Sermon Tone Analysis

Empty to be Filled

Hungering to Know and Be Known

2022-10-30

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-19

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Introduction

“I’m bored!”

How many of you have ever heard a kid say that?

How many of you have ever said that?

How many of you still say it?

So what is the feeling of boredom?

Boredom – the feeling of being wearied by dullness, tedious repetition, etc. Dictionary.com

Weariness caused by dull, tiresome people or events.

World Book Dictionary

Here’s hoping this sermon won’t be dull and tiresome or that you find me dull and tiresome!

I think most of us would also add the idea of having nothing to do.

We’ve run out of interesting things to do.

We’re tired of the same old things again and again.

Certainly, its true that the same things can be dull and boring to one person and very interesting to the next.

If you like doing puzzles, you find them a good way to relax.

If you don’t, you’re soon wishing for something else to do.

If you like reading, curling up with a good book sound enticing.

If the thought of reading makes your eyelids droop, I’ll probably more likely find you outside doing something physical.

It’s probably also fair to say that most of us don’t like to be bored.

We like to be engaged; we want to do things that we find interesting.

Can boredom ever be a good thing?

What are some good things about being bored?

Shout them out.

In a 2020 article in Forbes magazine called “Why Neuroscientists Say, ‘Boredom Is Good For Your Brain’s Health.’”,

Bryan Robinson, Ph.D. says, ” Neuroscientist Alicia Walf, a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says it’s critical for brain health to let yourself be bored from time to time.

Being bored, she says, improves social connections.

Social neuroscientists have found that the brain has a default network mode that is on when we’re disengaged from doing.

Boredom can actually foster creative ideas, refilling your dwindling reservoir, replenishing your work mojo and providing an incubation period for embryonic work ideas to hatch.

In those moments that might seem boring, empty and needless, strategies and solutions that have been there all along in some embryonic form are given space and come to life.

And your brain gets a much needed rest when we’re not working it too hard.

Famous writers have said their most creative ideas come to them when they’re moving furniture, taking a shower or pulling weeds.

These eureka moments are called insight.”

In other words, you sometimes have to stop doing in order to move forward.

The article went on to say, “The Italians have a name for it: “il dolce far niente”—the sweetness of doing nothing.

It doesn’t translate in the United States, where tasks and schedules define us.

The closest translation we have is “killing time.”

But “il dolce far niente” demands more: to intentionally let go and prioritize being alongside of doing.”

Here’s where the Paraguayans among us have got it figured out with their Maté time!

Intentionally stopping and doing nothing while they drink Maté.

What Drives our Desire for God?

So, why all this talk about boredom?

Well, today we come to my last sermon on the PAPA Prayer.

I’ll quickly review all the aspects.

“P: Present yourself to God without pretense.

A: Attend to how you’re thinking of God.

P: Purge yourself of anything blocking your relationship with God.

Then our theme for today,

A: Approach God as the ‘first thing’ in your life, as your most valuable treasure, the Person you most want to know.

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Well, stay with me.

When I’m engaged with an activity or a person, I have a sense of fullness in my soul.

When I’m bored, I have a sense of emptiness in my soul.

Nothing in my life in that moment is satisfying me.

Not an activity and not any people.

Boredom is a sense of emptiness.

Nothing to do.

Now think of prayer.

Think of our desire to know God and be known by him.

Our desire to hear from God and be in relationship to him.

What drives that desire?

What makes you want more in terms of God?

What is this relational longing?

There are two key things that drive our desire to be with God.

They are quite different and yet intertwined.

The first one is a prior experience of deep relationship.

If you have once had a really good friend, you know what it is like and what it gives you; companionship, belonging, good times, etc.

In terms of God, if you have had a deep relationship with God in the past, if you have experienced his love and care you will want more of him.

You will continue to pursue him.

Our past good experiences of God cause us to desire more of him.

The other thing that drives our desire for God is an internal sense of emptiness.

Think about human relationships.

Why do people pursue relationships, apart from the hormones?

Loneliness.

We don’t want to be alone.

There is something about knowing someone and being known by that someone that draws us.

In our state of loneliness, we want more than what we have.

Our lives feel empty, so we pursue relationship.

It’s the emptiness that drives us towards others.

This is true if we haven’t experienced good relationships and if we have.

I have talked to people who haven’t had a close relationship with a parental figure.

Either because they had died or abandoned them or because they were unhealthy parents, and the relationship wasn’t positive.

The longing for a good relationship is still there.

This emptiness inside, is the same emptiness that we experience with boredom, an emptiness because the things and people in our live aren’t satisfying us.

This emptiness drives us towards something more.

This emptiness has been a part of us ever since the Fall in the garden of Eden.

We desire God because we were designed to have in a deep relationship with him.

We were designed in such a way that the deepest part of our souls would only be satisfied by him.

In a sense, we have a vacuum inside that only God can fill.

Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher said “What else does this craving, and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself”

Psalm 42 captures both the emptiness and past experiences of God that drive us towards God.

(Read Psalm 42) (blank) The Psalmist talks about his longing, his soul being downcast.

I hear in this his internal emptiness that he longs for God to fill.

He also talks about having spent time in worship in the past and hoping to do so again.

The PAPA Prayer Leads to Emptiness

The first three parts of the PAPA prayer accentuate and make known this emptiness of our souls.