Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 6, 2022 | The Power of Anxiety (BIG Weekend)

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February 6, 2022 | The Power of Anxiety (BIG Weekend) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, TBC.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you all for having me.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jeremy.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of you probably haven't seen me yet because I've been stuck in the dungeons of the basement.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm fairly new here, still uh still kind of in my first couple months, but I'm excited to be here with you today.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh shout out to my student ministry homies in the crowd.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's up?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see ya.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm still getting a little acclimated though.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I do have to confess, I feel like my morning's not complete until I've uh crushed a junior higher in ping pong, but we're gonna power through, guys.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna power through.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, as Doug kindly pointed out, this last weekend we had a crazy fun time here at the student ministry on Friday and Saturday, playing crazy games, engaging in good fellowship, and in particular focusing our minds and thoughts on the topic of anxiety.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And anxiety is not just something that students deal with, but also something that we all deal with in varying measures and often in increasing measures as life goes on, it seems.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I hope that today, as we finish our four-part series in anxiety, this will be really helpful for some of us, engaging with what God calls us to when we encounter anxiety, debilitating anxiety in our own life.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do that, I want to take a little poll here.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: How many of us can remember back on a time when our parents let us win at something?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Raise our hands high, when our parents let us win at something.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's something you and I don't have in common.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, my dad was uber competitive.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: He never let us win anything.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He taught us from a very early age, it doesn't matter if they're two or if they're 89, you play to win.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You play to beat your opponent.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your grandmother walks up and she's gonna race you and she brings her walker, uh-uh, DQ.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a performance enhancer.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's disqualified.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Get out of here.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's how we play.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we play.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there was one game in particular I remember uh he was particularly savage in, and that was the game called Macho Camacho.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Macho Camacho was my dad's wrestling name.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: My dad worked from home, so so every now and then if he had a break or if he was he was done with work, he'd come down from stairs from his home office, he'd stomp down the stairs, and he'd yell throughout the house, Macho Camacho! And then we knew what time it was.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of my brothers and I have two brothers, we'd run through the house screaming and laughing, and we'd go in the living room, and we'd uh we'd try to wrestle my dad as he's throwing us around, flipping us, and pinning us to the ground, and we we had a blast, but we never won.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when, you know, when we were younger, when I was like eight and my middle brother was six, and my youngest brother was four, we didn't stand a chance.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: But let's just say Macho Camacho is uh is retired now.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he doesn't come out to play too often now that we're we're all grown up.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but you know, I was as I was preparing the sermon, I remembered one time in particular that just stuck out that we played this game.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my dad actually did a sneak attack on me.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: My brothers weren't in the house at the time, and and he got me in the living room and he threw me on the couch, and then he did something called a chest blaster, put his put his fists on my chest, and you know, blast me in the couch, and I'm laughing and screaming like, oh, help, help.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm getting my brothers to try to come help me out, but they're not in the house.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I hear the door open uh to the backyard, and Mitchell, my uh my youngest brother, comes into the house.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this is Mitchell, there he is.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he was probably about this age, too.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now, Mitchell, uh, at this point, he actually had his underwear in the right place, not on his head.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that's all he was wearing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was a summer day.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: He comes in in his underwear, four-year-old Mitchell, and he's got a popsicle in his hand.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's walking through the kitchen, then he comes to the stairs that lead down into the living room, and he notices my dad and I.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, popsicle in hand, he looks over, and then I see as his face scrunches up.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then he points at my dad and he says, Get away from my brother! And then he runs full speed with all the confidence of Captain America, straight at my dad, misses entirely, runs into the couch, and follows over.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so that didn't work too well.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was funny, but it was also it was endearing, right?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because he wanted to save save his big brother.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was really cute.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it was also a little foolish, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he obviously knew he couldn't take my dad.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was no chance.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and not only did he did he know that, but he had experience to prove that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: He knew from experience he couldn't take my dad, yet he still charged confidently at him.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of us would just chalk that up to childhood ignorance and just something funny that kids do.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But as I was thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that a lot of us actually do this in our own life with something else.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us think that we can control our life when the world throws uncertainties our way.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: That we can insulate ourselves and protect ourselves from loss, from unexpected dilemmas, even though we know that the world is a place that's very uncertain, and that we don't have all the control we would like to say we do.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I said before, we uh we've been talking about anxiety during this big weekend, and this is the last part in the series, when we began the series, we were talking about what the Bible had to say about anxiety in general.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then last night we decided to look at some specific ways the Bible speaks to our specific anxiety.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So yesterday we talked about social anxiety.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are going to talk about another way anxiety can trap us or debilitate us, and that is when anxiety causes us to take control in an unhealthy way.