October 25 - David Stockton - John 14

John 14 is where we’re going to be. Last week we got to hear from Marty on John 13, which was good stuff. Secret agents of service. And here we go. John 14:1. Jesus is speaking to his disciples. It’s the last week of his life. This is his last training session with them. It’s very intimate. He just washed their feet. And then he says to them:

1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas [who had been with Jesus for three years now] said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus [after probably a real long sigh, fighting off too much discouragement and disappointment] answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

As Jesus has, again, been with his disciples, he knows his time is just about coming to an end, where he’s going to leave them. Basically the training he has done in this way is going to stop. And they’ve seen him do so many things, they’ve committed their lives to him, no doubt. He’s taught them time and time again about who he was. And you and I have been going through the book of John. John is writing this whole book, this whole story, this whole testimony (in some ways), to help people know who Jesus really is; so that they will put their belief in him, they will put their trust in him. They will no longer put their confidence in the Greco-Roman world in Roman citizenship. They won’t put their confidence in Roman government. They won’t put their confidence in whatever resource they have. They won’t put their confidence in their own strength, or their own wisdom. But they’ll learn to put their trust in this small town Jewish Messiah named Jesus.

This is what John is writing all of these stories to do. And he started by basically saying “I want to tell you the story of how I came to put my confidence in him.” And he tells us a story in John 2 about how Jesus had called him and some other guys and they all went to this wedding. At the wedding they ran out of wine and Jesus, who was this teacher Messiah, turned a whole bunch of water into wine and it tasted really good. It was like really good wine. And John was like, “That was the beginning. That was the first sign.”

John gives us seven signs. Basically “There were seven things that Jesus did when I was with him that made me so convinced that this guy was more than just a guy. This guy was more than just a teacher or a prophet.” More than just his understanding of Messiah before meeting Jesus. He really put his faith in Jesus, that he was the one who made the universe and had all the power and authority—who was God himself. The guy that he hung out with. It’s fascinating.

That was the first sign. Then we know there was another sign in John chapter 8 when Jesus fed the five thousand. After that, all these five thousand men came and grabbed Jesus and they tried to make him king by force. And Jesus went away from them. He disappointed them. He said he wasn’t going to build a kingdom that they wanted, a kingdom of this world. And then you just see after that, John 9, 10, 11, 12, there’s all this debate about Jesus. There are people on one spectrum saying, “We should kill this guy. He’s a cancer.” To people on the other side saying, “He might just be God himself walking around with us.” And everywhere in between.

Now he’s sitting in John 14. He’s just washed his disciples’ feet. He knows the time is coming when he’s going to die. And he’s saying to them, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Don’t put your confidence in the strength of the trouble. Don’t put your confidence in the power of the storm. Put your confidence in me. Put your confidence in what I can do to stop a storm or make things better, even through the devastation of the storm. You’ve got to learn to put your confidence in me.”

He’s telling them this because he knows what they’re about to go through. Then he says, “I’m going to prepare a place for you. And when I go, I’ll come back and I’ll take you to be where I am.”

And then Thomas is like, “Where are you going? What’s happening?”

It’s like he just woke up. It’s like he hasn’t been paying attention at all. Jesus is like, “I am the way. You know the way. I am the way. You follow me. You connect with me. You stick with me. You believe in me and you’re going to get to see the full revelation of all that God has for you. The Father has such good plans for you. If you stick with me, if you follow my ways, you will get to see all of them.”

And Philip says, “Oh, you’re going to show us the Father.”

Jesus is like, “Philip! I’ve been with you all this time. How many times do I have to use the word Yahweh when talking about myself? How many times do I have to say I am Him.”

That’s what John said. Seven times also there are these I Am statements where Jesus is claiming to be God in a very blasphemous, difficult, challenging way. The people wanted to kill him because he kept making these blames. It’s not blasphemy because it was true. He said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. If you get me, you get it all.”

