Take Heart - Arrogance and Anxiety

well several years ago some buddies of mine and i decided to hike into the grand canyon it takes a better part of the day to get down then we spent all day at the base and then we hiked a day out it was a lot of fun but i remember when we did that i had been reading up on it and found out that there was a waterfall six miles further into the canyon so it's a bit of a hall six miles in six miles out and so after we hiked down that next full days i pitched a vision to my friends hey what if we hiked six miles deeper in to see the waterfall and then back and they said no they didn't want to do that which i was a little frustrated by so i wanted to see this waterfall so i was a little mad about them and their lack of commitment to beautiful things a little frustrated about this and so i went to just kind of walk it off and so as they sat there and did nothing with their lives i was just journeying decided as i'm processing this with the lord i'm going to just process you know towards the direction of this waterfall so i'm praying about my friends and praying about their hearts and then it's just becomes pray about my life and i pray about what god's doing in the world it becomes this wonderful like dialogue with the lord it's a beautiful day out and we're just walking as we do that i'm like dude i'm gonna walk to this waterfall i'm on my way it's a gorgeous day let's just keep moving and so i continued to do that and then after a while it struck me wait i have no idea how long i've been walking i didn't bring a watch i didn't bring a phone i can't see the sun i'm in a canyon like i don't know how long it's been it's been one mile it's been five i don't know how much further is this and then it hits me wait a minute i didn't bring any water i didn't bring any food either this this this could be a problem with how long until you dehydrate and then i rise but but i don't want to give up and go back i could be right there so i'm like i'm not sure what to do and i started to get a little painting about it so i just decided you know what i'm just going to walk faster and i started to power walk through the canyon and as i did that i remember i'm zooming through this canyon and then i see a couple out in front of me and so i just come up on them quick right because i'm moving and as i do that i show up and they're like hey like they want to visit and i'm trying to be nice so i'm like oh hey and they're like hey what are you doing i'm like well i'm trying to get to this waterfall and they're like oh we are too do you want to walk with us and i remember instantly thinking absolutely not i'm on a move folks you are way too slow you're not going to slow me down i've got things i got to do and so i was just like oh thanks now i got some meetings later see you later you know and just took off dustin but i remember as i did that they had said oh it's just around the corner and so i start going and i'm like hey i'm going and then i realized i don't know how long it's been i don't know how late it is it could become dark i could be out here in the dark and not see anything i could miss it i don't know how long this is going to take so i realized i don't be lost out here in the dark this power walking is not sufficient so i just start to run and i'm sprinting through the canyon and then i realized as i did that i'm running for a while and after i'm running for a while i realized wait a minute they said it was just around the corner what if i passed it then i'm just running into the unknown that i'm just some loser just disappearing into the wilderness it's gonna take days to find the body i was like this is crazy man like i can't believe i'm doing this i'm freaking out so then i realize i lack perspective i don't know where it is i need higher ground so i start climbing the side of the canyon and i get up to try to get some perspective but as i do that i scare a deer or properly we scare each other because i turn this corner and he was like munching on a branch and he goes ah and i was like ah and so i startled and fell backwards and as i did it my hand got driven a thorn into it and i remember it just drove into the meat made my hands seize up i start bleeding and i'm like my hand and as i do that i tumble and roll down the side of this canyon so i get up and i'm covered with dust and blood and as i'm sitting there my pain going why i got it suddenly i hear the crash of a distant waterfall look what it says so i get back up and i i make my way around the corner and and sure enough right there i look up and cascading down from the top of the canyons this gorgeous waterfall filling up this lovely pool on the banks of which there was a picnic and it was it was the couple that i had passed earlier they were already there and i'll never forget they looked at me and they could not hide their shock they were like what happened to you and as i stood there covered in dust and blood there was no way to fake it i'm like oh you know i ran into this pack of wild i was just like i i freaked out i freaked out and made a mess and gratefully they were there to clean me up and bandage my wounds and feed me and give me water and and i learned a lot about humility and about the dangers of anxiety what do i mean by that well for many of us anxiety is an engine it'll get you moving and for many of us you've got where you wanted to go that that fear of not arriving at whatever arrival means to you i got to get this certain number of followers i got to get this certain kind of job i got to make this certain kind of money i have to achieve a certain amount of fame notoriety power by this age that anxiety and fear has driven you and maybe you even got to where you wanted to go but you're getting pretty beat up along the way and anxiety as a driver can sometimes be the most dangerous thing for us and we got