"Braving It" Pt.2

Hi, Mr.

Tom, Pastor of Evolved Church.

And this is the Evolved Church Podcast.

Trust us, message, encouraging, full of hope.

Last week we started a series of talks called Braving It.

And if you weren't here last week and you missed it, uh that's okay.

We forgive you.

Because the cool thing is you can listen to it on the podcast.

And I wanted to mention as well, some of you have been asking when is the Evolved Church podcast going to be up on the Apple podcast platform?

And it's there, it's there now.

It takes Apple a little bit of time to approve things, but if you're looking for it, just search Evolved Church.

But last week we talked about the promise of peace.

And today I couldn't come up with a subtitle for part two of this talk that did any better than simply WWJD.

How many of you in the 90s repped a WWJD bracelet of some kind?

Who in this room?

I just want to know who here doesn't know what WWJD stands for?

Somebody in the back's thinking, isn't that that spray I use on the creaky?

No, that's WD40.

Um WWJD stands for.

What would Jesus do?

So last week we looked at John chapter 16, verse 33.

John 16:33

And 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.

I love the use of the word in there, because it's actually really powerful if you let it be.

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.

We made the thought last week that Jesus has taken away the power that this world has to defeat us.

He's conquered it.

Jesus took away the power that the world has to defeat us.

And you might be here today feeling defeated, that the circumstance of your life is compounded in such a way that everything about your human existence feels like defeat.

I want to remind you again that Jesus took away the power that the world has to defeat us.

He conquered it for us.

So true peace is learning to rest in Jesus' victory.

And then we also looked at 1 Peter 5, verse 7, where it says, Pour out all your worry and stress upon him and leave it there, for he always tenderly cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

And Psalm 46, 10 that says, surrender your anxiety, be silent and stop your striving, and you will see that I am God.

We looked at five ways that we can learn to pour out our, and it was simply this finding peace as we rest in Jesus is less about braving it, less about braving the pressure and the stress and the worry and the fear and the anxiety that life brings, and more about abiding in the promise of peace as we pour it out, leave it there, surrender, find silence, and stop striving.

I want to continue today to look at how do we learn to trust and follow Jesus?

What does it mean ongoing to surrender and pour out our worry and our fear and anxiety and all the pressure that life can bring?

Many people are unfamiliar with Huntington's disease.

Some are.

But most people that I speak with have never heard of Huntington's.

They don't know what it is.

Huntington's, the best way I can describe it is it's similar to having both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's full-blown in your in your physical body.

It is a degenerative brain disease where the Huntington gene is repeated too many times.

Every brain in this room has the Huntington gene present in your brain physically.

And when that gene repeats in too many too many times in too many ways, it it facilitates symptoms of Huntington's disease.

It's a hereditary disease.

You can't just catch it.

You have to have a parent that passed it to you, who a grandparent that passed it to them, and a great-grandparent who passed it to them.

In 1990, my dad's sister, Jenny, was really sick.

And she'd been sick for a few years.

And she'd been diagnosed with this bizarre disease that none of us had heard of called Huntington's.

And what was odd is neither of my dad's parents, my OMA or my OPA, didn't didn't seem to manifest symptoms of the disease.

And that's the tricky thing.

You can have Huntington's disease and not even know it.

You can go through your entire human experience without manifesting a single symptom of Huntington's.

But the tricky thing is, is if you carry the disease, you have a 50-50 chance of passing it on to your kids.

It's like a bullet that you may or may not dodge.

And my dad, he's the third oldest of 11 children.

11 kids.

And when my Opa passed away, it turned out that he carried the Huntingtons mutation of the gene.

That it was actually Opa Zanting that was sick with Huntingtons, he just never manifested any symptoms.

And so in uh the late 80s and the early 90s, there was very little bit known about Huntington's disease.

And I used to go to St.

Thomas, Ontario with my dad to um uh a hospital where they treated people with mental illness.