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to kind of show you and take you through the process of this before we jump in, because this is very important.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: God has given us a desire to have control, have safety and security in our life.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's often why we have anxiety.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we have anxiety, we seek control, we seek security, but to have that security, we have to place our trust in something.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that can be in ourselves, or that can be in something outside of ourselves.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is sometimes we trust in the wrong thing.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it ends up being worse for us than if we had found the correct source.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what we're gonna do today, guys.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to ask the question, a very simple question, what can we trust that can reduce our anxiety?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: What can we trust that can reduce our anxiety?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And lucky for you, we have some two simple points.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I have some good news and some bad news.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is, like I said, it's only two points.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to endure much.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: The bad news is my wife fell asleep halfway through the first point because it was way too long.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually still gonna be uh pretty monotonous and long.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: But stick with me.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh this is some good stuff, and I'm excited to share this all with you today.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so first we're going to tackle the faulty sources of trust, and then we're gonna tackle the only source of trust that we can actually have.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right, the faulty sources of trust.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we talk about why they're faulty, while they why they don't work, we need to actually identify some of the things we can place our trust in.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And these are obvious, these are kind of self-evident, we can have trust in money, we can have trust in parent, science, self, friends, and of course we all trust the government.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but what do all of these things have in common?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things have one thing in common, that is they are from man.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: They find their source of security and power in man, in flesh, in man's capabilities.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's important.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take this idea, let's take this idea of the power of man, power of flesh, and break it down into two categories that we're gonna cover one at a time and consider if either one can bring us ultimate hope and we can place our trust in it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one we're gonna look at trusting in yourself, trusting in your own ability, your own flesh, and then we're going to uh kind of consider trusting in others, trusting in other people's power and see if either one of those can get the job done and reduce our anxiety.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound good?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's take a look.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna contend here that we're gonna find that trusting man is actually going to be a cause for anxiety and not a solution to it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, first, trusting in yourself, trusting in yourself.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there are two ways we can trust in ourselves, guys.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: We can trust in our own wisdom, our ability to decide what's best for ourselves.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh how many of you guys have heard the phrase, the only person who knows what's best for me is me?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you said it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: No one's heard that phrase.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I guess you guys just live in your great Christian bubbles and you're all perfect people.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: No, but you probably have heard this phrase, okay?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's actually something that a lot of us live by even if we don't say it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh I remember there's one time when I was living back in Chicago.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my church and I, we went out on an evangelism kind of trip, and we went out uh to the Chicago waterfront, and I was paired up with another guy.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: We had created a questionnaire where we would ask some people, strangers, questions and try to engage them in a conversation about Christ.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember there were these two guys we ran into, and I asked them uh this question.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I asked them, what gives you purpose in life?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are you pursuing in life to bring you fulfillment?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one of the guys kind of chuckled and looked at his friend, and then he said, uh, uh to have sex with as many women as possible.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then I kind of looked at him and I asked him, I'm like, so has that worked?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel full?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you satisfied?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Have you achieved your purpose?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually stopped and he he considered it for a second.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, I don't know.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we'll I guess we'll see.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that told me everything I needed to know.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: That told me that in the present, his current goal, the way that he was trying to bring himself happiness and fulfillment, wasn't working as well as he had hoped.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that he was hoping that maybe if he just tried harder, he pursued it harder, then maybe, hopefully, it would eventually bring him that.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But guys, we all kind of do this in many respects.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just him.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever we think that we can take something in this world and and that it will fill us and bring us ultimate fulfillment, Scripture says we're being foolish.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: In Proverbs 28, 26, it says, Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And wisdom being the way that God has outlined us to experience life to the full.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other way we can trust in ourselves is we can trust in our own ability, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: We can trust in our own physical strength, we can trust in our own mental acuity, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in our ability to work through problems and find the best way forward and view life for what it really is.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's tackle physical ability first.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, who knows what's uh who this guy is up here?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Shout it out.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Shout it out.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Michael Phelps, all right.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Michael Phelps is a very famous Olympian, y'all know him.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I was doing some research and I found during the last Olympics, a bunch of Americans were polled and they were asked a very important question.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think you could compete in the Olympics and perform well?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the results were?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Americans, guys, come on.