Awake and Alive Summer One Day 2023 - with Author Hannah Schermerhorn

so without further Ado come on up Hannah [Applause] hello everyone how's it going that's good okay so I'm super excited okay there we go there are my slides perfect I'm very excited to come and talk to you guys today it's pretty crazy to me because just a handful of years ago I was sitting here at the summer version of awaken alive so I know what it's like to be here I know for me at the time I was going through some pretty rough things in college um a couple of which we're going to talk about today yay um so I know that Awake and Alive was something that really gave me some hope in all the things that were going on in my life so I hope that today I can give you guys some Rejuvenation as well as we go through this so let's do it I'm gonna start off just by giving a little bit of an introduction in case you don't know who I am so as said I'm Hannah schimmerhorn I went to Milwaukee School of Engineering and I graduated with degrees in electrical engineering and Technical Communications I then worked at a law firm for a year where I did patent writing patents are basically the most boring form of writing is what I found so after a year I was like man this is not the right job for me so I switched to a role at Rockwell animation which is the clock tower in downtown Milwaukee and I did product marketing there eventually did some Global Marketing and then last year I got published so then in February of this year I had my book come out which we talked about a single life to live so I basically wrote that book because I was single for about six seven years and I was very mad about being single when I first became single and then at the end of kind of those six seven years I was like man I love my life and I'm so happy with where I'm at so I decided to write a book about every single thing that I learned so that is what that book is if that is of any interest to you so that's me just one other fun fact is that last November I also got married so my name is Hannah graffey as well so God has a sense of humor where I had this book on singleness coming out and then it's like oh here's your person that you asked for so long ago and now here he is so that's that's where I'm at okay let's dive in today so I want to start by asking you guys the question is life going have you planned or thanks that was much easier than I expected I know for me A lot of times I have these big expectations and then reality sets in and it's a lot smaller and looks a lot different than what I expected and what I have in between there is just disappointment because I'm like man I thought life was gonna go this way I thought this thing was gonna happen and then it doesn't so I'm just not happy with how my life is going and I just want to see where you guys are at right now so I have a couple categories that were pretty big for me with disappointment and I want to see if you guys are kind of in the same areas or not so the first one is career in school has anyone felt disappointment in that area or is currently feeling disappointment in that area yeah I'm seeing some head nods some yeah arms raised yeah this is such a hard area especially in the ages of 18 to 25 there is so much going on I know for me when I was around the age of 18 it's like okay you gotta figure out what you're gonna do for the rest of your life it's like I have no idea what I want to do so for me I was like I'm good at math I'll do engineering right that's going to be great and then I did engineering and it was so hard and it was so difficult and it was not what I expected it to be and then after that you know you have to get into a career and apply for things and you might start a job and you're like I thought this was going to be so different than what I expected so just kind of a series of things in my life where School career we're not really what I expected it to be so then another big area for me is relationships has anyone felt disappointment with relationships either in the past yeah or now yeah yeah I'm seeing some high hands Rose this is pretty good um it can be something like family or friends or co-workers or classmates where they're not just living up to your expectations or you know maybe something has happened to them that you're like I didn't expect them to get sick or have this bad thing happen um or it can be the really big one for me which was finding a significant other that was the area I was so disappointed in um I know some people have never gone on dates and they're like I thought I would at least be dating by now or find someone or maybe you've been broken up with or been in relationships that didn't go well and you're like this is not the plan or maybe you've dated a ton and you're just so sick of going on dates and not meeting the right person this area can be so hard it's so hard I wrote a whole book about it so I totally get it and then another area that can hold disappointment is ourselves for me I have very high expectations of myself and what I'm gonna do a lot of times I think oh I'm going to accomplish this and achieve this and then it turns out I'm not perfect so I can't do any of those things um so I can really struggle with that but it can also be things like our own health might disappoint us or it might be something like a sin or a situation we got into and we just didn't act the way that we thought we were going to act and we carry that with us for a long period of time so these are kind of the depressing part of the presentation where we're thinking about all these things that are bringing disappointment and it might have been some of the things I talked about it may have been something totally different but if you have experienced disappointment or are currently experience in it then I am so glad that you guys are here because I had such disappointment in my life but in that disappointment God showed me just how good he is and what he can really accomplish in it and if I had never been through that I would not have known that so I want to encourage you guys today that if you're experiencing anything with disappointment that God is working with it and he has a plan for you so I'm gonna share three stories today to kind of show you all the things that I learned in a very short period of time the first story is going to be my own story which is my least favorite story at least in the beginning um so when I went to college I thought