Peace Isn't the Absence of Conflict — It's Wholeness, and Awe Is the Doorway | Advent | Chad Belew

But, you know, we're going to hop into this.

But there's something about this time of year that, you know,

always just kind of feels different.

Maybe it's like the five minutes that Texas has like a cold front,

and we're like, oh, like, San Antonio.

We're like, suddenly we need our flannels and fire pits.

And, um, you know, and then we're like, it's hot.

Actually, I bought a fire pit this weekend.

I don't know what for.

Uh, I keep trying to think, like, I'm going to be an outdoors guy.

Um, so I got a fire pit, but it's still in its bag.

Um, it's a travel fire pit, which is even cooler,

so we can go camping, which we don't do.

But, um, I think I had a good story.

So, it's like, this is exciting.

It's made here.

Oh, anyway, um, yeah, maybe it's that.

Maybe like the flannels and the fire pits.

Maybe it's the peppermint, everything who likes to drink peppermint stuff.

[inaudible]

Okay, um, or maybe it's the way like the Christmas lights start to show up.

Anybody put your Christmas lights up yet?

All right.

Anybody like heights?

Okay.

Okay.

I need help putting Christmas lights up on my house.

It's too tall.

Um, a couple of years ago, I hired a 20 year old kid who didn't care about his life, and

he would go to the edge and like, lean over and put him, uh, that's not me.

So I need to put those up, but we, we did decorate our house.

Mighty got a really good picture of us looking like we were all happy, decorating the tree.

Like we weren't yelling at each other at all, um, did just the kids.

They were yelling at each other, not us, um, but no, like whatever, whatever it is, something

shifts at this time of year.

And inside the church, that season has a name and this time of year is called Advent.

And some of us grew up with it.

Some of us discovered it maybe later in life.

Some of us just thought it was a calendar with chocolate in it.

They like maybe made Christmas time feel more spiritual, but Advent is this like older and

deeper, more human experience than what maybe, you know, just like chocolate calendar says.

It's a season designed to slow us down, to discover some things in life that are happening

around us.

It's a season designed to help us learn how to wait.

It's a season of longing.

It's a season where we remember that the world is not yet what it should be.

And yet light is already breaking in.

It's here.

It is, we see glimpses.

Last week we lit the candle of hope and today we're going to lean into peace.

But before I talk about peace, I want to talk about something else, like because I'm often

reminded and I have been this last week by how children encounter this season and how

much different it is a kid sees Christmas lights and they're like entire body changes.

Right, their eyes get big, their breath kind of like softens and they make that like, "Oh,

sound," right?

It's the sound that you guys probably make like when you have a good taco, like, "Oh."

But they, with Christmas lights, they do that and kids haven't lost their sense of wonder.

They haven't learned to talk themselves out of beauty.

Kids haven't learned to rush past the moments of awe in their life.

And I think whatever Jesus meant when he said in Matthew that, "Truly I tell you, unless

you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

I think this has a part of it.

This is part of that.

It could still let themselves be moved, adults, sometimes we forget how.

And maybe that's why Advent exists, to bring us back into present, to help us notice again,

to guide us back to wonder, which I believe is the doorway to peace.

And the Bible, peace, is not this word that means the absence of conflict or stress.

The Hebrew word for peace is shalom.

And shalom, if you look at the definition of it, it literally means wholeness or harmony

or integration, everything in its right place, it's not perfection, it's not performance,

it's not control, it's wholeness.

And shalom, it describes the life you have when all the scattered pieces of you begin

returning to center.

Your mind, your heart, your relationships, your sense of meaning, biblically, peace is

what wholeness feels like on the inside.

Most of us, we grew up in church, if you grew up in church, you probably heard the Christmas

story.

And when I step back and look at my upbringing in church and what this all meant for us,

a lot of times the Christmas story, its main point was still what happens after we die.

The idea was, baby Jesus is born so that he can become an adult die and so he can go

to heaven someday.

Thanks.

There's not a whole lot, yeah, there's talk about virgin birth and all the people that

come to see Jesus when he's a baby, but really the idea is like, how is he going to be an

adult and how is he going to die to forgive us of our sins?

So that one day we can get a ticket to go somewhere when we die.

But I don't think that's actually what this story is supposed to be about.