And we would visit Aunt Jenny there because they didn't know how to care for her.

And I remember um seeing her through the glass in in literally in a padded room with a straitjacket on because they didn't know how to care for her.

And when I was in grade eight in 1990, in the springtime, in March actually of 1990, I got a phone call at school from from my dad that Aunt Jenny, who was home on a visit, uh visiting my uncle Jack and my three cousins, Janice, Krista, and Angela, um, Aunt Jenny's three beautiful girls.

That Aunt Jenny went for a walk and she strolled down to the river and somehow ended up in the river and and died.

And so there was a tragic end to my aunt's life.

And as a family, um, a good Dutch family, uh, you know, all ten of my aunts and uncles on my dad's side uh have lots of kids.

And we're talking um, you know, dozens and dozens of Xantings who were all of a sudden thrust into the reality of a disease that we didn't even know was there.

And I share about Huntingdons because uh a couple years later we moved from Chatham, Ontario, to Vancouver, BC.

In the middle of my grade 11 year, um we were we were thrust into this entirely new city, new environment.

For me, it was literally right before Christmas that I started at a brand new high school.

I went from like a high school of 300 kids to a graduating class of 300 kids.

Culture shock, everybody in Vancouver.

I remember sharing week one here on our label series about how I always felt out of place because people dress differently in Vancouver than they did in Ontario.

And and in that same year, my dad decided to be the first of the 10 surviving siblings to get tested, to see, look, if it's 50-50, there's there's 11 of us.

One just passed away.

Somebody's got to continue this conversation.

So in Vancouver, my dad went and got tested at the at UBC at a medical uh facility, and they took some blood work and they took a lot of time to get us results.

And I will never forget the weight and the fear and the pressure that existed on us as a family as we held our breath waiting to find out does dad carry this?

My dad was 46 years old at the time, and symptoms typically manifest between the ages of 35 and 55.

And so, right in the middle, my dad was the first of his 10 remaining siblings to discover whether or not this was a bullet he was gonna have to swallow, or a bullet that he thankfully would dodge.

Because if dad didn't have Huntingtons, then myself and my sisters and my brother didn't have Huntingtons.

But if he did, then it was another waiting game.

And so I will never forget the heaviness that we felt as a family when we went to the hospital to hear the results from the doctor.

And the the breath that we've been holding in was finally released in a in a gasp of gratitude.

The dad doesn't have Huntingtons.

Which means that I don't, my kids won't, and my sisters don't, and my brother doesn't.

I will never forget the weight of that.

And more importantly, I will never forget how my dad chose to trust and follow Jesus while we were holding our breath.

I'll never forget his example of continuing to rise early, continuing to feed his own spirit with truth from God's word.

Despite the diagnosis of what it may or may not be, I will follow Jesus.

I will trust him.

In the middle of this storm, in the middle of this waiting, I will trust him.

In the middle of feeling absolute fear and pressure and what this could mean for generations to come.

Because since then, my cousin Krista, Aunt Jenny's daughter, has passed away from juvenile Huntingtons, and Aunt Johanna has passed away from Huntingtons.

And I could continue to list the aunts and uncles that have been diagnosed as positive or negative, the ones that haven't gotten tested because they just don't want to know, and how that impacts their kids and grandkids, and this wicked disease that is it's a part of this world that we live in, the world that is stricken with brokenness and disease and sin nature.

But how do we learn to trust Jesus despite what the world pushes against us?

And it just so happened in the early 90s when we were walking through the weight of this as a family.

A small youth group in Michigan put out bracelets with the letters W W J D.

And those bracelets took the Christian world by storm in the 90s.

And everybody I knew in Vancouver wore a what would Jesus do bracelet.

And as I began reflecting on some of my own life events that have created weight and pain and brokenness and hurt and stress and fear and anxiety, and how I've seen my parents model trusting Jesus despite circumstance, and how I've learned to trust Jesus.

