Mother's Day 2021 with Annie F. Downs

thank you amanda good morning um i think my favorite part for starters y'all have the cutest kids in your church but my favorite part is the little girl who said my mom gives me feedback like okay great you have a great working relationship well done i thought that was so cute um what an honor to be here thank you for having me i come to you from nashville tennessee and with uh blessing and love from crosspoint church my pastor kevin said tell him we love him so sending that to you from him this won't surprise you at all i as an author i also like i collect a lot of books in nashville my i have one little room in my house that has two big bookshelves that are just full of books in a terribly organized fashion i'm embarrassed to tell you because there is no organization to it i want you to think for a second in your own life what do you collect what are you collecting is it something like books i come by really honestly i grew up in georgia and my grandparents owned a bookstore and literally on the sign outside the bookstore and on the card that they passed out it said open wednesdays and saturdays or when you catch us here so we're very scheduled people in my family but the bookstore was great it was this tiny basement of an office and i spent almost every saturday of my childhood there and the way my grandparents just had books packed into every shelf it did not look i don't want you to picture a barnes and noble picture like something creepy in a basement that's much closer to that with just books shoved in every way nothing was lined up correctly it was just all over the place and my growing up life i thought that's how books went on shelves because it was all i knew my other grandmother i luckily grew up in town with both of my grandparents living very close to us my other grandmother had shelves of books in every room you couldn't go into a room where there weren't books to read my mom is the same way here's an example y'all my mom gave up novels for lent okay do you see what i'm saying she gave up novels for lent this year i'm not talking in the yonder days i'm saying in 2021 my mother had to stop reading for lent to sacrifice to the lord so you get where we're coming from right you understand how i am the one who collects books i just do i'm not good at giving them away when i've read them i think well i can't give that away because of this one page and this one place where i was reading it and i don't want to forget and then i literally never grabbed the book off the shelf again do you know what i mean are you similar to me i just collect books my friend jason in nashville collects signed baseball cards i think that's cool i guess i don't know he watches people on instagram open up packs of cards he like spends hours doing it i don't understand but that's what he loves to collect my friend jen every year at the end of the year she'll go through instagram and she will print off all the pictures she posted on instagram and make a photo album out of it so in her house there's a collection of all these photo albums from all the years that she has been on instagram i think she could skip the middle step of instagram and just make a photo book but whatever i'm not the boss of her so she can do it in nashville so many of my friends collect instruments right they collect things that help them with their job they'll have rooms where they have a couple of guitars or a piano and so they collect the things that help them with their work i don't know what it is for you maybe it's recipes or golf clubs maybe it is hats from golf courses that you love or i have a friend who only wears black v-neck t-shirts so he collects those that is the only thing in his closet he said he didn't want to have to decide anymore what to wear so that's what he wears that's what he collects maybe it's hiking gear or vinyl records it's all kind of connected with your hobby isn't it the things you love to do in your spare time kind of end up being what we collect i guess the question i posed to you is when does it go from a hobby to hoarding right when do we know that line because hoarding is a problem have you seen the tv show hoarders on a e it's awesome if you haven't watched it highly recommend it is wild to see i um i'm not married yet we'll talk about in a minute my old roommate laura and i we used to watch it we would record like two or three episodes and then be like should we watch orders tonight and we'd sit down and i would microwave popcorn like a normal person and she would microwave vegetables like a weirdo right and then we'd sit and watch together and in every episode you may have seen one before but what happens is the the camera crew goes into someone's home where their house is full i guess is the right answer it's just full it's full in every way there's stacks everywhere sometimes you can't get into different rooms they have collected things in their kitchen they've collected animals they've collected dolls where their eyes stare at you i mean they've just collected so many things that their house is full and and someone in their family or someone in their life has contacted the show and said i think my family member actually needs help there's too many things they can't even clean up their things and and so the camera camera crew comes in and sees their life and at some point an expert comes in and always has on gloves which i think is kind of rude the expert always has on gloves comes into their home and helps them kind of straighten up a couple of rooms they take things outside they put it in a dumpster they make a giveaway pile a keep pile and by the end of the show they've cleaned up a room or two rooms of the people's houses and it is a fascinating i'm telling y'all when laura and i would finish watching a couple episodes we'd be like that was so good uh do you want to like run to goodwill real quick anything yeah grab a bag let's just make a