In the actual text, that's not what angels are saying, that's not what we see happening.

There's actually way more about what is happening with us right now in our life than there is

about where we're going.

Let's read it.

In Luke 2, it says, "And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch

over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and

they were terrified.

Right here is this Greek word, phobos."

And phobos is like, where we get the word phobia?

It means dread, terror, like threat.

It is a different version of the word that we've talked about, Yerah, terror.

They experience terror when these angels, of course, like you're sitting in a field.

You see all the stars.

This is where you live.

You've been here your whole life, not your whole life, but like, this is what you do.

Every night you're here.

And all of a sudden, an angel just appears in the sky.

I don't know about you, but I'm terrified.

And this is a group of people who, if they're associating an angel with God, their understanding

of God is if God shows up, you're in trouble, like terror enters in.

But watch what happens next, it says, "But the angels said to them, 'Do not be afraid.'

I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord."

Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared, saying, "Glory to God in the

highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests."

I don't know how the shepherds felt when the host showed up and started chanting, but "Glory

to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests."

Being here in this statement that the angel's making or this, the host of angels that show

up, nothing here is about afterlife.

Nothing's about escape.

Nothing is about fear of judgment.

It is about the arrival of peace, of wholeness, the shalom right now to them.

The Bible has this fascinating thing that, with the Bible, it's written in multiple languages,

right?

Yours is in English probably, but that's not how it was written.

I just thought, anyway, I remember having a debate with someone one time about the scripture

and they were like, "Well, you're just trying to confuse me."

I was like, "No, no, I'm just telling you what the Greek word meant."

They were like, "Well, my Bible is written in English."

Yes, but it was originally Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, these are the languages that were

used and written that have been translated to English.

But when you go through the language of the Bible, it gets fascinating.

There's a verse this year that shook my world.

If you've been here more than once now, you've heard me talk about the emotion of awe.

The verse that really just kind of wrecked me was that I talked about fearing God and

I just don't understand it.

I don't understand being afraid of God.

Why the gospel would have anything to do with fear, a God who is love, fear doesn't make

sense to me.

In a relationship that is loving, I don't understand why I need fear in order to love

or enter into a relationship.

I had some people push back on it, and so I went to the scriptures to look at what the

word was.

And so, like I said, most of you guys have heard this, but in the Old Testament, in Proverbs

Proverbs 9:10

9, verse 10, it says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of

the Holy One is understanding."

And this is one of those ones where I was like, "I don't get it.

How does fear lead to wisdom?"

It's just not a normal path that someone would take, and I don't believe that that's

how our minds work.

And so, I went to the original language and started studying it.

I found that the word fear here is actually yerah in the Hebrew language, and it means

ah, or reverence or wonder, not terror.

Like I said, this is the verse in a moment that really shook me theologically this year.

The trajectory of my theology is so based on this idea now that I re-enrolled in school.

I'm like the 43-year-old man in college with a bunch of 20-year-olds.

And Algebra's kicking my butt, which I don't know why I had to take it again, but I thought

it was in my credits.

I have a lot of credits.

But I went back to school for psychology, because I really, I just want, like this is

fascinating to me, and I wanted to study this emotion and what is happening with people,

and there's been quite a bit of studies on it, but now I'm a 43-year-old man sitting

in psychology classes in college because this shook me theologically.

The awe of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Later in the New Testament, we see that John says in 1 John 4, there is no fear in love,

but perfect love drives out fear.

Because fear has to do with punishment, the one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Now, like I said, biblically, there's some fascinating things with words.

This word in the Greek is the word phobos that we were talking about.

It's terror.

It's a dread.

It is love cast out fear.

Now, is the Bible contradicting itself?

Because it's said in the Old Testament that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Here it says that perfect love drives out fear.

Well, there are two separate words kind of definition-wise, but I believe that it's not

a contradictory.

It's describing two very different human experiences.

How you are experiencing something, how you, the emotion you have, the reaction to whatever

that is, could be terror, phobos, this thing that closes you off, it pulls you away.

You are afraid, so you have to protect.

Or it could be ah, your ah, which opens you up, which makes you more curious and more

focused outside of yourself.

The angels aren't saying here when they come to these shepherds and they say, don't be

afraid.

They're not saying don't feel anything.

I think they're saying don't experience this as terror, experience this as ah.

