Hurt for Hope

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Advent Setup
• 2:30 A Better Way: Real vs Counterfeit
• 4:50 A Call To Engage Jesus Deeply
• 7:45 Practical Tools For A Slower Season
• 10:08 Naming Holiday Pain And Loneliness
• 14:30 Grief Stories And Memory Triggers
• 18:20 The Gap Between Expectation And Reality
• 21:30 Holding Hope When Life Punches Back
• 23:30 Israel’s Story: God Delivers
• 27:00 Exile And Longing For Rescue
• 31:00 From Persia To Rome: No True Peace
• 34:10 The Promise Of A New Exodus
• 37:10 God With Us: Hope For All People

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You may have a seat. Welcome to all of you. My name is Mac. I'm one of the pastors on our team. I also want to be sure to welcome all of you who are joining us from home. There's probably quite a crowd that is joining us from their couches this morning. But you all get like double the points. You know what I mean? Like, not only are you here on a holiday weekend, but you brave the elements, so that's pretty awesome. I have some bad news for you. Um this morning, instead of doing my normal sermon prep, I use that time to clear the driveway so I could get here. So today might be a little interesting. Um just just gonna say I have the task of sort of transitioning us into the Christmas season because today is the first Sunday of Advent. Um, if that's uh a term that's unfamiliar to you, it's uh it simply means to come. It's a Latin word, it's a compound word. Ad means to, vent means come, and it's the season leading up to Christmas where we prepare our hearts for the arrival, the coming of Jesus. And there's uh traditionally four weeks of Advent, each with a different theme. Uh so those he themes are hope, peace, joy, and love. And so we're starting Advent today. We're gonna look at each one of these themes, uh, but in a slightly different order than the traditional order and through a slightly different lens. We're entitling our Advent series this way, uh this year, A Better Way, because this is what Jesus came to give us. Here's the deal. Um I'm just gonna name it, that we live in a culture and in a moment where all of these themes are presented to us in a counterfeit way. Okay, so so false hope that doesn't deliver on what it promises, a pseudo-peace that sort of cracks underneath the pressure of conflict, a false joy that is circumstance contingent, and a conditional love that's really only given when you've earned it or when it's convenient. But see, when God took on flesh in Jesus, became Emmanuel God with us, he not only frees us from these counterfeits, but he gives us and invites us into a kingdom characterized by the real thing, like real hope, hope that doesn't disappoint, real peace, true peace, authentic joy, unconditional love that doesn't run out. This is the better way that God uh makes available to us and invites us to live into. Um I want to, before we get to our theme today, which is hope, um, I want to issue just a little challenge to all of us, and this is a challenge uh for me just as much as it is for any of you. So I'm preaching myself here, but I really want to challenge us this Christmas season um to engage Jesus in a deep and intentional way. Like right from the start, uh make it your goal to engage with Jesus deeply this Christmas. Advent this season we're starting today is all about cultivating a sense of anticipation and longing for more of Jesus. It's about attending deeper, um, long cultivating a deeper longing to be with Jesus and to know Jesus. And having tried to lead a church community through the Christmas season for many years now, I'll just tell you pretty much everything in this season works against that. From the gift buying and exchanging to the holiday parties and gatherings to the endless kids programming and concerts at school. Like, it's so easy to get sucked up into the busyness and pace of this season that you actually lose what the season is all about. You lose your center. And so I'm just naming right now, like, don't let that happen. Create a plan right now to preserve some margin, to create some space uh to go deeply with Jesus through this season. And I'm just gonna highlight two resources uh for you that will help you with this. I can't do this for you. Our job is to resource you, but you've got to do it. So one is actually a blog post that my wife Josie wrote a few years ago called How to Slow Down When Life Speeds Up. Life is speeding up right now. That's what the Christmas season does. And uh you need to do the opposite, you need to slow down. So you can just go on our website uh under our praxis uh section, there's uh our podcast and our blog, and you can find it there. But there's some great prompts at the end. And then the second one is what Cameron already mentioned, which is our advent guide. And I love this. We've been doing it for several years now. Part of what I love about it is it's written by our community for our community. And as Cameron mentioned, there's a daily devotional for each day, five a week, and what a perfect way just to stay grounded and centered. So you can get that online, you can actually order it through Amazon. There's a digital copy on our website, but pick one of those up and and it'll allow it to guide you deeper into this this season. All right, so let's talk about hope. I want to name something. Uh, you might already be aware of this, but uh forgotten. Some people uh maybe don't know this, but but the holidays, you guys, for many people are ridiculously hard. All