Peace in the Storms of Life - Louie Giglio

This collection recommended for you has a subtitle that we haven't focused on as much, and the subtitle is, The Father's Algorithm for a Healthy Heart. You might get at a happy heart, but not happiness in the sense of, oh, I'm happy, but a joyful heart, the kind of heart that God wants us to have. I was listening to Jonathan Pickens' talk from a few weeks ago in this collection, and he was talking about how after that opening week, all of us felt somewhat convicted that I'm on my screen too much. I'm scrolling too much, and it's not just a waste of time, and I'm not knocking anybody's social media rhythms here. I'm right in there with you. You can start with, I'm just looking for something that's good, and an hour later realize, how am I watching somebody who took in a stray deer in the backyard, and it ended up coming into the house, and now it sleeps in the bed with the dogs, and now it's gotten too big for the dog bed, and now it's going to have to go back out into the wild. Is it going to make it in the wild? I don't know about how little Randy's going to do when he goes back out into the woods, and it's not just that it's soaking up our attention, which is the goal, by the way, but it's shaping our direction. The algorithm isn't neutral. It's a discipler. It's a teacher. It's looking for pupils to shape them and to push them into probably more extreme positions because that's what keeps us engaged more with the screen, and Jesus is stepping into the midst, and He's just offering us, hey, the Father has an algorithm also, and it makes the heart healthy. God, we said, is recommending God. Jesus, secondly, this talk from Jonathan Pickens I was listening to, is recommending a cultivated private faith over a public curated faith. Jesus is recommending, this was going to be the least watched talk in the history of all of our talks, but it turns out the algorithm liked this.

This was so great. I was in a different church a few weeks ago with some friends of mine, and one of them said to me, hey, I watched your little clip online because you said in the opening sentence, this is probably going to be the least watched talk in the history of our church, and I went, well, I'm watching whatever you're saying from here on out. I went, oh, that's how the algorithm works. You got to have a hook. If you just come in and say, hi, I'd like to share something with you, people are done. But if you say, man, I'm telling you, this saved my life, or this was the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, or this set me on fire, people are like, okay, well, what was it? But that talk, Jesus was recommending that it's not about you. Not an amen at Trillith, but maybe we got one at 515 or Cumberland. Then we talked about how Jesus is recommending the advocate, Holy Spirit, who is able to supply the supernatural power that we need, and then we talked about how Jesus is recommending that we're sent, we're saved to be sent. And I know someone needs this today. Jesus is recommending peace in the midst of chaos. That's what he said. At the end of chapter 16 in the gospel of John, he says, I have told you these things. Now, it would be helpful for you to take a moment or two today or tomorrow and read the these things, to go back up to the these things he's talking about, so that in me, you may have peace. Now, let me set a backdrop for us today that's very important. This verse comes in the upper room discourse. Does anybody know about the upper room discourse? What we know about the upper room is, this is my body broken for you, this is my blood out for the remission of sins. Let's break the bread, let's take the cup, let me wash the feet. Whoever puts their hand in with me is going to die. Now, I mean, that's kind of the snapshot of the upper room.

But in the upper room, Jesus laid out a whole big picture framework of life. He talked a lot to his followers the day before he went to the cross. And in the midst of that upper room moment where the garden of Gethsemane is just right there and Golgotha is here, Jesus says, I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace. Now, it's important that you understand Jesus isn't sitting under an olive tree on a spring day with an iced tea in his hand giving this message. He's hours away from being crushed to death. Yet he says, I've told you these things so that in me, we'll come back to this, you may have peace. In this world or in life, you will have trouble. Can we just say, I got it? I got it. Our message is not follow Jesus, trust in him, and life's gonna be a bed of roses from there on out. That is not the Christian message. That is not the human message. That is not reality. Jesus is not promising us a trouble-free life. In fact, on the contrary, he's telling us, you're gonna have trouble. The word there is tribulation, so it's even worse than trouble. You're gonna have bad trouble.