It really is in Jesus that we learn the tools for handling the kinds of things we're talking about in this series.

That it isn't just about braving it because I'm a self-made man and I'm strong and dag nabbit, I can figure this out.

But it's about dialing it back to a place of trust.

And I want to look at a story that you've all read before, and I want to pull five things out of this story that as I prepared for today really hit home for me, and I hope they do the same for you.

But it's a story about Jesus, and it's a story that we can learn from in terms of when it comes to handling weight, pressure, stress, fear, anxiety, despair, darkness.

What would Jesus do?

Seems to work well as we look at Matthew 26.

I'm gonna read it, they're gonna put it up on the screen behind you, and again, for this series, I'm reading from the Passion Translation.

If you don't know what that is, ask me later.

Or listen to last week's podcast, because I talked about it there.

But then Jesus led his disciples to an orchard, and the orchard was called the oil press or Gethsemane.

He told them, Sit here while I go and pray over there.

He took Peter, Jacob, also called 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, them meaning Peter, James, and John, guys, my heart is overwhelmed and crushed with grief.

It feels as though I'm dying.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

So the scene is an oil press, a garden, and Jesus is with his tribe, his disciples, and he invites them into a moment of overwhelming pain and agony.

But he separates them.

I picture that as a group of twelve, they were kind of here, and Jesus said, wait here while I go and pray.

And then he singled out three men, Peter, James, and John, and said, Hey guys, I actually need you to come deeper with me into my sorrow.

I need you to come a little bit further with me in this journey.

So would you come and would you stay here and would you watch and pray?

Then Jesus walked a short distance away and overcome with grief, he threw himself face down on the ground and Jesus prayed, My Father, if there's 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 Jesus.

Later he came back to his three disciples, Peter, James, and John, and found them all sound asleep.

He awakened Peter.

I've often wondered why just Peter?

I would have kicked all three of them.

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

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, but your humanity is weak.

It's quite the chastisement for his three closest disciples.

Boys, by now I would have figured out.

Come on, run with me.

Then he left them for a second time to pray in solitude.

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

Again, this is not nuanced language.

This is black and white.

There's no way, so your will must be done.

Jesus is praying in these extremes.

And then he comes back to the disciples and finds them what?

Alert, watching, faith-filled, and praying.

The three men who I drew into my suffering and my pain that I invited into this experience with me because I can trust them are sawing logs again.

And so he says, sorry, carries on.

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

So he left them and went away to pray the same prayer for the third time.

And when he returned again to his disciples, he awoke them and said, 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 and let's go.

For the betrayer has arrived.

I want to pull five things out of this story that we've all learned and probably heard and people have preached on in your life in the past.

But in the context of Jesus acknowledging and walking through and working out some severe emotion, some heavy things, what can we learn?

The first thought I want to bring is that the Jesus that we follow, he experienced intense feelings of great sorrow that plunged his soul, his mind and his will and his emotions, that plunged him into what the Bible calls deep sorrow and agony.

Jesus felt overwhelmed and crushed with grief, almost to the point that it felt like it would kill him.

Have you ever worked through something in your life that felt so heavy and so weighty and so dark that you thought it might have the capacity to take you out entirely?

And maybe you've come through something that you've bounced back from, or maybe you're walking through something right now that feels absolutely overwhelming.

And so, what can we learn from Jesus today?

Well, I want to point us back first and foremost to John 16, which we've already read today, that says, where 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.

What the junk?

When I grew up in Sunday school, I was taught that God loved me and that bad things don't happen to good people.

Where's that God in my adult experience?

Where's the God that I believed in as a kid?

Well, maybe we haven't filtered that God through not just the truth of the promises He gives us to be with us and to protect us from harm, but to be with us when we go through things that are difficult and challenging.

Because Jesus says, sure enough, you're gonna walk through sorrow, you're gonna experience hard things.

You are, period.

But you must be courageous, for I've conquered the world.

