The Good Life

The Optimisation Trap

This month is my birthday — I'm turning 34. And because I'm turning 34, I decided now was a good time to join the gym. When you sign up, they make you do all these stretches, mobility tests, and strength tests to figure out your bio age — basically the age your body is operating at. I did all the testing, logged into the app, and the results came in: my bio age came out as 56. I'm 33. So I've got quite a lot of work ahead of me.

I don't know if you spend a lot of energy optimising your life. Maybe you've got a side hustle, maybe you've swapped your flat whites for a matcha, maybe you're doing cold plunges to start your day, an LED mask, a 37-step skin routine. Anyone else self-diagnosing on ChatGPT all the time? Make me sound smarter, make me sound more professional.

We are the most tracked, self-improved, and most intentional generation ever. But is it scratching the itch? Or is there more to life than this?

Come Holy Spirit: The Good Life

Today we're starting a three-week sermon series called Come Holy Spirit. I believe that fullness of life is found in the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.

The first time we ever read about the Spirit is in verse two of the Bible — right back in Genesis. The Spirit was there at the beginning, at the start of creation. When God made the world, he used one word to describe it over and over again. He said that it was good. Land — good. Light — good. Living creatures — good.

But he wasn't giving it a mark out of ten. It wasn't an adjective describing a behaviour. He called it good because it was. Everything was rightly and fully functioning as designed.

In creation, the Spirit is at work doing one thing: producing life. The good life.

So how can you and I live the good life? In our passage, I think we see three opportunities — three ways we can live life as God intended.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. (Genesis 1)

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

1. The Spirit with Us — Presence

This week my husband was away with work, so I was alone in our house. I don't know if anyone else is still scared of the dark — I really thought I'd grow out of it, but this week was a test. There's that moment before you turn the lights off when you realise you're in your bedroom alone, everything's quiet, and you feel a bit vulnerable.

The start of the world was pretty bleak. Pretty dark. It's described as formless, vast, and empty. But it wasn't just dark — it was unformed, unorganised, and uninhabitable for humanity.

But then we read verse two: the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Hovering doesn't have a very good reputation in our culture. It paints a picture of something overbearing. But the picture painted here is more like an eagle — wings spread out over its young, present and ready. The Spirit's presence in creation is like an attentive, caring parent. Before any word is spoken, before anything is made, the Spirit is already there.

The Hebrew word for spirit is ruach, translated as wind, breath, or spirit. There's an energy associated with ruach — it moves and has effects we can see and feel in the world.

From Chaos to Life

If we look closer, before the Spirit is mentioned, the water is called the deep. In Hebrew this was a really negative term — an abyss, a chaos that was going to swallow you up. But the moment the Spirit's presence is registered, the whole image shifts. It's no longer described as the deep or the chaos, but the waters — a far more neutral word.

The abyss will swallow you up and you will drown in it. And yes, with water you can drown — but water also gives life, through rivers and springs and wells. The whole scene is transformed simply by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

There are areas of my life that feel like they might swallow me up. I feel constant mom guilt — am I enough? Am I doing this right? For you it might be your performance at work, constantly striving for something out of reach, or a heavy and demanding schedule. For some it might be an internal chaos, where everything in your mind feels turned up to volume 100 and you can't think straight.

Even just living in 2026 in central London is a challenge. We're overstimulated, with noise coming from multiple directions. I have so many unread WhatsApps I can't bring myself to open them. We live amidst chaos.

God Is Not Overwhelmed

Last week there was a heatwave, and during it we had a massive thunderstorm one evening. I remember lying in bed with lightning flashing through the curtains, thunder so loud it felt like it was in our bed. I lay awake for what felt like hours waiting for the storm to pass, expecting one of the kids to wake up terrified.

But our kids have white noise playing in their rooms and blackout blinds on their windows. They were completely oblivious to the storm raging around them. They slept peacefully. As parents, we try to create that safe environment where they can be at peace.

God is not overwhelmed by what overwhelms us. You might feel like you're in the eye of the storm right now, but God is poised, positioned, and able to bring order to our chaos. Like an attentive, caring parent, he hovers over us. He knows what we need and he will protect us from those storms.

