Finding Peace in Uncertain Times

This morning as we continue this series I want to talk about uncertainty. Say that word out loud with me. Uncertainty. Again, a show of hands, how many of you would agree that we are living in uncertain times right now? Alright? I was writing down some of the ways that we feel uncertain right now. We are uncertain about the economy, democracy, inflation, elections, climate changes, quarterback changes, the war in Ukraine, the war on values, oceans rising, prices rising, the future of our country, the future of our Christianity, uncertain when to speak on issues, uncertain even what words to use when we do speak because every word, every day, a word that I thought I understood, turns out it means something really bad to somebody now I can't keep track. Uncertainty fills the air right now.

Somebody wrote, "In the past two years with all the uncertainty we have felt like living in a dark cave with no light. We simply do not know what's ahead." As I was doing some research on uncertainty this week, I discovered something I hadn't known before. There is what they call a global uncertainty index. This is something that the World Monetary Fund does for businesses all over the world so that they can kind of plan, you know? And they do quarterly measures of how people are feeling in 143 countries around the world. They look at all kinds of metrics. How uncertain are people feeling? They recently wrote this, "While global uncertainty reached unprecedented levels with the initial coronavirus outbreak," that's no surprise, right? "It then fell sharply." That's good. "However, the global uncertainty index has now rebounded, reaching levels close to the September 11th attacks." So how is all this atmosphere of uncertainty affecting you?

Well, we can know how it's affecting us because it turns out that our brains react to uncertainty in very predictable ways because it's part of our survival instinct. Uncertainty triggers a strong threat response. And it turns out that our brains tend to go three places when they encounter uncertainty and they go in this order typically. First, anxiety. What will happen next? I'm in suspense. Is it going to be good or bad? Is the shoe going to drop on one side of the bed or the other? I need to know I'm in suspense. Then, aggression. I will control what happens next because you feel like everything's an attack and you see both of these all around you right now, don't you? Anxiety in a lot of people and aggression in a lot of people now. These two are normal instinctive responses to uncertainty in our environment, but they are meant to last a moment. Or at best for just a season, not to go on for years.

These are meant to help us analyze the uncertainty and act on the uncertainty. But the problem we have is the world we're living in is feeding us uncertainty 24/7. And human beings are not made to exist in a constant state of alarm all the time because then you slip into despair. Which is, "I know only bad things will happen next because I have now lost hope." If anxiety is worrying about what will happen next, good or bad, and despair is like, "I know what's going to happen next. Only bad it's all going to hell and I am a basket." And you can feel all these aspects of uncertainty, not just about the headlines and global uncertainty. You can feel all three of these things and you do feel all three of these things. When you're uncertain about anything, about a loved one's health, you're going to feel all three of these things. About a relationship that is stressful. About whether or not you're going to be able to afford a home or afford rent or even find a place. If you can't afford it, you're going to feel all three of these things.

And so what do we do when we live in such a world of uncertainty right now? I mean, there's not much we can do to change the uncertainty in our world right now, right? But you and I can change how we respond. We don't have to be slaves to kind of the primal instincts in our brain, right? We can recognize these things and we can move to responding to uncertainty from a place of shalom. As we've been talking about in this series, a place of biblical peace. Because as it turns out, the Bible has a lot to say about how to respond to uncertainty. If you think about it, the entire Bible was written during uncertain times. Ever thought about that? The context of every verse in the Bible is uncertainty. The Israelites are in slavery and then they're wandering in the wilderness. Then they're attacked by enemies. Soon there's a civil war and then they're dragged into exile. Then they return from exile, but their society is collapsing. And then there's Roman persecution. Really, the entire Bible was written by people in stress, for people in stress, about people in stress.

