Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Awakened to Grace :: Silence" | Sunday Service | February 1, 2026

Transcript

"Awakened to Grace :: Silence" | Sunday Service | February 1, 2026 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: We are going to continue our sermon series this morning called Awakened to Grace.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: And this week we're going to talk about silence.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And for the bit, I almost just decided to get up here and just stand and see how long you could take the awkwardness, you know?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Kylie goes, not even not even a second and a half, Kylie.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: You've met you talked in the middle of the thing.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just sit in silence.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to use the pass a passage out of 1 Kings as a pop quiz and for bonus points.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody tell me what book of the Bible 1 Kings comes after.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: So what comes before 1 Kings?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Say it louder.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Say it louder.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: 2 Samuel.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: 2 Samuel, yes.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: If you have a Bible, I'd encourage you to pull it out.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: If not, it'll be on the screen in many different fonts and forms.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to read from 1 Kings chapter 19.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about a guy named Elijah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of hard when you pick up in the middle of the story and it says, then he, who's he?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the time it's Jesus, not here.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: This is Old Testament.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is Elijah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Here now the reading of God's word.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: There he went into a cave and he spent the night.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord's word came to him and said, Why are you here, Elijah?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Elijah replied, I've been very passionate for the Lord God of heavenly forces, because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: They have torn down your altars and they have murdered your prophets with the sword, and I am the only one left.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now they want to take my life too.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord said, Go out and stand at the mountain before the Lord.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: The Lord is passing by.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: A very strong wind, like kind of like yesterday, maybe, you know, when the snow was coming, through the mountains, came through the tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's a strong enough wind to break apart stones.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't miss that.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: A very so much stronger than the snow wind yesterday.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: A very strong wind tore through the mountains and broke apart the stones before the Lord.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the Lord wasn't in the wind.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And after the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord wasn't in the earthquake.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: And after the earthquake, there was a fire.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: But the Lord wasn't in the fire.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: And after the fire, there was a sound.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thin.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Quiet.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his coat.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he went out.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he stood at the cave's entrance.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And a voice came to him and said, Why are you here, Elijah?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a light into our path.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: May it speak to us and speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh God, you are our rock and you are our redeemer, and we love you because you first loved us.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Be with us, oh God.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: You ever have those months, weeks, sometimes years maybe even, where like everything is coming at you at once.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: You ever have that moment where you're like, I don't know if some of you may have that personality where you just don't get overwhelmed at all.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: Man, I get overwhelmed with like two things, and for the last month or so, I've had like nine flying at me.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: We I remember sitting with members of our office staff early January.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: We were just back in, we were starting to get ready for winter retreat, and we started going through the January calendar.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized at the beginning of January that the end of January had already come.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know this feeling?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's not a single day that I've got any sort of opportunity to do anything that's not work-related over the course of January.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's how it's been for us.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of things that have been going on in my life.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: There are a whole bunch of you that applied to be on our staff next year.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I know you're all nervous.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Me too.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: This I wish I had seven more beds.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just need seven more beds.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't, so we're gonna have to make some hard decisions.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: But we've been interviewing each and every one of the people who applied.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I am, I'm not like a hand over to somebody else kind of person.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: I really want to be on every single one of those interviews.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: I want to, to be honest with you, I kind of lead the whole thing.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, I've wanted to be in every single interview, and so that means that I've had to do that 26 times.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh we've also been getting ready for a winter retreat, yeah, which is really fun.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: If you're if you're not familiar, a lot of you like you may have gone on a winter treat if you've done something like that.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's super fun to go on these things, but what you don't often think about is the work that goes into it beforehand, and it's anything from planning to recruiting, like we have to recruit small group leaders and drivers and that sort of thing.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have to recruit you to go and hopefully put your money in it so that we can afford it, right?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we have we have to do all of that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: We also have to print things and including t-shirts and well, this time sweatshirts.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone wearing the crew neck?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, some crew neck.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so we we we gotta we print those here, so that takes some time and energy.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: We have to order those things.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: We have to prepare the speakers that are gonna happen.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: We also, and this this should not be overlooked, tear down everything you see.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Both here and upstairs where my friends are.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: Give them a hand to our friends upstairs.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: I got Jacob on the sound this morning, Sydney on the live stream sound, Thomas on the cameras for the live stream, and who is that on the slides?