(Read “Carnival of Content” from page 75-76 of Kyle Idleman Book)
We are surrounded by content, noise, opinions, entertainment, updates, feeds, streams, alerts— and yet anxiety is up, meaning is down, and people are spiritually malnourished.
We have an excess of information, but a deficit of wisdom.
An excess of stimulation, but a deficit of direction.
An excess of pleasure, but a deficit of peace.
Let me ask you a very serious question.
Have you ever stood in front of the refrigerator…
opened it… looked at everything inside… closed it… and said out loud, “There’s nothing to eat.”
Your fridge is full of… Leftovers. Condiments. Drinks. Food from three different decades. But somehow… “There’s nothing.”
What you really mean is: “There’s nothing here that satisfies what I want.”
That’s our minds. Full of content. Full of noise. Full of opinions. And we still ask, “Why do I feel empty?”
It’s because you can be surrounded by options and still starve for nourishment. That’s the “excess of nothing.” And the Apostle Paul gives this condition a name in Ephesians 4. He calls it futile thinking.
Today’s message, based on the Kyle Idleman book and series is called “The Excess of Nothing.” Because you can fill your mind with everything…and still have nothing that gives life.
On page 76 of the book, Kyle says…
“The more external input we receive, the less internal reflection takes place. There’s a connection between an excess of external input and an absence of internal reflection. We have more to think about, but we are thinking less about what matters.”
Kyle Idleman – Every Thought Captive
We are thinking less about what matters most. This is basically what Paul said was happening to the Ephesians in chapter 4 of his letter to them he said,
Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. 18 Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him.
Ephesians 4:17-18
You might be thinking… OK, “What does a mind full of darkness look like?” Some translations talke about “futile thinking”… what does that look like? Well let’s take a look at some of the symptoms.
Symptoms of Futile Thinking.
• Your mind is full of nothing
Paul is basically saying… they are “darkened in their understanding.” That doesn’t mean they lack information.
It means their thinking has lost light.
You can have a head full of facts and a heart full of fog.
We live in the most informed generation in history: Google in our pockets, Podcasts in our ears, Opinions everywhere
And yet, people don’t know: Who they are, Why they’re here, What really matters That’s what futile thinking does.
It crowds out truth with trivia.
You scroll, you watch, you binge, you consume… and still feel hollow. I think Christian recording artist Josiah Queen said it best in his song, “Dusty Bibles” when he said,
We got dust on our Bibles, brand-new iPhones
No wonder why we feel this way
We walk with our eyes closed, blind leading blind folks
And I'm done with those idols and dusty Bibles
There’s a reason you can’t remember what you walked into the room for… but you can remember a commercial jingle from 1994.
Our brains were not designed to carry endless junk.
We’ve trained our minds to skim instead of meditate. To scroll instead of reflect. To react instead of renew.
A mind that is disconnected from God doesn’t become empty.
It becomes cluttered. And cluttered minds don’t produce clarity.
They produce confusion.
And the scary part is this: You can be mentally busy and spiritually bankrupt at the same time. I know this has come up a lot lately but it’s worth repeating…
The devil doesn’t need to make you bad—
he just needs to make you busy.
Because when you allow him to make you busy, you get distracted. So that’s symptom #1 of a person who possesses darkness in their minds or futile thinking.
Symptom #2 is this…
• You have no destination
Paul says, “they wander far from the life God gives.” V. 18
That’s not just spiritual language…it’s directional language.
When God is removed from your thinking: you still move, you still make plans, you still chase goals… But you don’t know where you’re going.
So instead of being decisive about things, you drift. Instead of pursuing, you react, instead of living life to the fullest, you just survive.
Here is what I don’t want for you. I don’t want your life to become just making it to the weekend… or Getting through the next season… or escaping the next problem.
A destination-less life will always settle for distractions.
That’s why people jump from: Relationship to relationship, Job to job, High to high.
Because if you don’t know where you’re going,
any road will do.
Yogi Berra famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
I couldn’t agree more. Remove what is cause the road to be divided for you.
Remove the doubt. Remove the hesitation. Remove the endless back-and-forth in your mind.
Because here’s what a fork in the road really represents:
indecision. It’s standing still, overthinking, wondering, “What if I choose wrong?”
