The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - When Good Things Are Bad for You (Filling up on Chips and Salsa) Part 2

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Jeff continues to unpack what happens to us when we are too preoccupied with worldly things and neglect to keep our eyes on heaven. He uses the metaphor of filling up on chips and salsa to illustrate this point, and draws on multiple biblical examples to go ever deeper. Snippet from the Show “I am defined by Jesus Christ, I am defined by my heavenly Father, and I am defined by truth. And Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” SHOWNOTES Genesis 13:6 - (Lot & Abraham) “so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together; for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together” Genesis 36:7 - (Jacob & Esau) “For their possessions were too great for them to dwell together; the land of their sojourning could not support them because of their cattle.” Psalms 49:10 - “both wise and stupid leave possessions to others.” Proverbs 28:7 - “He who keeps the law is a wise son, but a companion of gluttons shames his father.” Ecclesiastes 5:19 - “Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. “ Numbers 11:18-20 - “And say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.’ Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the LORD who is among you, and have wept before him, saying, ‘Why did we come forth out of Egypt?’” Ecclesiastes 5:10 - “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity.” The Cost of Overindulging Matthew 19:22 - “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.” James 4:2 - “You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask.” Matthew 6:24 - “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” CCC 2113 - “Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, ‘You cannot serve God and mammon.’ Many martyrs died for not adoring "the Beast" refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.” Matthew 24:47 - “Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.” Matthew 6:33 - “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” Colossians 3:1-2 - “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Philippians 4:13 - “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, episode 132, Chips and Salza, When Good Becomes Bad, Part 2. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show.

Hey, welcome back to the show. talking about chips and salza. If you just got a hold of this show, you've got to go back and listen to the first chips and salza show. But I know one thing for sure, if you listen last week, the odds are that you went out to eat this week and you had some chips and Salza and hopefully the first show really came into focus. If you just joined us, go ahead and listen to that, part one, but we're going to continue on this week with looking at a little bit deeper the consequences of eating the chips in salza before the chimichanga and how full you get and how disappointed you oftentimes are when you go out to eat and you fill up on the appetizer

rather than the main meal. Hey, let me just take a a moment to thank you for joining the show every week. And the response that I'm getting from you is really, really powerful. I appreciate you going to iTunes and all the different sources where the podcast is available and ranking the show and leaving show notes. That actually helps quite a bit with the algorithm. If you enjoy the show, if you don't enjoy the show, go have some chips and Saul's not kidding. But please, I thank you for doing that, and I'm very, very grateful. And I look forward every week to getting together with you and sharing, you know, the good things of the Lord and some of the details of becoming an activated disciple. That is my latest book,

The Activated Disciple with Ascension Press. You can get it at Ascension Press or Amazon anywhere. And it's really a very practical guide to changing the shape of your day and walking with Christ, listening to his voice, coming to know him, and being obedient and sharing Christ with anyone. I am a huge believer that we all can share Christ with anybody anywhere. It is so simple, and I talk about that on a number of podcasts in the past on the Chirigma, a cup of curigmas, one of them. But in the book, there's a whole chapter on that. So I encourage you, if you want to take your faith to the next level, get the book, The Activated Disciple. And it's doing really well right now and we're getting some good comments from it. Well, last week we talked about chips and salzo when good

becomes bad. And using the basic analogy of going to a restaurant, in this case, it's a Mexican restaurant, most likely. And you walk in and they set down a basket of chips and a bowl of salza and you grab the menu and you start looking at what you came to eat. But when you know it, you fill up on chips and salsa, you even have a couple of baskets, even knowing I probably shouldn't be doing this because I want to save room for the enchiladas. And you do it anyway, and you get full on the non-essentials.

