Series: Overflow
Message: Overflow
Preacher: Jessyka Dooley
Reflection: Jessyka Dooley
Live Wonder: Zan Long
Live Adventure: Zan Long
Live Purpose: Kyle Smith
Editor: Becky De Oliveira
Refresh: Begin with prayer. Ask for the Holy Spirit to open your heart to new understanding and for God’s character to be revealed.
Read: Luke 6:43-45 in the New International Version (NIV). Note 1–3 insights or questions.
Reflect: My face is a tell-tale sign showing how I’ve been eating. If I’ve been surviving on french fries, candy bars, and chai lattes, you can tell. If I’ve been eating well-rounded meals with minimal sugar and drinking lots of water, you can also tell. As the old saying goes, “Good in, good out; bad in, bad out.” Or, as Jesus would put it, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man bring evil things he has stored up in his heart” (Luke 6:45).
This is evident on a practical level. We see it in our diets, our lifestyles, the shows we watch, the music we listen to, the friends we connect with. Good in, good out. Bad in, bad out. It’s just the way it goes. For my job, I read a lot of material concerning kids and teenagers. I also work with a lot of kids and teenagers. Sometimes I catch myself talking to other people, and I realize that I sound as if I have 15 kids of all ages back at home! I’ve starting reading some non-parenting, non-research, and non-kid books to balance myself out a bit!
Whatever goes into your brain, mouth, or life will come out eventually.
If you love to cry and be “all up in your feels,” you’ve probably watched the show This Is Us. In the show, mom Beth takes her daughters to sell Girl Scout cookies. Someone wants to buy four boxes but only has a credit card. When her daughters realize that she doesn’t have a swiper to connect to her iPhone, let alone know what a swiper is, they go off on a rant about how one of their friend’s moms is so much better at selling Girl Scout cookies. Beth immediately breaks down and yells, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
If you don’t watch the show, you would think Beth must be a horrible mom, but if you do watch, you would know that she just lost a job she’d had for more than a decade at a company she had helped build from scratch. Badness had come into her life and badness was coming out.
Sometimes there are bad things that we don’t choose that still end up occupying our hearts and minds. Sometimes bad things just happen and make their home inside us without consent. The pivotal choice is in how to handle these things. When bad comes in, bad will come out—but we can guide it out in a positive way instead of in a way that harms others.
We’ve seen the unfortunate reality of badness in/badness out in far too many of our communities— in movie theaters, streets, clubs, hospitals, and schools. Someone who has had a lot of bad come into their lives (maybe through their own choice; maybe not) finds something a bit more easily accessible than help: a gun. And with that, the bad comes right back out and harms others.
Sometimes bad comes into your life against your will. Choose to combat that by processing it out in a healthy way and filling your life with more good, more Jesus.
Recalibrate: What is your method of processing the bad out of your life?
Respond: Ask God to continue guiding you in filling your life with good and processing out the bad.
Research: Watch Sangu Delle’s TED Talk on Mental Health.
Remember: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45, NIV).
Jessyka Dooley is associate pastor at Boulder Adventist Church, leading Live Wonder (ages 0-3), Live Adventure (ages 4-11), and Live Purpose (ages 12-17), along with their supporting ministries. She grew up in Washington State and has a degree in theology from Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska. Jessyka has served in various areas of ministry, but her passion for discipling kids has taken center stage in her career.
With your little one, choose their favorite fruit. Chop the fruit up together and fill up a bowl, asking them to tell you when it is full. Enjoy eating together and filling up on something sweet. Talk about what the fruit is like to eat. Is it squishy or crunchy? Does it burst in your mouth, like a grape? Just as we fill up our tummies with good things like fruit, Jesus says we should fill our hearts with what is good.
Make time to speak or do good things today. You may need to plan what words or actions to use. Remember what our text says: “The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” If you’re having trouble thinking of good things to say or do, think about what you would like someone to say or do for you.
In 1999, there was a craze of people fearing something called Y2K. Maybe you have heard of it. The fear of thousands of people was that when the clocks hit the first hour of the year 2000, everything was going to crash! All computers would stop working, food routes would be delayed, grocery stores would go empty for weeks, and we would starve! Thousands of people stored up mountains of food in basements, pantries, and garages. But here is the kicker, the disaster of Y2K didn’t happen! Yet something cool did. I remember people in my community who were ready and willing to share what they had stored up. They had an abundance and out of that abundance came a spirit to share and give. Our text this week says that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What are you storing up in your heart? Are you willing to share it?