that I was going to find someone my mom and my dad and my brother and sister-in-law had all met in high school and then they had dated in college and got married and I hadn't found anyone in high school so I was like okay College I'm gonna find my person and I'm gonna get married that is the plan so I started dating in college I found someone who checked all the boxes of what I was looking for they were super passionate about their faith and smart and caring and all the things and we dated for all of call college and then we're like okay we're ready to take the step next step and get married so in our senior year we got engaged and we planned where we want to live how many kids we wanted to have basically everything that we wanted to do with our lives as we are planning our wedding our photographer sent us these books and it was how well do you know your fiance so there's a his and a hers and in the books there are all these kind of you know general questions like what's their favorite food or what's their favorite music and I was like okay this is great let's do this but then in my book I had this one very serious question and it said has he gotten over an addiction and my fiance had struggled with addiction and we had done a lot of counseling and different things to try to move past that and we had said we weren't going to move into marriage until that was really under control but when I answered in this book he was honest with me and he was like nope I'm not actually past this and it's been pretty bad for a long period of time and I haven't been open about it so my expectation for marriage and everything's moving forward was just totally dashed I was devastated and did not know how to move forward so we tried to make it work for a couple months it was very rough and very hard to see should we get married should we not what should we do but then one day he came to me and he basically said that what he was doing was not a sin and that it was my fault that we were having issues and that other people would be okay with what he was doing so that was definitely the hardest conversation I've had in my life but it opened up my eyes to see that marriage was not what I was supposed to be doing right now so I ended the relationship and I was in a place I never thought that I would be in again and that's that I was single and I was just horrified and so so sad to be there so my expectations for life were just dashed in that moment and as that was happening all these other things started to happen as well so my mom had a cancer scare and then my grandpa passed away and then I was walking through school and all of a sudden my eye just stopped working and I went blind in one of my eyes and as I went to the doctor I had seizures from the tests so I was in the emergency room and my doctor called me and he was like we found out what's wrong with your eye you just have to get shots in it every month to make it heal so I was in the emergency room and I was just devastated because I'm like all of these things have been such disappointments for me my health doesn't work my family isn't you know what I thought it would be I could just lose them in my relationship which was so important to me is not happening anymore so I saw that that was just a way that I was setting myself up to have so much disappointment because I realized that I was putting my identity into all of those things I had expectations for and by doing that I allowed myself to reach a really low place so that's my first takeaway unmet expectations show us what we're building our identity on so I want you guys to just think about the different things that aren't going according to plan right now and think and I put in some of my identity in that am I saying that the relationship that isn't happening that's what would have made me matter if I got that job that would have made me madder if I you know would have gotten that significant other that promotion or into that different major would that have made me a better person or made me like myself better because what I found with mine when all of those things were taken away was that there was only one identity that I should be putting myself in and that is the fact that I was not my disappointments the only identity that mattered is that God loved me and I know this sounds super super simple we've been hearing this from the time we were little if we're Christian that Jesus Loves Me But to have our identity in God means that when something goes wrong God has plans for us it means he loves us so much that he came and he died for us so that we could spend forever in heaven it means no matter what doesn't go according to our plans God has such bigger plans that we can't see and we can trust in him because he is good so I want to tell another story that really illustrates this and it's one of my favorite stories in the Bible because whenever I speak it just is so applicable to so many different facets of things so Lazarus has so much good nuggets in it I love reading it but we're just gonna go through a few verses today so I want you guys to pay attention to the different people who have expectations on Jesus in this story it starts off in John 11. now a man named Lazarus was sick he was from Bethany the village of Mary and her sister Martha so the sisters sent word to Jesus Lord the one you love is sick now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus so when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stared where he was two more days and then he said to his disciples let us go back to Judea okay now right away we have some expectations on Jesus we have Mary and Martha and probably Lazarus as well know that Jesus can heal Lazarus so they're like okay hopefully Jesus can come and help us but as this highlighted word says Jesus loved them so he chose not to do this thing that they were asking for so Jesus decides to go to go to them he tells his disciples and this is what happens but Rabbi they said a short while ago the Jews there tried to Stone you and yet you are going back so then he said to them plainly Lazarus is dead and for your sake I'm glad I was not there so that you may believe but let us go to him then Thomas said to the rest of the disciples let us also go that we may die with him man pretty bold of the disciples so on one hand we have Mary Martha Lazarus like Jesus come heal us and then we've got the disciples who are like Jesus if you go you're