And that means it has a ton of wisdom to offer for people in stress right now. And the Bible's wisdom works. It's time tested. When you think about it, the Bible has helped millions of people over thousands of years deal with all sorts of times of uncertainty. It's helped me. Why? Because it gives us things we can be certain about. I went into detail last weekend about my own mental health journey. And if you missed it, I encourage you to listen to it online. But I talked briefly about how one of the things the doctor suggested to me when I had my own anxiety attacks and breakdown and so on was, in addition to medication and everything else, that I write down Bible verses, positive promises from God's word, about uncertainty and stress on three by five cards like these, and put a rubber band around them, and just carry them in my back pocket like a wallet.

And that every time I feel uncertain or anxious, because remember I ended up in the hospital with anxiety attacks, he said, "What you got to do, in addition to everything else I'm giving you from a medical standpoint, is you got to do kind of biblical cognitive behavioral therapy on yourself here. And you got to whip those verses out, and you're going into an uncertain situation. Read a couple of those verses that you've written out in your own hand." And so many, many times a day, I was taking out these cards and reading those verses. And then at night, when I went to sleep, I put these verses under my pillow so that when I woke up in the middle of the night, worried I would whip them out and read something. And then in the morning, I would take them out from under my pillow, and before I got up, I'd read another Bible verse, and I'd prop them up on my cereal bowl and read another Bible verse.

And a couple of things happened. Number one, by the end of two weeks, I had all those verses memorized, and I had to add new verses. But number two, I was retraining my brain not to think in those kind of primal ways that we respond to anxiety and to respond to uncertainty in more biblical ways. Well, guess what? Every single verse that is in your notes today was one of the verses that I had on those cards. And so if you'd like to start this habit yourself, well, you can start by writing down those verses and add some that you like, and you can replace your thoughts of anxiety and aggression and despair with God's word. Because listen, would you agree with this? God's word is certain, even in the uncertainty. God's word is true even when your feelings don't line up with it. God's word is the way to calm your anxious and angry heart today.

Because God's word points you to Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Amen? All right, so let's dig into it and see how the Bible offers certainty. Let's go through all three of these responses. First for anxiety. What's gonna happen next? The night before Jesus is crucified, and Elizabeth read this verse to us earlier in the worship set, the disciples are feeling a lot of uncertainty and he knows they're headed for a lot more. So what does Jesus say? How does he set them up for this? He says this, "I've told you these things so that in me you may have," what? Peace, peace, shalom. So what is, God, what's the advice he's gonna give that's gonna help them have peace in these times of uncertainty? Look at this next sentence. He says, "In this world, you will have trouble." Say that sentence out loud with me. "In this world, you will have trouble." What? That's a promise from Jesus.

As we say around here, that's one of those promises you're never gonna find in one of those pocket promise books you get in the checkout line at Safeway. You look up trouble, you're gonna have it. Wow, very inspiring. That's a promise, that sentence, you're never gonna find on a coffee mug, an internet meme, one of those precious moment statuettes, one of the kids with the huge eyes with a burst balloon, and on the pedestal it says, "In this world, you'll have trouble." You know, you never, nobody ever talks about this promise. But we have his word on it. Why is this so important? Because it's important for you to realize that when you go through trouble in your life, that's just life. God is not mad at you, you didn't do something wrong, you're not just unlucky. It's just life. And that's kind of comforting, isn't it? Because look, if anxiety is what's gonna happen next, what's gonna happen next? Will it be good or bad, good or bad, good or bad? Jesus says, "Oh, well, both." You will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

See, in a world of uncertainty, I can be certain of both trouble and triumph, all the time, every day. Let me show you a passage that meant so much to me during my whole anxiety attack time, but I wanna show you something I've recently discovered about this passage. The Apostle Paul, great man, but he was also, well, talk about uncertainty, was beaten by mob shipwrecked in prison for years and years and years, not knowing what was gonna happen to him. How did he deal with all that uncertainty? How did he feel? Well, he tells us, he says in 2 Corinthians, "We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned, knocked down, but not destroyed." Now, this is one of those verses you'll see on coffee mugs. You'll see this one on the cross stitch at grandma's house, right? This was one of the ones that was on my cards.