You get full on the things that don't mean as much to you as, you know, Like, for example, I was thinking about this since last week, and I was thinking, you know, how many times in our life do we long for things or to improve ourselves in some way when what we're really, really desiring deep inside is unity with God and peace with God and harmony, you know, with God, to walk with God like Adam and Eve did in the garden? well what broke up Adam and Eve's nice walker stroll in the garden with God back in Genesis was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which had on it three things which are really good but not essential right they're not essential to our lives in fact in their case they were told

not to indulge in that but to freely eat in moderation from all the other trees in the garden and those three things on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were things that were beautiful things that were tasty and things that would make one wise. Those are dangerous. Those are dangerous things. And while we don't necessarily have this specific tree in our lives, we have aspects of that tree in our lives, that are things that are beautiful that we should not be indulging in, things that are tasty that we should not be indulging in, and things that we'll make one.

wise, or the self-improvement thing, and those are things that we don't want to totally focus on. Well, this week I want to talk about going a little bit deeper here, and how this focus on the Chips and Salza is so dysfunctional. You know, how leads us into a dysfunctional life. I asked myself the question, why don't I walk with the mind of Christ? Because we have been given, according to Paul, the mind of Christ. Why don't we walk? with the mind of Christ. And I've concluded, at least in my own life, and maybe you find it to be true as well, that I have other things on my mind. Why don't I walk with the mind of Christ? Well, frankly, I have other things on my mind, you know, today. Like what? Well, some beautiful things and some

tasty things and some things that will make me a fantastic person, you know? And that's one of the reasons we don't have the mind of Christ is because our mind is occupied by chips and salsa rather than what we're really called to do. Runaway appetites truly do have consequences, don't they? And what are some of the manifestations of a runaway appetite or focusing just on chips and salsa in a world where we're really called to think about eternal things, things above and not just things below here on earth? Well, some of the ramifications, one, is the relationship with God. We see that after Adam and Eve indulged in Genesis 3, in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, what happened with their relationship with God? Well, they hid from him,

right? Remember, they hid from him, and God said, where are you? And he had to go looking for them. The relationship with others also changed. They became utilitarian. We use people to fill our void in our and this happens so often with people on the internet with likes, right? It's interesting because I just heard a story about Facebook is talking about taking away the likes because they said that it is mentally not healthy for people, and particularly in the study, young women, and that interesting. So our relationship with one another is changed when we start to indulge in the beautiful, the tasty and the things that make us wise and better.

And so we start looking at other people in a utilitarian way. How can you make me happy? Now that our will is weakened and our reason darkened after the fall and we struggle with concupus, since the relationship becomes actually very, very more complex with one another. And it changes our relationship to creation. Big buzzword, global warming, what's happening in the world today with us. our relationship with creation. I was reading the other day about this vast wasteland in the middle of the ocean,

about the size of Texas filled with plastic and garbage. Well, this desire for tasty and beautiful things, the things that make us wise, results in quite a lot of waste. Quite a lot of waste. I got a Starbucks the other day, and I guess they're doing away with the straws, good thing. created the top of their of their nitro coffee but anyway it changes the relationship to creation

from stewards to what exploiters and possessors and we now find our meaning in the things of the flesh the things that are simply beautiful and the things that lead to personal advancement in our own lives very shallow very temporal very empty the bottom line is that now we have a major problem. And one of the problems that we face now when we focus on the Chips and Salza rather than the chimichanga, we focus on the temporal things of this world rather than the meal, the Eucharist, the relationship with God, those things that were really called to, is that possessions not only define us, but they divide us. This pursuit of the beautiful and the tasty and things that make us wives. They start to now define us. We define ourselves based on

these things, and they divide us. Let me give you a story. Real quick story here. It's a true story. I started buying books when I was in fourth grade. I got a hold of a book. I think it was fourth grade. It was called Coyote for Keeps. It was one of the books that really got me going reading along with a great story, My Side of the Mountain. And there were a number of other books, The Last of the Mohicans and some others. Anyway, I started to read books, and I was fascinated with books

because books gave me a gateway into another world. I could go anywhere, I could meet anybody. I found that books were just fascinating, you know? And I started to mow lawns and shoveled driveways in Minnesota, and every penny that I got, I would buy books. Well, as I got older and I turned 18, I had this conversion experience with the Lord, and I started buying all kinds of theological books. I make a long story short, it was about, I don't know, 10 years ago. I had close to, I think, maybe 8,000 books in my library, something

