Sunday Service | Feeling Out of Control: January 17, 2021
Brian speaks with us today about the commonality of “feeling out of control.” We keep waiting for things to settle down, but instead we keep feeling out of control with the events and circumstances all around us.
Inauguration this week, covid numbers not slowing down, unemployment numbers up… this is a new season for this generation yet not a new season in the history of humanity.
I think a huge temptation for us as believers and even for those who are not is to feel stuck in a cycle of survival mode. We are bombarded with events that keep undercutting our security and stealing our hope for tomorrow.
Yet there is much beauty and good in our midst, but so often we become blind and deaf to it because our focus and attention are on just getting through this day. We’re in survival mode.
Some good our community has seen this week:
Christy Keech received her masters this week
Elijah Harris turned 10 yesterday
Scarlet Beachy is selling some yummy girl scout cookies
David Jolly came through covid without getting sick and can go back to work
We are resilient. We are made this way because we are made in the image of a God who is too.
Timothy Keller says:
“When I forget the gospel I become dependent on the smiles and evaluation of others.”
This is so true. When we forget who we are, why we are made, and how we express our life--which the Gospel tells us that Jesus leads us in, we become dependent on others’ smiles and the affirmation from others and our own evaluation, or judgment, of others to feel secure or grounded in our lives.
When we allow the smiles and evaluation of others to ground us, we too easily stay in that survival-mode lifestyle and lose sight of good and beauty around us.
And then we are rocked by every thought or event that we are exposed to that challenges our security, identity, or sense of worth.
Slowing down and turning our attention to the Gospel, to Jesus who is the good news, reveals that even in the storm of life--we belong, we are loved, and we are found to be pleasing to God.
This process of slowing down and turning our attention is not new though to just our own current circumstances. Reading through Genesis these last few weeks, we can relate to their stories so much:
Like the story of Jacob and Esau. Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a meal because Esau was so hungry and exhausted that all he could think about was eating in the moment and made a choice not thinking about the consequences.
I look at Abraham and Sarah, and her choice to have Abraham father a child through their servant Hagar, so that Sarah would not feel shame or carry guilt for not being able to provide Abraham a child. In the moment, she chose to solve matters on her own instead of slowing down and processing the consequences of her choice.
Or even when Abraham had followed God into a land he was shown and a famine hit, Abraham decided what was best: to go south into Egypt under the falsehood that Sarah was his sister and not his wife in order to survive. He made a choice in a moment not thinking about how his choice would affect others.
Like us, the biblical characters are faced with choices to make in their day to day. The question we must wrestle with is this:
Do we make choices based on our relationship with God or by whatever means seems to get us through in the moment?
Are we surviving or are we thriving knowing who we are and whose we are?
In the end, in all those stories, God showed himself faithful, and blessed Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Jacob, and Esau. But they all had to navigate hardships for their short-sighted approach to making those choices.
Again, we have been feeling out of control in about every aspect of our lives for the last year. We keep waiting for outside circumstances to change so that we can get a better grip, and feel more in control of our lives.
In remembering these stories, we are confronted with the reality that the outside circumstances will not make us feel secure and in control.
So how can we make decisions from day to day and get out of the survivalist lifestyle?
I think it involves us slowing down and remembering who we are as we make these choices.
The last few weeks, Psalm 23 has been urging us to slow down and ask ourselves these questions:
Who is my shepherd? Who or what are we following?
How am I being tended? How is who/what I am following refreshing my soul?
What do I serve? Out of the overflow of that relationship, where does my effort, desire go?
Something holy takes place when faced with feeling out of control, and a choice is presented to us as we slow down, asking ourselves these questions to remind us that we have a good Shepherd in Jesus that has not abandoned us, instead of making snap decisions just to get us through.
We belong, We are loved, We are affirmed in God. Jesus is with us and looking to lead us through any circumstance or choice that needs to be made.
John 10:7-15
Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Jesus is explaining that he tends to our needs. He sees us, gives us a place to shelter. He is for us.
He does not seek to steal, kill, and destroy. This is the character of the one who leads us. His gives his life for us. His love is genuine and runs deep.
When we forget that we belong, we are loved, and we are pleasing, we are scattered. We feel out of control and out of peace. So we make choices to recover these essential truths of who we are. And often, that leads to us becoming dependent on “the smiles and evaluations of others” instead of becoming dependent on our Shepherd.
With Jesus as our good shepherd, we experience intimacy, love, hope, peace, and joy. When we slow down and begin to engage with Jesus on our day-to-day decisions, it helps us to release the urgency to make those decisions “correctly,” which then begins to create space so that we can evaluate how the actions of our choices will affect God, ourselves, our loved ones, and our neighbors.
Once we begin to allow these aspects into our decision making, we can choose love to be the overwhelming force that drives us.
This is the hard, but good work of the Kingdom of God. As we learn and submit to this kind of decision making, we find that our lives are much more abundant than we were aware of and we move away from the scarcity mindset.
In doing so, we lose the need for control as we realize that we are full of life because of the good Shepherd that is always with us, for us, and leading us.
Remember these questions this week:
Who is your shepherd?
How are you being tended?
Whom/What do you serve?