Advent - Peace

All right. Amen. Thank you so much, Mr. Woods. We work together in the school, so we call

each other Mr. all the time. My kids are like, why are you calling him Mr.? We just, Mr.

Woods, thank you. Some of y'all was probably like, oh, why are you being so proper? But

to you all, how are y'all doing? Good? All right. Well, my name is Chris Britton. I get

the opportunity to be on the teaching team here at the house, and it is always an extreme

pleasure to just prepare a message and the process that we go through as we, Pastor Jan

and Greg and I, kind of chop it up, talk amongst each other through text and whatnot as we

prepare. But it's always a blessing for me to be able to come before you and share. Last

night, Greg had sent me a picture of the first sermon that I did here at the house, and I

was like, man, who is that guy? It was quite a long time ago, but I told Greg, this message

is kind of special to me because we talk about peace, and even when he sent me this picture,

I didn't tell him this, but I was like, I probably wasn't experiencing that much peace

when I did that first message. And it was probably a, I mean, it was a process that

I went through in a meeting with Greg and our friendship developing and deepening where

I remember sitting at one of our favorite spots we used to meet at, the Quasity Pancake

House, and he just said, man, what kind of teacher do you want to be, man? Just find

peace and do that. And I'm like, all right, man, I'm going to be rapping and doing poetry

and all that kind of stuff. And he was like, well, good. So it is my pleasure to be at

peace amongst you this morning and to be able to be myself, to be with my family here at

church to talk about Jesus. Amen? I'm going to kick things off with a poem. And if you've

been here for a couple of Christmases, you might have heard this one, but tis the season.

Behold, baby boy born in Bethlehem, a bundled blessing, wrapped in redemption, but without

the most beautiful beginning. God foretold of a king for it was no fable, even despite

the world raising cane, our one true God was able to make himself known through one young

girl visited by angelic appearance, Gabriel announcing God's favor. Mary would be chosen

as vessel, giving her faith something to wrestle with. Then there's Joseph, there's Joseph,

her faithful companion with one pressing problem. He was put in a predicament that's hard to

picture. He too given angelic news with clues that Mary's pregnancy was more than probable,

but he wasn't involved in the one thing that would make it all possible. See, there were

obstacles like what seemed to be a senseless census, but they didn't stop. They move forward,

forward, forward, moving, marching, making footprints with their faith. There wasn't

a place to check in, but one in, and then God would bring self through virgin womb,

bursting into human history. This baby would live a life that would sing a song called

peace. This baby would grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man, this

baby would be beaten and blameless and hung. Our one sacrificial lamb, Jesus, who knew

that Mary be the first to carry peace in her womb. Amen. Amen. See, it's the second week

of our Advent series and Greg kicked it off last week. If you don't know, Advent is a

time of expectation. It's a time of waiting. It's a time of preparation. It's a time of

a celebration of the birth of Jesus. And I want to share a message this morning about

peace. And I believe that we can all have a better understanding of how we can live

a life experience the peace of God by looking at, you know, the Christmas story that we

kind of know about. Let me start by asking, what does peace look like? What does peace

look like to you? A few years ago, my family got an opportunity to do something that, you

know, I ever had to tell my kids, like, I don't know if we ever going to do this again,

so we've got to soak this up. But we went on the Disney dream cruise. And I promise

y'all I'm not trying to sell y'all no timeshares or nothing like that. But let me tell you

a little bit about it. It's not gonna be one of those meetings. Some of y'all know what

I'm talking about. But I remember one of my wife's favorite things to do was to wake up

way too early for me and to go out on like the deck. And I remember one time like, what

are you doing getting up so early? We're supposed to be resting. You know what I mean? But she

would go out and she would just soak in the sunrise on the ocean, which is calm. And it

didn't have this like, the rosy colors would bounce off of the all the things that you

would imagine that are beautiful. That's what it looked like. I did it one time. And then

I was like, Oh, that was that was nice. But I'm not gonna do this every day. But for her,

the peace and the tranquility was worth her getting up early. I can't tell you how many

pictures she took of that. I'm like, they look the same when we get it. But for her,

it was the perfect picture of peace. But I think we've been tricked. Because we can't

have that all the time. Right? And we get this this picture of like, that's peace, man.