“What if I miss out?”
“What if there’s something better down the other path?”
And while you’re standing there debating…life keeps moving.
Most people don’t end up lost because they chose the wrong road.
They end up lost because they never chose any road.
They stay frozen. Paralyzed by options. Held hostage by “what if.”
And here’s the truth: God rarely gives you every detail before He asks for your decision.
He gives you direction, not a full itinerary. A fork in the road is not a trap… it’s an invitation to trust. When you remove the fork, you’re saying:
“I’m done with double-minded living. I’m done with halfway obedience. I’m done standing still.”
James says a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways.
And instability doesn’t come from making a decision. It comes from refusing to.
Some of us need to stop praying, “God, show me everything,”
and start praying, “God, I trust You enough to take the next step.”
Because clarity doesn’t usually come before obedience…
it comes after.
So yes… when you come to a fork in the road…
take it. Pick it up. Throw it away. And move forward in faith.
Because a life going nowhere in perfect safety
is far more dangerous than a life moving forward with God.
The next symptom of a futile life is this.
• You’re a slave to your next high
In verse 19 Paul put it this way… “They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity.”
The NIV puts it this way… Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
That phrase is devastating. They weren’t forced to live like this...
They volunteered… they chose it.
Futile thinking convinces you that freedom means indulgence.
But indulgence always becomes enslavement. What starts as a choice becomes a craving. What starts as enjoyment becomes dependence.
The culture says:
“Follow your heart.” “Do what feels good.” “You deserve this.”
But feelings make terrible masters.
When your mind is detached from truth, pleasure becomes your guide… and pleasure never satisfies for long. So what happens when the pleasure wears off?
You need: More stimulation… More intensity… More escape
And he high wears off. the emptiness returns, and the cycle continues.
Let’s talk about how we treat coffee. My first cup of coffee is magical… it’s Life-changing…when I take my first sip of the day… it’s almost as if… I can hear the angels singing.
By the third cup, it’s not really as joyous… it’s more like, let’s just get through the day.
By the fifth cup, I’m not enjoying coffee. I’m negotiating with my body… come on, Ron… you can do this… you can get through the rest of the day.
And that’s how pleasure works. What once satisfied
now just maintains. What once filled now barely functions.
And the problem isn’t coffee… it’s anything we depend on to give us what only God can. That’s the excess of nothing. Here’s another symptom.
• You’ve forgotten how to feel shame
Paul puts it this way, “they have no sense of shame.” V. 19
To me… this is one of the scariest phrases in the Bible.
Shame, in its healthy form, is not condemnation.
It’s conviction. It’s the internal warning light that says,
“Something isn’t right.”
But futile thinking dulls the soul. What used to shock you
now entertains you. What once made you repent… now barely registers.
You don’t blush anymore… You rationalize.
You don’t confess...You compare.
You don’t change… You justify.
I heard it put this way once and I can’t remember how said it… but…
“Conviction is when God taps you on the shoulder.
A seared conscience is when you stop feeling the tap.”
A seared conscience is not freedom… it’s dangerous. When your conscience goes quiet, it doesn’t mean you’re free. It means the warning system is offline.
And it’s never good news when you don’t have a warning system.
But I’m so thankful that God doesn’t just diagnose the disease.
He offers the cure. God never exposes your broken thinking to shame you… He exposes it to heal you.
There is a better way. If Paul had just stopped at v. 19 then it would be pretty devastating wouldn’t it? But he continues…
And this is part of how we defeat this dark and futile way of thinking. We have to renew our thoughts and attitudes.
2. Renew your thoughts and attitudes.
And there are a couple of ways that we do this. Paul shifts gears here pretty dramatically. He goes from this gloomy picture of a defeated life to a life in Christ.
Verse 20-21 But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him
In other words: “This may be how the world thinks… but this is not who you are.” So I think the first thing we need to do according to what Paul is saying here is this…
• Gain a biblical worldview
Paul says, But that isn’t what you learned about Christ Notice—he doesn’t say:
“That isn’t what you learned about religion or learned church rules.” He says learned about Christ. Like we said last week… Christianity is not just behavior modification. It’s mind transformation.
