, finishing the marathon, going public, raising the child, publishing the book, building a ministry, paying off the mortgage. You know, looking at something saying I did that, that's good, and I'd say, if you've worked hard and accomplish something difficult, Ecclesiastes isn't standing in the corner glaring at you Q. One of the things he concluded is that he enjoyed it. But the problem comes next, the trophy problem, i'll call it. Imagine winning the biggest award of your career. Applause, awards, photos, speech, everybody's congratulating you. You bring the trophy home, and where do you put it? Mantle office shelf, ten years past twenty And eventually someone else is standing in your office saying, do you want this? Oh? What is it? Scrampa's Sale Award from nineteen ninety seven. Oh, goodwill, it's brutal and funny. Yeah, And Q sees this coming. His problem isn't can I accomplish something? And obviously he can. His question is can accomplishment make me permanent? His answer no. The word Q can't stand somebody else getting all the good stuff. And that's where Ecclesiastes gets painful. Q says he hated all the things he worked for. Why because quote I must leave them to the one who comes after me close quote there it is somebody else and then comes the line, I think we should have fun with quote. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish exactly right, or that person even care or care to remember Q. So you spend forty years building the company, you carefully establish its values, its culture, reputation, and then you retire six months later the new guy says I've been thinking about a read and Q's eyes start twitching. Or they spend thirty years building a family cabin, your children inherited, and one of them says, you know we're thinking AB and B. No, well that's c. This is part of Q's devastating question about Eutron. After all the amal, the suffocating work, and the toil, what actually remains. It's an illusion in many ways, And we're going to touch on something very contemporary, and I don't want to be preachy. We talk a lot about leaving a legacy, and that's good, it's not necessarily bad at all. But sometimes the concept of legacy, which I'm concerned about I'm almost seventy. Sometimes the concept of legacy is just a respectable way of saying I would really prefer not to disappear ouch. So we put names on buildings, foundations, scholarships, books, We ask companies, churches, awards and why, Well, partly we want something to remain Eternity has been woven into our hearts. I'll say more, But Q has already noticed the problem. Eventually nobody remembers. Can I ask who was the wealthiest person in your town in nineteen twenty six? You probably don't know who was the most successful dentist, the best attorney, who had the largest house, who was the employee of the year, who had eighty thousand followers? Right? Okay, the last one wasn't an issue in nineteen twenty six. But you know what I mean. History has an enormous delete key, and that's Q's terror. That's the LinkedIn problem. LinkedIn basically ask what have you done? Education, positions, accomplishment, awards, certifications, skills, publications, endorsements. Well, imagine q's profile cohela king, philosopher, developer, author, investor, viticulturist, wisdom, thought leader, followers one point two million, about greater in wisdom and wealth than anyone in Jerusalem before me, and LinkedIn immediately adds you may also know Solomon. But eventually every resume ends with the same final entry dates employed fourth century PC to third century BC. Nobody gets present. See that's Ecclesiastes, and again not depressing for depression's sake. Q is asking, if my identity is what I accomplish, who am I when I can no longer accomplish? And that's a very modern question. I'm sure many of you are resonating with this. So here's the reality check. By the time Ecclesiastes was likely written and or edited, Solomon was longtime gone, his castle gone, the great temple he built, gone, free Israel no more because Israel was occupied by Persia most likely. So retirement can be a theological crisis, and this is where Ecclesiastes becomes pastoral. Someone spends forty years being a doctor, pastor, teacher, executive, mother, business owner, then suddenly they aren't and people ask, so what do you do? The answer, well, I used to, And that can hurt because somewhere along the line, what I do quietly became who I am, my source of value, my source of identity and worth other than God. No guilt, trip, no judgment. I do it all the time. It's a human thing. What I do quietly became who I am. Q discovers that success is wonderful at answering what did you accomplish? It's terrible at answering who are you when? Proverbs and of course the New Testament says the real answer is who are you with Jesus? Who are you with the Father? Who are you with the Holy Spirit. Que's problem isn't work. I want to clear this up, and he's not criticizing work works good. Remember, even work existed before the fall. Human work was originally joyful, productive participation in God's creation. It wasn't a mol that drudgery that Q experiences and criticizes. So good Christianity doesn't say stop accomplishing things. It says, stop asking accomplishment to tell you whether you were worth existing. The answer to that question is look in the eyes of God and see has delight in you. That's why you exist. See work can be a gift, calling participation, service, creativity. Right, But when work becomes justification for my existence and meaning and reason for being, we've handled a job what it cannot perform, and there's something bigger to be part of. Let me give you an image that everybody would be well. Most of you be familiar with a father and a little girl spend an hour building an enormous stand castle on the beach. Towers, moats, walls, shells, right, a magnificent, beautiful thing. They take a picture and they know something. The tide's coming. Does that make the building the sand castle meaningless? Ah? Is that right? No? And this is fascinating. The little girl isn't standing there screaming, what's the eutron of all of our labor? Father? She's delighted she built something with her father, And suddenly we glimpse something Q may be missing. Maybe meaning doesn't come primarily from what remains in my work. Maybe meaning comes partly from who who I was with while I did it. Father, Son and Spirit, that we participated in creation, we participated in value and participated in doing what we were created for and what his love does loving the unlovable and love the unlovely, the unworthy and unlikely, And it moves us back towards that relationship with the creator, Father, son and Spirit. So build something, write something, start a company, grow a garden, raise children, finish the degree, serve the church, paint the painting, make it beautiful, and enjoy saying, hey, I did that just don't ask it to tell you. Therefore, my life mattered because someday somebody's going to get the house, somebody's going to get the company, somebody's gonna sit in your office, somebody's going to get that title, and yeah, somebody's going to get Grandpa's air frar. But Q's experiment has now produced an even bigger problem. A pleasure doesn't last, a complish doesn't last, wealth doesn't last, legacy doesn't last. Why Because there's one thing Q keeps seeing at the end of every road death and death doesn't merely interrupt Q's experiment. Death threatens to make the entire experiment pointless. The wise man dies, the fool dies, the rich man dies, the poor man dies, the successful man dies, the failure dies, and Q is furious about it. Yeah, what's next? I will let you know after this brief word from our sponsors. So I've been telling you about an important book. It's a book that I've been delaying writing for ten years because I didn't want to mess it up. I'm very, very very happy with how it's turned out. Good Enough christian sequel to Good Enough Parents, part of the Good Enough Christianity series. Here's part of the press release. Could God's Love Actually Frighten Us? New book explores why Christians struggle to experience the love they say they believe. Look Christian, if you're stuck, if you're worried about your relationship with God, if you wonder, if you're a disappointment with God, if you wonder, if you've got enough faith you know, if you've wandered away from Christianity and you've left church for well, you know, lots of reasons. If you're just cynical about the whole thing, if you're sliding into other religions, Listen, read this book. I think I think you will enjoy it. I think you will be challenged as not shame trip or guilt trip. I promise you no judgment. Is basically you know, I think we've been missing something and it's unfortunately affected all of us in our Christian walk, in Christian identity. It's such such good, good, good, good news. So check it out. It's not that expensive. Get some for your church, your youth group, church leaders, your group study, and it will generate I'm believe me, it will generate lots and lots of discussion. You won't want to miss that right, Well, thanks for listening to my series Chasing the Wind. Next time on Chasing the Wind, Then you Die. Wow, I got to change the title. So Q he finds an opponent he can't out think, out work, rout spend, and or put on his resume. That's episode number six. Well, we'll see you next time. Take heart, Child of God.