But it's like something that we have to attain. Or when I tell my kids, we ain't doing this

all the time, y'all. This might be a once in a lifetime. But sometimes that's how we

picture peace. It's the weekend or it's this break or it's when we get time off for us

vacation time. And y'all know vacation time. Sometimes that's not peaceful. The pictures

that you look back at that kind of gives you some calm but going through it sometimes is

not peaceful. So I think that my hope this morning is to talk about peace in a way that

is a little bit more realistic for us. Because, you know, as I prepared for the message and

comb through the passage that we'll read together, I believe that we hold that dreamy picture

of peace. But we run the risk of something that we can hardly attain. And we're always

waiting for that or something beautiful to happen so we can take an exhale and be like,

okay. But the true picture of peace, I believe is much different than we aim for today because

we work, work, work. Again, we wait for weekends so we can experience peace. And we outwardly

want to appear like we got it, especially on Sunday morning. Simple question today was

how are you? Did anybody say I'm peaceful and rested? If somebody did, you'd probably

be mad like, are you serious? It's Sunday morning. You know what it took for me to get

here and I got to put on this face and you're trying to tell me that you got peace and you're

rested? Because when we associate the words resting and peace together, it's usually when

we're gone. But I feel like we got it twisted a little bit. Why can't we say that on a Sunday

morning? I'm rested and I'm in peace and I'm alive. You hear me? I'm giving you permission

this morning to be at peace. You don't have to put on a face here or the posture at the

end and be like, everything's good. Oh, that was great. Oh, yeah. If peace, if you feel

God's presence and you want rest and you fall asleep, amen. Experience peace this morning.

Be free. Amen. Amen. Because I think that a lot of times, again, we get it, we get it

twisted. A little over a year ago, I was writing a series of poems that maybe never will see

the light of day. But when I'm kind of going through it or whatever, I like to write it.

It's probably no surprise. Some poems that maybe never will see the stage or never will

see a mic until today. There's one of them that I'll share. But last year, it was one

of those times where there wasn't a lot of peace. My family and I was going through some

things and I'm so excited again because this time last year, it wasn't as peaceful, but

I'm proud of my family for working through and getting a peaceful resolve through God.

This is a poem that I wrote around this time last year called Pit Stop. I'm so sad right

now. My emotions are at high speed zooming laps within my soul, heart racing, body breaking,

trying to keep up with the speeds of need, the speed of me without a lane for help. But

I do have friends. A crew that cheers is near and their prayers are fuel. They refill my

emptiness as I steer towards another day. I hope and hope I can make it again to the

pit stop called peace because I feel like there's so many more laps to come. I was not

in a great place of peace. It was hard to even think about it while doing the poem.

But I believe that too often we search for peace in me and the wrong places and I think

there's a more accurate picture of what peace is like. We're going to be in Luke 1, 26-38.

If you are able, you can stand as we honor God's word and we will read from Luke 1, 26-38.

Very common story that we hear. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God

to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin, betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of

the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. He came to her and said, greetings,

O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried

to discern what sort of reading this might be. The angel said to her, do not be afraid,

Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive in your womb and

bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son

of the most high and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he

will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end. And

Mary said to the angel, how would this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered

her, the Holy Spirit, say that one more time, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the

power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called

the Holy Son of God and behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived

a son and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren for nothing will be

impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the servant, the Lord, let it be me according

to your word and the angel departed from her. Let us pray. God, please meet us exactly where

we are this morning. Use me to direct our hearts and minds this morning to your grace,

your peace, your mercy. Help us to dig deep and find ourselves in your word. I pray we

can understand more and more what your peace means for our future. Amen. There's an artist

named Jack Dawson that painted a picture of peace and we're going to put that picture

up. If we can put the first picture up, please. Jack Dawson, this is more of an accurate picture

of peace, I believe. But Jack Dawson, according to him, this is what most of our life feels

like. See if we got that. It's okay. But there's a picture that you'll see with a lot of stuff

going on. A lot of stuff going on. That's a picture of peace right there. That's more

of what we were saying. Yeah, okay. I feel you. Where are we going with this? So Jack

