Gifted – The Gift of Rest

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

I love Christmas.

I love the Christmas season.

It's the best time of the year.

My house has like a 10-foot penguin outside of it right now.

Like I love the Christmas season.

And my favorite part of Christmas is gift giving.

I like getting gifts, but the truth is I'm a gift giver.

I'm an intentional listener.

If you tell me something like in June, that's just something you've been praying for or saving for, I want to find a way to get it for you.

I want to bless you.

I love being a giver.

The problem is I also like buying for myself.

I do.

And um, some people are spenders, some people are savers.

I'm a both.

I like to spend on people and spend on myself, and that's just what I am.

And so every time around this year, my wife and I get into this little fight because she always says something to me that's kind of feels like this.

She says, Jason, you're hard to buy for.

Anybody else get accused of this?

You're hard to buy for.

Lots of us in the room.

I'm hard to buy for.

And I've always thought this was the dumbest thing ever.

Because I'm not hard to buy for, I buy for myself all the time, right?

Hence the problem.

So I was thinking about you.

So we're thinking about this new series called Gifted.

What would I get for you?

And you need to know this about you.

You as a church, you're hard to buy for.

You're hard to think of what would bless you, and here's the reason.

We've really got to answer the question: what do you get for the church that has everything?

Like, what can you give to a church that would bless the church that served 25,000 hours to others, not self-focused?

What do you give to a church that built homes for widows that you'll never meet, who's building churches on the other side of the world in a country you may never visit?

What do you give to a church that gave tens of thousands of dollars away to people that have walked through tragedy and hurricane loss?

What do you give to that church?

What do you give to a church that cares for widows and orphans?

What do you give to a church that constantly is meeting needs?

What do you give to a church that is irrationally generous and lives open-handedly?

What do you give to a church that makes Santa Claus himself look greedy?

What do you give to that church?

And as I was praying for you this week, figured out the answer is rest.

It's rest.

Because you could chalk this up as a busy season.

When I said Christmas is in three weeks a few moments ago, I literally heard some people go, oh.

It's busy.

It's chaotic.

It is the most wonderful time of the year, and it is the most busy time of the year.

A study was done in 1914 that said the average American in 1914 got 10 hours of sleep a night.

Albert Einstein credited a lot of his success and a lot of what he accomplished to the fact that he got 11 hours of sleep a night.

A study was done a couple years ago that said 70 million Americans, which is roughly a third of American living adults, 70 million Americans got less than six hours of sleep a night.

86% of Americans say that they're chronically fatigued and that leads to 38,000 deaths a year.

I saw a stat, I don't know if it's true, but that Americans consume 60,000 pounds of sleeping medication every single day.

If it's not true, if it's half true, if it's 10% true, it's so much.

Why is this?

Why do we live lives that are so busy and so full of stress?

Why is it that we struggle to find rest in the most wonderful time of the year?

Why is it that we toss and turn at night in bed restless?

Why do we exhaust ourselves and never find rest?

Why do we get a good night of sleep and wake up and feel worse for the wear?

We wake up feeling worse than when we even went to bed.

We need rest.

And if that's you today, if your life feels restless, if your heart feels like it's in the tyranny of fear, if you find yourself always living chaotic kind of at a chaotic kind of pace, Christmas is God's gift to you.

Some 750 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah said this about Jesus.

He said, The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.

For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.

Maybe this feels like you.

Maybe the season has felt dark for some reason, and Christmas is the time when the light breaks through.

And then it says this for a child is born to us, a son is given to us, the government will rest on his shoulders.

And then I love this next part.

It says, and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And here's what I love about all of these titles.

At most birthday parties you go to, you bring a gift to the birthday boy or to the birthday girl.

But for Jesus' birthday, for Christmas, we celebrate the fact that he came to give all of humanity a gift.

And every one of his gifts are found in these titles that the prophet Isaiah prophesies about him 750 years or so before Jesus was born.

He will be called wonderful counselor.

He gives us his wisdom to walk through this life.

Mighty God.

We don't have to walk through this life in our own strength, but we get his.

Everlasting Father, our identity isn't found in what we do or what someone else said about us.

Our identity is found in the fact that we are his sons and his daughters.