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: 40% of them believed that they could compete in the Olympics.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And now, at first I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, maybe they're thinking like I could compete in curling or something.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the non-sports, it's not take much skill, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, curling fans.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: But no, no, no.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I looked, out of those 40% of people who said they can compete, they specifically said they could compete in swimming, in basketball, and in soccer.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: These people think they're gonna be dunking on LeBron James, all right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little crazy.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, so we overestimate oftentimes our physical ability.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: We always do this.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're not as in control, we're not as powerful, we're not as able as we often think we are.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but what about mental acuity?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: What about maybe, maybe we can't trust our physical ability all the time, but maybe we can always manage to figure out uh uh how the world works and we can pick the best direction forward, and we can trust in that ability to assess the situation and move forward and make sure we protect the things in our life we're trying to protect.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we also know that uh that we also aren't very good at assessing ourselves and assessing the world around us.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about some scripture in a moment here, but I just wanted to give uh a little psychological uh uh study here for you guys.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have any of you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dunning-Kruger effect?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay if you haven't, we're gonna go through it now.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a couple decades ago, some psychologists did a study where they tested people on their skills, on their knowledge, on their ability to work through math, science, and logic problems.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: What was interesting is the bottom 12 percentile, the people that perform the worst out of everyone else, when they were asked how they think they how they thought they performed in relation to everyone else, they thought they were gonna perform in the very top percentile, 62% or higher.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and guys, this isn't just them, this is a lot of us.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: We think that we're more intelligent than we are than we are.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: We think that we can, when we approach the world, we see it for what it is, and that we can conquer it through our own reasoning.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: But very often that's untrue.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at the Bible to show exhibit A of this inaction.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because some of you are asking, so what?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, so I'm not in total control, but but I can do pretty well for myself.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's look at someone else who could do pretty well for himself.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Up here we have King Saul.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we look at the story of David and Goliath, oftentimes Saul kind of gets left out and put in the background, even though very clearly the author meant for him to be one of the main characters.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: He plays a key role in the story.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what we know about King Saul is that he was very tall.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was about a head taller than any other Israelite in the in the nation.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he was very impressive in stature.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: He had a great physical size.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also know that he was a great warrior.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was engaged in many battles and led the Israelites to many victories, he had a lot of experience in fighting.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also know out of all of the Israelites, he had the best armament.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was the only one that had a sword, and then he also had this great display of armor that would befit a king.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, if anyone should be confident in his ability to win a battle, it should be Saul.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And indeed, he was confident in himself.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then something happened.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: He faced an opponent that was greater than he.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Goliath comes on the scene, and Goliath is bigger.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Goliath has been fighting since he was an infant.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Goliath has even greater weaponry, cutting-edge weaponry than even Saul.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Saul, because he was placing his trust, his confidence in himself, when he was faced with an opponent that he couldn't beat, he cowered in his tent.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Defeated, debilitated and scared.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, guys, if we place our trust ultimately in ourselves, we will come across things in this world that we cannot overcome.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot defeat, and that will win out over us.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when those things appear in our lives, oftentimes we are going to respond like Saul in fear and resignation and defeat because we know that we can't handle what's coming.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to handle the next aspect of trust.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: We looked at how we can't necessarily trust ourselves to have 100% security in our lives, but what about trusting others?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's some pretty powerful people in the world.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's some that we have a president, we have some great CEOs, some people with more power than us.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: What if we just trust in others and other organizations?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Will that do the trick?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you guys have seen this movie, The Big Short?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Great movie, by the way.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen it, go ahead and give it a watch.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who haven't seen it, this is a movie that covers the 2008 market crash, the housing bubble collapse.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what's really interesting about it is it covers how the big banks were really causing this thing to happen, and they caused it to happen because of their horrible, terrible business practices that were obviously, so obviously going to lead to ruin.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But what was interesting is every time the bankers, these big bankers were called out that what they were doing was absolutely foolish and was going to bite them in the butt, this is what they said.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they said almost every time in the movie.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: They said this might be true, but we're too big to fail.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're too big to fail.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they believed they were too big to fail because they had met with so much success.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: For decades, they had been running the banks like this with these bad business practices, and they hadn't been punished.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is actually something they described in the movie as humans, when we tend to see people being victorious, people accomplishing things, people on a roll, the basketball shooter making three after three after three, we begin to think that that will continue.