David Jeremiah - The Inward Journey (01/28/2026)
The sermon uses the powerful image of the 2010 Guatemala City sinkhole to illustrate how a life that looks stable on the surface can collapse if the inner, spiritual foundation is weak. Drawing from Romans 2:28-29, David Jeremiah argues that authentic faith is an inward reality, not just outward observance. He identifies two main distractions—frenzy and familiarity—and counters them with the spiritual disciplines of solitude/prayer and deep, applied Bible study to build a life that can withstand life's storms.
In late May of 2010, when the tropical storm Agatha had finally finished its course, a 330-foot deep sinkhole opened up in downtown Guatemala City. Now, like all sinkholes, this one caused the ground to collapse, and in this case, it sucked the land into the hole, including electricity poles, a three-story factory building, and one security guard, all sucked into this sinkhole. Now, in case you're not up on what a sinkhole is, let me tell you. A sinkhole is created when the ground underneath the surface is rich in easily dissolved rock type, and if enough water seeps into that area, these formations collapse and they create a large crater known as a sinkhole. Let me ask you a question. How many of you have ever seen a sinkhole of any kind? Quite a few of us.
Land that looks stable and strong on the surface suddenly collapses, often producing havoc for anyone who lives near the sinkhole. Unfortunately, our interior lives can sometimes resemble the danger zone of a sinkhole. When we're too busy to spend time with God or when we refuse to deal with past hurts or habitual sin or secret addictions or character flaws, we set ourselves up for a collapse. And the surface of our life may look stable and secure, but underneath the exterior, we're actually sitting on a fragile base, and the storms of life, or even just the normal process of living, can suddenly expose our hidden vulnerabilities, and it causes something that kind of looks like a spiritual sinkhole.
I want to ask you to think about a journey that is not quantified by charts or graphs. I want you to anticipate a year that is not validated by how many or how much. I want to ask you to think with me for these moments about a journey inward. When I speak of an inward journey, maybe I can give you an illustration of that from a rather strange passage, but a passage that really illustrates the truth. Romans 2:28-29, Paul's writing to the Romans, and he says this: "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter".
The apostle Paul was reminding his readers that outwardness is not authentic unless it is the reflection of the inwardness of one's life. It's not the flesh, but the heart. It's not the letter, it's the Spirit. And the inner life describes the heart behind the habits. It describes the belief behind the behavior. It describes the desire behind the duty. And lest you think this is a negative thing we're going to discuss, let me remind you that we should be greatly encouraged that God does not want us to live as hypocrites. No, God wants us to live transformed all the way down to who we are.
He wants us to live from the inside out. He doesn't want us to go around posturing all the time, trying to cover up what we really know is true. Now, nobody does that perfectly, not in this world, because we're all flawed and we're all sinners. We still have the old nature. But as we think about the beginning of this new year and the opportunities it presents, I want to talk with you about the distractions and the disciplines of an inward life.
The Two Distractions: Frenzy and Familiarity
Merriam-Webster says: a distraction is something that draws or directs your attention to a different object or in a different direction at the same time you're supposed to be concentrating on something else. And there are two distractions I want to talk to you about that can get in our way of growing in Christ. The first one is the distraction, I'm gonna call it frenzy. The distraction of frenzy, of busyness. Did you know that busyness can be an addictive drug? You say, "What do you mean"? That's why they call them workaholics.
According to James Houston, busyness, for many people, acts to repress our inner fears and personal anxieties. We get busy because we can't deal with what's really true in our own life, so we cover it all up by just getting so busy, we just go from one thing to the next, and we don't have to think about what's really important. In a "New York Times" article called, "The Busy Trap," Tim Kreider describes the frenzy of many Americans. This may sound like somebody you know and it may remind you of yourself.
He said, "If you live in America in the 21st century, you've probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It becomes the default response when you say to somebody, 'How are you doing?' And they'll respond, 'Busy, so busy, crazy busy.' It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response when people say that to us is a kind of congratulations. We say, 'Well, that's a good problem to have,' or 'Better than the opposite.'