And he goes on to explain that some more. That’s one of the reasons he’s saying, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” And if you skip down to verse 15, Jesus goes on and says:

15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

So then he goes on to say, basically, “This is not working out so well. You guys are not quite getting it. But don’t worry. If you love me, just keep following my commandments and the Father is going to send one to you that, after I leave, he’s going to send another.” And the word in the NIV is Advocate. But in the King James it’s Comforter. There’s kind of a wide definition of this. In John 16, we’ll get into a more full explanation of who this Holy Spirit is and what he does. But for now, basically Jesus is saying, “I’m not going to stress out right now. I’m not going to let my heart be troubled at your ineptitude and your challenge to understanding this. Because I know that it’s not just that you have to get it right now. God is going to give you a guide that the Spirit of God is going to come and reside with you. He’s been with you, but he’s going to be in you to help you navigate, to lead you into all truth.”

He goes on in verse 25:

25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid is probably the number one command in the Bible, because fear and faith can’t coexist. God is trying to create a people of faith and so he constantly has to tell us, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.” When fear starts to rise in your life, you need to understand that faith is going down. You can’t be full of faith and full of fear at the same time.

If you’ve sensed in your soul, when things get quiet and you’re face to face with your own thoughts, with your own soul, and you feel like fear is rising and winning the day, you need to know that faith is being regressed. And it’s time to take that seriously. It doesn’t mean you won’t be afraid. But don’t stay there. Do something about it. Make a change.

And Jesus is saying, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid.” And then he goes on:

28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, 31 but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

“Come now; let us leave.

The last thing he says here, he goes on to say, “The Advocate is coming. The Comforter is coming. He’s goin gto guide you. He’s going to lead you.” And then he says, “I’m going away. I’ve told you that before. I’m going to the Father. I told you before it happens so that when you get to see all these things happen you will believe. You need to understand the prince of the world is coming and he has no hold over me. But what he’s going to do is going to help you understand that I love the Father and the Father loves me.”

Obviously he’s talking about what’s gong to happen in just a couple more chapters, where the devil is going to enter into Judas Iscariot and he’s going to go behind the scenes and create this plot to have Jesus arrested. Jesus is going to be there in the Garden of Gethsemane, doing battle with the devil, the tempter, and then somehow the power of the devil is going to basically insight the Jewish leaders as well as the Roman leaders, and they are actually going to bring about the crucifixion of Jesus. Where the very people that he created, that he came to die for, that he loved, that he healed, are going to spit on him and mock him and pin him to a tree and laugh as he takes his final breaths.

They’re going to see the full power of the prince of the world deal devastating blows of death. The full power of sin and death, like we’ve been talking about, will be on display for the whole world to see. The sun is going to go dark at the noon hour and everyone is going to think, “See how powerful sin and death is? Jesus claimed to be the way, the truth and the life. He claimed to be able to take us there. And now, look. Sin and death has got him too.”

And Jesus is saying, “You need to see that the prince of this world is coming, but you also need to see that he has no hold on me.”

And, sure enough, Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, Sunday morning. You guys know the story. The disciples got to see that the prince of the world, the power of sin and death had no hold on him. And he was excited about that, even though he knew what he was going to have to go through. He knew what it was going to mean to them.

So, in this chapter, we have Jesus making it very clear that he doesn’t want our hearts to be troubled. The world troubled there is probably better distressed. The word anxiety is in there, for sure. He doesn’t want us to be fearful. He doesn’t want us to be anxious. How are you doing at that? Everybody doing good? No anxiety? Not worried at all? Actually, the election sounds awesome to you. You’re so pumped about it. Yeah? COVID? “That’s been great. I love it. It’s so awesome.” Racial unrest? “Oh, yeah. Got that perfect too. No problem. I know exactly how to make everything better all the time. “

No! It’s not good. I mean, it’s a tough time. It’s a very tough time and I get to hear all the stories. And I get to see all the things that are happening in our church. I will say that I am so impressed with Living Streams. I have heard story after story of the resilience that you guys possess. I have heard story after story of how you have been able to not let your hearts be troubled through these times, but actually bring about some good—not just for you, but for other people. I’m so impressed. I’m so thrilled.

