Courage in the Crisis

Well, we've been in a series called Rhythm, living daily in the spiritual practices of Christ here at Twin Lakes Church. And I promise we will get back to that series. But with everything going on in the world, I wanted to pause and start a little mini series that we're calling Shelter. Since, you know, we've been asked to shelter in place, but also the Bible says in times of trouble, we can find shelter under the wings of our God. This image comes from Psalm 91, which says, "Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty." And then look at verse 4, "He will cover you with his feathers." Isn't that a beautiful image? "He will shelter you with his wings, like a hen gathering your chicks under her wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection." So it goes on to say, "Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at noonday." Well, I read that and I thought, how relevant, right? So in this little series, we're going to talk about how to find shelter in God.

As Mark mentioned, you can download the message notes right now at TLC.org/notes. They're going to look like this when they come up on your laptop. I want to invite you to print them out or at least keep referring to them. They're going to help you follow along during this brief message. Plus, the back of the notes has discussion questions designed for you to use throughout this week for personal reflection or as discussion questions with your friends and family. So let's talk about courage in the crisis. Psychologists say that there's five frequent reactions to crisis and uncertainty that nearly every one of us has probably felt these last couple of weeks. First, difficulty concentrating. Have you been experiencing this? Mental tasks that normally would be automatic become harder. You can't remember things. You lose your place.

Second, obsessive worry. Your worries keep you up at night. And then, of course, you worry about the fact that your worries are keeping you up at night. Third, isolation. And this is really a temptation during this time that we've been asked to practice social distancing because social distancing is one thing. But cocooning in your room with just your news feed to keep you company, that is going to make whatever fear you already have much worse. Fourth, common reaction, a lack of purpose, especially if I've been laid off or I'm in danger of losing my job, I can feel purposeless and aimless. Like there's nothing that I can do that makes any difference. And finally, pessimism about the future. Feeling like it's all bad news right now. As The Washington Post puts it, coronavirus America is a constant hum of free floating anxiety, of late night worries about how life will ever wind back toward what it was just a few days ago. Man, that is a true statement. We've all felt this.

So what do we do about this? I want to help you have hope in the midst of this crisis. But I do want to make one thing clear. Alarm about an alarming situation is normal. Don't feel guilty about that. You're not a bad person or a weak Christian if you feel alarm. In fact, God gave you that instinct to preserve your life. But living in a state of sustained alarm is bad for you. It's bad for your physical health, your mental, your psychological health. And ironically, it will make you less able to actually face whatever it is that's alarming you. So the big question is, how do you live in an alarming situation without having your emotions in a state of sustained alarm? That's the trick. But it really is possible.

I love this email I got this week. I mean, as you can imagine, we've been getting just hundreds and hundreds of emails and texts and messages. Keep those coming in. But this one is from a woman that I originally met in one of our grief share classes here at the church. She's relatively recently been widowed. She lost her husband and kind of a lot of other wheels are falling off in her life. And now she's facing the coronavirus along with the rest of us. But look at what she says. "Though widowed and alone, my children are in Austin, I'm awestruck at just how much peace I feel." God's word isn't just a good read. There really is power in the word. When we get the word into us, when we get into the word so that the word can get into us, we should expect the promise of his supernatural peace. So living like that is possible. She's a living example.

But how? Well, what she said, God's word, the Bible. You know, whatever you happen to think of the Bible, consider this. The Bible was mostly written by people in crisis, to people in crisis, and has sustained people through crisis for thousands of years. So I would say whether you consider yourself a believer or not, whether you consider the Bible inspired or not, as you tune in this morning, the Bible is worth a look because it is proven effective when it comes to giving people during times of crisis hope. In fact, it's hard to find one verse of the Bible that wasn't written during either a time of persecution or war or famine or plague. Our faith was born in times like this and our faith was made for times like this.

In fact, I'm going to be very personal today. Earlier this week, I was so tense, just in constant suspense, adrenaline, feeling like what's next? I was having a very difficult time concentrating or sleeping. All those five ways to respond to crisis I was experiencing. And in my own personal Bible reading, as I cracked open the Bible and looked for things to encourage me, I found myself being drawn like a magnet back to a little tiny book in the New Testament called First Peter. And what I read this week in First Peter has relaxed me, has refocused me, and I know it can do the same thing for you today. So let me give you some background to really appreciate this. The book of the Bible, First Peter, was written during a period of extreme persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire about 1,940 years ago. They were under constant threat of violence. The emperor Nero was killing and torturing Christians, feeding them to lions, burning them at the stake. They were blacklisted from employment. Many of them had no work. So great economic hardship too. In fact, 15 times in this very short letter, Peter refers to suffering. And get this, he uses eight different Greek words for suffering. It's kind of like the Eskimos have a dozen words for snow because they have so much of it. These people had so much suffering that they had all kinds of nuanced words to describe it.

