Good morning South. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Nathan and I have the best job in the whole church. I do. I get to work with the students, but I don’t have to be the boss, so I can be the fun uncle. It’s a good time. Sean. Sean is my boss. It is a good time. Now, before I get too far into anything, I’m gonna go ahead and pray so we’re only mildly chaotic today.

Father, we come before you and we’re just thankful for your presence. God, would you speak to us during this time? If there’s anything that I say that’s not of you, would it go in one ear and out the other? Would you meet with us? Would you challenge us? Would you encourage us? In Jesus name everybody says, I got a question for you.

Don’t be ashamed. Anybody a movie crier? Oh, there we are. Yeah? Raise your hands. Yeah. I gotta be honest. I am one of you. And I used to tell myself I wasn’t. And growing up, I’d actually make fun of various family members that were movie criers until I became one. So much so that if I watch any movie, there’s probably a 70, maybe 75 percent chance I’m gonna cry.

And like literally any movie. I, I kinda had to accept. That I was a movie crier when I watched Wreck It Ralph 2. And he goes on a little monologue about friendship, and I’m like, why am I tearing up? This doesn’t make any sense. So I am a movie crier, and one of the movies that I watched this year that I almost certainly cried to, my wife can confirm, was Inside Out 2.

This is a picture from the first Inside Out. If you don’t know what Inside Out is, it’s a movie basically about our emotions. And so they characterize all these emotions that go in this girl Riley’s head. And starting on the left, I have a little laser, fun. Hope there’s no cats in the audience.

We have fear, sadness, joy, disgust, and anger, right? And so these characters would show the emotions that Riley would go through. And in the second movie, she encounters the real Riley. Puberty, which brings a whole lot of new emotions, not the most fun time for her, including this one, anxiety. Now if I were to describe anxiety’s behavior, it’s very erratic, very chaotic, if you gave a six year old a pack of Mountain Dew and said have fun and just didn’t supervise them at all or like any of our students, if you just gave them caffeine, they go crazy, right?

So very energetic, very crazy, but if I were to describe the mentality of anxiety, it is very tense, stressed. Ooh, you see the whirlwind in the background, right? It doesn’t feel very good, but there’s this stress, this tense, this wearing of the shoulders high, right? And so anxiety is something that I think we all encounter throughout our day to day, whether it’s for more serious reasons or even for sillier reasons.

We have a staff fantasy football league and I happen to have made it to championship weekend. I’m sorry, Sean. I beat him last week. And out of all the people that I’d have to play for championship weekend of American fantasy football, it’s the one British guy on staff. So I feel like I have to do it for America.

It’s just like the American revolution, just not at all. Um, but I find myself a little bit anxious about it, right? We find ourselves anxious. about all sorts of things. Anxiety, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension. worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.

Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they’re often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future oriented, long acting response, broadly focused on a diffused threat. Whereas fear is an appropriate, it. Present oriented and short lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat. So note the difference, right?

Fear is very short lived, very temporary, and it’s focused on a specific thing. Anxiety it’s hovering in the background. And maybe there is a main thing that you are anxious about, but usually it’s not something that’s right up about to happen, short lived. Usually it spans a longer span of time. I had a math teacher.

that before every math test, she would understand that sometimes people would get anxious about tests. So she’d play a song from Bobby McFerrin, maybe you’ve heard it before. It’s called, Don’t Worry, Be Happy. And the song goes like this. Here’s a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note.

Don’t worry, be happy. In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry, you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy. Don’t worry, be happy now. And he has a little like R& B, like kind of flow to it. So it’s a fun little song. And if you’re walking into the test, and you’re not stressed, and you hear this, you’re having a good time, right?

You’re not really thinking much about it. But if you are really stressed, and you’re told, have you tried not being that way? That is not always the most helpful response, right? If you’re really anxious, and you’re told have you tried just not being anxious? All that does is tend to make you more anxious and more frustrated.

And sometimes sometimes, When we read biblical passages on anxiety, we tend to read that in there, even though that’s not the main purpose. Let’s look at a couple examples. Matthew 6. Jesus is talking. He’s, it’s the Sermon on the Mount, so he’s preaching to a whole bunch of people, and he’s talking about anxiety, and he says, Therefore I tell you, do not worry.

about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire he not much more clothe you of little faith.

