How Do You Experience a Truly Fulfilled Life? These Pictures Show You. Read More to Find Out Why.

They’d been doing the survey for ten years, when they decided to add something different.  They decided.  They didn’t just want to know how many people were doing it.  They wanted to know what difference it made.    So, they took questions, ones that researchers at Harvard had developed to measure human flourishing, and they put them in.  And last January the survey went out.    Then Covid hit, and they realized.  They had an opportunity.   They could measure again and see the difference.  When the results came back, well, they showed something interesting, even a bit surprising. 

What am I talking about?  For a decade the American Bible Society has done a survey on Bible reading in the country.   And January a year ago, they did it again but with the human flourishing questions I noted above.  Then, as they were compiling that data, Covid hit.   And they thought.  Why don’t we do another survey in June?  We can see how Covid has affected everyone. We’ll see how much hope and happiness went down.  We’ll find out if people’s feelings of meaning and purpose changed.  So, they reached out to Harvard and together did this second study.  And last October, they published the results.   As you can probably guess, all the happiness measures went down, some by a lot.   But in all that, they saw something else. 

They saw that if you read the Bible regularly, as in a couple times a week, you were 50% more hopeful than those who didn’t read the Bible at all.   On a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being the most hopeful, regular Bible readers scored 75. Non-Bible readers scored around 50.  

But hold on, it gets more complicated.   Folks who read the Bible only occasionally (like 3 or 4 times a year) didn’t have much hope at all.  Heck, they had less hope than those who never read the Bible at all.  So why the difference?   Why did the folks who read the Bible just a little bit have even less hope than those who never read it at all?

 You can likely find the answer in the very thing to which the scripture you’re about to hear points.   This thing determines your human flourishing pretty much more than anything else.   You get this right.  Then your life will experience more fulfillment, more joy, more satisfaction.  You get this wrong, and well, it won’t be so pretty.   And this thing may be something you’re not even noticing.  But it is determining your life more than you could ever know.   How do you make sure it’s determining it towards happiness, towards fulfillment?  In these few short sentences, Jesus points the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Mark 1:35-39

So why the difference?  Why, in this study, if you read the Bible regularly, you have more hope, but if you read the Bible only occasionally, you have a lot less hope, even less than those who didn’t read the Bible at all?   Well, you can find the answer in the other results in the study.  You see, the study showed that folks who had regular, and I emphasize regular, engagement in certain spiritual practices scored higher in every measure.  They had better mental and physical health.  They had a deeper sense of meaning and character.  They even had better financial stability. That word regular tells you all you need to know.   For you need regular in your life, but it has to be the right regular.  Why?  Well, the wrong regular could kill you.    And those occasional Bible readers were folks who likely had a lot of wrong regulars in their life.  That’s why they only read the Bible occasionally.

You see, every day, you regularly do a lot of things without thinking.  They’ve become such a regular part of your day that you don’t even notice them.   Generally, that’s a great thing. It saves you time and energy.  Heck, without it, you could hardly function.  

You see. As you go through life, your brain figures out short-cuts.  It’s why when you back out of the driveway, you aren’t thinking a lot about it.  You aren’t thinking about checking the mirrors, how much to tap on the accelerator, fastening or not fastening your seatbelt.  Instead, your brain has created a whole set of automatic routines that kick in the moment you get in, so you don’t have to think about it. 

It’s why in this passage, the gospel writer doesn’t tell you about Jesus’ thinking before he went out and prayed.  He doesn’t tell you.  “Well, Jesus woke up a little early that day, and thought.  Hmm, what am I going to do while everybody is asleep?  I guess I could go back to sleep, but I’m not that sleepy.  And I’m not hungry yet, and I’d like to eat breakfast with everyone else.  Oh, I know what I’ll do.  I’ll go somewhere quiet and pray.”    It doesn’t tell you that because Jesus wasn’t thinking about his praying like that at all.   Jesus did that sort of praying regularly.  He didn’t have to think about it.  It had become as automatic as when you pull out of the driveway.  It had become a habit.  

In fact, the only reason his disciples couldn’t find him is that they had only just become his disciples.  They didn’t know his routine yet.   But once they did, they don’t mention the early morning praying again.  Why?  It wasn’t news.  It was just part of Jesus’ regular habits.