right, it's not just chestnuts roasting on an open fire uh or sipping hot chocolate while wearing matching pajamas. I don't like either one of those things, by the way. Um I don't think I've ever had a chestnut, but it reminds me of water chestnuts, which tastes like swamp, and I'm out. Okay? And and I'm actually not a big fan of matching pajamas. I think they're cheesy unless you're kids, in which case it's adorable, okay? I do like hot chocolate. But the the point is, that that's not the point. The point is that the holidays really can be a brutal time uh for a lot of people. And part of this is that there's a gap between expectation and reality. Starting, well, it keeps getting earlier every year. Um, starting at the end of October, you can sense this shift into the holiday season. And so people start putting out their Christmas lights, and the music starts playing, the commercials are on TV, right? And and and you can feel it like ramping up. Hallmark movies are on, and almost all of the things we're presented with create or cast vision for the holidays to be this magical time. This season of laughter and and joy and family and friends, and everybody's getting along, and everything's great. Even the Hallmark movies, if they have some tension at the beginning, notice it always gets resolved by the end of the movie, right? And we all know that's not how it is. We all know those expectations are unrealistic, but yet they still act on us and they act on the people around us, and so we all feel this pressure. Some of it's internal, some of it's external, that the holidays are supposed to be like this, and because life doesn't work like the Hallmark movies, uh, we feel grief and sadness as a result, some disappointment and frustration. What ends up happening is there's this massive gap between expectation and reality. Beneath the surface of all of these holiday smiles is an emotional complexity that doesn't really match the season. And whereas the holidays are supposed to be magical and full of fun and laughter, many people experience the exact opposite: sadness, grief, disappointment, frustration. I know many people who have told me like the holidays are their least favorite season out of the year. It's the most lonely, they experience more loneliness during these months than any other time. It's all amplified during this holiday season, especially for those who have lost loved ones. You know, I was talking to a woman who lost her son just a couple years ago, and his the anniversary of his death fell on Thanksgiving this year. Like that's brutal. When you talk to people, they'll tell you, like all of a sudden you're sitting there and a Christmas song comes on that reminds you of your loved one and you're in tears. Or you're sitting on your couch sipping eggnog and you look at the tree, and there's their favorite ornament, and next thing you know, you're sobbing. Uh these memories sort of catch you off guard and remind you of their absence, and it's super painful. Or maybe new memories are being formed, and you just grieve that they're not part of those new memories that are being created. I get this. My um my grandpa on my mom's side, so my mom's dad, uh, he died at the age of 51 on Christmas Day. Totally unexpectedly. So they got together as a family, did some stuff over the in the morning and lunch, and and then he didn't feel well. He started not feeling well, so he went to lay down and then had a heart attack and was gone like that. And um nobody expected it. And that was like I don't, I wasn't, um, I was an infant at the time, so I have no memory of this whatsoever. But I can tell for that side of my family, for my mom and her siblings, there's still like here's this day that's supposed to be about this, and now there's like a still 40 some years later, there's still a twinge of pain that marks that day because it was uh a moment of incredible tragedy and pain and grief and loss. I remember um so a number of years later, not the same year, but my grandma on my dad's side, so my dad's mom died on the 26th of December, day after Christmas. And we knew it was coming. I mean, she was 92 years old. Uh, but her and I were really close. Like we got along great. We I would say we were really good friends. Uh like she got me. I remember one year I drove up to Duluth. She lived in Duluth, I was in the Twin Cities. I drove up, um, this was when I was in high school, to pick her up and bring her back to the Twin Cities so she could celebrate Christmas with us. And I'm driving back and I've got Christmas music on, and the little little drummer boy comes on. And she starts uh on this rant about how much she hates this song. She says, Oh Gad, for some reason that was her thing. Like, oh Gad, I can't stand this song. Parumpa pum, parump. She fell asleep mid-rant. And I thought to myself, I can't wait till I get to that age where I can just like rant about anything I want and just fall asleep, and it's no big deal. But I'll tell you, on the 26th of December, like I I think about her a lot. Like I miss her. And so here's this season where it's it's supposed to be this, but it's actually something something else. Sixteen years ago, we welcomed our oldest son into the world. Um, but about 10 days later, I woke up the uh in the morning to a bunch of voicemails from my mom. And she was kind of panicky, and she she said, Your dad had a grandma seizure in the middle of the night. We're at O'Connemak Hospital. Uh, get here as quickly as you can. So I quickly got dressed, uh, got