So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. Now, if you’re reading this and your emphasis is on do not worry, That’s maybe not the most helpful passage. But if you see the true emphasis here, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. The message that Jesus is preaching isn’t just hey, stop being the way that you are.

He’s saying put your faith, put your trust, put your focus on God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and you’ll find that those anxieties will go away because your focus is on something else. Let’s look at another one. Philippians 4. Paul is talking to a church in Philippi, and he says, The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious. Just stop being that way. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So the focus isn’t on God.

Amen. Do not be anxious, but we tend to put it on there. The focus is present your requests to God. Saying give everything, bring it over to God. When I think of present, I think of show and tell. This is my action figure. He’s cool because he moves, right? It’s just like presenting the showing off of something.

And so he’s saying present your request to God, but Peter takes this a step further. He says, don’t just present your request to God, but cast all your anxiety on him. because He cares for you. Now, this word cast in the Greek, it’s epirepto, and it means to throw upon or cast upon. And it’s only used one other time in Scripture, in the New Testament.

And it is in the book of Luke, where the disciples are finding a colt for Jesus to ride on to go into Palm Sunday. And so it says that they brought the colt to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt, and put Jesus on it. I know, really deep. Passage there, but they throw their cloaks on it. So I have a question if they throw their cloaks on it Are they still wearing their cloaks?

This is the part where you guys answer the question that I asked. Are they still wearing it? No, right? They’re not wearing it because they threw their cloaks on the cult. So to cast something is to fully let go of it, right? It’s trusting someone or something else. So to cast our anxieties requires letting go of them and trusting God to hold on to your anxieties.

So whenever we find ourselves anxious, we’re dealing with the question, where is my trust? Anxiety is an issue of trust. And I think this season is one that we definitely see this. We just finished Christmas season. You probably had a fair amount of packages arriving to your house over the last month or so.

And maybe you’ve been anxious about a package. Have you ever been anxious about a package arriving on time this year or maybe a different year? I know I’ve been there. And whenever you’re worried about a package arriving on time, the question is, That you’re being asked is, do you trust the U. S.

Postal Service? Some of you, yes, some of you, no. Do you trust Amazon, UPS? Do you trust FedEx or whatever the other ones are that nobody uses? Do you trust them? And so when our trust, when we find ourselves anxious, Our trust isn’t something that is not trustworthy. More often than not, anxiety occurs because our trust isn’t something that is not trustworthy.

Let me give you an example. I don’t like rollercoasters. This rollercoaster is why. This is the Twister. Has anybody ever ridden it before? It’s at Eelich’s. It is made of wood, and it is sketch. That thing is not trustworthy. I have never felt closer to death than on the Times of Writing. I don’t know why I wrote it more than once, but I wrote it more than once, and that was a mistake.

I somehow lived, but, I don’t know how this thing is still going. I don’t know how it’s beyond me. But this roller coaster does not feel trustworthy. And because of it, if I’m on it, I feel very anxious because my trust is in something that I do not trust. Let’s look back at that Philippians passage.

When you give your trust to God, you experience the peace of God, which transcends all understanding. And it will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. When we trust something that is trustworthy, we can live with a peace that transcends all understanding. Amen. Let me give you a human example.

Pictured here are three individuals from the Detroit Lions organization. On the far left, you have head coach, Dan Campbell. In the middle, you have general manager, Brad Holmes, and I might note Brad Holmes and I share a last name. Maybe you see a little bit of a resemblance. We are not in fact related. And then on the right is Detroit Lions owner, Sheila Ford Hamp.

Now, Sheila hired these two individuals about three years ago, and they’re both Barium. Passionate individuals. Very verbal. And so Dan Campbell, in his introductory press conference, he’s laying out what the team is gonna look like, the mentality of the team. And this is what he says, give

the teeth punches back.

We us down, we’re going to get up. And on the way up, he kept off. Alright? And gonna stand up and then it’s gonna take two more shots to knock us down. Alright? And on the way up, we’re gonna take your other kneecap and we’re gonna, it’s gonna take three shots to get us down. And when we do, we’re gonna take another honk out of you before.