Notice, it usually isn't people pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are. No, what those people are is not busy but tired, exhausted, dead tired, dead on their feet. It's almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they've taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they've encouraged their kids to participate in. They're busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they're addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face if they weren't so busy".
And so, when we will not provide a place for the direction of the indwelling Christ, all that is left is the frenzied agenda of a hassled discipleship. That's the first distraction. The second distraction is what I'm gonna call familiarity. We become like the people that Paul wrote to Timothy about. You know what he said about these people? He said, "They have a form of godliness, but they don't have any power". On two occasions in the book of Revelation, John wrote to some churches.
Listen to how he described these churches. This is the Church of Sardis. He said, "These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: 'I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you're dead.'" And to the church of Laodicea, he said this: "You say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing', and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked...'" We can become so familiar with the outward tokens of our faith that they no longer draw us inward toward God.
Many of us are like Samson, who did not know that his strength was gone until he needed it, and then it wasn't there. You remember his story? He had his hair cut off by Delilah, and that was the source of his strength, and he didn't know it. When he woke up, the Bible says he got up as he had done before, and he was weak. There was no strength. In the 19th century, there was a philosopher that I had to read when I was in seminary. His name was Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher.
And all the way back then, he was very disturbed by the church situation of his time. He was a pastor in the city of Copenhagen, and everywhere he saw Christians, but he said, "They were 'Christians,' quote, 'in quotation.'" He saw, "Professed Christians who were completely secure and self-satisfied, for they had the Bible. Many of them carried the Bible in their pockets, and they had the Word of God". But Kierkegaard asked himself, "Is this really the religion set forth in the Bible"? And his answer was that such a religion was an impudent indecency.
Now, he was a very plain-spoken philosopher. And what I'm about to read you, I don't think I would ever have the courage to say. He said it. Just remember, this is Kierkegaard, not Jeremiah. He said, "A young girl of 16 summers, it's her confirmation day. Among the many tasteful and beautiful gifts, she also receives the New Testament in a very pretty binding. Now, that is what one may call real Christianity. To tell the truth, no one expects, and probably rightly so, that she, any more than anyone else, will read that New Testament or at any rate not as originally intended, the book given her as a potential consolation in life.
'Here, should you need it, you will find consolation.' Of course, it is assumed that she will never read it any more than any other young girls, but if she does, it will not be read as originally intended. Yet," said Kierkegaard, "that is supposed to be Christianity. You have a Bible, you go to church, you do the Christian things. I would be tempted to make Christianity another proposition," said Kierkegaard. "Let us gather together every single copy of the New Testament. Let us cart the whole collection out to an open place or up to a mountaintop, and then while all of us kneel down, let someone speak to God and say, 'Take back this book. We humans don't know what to do with it.'"
And I swallowed hard when I read that. Who would ever think of something like that? But what he was saying was, it's possible to get so familiar with the Christian stuff, you know, there's even a language, did you know it, called Christianese? You become a Christian, when you first become a Christian, you talk like a normal person. Then after you're a Christian for a while, you get a whole new vocabulary, and you walk around, everybody's so impressed with your thees and thous and all that stuff.
But if we're not careful, we become familiar with it, and it doesn't really make any difference in our life. And we just go about the business, and church becomes a part of our culture, and being a Christian is what we write down on the questionnaire, and that's what it is. But Kierkegaard is right about one thing. That is not the religion of the Bible. So these distractions that we deal with, how do we deal with them?
The Disciplines That Defeat The Distractions
In this section of my message, I want to talk about the disciplines that will defeat the distractions. And I want to tell you something. There's no rocket science here, and this is not something you probably haven't heard before, but at the beginning of this new year, this is what I believe God wants to lay on our hearts. So before I go there, I want to remind you of the importance of discipline in the Christian life. I know that's not a favorite word of many. I struggle with discipline myself. All of us do. If we don't, we're not being honest.