Because ah opens the heart, it softens the spirit, it creates room for peace and wholeness.

So what happens to these shepherds in this moment is they go from fear to ah, and they're

now invited into wholeness or peace.

I've given you the definition before, ah is the feeling you get when you encounter something

vast or beautiful that expands your perspective and pulls you out of yourself.

It makes you feel small but safe.

It creates a sense of connection.

It interrupts fear.

It opens you like I've given you multiple different ways to, you might like see this,

but like if you're standing outside of the Grand Canyon and you're just looking at this

massive hole in the ground, you're like what, what is this?

This is fascinating.

How did this happen?

And it's a reminder that you're not the only one here, but that there's so many things

that are happening that you are part of something, you are small part of something so much bigger.

But not in a bad way, in a fascinating way.

An invitation to be curious about what else is out there, what is happening around me.

And the studies show that when you experience, I thought it's like wow, that's cool, like

it is I am part of something bigger than my anxieties.

I am part of something bigger than my worry, I'm part of something so much bigger than

the struggles that I think are going to end this.

Psychologists, they describe awe as a self-transcendent emotion.

One that pulls your attention from fear and ego toward presence, gratitude and connection.

Because when you experience something so vast, your mind has to now accommodate what just

happened.

Something changed and like I don't know how to experience this, your mind has to open

up.

And once you've experienced all multiple times, you just get curious about what else is out

there.

What else is going to surprise me is going to create this emotion, this awe.

And you begin to, the studies show that when you experience awe, you are less self-focused

and more others focused.

You learn that there is connection that happens with us.

That we are actually here for each other.

I love when Brittany has talked about this.

She says that we breathe with the trees, like the trees create oxygen, which we need, science.

And then we expel carbon dioxide, which the trees need, they breathe in.

And it's just like maybe we were actually made to be together in this thing.

Look, how fascinating is this?

Keltoner says, "Aww, quiet's the self and brings us into deeper connection with the

world around us."

It quiets the brain's default mode network, which is this area where you actually are

experiencing anxiety and overthinking.

It quiets it.

It reduces your anxiety and your overthinking.

It activates the parasympathetic nervous system, this part of your body that literally, naturally,

it's a calming system in you, slows your heart rate.

It allows you to breathe a little bit deeper and it allows you to slow down.

It's built in.

It is this thing that gets activated.

In fact, it's like peace begins to happen in your body, restores your attention to things

around you, increases compassion and humility, reduces stress hormones like cortisol, researches,

even find that it reduces chronic inflammation.

It's a healing thing that happens when you begin to experience this.

I know that's not what we're talking about, but it is the throughline that I'm finding

now in what I believe we experience in life as humans.

I truly believe that awe, psychologically, physiologically, is the doorway into wholeness,

opens us up to peace, to shalom.

It makes sense why awe is spiritually transformative, but somewhere along the way, Christianity

became so centered on getting us out of here, getting to heaven that we forgot about what

it's so amazing about where we're at.

It's fascinating.

I saw yesterday, anybody raise your hands.

I know some of us did.

Raise your hand if you grew up with the Left Behind series.

Okay.

Yep.

Trauma, trauma, trauma.

I saw yesterday Kirk Cameron, who was like, some of you guys have seen the Left Behind

series and it was like Nicholas Cage.

That's fake.

Kirk Cameron's the real stuff.

Kirk Cameron was like the main guy in the Left Behind series.

Even after that has been a spokesperson for a lot of these things.

And yesterday I saw that he was on a podcast where Kirk Cameron said that he'd actually

changed his position on what he believed about afterlife, that he doesn't believe in eternal

conscious torment anymore, which is crazy, because that's all the Left Behind series

is about.

He's walked into what they call annihilationism, where we just kind of cease to exist.

But I can tell Kirk if I was going to talk to him, that's the entry drug.

He gets an annihilationism that you've been to read and study and you're like, oh wait,

maybe Jesus was about all of us.

This is what it looks like to experience life together.

See, Jesus didn't talk about getting us out of here somewhere else, but Jesus spent his

life talking about here.

How to be merciful.

He said, blessed are the poor.

What happens here, forgive, love your neighbor.

Come to me, all who are weary and I will give you rest.

He says, come to me.