Before long, where are they going to be the last ones standing? Alright, that’s going to be the mentality.

So as you can tell, I come up with some weird analogies, but that I think that’s got to be the peak right there. So the consensus thought was, first of all, that was amazing. Second of all, this guy’s either going to be one of the best coaches in the NFL, or he’s going to be atrocious.

And when they hired him, I must tell you the Detroit Lions, to put it nicely, were a dumpster fire of an organization. They were so incredibly bad over the years that they had two Hall of Famers retire early because they were so sick of losing. This team hadn’t won a playoff game in 25 years.

So they hired Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes to turn it all around. And so they give them six year deals and after a year and a half, they are four, eighteen, and one. Which, if you don’t watch football, is bad. Like really bad. And so halfway through their second season, they’re one and five, and everybody’s saying you got to fire them.

This is the point in time when you realize they’re bad coaches. They’re bad general managers. Just get rid of them. Restart. But Sheila, And she didn’t actually need to have a press conference, but she chose to, to answer all of the questions that people were asking. And she said this, I really believe in what we’ve got and what we’re going to be.

It just takes time. What I really have confidence in is the process we went through in the first place when we hired Brad and Dan. It was extremely thorough and we really believe we’ve come up with the right people. It’s just, this was a huge teardown and then turnaround. We really are only a third of the way through the season.

We’ve got 11 more games to go. So I don’t want everyone to push the panic button and give up the ship because I think we’ve got the right people in place to pull this off. And I truly believe that. And I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t. So she like fully buys in to Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes. She’s all out.

If these guys are awful, Everybody’s gonna hate her. But if these guys are great and they turn it around, then everybody will get on board. So she puts her full faith and trust in Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes and she chose not to interfere. This is the point of the season where a lot of coaches would get fired because owners would interfere.

They’d see the team struggling and no, we need to turn around. We need a fresh face. But she says, no, I’m not gonna interfere. And since then, they went 8 3 to finish the season, finished with a 9 8 record. Last year, they went 12 5, won their first playoff game in over 25 years. And not just one, they won two playoff games and they almost went to the Super Bowl.

And this year, presently, they are 13 2 and poised to be a Super Bowl contender. Sheila put her trust. in someone that ended up being trustworthy, and she lived with a peace that transcends all understanding. Now, I am not saying put all your trust in Dan Campbell. That is not they lost the NFC Championship because he’s a very aggressive coach, and he made some calls that were very aggressive.

Don’t put your trust in a human, right? I’m sure that she’s not always living with a peace that transcends all understanding. But when we put our trust in God, We will experience that peace. That even when we don’t quite understand why things are the way that they are, or why, things aren’t playing out how we want it to, or when we feel that anxiety, that whirlwind, we’ll know that our trust is in something trustworthy.

So I want to walk through A little biblical narrative with Moses, where you see this whirlwind happen, where you see this anxiety, this swirl go on in his head. And so I need to give you a little bit of historical context going into this. So Moses was a person, and he was an Israelite who grew up as an Egyptian.

Now a little bit of reasoning why. The Egyptians had recently experienced an uprising from the Hyksos. It was one of the groups that they had as slaves, and the Hyksos ended up growing up in number, and suddenly, they tried to revolt because there were so many of them. So they were afraid, this is gonna happen again.

We don’t want another revolt. As anyone would do, they decided to just kill a bunch of people. So they kill a bunch of the Hebrew babies, Which, not really the best move, but they did it. And so Moses gets sent off by his family, and he gets adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter. So he’s a Jewish male raised as an Egyptian.

And because of that, he doesn’t really fit in with either group. The Egyptians don’t see him as a true Egyptian, and the Jewish people don’t view him as a true Hebrew Israelite. And so he ends up being torn between the two. He ends up killing a guy. I don’t know why that’s a common theme, but it’s a common theme.

So he kills a person, and the Pharaoh chases him off. So he runs into Midian, which is a land outside of Egypt, and he’s there tending some sheep where God meets him and has a conversation with him through this burning bush. And this is what God says to him. I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.