But look at what Peter says to these people. Do not fear what they fear, what everybody else fears. Don't be frightened. In fact, Peter goes even further and says, "So be truly glad." There's wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. He says, "A little while, this is not forever." Can you receive that? There is hope. He says, "Even though your life here may be uncertain, set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed." Okay, that's great for him to say that, but how do I stay hopeful? How do I not just despair? Well, there's five themes that Peter repeats throughout his letter. And I want you to see how these five themes answer each one of those five common reactions to crisis that we just saw.

First, I need to steady my mind. Steady my mind. Calm down. This is the foundation for everything else, and this answers those having difficulty concentrating. Peter says, "Therefore, be clear-minded and self-controlled, and prepare your minds for action." Be self-controlled. Clear-minded, not panicked, self-controlled, not letting our anxieties control us. We control them. Okay, so how do I do that? Well, I want to pass along what I've been learning from my believing friends who have been living with cancer and other diseases. So many of them have told me how they clear their minds of anxiety, even while they are facing the very real prospect of their own death from their cancer or another disease. They talk about three tools a lot, and they always talk about this first one, and it may surprise you. Laughter. Laughter is good for clear, logical thinking.

Check this out. Dr. Lee S. Burke is a preventative care specialist and psychoneuroimmunology researcher at Loma Linda University Schools of Allied Health and Medicine and director of the Molecular Research Lab at SAHP. You know what all that means? It means he is way smarter than me. Or you. But for three decades, he has been studying the human body's response to laughter. And he has found that laughter decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers blood pressure, lowers bad cholesterol, raises good cholesterol. In fact, he calls humor "laffer size" because he says it has similar benefits to exercise. So again, personal confession. Earlier this week, I felt just constantly stressed. And yes, I have been praying and meditating, and I'll get to that. But I decided to take his advice. I've been reading heartwarming and lighthearted books. For me, I find a lot of relief in those Lake Wobbegan books by Garrison Keeler. And I also picked up the James Harriot books. Again, they start with all creatures, great and small. They're so funny and so heartwarming. And you need that. Laughter. Maybe for you, it's funny YouTube videos or some sitcom. In fact, maybe in the comments section, you can share with everybody your own laughter go-to.

And then there's another way to be clear-minded and self-controlled meditation. As Mark talked about a couple of weeks ago, biblically meditation means soaking in a truth in God's word. In fact, the word for meditation, it's kind of funny, it's related in the Bible to the word rumination, like a cow chewing its cud. That's what the word in Hebrew means, just ruminating on a little short Bible verse or ruminating on a truth about God has amazing effects. And it's been clinically proven. In fact, a joint study from UCSF and Harvard Medical School found that meditation reduces anxiety. That's probably no surprise, but look at this. It also improves cognitive ability, lowers inflammation, and improves cell immunity. That's amazing. They're not sure what the mechanism is, how that works, but they know that it has these effects. There is that correlation. So meditate. And I want to suggest that you start with these verses that are in your downloadable notes. Print out these notes and meditate on those verses this week.

Now, what else helps clear your thinking? Well, exercise. Check this out. Another team from Stanford studied the effect of walking for just 50 minutes a day and discovered that walking improves creative thinking and concentration. In other words, clear thinking. So please schedule regular times every day for some laughter, some meditation, and some exercise. Take a walk in nature so that you can be clear-minded. And you know what? I would actually suggest another thing too. I would say you not only schedule these good things, but you actually schedule, say, two times a day max when you're going to catch up on the news about the coronavirus. Maybe in the morning at 10 a.m. and in the evening at 6 p.m. Something like that. Not the first thing in the morning because that ruins the rest of your day. Not the last thing in your day because that'll ruin your sleep. Maybe 10 a.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., something like that. Just two distinct times for you to check on the news. And then also, schedule times for laughter, meditation, and exercise. Because you need to stay clear-minded if you want to stay hopeful.

All right. I spent most of my time on that first point. Point two is important too. It's stay prayerful. Stay in prayer. And this answers the very next common reaction we looked at, which is obsessive worry. Look at the rest of 1 Peter 4:7. Be clear-minded and self-controlled. Why? So that you can pray. And Peter also says cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Prayer really works. Check this out. Article in Nursing Times said, "Prayer can reduce levels of depression and anxiety in patients." According to research, and then the article went on to summarize 26 studies that show prayer reduces anxiety. And this is why Peter says cast your cares on him. You know what this means? It means turn every worry into a prayer. For example, "I'm so worried about my finances." Turn that worry into a prayer. "God, I'm worried about my finances. And so I'm asking you to help us somehow make ends meet. And I trust you with this."