But you know what occurred to me one day? What was Paul's secret? How could it be not crushed, not despair, not destroyed, not abandoned? Sure would love to know his secret. Well, guess what? He goes on to tell us his secret in the very next two verses. But hardly anybody looks at those verses because they're kind of hard to understand, but they're rich and they tell us how he got here because they tell us how he framed life. Do you dare to look at those verses with me right now? All right, here we go. He says in the next verse, "We always carry around in our body the what? Death of Jesus, so that the what? Life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." Now, maybe that was just the apostle Paul. No, this is all of us. "For we who are alive," how many of you are believers in Jesus and are alive right now? Can I see a show of hands? He's talking about you. "For we who are alive are what? Always being given over to what? Death for Jesus' sake, so that the what? Life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal body." What's all this about death, life, death, life? He's saying in a world of uncertainty, I can have certainty in death.

This, there is always death, and there is always life, always challenges, always blessings, always a cross, always resurrections in our lives, always every single day. And we should expect this. It's what we call here the shape of the gospel. This inverted bell curve. Jesus humbled himself from glory and came down to earth, became one of us, even unto death on a cross. But then he was raised to new life again. And when I put my trust in Jesus Christ and I identify myself as one of his followers, what Paul is saying, his story becomes our story. Now, also always in our life, we go through deaths and we go through resurrections. That's what Paul is saying. We always have crosses. We always have resurrections. We always have deaths. We always have new life. And that's what Jesus is saying. In this world, we will have trouble, but he has overcome the world and the same power is in us. I can be certain of both trouble and triumph, and I must expect both always.

Maybe today's trouble is just a little bit of trouble. I'm stuck in traffic, or maybe even I have a little fender bender, but that will also, that little death, that little cross, that little suffering will also always become a way. The life of Jesus is revealed in me a way that God works all things together for good to his glory in your life. We always expect that. And this gives us such a healthy, biblical certainty to life. There's a podcast that I love called Good Faith. In fact, it's probably my favorite podcast right now, but one episode recently actually kind of gave me the idea for this message and like two thirds of the outline idea. It was when the host, one of the two hosts, it's hosted by David French and Curtis Chang. Curtis shared, and I was totally surprised by this, he shared the other day about his own anxiety attacks and year-long struggle with serious depression.

Now this surprised me because Curtis is like kind of an immense level genius, teaches at Duke and American University and is amazing, and he was very vulnerable about this and some of the things he said were so brilliant that I thought, I'm gonna quote him, I'm gonna quote that, I'm gonna quote that. And there were like 15 lines from the podcast that I wanted to quote to you. And I thought, wouldn't it be better if I just interviewed Curtis and kind of had you meet him? And so I contacted him this week and he said yes, and here's part of our little Zoom chat, watch this. You are a Harvard graduate, you are a professor at Duke Divinity School, you are an author, a very successful podcast host and so on, yet you still struggle with anxiety. Yeah, so one thing to just realize that anxiety is just a fundamentally human normal condition. It is the condition that human beings have when faced with uncertainty, especially an uncertainty that may bring loss in their life.

Even if by world standards, you know, you graced me with all these nice things, but the reality is through all of those accomplishments, I was very anxious and also probably in some ways motivated many people who are what you would call high performing people on the outside. Some of that, some meaningful part of that performance is actually driven by anxiety. It's driven by the fear of loss, by the fear of some uncertainty that lies in the future and they're going to get on top of their life and plan and make to-do lists and get things done. And that was me. And yet that is okay at one level. There's some, you know, there's nothing wrong with being a highly functioning, anxious person, but it can lead to a point where the anxiety actually just gets higher and higher and can end up causing real damage because we're not getting at the underlying issues and the need to grow through our anxiety.

So when did you sort of hit the bottom and figure I needed to get some help on this? Yeah. So I really hit bottom when in my earlier career as a pastor of a church in San Jose, I was the lead pastor. And that was an experience where all of my highly functioning sort of habits basically couldn't, just broke apart. I started, it was a, I won't go into all the details, but basically I just cracked under the pressure of ministry. And went through a two week period where essentially I did not sleep almost at all because I was so anxious and wound up and basically had a breakdown and went on disability that ended my pastoral career and sort of spun me into a pretty, about a year long, pretty dark place of, and oftentimes anxiety can very easily bleed over into depression. And that's what happened for me.

