← Red Rocks Church Weekend Messages
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Come on, raise up church. Come on, let's give all the honor, all the glory and all the praise to the name above. Every name. Amen. The Lord is in this place. I'm so fired up for church today. Can we do this? Can we show some love to every Red Rocker joining us from all our locations in Denver, Colorado, to Austin, Texas, to Brussels, Belgium, watch parties all over the world, and of course, the men and women at our correctional facility, these campuses. We love you. We love you. We love you. Welcome to Red Rocks. Welcome home. And I'm just going to tell you up front because you're going to figure it out sooner than later. We're just a bunch of imperfect people pursuing a perfect God. And the reason I'm fired up is because it is week three of a relationship series called Summer Loving, Baby. Just the summer loving. I added the baby. Tell me more, tell me more about Summer Loving. This is all about biblical blueprints to help you win when it comes to relationships. In week one, Sean preached a fire message about the one verse that you need to have a thriving marriage and if you missed it, you gotta go get caught up. It's one of my favorite messages on marriage that I have ever heard. And I'm not kidding. Last week I talked about friendship. Go catch that as well. Today we're gonna talk about love. The big L. Ever been the big L. And I want to preach about love in a way that's relatable to you regardless, regardless of relationship status. So whether you are single or dating or married or single, wanting to be married or married, and sometimes you want to be single, or you are widowed or divorced or you are healing or hurting or friending or parenting, or you've been friend zoned or you're in a situationship, whatever it is your status might be, this message is for you. Really, this entire series is for you. The reason we do stuff like a relationship series is because once upon a time, Jesus was was asked to sum up the entire Christ faith. And Jesus did not talk about success or social justice. He did not talk about religion or even church attendance. Jesus said, I can sum all of it up with these two things. Love God and love each other with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength. It is not a stretch of the imagination to say relationships are the building blocks of the kingdom of heaven. I want to show you in Ephesians 4, verse 16, from him, that's Christ, the whole body, that's the church, joined and held together by every supporting Ligament, that's relationships grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. The church is built by people held together by relationships, which is why healthy marriages, healthy friendships, healthy families build up in love. Healthy churches and healthy churches change the world. Can I get an amen? Relationships are part of this whole thing we call living on purpose. But Jesus also gave us a warning in Matthew, chapter 24. He's speaking about the last days, and he says this in verse 12. Because lawlessness will be increased. Lawlessness. Just think, as the world decides our way is better than his way, we know better than God. As that increases, the love of many will grow cold. That's interesting to me. Not the love of a few, not the love of bad people. But as the world's patterns continue to drift from God's design, the love of many will begin to grow cold. Oh, people will still want for it, and people will still search for it and swipe for it and sing songs about it. But fewer and fewer people will know how to find it and keep it and build it and fight for it. But not so with you. I want to preach a message today called we've lost that love and feeling. Oh, it's gone, gone, gone. I want so bad to sing it like Maverick from Top Gun right now. But no, I promised my wife I wouldn't. All right. And my beautiful singing voice will surely distract all of us from the Lord. I'm kidding, by the way. If you're new around here, we got to keep the main thing. The main thing today, we've lost that love and feeling. So, God, we love you so much. Would you draw near to us as we draw near to you? Speak to us for listening In Jesus name somebody say amen. And then to turn, turn to somebody around. You say, you've lost that love and feeling. You've lost it, man. And then you may take a seat. I love this class participation in church already today. Let's keep that going at every location. Right now, I just want you to yell out your favorite rom com. Yell it out. You've got mail. Okay. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Ryan, was that you? Let's go, big daddy. Adam Sandler. Come on. How to lose a guy in 10 days. Perhaps the greatest rom com of all time, the Notebook. It's a lot of rom. A little calm, but I'll give it to you, man. It used to be the thing rom coms used to be. I mean, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had one. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn had one. Wedding crashers. Anybody? JLo had one, Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson had 12 of them. Man, I feel like Matt McConaughey taught an entire generation of single men with commitment issues how to date, myself included. Like, Jesus is my savior, but Matty Mac's my hero. You know what I mean? It used to be. Does this make me sound old saying it used to be? Every other movie that came out was a rom com. Even the movie Top Gun. It's a movie about fighter jets. But the most memorable part is when Maverick sings, you've lost that love and feeling. That was in 1986. And I can't help but wonder if that was prophetic 40 years ago for our entire culture. Cause we used to love love, but now it's true crime documentaries and serial killer podcasts. Ladies, what's the deal with this? Okay, My friend told me a few days ago. She said, I mean, it's, like, comforting. It's like, well, maybe I don't have a boyfriend, but at least I'm not married to a serial killer. Touche. Maybe we have lost a little bit of that loving feeling. Just a little. Maybe Maverick was right. We used to gather around stories of people falling in love. Now we gather around stories of people getting murdered. And if that's an exaggeration, no, it's not. Okay? It used to be, I wanna watch a love story and be happy. Now it's, hey, can you send me a docu series about a cult led by just an absolute psychopath? The darker the better. Just something light to fall asleep to. We've lost that loving feeling. We used to fight for love. Now we look for every reason that love could never work. Ladies, not to pick on you again, but the whole ick thing is getting out of control, ok? Sneezing four times in a row is called an allergy, not a red flag. All right, calm down. And just to show you I'm being fair, if he claps when the plane lands, that is a red flag. And run for your life. But I sneeze twice every single time I look at the sun. It's called Achoo Syndrome. That's real. It's a medical condition. That's an acronym. Okay, you guys are looking at me kind of snickering while I'm actually trying to raise awareness right now for Achoo Syndrome. I'm not messing around. This is. But, man, we used to look for every reason love could work. Now I feel like we go hunting for every reason it can't work. Just the list of icks Gets longer and longer. You're not drafting an NFL quarterback. You're on a date with Todd. Give Todd a chance, okay? He's a good guy. Like, I don't care if he texts with two thumbs or you saw him running that one time with a backpack on. All right? You don't have health insurance, sweetheart. It might be time to consider settling for a two hands Todd or a Sneezy Steve of your own. Cause I'm telling you, perfect love will drown out the ick in Jesus name. Just ask my wife. Ruffling some feathers in here. Okay? Just trying to help. We live in a world in a weird moment, in a weird world where people want love more than ever, but seem less interested in actually doing it. And when I say doing it, I mean marriage and dating and doing it. Okay? Statistically speaking, we're getting married less, dating less, cohabitating less. And even to quote Adam Sandler from Big Daddy doing the hibbity dibbity less. It's true. It used to be, who am I gonna marry now? It's, do I even wanna do that? Do I even want another human being knowing my address? Look at this statistic. In 1949, 79% of households in America contained a married couple. Today, it's 47%. That is a massive swing. Less and less people are staying in love. But it's not just that less and less people are finding love. We're seeing a dating recession, a birth rate decline. Valentine's Day has become singles awareness day. It just has. Okay, but it's not just romantic love. It seems like togetherness in general is at an all time low. I'm talking family. I'm talking friends. We're living in a loneliness epidemic. We're more comfortable with followers than we are friends. And we have all the contacts in the world, but not the connection to go with it. And we even live in a day and age where machines meet our relational needs better than people do. And what's interesting is over the last few decades, as Hollywood has lost interest in writing new love stories, neuroscientists were actually discovering something fascinating about love, it's itself. Let me show you something called the neurotheology of love. That's what I want to call it. And I want to borrow this for a moment from Harvard professor Arthur Brooks. The science part. He breaks down the science explanation of falling in love like this. Three steps. Step number one would be attraction, for which you need testosterone and estrogen. This is the part of the journey of falling in love where you are positive she's God's will for your life just because she's hot. And it might be the holy Spirit, but it's definitely hormones. Is it both? Only time will tell. Step number two is infatuation, brought to you by a chemical cocktail of dopamine and norepinephrine. Dopamine is what makes you feel the euphoria of the romance. It's why you can, literally speaking, become addicted to the honeymoon phase of falling in love. Because it functions in your brain the same way as any other drug. Norepinephrine is adrenaline. It's what gives you the nervous butterflies feeling, you know, it's why you'll check your phone every five seconds or you'll drive three hours just to give them a hug and give you a. Give him a kiss. You are, chemically speaking, biologically, a little bit delusional, but you don't care. You don't see the ick anymore. You see endearing quirks. You don't see. It's like she. It's not baggage. She's deep. It's depth. It's