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: The one and only Hannah, Ashley.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And all of this has to be torn down.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Now we have a great team that does it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's been amazing.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: To be honest with you, my hands have been off of it a lot more and more.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day, we have to tear it all down, and then when we come back, what do we have to do?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Set it all back up until what, two in the morning last night?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Something like that.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so what happens, we we got to go on retreat, and a bunch of us get together on Thursday morning and we pack up the U-Haul.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I go buy it, get the U-Haul rent.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't buy a U-Haul.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: I rent the U-Haul from U-Haul, and then uh I bring it here.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: We we load it up and then we drive it two and a half hours, and then we unload it, and then we have to drive 30 minutes in to get something to eat, and then we come in and we just set up and set up and set up and set up and set up and set up and set up and set up until we finally go to bed that night.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then we wake up the next morning, we figured out all the problems that we created, you know, because we had to test everything that we do that all Friday morning, and then we try to get everything else ready Friday, and then all of a sudden everybody shows up on a retreat, and then we're just off to the races.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're doing thing after thing after thing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: Then what happened?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Those of you who are on the trip will know this.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: We pack it all up Saturday night, and then we load it all into the truck Sunday morning in the pouring down rain.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think there was a single inch of my body that was dry.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we we pack it all in there, and then we bring it all back in the middle of the craziest storm, and then we left it here, which we don't normally do, and we had to come in Monday.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Monday is usually our day off, but we had to come in Monday to unload it and then take the U-Haul back to U-Haul.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then, and then I had to go home and do laundry because I had to go to Leesburg, Florida, of all places, to interview for uh with the Board of Ordained Ministry to become what we call in our church a full connection elder.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: And guess what?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: I passed.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you were wondering what the hats and the streamers were for, that's what they're for.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Streamers.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: What do you call these things?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Noise makers.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm past that, which is amazing.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a very long four-hour interview where I was very nervous that morning.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: I woke up, I put on my suit, and I'm literally just in my room.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: They give you a room to stay in, which is great.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just doing this back and forth.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized I should probably go do this in a more productive place.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: So they have a prayer labyrinth that I went down, and I just walked the prayer labyrinth because I'm walking here.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Why couldn't I just walk there?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm very nervous, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then I found it I passed and I cried and I went to Disney World.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: I've been working on this in our church for 17 years.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's when I first heard God's call in my life 17 years ago.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I figured I had to celebrate by going to Hollywood Studios.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I I tell you what, I only spent like two hours there, but I crushed that place.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um single rider on rock and roller coaster.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I went on uh Tower of Terror.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: I went on the new to the new villain show.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: I sat in the very back, was the very last person as I got in there.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then as I was leaving, I was gonna go get dinner and I was like, Phantasmic is going on.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I walked in and I sat down at Phantasmic by myself at 9:30 at night, closed the freaking park, and then I had to drive to Lakeland to be at another meeting the next day.
• 9:50
  unknown: Did you pass that one?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't, there was no test in that one, it was just a conference.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um not passed the day before to be at that meeting.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had that meeting, and then I had to come home.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna make it home for Bible study.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: I did not make it home for Bible study.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Big props to Eli who stepped in to teach Bible study.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um so good.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and I made it home, and then I had to come back on Thursday and Friday because we had to interview more people for retreat.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know, pastors, because they work on Sundays, usually get a day off during the week.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Friday is usually my day off.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't had it in an entire week, an entire month.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um we still have more interviews tomorrow.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so last night I went to a movie.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone a fan of the theater?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a big fan of the theater.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I really honestly don't even care what it's about.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I care that uh I don't have a phone, it's dark, and I can just escape for a little bit.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Nicole Kidman comes on screen and she says, somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I say, Amen, Nicole.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then I watched a movie.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Last night, though, I won't tell you what one.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can ask me later.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: I will not say it from the pulpit.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was the only person in the theater.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Private showing.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's too bad the movie sucked, but I cannot tell you what the movie was.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: But but I uh it was in that moment.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sitting there, my phone's down here, Nicole comes on screen, and I'm like, You ever heard those phones?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Just everything has been going on, and you just take a second to stop.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: What was funny is normally Nicole comes on screen and then it flows in right into the intro to the film.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: There was must have been a problem with the projector or something because there was a solid 35 seconds of just black and silence.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm the only guy in the theater.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I did that thing.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: 35 seconds, not not very much, right?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm sitting there like, do I go tell somebody?