"Under Pressure" - Part 1

Hi, this is John O.

Stanting, lead pastor of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolved Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Honestly, so good to be together.

Um, some good tunes leading into uh today's message, part one of two uh in a series of talks we're just calling under pressure.

And uh we're gonna take some time together to look at the life of Jesus uh as we as we head into Easter.

We're a couple weeks out from Easter Sunday, and we're so excited that uh we're gonna be able to celebrate Easter with all of you watching right here online and also in person at Evolved Church.

But uh I want to go to the Bible today to Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible with you or your smartphone, a Bible app, we're going to Matthew chapter 26, the uh the NLT, and just 10 verses there.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Starting in verse 36, here's what it says.

And Jesus led his disciples to an orchard.

The orchard was called the oil press.

And he told his disciples, sit here while I go over there and pray.

And then he took three disciples, Peter, James, and John, with him.

However, an intense feeling of great sorrow plunged Jesus' soul into deep sorrow and agony.

And he said to them, My heart is overwhelmed and crushed with grief.

It feels as though I'm dying.

Stay here and keep watch.

Then he walked a short distance away and overcome with grief, he threw himself face down on the ground and prayed, My Father, if there is any way you can deliver me from this suffering, please take it from me.

Yet what I want is not important, for I only desire to fulfill your plan for me.

And then an angel from heaven appeared to strengthen him.

Later he came back to his three disciples, found them all sound asleep.

He awakened Peter and said, Do you lack the strength to stay awake with me for even just an hour?

Come on, boy, right?

Keep alert and pray that you'll be spared from this time of testing.

You should have learned by now that your spirit's eager enough, but your humanity is weak.

And then verse 42, and then he left them for a second time to pray in solitude.

And he said, God, my Father, if there's not a way that you can deliver me from the suffering, then your will must be done.

He came back, found them sound asleep, they couldn't keep their eyes open.

So he left them and went away to pray again.

Verse 45, when he returned, he awoke them saying, Are you still sleeping and resting?

Don't you know the hour has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to the authority of sinful men?

Get up, let's go.

The betrayer has arrived.

So this story leading into Easter in the garden, Jesus and his disciples, and I just want to share four thoughts today.

But before we do, let's pray.

Father, we thank you.

We thank you for the gift of the Bible.

We thank you for Jesus.

Our friend, yes, our Lord, absolutely, our Redeemer, for sure.

And today we look to Jesus as our way, as our truth, as our life.

And we invite the truth of Jesus and the gift of your spirit and the power of your word to touch our hearts and speak to our soul today.

We invite you into this space in every part.

We love you, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, listen, comment in the chats for me if at any point in the last year you've experienced some pressure.

Would you describe the last year as a season where you felt under pressure?

And we want to talk about that, being under pressure, not just in light of COVID-19 and the last year, but in light of this moment in culture, this moment in history, this moment in March 2021, and everything you're walking through in your home, everything you're navigating in your workplace, everything you're experiencing in your taxes and in your finances and in your kids and in their education and your aging parents and in your sister who lives in another province, everything you're walking through right now, are you under pressure?

Give me something in the chats, let me know that I'm not alone in this under pressure season.

In part one of this two-part series today, I simply want to talk to you about finding peace when you're under pressure.

Because it's possible to experience the perfect peace, to be anchored to Jesus, our peace, even when we're under pressure.

And we see that through his life and through his story.

So we're going to look at Matthew 26 together and we're going to just pull out a couple of thoughts in the time we have in this message today.

So, verse uh 36, Jesus leads his disciples to this orchard called the uh the olive press, and he tells them, sit here while I go over there and pray.

And then he takes three of the twelve, Peter, James, and John, deeper into the garden with him.

However, an intense feeling of great sorrow plunged Jesus' soul into sorrow and agony.

And so when you're under pressure, um, God invites us to find his perfect peace.

And the first thought I want to share from Jesus' life is this choose your inner circle wisely.

But remember that even your closest friends are human too.

Choose your inner circle with wisdom, but remember that even your closest friends are still human.

And we see that in Jesus' life.

The Jesus that we follow was wise regarding his friendships, regarding his inner circle.