All you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn

from me, for I am gentle and humble and heart and you will find rest for your souls.

This rest is not after you die, this rest is the beginning of wholeness now.

When Paul talks about it, he talks about it as through the spirit.

He describes the traits that grow out of a life that is becoming whole.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

These are all fruit overflow of a life that is becoming whole, but experiencing the peace,

the shalom.

They are not behaviors to perform, these are natural fruit of wholeness.

It opens the heart, wholeness begins to root itself there, shalom is what wholeness feels

like, this peace.

And the fruit of the spirit is what wholeness produces through us.

So in order to find ways to get us to wholeness, to experience shalom, there's a couple of

things that I want to point out that we can do in our everyday life.

So sometimes, when you begin to study this idea of awe, there's a lot of things that

are like, oh, you got to get out in nature and you got to go fly fishing, which is cool.

I did it this year.

I didn't catch anything.

I went fly casting, but it was fun.

But it was just out in Oregon, just like, I've never seen trees like that.

It's beautiful, but there's also bugs and things that I'm still trying to work through.

But we can't always just get out and go places.

So part of experiencing the emotion of awe, in order to begin to experience wholeness

and peace and live from that, there are some things that we can do in order to just really

adjust our mind to experience around us.

And I think this lines up with advent, this idea of waiting, this idea of slowing down.

So yeah, I put four ways to experience awe and find peace.

One is linger, to linger, like don't rush past beauty, slow down for a second.

Then light hits a tree in a way that stops you, then stop and just stay there.

Wait a moment, look, be aware of what's happening around you, the beauty that is everywhere

around us.

We're so worried about getting somewhere or doing something that we forget just how beautiful

life can be.

Linger.

In order to linger, you have to slow down, so number two is to slow down.

All requires presence.

It requires you to realize where you're at, not be focused on where you're going or where

you've been, but be right where you are.

Presence, it requires like pace.

So there's in the message, there's this translation where it says, "We enter the rhythm of grace."

Not our pace, our rhythm, but God's rhythm of grace.

And I believe it's a much slower rhythm than we typically run at.

Slow down.

Three is to engage your senses.

You have them, they were given to you.

None of you have lost sense, but these are the other senses, taste, touch, sound, sight,

smell.

Engage those.

Your senses, they anchor you in the moment.

You walk by and you smell something sweet or floral.

Brittany loves these floral smelling things, it's weird.

Let that happen.

Let those moments actually engage you to the moment.

I joke about Brittany, but I remember we, Brittany is all about like sunrises and sunsets.

I would always make fun of her, I'm like, "I don't want to get up that early, we're not

going out there."

She's like, "Come on, you and Marty want to come with us, we're going to go to this."

This sunrise at 4 a.m., no, I do not.

I'll see the sun when it's already up there.

But really, I think what it is, is Brittany has found the beauty in that.

I was like, "Hey, you're missing it, like the color is really like..."

When we were in Oregon, we were out there for Marley and Cassie Jo's wedding, and just

so happened while we were out there, Brittany and Vin got married, and I was like, "Let's

do this thing."

So they did, but we went to Lake Trillion, went to Lake Trillion, which is surrounded

by these mountains that have just beautiful trees, pine looking trees, just like green.

We get out there and, of course, it was going to have to be at sunrise.

We got to do this at sunrise, so we got up early, we went out, and there's pictures of

it, but we got out there.

The lake was so calm, it was like glass, like you could see the reflection of the mountain

behind it.

You could hear the birds chirping, I mean there was nobody else there until this one guy tried

to get up on the thing we were at, we were like, "Go away, we're doing a wedding."

But it's just us, quiet in nature, and there's just this thing that happens that you do slow

down.

You just got to look around like, "Wow, this exists here, and I miss it.

I miss, engage your senses.

Even when you walk out of here, there's beautiful flowers, and we have bees on the top of the

roof.

You can go see them."

We really do, but we haven't checked on them in a little while, so be careful.

Even that, it's fascinating, they make honey, and the way they operate, it's just fascinating.

It sees moments in life where you slow down, you engage your senses, and last is unplugged.

Because they pull us inward, and aw, it pulls you outward.

When we're stuck, a lot of times when we're in these moments of just beauty around us,

the first thing we do is what?

Which school?

I do it.

I'm bad about it.

