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We live in a world today where anyone with Internet access can post anything they want
Experience and expertise are not required
We are drowning in a sea of endless noise and chatter
Told how to live
How to vote
How to be beautiful
How to get in shape
How to Invest
How to maximize your life
I’m over here being fed life advice by someone with little to no experience in life
It’s becoming increasingly harder to sift through all the noise
And find something authentic
Find something real
That can have a real impact
On my real life
It is also becoming increasingly frustrating
To constantly be told how you aren’t measuring up
Just push a little harder
Work a little longer
We are made to feel guilty for not winning a game we didn’t even know we were supposed to be playing
Guilt is a powerful emotion
It can cause us to act
It can also cause us to freeze up
Unsure of our next move
Unsure of ourselves
Guilt is a part of the human experience
And has several positive purposes
Including
Social interaction
Guilt can motivate people to act in ways that benefit others
Self-awareness
Guilt can help people understand how their behavior affects themselves and others and develop a better sense of right and wrong.
Self-compassion
Guilt can help people understand how they treat themselves compared to how they treat others, which can help them develop self-compassion.
Guilt can also get distorted
Too much guilt can be harmful and burdening
Toxic guilt
A feeling of guilt that is disproportionate to the situation or one’s actions
Unhealthy Guilt
A feeling of guilt that is experienced even when that person has done nothing wrong or as the result of an experience they had little or no control over
As Christians, we are not immune to guilt
I may even say we are more often victims of guilt
Whether intentionally or not
We are often guilted into many things
Because ‘Jesus’
What would Jesus do
So, we end up sacrificing our time at the expense of
Family
Health
Mental health
Only to come to the end of the day
And count the ways we could have done more
So we feel bad about ourselves
We feel bad about our efforts
And we get discouraged because we can’t measure up
We’ve let our Western mindset infiltrate our relationship with Jesus
We are supposed to be strong and self-sufficient
But Jesus tells us to trust in him
We are supposed to desire bigger, better, and more
But Jesus tells us he is enough
Not to store up for ourselves treasure on earth
I recently overheard a conversation between two girls in a store
Discussing what to buy her boyfriend
When asked what he likes, her reply was
‘Anything expensive’
That’s not an interest
Or a hobby
It’s just shallow masquerading
So we’ve gotten confused
Trying to live up to the world’s standards
We get frustrated with this balancing act
How do we live in this world
While still trying to pursue Jesus
We run out of time
We run out of patience
And we run out of energy
So when we reach the end of our day we have nothing left to give
Or worse, we start our day overwhelmed by all that faces us
So we start to get bitter
We hear the church telling us all that we should be doing
In addition to just trying to survive our 21st-century world
so we trudge our way through our morning devotionals
Unable to focus
With wandering minds
We read because we feel guilty if we don’t
We try to start our day in prayer
Only to find our minds wandering
Drifting off or falling asleep
I’m not saying time with God is not important
I’m not saying starting your day with God is not important
But this is the source of life
This is the source of love
We are called to seek his presence continually
To be in awe of the father
To desire him deeply
This is not supposed to be a guilt-laden slog to get our time in
This is not meant to drain life and passion from us
As we continually fail to live up to our expectations
Striving to do the things that we think will make God happy
But it just bogs us down as it adds to the endless list of things
We should do
Matthew 11:28-30
Then Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest
Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls
For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light
PRAY
I am a biker
More accurately a cyclist
I enjoy the freedom that can be found on the bicycle
The closeness of nature
The silence and the solitude
The ability to just leave everything behind for a little while
On a bicycle, I can access places cars cannot
Over distances walking cannot
I also love the physicality of the bicycle
I can only go as far as I can push myself
There is no cheating
There are no shortcuts
It’s a great way to get the heart pumping
The blood moving
The lungs expanding
It’s a great way to feel alive
I have in my mind the idea of a perfect ride
It’s 75 degrees
The sun is shining
The sky is spotless blue
I ride the back roads from Hills Creek to Arnot
Where I hop onto Landrus Rd.