like that. And it was kind of neat, you know, because I couldn't resist a good title. and I had to build more bookshelves. Not only was my office filled with books, the hallway outside of my office was filled with books. I had books upstairs in the bedroom, in other rooms, and oftentimes friends would come over and they'd look at my library and they'd say, wow, look at all these books. And they would ask the question, did you read all these? Well, I wanted to say yes, but I had not read all those books, but I couldn't resist a good title in collecting and accumulating books. And then one day, I was looking at all these books, a source of pride. And I thought to myself, it was a come to Jesus moment. It was an

honest moment. And I looked at these books and I said, you know what? And they were all categorized, by the way, by topics. I thought to myself, you know, I am not going to read all these books. and so I felt very, very moved. I was by the Lord to divest myself of many of these books. And I went through them, and it must have taken me, I don't know, two or three weeks to go through all of the books. And I started to divide them up into piles of books that were really a help to me. And this was my calling in life, this topic, the Bible, love, suffering, simplicity. There were topics that I felt the Lord had given me in my life, and I kept those, and I gave away so many books to the seminary, books on topics that I knew I will never become.

And I realized as I looked myself in the library mirror, Jeff, you bought these books based on who you thought you would become. You're giving them away based on who you are. But my point is this, is that the books began. to define me. But it was a false definition. These books do not define me. I am defined by Jesus Christ. I'm defined by my Heavenly Father. I'm defined by truth. And Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. So we are not defined by what makes us beautiful. We are not defined by what is tasty. and we are not defined by what is going to make us this great individual, you know, wisdom and knowledge and insight and everything. That's not how I'm defined.

Strip all that away from me, from you, and you have someone who is eternally valuable. With nothing, you are eternally valuable because you're created in the image and likeness of God. So not only do possessions not define us, but they do divine. us. You might remember back in Genesis chapter 13, Lot and Abraham. It says so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together for why, why? Why wouldn't it support both of them? If you've been over to Israel, it's a pretty good size land, even though it's not a big country. How come it wouldn't support Lot and his uncle Abraham? It says, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. Right? Let me ask you a question.

Are your possessions so great that you can't live as a family? How many storage bins do you need? How many storage lockers are you contemplating, right? Our things, our possessions can be so great that we can't live together. Or our pursuit of possessions and things is so great that we can't live together in harmony and peace as brothers and sisters because we're constantly thinking about what's beautiful, what's tasty, and what makes. us wise. In Genesis 36, Jacob and Esau remember that story. It says their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojourning could not support them because of their

cattle. Too much stuff. Too much stuff, and the stuff begins to divide us. It begins to create space between us. You know I'm right. You know it. I know it. I've experienced this, and this often happens with families, with siblings, that their stuff, their stuff becomes too much and they cannot get along. Good things don't define us. Rather, God defines us. All right. God defines us. Wow. If you know, if you think about that, think about the early church in the book of Acts. I'll put this in the show notes, by the way. If you don't get the show notes, again, send me an email with the subject line show notes. Email is the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. I'll give you all the notes for every show automatically.

Think about the early church. When the Holy Spirit was poured out, they sold possessions. They divested themselves. Possessions. They sold them. They lived as one. They came together. They got closer.

You see, possessions in common united them. And that's because the possessions. were serving a greater purpose than themselves, the possessions were serving the community, one another, their family. Isn't that beautiful? I think that's just absolutely beautiful. Now, I'm going to take a break. When I come back, I want to give you a little bit of a warning from Solomon and then a solution to this problem. Chips and salsa, is that all you're having? or is everything in moderation, and you are actually focused on the real meal, the real spiritual Chimichanga? I'm Jeff Kavans, and this is the Jeff Kavans show.

Imagine this. You're walking down the street and a Christian at a table with a bunch of pamphlets ask you, have you been saved? What would you do? Would you know how to respond? Hi, I'm Dr. Andrew Swofford, and I'm co-presenter along with Jeff Kavins in Ascension's new great adventure Bible study, Romans, the Gospel of Salvation. In this study, in this study, we teach you the biblical foundations for the Catholic teaching on salvation, how to explain salvation quickly and easily to non-Christians. What St. Paul really meant by works not leading to salvation and how we can enter more deeply into Christ?