Okay. What about the third common reaction, which was isolation? Well, Peter answers it with point three. Stick together. Stick together. Peter says to these Christians facing death, "Above all, love each other deeply." Now watch this, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Now that's an interesting phrase to add to the end of a verse about love. Why is Peter telling these people who are in a life-threatening situation, "You better love each other because that covers a multitude of sins of our sins." Well, I think it's because when people are stressed, they do things without really thinking. They can say things out of stress. They can even sin against you. I think Peter's just saying, "Let's all agree to give each other a break. We're all stressed. We're all just trying our best." And I think this is one of the reasons Peter says, you know, love covers over a multitude of sins. Stick together. Be loving.

Now, of course, the big question is, how do we stick together in a time of social distancing? Well, social distancing does not have to equal social isolation. I am so grateful that with modern technology, we can now contact each other, love each other deeply, yet remotely. In fact, I want to show you a great example of that. This was so encouraging to me a few days ago that I cried good tears. We here at Twin Lakes have three sister churches in Italy. And of course, Italians are really just getting hit so hard by this coronavirus right now. But when they heard that we here in California were at a stay at home order, just like they are, you know what they did? They started sending us encouraging videos this week, like this one.

We can win this battle together with our face in God. We are with you. Stay strong. We love you so much. One, two, three. God bless you. Don't you love that? You know what? That is them loving us deeply. And you can do the same exact thing for people that you love. In fact, I want to encourage you, make it a goal to check on five people per day minimum, just to see how they're doing. Call them up or text them or make a video like the one you just saw, my son and daughter-in-law have been making videos all week of them with our grandkids, which is so fun. Or you know what? You can also write people old-fashioned cards on this thing called paper and put them in this thing called the mail. You remember that? I love the Gregory family here at Twin Lakes Church. They sent us this picture of their kids writing, encouraging cards, and they gave these to their neighbors and also brought some to the church for us to mail to seniors in our congregation. What a great idea.

If you do that or your kids do that and drop the cards off here at the office, we will get those cards to seniors and shut-ins here in the TLC faith community. In fact, I loved all of the pictures that people have been sending into us. I love this one because here's a little girl who has filled out the TL kids version of our sermon notes. Don't forget you can always get resources for your kids from TL kids as well. Here's a cute picture of a little girl this morning during the worship that you just saw. Elizabeth is praying and this little girl stopped and she prayed as well. I love that sense of connection. We have families with us. Apparently, I'm very attractive to cats. We have several cats watching me this morning. We have older people. We have younger people all together. Let's stick together. Let's stay connected.

We're trying to make remote connection more and more possible for you. If you go to TLC.org/classes, we're moving most of our classes in Bible studies and support groups online and you can get all the info in this one spot. Or if you would like to be in something new, a virtual small group based on each week's message will provide you with everything you need. Just email our small group pastor jim@tlc.org and he'll help connect you. And as Mark said, I started a new podcast, TLC at Home. It's on our website also on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple, and it's all about how to navigate this rough time.

Now watch this. Peter then says to the Christians getting hammered by persecution and tough times, continue to do good. In spite of all of the hardship, just look around for ways to be of help to other people. Look around. There are ways all around you to continue to do good. I got this email from a woman who has cancer. She says, I'm amazed at how people are taking care of me. I love this. My home group is picking up groceries for me and takes the dog for walks. That's what I'm talking about. Look around in your neighborhood and you can volunteer at our people's pantry. You can email robin@tlc.org or you can volunteer at Second Harvest Food Bank. Look for ways to love one another.

And that brings me to point four, share your hope. You have a mission. More than anything, the people around you, they need hope right now. In fact, you will never have more people asking about your faith than right now. I guarantee you it will come up in conversation. And this is why Peter says to these people, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect. When they ask you, do it gently and respectfully, not like some religious nut or some religious know it all. Just talk about how your faith brings you hope. I can tell you my faith brings me hope because it helps me see that there is a bigger picture. And that's our final point.

See the big picture. And this answers people's pessimism about the future. See the big picture in three ways. Peter says first, remember what's temporary. He says all men are like grass and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever. That is the humbling truth revealed in crisis moments. All the glory of humans is like the flowers of the field. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean it's evil. It just means it's temporary. But you know what? So is the crisis. This too shall pass. Remember what's temporary and remember what is eternal. Peter reminds them, now remember, these were people who were losing their jobs, were finding all their belongings confiscated by the Romans. They were becoming homeless. But Peter is telling these people, but we have a priceless inheritance, an inheritance that's kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled beyond the reach of change and decay. In our situation, we could say in God's kingdom, stock never loses its value. In God's kingdom, every disease will be eradicated. And this hope is what kept those Roman Christians going 2000 years ago. And it can keep us going too.