Dawson has this awesome painting. But if we look in, we'll go to the next picture. One

more. There's a bird with a nest tucked in there with the little birdies chilling. A

picture of peace. There's a bird that happened to find this right place amongst everything

else that's going on and live. And I think that this is a little bit more accurate. Right

in the middle of the picture, you see this bird. And the bird flew there knowing all

that's going around and found safety during this storm. So my question is, again, I understand

the sentiment, but why can't it be true for us with all that's going on to be rested and

to have peace? What we learned from the scripture today is that real peace is when God allows

us to be in situations with raging storms crashing all around us, but we are chilling

because we know the one who created the water. We know the one who created the elements and

we trust God holding us in the palm of his hands because many of us will never find that

peace because peace is there being nothing around you that's wrong. But God is the one

that walks into situations that are all jacked up and he provides a level of calm, a level

of assurance and a level of knowing. No matter what is going on around you, I want everybody

in here to know that there is a God that is standing with you. And the passage this morning

are about the posture of Mary and Joseph under an interesting amount of pressure, peace and

pressure. You know how the preachers like to put all the words to the alliteration.

Posture, pressure, peace. Your posture promotes peace when you're under pressure. You know

in all honesty, I think we would prefer the dream cruise, ocean side view of Christianity,

but there's a way that we can make sense, make this make sense and this morning I pray

that we can see peace in a different way. Matthew 1 20 through 21 in another part of

the gospel says, but as he considered these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared

to him in a dream saying, Joseph, and this is Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take

Mary as your wife for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will be

your son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.

And the first thing is peace is in the presence of God. Peace is in the presence of God. I

believe that if we had angels that appeared to tell us some crazy stuff like that, we

would also be terrified. I love this scripture because they were scared. And one of the first

words that you hear is like, hey, it's okay. I know this is crazy. If I'm an angel, I'll

be talking like that. Yo, yo, yo, yo, no, no, no, put down the rocks and stuff. I'm real.

The rocks can go through me anyway. I'm an angel. You're good. All right. This is no

CGI stuff. This is real. You're going to be okay. Be at peace. Don't be terrified. Peace

is in the presence of God. I feel like those angels, they promoted this presence that calmed

them into belief and that belief into an action that they could trust and an assurance and

a protection as they went. Matter of fact, there's a modern day picture of Jesus, I'm

sorry of Mary and Joseph. If you look at that today, there was kind of a modern depiction.

Some of you may have seen that, but if you look at it, you can see a guy on a pay phone

and there's a whole bunch of different things around. If you were able to look at the picture,

you would zoom in and see a lot of different connections to the scriptures. Dave's City

Motel, no vacancy and all this other stuff. But out there trying to find a place, right?

This young couple trying to find a place to lay their heads with a pregnant wife.

And I don't have to say a lot about how that, you know, the humanity in the story,

that it would be kind of this frightening experience as they're trying to find a

peaceful place to rest. But I imagine that they felt a certain peace that would be unattainable

just with themselves.

The second thing I'd like to tell you is that peace is in the process with God.

Because we want the microwave peace, like we just want it to be gifted to us, like let me just wake

up with peace. But sometimes there's a process because we want this instant. We don't like

the process and we forget that Mary had to carry this child with her. And the scripture

is sometimes easy because on one sentence she's pregnant, the next sentence baby's born.

What happened to the morning sicknesses and all this other stuff? Like,

what was her cravings? Joseph, go out there and, you know what I mean? We forget the humanness of

the process that the day to day, what was the conversations like? What was the expectations

like? Was there some doubt sometimes? It's like, this is crazy, like this is really gonna happen.

We're gonna really, like think about if you have kids, like your conversations about what's to come.

You're marveling at every step along the way. But peace comes with the process.

I bet there's times where she thought that there were, had to be a simpler way or she wanted to

be like, this is too difficult. She went through it. And sometimes we too have to go through it.