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know that awkward moment where you're like, something's wrong here.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: I see enough movies there.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: I know exactly the protocol.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: What exactly is happening here?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's hilarious because I was prepping this sermon for silence.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Silence.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: It makes us uncomfortable, doesn't it?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to raise your hands, but how many of us thrive when we are busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't thrive at that, you are an American, and so you will learn to.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because our life and our culture is just set up to move you from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're an extrovert, it's even worse because you're just going out and you may feel energized.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: You may be going, going, going.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an extrovert, can you tell?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: I like you going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, going, but that moment when there's that first silence can be awkward.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: You ever been in a small group and a leader asked a question, and the whole place goes, You ever been leading a Bible study?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Did that happen, Eli?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Ever been leading a Bible study?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: The place just dead.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Makes you uncomfortable.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: When we catch Elijah here in 1 Kings 19, he's actually just coming off of perhaps the biggest accomplishment of his ministry and career.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a picture of him.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: He's actually coming off of, I mean, it's not a real photograph, okay?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but it's and he's coming off of this conversation battle, I guess you could say he's been having with the prophets of Baal.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: And there's this, there's there's this moment where Elijah and all these prophets are kind of battling against each other over whose God is the real God.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And Elijah is our God.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Elijah is is is is praying to Yahweh, the one true God.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the prophets of Baal are praying to Baal.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a moment where he prays for fire to come down and it comes down, and then the prophets are, they're like, holy cow, that must really be the true God.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he's accomplished this as a prophet, it's a huge deal.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then he runs and God actually gives him some food.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: He takes a little bit of uh a kind of a transitional moment in his life, and then he ends up in the cave where we find him here.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like everything's just been going for him, non-stop, just going for him, and that victory, according to our assumptions, would sustain Elijah.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because we do assume that like those victories have kind of these lasting moments, don't they?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: But instead, everything in his life kind of collapses and he ends at the end of himself.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason is is because the queen, Jezebel, she comes for him wanting his death, which is not, you know, an enjoyable moment in your life.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: She comes for him wanting his death.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: So everything's been going well, everything's been going great, things are going great.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: He has this kind of moment of like, oh my gosh, I got it, and now the queen wants my life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to run for my life.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's this sense that like I'm just constantly going, going, going, going, going.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then he ends up in the cave.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: He reaches the end of himself.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: This isn't Elijah who is now at this point in the cave.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not the big mighty Elijah, not the big one that we picture with the chariots of fire, not this big thing.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: This this is Elijah who is worn down.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever felt worn down?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I can take anymore.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then Elijah goes into the cave and he withdraws.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: He withdraws because he has reached his limit.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: All of us have limits.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's gonna tell you that you don't have limits.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Your soul, your body, your mind might tell you that you don't have limits.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: But let me tell you, you are human.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: You have limits.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: We have all gotten to the point where we reached our limit.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so he withdraws.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Because he's reached it.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like him or hate him.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna put a picture up on the screen.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want you to scream.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: But it reminded me of the story I heard about this guy.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this is Mr.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Beast.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Where's Zach Staubitz when you need him?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's not here this morning.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's the one.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, he's just gonna scream and clap when he sees Mr.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: Beast up on the screen.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, Zach, if you're watching online, see him.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um this is Jimmy Donaldson.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't know the story behind Mr.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Beast, I'll just tell you real quick.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's a YouTuber, he's the most popular YouTuber in all of history.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he he can be annoying because he's like, let's just say, cringe, right?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: But um his work ethic is insane.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: He literally started and made popularity by just like counting to like 100,000 or something like this.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember this?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: He counted to like 100,000.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's how he got a whole bunch of subscribers.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: He literally didn't stop, he just counted and counted and counted and countered and countered and counted until he got to 100,000 because he was just trying to drum up support for his YouTube channel.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it's turned into this thing.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I was watching this interview with him because he did this now Beast Games thing on on Prime.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it's it's mid.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: But I like I I like pulled up this interview with him, and and I've seen a bunch of interviews with him.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, recently he did one with David Letterman on Netflix, which is amazing.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: But he talks about, and every single one of them, about how he just works and works and works and works and works and works and works.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Eight, nine days in a row, taking two, three hours of sleep at the most, and then he gets to the point where he just crashes.