to learn how to deal with it and it's fascinating in this passage peter's going to address the issue of anxiety and he's going to do something interesting here i don't know if you noticed it he's connecting anxiety with arrogance and with humility he says humble yourselves because god opposes the proud but it says humble yourselves casting your anxieties upon the lord that that casting your anxieties as a participant participates and humble yourself part of walking away from being arrogant is being humble enough to hand your anxiety over to the lord he's making some connections between arrogance and anxiety and the remedy being humility now let me specify as i say that uh that doesn't mean if you struggle with anxiety it's because you're an arrogant person that's not really what like the apostle paul will say at one point i'm anxious for all the churches daily there's some kinds of anxieties that that aren't the fruit of arrogance and and look in our culture today we use the word anxiety for such a wide variety of experiences in humanity and and i'm not trying to maybe cover all of what you're experiencing and i'm certainly not in any way trying to diminish some medical intervention and help for many of us that have found it useful but what i am saying is peter sees a connection in many of our circumstances between anxiety and arrogance and he presents a remedy of humility and we need to understand why now what's fascinating about this is is great what's only happened because of great why's and what i love about this passage is for every what he tells us to do there's quickly a great why it matters and so we're going to take this in kind of two parts we'll look at this first chunk and the second of how we handle our anxiety what we're meant to do and why so we'll start in verse 5b he says clothe yourselves all of you with humility toward one another for god opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of god so that the proper time he may exalt you casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you now notice he says all of you so so for context if you're just joining us first peter he's been writing this to churches and churches that are suffering particularly because of their faith that their association with jesus has resulted in alienation from the culture they're weird and it hurts not physically yet but they're being ostracized emotionally they're being insulted it might have cost them socially and financially and they're in a situation that is stressful that they're feeling the pressure and whenever you feel that kind of pressure stress reveals fractures if we had a submarine and it just had a hairline fracture in the hull just a little one it might be indivisible invisible to the human eye but if you let that submarine continue to go down to the depths as the pressure builds what happens a little hairline fracture becomes a fissure and then it'll break open and it'll swamp the whole thing and for many of us we may have some little fractures in us and it's pressure that begins to compromise it and make it a fissure that could sink the whole thing and here he's talking about the church and if you notice here we didn't read it from the section before he was talking to elders in the church and he told elders not to be domineering over the young and then we read the part about the young submit to the elders what you're seeing there is he's saying hey our community is experiencing stress it's experiencing some external factors that are stressful and in doing that as that stress gets on us there's going to be a temptation for the leaders to become controlling there's going to be a temptation for the younger among us to usurp and and not trust the leaders and get out of the way if this person wasn't in charge i'd be in charge if i was in charge it would be better that something about our anxiety makes us want to get control if i get control would be better and our anxiety becomes becomes a demand for for power and in the midst of that he's saying hey there's some fault lines breaking and in this section he he definitely highlights the fault line between ages between old and young there can be a fissure within the community you see this in sports teams all the time if you get a team that's losing because they're being beat by external forces it it will open up some rifts within the team well this coach is an idiot well that guy's not committed well that person's arrogant well this person's not showing up on time and if we continue in tearing each other apart not only will we not be successful will continue to be dominated by outside forces it's not till the team sees where the cracks are and heals them they can move forward successfully this is uh the plot of the entire first avengers movie right external forces reveal fault lines in us stress shows fracture and if we can heal those fat fractures we can move forward successfully so here peter is talking to them and saying hey you're in the midst of anxiety but in the midst of that anxiety i want you to bring humility to the table a willingness to put your needs down and serve someone else's needs not try to push your agenda but but but see what other people need to succeed and push that agenda because your anxiety has become a threat to unity and to productivity so he says clothe yourselves with humility i love to clothe yourselves it shows up a lot in the bible close yourselves like put on the armor of light put on the lord jesus christ put on compassion here he uses the word put on that means to wrap around wrap humility around yourself the the willingness to serve others and not try to push your own agenda he said i want you to just cover yourself in that like a towel or a blanket or a robe or a shawl or a sarong just just wrap yourself in humbling yourself to other people why would i do that why would anyone in dc do that