But it clearly wasn’t part of theirs, at least in the beginning. And that points you to the problem with habits.  Your brain doesn’t know the difference between good ones and bad ones.  So, if, when you sit down to watch TV, you regularly eat a bag of Doritos, you’ll do that without even thinking about it, until one day, you look at the scale, and go.  “I weigh that much!  Really?” 

But all those habits, good or bad, are pointing you in a certain direction.  They are pointing you in the direction of what you choose to love.   What do I mean? 

Let’s say, I develop a habit of binge-watching Netflix every night to 2 AM.   I wake up the next day too late for any time with God.   Then grouchy and sleep deprived, I snap at my wife.  I get short with my son.  And I go to work, bringing my dark, sleep deprived cloud with me.   Do you see what I am choosing to love?  I am choosing to love binge-watching Netflix over everything, over God, over my wife, my son, my work, my colleagues.   And that’s crazy. 

But I don’t even realize I’m making that choice.  When I regularly say to myself the night before, “Oh just one more episode.  I can get by on five hours of sleep, no worries,” I’m not even thinking really.  My binge-watching has become a habit, one that is slowly but surely hurting me and everyone around me.   And Netflix doesn’t want me to think about it.    

It’s the same reason, you can lose an hour grazing Facebook or TikTok or Instagram before you even realize it.    Did you ever ask yourself?  Why are all those platforms free?   It’s because they’re not.  You are paying them with your time and attention, the most limited resource you have.    Facebook isn’t the product.  You’re the product.  Your time and attention are the product.  And all the platforms have built themselves to get as much of that product, of you as possible.    And to get that, they have to stop you from thinking about it.  They have to make it a habit. 

But if you’re regularly paying attention there, that means you’re not regularly paying attention somewhere else.  But here’s the problem.  Too often, we don’t think a lot about that.  We don’t ask ourselves if our attention is really going to what we say that we love.   But here’s the point.   Your habits tell you the truth more than your words do.   Thousands of years ago, the philosopher Aristotle, made that clear.  He said: “We are what we repeatedly do.”  Think about that.   And ask yourself.    “Is what I repeatedly do, who I really want to be or not?”    

You might notice the image I made as the sermon slide for this series.  If you haven’t guessed what it is, it’s a grape arbor or trellis.   Now, when grapes grow in the wild, they naturally find a tree or something to climb up.  Instinctively, a grape plant knows that it has to climb to be fruitful.  But we human beings like grapes, but we don’t want to climb to the top of a tree to get them.  So long ago, we created our own artificial trees so grapes can climb those.  But if those trees, those trellises aren’t there, what happens?  Well, the grapes continue to grow, but instead of climbing, they just spread and spread.   And when that happens, much of their fruit rots or is eaten, and they never become what they were created to be. 

And human beings too easily become like those grapes running on the ground.  In fact, in many ways our culture tries to keep us there, spreading ourselves out thinner and thinner and letting our fruit rot in the process.  But Jesus points us to a different way.  Jesus points us to a way of living that draws us higher, that bring us closer to the sun, that creates more fruit, more abundance for ourselves and others then we can possibly dream. 

You see. That’s what Jesus was doing early in the morning.  He was living life on the trellis, and as a result of that regular communion with God, he could go out in power.  And if Jesus, the very coming of God in the flesh, needed a trellis, then trust me, you and I need one too.  And here’s the good news, you already have the most powerful trellis of all.  You have the cross. 

And that cross, as it draws you higher and higher, frees you from the habits of self-condemnation that will rot your soul.  It leads you to a life of joyful service and sacrifice that brings you more joy and fulfillment than you could ever imagine.   It draws you into a life that is deeper and richer than you could have ever dreamed.

And in the coming weeks, we’ll talking about some simple habits that draw you further up that cross, further into the fruitful, abundant life God yearns for you.  I’ve been trying many of these habits now for months.  Here’s what I can tell you.  They are more powerful in shaping your life than you could imagine.  And they are not that hard to do.  But as we begin to look at them, I invite you this week to pay attention, to your habits, to the things you are unthinkingly doing and as you do, to ask yourself.   “Is this who I really want to be?  Is this where I want to spend my life?”  And as you ask that question, remember God has one central habit, loving you.   And there’s nothing that God yearns to do more than that, to love, you, me everything.   And as you face your habits good and bad, remember that.   Let us pray.