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: He's worn down.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he said that what he has to do at that point is everybody on the staff knows he just goes back into his apartment and collapses.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is not what I would recommend to you, but do you feel that way sometimes?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Even the extroverts among us, we get to this point where we're like, I can't do this anymore.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: As a prep, we're gonna decide staff this week.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: And on Thursday and Friday, I'm not gonna be here.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I just want you to know I'm trying to withdraw like Elijah is.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to withdraw.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: This is Elijah who is worn down.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting thing about this cave is a metaphor, though.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we see this as him just escaping, he's just running away from his problems.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to view the cave that way when Elijah gets to the cave.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's a failure.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's rebellion, I don't think it's evidence of a weak faith.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's just exhaustion.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think all of us have felt that, especially in college.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then God does this crazy thing with Elijah that I found that God does in my life too, and I hope God has done in your life.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's that God meets him right where he is.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: He does not wait for Elijah to recover his strength.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't say, Hey, I'm just gonna give you some time to just hang out by yourself.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna meet you right in that moment.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: He also doesn't demand that Elijah has his stuff together.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: He's probably going through a lot mentally here.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: The queen is after him, right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: He just meets him in the cave.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure when he's in the cave, he's expecting for all the things, the chaos of the world, to stop.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: But did you notice what happens in the story?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: The intensity actually increases.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: The giant wind, the one that broke the stone, that's what comes after him.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then a fire and a storm.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Just when we stop, doesn't mean that the whole world stops.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's an uncomfortable reality and a comfortable truth, but it happens to him, and I think it happens to us too.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: When my mom was in seventh grade, she lost her mom to breast cancer.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, if any of you have ever experienced a loss like that, as I know many of you have, uh, it's devastating.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: It uh makes you mentally unstable for a little bit as you're just trying to put together the pieces of what we call grief.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And she said the hardest part is when you kind of had gotten your feet underneath you.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: You walk back out into the world, and you realize the world's been going on without you the whole time, and it's so uncomfortable.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes we need that cave.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's good for us to come in, and yet we must deal with the reality that everything else has still been going on around me.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: When I need a break from this place on Fridays or sometimes Thursdays and Fridays, whatever.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: The biggest thing I worry about is like, oh my gosh, what's gonna go on?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: What's gonna happen when I'm not there?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: What are they gonna do while I'm not there?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I gotta make sure that I'm there.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: You ever had those moments?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, I don't I don't want to I don't know if it's FOMO or what, but like I don't wanna I don't wanna miss out on this thing, or I don't want this progress to be made without me being there.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: All of us have that moment, and the truth is Elijah's gotta be in the cave and the things have to go on outside.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's really, really, really interesting is it says multiple times in here that God was not there in all of those things.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna come back to that in a second, but I think that's important for us to remember that in those moments, God was not there.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: I have this thought about email.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like you take two days off of email in the professional world and you're screwed, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to remind myself, God's probably not in most of those ads, you know.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: The cave serves a purpose, it does not silence the world.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times that's what we want it to have, and we want it to close it out.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: The cave does not silence the world.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: What it does, and this is important, it creates a space to listen.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Because Elijah's moment in in this moment, his need in this moment is different.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's different than what all the ongoings of the world are.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: God's not in the noise.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: He's not in the wind.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's not in the earthquake.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: He's not in the fire.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And let me just take an aside.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't mean that God's never in those things.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe that God creates disruption or creates uh havoc like in in things like earthquakes, whatever we could theologize about this all day long.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to get into that.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: But God does work in disruption sometimes.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: God does work in chaos and can bring clarity out of chaos.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: But in this moment, Elijah's need is different.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't need the intensity, he doesn't need the spectacle.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't need the volume.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: He just needs God's presence.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: He needs God's stillness.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: He needs reassurance.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: He needs God in this moment that's not performative.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean that in like a tacky way.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: I just mean like sometimes God puts on a little show and that's okay.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: He's God.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: But in this moment, he doesn't.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And he comes in a way that I think Elijah needs the most.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: A still, small, thin voice.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Silence.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: So what is silence?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: A couple things.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: And if if you're a writer-downer, uh, this might be helpful to write down because we perceive of silence in strange ways in our world.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Silence is not empty.