But no one really succeeds without discipline. We need it. We need to develop it. We need God to help us become more disciplined about the things that really matter. Harry S. Truman, one of my favorite presidents, a quaint guy, said, "In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they all won was the victory over themselves. Self-discipline with all of them came first". And I love what Jackson Brown wrote. He said, "Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates". There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's gonna be forward, backwards, or sideways".
The Word of God tells us that discipline is a part of our life. Paul wrote to young Timothy, and he said, "Timothy, bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and that is to come". And at the beginning he says, "Exercise yourself toward godliness". What does that mean? I've always loved that verse because the word "exercise" in that verse comes from a Greek word, and here's the Greek word, I'm gonna pronounce it, "gymnazo".
It's the word from which we get the word "gymnasium". And what Paul is saying to Timothy is, just like you need to go to the gym and stay in shape physically, you need to go to the spiritual gym and stay in shape spiritually. Just like there are exercises that help you to become stronger physically, there are exercises that cause you to become stronger spiritually. And he says this: "Bodily exercise profits little". I know some people that have taken that little phrase as their life verse. Bodily exercise profits little.
When they're tempted to get up in the morning and take a walk, their life verse comes into play. Bodily exercise profits little. But Paul only uses that as an illustration. He says, "Bodily exercise profits little, but spiritual exercise is profitable in all things". And then he goes on to say that bodily exercise is temporal. Our bodies wear out. But the Bible says while bodily exercise is temporal, spiritual exercise profits us now and throughout eternity. So he's making the case that while you make a priority of physical exercise, don't forget spiritual exercise.
The Discipline for Frenzy: Solitude and Prayer
So what discipline do we begin with if we're living lives out-of-control frenzy? Where do we go? Well, the discipline of solitude is one that we might suggest. And I want to give you a verse that's so important, I'm going to read it to you in four different translations or paraphrases. Here is the verse, Psalm 46:10: "Be still, and know that I am God". Listen to the other translations of this verse. I love this. Psalm 46:10 in The Living Bible: "Stand silent! Know I am God"! Here is the Amplified Bible: "Be still and know (recognize, and understand) that I am God".
And my favorite is The Message: "Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything". "Be still and know that I am God". Now, what's the problem with those verses for all of us? We're never still. We get up in the morning and it's a rat race all the way through the whole day. We put our tired heads on the pillow at night only to get up the next day and start over. We don't have any solitude in our lives. And it's not just about being quiet, although people who aren't even Christians have discovered the power of that, and we'll see that in a moment.
Solitude in itself is not what will help you out of your frenzy. But what happens when you are still before God, you listen for his inner voice in your heart. The next thing you know, you're talking to God and you're praying, because when you're still before God, the discipline of solitude joins hands with the discipline of prayer. And Isaiah says that when we pray, God will keep us in perfect peace because our mind is stayed on him. When you get into fellowship with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, something happens in your heart.
If you rush into every day without any time whatsoever for God, God won't abandon you, but you will not be aware of his presence, and that's the problem. Oswald Chambers puts it in all perspective when he says, "Remember, no one ever has the time to pray. We have to take time from other things that are valuable in order to understand how necessary prayer is. The things that act like thorns and stings in our personal lives will go away instantly when we pray. We won't feel the smart anymore because now we will have God's viewpoint on life and God's viewpoint on people".
Do you know something that I have discovered? You probably have discovered it too. I would be disingenuous and certainly dishonest if I told you that every day of my whole life I have started with prayer because that isn't true. What I've noticed in starting a day with prayer and sometimes journaling and spending time with God is a lot of the things that are all collected in the back of your mind that you need to get done that day, you wonder how you're ever going to get done, all of a sudden things that you can't even explain happen that care for the cares of your day.