There’s a study from eh Barna Group that we’ll pop up here. They said they interviewed all these people. 90% of people in America say that they’re Christian. It’s like. That’s amazing. That’s awesome. It’s not true. So what they did is they took that word Christian and they asked enough questions to figure out how to differentiate between different types of Christians. These are the four different types of Christians that they’ve discovered.

Out of that 90%, 22% of them basically were saying that they’re Christian because they were at some point and now they’re not. But that wasn’t the way they answered the question. They basically said, “Yeah, I have some sort of Christian in my background, so I’m Christian.” But obviously they’re not doing anything Christian at this point.

30% they called nomads. These are people that have had a church experience. They’re not against Christianity. They went there on Easter or Christmas, and they’re like, “Yeah, I’m cool with Christmas. So I’m a Christian. They’re not locked in. They’re nomads.

They’ve got the habitual churchgoers. Uh-oh. Starting to meddle a little bit. These are the people that do all the Christian things, like church, trying to be a nice person, but there’s no real relationship with God. And if you take away something like meeting together on Sunday mornings and the church habit that they’re used to, they come unglued. The wheels come off. All kinds of stuff goes on.

And then you’ve got the 10% that they define as resilient. These are the ones that it doesn’t matter what you do to them. Their relationship with Jesus is real. It is their source for life, peace, joy, and guidance. And I’ve seen a lot of resilient Christians in our church.

There’s a police officer in our church. I remember talking to him a couple of months ago when things were really intense. I said, “How are things down at the precinct?”

He said, “It’s not good. It’s not good at all. I’ve never seen such a group of people in such despair. They all used to have this kind of a little bit of ‘I feel good that we’re doing this. We’re helping people.’ And now they’re just so ashamed of what they do and they’re so nervous.”

So I said, “How’s it been for you?”

And he said, “Honestly. It’s been a really great environment for me. I just go there and I’m full of peace and people are asking me all the time where it’s coming from. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you so relaxed?’”

And he gets to tell them about Jesus.

I was talking with people who have lost jobs or lost health. I’m so impressed with the way that they kind of keep their head up. You can see that they’re hurting. But they’re not keeping their head up because of pride. They’re keeping their head up because they believe. They’re saying, “I have confidence that this is a really hard thing. But I have a greater confidence that somehow I’m going to see God come through. And he’s going to come through in a way that makes me want to keep walking and keep my head up.”

I’ve seen some of them actually land new jobs that are better than what they had before. And I’ve seen some of them come out of the health thing and they have a new trajectory for their life, and they actually feel like God met them in the midst of that illness. I’ve seen all kinds of things. I’ve seen hundreds of people show up for evangelism teaching. What? I’m sure we could have thrown some other topics out there and had a whole bunch of other people. But we’re not actually trying to draw a big crowd, so it is a little bit strategic. But still, we had a bunch of you show up to learn about evangelism. It’s just beautiful.

I hear about all these prayer meetings meeting in parks. And moms getting together to pray for their kids. That’s resilience. That’s showing up in the midst of the challenge. It’s been beautiful. It’s awesome to watch. I’m so proud of you guys.

In this passage, we have Jesus giving us three reasons why we should not let our hearts be troubled. He doesn’t just say “Do it.” But he says, “Here’s why.” As we go through, we’ll see three of them.

The first one, he says, “Don’t let your heart be troubled because I’m going to prepare a place for you. Then I’m going to come back and take you there.” This is a big deal. The reality of heaven. You can’t forget about this. As Christians, we get so focused on this life that we forget that one of the greatest promises, one of the only things in our Apostles Creed that has not come to pass yet, is that Jesus is coming back. And we’re almost a little embarrassed to say it or we’re like, “Yeah, Jesus is coming back…” but we don’t want to say it out loud. Because it’s not going to help anybody right now. But that’s not true. The hope of heaven is what makes this life doable.

What I mean by that—I was twenty years old once. I was working at this summer camp and a bunch of us love to play basketball. We were all going to this guy’s house to play basketball on the weekend, because we had weekends off. We were so excited about it. We woke up and it was like 100 degrees outside. When you’re living in Oregon a hundred degrees is like death. For you and me, it’s like, that was yesterday.