Paul's letter to the Romans has been at the center of reflection, conversion, and controversy from the very beginning, and it's widely considered his greatest work. I invite you to start a small group in your Homer Parish and embark on this great adventure. Romans, the Gospel of Salvation, is available for pre-order right now and for purchase on September 1st, 2019. To order, visit ascensionpress.com. Welcome back talking about enchiladas and chimichangas and tacos and refried beans and fried rice, everything. We're talking about getting too full on chips and salsa so we can't enjoy the meal.

And we've been talking about possessions on this particular episode. And one of the great warnings for us is, King Solomon. Now, King Solomon was the second, or he was the third king of Israel, and he had everything at his disposal, but his life is a cautionary tale. Solomon, Solomon's overindulgence was associated with disobedience, just like Adam and Eve, clear back in the Garden of Eden. It says in Second Chronicles 1, verse 11, that Solomon prayed in he asked for wisdom and not things. And God gave him wisdom to rule the people, right? But in First Kings, chapters 10 through 12, we see that possessions actually became his downfall as a king.

And he was warned not to have much gold, chariots, many wives. He broke all those in spades, and it was his downfall. And Solomon, of all people, should have known better. right? He should have known better. He was so wise. Now, Psalm 49 in verse 10 tells us that both the wise and the stupid leave possessions to others. There's no U-Haul to heaven, right? Proverbs 28 and verse 7, He who keeps the law is a wise son, but a companion of glutton's shames his father. Now one of the things that we need to do and we need to learn when it comes to Chips and Salza and the real meal is we need to learn the lesson that's given to us in Ecclesiastes chapter 5 in verse 19. Ecclesiastes is this story of Solomon who had everything, tried everything,

found no satisfaction in any of it, and he concluded that it was really all about God in his relationship with God. And he makes a comment, cohelet, makes a comment. in Ecclesiastes 519. It's very important for us to get in. It says this, everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil, this is a gift of God. Listen to that again, because you don't get it when you just suddenly, you'll read it really, really quick. It says, everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them. See, God gives us the ability to enjoy things as well. It's part of wisdom. And I think one of the problems that we face is that we

don't know how to enjoy our stuff. We don't know how to enjoy our stuff. But God gives power to enjoy. Would you like that power to enjoy some of the things of this world? I do. I think it's a great gift from God to have a tasty meal. I think it's a great gift of God to enjoy beauty. I think it's a great gift of God to enjoy wisdom and growing as human beings. But if that is your chips and salsa, and that's all there is, you're not going to be fulfilled. You see, We don't know how to enjoy chips and salsa. We just eat and eat and eat. Have a few chips.

The real meal's coming. It's God who gives us the power to enjoy what he gives us. And enjoyment is not necessarily spending it on yourself. There is a way to enjoy the things of the earth, but it's according to God's will. Now, our tendency is to go overboard, the extra helping. You're going to think about this every time you go to a man. Mexican restaurant after this. That's my prayer is that every time chips and salza is put down in front of you, you're going to think about me and you're going to think about this message and say,

okay, let's enjoy this in moderation. And let's translate this into real living. If you're with someone, start the conversation. Honey, you're married, say honey, I hope our whole life isn't chips and salsa. I hope that we can enjoy a few of these chips, a little bit of salza, but I hope we can save room for the real deal. The real meal. The interesting thing is that the more we indulge, the more we don't enjoy it. Chips and salsa? You see, Israel wanted more, and when they got more, when they got more meat, remember that story? Oh, let me just, let me read that story to you. It's in Numbers 11 real quick. This is the one where they wanted more meat. Oh, they got more meat. It says in Numbers 11, and I'll put it in the show notes, it's 18 through 20.

and say to the people, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, because they wanted meat. For you have wept in the hearing of the Lord saying, who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt. Therefore, the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat one day or two days or five days or ten days or twenty days, but a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him saying, why did we come forth out of Egypt? That's a great, that's great quote. We don't know how to enjoy the things of this earth without temperance and prudence,

not saying don't enjoy, enjoy, but with moderation. freedom without temperance meat equals meat coming out of your nostrils freedom without temperance means your stuff to the gills on chips and salsa prudence and temperance you know what prudence is right prudence is being able to make decisions based on the desired outcome you know where you want to be at the end of your life make proper decisions that's prudence prudence and tenets You know where you want to end up at the end of the night. You don't want to be walking out of there or rolled out of the restaurant. You want to go out feeling satisfied, a nice night with your bride, your friend. Prudence and temperance are what we need to focus on. Prudence to think rightly.

