Tearing Down Strongholds Series

(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.