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Nikki Fox – Envy

October 20, 2023October 15, 2023

Nikki Fox looks at how envy impacts us and envy and children.

Excerpt from Envy

Well, isn’t it good to be in the house of the Lord today? Amen? Yes, it’s good to be with our brothers and sisters. If you’ve never been here before, we just wanna say welcome, welcome to 4th Avenue. You’ll hear us say we are a family a lot, and that’s what we’re called to be as the church, right? The family of God, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, cousins, you know, all that. We are here today as family to celebrate and worship our God. And part of that is looking into his word and what is he saying for us? And so we’re so thankful that you’re here this morning. I’m really grateful to be up here this morning. I was about to go and grab that other mic because I feel like I’ve been doing announcements and communing a lot and I was like, where’d the mic go?

Oh yeah, I get to be like here in the middle. So if you don’t know, I’m one of our student ministers here and I’m just really thankful to get to serve this body and to get to love this city of Franklin and beyond and so grateful you guys are here. If you haven’t been with us, we are in this series, The Enemy, talking about our inner darkness and our vices that come against what kind of life we’re supposed to live in Christ. And this morning, I just wanna pray before we get started talking about what we’re gonna be talking about today.

Open Ears, Open Eyes, Open Hearts

So Father, thank you so much for another day to live in your presence for another day to be convicted by your word for another day to worship as a family. God, I pray that we would have open ears, open eyes, open hearts to what you have to say to us today. Thank you again so much that we get the opportunity to gather to be your children and to worship you. Open our hearts in Jesus’ name, amen. So this morning, I get the fun opportunity about talking about our inner darkness.

Thank you again so much that we get the opportunity to gather to be your children and to worship you. Open our hearts in Jesus’ name, amen. So this morning, I get the fun opportunity about talking about our inner darkness. Thinking about envy, right? Gonna look at envy together. And when Kyle gave me some options of some dates and stuff like that, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, where we’d be in October.

And of course, as it happens, you know, the Lord does this all the time. It’s like, he gives you an opportunity to look at something that he wants you to look at, right? Looking in the mirror. So we’re gonna talk about envy today. So if you’re like, what is envy? When does it start? It starts pretty young for all of us. It starts when we’re kids, okay? I want you to imagine this scenario. I don’t have kids. I have nieces and nephews, and I get to be around a lot of children.

Envy In Children

But just think about this scenario. You’ve seen a parent or a guardian give a child a toy or a snack, right? And they are loving it. They’re like, this is mine. This is amazing. This is awesome. And then they look over. And they see another kid or another child and they’ve got a different toy or snack and all of a sudden they’re like, what is this? You know, they throw it down and they look over and they’re like grabbing for what the other person has and of course the other person’s like, well this is mine, you know, like this is my toy, this is my snack.

And then all of a sudden like it hits the fan, right? They’re like, oh, I want that, I want that one over there, I don’t want what you gave me and they just throw it away and they’re screaming and they’re having a fit and you’re like, hey, remember I had a toy, I had a snack for you, like you were loving it. But in that moment, that kid cannot be consoled and all they can think of, they’re not looking at what you have given them, they’re looking at what that other kid has and they’re like, I want that one.

Children and Envy

I don’t really care what you’ve given me over here, I want that one, right? Has anybody ever seen that, experienced that, your kids have done that? And you’re like, hey, I love you, I’ve taken care of you, I’ve given you what you need and they are just not having it in that moment. Some of us may not remember that of like us doing that as kids, but that’s kind of where this all starts, right? For us, we are like, when we’re first growing up, that’s what we do and we don’t even recognize that it’s something that just keeps growing in us.

Now hopefully as adults, we’re not still over here like pitching fits and screaming, saying I want what that person has, right? If you are like, come see somebody after the service or something, like we’ll talk through that, we’ll maybe get you some counseling or something, but it comes up in different ways for us, right?

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Kyle Dingus discusses what an audience of one is

Kyle Dingus-Audience of One

April 3, 2024October 8, 2023

Kyle Dingus – Audience of One

Today we listen to Kyle talk about what an audience of one is. Below is an excerpt from today’s talk.

Excerpt from Audience of One

Good morning, loved ones. It is so good to be with you all. I just want to echo what Nick said. Welcome, any visitors. Thank you for being here. And to echo what Gary said, we are super excited for Erin Owens joining us and our team. We think she’s going to be a great gift to this church. She’s already downstairs helping out. So we’re really happy about her being here as well. Before I get into this sermon, I just want to start with a prayer over what’s going on in our world right now. There’s a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff, a lot of fear happening in the Middle East and everywhere. So let’s give that over to God.

Lord, we come before you today and I mean, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to have omniscience on days like today. And how your heart is so heavily burdened about all the stuff that’s going on and all the violence and people who are your own in your own image that are attacking each other. And Lord, we pray that there be peace. We pray that your peace reign over all of the world and where there are wars, we pray that those end. And we pray that your kingdom come here on earth as in heaven and heal our world. And Lord, we’re praying in Maranatha.

Lord, come quickly. Let me pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Spiritual Excercise

One of the spiritual exercises that I have been going through through my spiritual direction training was praying through my earliest memories.

And one of the things that I noticed whenever I started doing that, especially my younger years, I noticed this weird trend of how I would make these very strange lies to my friends. And they were pretty elaborate.

For example, I lied to a bunch of my friends in elementary school that I bungee jumped down a volcano. And most of them believed me. because they’re in fifth grade. But I also, that same year, lied to my friends and said while I was riding my bike home from school one time, I started petting some deer that were running next to me.

I lied to my friends

That was, they ran close to me, but not close enough for me to pet them. And I also lied to a group of my friends that I was the starting quarterback on a fake football team in the same league that they were in. And most of them believed me, and then they got mad at me when they found out that wasn’t true, turns out. But as I reflect on things like this, I noticed this sort of ugly part of my heart as to why I was doing those things. It was because I was caring so deeply, and I would do whatever it took to get it, but about the approval of other people. I wanted it, I craved it more than anything. And I think our culture pumps out a lot of people like this.

Whether it’s like me and you, exaggerate a bunch of stories about yourself to impress people, or you do good things intentionally so other people will notice it, or maybe you do something that is unwise, or perhaps illegal just to get a few laughs, or how we take all the credit whenever we know that we don’t deserve it, or how we spend hours to look more and more attractive so we can look like the Photoshop Perfect People on Instagram, or how we spend so much time on social media trying to create this image or brand for ourselves, and we get deflated whenever we don’t get the amount of likes or followers that we want.

Approval Addiction

We gauge our worth based on that. The approval addiction is rampant in the human heart. There is such a hunger for people to find their worth in the approval of other people. And I would wager that everybody in this room has either struggled with this or is currently battling this on a daily basis. And to be clear, there is a human need to be loved, to feel worthwhile, to have approval and find approval in other people, that what I am and who I am, it matters, and that I’m significant. We all want to find and feel these things, but our problem is that we are looking for that approval in all the wrong places.

What I’m describing today is the forgotten vice of Vainglory. And Vainglory is probably one of the most powerful vices in my life. I would imagine that most of you in here have not heard of this word before. It’s kind of archaic, but I think we should kind of bring it back because Vainglory is the sin of our time. Breaking down the word Vaing, meaning false or fake, and glory meaning something good that has been revealed. So it is a fake, revealed goodness. As Rebecca DeYoung in Glittering Vices, she defines it, Vainglory is the excessive and disordered desire for recognition.