How do you go forward from where you are at? And temperance? To have things in moderation and balance. We don't live to eat. but we eat to live. Ecclesiastes 5-10, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth will gain with gain. This also is vanity. Lots of wisdom here, isn't there?

There's a cost for this overindulging, and you know that. Real quickly, you know, you've got Matthew 19, the rich young ruler, remember him, the rich young man, brother. He was so sad. Why? Because he couldn't let his possessions go. go. Jesus said, the guy said, what do I need to do? I've done all the commandments. Jesus said, sell what you have and give to the poor. Come follow me. Oh, it made him sad. No, no. Eve's sin,

what it cost her, walking with God. In the New Testament in James chapter four, says we desire and do not have so we kill and covet. See, it affects our relationship with each other in our environment. Matthew 6, the sermon on the mount, we can't serve God and Mammon, there must be a letting go. There must be a letting go. Let's talk about the solution real quick, shall we? I think we've talked a little enough about chips and salsa. What is the solution? Well, number one, realize that you're defined by your relationship with God. You're not defined by the things of this world. Maintaining is a matter of obeying God in matters of relationship with each other, relationship with creation,

most of all, a relationship with God himself through Jesus Christ. And so we have to shake ourselves out of this pattern of defining ourselves with chips and salsa. And we have to begin to pursue God. That is where our relationship is really defined. That's who we are. Number two, we have to change our relationship with these things. We do. When we go out to eat at the Mexican restaurant, we cannot go there thinking that it's the chips and salsa solely that we're going for.

We really are going for the Chimmy Changa. I know what you're going to write me and say, Jeff, I don't even like Mexican food. Well, fine, but you know what I'm talking about. We have to change our relationship with things. We go from being possessors to stewards, right? stewardship versus possessing. And read Matthew 24, a great parable there about a steward who is set over the master's possessions. Our possessions seen properly are God's possessions, and we are his

stewards. We're his stewards. An example, I can think of so many different examples of, like you have a car, if you have a car, you probably take care of it pretty well. But if the Pope called you and said, I want you to take care of the Pope Mobile for the next month, you'd probably take care of that a little bit better than even your own car. Why? Because of who it belongs to. It's the popes. It's the same thing with possessions. They're not yours. They belong to God. And so we take care of them. We take care of them. We need to hold things loosely as stewards, don't we? need to recognize that the true wealth that God is offering us goes through a filter of temporal wealth and that we're not going to stop there and grasp it, but we're really going to grasp

for the eternal things. We're going to grab a hold of them, not grasp for the temporal. So we need to change our relationship with the things of this world and do what Matthew 633 says, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all these things. shall be yours as well. Let me end with just a couple of scriptures, my friend. John 4, you know it. It's the woman at the well. Do you remember what she went there looking for water?

Remember that? She went there looking for water, but Jesus showed up and he gave her living water. You show up looking for chips and salza. That's what you're going to get. But God is offering you the Chimichanga. He's offering you something greater than the appetizer. And greater water, that's what she received. But listen, carefully, the world gives us a bucket to draw from the well

and that bucket has a string that's a foot too short. Empty promises. Can't get the job done. You'll see it on TV. You'll hear it on radio. You'll see it on the web. A bucket with a string, a foot. too short. God is the one who can give you what you're really, really desiring. So in conclusion,

do what Paul said to the Colossians. He said in Colossians 3, set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. And remember, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You are a beautiful child of God, a daughter of God, a son of God, with amazing potential. living in the kingdom of heaven, and you are eternity bound. Don't get caught in the quicksand of this world. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I love you. I thank you, Lord, for calling us to a greater life.

You're calling us up above to the eternal life. Lord, help us to learn how to enjoy the things of the things of the life. world without being caught up in them. Help us, Lord, to keep our eyes focused on you. Help us to enjoy a couple of chips knowing you've got something far greater. I thank you for doing this in your mighty name, in the name of Jesus, in the name of the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit. My friend, pray for me. I'm going to pray for you this week. And please know this. I love you and I love being together with you on these podcasts. God bless you and have a great week. Thank you.