not immaturity. He's got potential, right? You don't see Sneezy Steve anymore. You see a man after God's own heart anointed with a pollen allergy. You are. You're quite literally, you're crazy. You're crazy in love chemically. And then it's step three, which is attachment. The butterflies might fly away, but this is when oxytocin helps you build friendship slowly over time. But therein lies the problem. Slowly and over time. Because even though God's design for love is mostly about step three, where long term attachment is established, fewer and fewer people make it there anymore because it doesn't feel like love. So this is a recent pattern of our world. We want the short term attraction and the infatuation way more than we want the long term attachment. Who's got time for that? Just give me steps one and two and then once again, give me steps one and two and then let's do it one more time. Give me steps one and two. It's why every rom com finishes with the big kiss at the wedding and the credits roll before the marriage begins. Because we know what sells. But in the process, we have turned love into another dopamine chase training our brains that true love is butterflies and euphoria way more than it is friendship and connection. But when love becomes the love drug, then like all addictions, you just need more of it. Another new fling with another new person. And it can't be then, it's gotta be now. Pornography and another fling in reality tv. The drama, the infatuation. I'll say it this way. Oxytocin tomorrow cannot compete with dopamine today. Take it from a pastor who has had an addiction. Sunsets are so much better than Vicodin unless you're addicted to Vicodin. God's version of true love is so much better than the world's. Unless you're addicted to the world's. Romans 12:1 2 says this. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, in view of the gospel, in light of God's goodness and God's grace, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. And then you may recognize this part. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This has never been more relative. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will when it comes to all things love, sex and relationships. You will either conform to the world's patterns or you will be transformed by God to see that his way is better. Because the world has ways. And I picture the world's ways, marketed in, like, these beautiful brochures, the printed version of every drug commercial you've ever seen, where everybody's happy and singing bubbly songs in bright T shirts. And, like, secularism has a brochure. And that brochure would say, hey, we've outsmarted religion and we know better than God and we can make the world we want without Him. Which you might ask, how's that working? New Age has a brochure as well. The spirituality, the life you're looking for is not found in something bigger than yourself out there. It's actually found inside of yourself. But not in dying to yourself, really, in more of discovering yourself. And if you just do enough microdosing and pay for another new retreat, well, then you will find the spirituality and the satisfaction that your soul is. The world even has a brochure for your love life on the COVID It would say, God's way is archaic and outdated, and so do relationships this way and handle romance and sex and marriage this way. Because everybody who's doing it the world's way is finding what they're looking for. After all, if they weren't, would there be all these beautiful pictures in here? And on surface level, it sounds so good, but the results are in. In fact, guys, the Results have kind of been in for a while now. Divorce rates have never been higher. Happiness has never been lower. We are living in a new great Depression. Only this time, the poverty is purpose and meaning and connection and love. That's why the brochures have to keep changing, because the world's patterns keep changing, because our ways never quite work, from hookup culture all the way to living together before marriage. By the way, hookup culture basically trains your brain to always be looking for its next sexual partner. It's why it's kind of like rehearsing for affairs and divorce. We've been taught by the world you need to test drive the marriage before you buy it and live together first. But marriage is not a car. Marriage is a covenant. And guys, really quick, I know the city, but you know the room that you're in right now. We are an imperfect church of imperfect people. I consider myself the most imperfect of every single one of us. You do not have to agree with everything the pastors say in this place, to belong and have a home in this place. But as one of your pastors, I want to challenge you right now with science and scripture and tell you what the world won't. So forgive me for painting with broad strokes for a moment because I have to. The reason people live together before marriage is really to see if. Whether or not the dopamine keeps firing. Because if it doesn't, well, then, good thing I didn't buy the car. But listen, now that we know the neurotheology of love, marriages are strong not because dopamine stays high, but because oxytocin sets in and helps friendship and attachment to grow deep. And you might be training your brain that love is just about attachment or