A biblical worldview means: God defines our truth. Scripture shapes our values. Jesus sets the standard.
It answers the big questions: Who is God? Who am I? What is right and wrong? Why does this matter?
Without a biblical worldview, culture fills in the blanks.
And the big problem with culture filling in the blanks is this… culture always changes the answers… and it never points to Jesus.
Listen… You don’t drift into godly thinking. You must renew your mind intentionally. That means: What you feed your mind matters. What voices you listen to matters. What you normalize matters.
You can’t binge the world all week and then expect clarity on Sunday.
One of my favorite features on Netflix is autoplay… You know what I’m talking about… You finish one episode…
and before you even touch the remote, the next one starts.
You didn’t choose it. You didn’t approve it. You didn’t even think about it. It just keeps playing.
And the longer you watch, the more the algorithm starts deciding what you see next.
Now here’s the scary part. The algorithm doesn’t care what’s true.
It doesn’t care what’s healthy. It doesn’t care what’s holy.
It only cares about what keeps you watching.
Culture works the same way.
If you don’t intentionally choose what shapes your thinking,
culture will happily put your beliefs on autoplay. And culture’s answers change every few years.
What was celebrated yesterday is canceled today.
What was “empowering” last year is “toxic” this year.
What was “your truth” gets rewritten the moment it’s inconvenient.
And notice this… culture never pauses and asks,
“Where does Jesus fit into this?” Because culture isn’t designed to lead you to Christ. It’s designed to keep your attention.
That’s why you don’t drift into godly thinking. Drift always moves you away from truth.
Renewal takes intention. What you feed your mind matters.
What voices you listen to matters. What you normalize eventually shapes what you believe.
And that’s why you can’t binge the world all week
and expect spiritual clarity on Sunday. You have to decide who gets the remote to your mind.
And then finally, if you want to renew your thoughts and attitudes then…
• Share your emotions with Jesus
Paul says in verse 21 Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him.
Truth here is not abstract. It’s personal. Jesus isn’t nearly as interested in correcting your thoughts… as much as He is in receiving your heart.
Many people think renewing the mind means suppressing emotion.
Biblical renewal means bringing your emotions to Jesus, not hiding them from Him. He wants you to share it all with Him: your fear, your anger, your grief, your confusion, your temptation
Jesus already knows… but He invites honesty.
I’ve heard it put this way before…
“You can’t heal what you won’t reveal.” - Unknown
Some of us talk to everyone except Jesus about how we feel.
We vent to our friends. We post vague social media statuses.
We replay conversations in our head.
But Jesus is standing there saying, “Bring that to Me.”
You don’t have to clean up your emotions to come to Jesus.
You bring them as they are… confused, messy, frustrated, tired.
And He meets you there.
When you share your emotions with Jesus: Lies lose their power.
Shame loses its grip… Healing begins. You stop numbing your pain
and start surrendering it.
Sometimes… when people come in to see me… they are overwhelmed, anxious, or angry, but often they say the same thing: “I just need to get this off my chest.”
So they talk. They vent. They unload. And usually, by the end of the conversation, they feel a little lighter.
Not because I had incredibly wise words to share… Not because the problem disappeared… but because they stopped carrying it alone.
Now here’s what’s interesting…
Jesus invites us to do the same thing… but we treat Him differently than everyone else.
We bring Him our words, but not our wounds. We bring Him our prayers, but not our pain. We bring Him our polished faith,
but not our raw emotions.
Yet Jesus says,
“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Notice…He doesn’t say, “Come to Me once you’ve figured it out on your own.”
He says, “Come when it’s heavy.”
Some of us are exhausted…not because life is all that hard for you… but because we’ve been carrying emotions Jesus never asked us to carry alone.
Fear we’ve never spoken. Grief we’ve never surrendered.
Anger we’ve buried instead of healed.
And today, Jesus isn’t asking for explanations.
He’s asking for honesty. Surrendering your emotions to Jesus doesn’t mean you stop feeling. It means you stop pretending.
So before you leave this place, take what’s been sitting on your chest… and place it in His hands.
Because the safest place for your emotions… has always been the heart of Jesus. Let’s pray!