Where did you find help? Did you find help in scripture, in therapists, in medication? All of the above. I took medication, so that was very helpful. And in terms of relieving some of the weight and then the symptomatic sort of the hardest symptoms of it. But the thing with medication is that it doesn't get to the spiritual realities that are both driving some of the anxiety and also the growth opportunities that are present in anxiety. And that's probably the most important message I want to get across is that anxiety is not just a problem for us to make go away. It is actually one of the greatest opportunities we have for spiritual growth. And there's an invitation for all of us in our anxiety to actually grow closer to Jesus and in deeper ways. Not just in, hey, trust in Jesus so you don't have anxiety, but actually trust in Jesus to get at the underlying fears and uncertainties that fuel most of our anxieties.

For example, what would be one of them? Well, for me, underlying my breakdown as a pastor was really just the fear of failure. So one of the things that was really profound for me to just realize was the seemingly sort of basic reality that God does not promise us that we will not fail or that we will not lose things. There can be this notion that somehow as a Christian, we can almost sort of think of God as this great guarantor in the sky against loss in our lives. And in reality, when you look at scripture, when you look at the life of Jesus, Jesus himself experienced tremendous loss. And so instead of that, a deeper understanding of God as the God who actually promises to restore us through loss was a really important kind of breakthrough for me.

Oh, that's so good, isn't it? Curtis is doing great now, by the way. And in fact, he has new online anxiety curriculum. It's called Anxiety as Opportunity for Spiritual Growth. You can get it at his website redeemingbabel.org. I love that. I've gone through the first two sessions of it myself, and I found it super helpful, but I love his overarching idea. God won't keep you from tough times. God will redeem your tough times, and you can be certain of that. You know, I was thinking sometimes I feel a little bit awkward when I say this in church because loss and uncertainty are so fresh for so many people. There's people here in this church. I just did a memorial service a couple of days ago. I know there's people here who've just lost a loved one and they're facing uncertainty in their future. Or lost a job or grieving a loved one's choices. And so I worry that this can come off as cliche, but I also know this is true. I know it in my own life. And as a pastor, I get to see it in the lives of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people.

After being at this church for nearly 30 years, God will redeem your times of loss and darkness. It is not usually quick, and it is never easy, but you can be certain of this. Now, what about the Bible's response to the second way we deal with uncertainty, and that is aggression. Aggression. Would you agree with me that people are kind of freaking out right now? There's angry people, there's angry Christians, and that's a response to uncertainty in our lives, right? For the last three weeks, I've been speaking at different Christian conferences in addition to being here. It's been a blessing. I met Mount Herman this weekend, but right before that, I was speaking for a week at another Christian conference up in Oregon. Beautiful place. I was speaking in the evenings, and after the evening sessions, they would open up their ice cream stand. And so I went over there for ice cream, and I was chatting with the young woman who was kind of serving, scooping up my ice cream. I said, "How's the summer been going?" And she said, "Great," but she said, "Wow, I was just yelled at by this woman." Yes, a woman attending the Bible conference.

And I said, "Why were you yelled at by her?" And she said, "Well, this woman came up to her and said, 'I'd like some coffee ice cream please.' 'Oh, well, we're out of coffee ice cream,' and she just lost it." "You don't have a coffee ice cream? I want to see the manager. I come here expecting coffee ice cream. It's one of the highlights of my summer every year, is getting the coffee ice cream here. I just can't believe this is unacceptable, unacceptable." And she would fulminating, snapping and popping, and you know, she kind of hopped out in her outrage out of the ice cream store. And incidentally, this was right after my message on how to handle suffering. I'm so glad it was effective for her. But let me ask you this. Was that about not having coffee ice cream? No. That was just the latest uncertainty in her life. What happened was she came to that conference, and after all the things that had let her down, she knew there would be coffee ice cream. And she was thinking to herself, 'I've gone to this conference for 25 years, and I'm going to have coffee ice cream the way I've had since I was eight years old. It's going to be great.' And then that was uncertain too. It was the straw that broke the Campbell's back.