attraction and infatuation way more than attachment and connection. You're chasing dopamine instead of building oxytocin. And once again, the results are in. Showing more and more that it might mess with you after you say your I dos. Because you're seeing it a certain way. Before the covenant, before the commitment. And then once you get committed and once you enter enter marriage, it's like, well, I was trained to view love this way, but now I'm having a hard time seeing love this way. That's why it's showing that couples who do that before marriage, after marriage, happiness goes down and divorce goes up. I don't celebrate that. That's not and I told you so. I'm simply doing what the world won't do, acknowledging it. I'm just. I'm saying it. And I'm saying it not with a single judgmental bone in my entire body. I can. I'm not talking about this stuff theoretically. I'm just tired of the devil convincing all of us that everybody who's doing it the world's way is finding what they're looking for and everybody out there is happy. Guys, take an honest observation. The world has sexual patterns. They're working right now for nobody. And I'm just tired of pretending like we all have to imagine they are. There is a reason I can preach that God's way is better without judgment. And it's because my life is living proof that when it comes to love, sex and marriage, he can make you. He can make your relationship brand new all over again. It is never too late. You're not too far gone. You have not out sinned his mercy. All you have to do is make a decision to turn from doing it the world's way to saying, you know what, God, let's do this. Let's do this your way. I offer my body, my. My marriage, my relationship, my dating life. As a living sacrifice, would you transform me from the inside? See, Romans 12 has never been more important than it is now. Literally speaking, this is offering your body as a living sacrifice. This is true and proper worship. And man, God is not a formula. But at the same time, blessing always follows sacrifice and obedience. Especially when you don't fully understand why you're being obedient and why he's asking you to do it this way in the first place. See, with God, the right way is rarely the easy way. Sexually, financially, like, I acknowledge that. But there's something about your spirit that's not wired for the road most traveled. You got royal blood in your veins. You're up for this. You've got this because he's got you. And God will redeem and God will restore. And his grace is that good and his love is that strong. And I don't say that because I read a verse about it. I say that because it's my testimony. God's way is so much better. But that takes trust. Trust him enough to maybe try Him. So I'll leave that there, almost like a challenge. You decide. You have that conversation, you take it to God, ask him, you decide what you'll do with that challenge motivated by grace. But do not let the world trick you into settling for anything less than the best plans that he has for. For you. That's what I would say. One of the devil's greatest achievements, I think, is that when it Comes to love, sex and marriage. The world still has a good reputation somehow. And God has a bad one. I mean, that is. That's skill. I've been praying. Today would be the day you realize the truth. God's way is not just holier. You know how, Like, I feel like he kind of has a PR problem. God does. At least with my generation or the younger generation, where you grow up kind of of thinking that God is this divine Debbie Downer in the sky who wants to rob your fun from you. And you know he's there, so you're like, well, I better. I better have my fun now before my frontal lobe fully develops and I give my life to Jesus. I pray today is the day you realize God's way is not just holier, it's better. It's fuller, it's richer, it's funner. That's not even grammatically a word, but I'm gonna. It's funner. It's good in every possible way that God's plans for you, they're not just more pure, they're more full. They're what you're looking for. How did Forest Frank say it? I searched the world until my head hurt just to find out God's way is better. And man, I'm gonna challenge you. You can search for another decade and waste another 10 years not finding it, or humble yourself and try God when it comes to this, maybe he knows more than we do. Maybe he knows he's not trying to rob your fun. I am preaching this right now with every. He's trying to maximize your joy and maximize the blessing he wants you to experience. He's got nothing to gain from taking anything from you. It's all his in the first place. He is trying to give, he's trying to guide, but you gotta let him, man. Think about it this way. God gave us hormones. He created dopamine so we could experience life to the full, so we could feel love. And dopamine is most commonly associated with the reward that you get. And of course that's true, but way more important. Dopamine is the feeling of purpose and the passion to pursue that purpose. When I think of relationships, I think of the word pursue. What is a relationship without pursuit? What is your relationship with God without you pursuing Him? He's pursuing you all the time, every day. Pursue. Dopamine is what, is what gets all of us off of the metaphorical couch and out the