gonna die so two very different expectations on Jesus and I feel like this is a picture into what God sees probably a lot of times where people are praying and they're asking for things and it's just probably the exact opposite where God's like well this person wants this this person wants this but this is what I'm gonna do so just a little nugget of insight there so Jesus goes and on his arrival Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the Tomb for four days when Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went out to meet him but Mary stayed at home Lord Martha said to Jesus if you had been here my brother would not have died but I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask Jesus said to her your brother will rise again Martha answered I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day she went back and called her sister Mary aside the teacher is here she said is asking for you when Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him she fell at his feet and said Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died so again both Mary and Martha are devastated because they know that Jesus could have done something but he chose not to when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled where have you laid him he asked come and see a lord they replied Jesus wept then the Jews said see how he loved him but some of them said could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying now I want to just pause here and focus on those two words Jesus wept because in a matter of moments Jesus is going to raise Lazarus from the dead sorry to spoil that for you if you didn't know that but instead of Jesus just going don't worry guys it's going to be totally fine you just need to trust in me you just need to believe in me you shouldn't be upset about what's going on Jesus is meeting them exactly where he's at he's feeling their pain with them and he's crying with them and the same thing is true for you and me God knows what's going to happen in our life he knows that we're going to be with him in heaven and we're going to be so excited and so happy but he's not just saying you're not trusting in me otherwise you'd be happy he's going you're feeling this and I'm feeling this too and I care I'm crying with you in your pain so God knows what your disappointments are and he cares about what you're feeling with them so then comes the happy ending Jesus once more deeply moved came to the tomb then Jesus looked up and said father I thank you that you have heard me I know that you always hear me but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here that they may believe that you sent me when he said this Jesus called in a loud voice Lazarus come out the dead man came out his hands and feet wraps were strips and linen and a cloth around his face Jesus said to them take off the grave clothes and let him go so what we have here is again our nice chart we had expectations from Jesus's disciples of don't go or you're gonna die we had expectations from Mary and Martha of please come and heal Lazarus but instead of having a smaller reality and not meeting those expectations Jesus came in and he completely blew their expectations away you see Jesus could have just done another miracle he could have healed Lazarus but instead he allowed people to be disappointed he allowed people to suffer and as a result he raised Lazarus from the dead which was so much more impactful than what they had originally asked for so this is what happened as a result meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came not only because of him but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead so the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well frown account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him and then later in John 12 it says now that crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word many people because they had heard that he had performed the sign went out to meet him so the Pharisees said to one another see this is getting us nowhere look how the whole world has gone after him again if Jesus would have just done another miracle people would have believed in him but instead he decided to raise someone from the dead and have such a bigger impact on the world so many more people might be in heaven because Jesus allowed disappointment in the beginning only to have such higher expectations in the end which is the next takeaway unmet expectations leave the door open for God to exceed our expectations this was the case for Lazarus and this was also the case for me so out of my biggest disappointments of not getting engaged of God allowing my relationship to break off and me praying and begging God to make it work to make something happen I had so much pain and I had so much Agony but out of that all of a sudden my heart started changing it forced me to realize that my identity was in the wrong place and then I had this Whisper of writing a book and the whisper became louder and louder until I wrote the book and then I got an agent and I got a publisher and now my book is out and now I have an entire career around something that came out of the biggest disappointment in my life I could have never imagined what God would do when he was saying no to please let this relationship work and he can do the same thing for you guys too so you may be feeling like oh I have these disappointments in my life and it looks so bad right now but just wait and see what God can do with them it's pretty incredible God's shown me it in a very small way in a very few years in my life but as your life unfolds I feel like I've seen that more and more so I want to share one more story that's been impactful to me that really Drew this home for me so this one is a fake story unlike the other two and this one is from The Chronicles of Narnia has anyone read the horse and his boy yeah okay this is good I've talked about this before and sometimes no one raises their hands and I'm like oh this is so sad um so if you haven't read it I'm sorry because I'm gonna totally spoil it for you I'm gonna give a high level overview of it but it's not everything so you should still read it um so in this book the main character director is Shasta and I love this book so much that I just named my Samoyed puppy Shasta after the main character so it's pretty good uh so Shasta is found as a little baby and he's in a boat in the sea with no parents no