God has a wonderful way when we put him first and take time for him, of helping us get through the day. Sometimes without our even knowing it, he reorganizes everything in our day. I didn't know how in the world I was ever gonna talk to this person, and I went to the gas station and they were pumping gas next to my car. Have you ever had that happen? Somebody say, "Oh, that's just a coincidence". You know what I've discovered? The more I pray, the more coincidence that happen to me, amen? So be still and know that I am God.
You've heard me quote him often because I greatly respect Mark Batterson. He's an incredible writer. And in one of his books, he was talking about the importance of solitude, and he cobbled together the solitude strategies of some very famous people. I thought I'd tell you some of these. In 1956, environmentalist Sigurd Olson built a small cabin on the banks of a lake in northern Minnesota. The naming of lake homes is customary in the land of 10,000 lakes, and most of the names are rather predictable.
But Olson was a little more intentional. His objective in building the cabin, and he wasn't a Christian as far as I know, but his objective in building the cabin was to, quote, "hear all that was worth listening for". So he called his cabin, "The Listening Point," and he would just go there and be quiet and listen. Susanna Wesley raised 17 children in a very small cabin, so solitude was hard to come by. Her whispering spot was a rocking chair in the middle of the room, and she would throw a blanket over herself. It turned into her tent of meeting God.
Perhaps that's what inspired her son, John, to kneel next to his bed and give his life to ministry and become the John Wesley about whom we have all read. Thomas Edison, probably not a believer. He had a thinking chair. Alexander Graham Bell had a dreaming place. Overlooking the Grand River, Henry David Thoreau skipped stones on Walden Pond. Then there was Ludwig van Beethoven. He sat at his desk until early afternoon and then took a stroll to reinvigorate his mind.
He carried a pencil and a few sheets of music paper in his pocket to record anything that might occur to him musically, and he would write it down. Your whispering spot, your listening spot, will be as unique as you are, but you need to find a time and a place to escape the frenzy of the world so that you can be still and know who God is. Why do you think most people get up early to do this? It's the only time they have control over. And so they get up early when no one can mess with them and take time for the Lord. The discipline for frenzy is solitude and prayer.
The Discipline for Familiarity: Bible Study
Now, the discipline for familiarity is Bible study. And I know you're going to say, "Well, Dr. Jeremiah, we expect you to say that. That's what we pay you to say". Listen carefully. The journey inward is not possible without the Bible. The Bible itself is not the answer. It is our use of the Bible that makes the difference. We have to allow the Bible's truth to wash over our minds and thoughts and fill the emptiness in our hearts. Paul told the Romans that the only way they could recover from the pull of the world upon them was through the renewing of their mind.
He said, "Don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind so that you can determine what's right". What does it mean, "the renewing of your mind"? I liken it to a spiritual transfusion. You don't get rid of worldly, negative, sinful thoughts by making up your mind to get rid of them. You get rid of them by replacing them. You force truth into your mind, and that forces all of the junk out. There's a great statement about that in the Bible, and I want to finish my message with that in just a moment.
We live in a world that is more and more negative, where good information of any kind is becoming rare. I don't know how many stations you have in your television system. You would think that on a given night, you could find something somewhere that was worth watching. But there are many nights when you just want to sit down and relax and watch something wholesome, when you go through the whole channel thing and there's not one thing worth watching. Can I get a witness? So, you've got to figure out something else.
If you're going to get positive input, there's only one place I can promise you you can get it, and it's in the Word of God. And Paul said, "You renew your mind by the Word of God". How many of you know that sometimes there's a little verse, and I don't mean this in any other way than it's just pregnant. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 is a pregnant verse. It's a verse that's just begging to be born in your life and in mine, and it's just chuck full. So I'm gonna give you a little outline of 1 Thessalonians 2:13, and this is what the Bible says we should do with the Word of God.