I’ve heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I’m concerned about their suffering. So I’ve come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up as slaves. out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I’ve seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, So he gives Moses this great commission. Hey, I’m tasking you with this. You’re gonna go to Pharaoh. You’re gonna go to Egypt, and you’re gonna tell him, Hey, let my people go.

And you’re gonna take the Israelites out of Egypt. But remember, Moses doesn’t really fit into either crowd. So he’s a little bit anxious. He’s a little bit stressed. He’s whoa, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? Notice what he’s emphasizing. Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?

Where is Moses trust? In himself, right? He’s trusting himself. And when our trust is in something not trustworthy, We encounter anxiety. Most often, we put our trust in ourselves, and that is what Moses is doing. His trust is in himself, and he doesn’t trust himself. And frankly, I don’t blame him, right? He doesn’t fit in with either crowd.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So God answers Moses’s question, Who am I? And he says, I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Notice the emphasis. He’s not saying, yeah, but Moses, you’re like so cool, and you like are so awesome, and the people are gonna love you, and they’re all gonna listen to you because you’re just the best.

No, he says, I will be with you. Moses, do you trust me? This is from the movie Aladdin and re watching that movie as an adult, Jasmine, Aladdin reaches down to her and he asks her this question like, do you trust me? To get on the magic carpet and she at the time just met this man and he’s trying to lure her away from her home in his strange vehicle.

This is an example of stranger danger, but apparently that doesn’t exist in the Disney universe. So she gets on his magic carpet, they see a whole new world and all that but maybe don’t follow her example. But I think this is the question that God is asking Moses, do you trust me? I will be with you.

Do you trust me? And so Moses in response to this question goes, Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, The God of your fathers had sent me to you. And they asked me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? You see the spiral begin to happen. He’s thinking all the questions they might ask, all the things they might want him to do to prove it.

What do I do? And so God says, I am who I am. I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. He uses his name Yahweh but I love the emphasis. I am that I am. Moses, I will be with you. I am that I am. Do you trust me? Moses, do you trust me? And he goes what if they don’t believe me or listen to me or say the Lord did not appear to you?

What if they don’t buy it? What if they send me away or what if they, try to kill me? And God gives him a couple signs. He says, what’s that in your hand? A staff. Throw it on the ground. Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake. And he ran from it. The Lord said to him, reach out your hand, and take it by the tail.

That’s not what I would do, but fair enough. Moses reached out and took hold of the snake, and it turned back into a snake. This is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. And he gives him another sign where he puts his hand inside his cloak, and when he takes it out, it becomes leprous.

And he puts it back in, takes it out, and the leprosy is gone. So he gives him these signs. He’s hey, if they don’t believe you, show them this. God just keeps answering his questions and asking another question. Moses, do you trust me? But God, what if they don’t believe me? Moses, just do this. Do you trust me?

So Moses says, I’ve never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you’ve spoken to me. I’m slow of speech and tongue. God, I’m not that good at the talking thing. What if I botch the words and Pharaoh doesn’t believe me because of it? He’s continuing over and over to answer the question, do you trust me with?

No. I trust myself, right? And so God answers this quest, this, kind of response. I’m not good at speaking. And he says, who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go. I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.

Moses, I’ll be with you. Moses, use these signs. Moses, I am that I am. Moses, I made you. Do you trust me? Moses, do you trust me? In the book of Isaiah God says to the people, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Notice the language, higher. It’s a matter of perspective, right? When you’re on an airplane looking down, you can see more because you are higher, right? But we come from a limited perspective. We experience life Through our eyes, through our ears, through our senses. So it makes sense why the people that we instinctively trust are ourselves.

Or maybe some people that we encounter along the way. But God doesn’t operate like how we do. Even though we see from our limited perspective, God sees all perspectives. His thoughts are higher. His ways are higher. It’s like a puzzle. Pictured here is the world’s largest puzzle. It is 29 feet wide by 8 feet high, but this picture honestly doesn’t do it justice.

So here is a Ford F 150 roughly to scale next to the puzzle. Anything but the metric system. And so this is a pretty big puzzle. It’s 60, 000 pieces. It’s made up of 61, 000 piece puzzles. Now, I’m not a puzzle person and so I can’t fathom attempting something like this. But whenever you’re attempting a puzzle, usually you have a bunch of just blue pieces.