And so Jesus teaches us and he shows us through the narrative of this story in the garden that despite what he was going through, he still chose courage.

He still chose to move through it.

And the thought, the first thought is simply you will experience trouble and sorrow.

You will navigate dark days of pressure and stress, but stay courageous.

Don't lose your courage.

Don't lose that edge that says, I know that these things are real, but I know that my God is more real.

I know that these things feel great, but I know that my God is greater.

I know that these things feel heavy, but I know that he takes my heaviness and lifts my burden.

And I know that I can overcome, I can stay encouraged.

Encourage.

The second thought that I want to pull is simply that the Jesus that we follow was rot was wise regarding his friendships and his inner circle.

He chose the right people to take with him into his pain and pressure.

He didn't just invite anybody to come with him into that immense pain and pressure.

He specifically chose Peter, James, and John.

The same three guys, incidentally, I find this interesting, that when Jesus had his mountaintop, the Bible calls it a transfiguration, then when Jesus went up on the mountain, actually not that much previous, before this experience, Jesus climbed a mountain in Matthew 17, again with Peter, James, and John, and there was this profound moment that heaven touched earth, and God the Father cried out, This is my son, and Peter and James and John, they were there and they bore witness to Jesus' transfiguration and that sort of cosmic neon glowing mountaintop experience.

Jesus took them to this elevated, high point in his journey where things were like, Man, this is my son.

Nothing's gonna touch him.

I'm proud of him, I believe in him.

And Jesus took those same three into the garden, into the dark despair, into the deepest, darkest sorrow and grief that he encountered in his journey of following the Father, he took those same three guys there.

And I want to ask in response to this story who do you invite?

Not just into your best and brightest moments, into your Instagram worthy story posts and into the things that you're like, woohoo! But who do you bring with you into your darkness?

Because if you don't have a who, You won't last long.

And Jesus was intentional.

I often wonder about the other nine.

How they must have felt.

But I'm wired that way to think about how people feel.

Do they feel left out?

Do they feel excluded?

I don't know.

Maybe they just liked it.

They got to stay at the first tree and have a nap.

Right?

They're like, all right, Jesus can take them again.

Cool, guys, let's chill and take a sleep here.

I don't know.

And you know what?

We we choose to think more about how bringing the right people into our lives to walk with us and share with us.

We hold back from bringing the right people out of fear of how other people are going to feel.

But there was an exclusivity to who Jesus invited into his darkness for wisdom.

And I think I look at Peter, who was absolutely in the pocket.

God revealed to him that Jesus was the Messiah.

Peter was the revelation that Peter had is the foundation that we're building Jesus' church upon.

That Jesus Christ, flesh and blood, God's Son, came to mediate that relationship.

Peter, God's Spirit, gave him that revelation in the Bible.

And so there was something about Peter that was foundational in understanding who Jesus was.

And I look at James and John as brothers and the love that they shared and the friendship and the intimacy that was in their friendship and how Jesus was included in that kind of intimate friendship.

Not in inappropriate or wrong ways, but in really healthy and strong and male friendship, trusting kind of ways.

Jesus invited Peter the rock and James and John the brothers, who he deeply loved, into his deepest, darkest moment.

You will need to use wisdom regarding your inner circle.

Know the difference between somebody and anybody.

We don't just bring anybody in.

We bring somebody, somebody specific, someone who's had a revealed truth of who Jesus really is in my life.

That when I can't see who Jesus is, my friends say, Johnno, shake your head.

Look to the truth of who God is and what he's provided through Jesus.

When I'm in my darkest moments and I invite in the right people who will walk through this with me with a deep, sincere love.

Choose your inner circle with wisdom.

The third thought is that the Jesus that we follow didn't pretend away his feelings.

He recognized and experienced his grief fully.

Matter of fact, the Bible says he was overcome with grief.

He threw himself physically face down on the ground and felt all the feels.

But it was for the moment and in the moment.

And that moment was not permanent.

