Title: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Text: Isaiah 43:16-21
Thesis: God is always doing a new thing and you don’t want to miss it!
Introduction
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian psychologist who earned the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work in Classical Conditioning.
There are automatic responses to a specific stimulus… If a dog smells food his automatic response is to begin to salivate and wag his tail and run around in anticipation of having a newly opened can of Alpo plopped into his food bowl.
There are also learned responses to a specific stimulus... Ivan Pavlov observed that whenever the people who normally fed the lab dogs came into the room the dogs began to salivate and get all excited in anticipation of being fed. The dogs did not see the food or smell the food… they simply saw the people who fed them. This led to Pavlov’s famous Pavlov’s Dogs Experiment in which the dogs were conditioned to salivate when they heard the chime of a bell that would signal they were about to be fed. When the bell rang… food appeared. Their response was not an automatic response to seeing or smelling food it was the conditioned or learned response to the ringing of a chime that signaled they were about to be fed. Perhaps Pavlov’s chime for the dogs is akin to the old farmer’s dinner bell.
In our culture we are more familiar with the conditioned response we have to the vibrating or buzzing or chiming or ringing of our cell phones. In his book iDisorder, Larry Rosen says that 50% of teenagers and young adults become moderately to highly anxious when they can’t check their technologies as often as they would like. Two-thirds check their texts every fifteen minutes or less. And if there is a flashing light or a buzz or a vibration or whatever signaling an incoming text or an email or a news update or a tweet, we begin to salivate and wag or tails and get all jittery and excited in anticipation of picking up.
They call this syndrome the Fear of Missing Out… FOMO!
Our text begins with a little historical reminder to a people who were not feeling the love, so to speak.
I. Memory serves to remind us of how deeply God cares for us. Isaiah 43:16-17
“I am the Lord, who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea. I called forth the mighty army of Egypt with its chariots and horses. I drew them beneath the waves, and they were drowned, their lives snuffed out like a smoldering candlewick.” Isaiah 43:16-17
The Israelites were living out a 70 year sentence of exile in Babylon… present day Iraq. They felt like they had no future so God spoke to them through the Prophet Isaiah reminding them of his faithfulness to them in the past. God referred specifically to the story of the Exodus when God freed them from slavery in Egypt. Following a series of miraculous plagues the Pharaoh of Egypt let the Israelites go and Moses led them out into the Sinai toward the Promised Land. But then the Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army after the Israelites… and the Israelites found themselves with the Red Sea before them and the Army of Pharaoh behind them. They were caught between a rock and a hard place.
So God reminded them, that despite their discouragement there in Babylon, he has been faithful to them in the past. It was as if he said, “Hey folks… remember when you were in a huge jam there on the shore of the Red Sea? Remember what I did? Remember how I opened the waters so you could pass through on dry ground and then when the Egyptian army followed you into the path I let the water flood back over them and they were literally snuffed out like a smoldering candlewick? Remember?”
The ancient Israelites had a belly-full of Egyptian oppression and the Israelites in exile during Isaiah’s time had a belly-full of Syrian oppression. And sometimes we too have had a belly-full of it… We too live in what often feels like a bad world filled with bad people and memory is good for reminding ourselves of how deeply God cares for us.
Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister from 1997 through 2007 is known to be a devout Christian and man of faith. On one occasion while touring a blood stained school classroom in Scotland where a gunman had killed sixteen students and a teacher his press secretary asked him, “What does your God make of this?” It is said that Blair stopped and answered, “Just because man is bad, it does not mean the God is not good.”
God reminds us in our text today that regardless of what it looks like all around us that he is a good God who has acted faithfully in our behalf in the past.
However, sometimes we get stuck in a place where we think that what God has done in the past is all that God can do.
II. We can get stuck in our memories… Isaiah 43:18
“But forget all that – it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.” Isaiah 43:18
The text begins with God remembering and reminding his people that he has done great things in the past… consequently we often think the past is the way God works and consequently we may have a Fear of Losing Our Past (FLOP). But then in 43:18-19 God says, “Forget all that! It’s nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?”
We served in a community in northwest Kansas for ten years. It was a wonderful time in our lives. God was good. The church was good. We loved and were loved by the people there… still do and still are. Our children still think of that place as home. Our oldest son is buried in the little cemetery behind the church. The attorney who did my taxes back then still does our taxes.