I can't tell you what process you need to go through, but there may be some things that you

need to go through to find peace in your life. And the third thing is peace is in the promises of God.

You know, when I think of their story, I think of in times of doubt or anger or frustration in the

whole situation, they remembered the angel. They were able to look back at a time where they

experienced peace. Are there times that you can look back when you experienced peace?

As you can look back on a promise that God kept in your life, and maybe you're going through one of

those storms right now, but you can recall that. You can look back on the promise that God kept in

your life, and maybe you're going through one of those storms right now, but you can recall that

and it can bring you peace and be like, yeah, God did that before. I believe that he could do it again.

And you can look at yourself in the mirror and say that we're gonna make it. We're gonna find peace.

I mean, Mary and Joseph felt a supernatural peace when God's promise came to pass. And let us

remember there's a continuation of rhythms of this peace because we can fast forward to the

Mother Mary being an eyewitness to her son's death. Promises of God, the assurances of God,

how could she find peace in these situations?

And the big thing, my big message is, it's kind of simple, but one of the most difficult things

sometimes in the faith is that peace is a supernatural gift from God. Something that we can,

it's not a door buster gift that we can, you know, that's not an Amazon Prime deal. We can,

like, let's go grab some peace real quick. I'm gonna run down to the store and grab some peace.

I need it. It's this supernatural gift from God, I believe, where we can have a resolve that we know

is not of us. So how will you pursue peace this season? You know, we won't find peace through

turning up and hustling and bustling and wearing ourselves out in the street. We won't find peace

turning up and hustling and bustling and wearing ourselves out during the holidays.

There's a book by a guy named Kevin DeYoung, and the book is called Crazy Busy, and he has a chapter

about how sometimes we are our worst enemies when it comes to peace, because we work and work and

work the peace out of our lives by overdoing stuff. Let me read a quick couple sentences from

this book. Opening our home to others is a wonderful gift and a neglected discipline in the church,

but we easily forget the whole point of hospitality. Think of it this way. Good hospitality is making

your home a hospital. The idea is that friends and family and the wounded and weary people come to

your home and leave helped and refreshed, and yet too often, hospitality is a nerve-wrecking experience

for hosts and guests alike. Instead of setting our guests at ease, we set them on edge by telling

them how bad the food will be and what a mess the house is and how sorry we are for the kids' behavior.

We get worked up and crazy busy in all the wrong ways because we are more concerned about looking

good than with doing good. So instead of encouraging those we host, they feel compelled to encourage us

with constant reassurances that everything is just fine. I don't know about you, but

during this time of season, it's quite common for a lot of activity to be going on.

It's common for us sometimes to miss the point of what's going on. So I would encourage you

to not just be crazy busy for the fact of being crazy busy,

but focus on the question, how will you find peace? If we want practical peace,

we can call upon God's Spirit. We can pursue peace. We can practice peace.

When we give our life to Christ, our salvation gives us the peace with God. Our past

sins are settled and we abide in Him and that gives us a peace of God. Reading our words,

sometimes staying connected with God and God's people, having connection with one another gives

us peace. Even accountability in certain areas of your life can give you peace. These are all

constructs of peace when we pursue peace from God. I'll never forget years ago visiting Canada and

sitting with my wife's grandmother who has passed now, but at that time, her grandfather had passed

he had dementia and things of that nature. I got a chance to sit with Tricia's grandmother

and she just was telling stories. She was telling stories about him and I felt like I should just

glean as much as I can about her story and write a poem about this. She wrote a poem. I wrote a

poem from the notes that I took, but I'll never forget her sharing with me about how dementia had

ruined him like so much, but when she would show up and sit with him, he was at peace.

