Everyday Courage • Part 2 with Tony Jennings

Welcome to the Southside Church Podcast.

Weekly content that inspires all of us to follow Jesus.

Join us each week for a message from one of our fantastic communicators that provide practical ways to grow our faith, challenge ourselves, and to love others more.

And now, this week's message.

So last week we kicked off our series Everyday Courage, and we started off the back to school celebration with an experiment called the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment.

And because I love this dad joke so much, y'all gonna get it a second time or the first time.

Um, so why do we call it the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment?

Because elephants don't brush their teeth.

Oh, I gotta laugh this week.

Let's go.

Okay.

So, sweet Scarlett Grace, she she helped us do this experiment, and the hope was that that you would understand this word catalyst and what it means.

That that it kind of well, let's just make some noise for Scarlet Grace.

Come on, Scarlett.

She had no idea she was doing that experiment either.

I kind of just asked her uh the day up.

Uh, but the idea there is that we would take a deeper understanding or deeper look at the word catalyst, what it means and how it helps to create a reaction or even speed up a reaction.

Uh and and then be just because courage, courage is the catalyst for our lives.

But for so many of us, having courage is hard, it's difficult, it's challenging, and sometimes comfort gets in the way of a courage.

And so we took a look at this extraordinary moment between Peter and Jesus, where Jesus tells his disciples, hey, go as far away, get on the boat, go away.

Um, I'll catch up with you a little bit later.

And then when the winds came, the boat starts to rock a little bit.

They see Jesus.

Well, at first they don't even know it's Jesus, but they see Jesus walking on the water.

Jesus, he tells them, hey, um, take courage, don't be afraid.

It's I.

And so Peter, and I think we all need a friend like Peter, Peter yells out, Well, hey, Lord, if it's you, do me a favor, tell me to come.

And Peter found the courage to step outside of the boat and begin to walk towards Jesus.

I wholeheartedly wholeheartedly believe that we're in a season of our lives where we can experience the extraordinary life Jesus is inviting us to.

But it's going to take courage.

And so we were left with this question.

What's your one step?

What's the one thing that Jesus is asking you to do?

We all have that.

The one thing.

And then, ooh, trust.

Oh, okay.

Anybody have another one?

The one thing.

The one thing that Jesus is asking you to do.

Ooh, patience.

Whew.

That's hard.

Well, we got a chance to see Sage take her one step.

And we celebrated Sage being baptized last week.

Can we make some noise for Sage?

She was baptized by her parents.

I know that is so exciting.

But here's the thing for many of us: there's something that gets in the way of us taking our one step.

Well, my son August was born.

He had some complications, and I've shared a little bit of that story with some of you.

But when he was born, we didn't get the opportunity to hold him right away.

He spent some weeks in Nick U, and so then we got the call that, hey, we can actually touch him through what it's called, I think it's the incubator.

We could touch him.

And we were, y'all, we were stoked.

You know, he grabbed our finger and we were we were excited.

And then we got the call that, hey, um, you guys can hold him today when you come.

Oh, you guys, we were so stoked.

We were so excited.

We were we were ready.

And and and for a moment there, right before the nurse got ready to hand August to me, these thoughts started racing in my mind.

Like I started to think, well, what if I drop him?

Right?

He's so tiny, he was maybe uh just a little over three pounds.

What if I drop him?

Or what if he poops?

And what if he screams again and cries?

And then what if he poops again?

Like what do I do?

But then some more serious thoughts began to just phrase through my mind.

I had the opportunity to have a father who I would have loved for each and every one of you to meet.

He was an incredible man, and most of my friends still call him their hero.

So I started to think, well, what if what if I don't measure up to this guy?

How will August see me?

Will he see me as someone who's a who's a solid, okay dad or a solid and an okay leader?

Like, will he see me as someone who loves him unconditionally?

Like, how will he see me?

Will he see me as his hero?

And as she got ready to hand him over to me, I hesitated for just a moment.