And that's the key that I want to pull out.

Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 says we look away from the natural realm and we fasten our gaze onto Jesus, who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith's perfection.

Hebrews 12:2

His example is this.

And this is the truth for us as we continue to look at what Jesus did in response to this overwhelming stuff.

You will need to choose this truth.

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

Always.

Always.

Sometimes, no, always.

For the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured and he worked it through and he stayed courageous and he brought the right friends into that process with him to encourage him and be a rock for him in his identity.

Which brings me to the fourth thought.

The Jesus that we follow acknowledged the purpose despite the pain, for the joy that was set before him was simply you, your life, your unique human experience here and now in 2018.

Jesus then looked ahead to the truth that your life would be redeemed, your life would be reconciled.

He would mediate for you and God in a way that nothing ever could.

And so for that joy, for the purpose of mediating our relationship with God, Jesus endured the pain and the suffering.

And that's the fourth thought.

The Jesus we follow acknowledged the purpose despite the pain.

Our pain doesn't diminish or remove our significant purpose.

And that's the lie.

When we go through things that feel overwhelming, the first thing we tend to believe is, man, this thing is going to cause me to be ineffective and check out.

Whatever that thing is, it doesn't carry that much weight.

Our purpose is carried out in the middle of and despite the pain that we experience, despite the stress and the pressure and the fear and the worry and the anxiety, none of those things change our purpose.

And so we learn like Jesus.

The Jesus we follow acknowledged the purpose despite the pain.

And I love, we shared this verse last week, 2 Corinthians 6, verse 4.

2 Corinthians 6:4

As God's servants, we prove ourselves authentic in every way.

For example, we have great endurance in our hardship and in our persecution.

We don't lose courage in our times of stress and calamity.

You know, a few years ago, Julia was playing basketball after school, and her and her friends decided to have a contest to see who could hold their breath the longest.

It's really smart.

I taught her that.

And uh and being a winner, uh, Julia was all in.

So she was like, I'm gonna win this contest.

I'm gonna hold my breath the longest.

And so she was in a gymnasium on a hard wood floor, and she held her breath the longest, so long, in fact, that she passed out.

She lost consciousness and she fell face first, nothing to stop her, and landed on her jaw.

And uh she was 10 at the time, and Nicole was in Calgary.

We were living in Winnipeg.

I got a phone call that Julia was a hot mess, and so I whipped over to the school, and sure enough, she was.

It's the kind of thing parents don't ever want to see their kids go through.

And so I took her to the hospital, and uh she was swollen and bloody.

And if you're queasy, I apologize in advance.

I won't say much more in terms of detail, but she she broke her jaw here and she bent her jaw here, and so our 13-year-old princess has uh uh plates that have kind of held her jaw back in place.

And I remember sitting in a hospital room feeling really helpless as her daddy.

I remember feeling like if there was some way that this cup could be lifted, I would I would carry that for her.

If there was some way I could step into her her agonizing pain, and and it was attached to embarrassment because she was really concerned about about um winning the contest, basically.

And uh but also just like man, the kids at school are talking about me, and and the principal had to go to every class the next day and say, this is not something we condone, holding our breath for as long as possible.

And it was like a life lesson for her, but a life lesson for the entire community that she was a part of, and so there was this embarrassment attached to it.

But I remember sitting in the hospital with her, and what I wanted more than anything was to remove the weight of this injury from her, to take away her pain.

But what I learned that was more important was to teach my daughter how to not lose her joy, because she's full of it, and how to not lose her spark, and how to not let her light shine in the middle of this experience, and to continue to trust and follow Jesus while he healed her and restored her injury.

And so out of that hospital time came things like what's the deal with your daughter?

Why is she so up?

Why is she so full of life?

Why is she so happy all the time?

Why is she so encouraging?

And as I was preparing for today, I thought about that because it helps us understand what Jesus went through and what we go through, and that our faith is about how we tangibly and practically follow Jesus despite our current circumstance.