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: That that person or that organization is invulnerable.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what the banks thought.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: The banks thought they were too big to fail because they had met with continual success.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: But as we know, they did fail.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when they failed, they failed hard, and it affected millions of people's lives around the world.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And guys, it's not just with the banks that this happens.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can look throughout all of history in our own lives to see this happen in tons of respects.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: We see the Soviet Union, this large nation, collapse.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: We can look at people, uh spouses who we thought were just like the paragons of Christian virtue, and then they cheat.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then we can look at great Christian leaders who we think are just fantastic and can do nothing wrong, and then we find out that they embezzled.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't matter.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: What we learn is it doesn't matter how great or how powerful or how big another organization or person is, we are all susceptible to the uncertainties that this world brings our way.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, David, when he was kind of pressed with this understanding, he recognized this in his own life.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: He said this after he realized that there was no ultimate trust to be found in others.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: He said in Psalm 146, put not your trust in princes in a son of man in whom there is no salvation, for when his breath departs, he returns to the earth, and on that very day his plans perish.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I want to point out here is David isn't saying that he he can't trust anyone ever.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: He he very clearly trusted people in his life.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what he says is we can't trust others for our salvation.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can't trust others for our ultimate hope, to protect the thing that is most precious to us, because if we do, not only will we be let down, but we will lose those things.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: What do I mean by that?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you uh know Ravi Zacharias?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard of Ravi Zacharias.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who haven't, Ravi was a great apologist.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: He traveled around the world, was very well known and well respected for speaking with great power and with great truth.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, he was like a paragon of Christian authenticity and Christian knowledge and practice.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: He recently died, and after he died, uh it became known that he owned and operated multiple massage parlors that essentially gave happy endings.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he himself uh had participated multiple times in uh in these services.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people, as you can understand, you yourself might have been, were devastated.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember there were some people I knew who who said that Ravi actually brought them to faith.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ravi was the reason they trusted in Christ, and they really struggled with that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them even doubted.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't know anyone, but but I know that there are probably some people out there who were converted by Ravi and actually fell away.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when they saw Ravi speaking, and they came to Christ because of him, when they looked at Ravi, they said, Man, there's something different about this guy.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: This guy, there's something divine about him.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's representing something that's different from other people, and so I can trust him because he's wise and he's smart and he's different.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so then when it's revealed that Ravi is no different and he is just susceptible to sins as we are, the trust is lost.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so too is the trust that was placed in Christ, because it was rooted in a man who is susceptible to failure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And David recognizes this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: He recognizes if we place our trust in man, first off they're finite.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: So even if they succeed throughout their whole life, eventually they'll die.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually they'll die.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually an organization will fail, and you'll be left without you without what you were trusting in.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then, second, he recognizes they're fallible.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us do fail.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of organizations will fail and let you down.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have your ultimate hope and trust in them, so too will you be.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Last thing I want to cover here on the false faulty sources of trust is just this uh this illusion of control that we all kind of feel.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we can recognize that what I'm saying is true, that we all, you know, fail sometimes, and that and that we can't totally protect ourselves.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but oftentimes we think, at least implicitly, that if we do X, Y, and Z.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Z, we are going to get A.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: We we figured out that if we if we if we uh work really hard in our job, we're gonna make enough money to make it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if we if we push our kids to do really well in school, then they're gonna go off to a good college and get a great job.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we just think we've kind of cracked the code of life.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if we just do all of the right things and do all of the right steps, then we're gonna make it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna protect ourselves and insulate ourselves from the uncertainty of the world and what it can throw at us.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But in James 4.13, James kind of pops this bubble of illusion.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to what he says here.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: What is your life?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: For you are but a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that, as it is, you boast in your arrogance.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: What James is pointing out here is that there are some businessmen who might think they figured out how to make it in business.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: That they figured out that if we if we do these things, if we collect this amount of resources and we bring it to these ports and we sell it for this amount, we are going to be wealthy and we can protect ourselves from poverty.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he's saying you're foolish for two reasons.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: One, you don't even know if you're gonna be alive tomorrow.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, you have no certainty that that's going to work.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: You have no certainty that the output you're hoping for is going to come true.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolute foolishness.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking uh just kind of an analogy here, uh, a kind of silly analogy, but we have uh we have a really cute puppy, Butternut.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: She's in the picture here.