And the last one, the one I want to camp on today, is he's the prince of peace.

He's the prince of peace.

Does peace feel like the metaphor for your life?

Does it?

Like if you were to really examine your heart and how everything feels in the season, would you say that you're living at peace?

I have three kids, Joey, Gavin, and Ella.

My daughter Ella is the youngest, and she's probably my favorite.

My kids aren't in here right now, so I can say that.

And I love, I they're just all my kids are amazing, but I just Ella and I have this amazing bond.

And every night about 7:30 or 8 o'clock, it's like clockwork.

Ella will look at me and she'll go, and that's her own little sign language for do you want to snuggle?

And I always put down whatever I'm doing, and I go, because we're gonna snuggle.

That's what we do.

And so one night, a couple years ago, around this time of year, Ella did that thing where she did the little wiggle and she came over and she cuddled with me and she laid her head on my chest and she took this big deep breath.

And she said these five words.

She said, I feel safe with you.

And immediately two thoughts flashed through my mind.

The first thought was, This is the best time of my life.

I love these moments.

She's now eight years old.

I don't know how much longer she's gonna want to snuggle with me like this, but she said, I feel safe with you, and I pulled her in even tighter.

The other thought that flashed through my mind was, It is Christmas, and she's playing me like a fiddle, right?

She knows what she's doing, she's like her mama, that's what she is.

But she said, I feel safe with you.

I thought to myself, why would she need to say this?

Why does she feel unsafe or unsettled?

Well, later that night, I took her to bed, and you need to know this.

Like every single night I put Ella to bed.

Like that is one of the great joys of my life.

And we have this whole routine, and it's adorable.

And if I told you about it, your heart would melt.

It's the cutest thing ever.

And I'm not telling you because I'm keeping that just between me and Ella.

And so I go to put her to bed, and Ella has this loft bed, so you have to climb upstairs to get up into the bed.

And every night she stands on the stairs and we hold each other and we pray, and I and I give her a kiss and send her off to bed.

Well, on this particular night that she said, I feel safe with you.

I was holding her, gave her a little kiss, and I sent her up to bed, and she stopped halfway up the stairs and she goes, Dad, will you check my closet for me?

And I said, Why?

She goes, What if there's someone bad in there who wants to get me?

And I thought, why would she think this way?

I said, Ella, you don't need to worry about that.

Come on, I got you.

You're safe here.

She goes, No, please, just would you please just check my closet for me?

So I said, sure.

So I ran into her closet and it was kind of this awesome moment because I didn't really know what to do.

So I walked in there and there was nobody in the closet, right?

But I wanted to create a moment for her.

So I started doing this thing where I was like, boom, ow! Oh, oh, oh, oh, and I made a oh, oh, ow, oh, ow, ow, oh, ow, ow! And I came walking out, and her eyes were as big as the state of Texas.

I said, babe, you don't have to worry, I killed him.

She said, Who?

Who?

And I walked back in and I walked out with this guy.

I said, He won't haunt you anymore.

You can sleep easy.

Hey, fun side note, um, when Ella was like two, there was this little boy that was a good friend of ours, and he sent her cookies for Valentine's Day, and I said, Oh, heck no, none of your dusty sons are good enough for my daughter.

So I went and bought her this.

At that time, Ella was about this tall.

The bear was taller than her.

I sent a selfie of me, her, and the bear to that two-year-old.

I'm not too big to trash talk a two-year-old.

I'll do what I gotta do.

Anyways, I walk out of the bedroom holding this bear above my head, and it was so funny.

Her eyes that were filled with fear moments earlier, when I walked out with the bear, you could see this sparkle return to her eyes, her cheeks lit up with color.

She was so excited, and she went, I thought to myself later, why should a five-year-old go to bed and feel fear?

Like God doesn't want us to feel fear.

And I think if I'm a good dad who loves my daughter and I don't want her to be afraid, how much more does God want us to not live in the tyranny of fear?

Here's what you need to understand.

Fear is not the opposite of peace.

The opposite of peace is actually chaos.

But the opposite of fear is actually faith.

And if God wants us to be people not characterized by fear, we need to understand what it means to live as people of faith.