What we're going through is not the end of the story. And this is a theme on every page of Peter's letter. Hang in there. The best is yet to come. And then finally, as part of the big picture, I need to remember my purpose. Remember what God put me here on earth to do. I mean, picture the original audience. Here's these people in Peter's day, they're being squashed like ants under the boots of the Roman Empire. And Peter says, but don't you see you? You're a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness. He's saying, even in this dark time, remember who you are. Remember why you're here. Remember why God saved you. Remember how God's equipping you.

It reminds me of a great story about John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach. And there's a great story how he once told his team at halftime of a game where they were just getting crushed. And he walks into the locker room, all the players are looking down at their shoes. And he says, "Men, don't look at your shoes. Look down at your uniforms." He says, "What's the name on your jersey? U-C-L-A." And he says, "Now look at me. I want you to go out there and play the second half, remembering whose name is on your uniform. Go play like UCLA plays." And they went out, had a great second half, and they won that game. Well, Peter is saying, "Men, women, I know times are tough right now, but remember the name on your uniform, Jesus. Now go out and live like Jesus." And they did. And of course, these early Roman Christians, they turned the world upside down in a very good way.

So now we're in crisis again today. Let's remember the name on our uniform. Let's remember who we are as Christ followers. Let's be people of hope. Let's be encouragers. Let's be helpers. And maybe you're honestly saying, "But René, I'm not feeling hopeful right now. Hope seems so far off." I get that. So let me wrap up with this. In the movie Elizabeth, The Golden Age, there's one scene that to me wraps up everything we've been talking about this morning. And in this scene, Sir Walter Raleigh tells Queen Elizabeth how he handles the fear that he has while at sea. Remember in those days, when you were out on a ship headed to the New World, you were like an astronaut going to Mars, man. It was all uncharted waters. You weren't sure of anything beyond the horizon.

Well, Queen Elizabeth looks at Sir Walter Raleigh and she asks him, "What is that like?" And he answers her, "For weeks, you see nothing but the horizon. Empty. And you live in the grip of fear, fear of storms, fear of sickness on board, fear of the immensity. And so you must drive that fear down deep into your belly and study your charts and watch your compass pray for a fair wind and hope. Pure, naked, fragile hope. Hope that there's land out there somewhere. At first, it's no more than a haze on the horizon. And so you watch. You watch. And then it's a smudge, a shadow in the far water. For a day and another day, the stain slowly spreads along the horizon, taking form until on the third day, you let yourself believe. You dare to whisper the word, land, land. Life, resurrection. He says, "Coming out of the vast unknown, out of the immensity into new life, that your majesty is the new world."

Well, do you see this is exactly what Peter is saying to these believers when he says, "Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed." He's saying, "That smudge on the horizon, it's the promise of new life, of resurrection. And one day you will find yourself coming out of the vast unknown into new life." Now, the difference for us is, of course, we don't have an uninformed hope. We've got somebody who's been to the other side and came back and told us what's there for us, because Jesus Christ died and rose again. So we don't have to fear even death. So, set your hope fully on him.

You know, one thing times like this are good for, they clarify where we have actually set our hope. And so I just want to invite you right now, today, set your hope fully on Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. I just want to invite you to close your eyes and bow your head, because this moment is a chance for you to practice what we just talked about. Just take a deep breath, steady your mind, and cast all your cares on him, because he cares for you. Just take a moment to tell God what you fear right now. Just go ahead and cast your cares on him. Father, I pray that we would live every day focused on hope. And we want to pray specifically for some people this morning. We want to pray for our healthcare workers. We pray for health and strength for them. We pray for our civic leaders, for wisdom and strength for them. We pray for those impacted by this health-wise and impacted by this economically, for hope, for strength, for full recovery. And God, we pray, stem the tide of this virus. Please slow it down and please give us all wisdom to know how to be clear thinkers so that we may endure these days with hope. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, now, if this were an in-person service, there's literally not one body in our entire auditorium right now, but if it were a regular in-person service, we would do two things right now. We would take an offering and we would have prayer partners up front to pray with you. So how are we going to do that virtually? Well, it feels a little bit awkward, frankly, for me to say, but you can go to tlc.org/give for the offering or text TWIN LAKES to 77977 and follow the instructions there. We do appreciate your generosity. TWIN LAKES doesn't get support from any denomination or large foundation. We depend entirely on your weekly contributions. So thank you.

Now for prayer, we want to encourage you. There's no prayer team up front, but you can go to tlc.org/prayer anytime, day or night, and somebody will get in touch with you. Or right now you can call 465-3358 for a live prayer partner, and they're going to be waiting at the phones for at least one hour after these live streamed services. Well, right now, let's just take a minute to breathe in these words from scripture, to ruminate, to meditate on them. And then Trent will be back with a song he himself wrote for times like this.