And in the uh in the years that he lived on planet Earth and kind of grew a team of disciples around him, we see a few times in the Bible where he went off alone and brought three with him, Peter, James, and John.

And so did Jesus have favorites?

No.

I think he just, there was a different level of intimacy and trust.

And I hope you have friends in your life where you experience trust and intimacy.

Uh, but choose the right people.

Jesus took the right people with him into his pain and into his pressure.

And just a few chapters earlier in Matthew 17, there's this beautiful story of Jesus going up onto the a literal mountaintop.

And in the church world, we call it the transfiguration of Jesus.

And he brings three disciples with him to this mountaintop, Peter, James, and John.

And on that mountaintop, they have a literal, like profound experience with Jesus, where they hear the voice of God the Father speaking to Jesus' identity, speaking to Jesus' worth.

They see Jesus for who he truly is, their Messiah, their redeemer, their savior.

And it's this powerful mountaintop experience.

And then a few chapters later, Jesus brings those same three with him into the depths of the garden and into the depths of his sorrow and into the depths of his pressure.

The friends that you bring with you to your mountaintop might let you down in your valley.

And we see that here in Jesus' story.

The same three that saw him on the mountaintop slept through his pain.

They napped through his deepest, darkest moment.

And just because your friends laugh with you at your best doesn't mean they can handle the weight of you at your darkest.

So what do we do?

Where do we turn?

When it's hard, how are we going to respond?

Are you going to curate a weighty Facebook post and push it out there in the hopes that somebody's going to comment on that and chime in?

Are you going to seclude yourself in your bedroom with a bottle of something strong?

Are you going to go on a deep dark dark dive in terms of Netflix and just like try and mask the pain you're going through?

If your friends have let you down in your darkest moments, what are you going to do?

Don't place on people what you should be laying at the Father's feet.

Don't put it on people when you should be laying it at the Father's feet.

Tapping into the presence of God, that's what Jesus did.

God who never leaves us, never forsakes us, that's the key to finding peace under pressure.

Jesus prayed out loud, and then he went back to his friends and was disappointed.

But he returned to the Father and he prayed again and he prayed again and he prayed again.

Here's what I can't help but wonder: is prayer, laying it at the Father's feet?

Is that your go-to?

Or is that your whoops?

I totally forgot.

And we've all done this.

We've all gone through a difficult moment.

We've reached out to friends and they're not responding to texts.

And we called our mom, but she was busy.

We've done everything we can think of.

And then in our deepest, darkest pressure, we're like, oh wait, I should probably pray about this.

I should probably put this at the Father's feet.

1 Peter 5, 7, it says, Pour out all your worries and stress upon him and leave them there, for he always tenderly cares for you.

In Psalm 46, surrender your anxiety, be silent, stop your striving, and you'll see that I'm God.

This is what God says to us.

Just surrender your anxieties.

Come on, get with me.

I am the God above all the nations.

I'll be exalted.

And then Psalm 91, 15, I'll answer your cry for help every time and pray.

And you will find you will find and feel my presence even in your time of pressure and trouble.

This is what God says.

Don't place on people what you should be laying at the Father's feet.

Have you cultivated that kind of space with God?

Or have you allowed the disappointment of people to keep you from pushing in to the Father's presence?

In times of pressure, you're gonna forget to respond with prayer.

You will.

And then you're gonna remember that prayer is still your best response.

Under pressure, there's peace in the praying.

In verse 38, as we keep going through this story, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him.

However, this intense feeling of great sorrow plunged his soul into deep sorrow and agony.

And he said to them, This is what Jesus said, my heart is overwhelmed and crushed with grief.

It feels as though I'm dying.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

So the second thought from the life of Jesus is this Jesus wasn't immune to intense emotions, to great sorrow, to overwhelming grief.

Jesus wasn't immune to that kind of heavy stuff.

And if Jesus wasn't, chances are you're not immune to it either.

So what do you do?

What do you do when the pressure you're under feels like intense grief or great sorrow?

Big emotions.

Sometimes we think as Jesus followers that when we're in a dark place, it makes us less spiritual somehow.

And I just want to speak that into somebody's heart today.