And if I could define it really simply for you, I would define it like this: Faith is playing to win.

The book of Hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for.

It's the evidence of things unseen.

It's stepping out and trusting God when you don't know how it's going to go, but you're trusting him with the results.

It's our church saying, God, I don't know how we're going to build a triangle of hope.

God, I don't know how we're going to afford a North Lakeland location.

But we're playing to win because we're we're on your team.

Faith is playing to win.

Conversely, though, fear is playing not to lose.

Fear is playing not to lose.

I'm a big sports fan.

I know not everybody likes sports.

But if you've ever watched a football team get up to a really big lead, they're up by three or four possessions late in the game, sometimes, instead of playing to win the game, sometimes instead of doing what got them the big lead in the first place, what they do is they start playing soft.

They play bend, don't break, they play pre-vend defense.

And what is that?

It's playing not to win, it's playing not to lose.

Very often, when a team changes, they actually end up losing the game.

So if we are to be people characterized by faith, here's what you need to understand.

Most social scientists and experts, psychologists say that almost all of our fears are learned experiences.

That they say that when a child is born, they really only have two fears.

One is fear of loud noises, and then second is like fear of falling, that these are the only two fears.

Everything else is a learned fear.

Let me say this to you.

If you can learn fear, it also means that you can unlearn fear.

So a simple definition of faith is simply this faith is the process of unlearning fear.

You may say, well, why are we talking about this when it comes to Christmas?

The whole Christmas story is littered with fear.

What do you mean?

Well, think about the very beginning of the Christmas story.

We meet Mary and Joseph.

They're betrothed to each other to be married, but they're not married.

And an angel of the Lord shows up to Mary.

I'd be afraid.

And then she says, You're going to have a baby, and Joseph's not the father.

I'd be afraid, wouldn't you?

And she goes through with it, and then the story goes on.

They have to go to the city of Bethlehem because there's a census.

With the census comes taxes.

When there's taxes that are being raised, there's economic fear.

So now there's money fear in the story.

They have the baby.

Word gets out about Jesus.

Herod puts on this whole full court press trying to find him, and they run for their lives to Egypt.

Fear, fear, fear.

Fear is the undercurrent in the Christmas story.

There's another place where fear is experienced.

Here it's in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And let me show you this.

Um, normally when I read the Bible to you, I read in the NIV or the ESV, which are more modern translations.

I want to read this from the King James Version, the kick at old school, like the old translation, because I want you to see something.

It says this.

It says, and there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

So it's dark, there's the shepherds just shepherding it up.

And it says, And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

I want you to see this.

The word sore here is a really interesting word.

In in our modern English, we we use sore as a noun or an adjective.

We use it to say we overworked a muscle.

I'll never forget uh five years ago or so, I joined a CrossFit gym, and I was I was so out of shape.

I mean, my shape was round, like that was my shape, right?

And I joined and I thought, I don't know how I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna try.

And so I showed up on a Wednesday morning, and the first day I showed up, it was me, and there were four ladies there working out.

I thought, I got this.

I was born for this moment, I'll do this.

Halfway through the warm-up, I needed to lay down on the ground because I thought I was gonna pass out.

That was the warm-up, everybody.

I didn't know.

Stuck with it, I was terrible, but I made it through and all of my muscles ached.

They were sore because sore is overworking a muscle.

You get this, right?

Well, then I took Thursday off and went back Friday, and I was so sore.

I couldn't, I couldn't even move, right?

Then Saturday, a man was moving from North Carolina to Florida to join my team and work with me.

So I said, I'm gonna help you move.

Here's what I need you to know.

If I show up to help you move, that is the single greatest act of love I can show you.

I don't, I don't do that.

And so I show up to help this guy move, and what he didn't tell me was he was moving into an apartment on the third floor.

So now all my muscles are sore, lots and lots of trips with heavy furniture up multiple flights of stairs.

When I got home, I was so sore that when I took a shower, I couldn't get the shampoo from my hands to my hair.

Okay?

Have you ever been there?

You ever hurt that bad?

I was sore, right?

When we use sore as a noun, it means, like, or an adjective, it means that we've overused the muscle.

When it's used in the archaic way as an adverb, which is used here, it literally means extremely or severely.