ben that's not how this works it says because god opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble we used to quote this a lot in the early days of our church because we experienced a lot of success early and when you experience success you can get arrogant and i would warn our team hey if we're arrogant if we look and say look what my hands have wrought if we have that kind of attitude god says not only will he not bless us he says he will come around the other end and oppose us i said i don't want to lead a church like that a church that god opposes bad life choice so we will not be proud we'll be humble people because god opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble fear seems to seek control some of you experience this if you're riding with someone in the car and you're not sure they know where they're going that fear manifests how you go hey man have you ever been there before hey what app do you use hey i'm gonna pull up on my app actually i pulled up three different apps and they're all showing that a different way would be a better way what is that fear becomes control right and here in this moment you see anxiety becoming control but that pride man it's dangerous for us because it betrays a mentality if i was running things it would go better and the reality is that's not always the case in our life right that god when we say to god hey i don't like the circumstances in my life if i was running they'd be better we're telling god move over let me drive not a great strategy not a great plan because for many of us the desire to be exalted that's the the thing he's worried about that god will lift you up at certain amount of time some of them say hey i'm not getting exalted quick enough at my office in the sphere in my friendship group i'm not getting to the heights i want to get to so i need to grab control i need to drive sometimes often that's a selfish motivation that god can't bless because you don't have other people in mind uh when i ran breakaway a college ministry there was a a season where we didn't have a worship leader and so i was having different friends come in and guest worship lead but it was a large ministry multiple thousands of people and so we just got inundated with requests to lead worship and i remember people would request and we would talk to many of them some of them uh had the skill and talent but lived too far away others of them just weren't maybe developed enough to lead in that environment but there was a handful that would come to us that would demand to be on stage and i remember one of them coming up to my wife and saying what's it going to take for your husband to put me on that stage and she was like well hey there's a board of directors we make those decisions but ben is the head of that and as soon as she said ben is the head before she could finish his sentence this person went well the neck moves ahead talking to my wife and my wife was like okay god is not going to elevate that because you don't want to serve the sheep you want to use them this isn't about using your gifts to help us it's about using us to fulfill your insecurity and that's not what leadership's for god can't bless that he will oppose the proud but for many of us that fear is real even now you're going no ben you don't understand in my workplace at my friendship group in my world i need to get control cause i'm trying to get to a place and there's people blocking me and ben you don't understand if i humble myself and serve others i won't be able to grab authority and i have to grab authority because if i don't i'm in imminent danger of not getting what i want well when you think that way you're missing something important that's why he moves on humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of god so at the proper time he may exalt you when we look and say my boss is holding me down that person's holding me down these things are holding me down we're losing someone in the equation the almighty god and it says if you try to run this world that means you're telling god to scoot over and that's not how this works there are things for you to do but god runs this show don't cut him out of the equation there's a mighty god who leads us this only makes sense this this idea of humbling myself um if you believe god exists and what i love about this is he doesn't just say humble yourselves under almighty god or under god he says under the mighty hand of god and what i love about that is that's used so many times in the book of exodus it's used all throughout exodus to talk about god's mighty salvation of his people they were enslaved in egypt and god broke the back of pharaoh separated the ocean moved his people out and set them into a nation that god mightily moved to rescue his people from jeopardy into life and he did it his way so all through the old testament passages like deuteronomy 3 say oh lord god you've only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand for what god is like you in heaven on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours deuteronomy 4 has any god ever attempted to go take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation by trials and signs and wonders by war by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and by great deeds of terror all of which the lord your god did for you in egypt before your eyes are like no one's even conceived of this so deuteronomy 5 you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of egypt and the lord your god brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm therefore the lord your god commanded you to keep the sabbath day you can rest why because the mighty hand of god is leading you this mentality only works if you believe in a god who exists and it's fascinating if you read the book of exodus it's it's embarrassing when you read the book of exodus and you