After ten years we accepted a call to serve a congregation in southern California. It was a fun move. For the first time in our ministry we were actually anonymous. We could eat in a restaurant and no one knew us and came up to chat while we were eating. And what’s not to like about southern California. Mountains. Deserts. The beach. The weather.
We moved again and in time I started hearing there was some interest in inviting us to return to that first church… would I consider it? How much money would it take to make it happen? I really wanted it to happen. I prayed and searched the scriptures until I found a remote passage in the Old Testament where God told Elijah to “go back the way he came” and I just knew God wanted us to go back.
You could call that FLOP (Fear of Losing Our Past).
Remember Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days?
I had a friend was a big baseball player
back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
but all he kept talking about was
Glory days, glory days
In the next verse Springsteen remembers how his Dad worked for the Ford Motor Plant for twenty years and then was laid off so no he sits on a stool down at the Legion Hall thinking about his glory days.
In the third verse he wrote:
Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
but I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days… glory days.
God doesn’t mind us reflecting on the glory days of our lives. Remembering the goodness and faithfulness of God and celebrating how God has worked in our lives and in the life of our church back then is just fine. But there are a couple of problems with spending too much time back then:
1. We get stuck in a place where we think that what God has done in the past is all that God can do. In other words, God was alive and well then but now, not so much.
2. We get stuck in a place where we think God only works in the ways God worked back then. In other words, the only ways God works is the old ways…
However the greatest danger of living too much in the glory days and dwelling on the past is this: Dwelling on the past tends to turn into discontent and dissatisfaction with the present… glorying in the past is our way of grumbling about the present.
“We are to learn from the past… not live in it!”
In our text God reminds the Israelites and God reminds us of his faithfulness and power to deliver. He reminds us to look back and remember that God is still God and God still loves us and cares about us and God is still in the business of rescuing his people.
“We are to remember the past but then forget the past.”
But then God said, “Forget all that – it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.”
In verse 19 God tells us exactly why we are to forget about the past.
III. When we live in the past we tend to brush aside what God is doing now.
“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you want to see it?” Isaiah 43:19
A few minutes ago I referred to FLOP or the Fear of Losing Our Past. Now we are back to FOMO or the Fear of Missing Out.
Earlier I spoke of people who suffer from iDisorder. Dr. Rosen suggests iDisorder changes to your brain´s ability to process information and your ability to relate to the world due to your daily use of media and technology resulting in signs and symptoms of psychological disorders – such as stress, sleeplessness, and a compulsive need to check in with all of your technology. In his book he tries to teach us how to stay human in an increasingly technological world.
A person is really hooked on hand held devices when we are so afraid of mission out on something that we get all stressed out and compulsive about checking our messages.
I love my Droid. I don’t know what I carried around before or how I survived without it all those years. But I like it when I see a blue blinking light or a green flashing light because I know something is going on that I don’t want to miss out on.
God was afraid that the Israelites were so locked into FLOP… Fear of Losing the Past that they would Miss Out On what God is doing in the present.
God says, “I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you see it?”
Bonnie and I have enjoyed 43 years of marriage and 43 years of pastoral ministry. We knocked around three or four years in youth ministry before pastoral ministry. We were in our first parish 10 years, our second only 3 years, our third 5 years, our fourth 8 years and 12 years here at Heritage. I cannot tell you how often over the years I have looked back longingly only to be reminded, “Hey! Forget the past. I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you see it?”
Over the years we have witnessed and been part of what God was doing in the present and we are still. God is at work in your lives and in our lives and in the life and ministry of our church today as in the past… just differently. God wants us to hear that, “see I am doing a new thing!”
The New England area has long been regarded as one of the most spiritually cold places in our country. Statistically Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts are the least religious states in the United States. Traditional churches have been on the decline for years but something new is happening there and they are calling it “Ethnic Vitality.”
Ethnic congregations are buying warehouses and remodeling them into places to meet and from which to do ministry. In a rather short time one congregation in Boston has grown to over 1,500 members.
What that means is simply this: God is doing a new thing right before our eyes.
I was challenged a few weeks ago in our Perspectives Class… it seems that we as Christians and Churches and Mission Organizations spend most of our time and resources “plowing old ground.” We just keep doing what we’ve always done, where we’ve always done it, like we’ve always done it. We keep doing missions in places where the indigenous church is now larger than the Church in our country and in many cases places that are now sending missionaries to unreached peoples.