We couldn’t get motivated. We couldn’t do it. A couple of guys would go out there and shoot a little bit. It was just so hot. They’d come back in and they were like, “No, I can’t do it. It’s too hot.” But then the mom of my friend came in and said, “Hey, you guys know we have a community swimming pool. You can go jump in there and it should be fun.”

It was interesting. All of a sudden something happened with us. We thought, “Oh.” The idea of having a swimming pool to jump in made us want to go play basketball. So we actually went and played basketball for about three hours. It was a lot of fun. We never stopped because we knew at any minute there was this relief that was coming. There was something afterwards that we could look forward to. So it gave us this rejuvenation to go at it. We even fought each other and everything. We were fired up. And then we went and got the relief.

That is a true reality. That is not shallow. That’s not cheap. That is a reality. For Christians, this is as bad as it gets, this life. We have a hope in heaven and it’s hard for us to really understand heaven because it doesn’t seem real to us. But the truth of the scriptures is that heaven is more real than this life. You’ve got seventy or eighty years. Some of you jokers might get to a hundred. But that’s it. It’s gone. It’a vapor, the Bible says. But that’s everlasting. That’s more real than this life. And it is not foolish to put your hope in that. Actually, that’s something that’s going to make you a lot more effective and a lot more alive in this live.

Not only that, but check this out. That was in the morning. We’re driving back to the camp later that day. I’m in my little Nissan pickup truck. Sorry for those at my table talk. I told this story at our evangelism night so they have to hear it again. But it’s a cool story, so you’ll be okay.

We’re driving back and there’s this guy hitchhiking. We’re way out in the sticks because that’s where the camp was. As we’re driving up I just feel like the Lord’s saying, “You should pick this guy up.” And I was like, “I don’t want to pick this guy up.” I had two guys with me and we were going to be on time for the first time ever in my life. They always made fun of me. But I feel like the Lord was telling me. So I stopped and said, “Hey, man, you want to jump in and we’ll take you to where we’re going?” He’s like, “Yeah, that’d be great.”

So we take him down and the whole time we’re just driving, I feel like God’s saying, “This is time to share. This is one of those moments I’m setting up for you. You’ve been praying that you’d have chances to share me with people and I’m giving you one right now.”

It’s not like it’s in my heart. It’s like down here somewhere. I don’t even know what part this is. Maybe my heart is so cold it was not able to get in my heart or something. There was like this wrestling match going on. I don’t know if some of you have ever experienced that before. I just knew I was supposed to share with this guy.

So we got to the part of the camp where we were supposed to turn. I said, “Hey is this far enough or do you have to go further?” He’s like, “Well, my truck’s at the end of the road.”

“End of the road? Great.” So I keep driving and again, just battling this whole thing. We get to the end of the road. There’s his truck. I turned around, getting ready to go back. His truck’s on one side, we’re on this side. I rolled down my window and he’s getting out and I said, “Hey, do you know Jesus?” I mean literally, I was just that flippant. I didn’t even roll my window down the whole way. And I was like, “Hey, do you know Jesus?”

And he was like, “Well, you know.” And I was like, “Here comes the awkward. I knew this was going to happen.”

And he was like, “I just kind of think life is, you’ve got to make the most of it. That’s really all you can do. I’m not really into all of that.”

And I was like, “Really? You think that you just make the most of it and die and that’s it?”

“Yeah.”

I go, “Doesn’t that sound depressing? Isn’t that kind of a bummer? You really think all of this is just a mistake.”

“I don’t know.”

And I said, “Let me tell you a story.” And I told him the basketball story about how the hope of the going swimming made us so much more alive. And he was like, “Okay.” I was like, “You want that hope?” Again, I’m trying to get this overwith so we can go, because I know nothing’s going to happen.

And he didn’t answer. So I looked over at him and he’s standing a little bit away from me. He’s standing there and he just has this look on his face and I go, “You want that hope?” And he goes, “Yeah. I could use some hope.” I was like, I don’t know what to do right now. This has never happened before. So I was like, “Come over here.” I should have gotten out of the car. I didn’t get out of the car. I rolled the window down the rest of the way, so that’s pretty good.