see the these people rescued the nation of israel out of slavery out of egypt brought to the promised land and as they're moving to the desert what happens god parted the red sea set them loose they get out and three days later there's no water and what happens as soon as there's no water god let us out here to die we're gonna die of dehydration how dare you let's rebel against moses let's kill them all you're like guys stop stop do you think god saved you in order to kill you from dehydration or you think the same god that took out egypt can provide for you now and god provides the water and then a couple days later they get hungry and they're like i'm hungry there's no one driving give me the wheel kill moses and they totally lose their minds and god i say you think you're gonna start i'll give you water said you're free from egypt stop doing this you're acting crazy your anxiety is this this grip for authority it betrays an arrogance you think you can run this show better than me and we look at them and we read this and do bible studies oh those silly israelites the god who saved you can provide for you so don't be anxious about what you're going to eat and what you're going to drink what you're going to wear the gentiles do that it sounds just like what jesus says to us god saved you jesus christ entered history took on sin on the cross buried it in the grave rose victorious rescued you so sin and shame is your past not your present not your future that you have hope and life you are a child of god in jesus name both now and forever so don't be worried about is my boss gonna notice me because if he doesn't i won't get the money i want so i won't be significant stop there's a mighty god and that mighty hand is leading you that doesn't mean there's nothing for you to do moses confronted pharaoh when pharaoh was wrong moses led the people moses had to solve problems there's things we do but we don't try to grab the wheel from god we do our part and we trust him to do his that's what it means to humble yourself i don't need to pretend that i should drive i think he knows better than me so the question becomes really a faith question do i believe god exists do i believe there's a god and if i believe god exists do i believe he acts in history if you don't then freak out and go for yours get all you can before you die right but if you say no i believe there's a god who made all this and i believe he is leading human history if you believe that that's your liberty from anxiety then i can humble myself that i can trust him to drive this thing do i believe god is strong enough to take care of me and supply what i need and not only strong enough do i believe he's wise enough that at the proper time he may exalt you that's the other time we freak out we want something and then we get mad about the timing so we want to take control but we can trust god even with that do i believe he's wise and if someone was like why i'm gonna be married so mad so i know this guy's a loser but i'm gonna marry him because he's the best i got no remember what garth brooks taught us some of god's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers some of us are are gripping for something we know we need and god's going hey it's not the proper time trust me i know your needs let me provide my way my timing my kids dad can i have a snack no it's because you're a monster you want us to die you don't know what's going on i'm gonna starve to that no it's because i'm making dinner right now you don't know that because you lack perspective but i'm cooking things that are nutritious you'll be eating within the hour i have a better understanding of what your body needs than you do so let me do my job you do your job and we're going to thrive here do you believe god's strong enough to take care of you do you believe he's wise enough to know when and do you believe he's loving enough to want to that's the last thing casting your anxieties on him because he cares for you this is the one a lot of people struggle with do i believe god exists and moves in history sure do i believe he's wise enough to know how to run the planet yes although we don't functionally live like that we ask on a quiz yes we believe god is powerful in life do you believe he cares about you do you believe he cares about the things you're going through i love the way this is written just if i can nerd out about the greek it literally says to him it matters about you do you believe that the mighty god who is wise enough to know when and how to exalt you it matters to him about you what you're going through matters that might be my favorite part about this passage is he's not shaming this community for feeling stressed he's not shaming them for their anxiety like oh get over it stuff it down eat your feelings get it done he's not doing that he's saying hey no you're in the midst of things that are really stressful really overwhelming i don't want you to pretend like they're not i want you to cast them on to me i want you to see that you have an alternative you have a mighty god who is strong enough to take care of you wise enough to know when and how and loving enough to want to i want you to access that when you understand that kind of power is at your disposal you can be a non-anxious presence in the world you can be something different in your office you're not striving for power you can humbly serve people and let me just point out if you're working in an office the people who will most likely get elevated are not the ones that are desperately seeking power desperation smells but the people who are comfortable with god running the universe and say but these are the gifts and opportunities he gave me i'm going to use my gifts to serve other people you want to bless someone like that that person rises faster what do you do with the anxiety i cast it on him because