This is what I had wrote in the final poem. There's a certain chunk. Fred was 93 years young

staring into the mirror of eternity and a bully named dementia had dominated his days. He was

often beside himself, but if you dug deep inside his heart, you would find inside a wealth of

memories. Memories his brain had forgotten, but because of his decline in health, but when she

came to visit, he would recline and hide himself inside her heart because that's where their love

lived. When he knew nothing else, he knew her. Fred may have scratched his head about a lot of things

for answers he'd find himself searching, but when he looked into her eyes, it was certain. Love had

conquered all diagnosis. There wasn't a pill he could have swallowed that would have given him

peace like her presence. And just to bring it to my neighborhood, to bring it to our neighbors, to

make this more practical, I remember again about a year ago, Greg pulled up to my house and gave me

a hug. That's all he said he wanted to do, and after he left, I stayed on my porch and I felt a

piece that I can't explain, and I felt it's going to be fine. It's going to be okay. I didn't believe

it, but I felt you're okay. I remember sitting in the parking lot in spring 2020, and I was anxious.

All the question marks about a big career change, and it was a defining moment. I was sitting right

outside of the school district with final paperwork after 15 years serving in a great place, and I sat

there, and I was going to drive off. There was something in me that was like, man, you're making

the wrong decision. You shouldn't go through with this. And we had a trial of XM radio. This isn't

an advertisement at all, but it wasn't, this isn't a Caleb story, no shame, but a song came on in

there, and it said, what do you do when you're at a crossroad? What do you do when the world is on

your shoulders? Keep the faith, keep the hope, find peace in God. I remember crying and feeling

this peace come over me and walking out confidently turning in this paperwork and going home saying,

like, it's fine. This is a good decision. What do you do when your back's against the wall? What

do you do? You hold on. You keep your faith. I remember in college when I felt this supernatural

peace that was not my own strength about ending a relationship that I wasn't good at that. I'm not a

confrontational person. I would have just been like, all things will work out. I was just like,

I'm not going to let you go. And I felt this peace about saying, you've got to just end this.

The picture of this beautiful ocean view isn't real, but it can kind of be more real if you

imagine a plank. All right? Imagine a plank. Imagine us stepping out into God's peace,

God's peace. Imagine God to fill us with the presence of presence powerful enough to fill us

to the brim and give us a buoyancy to give us hope that will keep us afloat and point us towards the

proper place of peace fast enough and slow enough for us to take in all that's going on, but still

just be comfortable enough to rest in his peace. What if that's a better picture? We're on a dream

of God. Because sometimes we got to jump in the waters of the unknown and we got to trust that

we know this picture is there, but we got to jump into this peace of God's presence and let it consume

us so we can float to the top of this. We still got the view, but we still got some things that

we got to go through. We still have a destination and I think that's the dream. I think that's the

hope of God. How can we navigate this now, stay afloat and be at peace? And that's his presence.

To close this sermon today, I want to honor somebody in our church, in our community that

has done a tremendous work by bringing youth hope, no pun intended, for nearly 20 years.

And I would love to celebrate that, how God orchestrated Dave Hodges life and

he poured himself out for so many years in the community and he's found peace in God's presence

about making a big decision in switching where he'll be serving. And I'd like to just bring you up,

look, I'm not going to tell a crazy story. But if you know Dave, you know that his heart is gold and

he's been a servant of the community for so many years. We got so many different stories and

I think that it's been an honor that I had to work and serve alongside with him, but for the most part,

even as Greg and I was talking about peace and this message, we think that it's very proper

just to honor Dave and the commitment that he's had to serving and him just feeling the peace of God

through a lot of different situations and circumstances in his life and this peace that

he feels now with even moving on and to stepping into a new role in the community.

Appreciate it man, yeah. It's been a long time. His story is every time we go somewhere,

we would always get introduced and if I were to get introduced before Chris, I would share his testimony

before he got up there. So I'd be like, yeah, I kind of grew up, my brothers were kind of messing

around with stuff and I got involved and I would take his testimony because I'd heard it so many times.

Yeah, we would swap stories. Testimony swap.

Yeah, it's been great. You know, Youth Hope has been a huge part of my life and this recently for me,

my life has changed dramatically in the last couple years. Getting married and then jumping

in with two teenage girls and everything else and life has just shifted and I've never felt a peace

of leaving Youth Hope because I just loved so much of being a part of that community and just loving

the students and just being a part of that ministry and I had a lot of opportunities

throughout that time to possibly leave over the years and even recently I had a couple of

opportunities of people saying, hey, what about coming to do this, what about coming to do that

and it's never seemed right. But in the midst of that, just realizing that there was a conflict,

like me trying to put my family first and trying to put the ministry first and I just knew deep down

in my soul that I just had to step away so I could put my family first and make that my priority

right now and as soon as I did that, I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.

