After The Party

Intro

Good morning Real Life… Happy New Year!

My name is Curtis and I’m the Connections Director and it’s great to be here with you all this morning.

So here we are… It’s almost the new year. You probably have one more party before the new year begins. Not sure how you guys are but I love this time of year up until now. I love the holidays, I love the build up to Christmas. But then it all ends, it’s over and January hits. And it’s all over, it’s just the worst. Once new years day hits, it just gets a little bleak for me. The next few months are the worst of the whole year.

This afternoon I”m going to be taking all our Christmas decor down, putting the lights away until next year. It’s going to be cold and it’s dark for 18 hours a day… And it just feels like there’s nothing to look forward too… Except the Patriots.

It’s kinda like when you host a Christmas party… Maybe some of you did that this past week… But there’s all this anticipation and preparation for this party. All these people show up and eat, drink, and be merry. And the last person leaves and you shut the door and turn around to what? A mess… Right? And now the party is over and you have nothing left to look forward to except clean up duty.

My guess is that’s how a lot of us are feeling as we approach this new year.

Tension

Some of us we are ready to take this new year by storm, 2018 is going to be awesome. Things are going to be different. I’m going to lose weight, make more money, make better decisions, kick that habit, fix my marriage, my football team is finally going to be good this year… Some of you are ready to go…

Yet there are others of us here that we just barely got through 2017 on fumes. It took everything in us to get out of bed this morning. And 2018, eh, it’ll probably be more of the same.

This time of year is really just a metaphor for our lives. Maybe you are stoked because of all the things you are going to do in 2018. Or maybe you are beat up because of all the things that happened in 2017… Or maybe you are somewhere in between…

We all have these areas where we put all this hope into, and right now most of us are either in a funk from last year or stoked for what’s coming. There this big build up for whatever… And then it comes and goes. You’re left thinking, what is there to look forward too?

Here’s a good question for you motivated people if you get what you are after in 2018… Will it really be enough? Will whatever you are after really satisfy you? Or at the start of 2019, once you got what it is you are after, are you going to have that same feeling where the party ends, the door closes, and all you have to look forward to is cleaning up the mess. Because once again you put your hope in the wrong things. Will it really be enough?

Here’s question for those of us that are in that kind of funk… If we don’t put anything in this year, do you really think next your will be any better? If you don’t take any steps forward, will your life really just change?

Here’s a question for all of us… What can we do to put our hope in the right things this year?

Truth

Fortunately for us the Bible isn’t silent on this. The bible is full of real people facing real issues, and feeling real emotions. When you read the stories you will find people dealing with every emotion that you are and I face today.

The reality is the Bible isn’t a self help book. It’s not a 3 easy steps to you best life. That’s not what it is. It’s more about Jesus doing for us what we could NOT do for ourselves. With that disclaimer I want to turn to what is a relatively well known part of the Bible, the book of Psalms. Psalms literally means a collection of songs. And these poems and songs express the range of human emotion. From anger to sadness, to happy. Whatever you are going through there’s a good chance that the book of Psalms deals with it.

So the Psalm I want to look at today is Psalm 42… Not by David.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long,“Where is your God?” Psalm 42:1-3