It's the Spirit with us that makes the good life. His very presence is what shifts and changes us.

The Peace the World Can't Manufacture

All over my algorithm at the moment is Steven Bartlett, who loves optimisation. He interviews world leaders, neuroscientists, and tech experts. On a recent interview he had the theologian and apologist John Lennox on, and he said this:

One of the most compelling arguments for God that you have presented — your way of seeing the world and being — is not necessarily anything you've written in your books or anything you've said. It is actually you. You have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I have interviewed, but I often, almost always, see in the Christians that I have interviewed.

The invitation of the Spirit is a life where peace is possible, where there is order out of our disorder — order the world cannot manufacture. And it all starts with this: the Spirit with us.

2. The Spirit through Us — Potential

Creation starts formless and dark, with the Spirit hovering over it. Then we read in verse three: And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light.

The dark, formless earth was not only seen by God as disorder and chaos — our creator God saw it as raw material. The Spirit hovers over it and brings order and form, but he doesn't stop there, because he knows that out of the darkness he can create fullness of life. He knows the potential.

In the Old Testament, the word ruach is used 389 times, and about a third of those times it refers to God doing things in nature and in the life of humans. When we think about ruach meaning wind or breath, it can be hard for us in the 21st century not to read our modern understanding onto the text. We know wind is caused by changes in the atmosphere; we know breath is oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. But the Hebrews reading this for the first time attributed all of it to God's presence — his animated energy in the environment and in our bodies.

It was God's breath that made light. He spoke and it was created. We can't see breath or wind, but we can see light. In the same way, we can't see the Spirit, but we can see the effects of his presence in our lives.

Hope for the Formless Places

God doesn't just want to give you peace today. Out of the disorder, he can create and shape the most beautiful things. Just look at the world he's made — the trees, the oceans, the sunrises, you, me. What looked formless had all the conditions life came from.

If your life feels a bit formless or empty today, there is hope. The Spirit brings life by shaping, creating, forming, and filling us up. Those darkest parts of your life you think are untouchable, unsalvageable, untamable — they are not in any way putting the Spirit off. The Spirit is not blind. He is powerful to create out of nothingness.

Life Out of the Waiting

In 2019, my husband and I were given the statistic that we had a 5% chance of ever conceiving a baby. At the time I was 26, so I hadn't prepared myself that this would be the information I'd need to engage with. Over the next couple of years we were trying, but also dealing with the reality that biologically we just didn't have the conditions to produce a baby.

It was a really harsh time. We were living in Malaysia, away from all our family, during COVID and lockdowns, and it felt like every single person around me was getting pregnant. As time went on, doctors said there was nothing that could make it better — no special formula or process to follow. So we just had to trust God in the waiting.

The Holy Spirit really met with us in that waiting. It was the pain and disappointment that breathed a dependency on God that I'd never experienced before. But like we see in creation, God takes the unformed and the uninhabitable, knows the potential, and creates life from it. Sometimes that's metaphorical, and sometimes — in our case — it's literal. Our son, Arthur, is about to turn four this month, and he is our absolute gift from God.

Living in the In-Between

I realise that's not everyone's experience. When this description from Genesis was written, it was during God's perfect design, when everything functioned as he had intended. But just a few chapters later, sin enters the world, and it becomes broken and no longer functions as God wanted.

So for us today, the order the Spirit brings in our lives will never be fully completed — because we live in the in-between bit. But the Spirit is still here. Every answered prayer, every person who comes to faith, every miracle, every good blessing in our day is just a glimpse of the goodness, faithfulness, and fullness of life that Jesus will one day bring when he returns.

The Worst Alpha Ever

A couple of weeks ago a couple came to our house for dinner to do their pre-marriage course survey. We'd never met them; we were just linked up on email. As we got to know them, Crystal mentioned she'd done Alpha before. "Oh, where did you do Alpha?" "In Malaysia." "We used to live in Malaysia — what church?" "At HTB." "We were at HTB!" "Oh yeah, but I never went to the building — I did it online in 2021."