door. To pursue God's good plans and the people that he's put in our lives to do those plans with. But our world of abundance is messing with our brains. We've never had this many quick fixes of fast dopamine before in all of human history, from TikTok to Netflix, from pornography to online shopping and video games and processed food and gambling. And addiction is no longer a conversation about heroin and whiskey and those people of which I am one. It is now a conversation about a thousand drugs of choice and every single one of us. Because the new pattern of the world is chronic compulsive over consumption. Screens make sunsets more boring. And we get more of a dopamine hit now from our phones than we do from our friends and from our families. And that's just true. And over time, it burns your dopamine system, leaving you with less and less feeling of purpose and the passion to go and pursue it. Neuroscientist TJ Power sums it up like this maybe explains why we are all feeling the way we're feeling. When you repeatedly spike and crash your dopamine levels, which now there's a hundred ways to do every single day, it exhausts your dopamine system. This is a primary cause of the demotivated depressive symptoms you may experience in your life. When your brain is trained to expect neurochemical fireworks every five seconds. A 20 minute quiet time with just your Bible gets harder and harder to do. What else gets harder and harder to do? Falling in love and staying in love. It's like we have more access to each other than ever, but we are attaching less. I think about the dating world. I think people are bumping into each other more and more than ever before, but sticking together a lot less. Because the neurochemical system that God designed for us to stick together has literally been compromised. See, King Solomon lived a life of abundance and over consumption in every possible way. If you don't know King Solomon, Old Testament, he wrote the proverbs. Wisest man to ever live other than Jesus. Essentially his life was one big experiment where God gave him infinite wisdom and also gave him infinite access to the world and said, try to find what you're looking for in anything under the sun apart from me. And he tried. I mean, you want to talk about fame and power and success and money and sexual experiences. The guy wanted for nothing. I mean, he threw parties that would put the Great Gatsby's parties to shame. The Bible says he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. You want to talk about sexual opportunity? And before you. I know I have to say this because I'm going to get the question like, well, Solomon had a thousand wives and that's in the Bible. It's like, okay, just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean the Bible's teaching it. That's not a prescription for what you should go do. That's a description of what he did that you shouldn't do. And he shouldn't have done either. It did not go well for him. All of this stuff, none of it did. Solomon was a good man, but he was flawed, messy and imperfect. And although he started his life well, he did not finish well. And this is in the Bible so that maybe me and you would finish well. This is his conclusion at the end of his life. Ecclesiastes 2, 10, 11. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure. Really quick. Doesn't that sound like the world's definition of the good life? If I wanted it, I did it, I bought it. If I craved it, I. I consumed it. If it felt good, I. I indulged in it. But this is the realization he comes to. Yet when I surveyed all my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve. Everything was meaningless. A chasing after the wind. Now when I read this from a 2026 vantage point, I see a man ahead of his time with a crashed out nervous system and a brain absolutely depleted of dopamine. I see an ancient king. But more than that, I see a warning. Because 3,000 years later, we have engineered a world where all of us are trying to live like Solomon every day. Maybe not with the palace or a thousand wives, but with unlimited scrolling and distraction and pornography and stimulation. And we are finding out what happens to our brains when we entertain them into a spiritual oblivion. And what happens is relationships don't hit the same anymore. Small talk and first dates and even a first kiss doesn't hit the same anymore. Love doesn't hit the same anymore because love takes patience and presence and we're chemically, literally losing the ability to do both of those things. And lust is just easier than love. And AI is just faster than love and another hookup is just way less commitment than love. And social media is easier than messy relationships and pornography replacing imperfect intimacy because you can have it exactly how you want it, when you want it, which is now without any effort at all to attain it, which, chemically speaking, is the worst possible thing for the human brain. It's the world's brochure that over promises. It's beautifully laminated and bright colors and everybody seems Happy, but it under delivers every time. And just like Solomon found out, the world will still send you the bill for it. Sin will take you further than you wanted to go. Cause you to stay longer than you wanted to stay and make you pay a lot more than you wanted to pay every single