run real quick real quick because the line from hobby to hoarding is a very thin line in my life feels very possible but i'll tell you something i've noticed about all the people that i have seen on hoarders is none of them are happy have actually gotten what they wanted which is everything they wanted all the baby dolls with eyes they got all the baby dolls with eyes they wanted all the newspapers they got all the newspapers and they are not happy you never see the camera crew show up and the people go come on in like it's mtv cribs or something right they're never like can't wait to show you what i did to the kitchen right that's never the situation there's always embarrassment shame there's always some form of sadness depression it it's a beautiful show because of the redemption at the end but the start is very sad and you think when you get everything that you're gonna be happy but have you learned like i've learned that that's just never true it's never true you can have an absolutely full life and an absolutely full home and it not be joyful and it not be the abundant life that jesus tells us about you know that part in john 10 it's verse 10 where jesus says the thief comes to steal kill and destroy but i have come that you would have abundant life and what does that even mean what is an abundant life well the actual definition of abundance is plentifulness of the good things in life the good things in life so on this mother's day weekend we're going to look at two women of the bible who both have an abundant life because of jesus even though their lives look pretty different as we study them so if you have your bible you can turn with me to acts chapter 16. if you don't it'll be on the screen and i know how to read so we're good um i got you so we're gonna go to acts 16 and and just as a quick refresher acts is written by luke dr luke who also wrote the book of luke you got it so he wrote luke and axe and they're kind of two chapters to the same book so if you ever kind of want if you've ever sat down and wanted to read two books at a time and get a full story this is a good one because reading luke straight to acts kind of gives you the same author telling two parts of the story and while he was not around with jesus luke is now with paul as they are traveling and so you're gonna hear in this story a lot of we and a lot of us because paul and luke are together for this part of the story and in acts 16 he starts in verse 11 which is where we're gonna pick up he starts with this kind of a track of where they're going and where they've been so we'll start in verse 11. from troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for so mattress and the next day we went to neapolis from there we traveled to philippi a roman colony and the leading city of the district of macedonia and we stayed there several days on the sabbath we went outside to the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer we sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there one of those listening was a woman named lydia a dealer in purple cloth from the city of thyatira who was a worshiper of god the lord opened her heart to respond to paul's message and when she and the members of her household were baptized she invited us to her home if you consider me a believer in the lord she said come and stay at my house and she persuaded us lydia's life is full did you hear it even as as luke is just describing lydia first of all she's sitting down by the river with her friends on sabbath on her day off so she's got friends we know that she's a dealer in purple cloth so lydia is a small business owner she has a household so she probably has husband kids maybe her parents her in-laws living with them so she's got a lot of people she's taken care of she is a worshiper of god so she has religious practices she is from i love this detail y'all the bible just gets the longer i study it the more fun it gets i cannot wait to keep going but saya tyra is like a really small town and what luke tells us at that beginning the reason we read verse 11 for this particular story is that luke says lydia's from a small town and she's moved to the big city right she's in philippi she's in the biggest city in macedonia so she's a small town girl who's made her big city move and now she's got friends and family and a job and religious practices it says that at the end of that portion where it says that she said come to my house and she persuaded us y'all in the message version she's it says we hesitated but she wouldn't take no for an answer my girl right she's like i told you i was making tacos come over right she gave them no choice she gave them no choice but to feed them that is our kind of friend right if lydia was today this is kind of what her morning would look like i think she'd like get up and she's gonna put the sheets from the guest room in the washer because someone's staying with them that night that's coming through town and while the kids are still sleeping she's getting all the chicken ready to put in the crock pot so she can make tacos she doesn't have an instant pot yet she doesn't know and so she's using a crock pot it gets the kids ready she's driving them to school she runs to her office where she's making her purple cloth and getting some things shipped out she has to go to lunch with some people from the synagogue because she's on a committee she wished she'd never signed up for she regrets it immediately but she has to go to this lunch to get everything scheduled now she's gonna go back to the office for a few minutes to scroll through her etsy and get all her orders filled while she's making sure she has everything for dinner she picks the kids up but while she's in carpool she's on instagram seeing like what other people are doing with purple cloth right now so she can be on the edge because she's in the big city right then when she gets home everybody's coming over so she's got to make those