Now we're all kind of experiencing this, maybe kind of that hair trigger, right? And it can be kind of humorous, and we can show grace in situations like this, but where it's getting dangerous is it is undermining our public Christian witness. When Christians think it's acceptable to be hot-headed about anything. But that temptation is real right now. So I was on this Christian blog site the other day, and this was something that was originally posted in 2017, but they reposted this, and it was pretty interesting, because see if you don't get riled up by this. Jesus didn't turn the other cheek. Okay, just wait a minute. I want to say, I want to press pause and say, what? But, you know, they just barreled on. Jesus didn't turn the other cheek, and neither should you. How can it be right to turn the other cheek when the sacred is traded for sacrilege? When truth is traded for lies? When purity is traded for perversion? Are we called to passive indifference when Western civilization, the cradle of our faith and reason is under attack by enemies? When the honor of Christ's virgin bride, the church is assaulted, my friends, it is time to wake up and realize we are in a war, and things don't look very bright for the home team right now.

I'm all riled up, right? Incidentally, this was all in service of getting you to subscribe to some kind of email list associated with politics, right? You know, they were getting these people all riled up. Now, what is wrong with all those statements? By the way, somebody is going to clip this, I just know out of YouTube, and they're going to make it look like I said these things. You know, they're just going to stop it right there, but... Here's the deal. Are we in a war? Yes, that is biblical. But Jesus made it very, very clear what his strategy was for fighting that war. Of that, we can be certain. I can be certain of the strategy of Jesus Christ. He left no room for doubt. He said, "Love your enemies." Now, remember, this is happening at a time of brutal Caesars and brutal Roman governors and brutal Judean kings. Yeah, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If somebody slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.

Now, what does that mean, turn the other cheek? Well, first, it means literally turn the other cheek. But it also means that when we fight evil and injustice and foolishness in the world, we don't lower ourselves to their level by fighting the battle the way they do with slander and innuendo and aggression. That's not the Jesus way. Why not? Because to stand against fools by acting like a fool makes you a fool. You are just contributing to the problem. This is why the Apostle Paul echoing Jesus says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil." Yes, yes, overcome evil. But how? With what? With good. This is because anger and aggression, it's not the Jesus way, partly because it's just not effective. Jesus' strategy for winning the war with love and with service and with kindness and with prayer and with blessings, that's the only way that works.

This is the way Christians won the Roman Empire, which was trying to exterminate them, right? It takes longer, but it's the only way that works. In fact, James says, "Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. It does not work. It is ineffective. It backfires. It produces resistance to the Christian message, not openness to the Christian message." How many times have Christians had to prove this, sadly? I'm gonna preach a lot more on this next week. I've been so burdened by this, specifically the division and judgment that's going on in Christian circles right now. Every pastor I know is burdened by this. And we're all doing messages on this because it's a satanic attack on the unity and the love of the church. And I'll be talking about how we can live in shalom with others as we wrap up the series. That's next weekend.

But finally, what about despair? A lot of people feel a lot of despair right now. Nothing's working. All is lost. What does the Bible say to despair? The sense that only bad things will happen next. Well, I can be certain of God's ultimate promise. That one day, Jesus, the king of all creation, will return and restore it all to glory. It'll be eaten again. The Bible says he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making everything new and the lion will lie down with a lamb and swords will be beaten into plowshares." And that is our hope. And we can be certain of that. Amen?

It's kind of like an analogy that I heard Curtis Chang use on his podcast. Let's say you own some stock and it's just going down, down, down, down, down. And that's the way we can feel right now with the world, right? And if you had stock like that, you'd want to disengage. You want to sell it, not be involved anymore with the company. And that's the temptation when you are in despair. But what if I were able to tell you, you know, hang on to that stock, because I have a time machine. I've been to the future and guess what? That stock's value is going to soar 100X. Suddenly you'd be engaged with the company, engaged with the stock, excited about it, evangelizing about the stock to your friends. Because you know that although it looks bleak now, there's great things ahead.