You're gonna have stuff that's gonna test you, press you, make you wanna cash in everything you believe. You're gonna have that. And to that, I say, well, I agree with that. Can I get anyone else at any location that could show a hand that says you agree with that, that in this world, there's gonna be stuff that wants to make you cash it all in? No? Man, in this world, this broken world, this sin-infested world, this prideful world, this raging world, this man-centered world, there is all manner of trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world. Now, your translation may say, but be courageous, or take courage, or have courage. I like take heart, but not if you miss the context of someone who's on their way to the cross. So he's not patting you on the back. Take heart, sister. He's offering something way more substantial than that today. Be courageous. Live a life of confidence. Take heart. Why? Because you're strong. No. Why?

Because you can do it. No. Because I, Jesus is saying, have overcome the world. So the promise today is, and I don't want us to miss this, is peace. And I think peace is one of the great commodities in the world that we're in right now. Obviously, it was in Jesus' time as well. But peace is a sought-after commodity right now in this world, and we have an answer today for a peace-less and a rest-less world. The promise is peace. The way is Jesus. In me is the peace. The offer is any time you can have peace, especially in the troubled time you can have peace. And the means of our peace is not meditation. It's not some other means that humans can contrive. It's that he has overcome all the trouble and the tribulation in this world. And the big idea of this that I think is important today, that what Jesus is teaching is that you can believe in two seemingly opposite things at the same time. Now, you can't believe in two objectively opposite things at the same time. In other words, you can't believe that there isn't a God. and there is a God at the same time. You can't believe that the devil is good and Jesus is good at the same time. But you can believe in a lot of seemingly opposite things

at the same time. Let me show you. And maybe you'll think of this the next time you're playing bocce at the beach or out in the yard. You can believe that the world is full of trouble and at the very same time, believe that Jesus has overcome the world. You don't have to pick or choose and say, well, the world looks like it's in a downward spiral or, well, I believe Jesus is king. You can believe both of those things at the same time. You can read the newsfeed, you can watch what's happening in the world around us, you can think the whole world is racing toward oblivion and still believe that Jesus has overcome the world. You can believe in a sovereign God, how about this one, who runs the affairs of everything and believe that we have free will at the same time. You're like, no, you had to pick one or the other. Nope, I don't. You can believe in a sovereign God and believe that God has given you free will. You can believe that there's chaos everywhere and believe that God is in control. You can believe that God loves me and I have cancer at the same time. You do not have to say, well, I have cancer, so that must mean God doesn't love me or God loves me, so he's not gonna let me have cancer. You can believe God loves me

and I have cancer at the same time. You can believe God is all-powerful and believe that none of your prayers are being answered the way that you hoped at the same time. Has anybody ever been in that place before where you're like, I do believe he's all-powerful, but I also believe that he has not answered our prayers the way we hoped? And I don't have to choose today to put one of those beliefs down and lift up the other. I can believe them both at the same time. Why? Because Jesus said, in the world you're gonna have trouble, I've overcome the world. You can believe that there's gonna be tribulation and believe that I'm a victorious overcomer at the same time. You can believe that God is good and also believe that life is not good. And frankly, you're gonna have to. Because there are gonna be days when life is not good. But you can still believe that God is good. You can believe that God is for me while you also believe that you're losing everything. You can believe that life is not peaceful, but I am at peace. Life is not peaceful today, but I am at peace. This is what Jesus is getting at. In the world, you're gonna have trouble,