Our faith is really about how we choose to tangibly and practically trust, love, and follow Jesus, regardless of the really hard things that are going on, regardless of the source of our press, pressure, and stress, and fear and anxiety.

That's the fourth thought I wanted to pull out of that story of Jesus.

And the last and final thought is this the Jesus that we follow knows that even your closest friends can feel like absolute bums when you need them the most.

So tapping into the presence of the God who never leaves or forsakes you is key to moving through the storm.

Jesus prayed out loud, and then he prayed out loud again, and then he prayed out loud the same prayer again.

And Jesus models clearly in the middle of his deepest, darkest, agonizing sorrow, weight, pressure, fear, worry.

He models what it means to pour out on the Father, leave it there, surrender his anxiety, to be silent and to stop striving.

Jesus modeled it so well.

Psalm 91 says, I will answer your cry for help every time you pray, and you will find and feel my presence even in your time of pressure and trouble.

The fifth and final pullout is simply this you will forget to respond with prayer.

And then you will remember that prayer is still our best response.

And we all do it.

We all have some version of I was going through this and I was trying to figure out, and I talked to this therapist, and I met with this person, and I read this book, and then I should probably pray about this.

And then we prayed, and somehow our hearts were enlarged and our faith was lifted, and our eyes were put on him instead of it.

And then we prayed again, and then we prayed some more.

And if Jesus, in the middle of being abandoned by his closest friends, in the middle of going back a third time, oh they're they're asleep.

I like the third time he didn't even bother to wake them up.

He's like, Yep, they're sleeping again.

I'm gonna go back and pray a third time.

Even when you invite the right people and the best people in, sometimes people will let you down.

Wanna know why?

Because they're going through stuff too.

So, how we learn to lean in and experience the presence of God as we remember to pray, as we remember to carve out time, to not just talk to God, but allow Him to speak to us through His Word, through His Holy Spirit, through His presence.

This week, as we head into whatever's real in your life, I want to encourage you that however your MO has been in terms of responding to pressure, stress, weight, darkness, fear, worry, I want to remind you that this week you will experience trouble and sorrow.

You will navigate dark days, but stay courageous.

Jesus did.

You will need to use wisdom regarding your inner circle.

Know the difference between just somebody and anybody.

Choose the right people.

Invite them in.

This week you're gonna need to choose this truth.

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

And so I choose joy.

Even when I don't feel joy, I choose it because I know it's mine.

And that joy is simply about understanding that my faith is how I tangibly and practice the God that I serve, how I live it out, and how I choose to have moments filled with purpose where I radiate his life and his love into other people despite what I'm going through.

I can still rise up with purpose.

I can still be a part of Jesus' story and make a difference in my life.

And fifth, you will forget to respond with prayer.

So remember that prayer is still our best response.

Remember that a life and a heart fixated on the presence of God will overcome being disappointed by our friends as they fall asleep on our watch.

But God never leaves us and never forsakes us.

In Jesus' name.

Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that practically we can look to the life of Jesus and we can find all that we need to strengthen us and give us hope and give us a shot of courage to rise up and continue to overcome.

And in this room here and now are men and women who are going through something.

Something that feels exhaustive, something that feels all-encompassing, something that feels heavy and weighty and might even smack of darkness.

And so today we choose to remember Jesus.

We choose to look into his life and to see how with wisdom he invited the right people in.

He chose to respond with courage, even against how he was feeling.

He chose to choose joy connected to the purpose of his life, connected to the purpose of how his life was going to help others find hope in Jesus.

And that same purpose holds true for us today.

And he chose to put all of his faith eggs in the God basket.

And so we can learn from that not just in an experiential, feeling good kind of way, but in a practical walk it out tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday kind of way.

God seal this word in our heart.

Allow it to be a source of strength and hope for us as we move through today and into tomorrow.

God, we love you.

We trust you.

We follow you today and every day.