Well, this is kind of how the Bible encourages us about the future. And that kind of encouragement doesn't make us disengage from the world. It makes us engage with hope. We feed our neighbors with hope. We love our neighbors with hope. We share the gospel with hope. Why? Because we know that God's got 1000X increase in store. We live in a world of uncertainty. But to that uncertainty, I can be absolutely certain of these three crucial things. First of all, I can go through life absolutely certain of both trouble and triumph. And that is actually very healing and healthy. I can be certain of God's ultimate promise. And I can be certain of the strategy of Jesus Christ.

Now, maybe you've been so uncertain and so troubled, you've hardly had a chance to take all of this in. Let me just close with this simple story. I started with the quote about how living in uncertain times feels like you're in a dark cave and you don't know which way is out, right? Well, let me close with this. It's one of my favorite stories that a friend of mine, who's an author and a speaker, John Ortberg, tells, I happened to run into John last Thursday and it reminded me of this perfect story. I've shared it with some of you before, but he tells a story about a friend of his, Danny. And Danny was an adventurer. And one day Danny goes spelunking. You know what spelunking is? Cave exploring with a friend of his. And this friend had been in this cave before, but Danny had never been in this particular cave system.

And so they're going through the cave and it's pretty nice. And then Danny's friend says, "Hey, Danny, I know there's this beautiful cavern nobody ever goes into. It's got all kinds of stalagmites, stalactites, and it's completely undisturbed. Would you like to go there, Danny?" He's like, "Of course." And he says, "But it's a little challenging to get there. You still in?" And he's like, "Yeah, let's go." So they go through the tunnel that leads to this chamber and it gets lower and lower. They've got a hunch over to go like this. The walls get narrower, lower, narrower. Pretty soon they've got a crawl on their hands and knees. To get through this tunnel. And then they've got to do the army crawl to get through this tunnel. And then pretty soon what they've got to do is lay on their backs like this. There's not even room enough for the army crawl and they're just pushing themselves forward with their legs like this.

And then it gets so tight that if they breathe in, they're stuck. And so the only way they can move forward is to exhale and then scoot forward with their heels. That's right. If they breathe, they're stuck. Like a cork in the neck of a bottle. How many of you are experiencing sympathetic claustrophobia right now? So Danny's friend wriggles through and he's in this chamber. And Danny's still like hyperventilating in this little tunnel. And then he hears a voice echoing. It's Danny's friend talking to Danny and he says, "Danny, you have to listen to me very carefully right now." Because your thoughts right now are running wild and you're probably breathing too fast and you're listening to voices in your own head telling you, "Why did I do this? I'm never gonna get out." You have to not listen to those voices and instead only listen to my voice telling you, "Take another breath. Take one more step. Take another breath. Scoot forward one more inch and you'll get through this and it's gonna be worth it."

Danny died in that cave. No, just kidding. Danny made it through and it was glorious. But right now for some of you, that voice is Jesus. And he's saying, "Stop listening to the other voices of despair and aggression and anxiety and listen to my voice saying, 'I've been through this myself and I know it's tough. No doubt in this world you will have trouble.' But wow, it's so worth it." Take a breath. One more breath. One more step. One more breath. One more step. Focus on His voice for certainty in a world of uncertainty. Let's pray together. Lord, thank You that we can be certain of You. Thank You that in a world of uncertainty, we can know for sure that You are here with us, You've been through all of this, and that the glory that awaits us is going to make all the travails of this earth really forgotten.

And Lord, I pray that we would just fix our ears on Your voice, Your voice through Your Word, when there's so many voices clamoring for our attention. Now, with your head still bowed and eyes still closed, I'm not even going to say amen, because actually we're going to continue our prayer with our closing song. Elizabeth is going to sing you a song about how in Jesus and in His certain word, we are promised peace. So make these words your prayer. In this time of meditation.