So he came over and I talked to him a little bit more about Jesus and what he did for us, that’s why we can have this hope. I was like, “If you really want that, let’s pray and God can fill you with hope.” So I prayed and he repeated after me and then it was like, “That was cool.”

And then he was walking back to his truck and there was a little spring in his step. And my friends and I were like, “What is happening?” And he walks back. There were two yellow lines in the middle of the street. And as he’s walking back he kind of stops and he looks down and he reaches down and he grabs something and he pulls it up. It looks like it’s stringy like gum or something. And I was like, “Oh, he’s a crazy guy. That’s why this worked. He’s crazy.”

But then he picks it up and starts walking back toward us. His eyes are huge at this point. And he’s like, “Look! Look!” And I was like, “What’s happening?” And he gets next to me and I can see the think is shiny. It’s a gold chain and it has a golden cross with a diamond right in the middle of it. And he was like, “Look! Look!” And I was like, “Oh!” And I told him, “Look man. I don’t know how this has happened. But I think you can know that Jesus is with you. God heard your prayer. And he’s been watching you and he set this moment up. This has nothing to do with me, man. This is all you and God.

And he was like, “Take it.” And I said, “I’m not taking that man. You take that and you keep it.”

And he goes, “Are you guys angels?”

And I was like, “No. Definitely not.”

But that hope is real. And it’s powerful. And we live among a people that just have it. And they can. So that’s the first thing. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Jesus is coming back to take us to forever. Forever.

The second thing he does here: Don’t let your hearts be troubled because he’s going to give us the Advocate, he’s going to give us the Comforter, He’s going to give us the Spirit of Truth. That Spirit of Truth is not only going to be with us, it’s actually going to be in us and it’s going to teach us everything and lead us into all truth and give us then peace of God. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled because I’m going to give you something. You have access to something that can change everything.”

All right. Second service. We’re going to do a little work right now, okay? I don’t know if you had a hard week. But just shake it off. We’re going to do a little brain work now. I’ve been reading this book, Reappearing Church by Mark Sayers. It’s cool. He says some stuff in here that is pretty amazing. He’s talking about a society that I think really describes ours well. A society of emotionally regressed people. We’re emotionally regressed because we’re so filled with anxiety. The anxiety in our society, the fear in our society has caused us to actually emotionally regress. We’re all acting like two-year-olds throwing temper tantrums right now is kind of what he’s saying. And this is Friedman. He’s not writing right now. He’s writing about twenty or thirty years ago. But the way he describes society and where we’re heading. It’s like, oh yeah.

I’m going to read some of these things. He talks about this cycle, these five things that describe this emotionally regressed society.

The first thing is Reactivity:

The vicious cycle created when individuals and culture continually react intensely to external situations with negative, anxious, angry and fearful emotions. They no longer rely on inner values, common sense or dialogue to help them find truth.

They’re just in this vicious cycle of reactivity. The second thing that he noticed about these societies is that they go to this ting called Herding:

As culture becomes reactive, we begin to act in herdlike ways. The mob mentality takes over. Society lowers itself to pleasing and not offending its most emotionally immature and unhealthy members who end up dictating the health of the culture.

That’s just number two. All right? That’s just number two. Another thing that he described this type of thing happening is Blame Displacement:

Instead of searching out the underlying causes of toxicity, we focus on symptoms. We retreat into a perpetual victim status blaming others and external forces instead of examining ourselves. When blame and fear of offending take over, it creates a gridlock which prevents renewal.

And then we go to this Quick Fix Mentality.

Our culture of Hedonism [which is basically pleasure at all cost—no pain at all cost] has created in us a low pain threshold which prevents us from persevering through the pain that is part of the process of renewal. We look to technology, more commentary, and more information as the cure for our ills.

Oh, by the way, Friedman is a rabbi and he is a family system theorist. Anybody a family system theorist in here? I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds awesome.