If you're going through a really challenging time, it doesn't mean you don't love God, and it doesn't mean you're any less faithful in terms of your heart towards Jesus.

It doesn't make you diminished in any way in terms of the work of God in your life.

No.

The Jesus we follow experienced intense feelings of great sorrow that the Bible says plunged his soul, plunged his mind, plunged his will, plunged his emotions into deep sorrow and agony.

Jesus can relate to what you're going through right now.

He felt overwhelmed and crushed with grief, as though he were dying.

You know, years ago, um my dad's sister, my Aunt Jenny, was diagnosed with a horrible disease called Huntington's career.

And Huntington's is wicked, it's it's a genetic disease.

And I describe it in it in its neurological power.

It's kind of like having Parkinson's and Alzheimer's at the same time.

It presents with physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms.

And we watched this disease erode Aunt Jenny's life to the point where she made the decision, under duress and under pressure and diseased, to end her life by suicide.

And that was in 1990.

And a couple years after that, 1992, I moved to Vancouver with my mom and dad.

And those two years were difficult for my dad and all of the remaining siblings.

My dad is one of 11 kids.

And so here's 10 remaining siblings that have lost their sister.

And they're all wondering if she had it, who else has it?

And this was a season of grief and torment and great sorrow for our family as we navigated this, the beginnings of this Huntington's journey.

And in 1992, when we moved to Vancouver, my dad was the first of the remaining 10 siblings to make the decision to go and get tested, to just face it full on.

And here we were, myself, my three older siblings, my mom and my dad, in this, in this powerful pause in our lifetime when my dad got tested and we were waiting for his test results to come back, wondering what is our future gonna look like?

Because Huntingston's is like 50-50.

It's it's you pass it on or you don't, and it's usually about half of the time.

So there was, if my dad has it, there's four of us kids, which one of us has it?

Are we gonna continue to see this play out in generations in the Zanting family?

Dad was 46 years old at the time, like almost as old as I am now.

And uh, and it's that 35 to 55-year-old gap where symptoms usually present themselves.

So we had this moment as a family of just tremendous sorrow, a lot of emotion, and holding our breath, waiting.

And in the waiting, I love that my parents modeled what it means to trust and follow Jesus in the middle of pressure.

The possibility of this disease being present in my dad's DNA, and then the potential to cut short his life as well as maybe half of his kids' lives and future grandkids.

You know what, it didn't derail him from rising early, studying his Bible, spending time with God, and living his life well as he trusted and followed Jesus under pressure.

When it comes to the pressure that you're under right now, the storm, the battle, the fear, the worry, the anxiety that you're facing that's pushing against you, is it not beautiful to have a Savior that not only sees us and examines our hearts and walks with us through the weight of what we're feeling, but also models how to stay in peace under pressure.

Stay in peace despite feeling overwhelming emotions.

It's possible.

John 16, 33, Jesus says, Everything I've taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in me.

For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrow, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world.

You will experience trouble.

You will experience sorrow and grief.

You will navigate dark days of stress and pressure.

You might be in that season right now.

However, there is peace when you stay courageous under pressure.

And I'm grateful that my dad never tested positive for Huntington's.

And we're still as a family walking this out with aunts and uncles and cousins.

But what a peace that my own family is uh is walking free from the weight of that disease.

And what a gift that my parents stayed in courage during that season.

I saw it in them.

We see it in Jesus.

Which leads me to my third point.

Don't give permanent power to something that is short term and temporary.

You're in a season, you're in the middle, you're in the gap.

So don't give that gap permanent power.

Don't play it out over the rest of your life when it's just short-term and temporary.

The Jesus that we follow didn't pretend away his feelings.

He didn't like hype himself up or like mental his way through it.

He didn't ignore his pain and grief.

He recognized it and he experienced it fully.

Matthew 26, 39, overcome with grief.

He threw himself face down on the ground and then he prayed, My Father, if there is any way you can deliver me from this suffering, please take it from me.

Overcome, throws himself face down, feeling all the fields.

This is our Jesus.

But it was for the moment, and in that moment, and that moment wasn't permanent, it was temporary.

Don't give permanent power to a season in your life.