It’s what on earth am I supposed to do with this? It could be the sky, it could be the water, it could be somebody’s shirt, it could be anything. And so you’ll notice there’s a lot of yellow in this puzzle. So we’re a lot like one little yellow piece, right? And we see from our piece and we try and figure out how is this all gonna work out, right?

How is this puzzle gonna come together? All I know is this little bit of yellow. Is the whole thing yellow? Is just a little bit of a yellow? We don’t know because we see from our limited perspective, but God made the puzzle. We are like a puzzle piece trying to figure out how everything works from our very limited perspective.

But God sees all of it. God made the puzzle. So do you trust? Do you trust God? Moses. Do you trust me? Now, I want to be very clear. I’m not saying that if you put your trust in God, he’ll make everything work out how you want it to, or that you’ll even initially like how it works out. Because I think sometimes when we tread down these waters and we talk about putting our trust in God, it’s very easy for us to say, oh, yeah, and everything will be perfect if you do that.

But look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He brings several of the disciples there and he tells them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. This is right before he’s arrested and then killed. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, My father, if it is possible, may this cut be taken from me.

Yet not as I will, but as you will. Jesus is overwhelmed with sorrow, and I think there’s some anxiety in there. He knows what’s about to happen, and he’s not stoked about it. It’s not going to be a fun time. But he brings his anxieties, he brings his requests to God, and let’s see how it changes his mentality.

He returns to the disciples and says to them, Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise, Let us go. Here comes my betrayer. He comes from this place where he’s overwhelmed with sorrow, where he’s so incredibly emotional.

There’s so much going on in his head. And he goes from there to okay, let’s get arrested. He’s prepared. He’s, he goes from this place where he presents his request to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, guarded his heart and his mind. That is the promise, is that when we present our requests to God, when we fully let them go and trust them with God, we experience the peace that surpasses all understanding, and it will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

But it’s important to note that how you see God determines how willing you are to trust God. It’s very important, and this actually plays into way more than just this. How you see God determines how you end up living your life. But how you see God determines how willing you are to trust God because if you see God and you go, Oh yeah, no, He’s not bothering with me, right?

He’s dealing with the wars, and, the world hunger, and like the big things. He doesn’t care about my fantasy football matchup, right? He doesn’t care about the little day to day things that I have. He doesn’t care about my test that’s coming up, or my job interview or my kid that’s sick.

He doesn’t care about that. He’s just the big things. If you see God that way, then I tell you, the Lord loves you.

And if you see God, it’s oh, he’s near but he’s disappointed in me, right? I’m not good enough to him. He doesn’t actually love me. He like loves me, but like I love ice cream. He just he’s just there, but he doesn’t actually deeply care about me. And to you, I say cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

He deeply loves you. If we know that God is good, that God is loving, that God is just, that God is all knowing, that God is in control and that God wants what is best for us, why not trust him? Why not trust him? Because we live our lives as if God is untrustworthy, but we know his character. We know that God is trustworthy.

The best definition of love, I have it on the bottom, that I was ever told. is seeking the best for someone else. That’s what God does for us. And if God is seeking what is best for me, and he sees all things, so he knows what’s best for me, why don’t I trust him? So as we go about our weeks, as we go about our days, and we encounter anxiety in the big and in the small, we’re going to find that When you start to feel that whirlwind begin to happen, ask yourself the question, Where’s my trust?

When the bills start piling up and Christmas was a little bit more than you were planning, Where’s my trust? When you’re really struggling in that class that you really need to graduate, Where’s my trust? When you feel like you just can’t catch a break at work, and you’re nervous that you might get let go, because rumors are layoffs are coming.

Where is my trust? In the really good things, where is my trust? In the really hard things, where is my trust? In the big things, in the small things, where is my trust? Because if it’s not in the God who knows you and loves you, I’d encourage you. to bring it back there. So Father, as we come before you, we don’t trust you very much, and we should, but it’s instinctual to trust ourselves and only ourselves.

So God, would you call us out when we’re trusting anyone but you, and would you return our faith, our hope, our trust? In the one who deserves it. Amen.