chicken tacos and put the sheets in the dryer because don't dry your clothes when you're not there right that's very dangerous put your sheets in the dryer because people are coming over and they're going to stay that night she had house guests you know lydia because you may be lydia right she's impressive she handles a lot of things not to mention she has friends that she's got to care for in fact if you actually keep reading in acts 16 it continues this really wild story of paul and silas getting put in jail it is absolutely worth a read this week if you have time during your morning reading or whenever you read your bible to read the rest of acts 16 in the miraculous way god gets paul and silas out of prison but then lydia pops back up again in verse 40. says after paul and silas came out of the prison they went to lydia's house where they met with the brothers and encouraged them and then they left so now lydia also runs a small group that she didn't sign up for am i right like suddenly now it's a small group they came last tuesday they're coming back this tuesday lydia is so busy but do you know the thing that is so interesting to me about lydia is that in all of her busyness something didn't feel like enough because when paul told her about jesus it changed her life and changed her family they all got baptized they all believed which tells me that even when you have everything you don't have everything even when you have the family and the job and the friends and the committees you might you do not feel like it is enough there's just something missing for her what she learned in this story that we learned from lydia is no matter how busy your life gets it is not enough without jesus and you know that the way i know that because there have probably been nights in your life i'll for sure just speak to me for me he'll speak to me that'd be boring i'll speak for me in that there have been nights where my calendar has been packed all day and i get in bed at night and go what was today for did i gain anything out of this did i do anything that matters today what is my purpose on this planet you looked at my calendar and thought i had a lot of purpose but when it's just me falling asleep i'm wondering if i have any purpose a full life without jesus is not abundant it's not joyful as it could be it's not as peaceful as it could be the busy fun life you thought would be enough to satisfy hasn't you know how you said when you had this amount of money that that would be enough if my bank account just had this and then you got there and you thought well what i didn't know is that i actually need this this this this it is a mountain without an actual summit we always think we're going to be satisfied till we get the thing that was going to satisfy us and then it doesn't do it getting married having kids getting the job you always wanted the schedule you always wanted it's just never enough and that's okay i don't want you to hear me shaming you or me for wanting things you had breakfast you know what i think you're gonna want lunch like we're humans we're wanters it's part of the deal don't ever shame yourself for wanting let's just learn to want well and to find joy in what we do have while we continue to want the other thing that i think is so interesting about lydia's story is that her experience of learning about jesus happened on her sabbath the day when her schedule wasn't full the day when things calmed down is the day that she could hear the story of jesus and respond i think it's what you're doing right now whether you're in the room with us or watching online right now you're setting aside time where you're not on your phone as far as i can see you're not on your phone you're not doing business you're not on a phone call getting some stuff handled at work you're not swiping on hinge figuring out who to date next right like you're just quietly here together and i just think there's something to that the ability for our brains and our bodies to connect with jesus when we quiet everything else lydia's life was really busy but it was on the day that she rested that she experienced jesus in a profound way that changed her life i just would encourage you to take a day off of your phone every week put your phone down turn it off take a sabbath day of rest i'll tell you i'm i'm pretty serious about my days of rest every week and my schedule is busy you hear how fast i talk like i move fast all the time and my schedule's busy and what will happen on a saturday when i rest is i'll sit down to read and i'll start journaling and about 20 minutes in i'll start grieving over something that happened on wednesday because i didn't have time to deal with it on wednesday because it happened at 12 30 and i got that thing at one so i just put it in the back of my head and like i'll deal with that later and then what ends up happening is the day i rest is the day i feel my feelings that i experience jesus in some really profound ways but if we never take a day like that does it just build up in us and then that's when you yell at the driver next to you in the car that has nothing to do with your bad day so maybe the piece you're really looking for when you're sitting here you could have any day of the week if you rested i think that's a profound part of lydia's life and that story so a really full life might not be abundant without jesus and the opposite is true too you actually may not have a busy life at all i was speaking a couple of weeks ago and the person who got up and was leading the announcements and introducing and said this it may have been hard to fit this day on your calendar or this may be the only thing on your calendar and i'm sure that's true for some of us in in the pandemic and in your life and your schedule this may be the only thing you get out and do right now you may say my life's nothing like lydia i believe that you can have gaps in your story tragedies heartbreak disappointment