Hebrews 12, 2 says we look away from the natural realm, and what do we have to do?

We have to fasten our gaze onto Jesus, who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith's perfection.

His example is this, Jesus' example.

Because his heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be his, he endured the agony of the cross and he conquered its humiliation, and now he sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God.

I believe that in every moment, in every season of pressure, in every space, in every challenge, there's always joy to be found.

And you don't have to look hard, you just have to look.

There's always joy to be found in any season of great pressure.

Experiencing peace under pressure often looks like locating the joy set before you and then fixing your heart on that.

And I, as I was preparing, and I've shared this story once before at Evolve, kind of in the first couple months, but I wanted to share it again just as a poignant reminder of something that I experienced as a dad in 2015.

Our daughter Julia, um she she was uh nine, almost 10 years old, and she she had this freak accident where she passed out in a gymnasium and fell and hit the gym floor and broke her jaw and bent her jaw, and head injuries are awful.

And Nicole was away in Calgary working uh with a team there, and I was in Winnipeg with the other three, or the other, all three kids, kind of single dad uh weekend, and so I have to rush our daughter to the hospital, and she's bloodied, and I'm figuring out who can pick up the boys from school, and it was awful.

And we get to the hospital and her jaw is broken, and they have to they have to do surgery and they have to put plates in her face.

And I remember lying in this hospital bed uh right beside Julia in the first kind of day after this accident, and just seeing her swollen and bruised and messed up, and crying out to God, saying, God, man, if there's just some way I could crawl into crawl crawl into her body and just take this pain from her, just carry the weight of this accident and all the feelings and all the pain and all the physical stuff, man.

If I could just take it away from her.

From my kid in the hospital bed.

Not from me, from my kid.

Why?

Because just because you're going through something hard doesn't mean that you can't hang on to the joy set before you.

And the joy that was set before Jesus was people.

It was you, it was me, it was everybody watching, it was humanity.

Jesus endured a temporary season of pain and suffering and tremendous pressure for the joy set before him, which was people.

The joy of knowing that when I overcome, people are gonna step into right relationship with God the Father.

Do you carry that same mission, that same value, that same purpose?

Because here's the thing the same joy that Jesus held on to is the joy that you need to find and hold on to.

It's others.

It's others.

And isn't it like great pressure to put us into rocking back on our heels and looking inward and becoming a victim?

Isn't it like a season of great pressure to get our eyes off the big picture and give something that's temporary, permanent power, and this is gonna this is gonna destroy my life, and then we look inside of ourselves.

Don't give permanent power to pressure that's just passing.

Don't let pressure slide you into the victim chair and rob you of your joy.

You will need to choose this truth.

Sorrow might last for a night, but joy always comes in the morning.

And there's peace when we hold on to our joy under pressure.

The joy of knowing that your story matters, your life matters, and God wants to use your heart and your peace and your courage and your joy as a witness for how good He is and draw others into Jesus' story through your life.

Hold on to your joy.

And lastly, the Jesus that we follow acknowledged the purpose despite the pressure.

Again, verse 39 My Father, if there's any way you can deliver me from this suffering, please take it from me.

And yet, what I want is not important, for I only desire to fulfill your plan for me.

Can we echo the words of Jesus under pressure, in the middle of what we're experiencing right now, in this moment?

Can we just echo the words?

Echo the words of Jesus and say, Father, this is hard.

And yet, what you want from me is more important.

I only desire to fulfill your purpose, your plan for me.

Our pressure doesn't diminish and certainly doesn't remove our value and our purpose.

Our purpose is carried out in the middle of, and despite the pressure that we're going through.

The purpose is still there.

The purpose is still inside of you.

The Jesus that we follow understood that it's not about the ceasing or removal of the pressure, but rather how we move through it, how we navigate through it.

Matthew 26, 39, is there any way you can deliver me from this suffering?

Please take it from me.

2 Corinthians 6, verse 4 says this, yet as God's servants, we prove ourselves authentic in every way.

2 Corinthians 6:4

For example, we have great endurance in hardships and in persecutions.

We don't lose courage in a time of stress and calamity.

We keep moving forward.

We navigate through it and we recognize that the Father's plans for us and his purposes for us haven't changed just because we're going through a season of great pressure.