Marty says yes, but the picture doesn't capture the moment and the emotion of all.

Even when I look at it, maybe, "Oh, that's really pretty," but I don't experience what

I experience there.

Unplug.

Allow yourself to just be there.

These aren't like self-help hacks.

These are spiritual practices, I believe.

They're pathways back into our own humanity, finding who we are, finding our wholeness,

finding out how we can operate in this world, and what's around us.

There's something else that happens when awe opens us up.

Peace begins to settle into our bodies.

We stop living from these fragmentations, we start living from wholeness.

When people begin living from wholeness, something remarkable emerges.

We talked about it a little bit earlier when we read the Scriptures, we become peacemakers.

Is this outflow of what happens when you experience wholeness, not peace keepers, not avoiders,

not people who pretend everything is fine, but peacemakers, people who create wholeness

around them because wholeness has taken root within them?

It's exactly what Jesus says when in Matthew 5, 9, he says, "Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God."

They're not special Christians, they aren't spiritual elite, they aren't people who never

get angry or overwhelmed, peacemakers are simply people whose inner life has been rearranged

by love.

Anyone no longer governed by fear or ego or the need to prove themselves, people whose

lives are becoming whole because peacemaking is the natural overflow of Shalom.

When we're fragmented inside, we react, we defend, we control, we grasp for certainty,

we compete, we fear difference, we hurt others out of our own unhealed places, but when pieces

begin to come together, when all opens up, when peace takes root in us, something shifts.

Wholeness expands our capacity, it increases our compassion, it softens our judgments.

It makes us curious, instead of defensive, it helps us hold tension without collapsing.

Wholeness makes peacemaking possible.

As the part I think often missed in the Christmas and Christian story, Jesus didn't come to

create people who go to heaven, Jesus came to create people who bring heaven into this

world, peacemakers, wholeness carriers, people whose lives are healing agents in this world.

Paul captures it in Romans 12, 18, he says, "If it is possible, as far as it depends

on you, live at peace with everyone."

You can only offer the world, the peace you've experienced inside yourself, which is why

all matters, it's why presence matters, it's why wholeness matters, peacemaking is not

about effort, it's about overflow.

So the work is, how am I experiencing the world around me, how am I experiencing awe,

which has opened me up to begin to become whole as a person?

Because when peace becomes the interior atmosphere of our soul, peace begins to radiate outward

through your conversations, your relationships, your posture, your hospitality, your compassion,

just your everyday interaction, it's what the world is longing for.

It's what God is forming in us if we slow down.

It's what Christmas announces that peace has come, and now peace comes through us.

That's the imitation of Advent, not to believe harder, but to wonder again.

Maybe peace isn't something you wait for, maybe peace is what happens when awe opens

us up just enough to let God gather the pieces of you back together.

The wholeness begins the moment you allow yourself to be surprised again.

Because when awe opens up, peace makes its home in us, rest becomes possible and wholeness

grows, and we slowly, beautifully, gently begin to look more like love.

The Advent is an invitation to look around, to find the present, to see the beauty around

you in the midst of chaos, and open yourself up to find new, creative ways to love those

near you.

Maybe you find this promised peace, and you experience wholeness that Christ offers, and

you begin to look like Jesus.

So my prayer is, may you find that promised peace.

May you experience the wholeness that Christ offers you more and more this week.

Because as you experience it, Scripture says in Philippians 2.4 that to discover your own

completeness, to discover your wholeness in Christ, frees you to turn your attention away

from yourself to others.

You experience awe, you experience presence and presence, you experience what it looks

like to be a human, you begin to discover wholeness, and you begin to become whole, and

then it frees you to turn your attention away from yourself to others.

Even the research shows that when you experience awe, you begin to be compassionate and kind

and loving, because you realize that it's not just about you, but it's about us, that

we are interconnected, and that the way that love works is only in relationship, only in

how we treat each other.

You discover your completeness, and it turns your attention from yourself to others.

Because when you experience the awe that is all around you, and you begin to discover your

wholeness in Christ, then natural response looks like love.

So may you slow down, linger, engage your senses, unplug, and allow awe to blow you

away, so that wholeness, shalom, peace, give me into take root.

You can experience that, and then from that overflow, you can go love well, because that's

who you're made to be.

I love you guys.

See you next week.