unmet desires unfulfilled dreams and still have an abundant life did you watch inside out it's one of the most theologically sound movies in a long time because what they told us about those little cartoons is that joy and sadness are meant to live together they actually are better together if we try to erase one and only celebrate the other you don't get the full experience of life and so there is something to the reality that we are all here together today and we all have unmet desires or tragedies or sadnesses that we brought with us especially on mother's day who can know everything you're feeling you probably if i'm a guesser you probably feel joy and sadness about mother's day right maybe it's a loss of your own mom maybe it is the relationship you have with your mom brings sadness or there's a broken relationship maybe it's your adult children bring sadness on mother's day bring joy on mother's day it's your desire to be a mom it's it's your wondering about what it looks like to mother it's unmet expectations of mother's day i have a friend who tells all of us on social media for mothers make a fake mother's day so that you aren't let down on actual mother's day you just do it yourself you get you a massage you get you a pedicure and then your expectations are handled so your family is released from the pressure because you handled it i'll tell you i i didn't dream that i would not be married or have kids at this point in my life i didn't think this was my story if you look at my journals from when i was 22 this wasn't what i was writing this in the story so there are gaps and disappointments and fears and worries in my life too we all want something that we don't have and there are some holidays that highlight that still very worth celebrating but we can hold both right there's this family in nashville that i uh every christmas we watch a christmas movie together and wear footy pajamas and we take we eat a cute dinner and make uh like cookies decorate cookies and we take a picture we've done it for like eight years and so there's this picture of them like growing up where they used to sit on my lap and now she's like 15 right it's so sweet it's one of my favorite things i drive over to their house already in my footy pajamas which always concerns me i'm gonna get pulled over and then be like how do i explain to you my sock monkey pajamas as a full adult i don't know it is one of my favorite things and and a couple of years ago after we took that picture together the middle daughter sadie which i got her permission to tell you the story but the middle daughter sadie just real comfortably and real calmly like she took a deep breath and she said annie i hope you never get married and i was like get behind me satan what are you saying you need to shut your pie hole right that's how i felt i was like what are you talking but i i was i'm a grown-up i was very chill i was like tell me more sadie she's like yeah i just hope you don't get married i was like don't say it again don't say it twice don't you know what it says in proverbs your words have the power of life and death get right sister and i said tell me why sadie and she said i think when you get married you won't come over as much anymore in it amazing how we see gaps in our life and someone else sees abundance you all know this profoundly because you live here but what i saw as a valley she saw as a mountain and we actually need both i wonder where there are gaps in your life where there's disappointments where there's tragedy and loss that there is a mountain view for you let's stick with the author that we already love and trust dr luke let's flip back to the book of luke if you have your bible with you and we're going to go to luke 2. you've heard luke 2 if you've watched charlie brown's christmas because it's that part that he says at the beginning with the shepherds right so this is right when jesus was born and after the shepherds on day eight of jesus's life mary and joseph are taking him to the temple to present him at the temple we're gonna actually start in verse 36. remember i told you we're going to talk about two women we've got lydia whose life is so full and then i want to introduce you to anna this starts in verse 36 of luke 2. there was also a prophetess anna the daughter of faneuil of the tribe of asher she was very old she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage and then was a widow until she was 84. she never left the temple but worshiped night and day fasting and praying coming up to them them being jesus baby jesus mary and joseph coming up to them at that very moment she gave thanks to god and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of jerusalem anna has nothing did you hear her story she's married seven years and in that culture let's give her the benefit of the doubt that she got married at 20. it was probably younger ooh but she got married at 20. married till she's 27 and then a widow until she's 84. that is a lot of years of being alone it does not say she has any children based on the rest of the context it appears that she doesn't because what does it say she spends every day in the temple fasting praying she's not like in trader joe's looking for the next dude to marry like i am right she's not like scouting out the market and figuring out what's out there her family members say things like i love aunt anna i hope she's okay she's alone so much she just keeps going to the temple every day i wish she'd meet someone do you think anna's okay on mother's day should we take her some flowers anna's next door neighbor checks in on her because she may need some help right she's been alone for a long time do you know what's amazing about anna's life is the minute she sees baby jesus she knows exactly who he is he's not a grown-up he's not telling her who he is he is an eight-year-old eight year eight day old infant and she knows exactly who he is there is something