We've been part of lots of Alpha small groups, but hands down the worst Alpha I've ever been part of was 2021 online. The Wi-Fi kept cutting out. People kept losing the Zoom link. You had people on mute trying to talk, ten strangers sitting in silence. We're trying to talk about life, faith, and meaning, and it's so uncomfortable and chaotic — honestly, it would put anyone off coming to faith.

Five years later, I met Crystal across the table in my kitchen. She's come to faith in Jesus. She's part of HTB. She serves on the kids team. She's from a Buddhist family in Malaysia, the only Christian in her family, and she's growing day by day in her faith.

Because that's what the Spirit does. He brings life out of things we think are chaotic. He brings amazing new life.

3. The Spirit in Us — Purpose

From the very beginning, God didn't just make humanity — he breathed his life into us. We read in Genesis 2:7:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Throughout creation, when God creates, he speaks it into being — a command from a distance. Let there be light. Let there be land. But when it comes to humans, the language changes: he formed a man from the dust of the ground. It's the image of a potter getting his hands into the clay, shaping it closely and precisely. This is the only part of creation that God gets his hands dirty for.

And he doesn't just form the body and step back — he breathes into it. The Spirit who created the entire cosmos comes down and breathes into a nostril. It's so intimate, so close. He doesn't breathe a soul into the body; he breathes the ruach, the life, that same breath that animates every living creature. We need that gift of breath to live — we've needed it from creation until this very moment.

Made in His Image

On all the other days of creation, God looks at what he's made and says it was good. But when he makes humans, he says it was very good. We are the only part of creation made in the image of the creator himself. We were formed and made by him for a purpose: to know him, to be in relationship with him, and to reflect him to the rest of the world.

A Glimpse at Focus

In a couple of weeks we're going to gather at Focus — 8,000 people from different churches across the country. That first night when you walk into the big top and see that many people, there's such an energy and vibrancy and life in the room. It's a tiny glimpse of something greater.

Every single one of those 8,000 people is made in God's very good image. Every one has had the breath of life breathed into them. Every one has the potential to live a Spirit-filled life. What we see at Focus is just a fraction of what God is doing in those people, their churches, and their cities.

We weren't just made — we were made for something. For relationship with him and with one another. That's the purpose of God's people: one body made of many different parts, a diverse community on a mission to see our lives and our cities changed, so that every person will know they were made for a purpose and are so loved by God.

From Breath to Breath

The first man, Adam, had the breath of the Spirit breathed into him, and he became physically alive. Jesus, on the cross, gave his last breath so that you and I could be truly alive — creating a way for us to be in relationship with God. And when Jesus rose from the dead, he gathered his disciples in a room, breathed on them, and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

What sustains the very good life isn't comfort, and it isn't achievement. It's this: the breath of the living God in you. You don't need to strive, and you don't need to optimise, because it has never been about what we do. It always has been, and always will be, about what has been done for us. And that is what transforms how we live.

Come and Breathe on Us

I'll finish with this. If you've had a barbecue this weekend, or been camping in the nice weather, you might have had a fire pit. Sometimes the flame disappears and you're left with an orangey ember — not totally dead, but barely glowing. The only way to bring it back isn't to dump a whole pile of wood on it, or to leave it and hope for the best. It's to get down really close, your face right beside the coals, and gently, deliberately breathe over and over again until that little glow flickers, catches, and becomes a flame again.

Some of us might feel like we're dying to the embers at the moment. There's a lot going on. Maybe you're running on empty, barely glowing. Here's the good news: God has never been the kind of God who dumps a pile of wood on it and hopes for the best. He gets close. He breathes on us. That's what he did to Adam in creation. That's what Jesus did to his disciples. And that's what he wants to do to you today.

So let's stand together and ask God to breathe on us. We're going to pray, "Come Holy Spirit," and we're going to wait. You might want to close your eyes. You might know the exact thing you need God to breathe life into. Let's take a few moments and pray: Come Holy Spirit.