time. It's not God who punishes us for our sin. He already punished Jesus for sin, you understand? That was one sacrifice, one time, perfectly paying the price for all sin, past, present and future. That's the gospel. And just a little bit of your faith and his amazing grace in that story covers you heaven forever, then and there, the fullness of life in the here. He doesn't. He will discipline sons and daughters he loves. He does not punish sin. Punishes you. My sin will punish me over and over and over. And then hand me another brochure saying, well, this actually, if you just. It's the gambler's dilemma. Double down again and you'll find it. And meanwhile, over here, God is waiting with mercy going, oh, oh, I've got so much more for you. And every single time, you will be met with grace and goodness. So in light of his mercy, grace and goodness, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, be transformed from the inside out by the renewing of your mind. And you will know God's will, God's plan for your life. Which by the way, is what again? Good, pleasing, perfect. So here's what I want to do. I want to give us some biblical principles. To live and love in this world without being of this world, without conforming to its patterns. See, this is where knowledge is power. The truth will set you free, and a little bit of hope will help you to live free. So based on scripture and the science that God created, how do you fall in love in 2026? How do you stay in love in 2026? Cause here's what I know. God brilliantly designed your brain with more than 50 billion neurons and 4 miles of blood vessels. And he made it on purpose to be neuroplastic, which means your brain is constantly changing. And your mind has been given an instinct by God to renew itself. Almost like God saw 2026 with great forethought and designed our brains in a specific way, like the world can wire your brain to lust. And the word of God with your decision every day, can rewire it to love again. This is a testimony that I see happen all the time. But you must decide. For love is a decision. You must choose God's way over the world's patterns. So whether you're dating and feel dopamine depleted or you're married and feel like you're going through the motions. How do you fall in love? How do you stay in love? What does it mean to offer your body as a living sacrifice? I just want to give you two points and then we'll worship. Point number one, fair warning is really boring. Be more bored. See when you're by yourself you can call it low stim instead of boredom. If boredom scares you, which it does a lot of us remember when your brain gets those neurochemical like those neurochemical fireworks every five seconds, reality can't compete anymore. Your dopamine is a limited resource. You only get so much wonder, you only get so much anticipation, you only get so much infatuation, you only get so much excitement. Be careful that you don't spend all of it before breakfast. Like this is a, this is a point and sort of a metaphor. The more doom scrolling there is in your marriage house, by definition the less passion there will be in your marriage bed. The more you are watching pornography, the less and less in color. All of life will start to will start to be. And the reason is because real life will get more and more boring unless you get more and more bored on purpose. We've engineered boredom out of our lives. But Psalm 46:10 says this. You might know this verse, be still and know that I am God. The Hebrew word for be still is rapha and it means to stop, to cease to quite literally be bored. For when you are still, you will know that he is God. There is a setting in your brain called the default mode network. And when your brain is in this mode, that's when you have all the big epiphanies about life, any of your greatest revelations, or when you connect the dots and in a light bulb where you're like oh my gosh, I'm supposed to take that job or this is my purpose or I'm supposed to marry that person. All happened in your default mode network. The reason those moments are becoming fewer and farther in between for all of us is because it was requires boredom for your brain to shift into that mode. God gave you that mode to speak to you within it. And a lot of us are just like over stimulated and distracted all the time, praying God, would you give me some divine direction? And God's in heaven going I would love to, I just have nowhere to put it. I got nowhere at all to put it. Be bored on purpose. Especially when you're by yourself. And here's why, because well let's answer this. How do you be bored? Basically, you just stop running away from boredom. It's like the the default mode network. That's why you have your best ideas in the shower. And some of you are like, well, I take my phone into the shower. Exactly. And you need this point more than you could. It's. This is a new pattern of the world. We're too afraid to be alone with our own thoughts for nine minutes that we take our phones into the shower. It's almost like we're all just running from something. That's why we're running from boredom. Because in boredom, we have to face the something. How do you be bored? You stop running from boredom. Practical ways. Start your day slow with scripture. Before your smartphone. Go for a walk without a podcast. Drive