he cares because i believe he's looking out for me right that's what we're meant to do i release my fear because i have a strong and a wise and a loving god that's how we deal with anxiety i release it to him i've said this many times in here that that's for me a daily exercise of waking up in the morning and then just asking myself how do you feel and often i'm worried about the things of the day but i don't beat myself up about that i don't shame myself about that i cast those cares onto him because i know those shoulders are strong i can trust him i want you to live by faith we're invited to and the remedy for many of our anxieties is to release our need for control and to actually look up and see no there's an almighty and if i'm humbly under the almighty i get liberty from my anxiety right the alternative is dangerous and this is the back part he says be sober minded and be watchful your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced from your brotherhood around the world if you don't cast your anxiety on the lord and trust him that in due time he'll exalt you you will be influenced by other voices and spiritually speaking if you don't trust the almighty you have an adversary that's waiting for you to separate and become vulnerable we like to think that we're autonomous people i make my own decisions i make my own choices no one rules me i define me and you're like okay yeah i think everything from what we wear to what we listen to is influenced by outside voices we are not as autonomous as we think right we are influenced and what it's saying here is you're either going to follow a lord who wants to exalt you or you're going to follow an enemy who wants to devour you as bob dylan said you're going to serve somebody it may be the devil it may be the lord but you're going to serve somebody we're not as autonomous as we think we're pinocchio uh from the movie i don't know about the book the book pinocchio is kind of weird he kills jiminy cricket early you ever read the book it's bizarre let's go with the disney version in the movie what happens pinocchio's wonderful little boy born to a loving dad right that tells him you're going to go to school why so you can learn about the world why so you can be someone that knows how to navigate his dad trying to give him wisdom and knowledge to move in a way that exalts him i want you to trust me go to school and he calls him to do that but what happens as he starts to walk to school he encounters honest john and honest john says no school's for losers you're gonna be an actor you can get a bunch of fame and money and do that instead and here's innocent little pinocchio there's different voices speaking you're going to serve somebody and he says yeah i'll do that and so he goes and joins this show and what does he sing i got no strings to hold me down like yes you do cause look at you being influenced by a bunch of psychos and now everything goes wrong so he's singing i got no strings you're like oh yes you do you're being completely controlled by voices that don't care about your well-being and what looks like freedom power and money actually becomes slavery and he gets locked up in a cage little jiminy cricket comes to the rescue because he's still alive in the movie they get him out he goes back home and then what happens goes home and the next day he leaves the house and honest john's waiting for him and says hey man the acting gig didn't work out doesn't work for everybody moved back from la it's great i got some other options for you let's go to pleasure island let's just indulge every sensual desire you have and so he takes him to pleasure island you're in control what do you feel like doing let's do that let's indulge these things and as he indulges that he doesn't realize hey pleasure island looks like it's giving you all you want but as you dwell there what happens you slowly become a donkey and then they enslave you in the salt mines what looks like liberty becomes slavery so a little wooden boy a blockhead becomes a jackass and a slave that's the story of pinocchio and how is he saved only by going down to the depths and rising through sacrifice as he made new and a real boy where do these conversion stories come from how do they do it in disney but for many of us we're the same we're going to serve somebody we're going to be influenced by somebody and if we're not trusting the lord i'm humbly saying i'm going to give my anxiety to you and i'm going to excel at the revealed things of loving you and using my gifts i'm not going to freak out and grab control i'm going to trust that you're in control i'm going to be humble under the almighty i'm going to trust your mighty hand i'm going to be free from anxiety to serve with humility because i trust god you're either going to do that or you're going to say no it's all about me i got to go for mine no one's looking out for me and you'll start to run over you and you look out because as you isolate from the community you are vulnerable to an adversary he's prowling around to devour you it's interesting i remember years ago i was a youth pastor and we decided to film a movie uh video for our church and they said hey we want to do this kind of video i'll save all the details about it the video ended up with me and a burlap sack at the zoo that's all that matters right now and they were taking videos of me with the animals in a burlap sack fascinating because i went in the petting zoo and as soon as i walked in the sheep and goats separated immediately and the goats surrounded me and the sheep fled i'm like there seems to be a verse about this we call the goat side being the bad side i'm not sure what to make of all this it's very weird and i remember i would walk past the zebras and when i walked past the zebra they would buck then i would walk around and walk back and they would buck