Broadcasts

If we were to trace some of our worst choices, our bad habits, our addictions, and even some of our emotional problems back to their source, we would find a deep and unsatisfied spiritual hunger.

As humans, one of our most basic needs is food—when we don’t have it, we experience discomfort, irritability, or even sickness or death. And yet, as unbearable as physical hunger can be, it is our spiritual hunger that we often neglect to address, to our own detriment. As we begin a series looking at the seven “I am” statements made by Jesus in the Gospel of John, this message from Pastor J.D. explores the first of these, from John 6. Jesus’ claim to be the “bread of life” is a truth that we so desperately need in a world full of people who seek to satisfy their spiritual hunger with anything but Jesus.

Our emotions function like smoke from a fire—and just like you can follow a trail of smoke to figure out what’s on fire in your house, you can follow the trail of your emotions to figure out what is on fire in your heart. Pastor J.D. concludes with the emotion of shame.

We’re in the final couple of days of our series on difficult emotions titled, “Smoke from a Fire.” Or, to change the analogy—each of these emotions—depression, anxiety, anger, envy, and now “shame”—functions like warning lights on the dashboard of our hearts, indicating what is going on in the engine of our souls.

Sociologists say that envy seems to be a bigger problem for our generation than any before us, because social media seems designed to play on it! But when we look at other people’s lives on social media, we are seeing a filtered image. Pastor J.D. concludes his message on the difficult emotion of envy.

Envy surrounds us—and most of us don’t realize the deadly poison that envy is. We think of envy as a kind of petty jealousy that just comes from wanting a little more.

People seem queued up and ready to be angry—in the classroom, at work, on Twitter, and on the freeway. Pastor J.D. teaches how we can be angry like Jesus.

Remember that one time in the Bible when Jesus got angry? And he didn’t hide it? And he didn’t sin? Pastor J.D. is helping us see how we can be angry like Jesus, too.

When it comes to money, parenting, career, and any of the other litany of things we worry about, God is not telling us to sit back and do nothing. He is saying that we need to do what we can, and trust him with the results.