about a life that is empty that makes jesus really clearly jesus my guess is for most of us we are anna and we are lydia there are days or areas of our life that feel very anna and very empty and there are days and seasons that feel like lydia i mean you just sang it right you saying your goodness is running after me said i have lived in the goodness of god you sang all my life you have been faithful do you have everything that you want i don't and yet we still sing it before we feel it right we sing it when we don't feel we sing all my life you have been faithful all my life you have been so so good and that is true even when our lives look like anna's life even when we do not have everything that we want the truth is no one has everything they want that is the hope of glory that is the hope of eternity right nobody has everything they want the person on instagram you think has everything they want they don't and you know it because when you got the thing you wanted you wanted you wanted you wanted you know we're all human but his goodness is running after you that is true before it feels true so i go back to my question of what do you collect what is it you collect because the other thing that i collect is the stories of god in my life i journal a lot i don't think it's the only way to do that i think you can do it you can collect stories of god through pictures through playlists you create through photo albums but for me it's journaling where i sit and write god's stories of his faithfulness because then when i feel like anna and i feel like i've lost everything i have these moments where i say his goodness is running after me i collect the stories of god in my life it does not mean i get everything that i want does not mean that everything goes well just means i have lived in the goodness of god you have too even in our sadness even in our loss even in our days that do not feel abundant his goodness is running after us so maybe on mother's day one of the conversations i mean i'm not the boss of your lunch but maybe one of the conversations is how have you known the goodness of god in your life mom dad how have you seen the goodness of god in our family's life friends how do you see the goodness of god in our lives because maybe you just need a reminder until it feels true again maybe your life is very full maybe you're squeezing in three mother's day lunches today remember it is jesus though that makes it really abundant it's relationship with him that changes everything i i don't think you'd be here if you didn't know that or wonder if that was true and if your life feels empty like anna if it all feels dark it does not take much to bring a little bit of light jesus is carried into the temple and anna knows anna knows because she's been looking she's been looking for a redemption story for a long time and it shows up in a baby who is the savior of the world my guess is that some of us in this room and some of us watching online have more questions than answers about jesus are wondering if it would really change things to be in relationship with him and i'm just here to tell you is your friend from nashville who does not have the life i thought i would have with my life laid down i surrender now i give him everything right that's what he's saying his goodness is running after us so i'm just gonna give us an opportunity if you want to invite jesus to be that abundant life for you if you know that it could be different when you lay down in your bed tonight than it was last night if you need something to calm down the busy or to bring joy to the empty it is jesus and i don't have to talk you into it because he'll just prove it he'll prove it so we're going to pray together and and if this is a decision you want to make to invite jesus in like this just pray along with me if you're watching together with us online you can let the chat know that that's a decision you want to make you can hit the little high five raise the hand emoji and we'll pray together and then and then this incredibly gifted team is going to lead us in a song that i hope you will open your heart to and engage along with at your comfort level and and know that it's true before it feels true if today brings you any degree of sadness or disappointment in this room which i guess is probably true for all of us that we're humans there's hope so for those of you walking with jesus you know that hope but we'd love to reinfuse that again today to carry you through this week and if you've never made a decision for christ and you want him in your life if you want to notice all this stuff that annie says really true it is and he is so we'll just pray together so if you'll bow your heads and if you want to just repeat after me if you want to invite jesus in dear jesus i confess that this life is not enough for me i confess the times i've turned to other things but i want you to be in my life jesus come and forgive me of my sins enter into my story bring me abundant life lord i i pray for these friends of ours here in the room and those watching online god the ones who have big feelings today and for a lot of different reasons the those of us who came in here really tired those of us who came in here really worried or really afraid really lonely god i pray that in these next few minutes and as this day carries on it would be a day where you remind us of all your faithfulness and our story that we would be people who collect stories of your faithfulness in our lives to remind ourselves when we don't feel it that you are faithful lord if joy and and abundance are a thermometer in each of our lives would you just send it to the top would we feel more on purpose and on mission and connected today we love you in jesus name amen

Channel: Cherry Hills Community Church

Views: 339

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: 9-2-OuIVcu0

Length: 34min 58sec (2098 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021