And you know if courage is the catalyst for living the extraordinary life Jesus is inviting us to, then why do we hesitate?

Why do we lack courage?

The problem is that we rarely describe our hesitation as a lack of courage, right?

We we usually give it a more respectable name.

We all do this, we all have the tendency to call it complicated.

Right?

But but really what we what we really are trying to get after is like what's on the other side of the thing that he's asking me to do?

Like well, what is on the other side of that?

Like, what's on the other side of having the conversation that he's asked you to do or to reconcile the relationship or establish that that boundary that needs to be established?

So honestly, the the question that we're really after is this what will happen if I actually do this?

Like if I actually do the one thing that Jesus is asking me to, if if I actually do the one thing that's in front of me, if I actually take the one step, like, what will happen?

And in this moment, this is where fear enters in.

So the question isn't necessarily, okay, what will happen if I actually do this?

The question is, well, what am I afraid of if I actually do this?

Like, what if I'm a well, what am I afraid of if I actually have the conversation with the person that I know I've been needing to have that conversation with because it's time for me to apologize, or it's time for them to actually, actually forgive me for the things that I've done.

Like, what am I afraid of?

And although we all have experienced fear in our lives, here's what's often dangerous about fear.

Fear doesn't necessarily introduce itself, right?

It doesn't go, hi, I'm fear.

I'm here, be careful, don't do it.

No, sometimes fear says it's not the right time.

Sometimes fear says, I need more time.

Sometimes fear says, well, what if I'm unqualified?

Sometimes fear says, well, what if they reject my phone call?

What if don't they return my text messages?

Let's be honest, we all have a fear.

For each and every one of us, there's something we fear.

Maybe some of you fear um being bitten by uh spiders, some of you fear being bitten by uh mosquitoes, which by the way are the most terrible insects ever.

Like, why do they even exist?

Anyway, uh some of us fear eating black beans.

There we go.

It's two of us in the room.

Um, some of us, some of us fear uh wrestling a bear, except for Trey in the back there.

I think if anybody could wrestle a bear, Trey, who's part of our production team, he could he could probably take the bear.

Some of us, though, some of us fear losing a loved one.

Some of us fear maybe not hearing I love you again from some of the people we love the most.

Some of us fear what will happen to our kids.

Some of us fear financial instability.

Some of us fear that we don't have enough time.

And sometimes, right?

Sometimes we can get into the space where um we hide behind fear, and we can sometimes call it like humility.

That's sometimes the language that we can use.

Sometimes um when we're in the moments where we should do the thing that he's asking us to do, that we should take the one step.

For followers of Jesus, we use this over-spiritualized language.

I'm just waiting on God.

I'm just waiting on God.

But but let's be honest, because the thing that he's asking us to do, the conversation that needs to happen, or the apology, or the forgiveness that needs to be forgiven, whatever it is, sometimes we get into these spaces in our lives where we allow the space between obedience and Jesus' ask to be occupied by fear.

And this is why courage matters.

But I want to be clear before I continue to move on.

Courage offers no guarantees, but fear guarantees more of the same.

And sometimes, sometimes we fear what obedience will cost us.

And I want to be clear when I say this, so I'd love to have your eyes, hey, uh, being obedient to the thing that Jesus has asking is asking you to do is going to cost you something.

It's gonna cost you your comfort, it's gonna cost you that control that you love having, it's gonna cost you your selfishness, it's going to cost you something.

And so many times, we often know the one thing that Jesus is inviting us to do, but we just don't know how to do it.

We just don't know if the thing that we're we're going to do, what it will cost us.

And we're often guessing or thinking or wondering if the thing that we're supposed to do will it cost us too much?

I can't afford right now to lose control.

I've worked so hard to build a life of comfort.

I can't afford to be uncomfortable.

I know that I'm not supposed to be thinking about me, but I've lived a life for the last several years thinking about so many people.

Don't I have the right to think about me, to put me first?