And then the last thing that he notices is that there is a Lack of Well Differentiated Leaders:

The anxious environment works against the leadership needed to lead a toxic emotional system to renewal. The inevitable backlash from trying to break free of the emotional reactivity, herding, blame displacement, and quick fix mentalities keep the kind of leaders and leadership needed to bring about renewal.

So you might say, “Okay. I see this in America these days.” And then you might actually say, “Well, if I’m really honest, I see this inside my own soul. I see this in my family. I see this in my friend group or what used to be a friend group but now it’s gotten real thin. Our relationships have gotten thin because we start to see each other as maybe dangerous, or as part of the problem.” And it becomes real serious and it’s easy for our hearts to become troubled or distressed. What Friedman goes on to say is the answer to this, the only way to get out of this vicious cycle is for there to be a non anxious presence introduced into this system. You need a differentiated leader, a kind of leader that is not in the system, a kind of leader that is outside the system, a kind of leader that still relies on those inner values to be able to be inserted into the system. In doing that, it can actually create a pathway to renewal.

And when Jesus says to us, “I’m going to go and you are going to find yourself in a deep, endless cycle of emotional regression and anxiety. I don’t want you to let your heart be troubled because I’m going to give you a non anxious presence that is a differentiated guide. It’s not of this world. It doesn’t depend on things in this world to guide you. That’s the Spirit of God. That’s the Holy Spirit that you and I have access to in Christ Jesus. And you and I do not have access to outside of Christ Jesus.

Jesus said it’s not just going to be one that’s with you, it’s going to be in you. If you and I will receive the Holy Spirit, we will be filled with a non anxious presence, a differentiated kind of guide that can lead us in our own souls, and lead our families, and lead our institutions that we’re a part of. We can be that non anxious presence as we go forward. That’s the mystery and the beauty of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed when I think about politics, when I think about all the systemic problems that we have in America. They’re everywhere. Greed, pride, deceit, stealing and cheating. Those are the main ones. Our country is riddled with those things. We’re actually celebrating those things, rewarding those things at this point.

I get so overwhelmed, but then I remember that what God is asking me to do is just “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. As for me and my own soul, I will serve the Lord. As for me and the institution I’m a part of called Living Streams Church, we will serve the Lord. We will try and, every chance we get, get rid of any corruption, get rid of any compromise so that this can be a place where people can taste what a non anxious presence is like, where people can begin to feel and know that renewal is possible.” If there’s enough little renewal, it will actually show up on the big scene.

America is always talking about top down. But that’s not what we need if we’re going to change this place. We need grass roots. We need bottom up. We need one on one discipleship. We need life groups. We need caring for one another. We need to stand up and defend our own souls, our own homes, our own relationships. That’s what at the church is called to. That’s why God sent his Spirit.

The last thing that Jesus says that we should not let our hearts be troubled is because the prince of this world has no hold on him. And if it has no hold on him, then it has no hold on us. That’s the big debate. That’s the big challenge. Mankind has faced sin and death. Mankind has been cursed with the stain of sin and death. Mankind has never really been able to get free. But then Jesus came and he took on humanity. He took on the curse. He took on sin and death. And just like everybody thought, sin and death once again claimed another victim, until that third day, when Jesus rose from the dead and began to be this first fruits of a new kingdom, of a new creation. And he says, “If you will follow me, if you will keep my commands, if you will allow my non anxious presence to fill your life and to guide you into all truth, then ultimately sin and death will have no hold on you either.”

That is my prayer for all of us, especially those of us in this room who have never really experienced the presence of God, the non-anxious presence of God. You’ve never invited Jesus into your life. You’ve never said, “God, I am stuck and I need you to come set me free.” You can not only receive what Jesus has for you now, but you can receive life forevermore. That’s the promise of the gospel. That’s the only thing that’s going to keep our hearts from becoming troubled not matter what happens with the election, no matter what happens with COVID, no matter what happens with your own relationships and brokenness. If you give your life to Jesus and you receive his Spirit into your life, you’ll find his peace is more powerful than the pain.

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