You will understand that faith, real faith, is about how we tangibly and practically keep choosing every day to follow Jesus despite our current circumstances.

And if you're on a mountaintop with your friends right now or in a valley and feeling all alone, there is joy to be found, there is courage to be found, there is prayer to rise up big on the inside of you, and there is a purpose for your story.

There is peace when you stay the course.

Stay in your faith journey under pressure.

John 16, 33, again as we close.

And everything I've taught you, this is from Jesus.

Jesus says, everything I've taught you is so that the peace which is in me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in me.

For in this unbelieving world you will experience troubles and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world.

Jesus has actually taken away the power that this world has to defeat us, and he's conquered it for us.

True peace is found by resting in Jesus' victory.

Will you stay in peace?

Will you not allow whatever you're working through right now, whatever feels hard, whatever feels weighty, whatever feels challenging, whatever feels like pressure.

Can we just together draw a line in the sand and say, I refuse to let it take me out of my peace?

Because in times of pressure, you're gonna forget to respond with prayer, and then you're gonna remember that prayer is still your best response.

And there's pre- there's such peace when we take it to the Father in prayer, when we cast it at his feet.

And you will experience trouble and sorrow, but you will navigate these dark days by staying courageous, just as Jesus invites us to.

And sometimes you're gonna need to choose this truth.

This the sorrow feels like it's lasting for tonight, but joy always comes.

And so I choose to just attach my heart to the joy set before me.

Other people will be encouraged by how I move through this storm, how I move through this pressure.

Other people can be encouraged by me while I'm in the middle of this.

I don't have to arrive, I don't have to get quote unquote better, whatever language you want to give that.

Right now, right in this moment, I refuse to become a victim and I look out and say, my story matters, my voice matters, my heart, my faith, my love for Jesus matters.

So I don't have to let this moment, this temporary moment, have permanent power.

I can just see it as a moment and still encourage and bring life to others.

And that's actually what helps us tangibly and practically choose to stay in faith, stay just going after Jesus, despite what you're working through right now, despite what pressure you're under.

And it's in those things prayer, staying in courage, choosing the joy, and fighting to stay in faith.

That's where we we find peace, perfect peace when we're under pressure.

Can we pray?

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for the life of Jesus.

These aren't just narratives or fairy tales or bedtime stories, these are incredible historical lookbacks at how Jesus Christ, God made flesh, divine, who dwelt among human, how he navigated great pressure and stayed in peace.

And so, what we want to do today is we want to look to Jesus.

The Bible calls him like the author and the finisher of our faith.

And so we want to invite Jesus' story to help keep writing our own stories today.

Jesus, we we look to you today as our way, as our truth, as our life.

When other voices are shouting for our attention, when the pressure that we're going through is trying to take us out and get us off course, we just keep our eyes on you and we stay encouraged and we fire up our prayer life and we choose the joy set before us, and then we stay in faith as we move through this temporary season of pressure.

God, would you hem us in by your spirit?

Would you would you surround us by your church, by the right people to encourage?

God, the right friends who maybe are going to walk us through this season and don't have to uh you know take off on us, but can can carry us through.

God, we find those relationships in this house, in small groups, and in teams that we're volunteering on.

And and God, so we just invite you right now to see us where we're at, see the season, the moment that we're in, the pressure that we're facing.

For some people, it's just the weight of the last year.

It's gotten heavy.

For other people, it's it's a relationship that hasn't survived and our hearts are broken.

For other people, it's just pressure at home.

We feel like we've been in a can, and maybe this week the top finally popped off and we don't know what to do.

We're under pressure, God.

For others, it's work and finances.

We don't know how to make ends meet.

We're under pressure.

But we know that wherever we're at today, through Jesus, we can stay in peace.

We don't have to lose our joy.

We can take it to you, Father, in in a time of prayer.

We can lay it at your feet.

We're not gonna place on other people what we should be bringing to you.

We're gonna stay encouraged.

Jesus shows us how.

And then we're gonna attach all of that to the purpose and the plans that you have for us.

Father, not my will, yours be done.

Not our will, yours be done.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit EvolveChurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.