again and walk around and i'm like i don't know what's going on with these things and someone finally told me well they probably think you're a feed bag you're just a walking moving feed bag i'm like oh okay well that's interesting and so then we walked over into this middle place where all the monkeys were and birds and and suddenly as we walked into that area they all went crazy monkeys screaming shaking their heads shrinking everything birds squawking jumping up and down i'm like what is going on man it's crazy at the zoo today and i look around like what is happening and then i look behind me and there's the lion and the lion saw the living moving chewing feedbag and he got up and he looked at me and he just began to pace like this and he put his face right up against the glass and he was pacing looking at me and it was like the whole jungle could feel it this lion sees a snack and as they did all this energy is reverberating through these monkeys and birds and they're all freaking out and i was standing there going like i wonder what's happening at the zoo today the zookeeper is like it's you moving feedback get out of here you're in danger and for many of us we have a spiritual enemy who wants to devour you destroy you and we're like wow sure is loud in the zoo today you're like hey man be sober be watchful your enemy prowls around be sober means don't be drunk but what do you do when you get drunk you're trying to numb intolerable feelings i don't want to feel certain things i don't want to think about certain things that happen to me i don't want to process potential consequences of the decisions i'm about to make and so i numb myself to the world because i don't want to deal with things that scare me that i'm out of control but as you do that you often put yourself in a place that doesn't solve your problems but creates new ones and here in the gospel it says no be sober be aware be watchful don't numb the realities around you spiritually that there's a god in heaven and an enemy below their influence in you be sober be watchable because your enemy does not have your best interest in mind he wants to devour you i had a buddy who's kind of a country dude so i can't do justice the way he would explain us but he was like i'll tell you right now he said if you were on your way out of this church and he said we told you in the foyer hey there's a lion in the parking lot and uh he's looking for you and so he's prowling around and he's got your number man look out and i know some of you are like man that story's so crazy it's fake no parking lots in dc just try to imagine if i came to you and said hey leaving church today there's a lion out there on the streets and he's looking for you man he's got sent picked it up he's coming for you he's like you would not leave the church in the same way you wouldn't be like okay we'll see you later i'm off to brunch no you'd be at the door like what what seriously does anyone do someone call somebody like can anyone see him like somebody held it this is crazy this isn't right this is not and you would feel all this tension about no i'm in danger and peter's like yeah yeah that's you spiritually that you have a god in heaven that wants you to trust him so in due time he can exalt you and you have an enemy that's trying to get you to distrust god go your own way because it'll look like freedom but ends in slavery you're going to serve somebody either a god that will exalt you in due time or an enemy that will devour you and so it says in this side no you've got to resist him how do you resist the devil or you get some holy water and you splash them in your house no that's not in this deck what does it say here resist him firm in your faith when the enemy came to jesus he didn't come with a sword didn't come with a bunch of goblins he came with deception your god's not feeding you your god's not providing for you you need to walk away you need to go for yours you need to take control you need to drive your father didn't have your best interest in mind you take control no one bosses you you're the king and jesus said no i'm trusting him that i release my fears and i stand firm in my faith what does stand firm in my faith mean it means i trust the way you've made the world i trust you know how to move within it and i'm moving with you uh my son is in mma mixed martial arts and in mma when he first got in kids seven so excited about being in mma i mean it's very exciting for him he's got so much energy in his body that he shows up there he's got a little white belt which means i know nothing but when they get there on wrestling day they're very polite the way they do it you shake hands with the kid you battle each other and then you're gonna have this little controlled wrestling match and the first time my son just dominated out of just sure passionate ignorant energy they were like wrestling he was like like just this poor helpless child had no idea what was going on and my son just ruled and so he walked out that day and he was like dad i'm amazing at mma like i've already mastered it and i'm like no nope nope nope you mastered some poor unsuspecting child but uh no so the next time they put him in there they put him with a green belt get a couple belts above not as big as that one but i could see and oh and he's like i got this say my name i live in washington dc i run this town you know like he's got all that energy and then the next thing you know he's in some kind of lock he doesn't know the guy's got his arm back here head up here kids flipping him in circles spinning him on his finger my son's like what is happening and he just gets totally owned it's like what happened was you don't know anything you don't know how to actually wrestle you don't know actual jiu-jitsu this kid has learned from his teacher how to move and so he can move you and and you were