As soon as I did that, I literally was in the office this morning and that morning and just

talking to my boss and saying, hey, I don't know if I can keep doing this and he's like,

what else did you do? I'm like, I don't really know and to go to lunch with my wife after that

and told her, hey, I think I'm quitting my job and we called a friend of ours who, she'd asked me,

what would I want to do and I was like, man, I've always wanted to do life coaching or counseling.

I've been mentoring, doing all this stuff for all these years but how do I find something more in

that way that could be more in line with our family time and so we called a friend of ours

who's Dr. Nett Clevenger and we had met with her previously about her organization called Narratives

that does just that as they provide life coaching and mentoring to young adults,

primarily at-risk young adults but she's open. She works with anyone who needs help and as we

were talking, I was like, Annette, how do I get into this line of work? It's always been a dream

of mine and she goes, why? I was like, I think it might be time for me to leave Hope and she's like,

I'll hire you. She's like, I need you and so I just started the conversation and this moved

really quickly and in that instant moment after that lunch of just literally quitting your job

and going, okay, God's providing something here in the midst of this. It's all okay. God's got it.

God is in control and so I'll be moving on to Narratives. We're located right on 11th Street

in Rock Island right next to the McDonald's in the parking lot of the Plasma Center.

So we'll be in the area still and just reaching out to young adults, anybody that needs it.

We have a huge opportunity just to serve anybody right now and I'll be talking more about it,

I'm sure, and you'll hear more about it and stuff but for Youth Hope to close that door this Friday

coming up, the 9th, December 9th, we're having an open house at Youth Hope in Moline and it'll be

kind of my final farewell, be my last day and so anybody would love to come and be a part of that

and just come to the open house, the Christmas open house. It's just kind of a way for us to say

thank you for being a part of our ministry. If you have volunteers to support it or you have some

interest in doing those things, just come hear about it. There'll be some treats and all that

kind of stuff in a short program so I'd love you to come join me on my last day of work and I

appreciate you guys so much and just love this family. As Greg said, you guys sang that song

when church started and I remember sitting in the planning meetings for the house to be launched

years and years ago and being great friends with Greg and Jen and Chris forever and just really

appreciate you guys and the values community so much. All right man. Well we would love to

lay hands on you and pray for you if that's all right with you. Of course.

If you've never been in ministry and if you've, the idea of putting 20 years into a place and

then stepping out to do something else, he's going to be raising funds and so I would love

for some of you to reach out to him about supporting him financially as well and so be

praying about that okay and Chris, will you pray for him? Absolutely, yeah. God, I just thank you

Lord. Thank you for Dave, his heart, his service. I thank you for his family. Thank you God for

Leah, Kimwe, Sweetie. What a blessing they are God, themselves to our community and the outer

community as well. We thank you God for Dave and his heart of serving your community for such a

long time and we pray God that he will continue to give him peace as he moves forward. We understand

that with transitions everything is not easy peasy. We pray God that this spirit of peace will be

upon him and his family as he continues to say goodbye and say hello to this new opportunity.

We do pray and thank you God. You know anyone else in this, in our community that might be

experiencing something similar with today as far as wanting a career change or transition, we pray

and lift them up as well. We know all stories don't work out like Dave's did but we do praise you Lord

for the provision that you provided for Dave and we pray for those guys that are in transitions in

their lives and families as well. So we are just thankful God for you. We thank you God again for

the work that you've done in and through Dave Hodge. Bless the families and the students that

he's worked with Lord and the seeds that he has planted throughout his time and years and

many of which that would blossom without him even understanding the tremendous amount of impact for

years to come. We're thankful and we trust these next steps for him and his family. In your name we

pray amen. Amen. Appreciate you guys. I don't know but these two they went to college together. Yeah.

We went to high school together. They've known each other for decades.

A lot of years of relationship. A lot of years.