Let me read the verse: "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe". Here's what we are challenged to do with the Bible, according to 1 Thessalonians 2:13: we're to accept it. "You received the word of God which you heard from us". We hear the Word of God today through preaching and reading and watching and personal testimony, and we listen to it.
But how many of you know the hearing of the Word of God is becoming more and more rare? Even in many churches, the Word of God is given just a lick and a promise. It's incidentally involved in the service. But our church services ought to be all about the Word of God. Amos the prophet said, "'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord God, 'that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.'" Amos said, "There's coming a day when there'll be a famine of the hearing of the words of the Lord".
We have discovered that people want the Word of God. We cannot give them something inferior that will ever satisfy them. Over the years that I've been doing this now for almost 50 years, I have been just doing the same thing. I've avoided all the cul-de-sacs, all the detours, all the, "Let's try this, let's try that". No, there's only one thing you can do. The Word of God comes with a promise that it will never return unto God without accomplishing his purpose. We need to accept the Word of God. Here's the second thing. We need to anticipate the Word of God.
He says, "You welcomed the Word of God". That has the idea of getting excited that it's going to happen. You didn't just listen to it. You were anxious to hear it. You wanted the Word of God in your life. The two words used in this verse are quite different. The first one means to hear with your ears, but the second one means to hear with your heart. When you came to the Word of God, you had an anticipation that God was gonna say something to you from this book that was gonna mean something to you in your life.
Do you come to the scripture like that? Do you come to church like that? Do you pray as you come to church, "Lord, help Pastor Jeremiah to say something today that will help me understand the situation I'm in, direct me to a scripture that..." and you know, God does that. He does it in a way that's just amazing. I can preach on something that has nothing to do with what's going on in your life, but incidentally, I will say something, and God will use that to help you get through your situation. How do I know that? I read letters about that every single week.
And I think to myself, "When did I say that"? You accept the Word of God, you anticipate the Word of God, you appreciate the Word of God. "Not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God". Paul was rejoicing that these Thessalonian believers, when they read the Word of God, they didn't read it like it was a book written by men. They read it as a book coming from God. This book is not human. This book is supernatural. This book is God's book. And when you read it, it's not going to have the same impact on you as if you're reading a novel.
This book will come to you in a way that is just amazing. We should never approach the Bible as we approach other books that we read. The Bible is different in origin and in character and in content and in cost. The Bible is the Word of God. It is inspired by the Spirit of God. It was written by men who were controlled by the Spirit of God. People think, "Well, when the Bible is inspired, that just means the guys who wrote it had an inspiration". No, the word "inspire" means to breathe into.
And 2 Peter 1:21 says it this way: "Prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit". So the Bible is a book that was written from God, but he wrote the book through the personalities of the writers so that while it was still the Word of God, the personalities of the 40-some writers is clear in their writing. It's an amazing, incredible book. One of my great teachers in seminary was a guy named Charles Ryrie. He wrote some tremendous books along with his study Bible.
And here's what he wrote about the Bible. This is instructive. He said, "Not many years ago, all you had to say to affirm your belief in the inspiration of the Bible was that you believed the Bible was the Word of God. That was it. But as people have sliced and diced and criticized and hacked the Bible to bits or tried to, it became necessary to add that you believe the Bible was inspired. It's the inspired Word of God. Later, you had to include verbally inspired, which means every word is inspired.
And then to mean the same thing, you had to say, plenary. Plenarily inspired means that it's inspired from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. Today, you have to say, I believe the Bible is plenarily verbally inspired, and it's the infallible Word of God. That's what I believe. That's what we believe. But now you've got to do it, because so many people have tried to undermine God's Word that you have to be really clear about what you mean. I believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God". That's what we teach and preach. That's what we believe.
So you accept the Word of God. You anticipate it. You appreciate it. And then in the same verse, here's an incredible little phrase, you apply the Word of God, most important of all, "which also effectively works in you who believe". Do you see that in the text? He says you accept the Word of God because it is working in you. It's energetically working in your life. Let me ask you this question: Is God's Word energetically working in your life? Is it making a difference? When Paul says that God has an effective work in the hearts of those who believe, he is saying that when anyone, anytime, anywhere believes the message of the Bible, something will happen in his life.