without music. Some of your heart rates are speeding up. Cook a meal without Netflix. Stand in line without scrolling. Don't be in the simulation. Just be in reality and notice that people are there. A shelf with food is there. Like go to the bathroom and don't take your phone away. You're not going overseas. You'll see it again in 90 seconds. Just. I remember when we took Will's pacifier away for the very first time for one hour. He screamed and cried and hated us for one hour. And then his one year old brain figured out how to comfort himself without it. Well, screens are the new digital pacifier. The second we feel lonely. Scroll. The second we feel shame. Pornography. The second I feel anxious. Online shopping. The second we feel bored. Dopamine. You only have so much of it. So what if instead of spending it just to survive the moment and get through another day, you thought about dopamine this way? You invested it to help you to pursue with more passion the things in people that truly matter. See, a point about being bored more is not about minimizing your joy. It's actually about maximizing it. If the definition of addiction is the gradual narrowing of things that bring you joy until only one thing brings you joy, namely your phone for most of us. And then before you know it, it doesn't bring you joy anymore. Now you just need it to feel normal and get back to a dopamine baseline. Well, then the opposite of addiction would be the fullness of life. The gradual expanding of the things that bring you joy. This is not about less joy. It's about more joy in more places. The goal of boredom, strategic boredom, is not less love. It's staying sensitive to real love. To small talk with strangers and game nights with friends, to laughing and playing on the floor with your kids without wanting your phone or an episode. It's staying attracted to and infatuated with your spouse of 20 years. From first dates to falling in love to staying in love, it brings back the magic of it all. Be more bored, because when you do, the moments that matter will be more full because of it. And then finally. And Tina, you can come back up. Have more fun when you're together. And I really want to just encourage married couples right now who feel like you're going through the motions, whether you've been married for five months or five decades. What if you've lost that love and feeling? What if you've lost the butterflies? Okay, let me just calm your nerves for a second. Remember, butterflies are a metaphor for anxiety. So if the butterflies are gone, that might just mean you feel safe and you can ride in a car together and nobody talks for an hour. And it's not weird. That's what you've built. Well done. Friendship and more attachment. Remember, it's not about dopamine staying high. It's about friendship and oxytocin running deeper and deeper and deeper. So let me give you what I think is a really timely word. I have more and more couples come up to me between services, and usually ones who have been married just for like a few years. And let's say this glass of water represents your marriage. And like all marriages, it's messy. There's dirt, there's problems, there's challenges. By the way, marriages is amazing. Not because it's easy, but because it's challenging by design. Friendship relationships are challenging by design. That's what makes them rich. And they'll ask me for prayer, and I'll pray for married couples in our church. And over the last few months, I've been getting the same word from most of them while I'm praying. It's gonna sound strange, but I'll say amen. And then I'll look at them and I'll say, this might not make sense at first, but I feel like God wants me to tell you to go to topgolf after church. Now, topgolf can be an actual example or a metaphor of having more fun because you have forgotten that the reason you fell in love with each other at first, your first love, you, the things you used to do, you haven't done in such a long time, you've forgotten it. You've. So what if you want remembered it, why you fell in love in the first place? Maybe a marriage devotional is not the most spiritual thing you can do this week, maybe the most spiritual thing you can do, is go to topgolf, is laugh with each other more, is go to a comedy night. Naper Gatsby's touring right now. Prices just went down. He'll be here next week. All right, I'm just saying you forgot your first love. And I'll throw it to Harvard professor Arthur Brooks one more time for the ultimate quote. Here it is. Don't rehearse all your problems. Have more fun. Because marriage counseling. I don't know where me and Sam would be without marriage counselors, first of all, but you can get to a point where you're just, let's book another session and talk about the same stuff and swirl it around again. And let's have another conversation where we dive into the same insecurities and the same bitterness and the same anger and the same unforgiveness and the same story. And let's just swirl it around and continue to examine it again and again. But then what you're left with at the end is the exact same thing. And I just wonder if the most timely thing that so many married couples this day nowadays could do in a world where we have lost that loving feeling, chemically speaking, spiritually speaking, it's just to remember