I ride into Morris
And from there, I can take Rattler Rd. over the mountain into Stony Fork
Or I can take 414 to Stony Fork Rd. If the water isn’t too high to cross
Then I can take Claymine Rd. Down into draper
Or continue on Stony Fork Rd. To the other end of Rattler
The possibilities are endless
The point is I’m in the middle of nowhere
On a bicycle
I rode in I have to ride out
Any one of these routes is 50 miles or more
I’m carrying everything I need
Theoretically self-sufficient
This is what I would consider an epic ride
They live inside my head
And what I think of when I say I ride a bicycle
The problem is I can easily begin to feel guilty for not riding my bike
On a random Tuesday evening, I may only have an hour to ride
Am I any less of a rider because those 12 or 13 miles don’t live up to my grand ideas of epic
What if I only rode when I had 5 or 6 hours to dedicate to it
When the time would come
However infrequently, that is
I wouldn’t be able to pull off a ride of that size
Because I hadn’t been riding all along
And I am in danger of not riding at all
Simply because the ride isn’t epic enough
This sounds dumb
You’d probably tell me to just go ride
Even if it is only for an hour
The point is that we tend to approach
Our relationship with God
Our pursuit of Jesus in the same way
We have grand ideas and plans
And we get stuck in our head
About what we think things are supposed to look like
Praying on my knees for an hour every morning
Giving everything I have to help the poor, only then to become one of them
Reading the entire Bible from cover to cover
We think God wants us to do something epic
When all he really wants is our hearts
So, we focus on the big things
and are in danger of missing out on the seemingly lesser things
We see it all the time come January first
People say
This is the year I’m going to get into shape
So we join a gym
And we go full steam ahead
For 2, 3, maybe 4 weeks
But then we quit
We get tired
We get hungry
The results are too slow
We tend to take an all-or-nothing approach
And our all quickly becomes nothing
I recently listened to a podcast from Paul Tripp
Where he interviewed the author Drew Dyck
Which then pointed me to his new book
Just Show Up
How small acts of faithfulness change everything
A guide for exhausted christians
And the idea is
Maybe I can’t fit a 50 mile bike ride in
But I can do 13
Maybe I don’t have time for a whole gym workout
But I can do some pushups and crunches at home
Maybe go for a walk
Reading the entire Bible in one year is an admirable goal
But maybe I’m more likely to develop a healthy habit of reading my Bible
If I focused on a few verses a week
Really dig in rather than rushing past
And by starting small
We release these unrealistic expectations
And actually begin to grow despite how small our efforts may seem to us
Several months ago, I decided I wanted to learn Spanish
This was not the first time I tried
But I had some friends that were doing it
And I thought maybe this time it would stick
Learning a new language is daunting
I didn’t go out and buy a Spanish dictionary to memorize
That would not have lasted long
But I downloaded an app
And on average spend about 3 minutes a day doing the little app
I recently lost my daily streak, but I was up to 275 days
3 minutes a day for 275 days
Is 825 minutes
I can do 3 minutes a day
Small incremental changes
Keep moving forward
Just Show up
God invites us all the time to just show up

Matthew 14:14-21
Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
15 That evening the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16 But Jesus said, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them.”
17 “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” they answered.
18 “Bring them here,” he said. 19 Then he told the people to sit down on the grass. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples, who distributed it to the people. 20 They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers. 21 About 5,000 men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children!
We can’t feed all these people
Do you know how much food that would take??
The disciples had gotten stuck inside their own heads
They couldn’t see beyond their expectations of what they thought they needed
Of what they considered to be an epic meal
They had an all-or-nothing mindset
But Jesus was willing to bless the unimpressive
The mediocre
Which then turned out to be pretty epic
I was having a conversation with friends recently
Regarding this all-or-nothing approach
And was given this quote from
Dallas Willard
“God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being ‘right’, we will simply have no place to receive his kingdom into our life, for those situations and moments are our life
If I only rode my bicycle when the ride met my expectations, I would not ride
If we only dove into the word of God when the moments met our expectations, we would not know the word of God
We need to show up
We need to be present
We need to allow the space for God to speak to us
Allow the space to reveal himself to us
To share with us his heart
To hear from him the things he cares about
And the things he has for us
You could spend 3 minutes reading a few verses and be so impacted by what the Holy Spirit has for you there
That you spend the next month unpacking it
That you remember it years down the road
You cling to it, and you look back on it in times of doubt
And you can point to that one space in time and say without a doubt
God met me there
Don’t discard the little things
The small efforts
The baby steps you take toward God
Just because they don’t fit your expectations
Or they don’t fit what the person next to you is doing
God has plans for you
God has a desire for you
God has love for you
And just because you don’t have an orchestra
Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t just show up with your measly little kazoo
We have seen it time and again throughout the Bible
God blesses the small things
So we can release our guilt of not measuring up
Of not having it all together
We can release our guilt and our striving
If only I read my Bible more
If only I could pray longer
If only I loved harder
Just show up
Just reading three minutes is better than none
Just pray
Set a timer
A few minutes is still a few minutes communing with God
Just love those around you
It may not look the same as the pastor’s love, but it is still an offering
And it is no less love.
God blesses our small moments
And Our small moments add up to a lifetime of pursuing him
Luke 19:1-10
Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. 2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. 3 He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.
5 When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”
6 Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. 7 But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.
8 Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
9 Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man[a] came to seek and save those who are lost.”