Let me point out why this matters.

It says that they were sore afraid, that they were extremely and severely afraid.

But I want to point out to you that I think the other definitions work too.

Because for most of us, when it comes to fear, we're really good at exercising the muscle of fear to the point where it actually hurts our soul.

It's damaging to our soul.

They were sore afraid, and then I want you to see what happens.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not.

Why does the angel say this?

Because they were afraid, because they were exercising the fear muscle.

He says, For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign to you.

Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was an angel, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.

I want to end with this simple thought.

In the middle of all the chaos, in the middle of a story that the undercurrent is fear, an angel shows up and says to these shepherds who are riddled with fear, you don't have to worry, because peace and goodwill are coming from God.

I could summarize it by saying this God's will is goodwill.

God's will is goodwill.

And a lot of us have placed things on God that have nothing to do with God.

If it's not peace, if it's chaos, that is not God.

If it is not faith, but instead it's fear, that is not God.

If it is not joy, but it is hopelessness, that is not God.

If it is love with strings attached to it, that is not God.

It is not.

The Christmas story is a reminder to all of us that if it's God's will, it's good will.

That you don't have to live a life characterized by chaos, but your heart was intended to live in peace.

That you don't have to live a life characterized by fear, living in the tyranny, the prison of fear, but your heart can be set free because of faith.

If you feel hopeless, blinded, unable to dream for the future, you need to understand that that is not of God, but God's gift to you at Christmas is joy.

You are gifted all of these things in the person of Jesus.

I could say it like this: At Bethlehem, when Jesus was born, we see that God is with us.

33 years later, when Jesus dies at a place called Calvary, we see that at Calvary God is for us.

At Pentecost, some 50-ish days later, we experience the God who lives in us.

And why does this matter?

Because Christmas kicks off the reminder that you were never intended to do this life in your own strength.

You were never intended to suffer through the pain of this life on your own.

In fact, I could say it like this peace isn't the absence of fear.

You will experience fear in this life.

It is the constant companion of any person who journeys through this life.

Peace isn't the absence of fear, peace is the presence of Jesus.

I think back to David's words in Psalm chapter 23, one of the most popular verses in scripture, again from the KJV, he says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are what?

Psalms 23 · chapter mention

With me.

It's not that there will be no evil, it's like I'm not going to be afraid, I'm not gonna live in the tyranny of fear.

Why?

Because you're with me.

Okay, what would it look like if this Christmas season was different for all of us?

Because we trusted that he is actually here and that he's with us.

And what if we made this great exchange?

What if we exchanged the worst parts of us for the best of who he is?

If your heart feels riddled with chaos, what if today you just made the decision to understand that it's not of God and you exchanged, you traded that chaos for peace?

And what what if you feel like your heart is inundated with fear?

What if you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe and catch your breath because you're so overwhelmed by what if, and what if this happens, and what if she leaves, and what if my kids get hurt?

What if you traded all of that fear for faith?

And what if you feel like in this season life just feels hopeless?

You feel like you wake up, go through the routine, go to bed, wake up, and do the same thing over and over and over, and it feels hopeless.

What if you made this decision to receive at Christmas the gift of his joy?

I think this Christmas could be different for all of us.

Because at Christmas, instead of us bringing a gift to our Savior for his birthday, he gifted us the gift of himself and everything with it.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

We pray for you now.

Jesus, we just want to pause and say thank you.

Thank you for Christmas.

Thank you that you bankrupted heaven, you stepped out of the comfort, the beauty, the majesty of everything in heaven, and you stepped into this world as an innocent baby for us.

When you came into the world, the light pierced through darkness, it screamed that hope was now here.

God, for some of us, if we're just honest and we examined our heart today, we would see that our hearts are crowded out, flooded by chaos and fear and hopelessness.

May we receive today the gift of Jesus and may we exchange all of that for your love, for your peace, for faith, and for joy.

Thank you that you're in control.

And even when we walk through valleys of the shadow of death, even though we walk through valleys of doubt, even though we walk through valleys of pain, we don't walk alone because you're with us and you're for us and you live in us.

So we thank you for it, God.

Today we receive your gifts, we thank you for it.