Our obedience to Jesus is going to cost you.

But not taking the one step will cost you the opportunity to live the extraordinary life that Jesus is inviting you to.

And if we allow fear to get in the way of our obedience, well, we'll end up living a life surrounded by the things we're too afraid to confront.

And so maybe for you, the one step that you should take that you need to take today is not a dramatic step.

It's not packing up all your things and moving across the country.

Maybe, maybe it's just an hour of prayer.

Maybe it's as simple as inviting someone to church.

Maybe it's as simple as having coffee.

Maybe it's as simple as sending a text message or having the phone call.

Maybe it's it's this simple.

Just acknowledging the fact that I know what I need to do.

I'm just afraid.

And this is a great step because courage doesn't mean you aren't afraid.

Courage means that fear doesn't get the final word.

And today, for the rest of our time together, we're gonna look at John's gospel.

Now, here's what I love about John's gospel.

When we get to the end of John's gospel, he says, like, here's why I wrote it.

He makes it so clear that I want you to know that Jesus is the Messiah.

But in John's gospel, we find this narrative.

And maybe if you're a follower of Jesus, uh you've read it before, but I don't want you to rush past and go, I know the end of the story, Tony, I'm gonna check out here until we get to the end.

Call me later.

No, don't check out.

I want you to lean in here.

Because there's this narrative of this paralyzed man.

He'd been paralyzed, y'all, for 38 years.

And so what happened?

They would they would sit around this pool.

There's this pool, and they would sit around everybody who need any, needed any type of healing.

Any type of healing, they would go to this pool because there was this myth.

This myth that an angel would appear, he would, the angel would stick their wing into the water, the water would stir really, really, really fast, and then all of a sudden, the first person that makes it to the water, guess what?

Boom! They are healed.

So you can imagine what this pool looks like.

Now, in present day, here's a little bit of what the pool looks like.

And then I asked our friend uh ChatGPT to create a pool of from way back when, when people were surrounding this pool.

And here's a little bit of what it looked like.

So you've got all these people around the pool hoping and waiting for years upon years, hoping for some type of healing, hoping their situations would be changed.

And John continues to write that at some point Jesus is found there.

He is there, like somehow Jesus always finds himself where people are in need.

Which is a very important point for those of us who are followers of Jesus.

That we too have to find ourselves around people who are in need.

But that that's we'll we'll talk about that another time.

Um, so we get to this point in John's gospel, and that's where we're gonna pick up at John 5, where Jesus meets this man at the pool.

So if you've got your Bibles, go ahead and bring them out.

We're gonna jump into John 5.

If you've got your phones, bring those out too.

If you've got neither, it'll be on the screen.

Okay, here we go.

John 5 and 6 says, when Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him this question.

Can we read this together if that's okay?

Let's go.

Do you want to get well?

Doesn't that feel like an unnecessary question?

Right, like he's by the pool that I'm sure Jesus knows about the pool.

He knows that all of these people are waiting there for something.

So he goes up to this man, hey, do you want to get well?

And I think we'd all agree that our answer would be right.

But notice this man's reply.

He says, Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.

While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.

He doesn't answer Jesus' question.

Right?

He basically responds with, it's complicated.

It's complicated.

Jesus asked him, hey, do you want to be healed?

Do you want to be well?

And he doesn't go, yet, Jesus, signed me up for this healing.

I am ready to go.

What do I do next?

I want to get well.

I want to be healed.

No, he doesn't.

Which now for us, I think we can understand why Jesus asked the question in the first place.

Now I want you to know that this man has probably built a life around depending on other people.

He'd probably built this entire life of feeling outcast.

He knows what it feels like, so he is comfortable there.

He's built every single thing around being paralyzed.

And Jesus knows that if he heals them, if he gets well, it would drastically change his life.

It would change everything about his existing.

So it would change it in such a way that he might not be ready for that life.

He might not be ready for this new life.

Imagine not being able to walk for 38 years.