but I've overcome the world. Therefore, I've told you these things so that in me, you may have, say it with me, you may have peace. So that even when life is not peaceful, I can be at peace. Now let's talk about peace for a moment. And I hadn't done recently a deep dive into peace, and it was very helpful to do that. And we need to do just a little bit of work together. So what does this word peace mean? Obviously, just making sure we're all remembering, Jesus never said the word peace because he didn't speak English. Hello? Hey, are we all good on that? So in Greek, he said, peace. And so to really fully understand what is peace, is it peace, what is it? You have to dig into that word. So let me do that just for a moment really quickly. This Greek word means a few things. And normally when you do a word study on a Greek word, you're gonna get a bunch of English words because some of you are gonna say, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Sometimes it takes more than one English word to really dive down into the meaning of that Greek word. And that word means one, not the number one, but one as in oneness. It means peace, obviously, it means quietness,

it means rest, and listen to this, it means set at one again. It comes from a shorter Greek root that means, this is amazing, to join, to tie together into a whole. Properly it means wholeness, when essential parts are joined together. Now, that's not what you were thinking when you thought peace. When you thought peace, you just thought my blood pressure went down. When you thought peace, you thought I felt a little happier and a little easier about life. When you thought peace, you thought, yeah, man, me too, all right. That's not what peace means. Peace means essential things being joined together into wholeness or oneness. And then, I love this, peace is God's gift of wholeness. So if the root of peace is to join, then he had it. I've told you these things so that, could you say it with me? That in me, could we say it together? Or do you see it? Maybe not, so that what? In me, you may have peace. So what is peace? It is being joined with Jesus.

Peace is not something Jesus gives, it's something that he is. And so to get peace, you have to be in Jesus. I've told you these things so that in me, you'll have peace. We've all heard it this way. We've all heard it said that peace is not the absence of the storm, but the presence of Jesus. And now we understand, when we know what peace is, that there's really some ballast in that boat. Peace isn't the absence of the storm in life, peace is the presence of Jesus in our lives. So let's talk about storms for a moment then. A few storms that we find in scripture. One storm, we find when the disciples and Jesus are out in the sea and the winds kick up and the water starts coming over the sides of the boat and the boat starts to sink and where's Jesus? Do you remember this story? Jesus is asleep on a cushion in the boat. Yeah, and they have to wake him up and say, hey, do you not care that we're all drowning? And he's like, oh, okay, yeah, are we going under? Oh, okay, stop blowing! And everything chills and then they freak out. Who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? He's just sleeping while the boat's sinking. It's a good, great picture in that. I remember when we first moved to Atlanta, Shelly and I and two other couples, we basically piled up all the resources we had.

It was a crazy year for us. My dad had passed away. We'd moved to Atlanta to take care of my dad with my mom. So that was crazy. The 1996 Olympic tickets went on sale the day we buried my dad. And so we had piled up, I don't know, the $900 we had and bought every Olympic ticket you can buy for $900. We just cashed it all in. We'll be poor, live on the sidewalk, but we're going to the Olympics. And later that year, we got invited by two other couples to go on this sailing expedition in the Caribbean. And we piled all of our money together, us three couples, and we rented a 60 foot McGregor sailboat. And we were leaving out of St. Thomas, St. John. We're going to sail for three or four days, come back. And we were like, this is going to be the best time ever. We get out. I think I've shared this with you about a day into the trip. It's glorious weather. And our captain comes up during lunch and he says, hey, just got word there's a tropical depression, blah, blah, blah. I'm keeping my eye on it, but I just need to let you know. By dinnertime, he said, hey, it's a problem. It's forming really quickly. And it looks like it's going to be a hurricane and we need to make some decisions. What do y'all want to do?

We're like, well, what are our options? You know? And he goes, well. We can wait till it gets closer. We can get on the front edge of the wind and we can go to Venezuela and just stay there till everything clears up. And I was like, yeah, no, we have jobs, man. We don't just go to Venezuela. He said, well, second option is I can take you all back to St. Thomas, you can check into a hotel. We'll manage, we'll go to Venezuela. And I was like, yeah, okay, what's third option? He says, third option is we go right now. We'll be the first boat into Hurricane Hole on the right side of St. John. We'll strip the boat of everything. We'll tie into the mangrove trees and we'll ride it out. Okay, let me review. We can go to Venezuela indefinitely. We can go to St. Thomas, which at the end of this hurricane, St. Thomas Airport did not open for weeks. The hotel that we were planning to check into that we had checked out of closed indefinitely. Or we can go to Hurricane Hole where people have been going for centuries and tie into the mangrove trees and ride it out. We pick C. All right. Hurricane Marilyn came over.