Zacchaeus just showed up that day
All he wanted was to see Jesus
And Jesus met him exactly where he was
In a tree
Not doing something epic to draw attention
Not making some big display
About how wealthy or important he was
He was just a man
Who in that moment
Just wanted to see Jesus
V. 5-6
5 When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”
6 Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy.
Jesus stops and acknowledges Zacchaeus
Blesses Zacchaeus
And goes to his home
V. 8-10
8 Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
9 Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man[a] came to seek and save those who are lost.”
Zacchaeus is blessed this day
Zacchaeus will remember this day for the rest of his life
He can look back on this day
This moment in time and confidently say
God met me here
Zacchaeus was a wealthy man
I’m sure he had many ways and opportunities
To impress his fellow tax collectors
Owned expensive things
Threw fancy parties
I’m sure in his mind
Climbing a tree would not be on his list of epic events
But his heart was right
And Jesus saw him
And blessed his small effort
Jesus made this mundane thing
Epic
What if Zacchaeus
Went about this differently
What if he tried to plan the most extravagant party he could
He invited all his A-list companions
Served all the best foods
And provided the best entertainment
All in an effort to entice Jesus into his house
All in an effort to impress Jesus into blessing him
Luke 18:9-14
Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else: 10 “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer[a]: ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! 12 I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’
14 I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Jesus is clearly not impressed by the things we are impressed with
He desires the heart
It’s interesting in this parable
The one claiming his righteousness
Is the religious man
Thinking he knows what it takes to please God
How could he be so far off base?
It is the sinner
The one who knows how far from God he is
How much in need of God he actually is
He is the one with a heart after God
While this religious man is stuck on his own righteousness
Seemingly has no need for God
He’s got it all figured out
In an effort to impress God
He lays out all the epic ways he is awesome
While the sinner just kneels before God
Bringing him the only thing he has
His heart
God blesses the unimpressive
And makes it impressive
For his glory
That we cannot point our finger
And shout
Look what I did
That was all me
Is your pursuit of God the source of guilt?
Do you feel bad because you don’t read your Bible enough?
Do you feel bad because you don’t particularly like listening to worship music?
Or you think your prayers are too short
Or not eloquent enough
Or you don’t know much about the Bible and have no idea where to start?
Don’t let your ideas of what things should look like
Stop you from doing anything at all
God desires your heart
God desires you
This relationship was not meant to burden us with more
Tasks, chores
Guilt
This is about a loving God sacrificing so much
For you
Calling you his own
And pulling you up to himself
It is our desire to love him
It is our desire to serve him
And learn about him
Not from our own exhausted energies
But out of an abundance
From knowing the father
Don’t leave here with grand plans to change the world
With grand plans to do great things for God
Just go find him
Find your desire for him
Listen for his voice
His guidance
And follow where he leads
One step at a time
The great men who changed the world
Just put one foot in front of the other
Day after day after day
A lifetime of committed service to God
Is made in the small acts of faithfulness
Read one verse a day
There’s an app for that
Memorize a passage a week
Let it sink in
Let it transform you
Stop worrying if it’s enough
Are you actively seeking God
No matter how small the steps?
Then it is enough
Listen to a fifteen-minute worship set while you pray
If you don’t have the words
Listen to the lyrics
Pray the lyrics
Don’t throw out all your albums of Good music
They have their place
It’s not black and white
Its not all or nothing
God can take the little you have to offer
He can make it epic
Stop worrying if you are enough
You are enough
You are a child of God
You are enough
Mark 12:41-44
Jesus sat down near the collection box in the Temple and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. 42 Then, a poor widow came and dropped in two small coins.[a]
43 Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others who are making contributions. 44 For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she had to live on.”
God doesn’t need your stuff
He wants to know how much you need your stuff
The sacrifice of this widow was great because it revealed her heart
And her blessing was great because it was all she could offer
We go through seasons in life
Some of abundance
We have time
We have money
Our physical needs are being met
And we go through times of scarcity
Our time is limited
Our money is tight
It can be hard to see beyond our struggle
But we come before God
In good times
And in bad times
We offer what we have
In the place we are
And God will meet us there
And you may feel like your contribution
What you have to offer
Is not enough
Is not epic
But you offer him what you have
you offer him your heart
He sees your sacrifice
He can bless the unimpressive
And make it impressive
If you seek God, you will find God
And if all you have is a few minutes
In the morning
Praying over a few verses
That is time well Spent
That is time in the presence of the father
And three minutes is better than none at all
So we release our guilt
We release our sense of obligation
And we just sit in the presence of the father
We just enjoy our God
We enjoy his peace
No strings attached
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Sermon Notes
by Jesse Gotschal
Presented at Vineyard Church of Wellsboro
7/28/24