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: She's about five months old, little Bernese mountain dog.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you met her.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Butternut is a bad girl.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Butternut here, every time I give her a walk, she uh she likes to take hold of the leash in her mouth.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe I'm just a bad owner.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know I need to train her better.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But but she does that because she thinks that she's in control then, right?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: If she can get in in her mouth and she's like, ha, you can't you can't force me, you can't force my neck around and tell me where to go.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is she right?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is she in control now?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, she has just shortened her leash, if anything.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as the leash grows taunt, she's gonna have to go wherever I direct or let go with her mouth.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, this has happened a couple times, if she's running at full speed away from me, and the leash grows taunt, she's gonna hurt herself even more.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Her gums have bled before.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm a really bad owner, don't call anyone on me.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's been bad.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or she's yelped, and it hurts more because she's trying to grasp so tightly to control, and she's grasping so tightly to this illusion, and ultimately it's going to hurt her more in the long run.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because she's trusting in it, because she's banking all that she has and her ability to control the direction she's going.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And guys, that's the same thing that will happen to us if we seek to grab control, and we we delude ourselves that we can determine and be the masters of our fate.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the false sources of trust.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now for the important part.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now for the important part.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: What is the only source of trust we can have that will reduce anxiety in our life?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty obvious.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: So let's all say it together on three.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Doug will.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you need to get something done, Doug will get it done, right?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, okay, no.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But not Doug will.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Don't burn me for a heretic.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you were right.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is God, even though Doug is pretty great.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's not that great.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it is God.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is God.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Doug.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love you.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it is God.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So why can we trust God then?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why is he the only source of trust that we can have confidence in that will reduce our anxiety?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Bible gives us two reasons.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are the two reasons.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: First, because he has a hundred percent completion rate, better than Mahomes, guys, even better than Mahomes.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, he has a he's a hundred percent motivated by love.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's a hundred percent motivated by love.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's tackle each of these one at a time.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: First, he has a hundred percent completion rate.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite psalms is uh Psalm 46.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really interesting and different among the Psalms because while most of the Psalms are considering bad things that are happening in their life, this psalmist decides to think about like an apocalyptic future.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he begins this psalm by saying, by imagining what would happen if the world literally came to an end, if hurricanes were ravaging the whole world, if tornadoes were sweeping across, and earthquakes were literally wrecking the foundation of the world around him.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he imagined what it would be like to be witnessing this.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what he says.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he says would be his response in the midst of this utter chaos of the world literally falling apart around him.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, even if heaven and earth pass away, God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help and trouble, therefore we will not fear.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are like, all right, that's a little heavy, Jeremy.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to get my kid through college.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about all the whole like earth passing away, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: But but this teaches us an important lesson.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the important lesson is that the things that we're going through here and now, that not just the things in the far, far future, like the end of the earth, the things we're going through now, God is in control of and he is over.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's no cancer, no COVID, no Alzheimer, no trauma, no kidney failure.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is too big for God.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing too big for God.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is beautiful news.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because he knows all things and he sees all things and he orders all things and he is above all things.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: But some of you are like, Jeremy, that's that's all well and good, but I've prayed before and God hasn't answered my prayer.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched as my family member died.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've watched as my family was ripped apart by cancer, as I lost my health, as I fell into depression.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: If God is the conqueror and he's over all things, why does this happen?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why can I trust him?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the reason we can still trust him is because he is also a hundred percent motivated by love.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: We know that God is in total control, and we also know that he does all things because he loves us and for our good.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, up here I have a picture of C.S.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis, and obviously many of you know him, but he wrote a book uh called the called Grief Observed.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a book, a memoir, kind of about his own inner emotions and relationship with God that he was processing after his wife died.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he was experiencing lots of grief, as many of you could understand.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he said this in relationship to how he how he viewed his suffering and his loss in relationship to God.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said this: the more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because a cruel man might be bribed, might grow tired of his vile sport, might have a temporary fit of mercy as alcoholics have fits of sobriety.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then the quote begins here on the screen.