And then all of a sudden, this man named Jesus comes up to you and asks you, hey sir, do you want to get well?

Wait a minute.

If I get well, am I no longer invited to the pool?

Am I no longer invited to hang around the people that I've known for years?

Basically, his response of it's complicated looks a little bit like this.

Um Jesus, I'd love to get in the pool, but it's not the right time.

Jesus, I'd love to get in the pool, but you know what?

No one's here to help me.

Jesus, I love to get in the pool, but every time I try to even muster up the courage to do so, somebody gets in the way.

Jesus, you know what?

Hey, dude.

It's complicated.

Now his complicated is valid.

But I think we understand why Jesus was asking him this question.

But it's not complicated.

It's fear.

What if this man stood up for the very first time and he falls?

What if he stands up for the very first time and everybody watches and experiences his failure?

What if after 38 years of feeling disappointment and we don't know how long he'd been at the pool?

What if he tries to do the thing that Jesus is inviting him to do and he's disappointed again?

Isn't this really true for many of us?

That's the one thing that Jesus is inviting us to do, the one step that he's inviting us to take, we often go, Jesus, yeah, I would, but it's complicated.

But when in actuality it isn't complicated, it's fear.

Here's what it can look like for us.

Hey, Jesus, I know you're asking me to forgive this person, but what if I ask for forgiveness and they don't forgive me?

Jesus, I know you've been asking me to reconcile my relationship with my mom, relationship with my dad, relationship with my spouse.

What if I actually do that and it doesn't end in reconciliation, but it ends in distance?

What if I finally text the person or call the person that I need to call?

And instead of having this beautiful conversation with butterflies and rainbows, what if it turns into an argument?

What if I apply for the job that I know I need to apply for, that I feel you're asking me to apply for?

What if I get the job interview?

I make it through the first round, everything goes great, and then I get to the second round, everything goes great, and then I finally make it to the third round, and I think, okay, I can start planning how much I can budget, I can plan for next year's vacation because I'm excited about that.

I can plan for the new car that I need to buy because the brakes on my my current car is just out of control.

You start planning that, and then all of a sudden, you don't get the job offer.

What if that happens?

What if this happens?

What if I decide to follow Jesus and life gets harder?

What I love about the rest of this story is that Jesus doesn't give him the how.

He doesn't give him the strategy for it.

He doesn't even give him a proposal.

Like, hey, dude, here's how I'm going to heal you.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to do this.

And then on top of that, he doesn't even heal him the way he would have expected to be healed.

Here's what Jesus says to him.

He gives them this command.

He says, get up, pick up your mat and walk.

So wait, I've been sitting around the pool for 38 years.

For 38 years I've been this way.

I expected to go to the pool that some angel will appear, dip their wing in the pool, it would stir really fast.

I would be able to beat the line and get to the pool, and then boom, I'm healed.

Jesus doesn't even use the pool to heal him.

Jesus simply gives a command.

Get up, pick up your mat and walk.

Before we move on to the paralyzed man's response, I want to let you know something about fear.

Fear will delay obedience until disobedience feels reasonable.

Until we can justify not doing the one thing.

Until we can justify not taking the one step.

What I love about this though, is that the man's response, at once, here's what Jesus says, at once, the man was cured.

He picked up his mat and he walked.

What this tells me a little bit is that as this paralyzed man was listing all of his fears, and maybe this is true for you and I, as we're listing all of our fears, listing all of our it's complicated, listing why we can't do the thing that we know we're supposed to do, why we can't send the text message, why we can't have the phone call, why we can't go after the new job.

Jesus interrupts his it's complicated.

He interrupts his fears.

Because your it's complicated doesn't mean it's impossible.

Especially with Jesus.

So when he utters the words, hey, at once the man was cured, he picked up his mat and he walked.

I love, I love how John writes this.

He goes, at once.

The man had spent 38 years waiting, explaining, hoping, wishing, doing everything he could for his situation to change.