so ignorant you didn't even know how ignorant you were but now a little bit of pain has showed you your ignorance of wrestling and your ignorance about your ignorance just getting to and away hey suddenly you got to go i need a teacher i need someone to teach me i don't know how to navigate the space i'm in danger here i'm a walking victim among these green belts someone teach me a chokehold and it's the same here you have a spiritual enemy it doesn't mean you got to freak out but what it means is i got a teacher i need someone to show me i i'm vulnerable in this environment somebody tell me how to move tell me where to put my arm tell me where to put my leg tell me how to walk show me how to live show me how to walk i'm going to release my fears to you god and then i'm going to stand firm in faith meaning i'm going to trust you i'm going to obey you i'm going to walk with you i'm going to believe you i'm going to move with your community why because the brotherhood's all going through this pain is a common denominator in the human story we often feel like our pain isolates us but here he says the whole brotherhood's suffering the enemy wants to isolate you but all of us struggle you don't pull away from the people of god in that moment you move towards us i release my fears i'm going to walk by faith with the people of faith knowing we're all suffering but ultimately we'll be vindicated that even though we're suffering now as a brotherhood after we suffered for a little while the god of all grace who's called us to his eternal glory in christ will himself restore confirm strengtheth and establish you i love that those are god's responses to us and it's a cascade of verbs that are all basically synonyms that god is going to give you grace god is going to lift you up god is going to strengthen you internally god's going to plant your feet you may suffer for a little while but you're leading to glory on the other side that our job in this text what do we do i clothe myself with humility towards each other i humble myself before the lord i cast my anxieties on him i'm sober minded and watchful i'm firm in my faith knowing i'm not alone what does god do he opposes the proud gives grace to the humble exalts me cares for me and after a little while he will restore confirm and strengthen and establish me i do my part and i trust him to do his that as i trust him he cares for me and on the other end of the suffering there is glory as i release fear and walk by faith last thing there's a there's a movie passion of the christ uh many of you have seen it's it's a difficult movie to watch because it's jesus uh just being brutalized and uh uh tortured and then crucified but it's fascinating when you watch that movie there's there's all kinds of human opponents pilot that convicts him the jewish leadership that that reviles him even while he's being crucified roman soldiers that drive in the nails his disciples fearful and scatter and yet it's interesting for jesus he never lashes out at those people they're not the real issue but i love the way they did it in the movie they show you there's a spiritual battle behind all these physical realities and they they have a depiction of the devil that's that's beautiful and terrifying that's alluring and and uh disturbing and you're meant to see that's the real battle that in the midst of all this pain and suffering jesus could leave the invitation of the enemy is don't trust god go your own way look out for you forget this don't serve god don't serve them you go your own way you protect you and the battle jesus wins is saying no i'm not going to grab the wheel i'm not going to take control i'm not going to go for mine i'm going to trust my soul to him who judges justly and i'm going to do good for them i'm going to pray for those who persecute me i'm going to speak the truth to pilate even if you don't want to hear it but i'm going to trust that god guides my story and i will live under the mighty hand of god and you see jesus suffer for a little while but in the end arrive in glory and what i love about that here is he tells us you will suffer for a little while but the end is in glory but he's telling you i'm not asking you to do anything that jesus didn't already do for you that your god is not just telling you what to do he's showing you jesus christ in the garden of gethsemane cast his fears on the lord then he stood up and walked by faith into that trial and then he continued to trust the lord and obey him firm in his faith forgiving his enemies praying for those who persecuted him blessing those who had scattered from him while he was being crucified and he suffered for a little while but then he was buried and he rose strengthened encouraged exalted glorified and god tells us if you're with him you're with him you may go through suffering but continue to trust him cast your fear on him walk by faith and there's glory on the other side god is calling us to something great will we trust him the world needs to see a non-anxious church they need to see that we actually believe there's a mighty hand guiding me and when they see it they'll want it when they see our humility when they see our willingness to serve when they see that we're not dominated by fear but by faith they're going to want to know this god this is part of god's plan that as we walk through suffering well we see those come with us into glory

Channel: Passion City Church DC

Views: 17,918

Keywords: Passion, Passion City Church, Passion Sermons, Ben, Stuart, Washington D.C., Passion D.C., christian, sixsteps, (six), passion conference, passion, passion city church worship, passion church, passion music, worship, jesus, ben stuart, 1 Peter, suffering, pain, hard times, 1 Peter 5, Anxiety, Arrogance

Id: X3a1RAaY-0Q

Length: 38min 41sec (2321 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022