I think it says online 115 mile per hour winds tops, but the ones were recorded at Hurricane Hole to my memory were 121. And it came over in the pitch dark of night as you would expect after we'd spent a day and a half taking everything off this boat. I'm just telling you this whole story just because I like taking my mind back there and thanking God that I'm here. If you could screw it onto the boat, we unscrewed it. I'm not talking about taking the sails down and covering the cushions. We stripped this boat down to the bare bones, tied in with multiple ropes, big hill going up to the top. That's why this place down here is called Hurricane Hole. Eventually by the time we got tied in and the hurricane came, there were hundreds of boats had come to Hurricane Hole. Hurricane Marilyn, this picture interesting was taken right about the time the eye, if you can see this, was over St. John. So we're somewhere on our little boat right about there. In the dark. People drowned around us, boats sank around us. Why am I telling you all this? I was asleep on a cushion in a boat. I'd gotten seasick. Yeah, I don't do good on boats. And I'd taken so much Dramamine that I absolutely was knocked out cold.

Out. Out. I do remember hearing winds that were very eerie and hearing ropes snap at times and hearing the other couple scurrying around with the captain and his assistant, but to try not to move because I don't feel great. Woke up the next day and Shelly said, well, there comes Jesus. That's not the story I really wanted to focus on. I wanted to focus on this other storm. The one where Jesus calls Peter out on the water. The night they wrote oceans. That story is in Matthew 14. I'm sharing this because you need to come up with a good example for how you can have tribulation and know that Jesus has overcome. But Jesus gave us the illustration. The gospel writers recount it. Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Now we saw this in the close the door part of this collection. Later that night, he was there alone and the boat was already a considerable distance from land buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

Shortly before dawn, Jesus went out to them walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified and said, it's a ghost. And they cried. out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them, "'Take courage, it is I, don't be afraid.' "'Lord, if it's you,' Peter replied, "'tell me to come to you on the water.' And Jesus said, "'Okay, come.'" Then Peter, we all know this story, got down out of the boat and walked on the water. We're gonna stop right there. Before we get down to the part where he sank, and we're gonna just give Peter a round of applause today. At all locations, Peter walked on the Sea of Galilee. Did you ever do that? Anyone? Not one person on the south side. Cumberland? No? 515? Okay, so Peter did something nobody's done. That's pretty epic. Yeah, but keep reading. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And he began to sink. And he cried out, "'Lord, save me!' And immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him."

Now, that's how you know Jesus is awesome. Because any of us would have gone, hmm, let me think about it. And just waited till he got right to here. But no, he's like, gotcha. I gotcha. You're not going down. But then he said, "'You little faith, why did you doubt?' And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, "'Truly, you are the Son of God.'" Now, if you're inquisitive like me, you're curious, you would say, well, why it didn't, when the winds were kicking up and all that business, and he got out on the water, why didn't Jesus just do what he did when he woke up? Stop blowing. It's freaking Peter out. He didn't calm the storm till they got back in the boat. Why didn't he just say, whoosh, come on. In fact, why is he telling this story to the gospel writers anyway? Why does God want this story in the Bible? Is it to ridicule Peter? Just because we know he's kind of, you know, got a little bit of an edge, so that we can always remind him, yeah, and then you sink. Is that why this is in the Bible?