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: We often treat silence, like in a small group, as uh awkward or unproductive, or everybody's just avoiding talking about it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: But could it be, just go with me here, could it be possible that in that silence, actual Holy Spirit moments are happening in the space, they're just not being said out loud.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we view silence as this kind of emptiness, but the truth is it's just not.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's actually something happening in there.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: We also view that silence is the absence of sound.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we define it that way.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: I want to encourage you not to do that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Silence is not the absence of sound, silence is the practice of listening.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: The practice of listening more deeply.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: This is him.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Fun-looking dude.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing is performed in the four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's just silence.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And his point is he said that there is no such thing as silence.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because instead, what we start to do is hear the sounds around us.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: So in a very awkward moment.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: The air conditioning?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do you hear the person next to you moving?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you hear the person next to you breathing?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: What happens in silence is that everything else quiets.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that all that is left is God to speak to you.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say this else about silence.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Silence settles your soul.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And shooking it real heavy and creates this chaos inside of it.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: It becomes very hard to tell what's actually in there.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you can see the little house or scene or whatever, but a lot of times it's just snow everywhere.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And it takes a little bit for everything to just calm.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: It settles your soul.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: May I offer you this suggestion?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: If you feel like your life is chaotic and crazy, if you feel like you have everything going on, could it be that you just haven't practiced the discipline of silence alone?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know a couple of pastors who once a year will go to a silent retreat for a week at a monastery.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: And they read, they might write, they certainly pray.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: But the biggest thing is that they don't talk.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Not to each other, not to their people back at home.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: They don't talk at all.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a couple of things I want to uh want you to write down or remember about ways to practice silence.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the first one is to choose it.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's a joke, I know.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like you all have AirPods or things like that.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: And what do we all do when we have like a 30-second walk?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: We put our AirPods in to go on a walk.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: Many of us do not practice or choose silence in a moment.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: So if you feel like your life is chaotic, if you feel like your life is crazy, there's a lot going on.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: May I suggest that one of the things you could do here is just to choose silence for a short amount of time.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to do it for a crazy amount of time.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have to do it for a week in a monastery.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: You could just do it for 45 seconds as you're crossing Jefferson Street.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: But in that moment, you could listen rather than playing on your phone.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Don't play on as you're crossing Jefferson Street.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but like, you know, putting on your AirPods, whatever.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then what else you can do to practice this is hush what isn't of God.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes this is literally saying, I hear that fan noise or I hear that air conditioner, and I'm just going to hush it because what I want to do is listen to God, not anything else.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So set it aside.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a banger point I forgot about.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes the issue is not that God is silent, but that we're listening elsewhere.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Duh duh.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: Hush everything else that's not of God.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then this is maybe my favorite one.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Talk less.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Smile more.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hamilton reference.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Talk less.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Talk less.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: There are some of us among us that are, we're the quiet ones in the group.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: We don't speak in whether us we're spoken to.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're not gonna, we're not the extroverts, we're not gonna the ones that are gonna walk in a room and just take over socially.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're not those people.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: But there are a lot of us among us who fill empty space with talking, don't we?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Some of us who don't talk out loud talk internally, constant with worry and obsession, fear, anxiety, all of those things.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: We just encourage you that as you're practicing silence, to just talk less.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Just say less.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: When God arrives in the still small voice, Elijah doesn't break open this big old conversation with him.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: He actually covers his face in reverence.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing Moses had done, by the way.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Faithful silence, I think it looks like restraint.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: A way to just stop yourself.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: When Jesus is on trial, we just read this on Wednesday nights.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: When Jesus is on trial, they ask him a bunch of questions.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't sit there and try to defend himself like we would in a court of law.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: What does he do?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Silent.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Completely restrained.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's not weakness, it's not emptiness.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's filled with this courage and strength that can only come from God.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then God will speak to us.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that silence is a way that God can show us his immeasurable grace, can speak to us when the rest of the world seems so loud.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: So my invitation to you this week shut it off.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hush the things that are not of God.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Choose it.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then shut up.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Don't talk so much.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: And let God fill the silence.