one around so he's abandoned something terrible happened but thankfully these fishermen find him and they take him in and they decide to raise him so they raise him but then one day he overhears the fishermen talking about the fact that they're gonna sell him into slavery so obviously he's very devastated very upset and he goes into the barn and he's like what is going on this is terrible I can't be sold into slavery but there's this horse in the barn and since the horse is from Narnia it's a talking horse so the talking horse starts talking back and he's like I got captured from Narnia so I was sold into slavery here and I want to make it back to Narnia so the boy and the horse the name of the book decide to journey together to Narnia to try to get to Freedom so they start going and as they go there's is this girl Arvis and she is escaping from an arranged marriage and this line comes out of nowhere and starts chasing her so she gets chased and she meets up with Shasta and the horse and they start journeying together and as their journey and all these crazy things happen but eventually they meet up with the royalty of Narnia who's in a different Kingdom and they're in this Kingdom to see if they want an arranged marriage between Narnia and this Kingdom but they found out the Kingdom's pretty bad so they're like no we don't want to have this marriage but they're like this Kingdom's gonna be super mad when we find out that we're not going to do this so they decide to sneak away and they're like we need to warn the king because they're gonna attack us right after they find out that this marriage isn't happening so Shasta and the narnians and everyone start journeying away and sneaking away from this Kingdom but as they're sneaking away all of a sudden this line comes out of nowhere and starts chasing Shasta and then Shasta gets all by himself and he gets separated from the group and he starts journeying up this mountain and it gets all Misty and he starts just feeling so sorry for himself he's like you know all these terrible things have been happening to me and as he's talking this voice from the Mist starts talking back to him and he's not like that weirded out by it he's just like okay I'll keep talking um so he's like you know I was found abandoned in a boat and then these people took me in but they were going to sell me into slavery and then this line came out of nowhere and started chasing my friend and then I met up with these cool narnians but then another line came out of nowhere and started chasing my friend and he's just feeling so sorry about all the things that have happened in his life now it hasn't gone according to how he planned and then it comes here don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions said Shasta there is only one line said The Voice what on Earth do you mean I've just told you there are at least two the first night and there was only one but he was Swift foot how do you know I was the lion and a Shasta gate with open mouth and said nothing The Voice continued I was the lion who forced you to join with Arvis I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the Dead I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King loon in time and I was the line you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay a Child near death so that came to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you then it was you who wounded Arvis it was I but what for child said the voice I am telling you your story not hers I tell no one anyone's any story but his own who are you Ash Shasta myself said the voice very deep and low so that the Earth Shook and again myself loud and clear and gay and then the third time myself whispered so softly you could hardly hear it and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves wrestled with it Shasta was no longer afraid that the voice belonged to something that would eat him nor thy was the voice of a ghost but a new and different sort of trembling came over him yet he felt glad to the Mist was turning from black to Gray and from Gray to White this must have begun to happen some time ago but while he had been talking to the thing he had not noticed anything else now the whiteness around him became The Shining whiteness his eyes began to Blink somewhere ahead he could hear birds singing he knew the night was over at last he could see the Mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now a golden light fell on them from the left he thought it was the sun he turned and saw pacing beside him taller than the horse a lion the horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it it was from the line that The Light Came no one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful and I feel like when we die we're gonna have a very similar experience to that where we think you know all of these bad things happen to me in my life there's the time where I had that heartbreak there's the time that was so bad that I didn't think I could continue there's the time that I didn't get the job or didn't get the promotion that I thought I was going to get and we're going to have the story of all of these bad things that have happened and we're gonna wonder what was going on in that but then God's gonna show us the actual story of what was going on in our life and he's going to show us you know that time you had heartbreak it's because I was preventing you from getting into this bad experience or that time that you felt you couldn't continue I was right there with you strengthening you and that time you didn't get the job or the promotion it was because there was something so much better that was beyond that time for you so if I would have given you those things when you asked you wouldn't have experienced those greater things later and I think we're just going to be in total awe as we see what God was doing not only in our own lives but in the impact of the entire Kingdom so if you guys are experiencing disappointment today don't lose heart God is working things out for your good he promises that he promises that he's with you and that he's going to work everything out for good so do not be sad do not be scared in it I know it can be so easy to focus on those disappointments God has a plan and he promises that for you thank you guys

Channel: Awake and Alive MKE

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Id: afVj1guUOlo

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023