The Covenant along with many mission organizations is beginning to push into new areas where there are yet unreached people. Karen Nelson and her co-worker serve along a migration/trade route where the Fulani people move back and forth in West Africa. The Fulani are the largest nomadic group in the world and they were the first in West Africa to convert to Islam. They are merchants, tradesmen and herders who live along the desert fringes. But the ever expanding desert that is forcing the Fulani to adopt new ways and they are beginning to settle in communities. So we go and we live among the Fulani. We love the Fulani. We provide medical care for the Fulani. And the Fulani are exposed to Christ through those who live among them. All this and more is going on right before our eyes. God continues to do a new thing in the world.
And it isn’t just in New England and West Africa… it is everywhere. It is right here and we can either watch God work all around us or we can work with God where God is at work.
A few years ago God did a new thing and continues to do a new thing in the Republic of Boulder. We were blessed to invest heavily in the New Day Covenant Church Doug and Lisa White serve. Just a few years ago we were blessed to invest heavily in what God was and continues to do through Hope House. Recently we have been blessed to participate in the birth a new congregation right here in this place and God is doing a new thing today in Restoration Covenant Church.
When I look at the new churches being planted along the Front Range and elsewhere, they do not look much like the churches we grew up in. But God is obviously doing a new thing in new ways.
Illustration: I read a quip last week, “My great-grandfather rode a horse, but he was afraid of the train. My grandfather rode on a train, but he was afraid of a car. My father rode in a car, but he was afraid of airplanes. I ride in an airplane, but I’m afraid of a horse.”
Things are always changing and as fearful as we may be of it – changes happens.
Recently I had lunch with several of my colleagues who serve area churches. We were talking about how we do church and we talked about the social media and gun control and so on. At one point the younger guys were talking about tweeting and how much they learn from other pastors and seminary professors and church leaders who tweet. They assumed I was a tweeter and when they learned I was not… they jumped all over it and told me I would be a great tweeter. Then we moved on to talking about sermon preparation and how we can most effectively reach new people today. I learned that instead of points like I do… # I. #II. #III. A. B. C. 1. 2. 3. is not what speaks to people today. I learned that it is better to make several tweet-like, memorable, catchy statements that will stick. Statements like, “Glorying in the past is our way of grumbling about the present.”
It doesn’t really matter if we like it or not… but times change and things change. And we need to be living in the middle of where God is working and in what God is doing. Failure to adapt is literally a self-imposed death sentence.
In 1922 a guy working for the Washburn Crosby Company, which would later become General Mills, accidently spilled a wheat bran mixture onto a hot stove and invented Wheaties. By 1926 Wheaties had been perfected and packaged and were being marketed on Minneapolis’ WCCO radio station with the first ever commercial jingle:
Have you tried Wheaties?
They are whole wheat with all the bran.
Won’t you try Wheaties?
For wheat is the best food of man.
In 1927 an advertising agent penned the slogan, “Wheaties… the Breakfast of Champions.” And with that slogan on that trademark orange box, Wheaties was an instant success. In 1934 they added the picture of a sports champion along with the caption, “The Breakfast of Champions.” Baseballs Lou Gehrig was the first. Then came the likes of sprinter Jessie Owens, race car driver Dale Earnhardt, golf’s Lee Travino, footballs Walter Payton, gymnast Mary Lou Retton, basketballs Michael Jordan has made the box 18 times and Tiger Woods has made the box 14 times.
The point is… they did not leave Mohammed Ali on the box. The pictures continue to change to appeal to a new generation of sports minded Wheaties eaters. Inside is the same ole Wheaties they cooked up in 1922… the product has never changed but the way they market Wheaties is constantly changing.
And so we continue to take Christ into the world… the packaging changes, the appeal changes, the delivery mechanisms change but the product does not change.
Someone said, “When you have more memories than dreams, you life is over.” When we are content to live in the past rather than retool and adapt to the future for the sake of those who do not yet know Christ, we become useless to God.
I wonder if the key to God being able to do a new thing is largely due to people being open to doing a new thing? I wonder if the key to spiritual and missional vitality is not a healthy Fear of Missing Out on what God is doing.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” Says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
Conclusion
FOMO can be a good thing for spiritual and missional vitality.