This is a dynamic book. Hebrews says: "The word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword". Theologian Robert Webber said, "Some time ago I was biking in Michigan, and I met another biker who, like myself, was a professor of theology. In the course of our conversation by the side of the road, he said something I will never forget. He said, 'Bob, all I really want in life is for the Word of God to take up residence inside of me and form me into Christ-likeness.'"
Webber said, "I think that statement hit me hard because my seminary training in the Bible was never that personal. We were always asking, what does it say? And seldom, if ever, made the step into a deep personal application: How can that truth take up residence in me"? That's so critical, men and women. The Bible needs to be energetically working in us. That's what will make the changes in our life that we're seeking. That's what will make us different people. And I know that some of you say, "Well, Dr. Jeremiah, I've been reading the Bible all my life, and where's the change"?
J.C. Ryle said, "Do not think you're getting no good from the Bible merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise and are most easily observed. The greatest effect of the Bible is the often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time thing that is producing in your life. Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more going on in your life because you read the Bible than you are taking note of".
Let me tell you something. You cannot read the Bible and study the Bible as we've described from 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and not have it change your life over a period of time, little by little, the renewing of your mind and the renewing of your heart. Let me close with a story. The island of Manhattan consists almost entirely of bare granite, a very hard and strong type of rock. To carry the weight of a 75- or 100-story skyscraper, builders use foundation anchors called piles. Piles are concrete or steel columns hammered into the ground until they penetrate the solid rock of the foundation.
For especially tall buildings, listen to this, some piles are driven 25 stories below ground. The heavy weight of the skyscraper is then distributed through each of the piles. And together, they support the structure's enormous weight. If foundation piles are drilled and driven in poorly, cracks will eventually appear in the structure. Entire buildings could lean, and then they have to be torn down or lifted completely so the piles can be reset. In the same way, men and women, in our lives it's true. If we don't have a strong foundation, we're going to be in trouble, and especially at a time like this.
Building Your Life on a Strong Foundation
What I've been talking to you about today is mirrored in the New Testament by the words of Jesus. Listen to these words: "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew that beat on the house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall".
I want to tell you two things about this story that you may never have heard before because I never thought of them quite this way. First of all, the blessing or the curse of your response to the Word of God is not whether you heard the words or not. Notice what it says. "Whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them". So the issue isn't whether or not you heard the Word of God. The issue is whether or not you do the Word of God. If you hear it and you don't do it, that doesn't make any difference.
Now, I want you to imagine with me that the two houses in Jesus's parable are on the same street. They're actually next to each other. They're built by the same builder, and you can see the similarity of the houses. And you don't know there's anything different about these houses, because they look the same. They're almost mirrors of each other. And then one day, the Bible says the storm came, and the rain came down, and the floods came down, and the house that was built here on the rock is standing strong, but the house that was built on the sand crumbles, and great is its fall.
Here's what I want you to remember. Whether or not you build your foundation strong, is your choice. And you may be able to go through life, and nobody will know whether you're doing that or not. But one day, and maybe it's happened already, the storm will come. And the storm will not make you what you are. The storm will reveal what you are. The storm is very non-discerning of who we are or what we've done. The storm hits everybody the same, and the difference is whether or not you've built a strong foundation.
So as we go into this new year, as lovingly as I can, without making this a guilt trip, because it's not, I just want to encourage you as to how you can make this year the best year you ever had. No matter what goes on in life, frenzy can grab hold of us if we don't find a place to be still and know that God is there. And familiarity, we're all victims of that. The way we overcome that is get a fresh word from God every day and know that God is... he's not static. He's dynamic. And you can be dynamic if you let the Word of God fill your life.