Is the story in the Bible to make us feel better about when we fail? Oh, I fail, but you know what Peter did too, we're all gonna sink at some point, we're all gonna get freaked out. Or is the reason this story is in the Bible is to inspire us that we can walk on the storm? The answer is C. This story is in the Bible to remind us today that you can walk on the storm. This story is not in the Bible to remind you that you're not gonna have a storm. It's reminding you, and when you read the other gospel accounts here, they're in the boat trying to go across, the waves are smashing them, the wind is buffeting them, they're rowing as hard as they can, and then Jesus just comes walking. He's walking. He's walking. He's not really interacting with them. He's not, he's not there going, hey, he's just walking, and they're like, ah! And then Peter yells, if you're saying, take heart, then I wanna come out. I don't want this to sound like a bumper sticker, but I do want you to know today that whatever storm you're in, Jesus is walking in that storm with you. He's walking in it.

And if you ask him, can I walk in it? He'll say, yeah. Come. Because in me, you can have peace. It's not me shouting to the boat, instructions for peace. Step one, it's like, come join up with me. Come become one with me. Come link up with me. And what I loved about this illustration, I thought, God, how do you illustrate John 16, 33? He said, you illustrate it with Matthew 14, 27. And when I went and lifted up this story again and looked at verse 27, I saw it in this particular passage, the translation comes out, take courage, but in your translation, it may come out in verse 27 and say, take heart. Why? Because the very same word that he spoke, take heart, take courage, and John is the very same word he spoke when he said to the disciples in the storm, take heart, take courage. This is the very same Greek word. And so he's speaking to you from the upper room discourse, but he's also speaking to you in the middle of the storm, the very same word, be of good courage, be confident, take heart. So I dug under that as well. I'll save you a lot of the digging around, but at the end of take heart, be courageous,

was literally to radiate warm confidence. That's different than just having a pie in the sky view. It's understanding that peace is going through hard times with the confidence of someone who is overcoming it all. It's a shift that happens in here. It says, please hear me. We're not lessening the pain. We're not dismissing the circumstance. We're not sweeping under the rug or dissolving all of the tension, but we can hold our pain in one hand, and at the same time, we can hold the spirit of an overcomer in the other hand. So it doesn't just have to be, it's all pain, or I'm an overcomer. I can be in the pain and know that I am an overcomer at the same time. That's peace. Peace is going through hard times with the confidence of someone who's overcoming it all. Why? Because I'm in him and he has overcome the world. He's overcome this cancer. He's overcome this death. He's overcome this tragedy. He's overcome this war. He's overcome this economy. He's overcome this political divide. He's overcome all of it, and because he's overcome it,

I overcome it because I'm in him, and right now, I'm a few feet away from the fullness of the overcoming, but I'm already living like an overcomer, and that's how I have peace. We did a whole collection around this idea, even though I will, and the whole idea of even though I will was that like Psalm 23, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me, and so look how Habakkuk says it. Though, and you could add the even though, the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines. Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no fruit, though there are no sheep in the pen, no cattle in the stalls, here it comes. Yet, I will, even though I will, even though I will. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God, my Savior. Why? Because the sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to tread on the heights. So there may not be grapes today.

There may not be olive crops today. There'll be no produce in the field, no cattle in the stall, no sheep to be had today, but I'm telling you, my hope is in God. God, He is an overcomer. I am an overcomer in Him. And so even though it's the darkest of days, I will still praise Him. Even though it's the hardest of times, I will still know that my God is an overcoming God and I am an overcomer in Him. And that's, that's how that this peace, this oneness can produce praise. Peace always produces praise. And today I think the beauty for someone as a testimony of your oneness with Jesus is to say, I'm going to worship Him today. Because I can hold tribulation and overcoming at the same time. And I'm not minimizing the tribulation. I'm just accentuating the overcoming power of Jesus. I wonder if that's anybody across our church today, just right in the middle of the trouble. And today you, you need peace. I can't fix the trouble. We can't solve the trouble. We can't push aside the trouble, but Jesus is saying, but I can give you peace right in the middle of it. In me, because I have overcome the whole world of trouble.