how to have fun with each other and all the things you used to do that made you fall in love in the first place. Do those things again and go to topgolf and go to see Nate Bergatzi and relive that very first date that you planned back in the day and stop swirling it around again and again and just pour more and more fun and more and more life. And remember, at the end of the day, you don't drown out fear by trying to examine it and just muster it out of your life. You pour in perfect love and it drowns out fear for you. And I. I just. I don't know. I think that's a word for a lot of couples in our church. You know, the great tragedy of what the devil has done when it comes to sex is before marriage, we put it on the table. When in reality, before. Before marriage, you need to be learning how to have fun without it, because you're going to need that after you say your I dos, and then you train your brain in a certain way, and then we get married and all the. And the devil uses it as a way to now cause us to take it off the table. When the number one thing you need to do is actually put it back on the table, it's like, where is all the love gone? You stop creating it, you stop making it. It's like such a powerful tool and weapon that God has given married couples. Couples not just for procreation, but to literally becoming one. It is powerful. It is. It is intimate. It is one of the greatest weapons that your marriage has. Have more fun together. The things you used to do. What if you recreated that date night? Here's what's in my mind right now. I just want to finish with this. It's Revelation, chapter two, verses one through five. And this is a letter that Jesus. Jesus is writing to the church in Ephesus. And you'll see why we're reading it when we get to the end of it. To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write this. These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. That's Jesus. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but aren't. You found them to be false. You persevered and you've endured hardships for my name. And you've not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Another way to say that you have forgotten the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repent. Which means to turn back to it and do the things you did at first. May our marriages never become so corporate that we're running a family business as parents together. That we have forgotten the love we had at first. Even if you're crushing it on paper, Jesus would say you forgot the reason you're doing this in the first place. What are the things you used to do? Remember those things and return to it again. And I pray that for our church as well. Like the church in Ephesus, man, they are crushing it on paper. May we never be that church that gets so good at doing ministry that Jesus actually has to press pause and write us a letter that says, y' all have forgotten your first love. You've forgotten the reason you do all of this in the first place is because of me. It's because you just can't help it. You're just so in love. You have forgotten that you've lost that love and feeling. Hearts have grown cold. Love has grown cold. Remember the things you did at first. You know, there was a day I couldn't wait to wake up in the morning and spend an hour with God and then you kind of go through the motions and you get good at Christianity. And it's like, hard to do 15 minutes in it. Just busy, but not just busy. Overstimulated and distracted and not good at it anymore and can't be still and just know that he is God anymore. Remember what you did at first. Remember your first love. Remember what he saved you from. Remember what he saved you into. You used to be dead in your sin, and now you're more alive than you will ever know. I used to be blind, but now I see. I used to have no hope beyond this life, but now I know I'm going to heaven forever, then and there. And I get to live in holy anticipation of that today. God, I just love you so much. I love you so much. Perfect love will drown out fear. Remember your first love. Keep it alive. Fan the flame. The love of many will grow cold in the last days, but not Red Rocks Church. Our world might lose that love and feeling, but you know where to find it, because you know the one who gives it. We love each other because he first loves us. Amen. With every head bowed and every eye closed at every location. Just want to pray for you, God. God, I just love this church so much. And I know that you made us to be loved by you and to love each other. And the patterns of the world caused that to be harder and harder to do. And so I pray that you would just help us to return to them. Because everything can be made new again. Every mind can be rewired and renewed. Every life and every relationship, every dating relationship, every engagement, every marriage can be redeemed and made fresh and new all over again simply by us turning towards you, praising you, worshiping you. So as we do that right now, all of this to bless your name, I pray that you would restore that loving feeling to all of our hearts. Restore the joy of our salvation, restore the love that we had at first. We just love you. It's our honor to worship you in Jesus name. And everybody said, amen. Red Rocks at every location. Let's stand and let's worship.