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: The kinder and more conscientious this this uh this surgeon is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: If he yielded to your entreaties for him to stop, for him to deliver you, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all of the pain up to that point would have been useless.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he's saying is when God allows us to go through suffering, we can be sure, just like a good physician, he is there using that pain in the moment for good.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: How?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: How let's look at James 1.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: James 1, 2 through 3.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: James here says that consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kind, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and let perseverance finish its work so that you may be made mature and complete.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things the Bible promises us is that if you are in Christ, even in the midst of losing good things, even in the midst of your suffering and your trials, we can be sure that God is working good within you to make you more like Christ.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can be assured of this, guys.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then, second, we can be assured that even we didn't we don't understand it and we don't see it, and everything, like we said before, the world seems to be crumbling around us.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: We can still be sure that God is working behind the scenes for good.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Romans 8.28 and says, and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pause.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've said some things that probably most of you are nodding your heads in agreement with.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, yeah, Jeremy, I I know.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: God does these good things, and even when I don't know, he's working behind the scenes.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we and we we kind of acknowledge this is what the Bible says, but I want to ask you this morning, do we really believe that?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do we really believe that?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of us, and I'm one of them, when push comes to shove, when our health starts declining, when we can't make our house payments, when we fail multiple tests in a row, when our spouse leaves us, we begin to have a panic attack.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: We begin to look at our future and think, man, life is not going to be worth living.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: My very existence and identity has been robbed.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is no point in continuing.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had uh I had a family friend growing up.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, they had they had two sons, and and the mom, she was uh she she had an anxiety disorder.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it caused her to be really controlling and and manipulative when it came to her two sons.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so bad that her youngest son wasn't allowed to go anywhere without her, actually hadn't gone anywhere without her until he was 16.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it was when he came to my youngest brother's birthday party.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the birthday party, she dropped him off and she told him, Okay, you can you can stay here, but don't leave the house.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't leave the house.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, Okay.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now the party was going on, and my brothers and some of his other friends uh decided they wanted to go play football at a field a couple blocks down, and he said, No, I have to stay.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: My mom told me to stay, but they convinced him to do otherwise because they're bad influences.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and they headed out and they were playing football.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden, almost immediately, as soon as they started, the mom pulled up, got out of the car, said, You disobeyed me.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Get in the car, we're leaving.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out, found out later, she had been circling our block the entire time, the entire length of the birthday party, making sure that he obeyed and that he was safe.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And fast forward to today, both of her sons are over 18, are still living in the house, and are very controlled by her.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: They very rarely go out, they don't have jobs, they can't go to school because she's afraid to lose them.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not trying to minimize or trivialize anxiety disorders.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a woman that really needs help, maybe has a chemical imbalance that can be helped by drugs or therapy.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: But but I brought her up as an extreme example because I think a lot of us do this in our own life with other things we value.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: You see, she placed ultimate hope, she placed ultimate purpose in joy.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: She gave it all, she put all of her eggs in one basket in her sons.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, she couldn't imagine losing her sons, because if she did, she would feel like life was not worth living.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Her very existence and purpose was gone and eliminated.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And some of us feel that way about a lot of things we're anxious about, even good things like our family.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: But guys, the Bible tells us we don't need to have this level of anxiety over the things in this world.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have something better to place our ultimate hope in.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: In 1 Peter 1 3 through 6, Peter says this in his great mercy, he has given us new birth into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time, and all of this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: What God is saying is, yeah, you may experience loss in this life.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Good things may be taken from you, but you know what?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a blip on the map of your eternity with God.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he has given you everything in him.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: You are his precious sons and daughters, his heirs that will rule with him for eternity in joy and in a place free from suffering.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is where our whole ultimate hope lies.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to place our ultimate hope in things that we might lose.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so, guys, if you hear anything today, just hear this.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: When our anxiety makes us feel like the only way forward is to cling tightly onto control in our own life.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Remember one, that it won't work, and remember two that we have a better way.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we have something so much better to hope in.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for your word.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your word that, Lord, that's both so encouraging to us, that points us forward to a better way, and then also exposes to us the ways that we trap ourselves, the ways that we we discourage ourselves through trusting in lies and false hope.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray for people here who are struggling, who have real fears, who are worried about losing truly valuable things, things that you value, things that you have given them that are good.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you would give them strength.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would allow them to continue to hope even in the midst of uncertainty and pain, and that they would be able to rest in you even when things seem uncertain.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I pray this in your name, Lord.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.