But when Jesus spoke, everything changed.

Jesus didn't need another explanation.

He didn't need, the guy didn't need more time to process the possibilities.

His obedience became the evidence that his encounter with Jesus was real.

The mat he had spent years lying on became the mat he carried.

The very thing that had once represented his limitation became a bright spot in his story of what Jesus had done.

So for each and every one of us today, I want you to consider this question.

What if the thing that Jesus is asking you to doesn't require time, it requires obedience.

Ryan Holiday, in his book, Courage is Calling, he writes this.

Today, each of us receives our own call to service, to take a risk, to challenge the status quo, to run toward while others are running away, to rise above our station, to do what people say is impossible.

And there will be so many reasons why this would feel like the wrong thing to do.

There will be incredible pressure to put these thoughts, these dreams, this need out of our mind.

Depending on where we are and what we seek to do, the resistance we face may be simple incentives or outright violence.

Fear.

Fear will make itself felt.

It always does.

Will we let it prevent us from answering the call?

Will we leave the phone ringing?

Or will we inch ourselves closer and closer, preparing ourselves until we're ready to do what we're put here to do?

I wholeheartedly believe that we're in a season of our lives where we can experience the extraordinary life Jesus is inviting us to.

But it's going to take courage.

It's going to take courage to overcome our fears, to overcome our it's complicated, to overcome all of our excuses, all of our reasons that are easy for us to simply say no.

No to the call that He's placed on our lives.

No to the call to serve.

No to the call to show up.

No to the call to lead with love, to lead with grace, to lead with compassion, to lead with care, no to reconciliation, no to reconnection.

No to following Jesus.

But here's the thing.

If you're looking for courage, if you're looking for an example of what courage looks like, we can look to Jesus.

Because Jesus never asked us to go somewhere or to do something he hadn't done himself.

Because here's the reality, Jesus didn't ask us to take up our cross until he took up his.

So that we can experience the extraordinary life that Jesus has invited us to, so we can experience closeness to our Heavenly Father.

And so when we find, when we don't find courage, we can look to the one.

We can look to the one who shows us what courage looks like.

Because here's the thing, we don't find courage by looking within ourselves.

We find courage by looking to the one who went before us.

And here's the reality, because he conquered death, sin, and the grave, you guys, we can follow faithfully his example.

Jesus shows us this kind of courage, the kind of courage that overcomes fear and leads to the extraordinary life he is inviting us to.

So the question for us is an important question for us to answer.

And I want you to spend time over the next couple of weeks figuring it out, but what's your one step?

What is your one step of courage?

What is it?

What is the one thing that he is asking you to do?

But before we leave today, um there's one thing that has been on my heart to share with y'all.

Um for followers of Jesus, love requires something of us.

Now, if you're not a follower of Jesus, you you can check out on this one.

Um, but this is specifically for followers of Jesus.

Love requires something from us.

Love requires us to embrace the uncomfortable.

Love requires us to overcome fear with courage.

Love requires us to experience a closeness like never before.

Love requires us to reconcile.

Love requires us to forgive.

Love requires us to be more compassionate.

Love requires us to share, share things that we would normally say, no, this is mine, this is just for me.

Love requires us to give of ourselves, not because we have to, but simply because we get to.

And simply because he showed us how.

Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father.

What an extraordinary privilege it is that we get to do this together.

That the person that's been here for the very first time today, or the person that's been been here for a long time, the person that's new to faith, for the person that's discovering faith.

Um, the fact that we all get to come together today to figure out our one step is such a gift that I never want us to rush past.

But God, I'm praying that all of us, myself included, would find the courage, the courage to do what love requires of us, to trust you more than we trust our fears, to trust you in the middle of our hardships, to trust you in the middle of the best seasons of our lives, to trust you even in the unknown, to trust you even when we don't know the plan.

That we would take our one step.

I pray that everyone here would make the decision today to take their one step to do what you you've asked them to do.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.