to the hospital just in time for a doctor to come in and say, Hey, you've got a brain tumor the size of a golf ball, and it needs to be removed right away. And so that's what they did. They went in and operated on it. But I just remember like just how stressful that like that Christmas was so stressful for our family. And to this day, I I can be driving around in December and all of a sudden like things come back to that that year that sort of flood me and make it difficult, it makes it hard. A lot of things change to that year for our family. The point is that the holidays can hurt. They can hurt. Um, and it's not just the loss of a loved one. There's a whole bunch of things that cause pain and difficulty in this season. You can have strained family relationships. Unresolved conflict can prevent you from getting together with family, or when you're together, you're not really able to talk about anything of substance. I know some people in our church who uh are estranged from loved ones, estranged from kids. The kids won't talk to them, or they don't talk to their kids. And so here's this season where everybody's supposed to be coming together as a family, and it's just a painful reminder that they they don't get to. Their family isn't in that place. I know some people who are navigating a divorce this year, and so this will be their first year rather than every other year where they're all together. This is their first year where they're actually apart, and they may not see their kids on Christmas Day or whatever. It's it's painful and it's hard. I know many people navigate loneliness during this season of the year. Um, maybe you're you're you're single and you don't want to be. You've been waiting for that Mr. and Mrs. Wright, and they haven't come along yet. So you long to share the holidays with this special someone, but they haven't they haven't come along yet. I know some people are experiencing health struggles, a cancer diagnosis. And so even though it's a season, you know, marked by joy and gratitude and thanksgiving, there's like this uh prognosis that's totally uncertain, that sort of clouds everything. It's this shadow that is cast over the holidays. Other people are experiencing financial pressure for whatever reason. Um they're just feeling the pinch this season and it feels really overwhelming. We could keep going, but the the point is the holidays can hurt. You need to be aware of this. We need to be aware of this as a church, because even if you're in a great spot, the reality is I can tell you right now, as someone who's pastoring this community, the people sitting around you may not be experiencing the same joy and excitement that you are. There are people who are deeply grieving and in a lot of pain right now in our very own community. There's this gap between what the holidays are supposed to be like and reality. And the more pain you've experienced this year over the last few years, caused by the brokenness and fallenness of the world, the bigger that gap is going to feel between what the holidays should be like and what they actually are. And the truth is that this gap is there for all of us. And the ache that it causes, that life isn't the way it's supposed to be. We all experience this to some degree, where we rub up against the brokenness of the world and we long for it to be right. We long for things to sort of come together, to fit together, and they don't. And because that longing is there, it creates pain on the inside, disappointment, frustration. And so we try to hold on to hope that God is good, that God is who God says he is, that God is good and that God is true, and that God will be faithful to his promises, redeem our hurt and pain. And yet the more we feel the effects of this broken and fallen world, the more times we get hit and punched in the gut, the harder it is to hold on to that hope. The harder it is to trust God with the difficult parts of our lives. I don't think that this feeling that we uh uh are experiencing is new to us. I think every human being experiences this. It's not new to us, and it's exactly what the Israelites, the people of God, were experiencing leading up to the time of Jesus. Israel was in the exact same scenario. The tension of feeling all the pain and hurt of life and trying to hold on to hope that God is good, and that God will come through for them and be faithful to his promises is exactly where the people of Israel were when Jesus arrived in Bethlehem. And so today, what I want to do is I want to try to invite us into this felt experience of being a first century Israelite. I want us to try to put ourselves in their shoes so we can appreciate what the first advent must have felt like. Okay? So here's how I want to do that is I want to I want to name two competing realities that the ancient Israelites were were experiencing at the time of Jesus' arrival. And so the first reality is this is that God is a God who delivers. All right, remember a little history here, okay? Remember the way the book of Genesis ends? Um Abraham's descendants uh are in Egypt. You remember this? There was a famine, and Joseph ends up kind of moving up the ranks, and um uh his brothers come and ask for food, and because he's in a high position, he's able to bless them and provide for them. So Genesis ends with Abraham's descendants in Egypt being cared for because Joseph has a high position and is second to Pharaoh. But what happens, if you'll remember, is that time passes, Joseph dies, new Pharaoh comes in town, and the people of Israel go from a privileged position to being on the outside looking in, and they end up enslaved, miserably treated. They hit rock bottom, and just like all of us, when we hit rock bottom, as long as we don't reinvent rock bottom, we tend to cry out to God for help. And so this is what the Israelites do. In Exodus 2, 23 and 25, it says this. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. So notice the Israelites cry out to God in their pain, and God hears them and responds to them. I want to comment briefly on this word remember, because the way we use the word remember almost implies like we forgot something. You know, if I go, oh, I remember to do this, it almost implies I forgot it. But that is not what the author here is implying. The word remember here is a covenant term, and it implies faithfulness. So it's less about God forgetting, and it's more about the motivation for why God is acting. He's acting out a covenant, faithfulness, and loyalty to his promise to Abraham and his descendants. So out of covenant fidelity and faithfulness, God hears their cries, listens to their pain, and he responds. And you all know the story. He selects Moses, Moses resists, God persists, and then there's a showdown between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt, and God wins over those other gods and then delivers the people of Israel out of Egypt. This is the story of the Exodus. And the reason why I'm rehearsing it is because this was the identity marking event for the people of Israel. Their entire identity was wrapped around this moment that they were an enslaved people. God heard their cries and delivered them. They were the people of God, who God delivered from slavery, turned into a nation or a kingdom of priests, blessed them so they could be a blessing to the nations. This was their identity-defining moment as a people. It was their foundational experience that formed who they were as a people. And because of this, you'll notice throughout the Old Testament, they're constantly rehearsing and telling the story of this moment. They're going back to it again and again. It's always on the forefront of their minds. And part of what this does is it creates hope for them. This moment of the Exodus, the fact that this was an identity-shaping moment for them, and that they continued to rehearse it, gave them hope when they experience hard times in the present, because it's something they could point back to. When they're experiencing suffering or hardship, they could point back to the Exodus and go, look, God delivered us once, and God can certainly do it again. You ever experienced that before? You're in the middle of something in life, and you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this, but then you remember this moment before where God got you through something really difficult, and you're like, oh, if God did it then, he can certainly do it now. That's the idea. And so this is where Israel is, is they're they're they're they've got this reality that God is a God who delivers them. He uniquely did it for them before, and this anchors their hope in the midst of challenging and hardship. Now, what you need to know is that in the first century, when Jesus arrives on the scene, the Israelites are hanging on to this hope by a thread, like the thinnest thread you could imagine. And the reason why is because their circumstances were incredibly hard and miserable. They were in need of rescuing again. So here's the second reality. First reality is that God delivers, second reality is the experience of exile. The vast majority of Israelites in Jesus' day felt like they were still in exile. They felt like they were enslaved again and in need of rescuing. So let's go back and do some history again. Remember that when God rescues the people of Israel out of Egypt, that's the Exodus, he enters into a covenant with them. Okay? And part of that covenant, this was like standard practice for forming covenants in the ancient Near Eastern world, is you have a mutual commitment to one another, and then there was like a blessings and curses section where it's like if you stay faithful to this covenant, here's what's going to happen. These are the blessings, good things are going to happen, and so on. And if you aren't faithful to this covenant, bad things are going to happen. And one of the bad things, the covenant curses, from the very beginning, there's no this wasn't a secret, it was out in the open. From the very beginning, God was honest with the Israelites. If you are not faithful to me, you are going to experience exile. Exile is when a foreign nation comes in, defeats you, takes you away from your land, and you're brought to their land or some other place. That's what exile is. And that's exactly what happens in the Old Testament. Israel is not faithful to God. God sends so many prophets, begging them and pleading them to turn to him to be faithful. They don't. And sure enough, they go into exile. Happens in two stages. You'll remember there's a split between northern Israel and southern Israel. So northern Israel, in 722, Assyria, the superpower at the time, comes in, defeats the ten northern tribes of Israel, brutal. I mean, the Assyrians were brutal. Then they take the leftover people who weren't killed and scatter them among a ton of different nations, and they're lost forever. Okay? Hundred years later, it repeats with the southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin. At this point in time, Babylon is a superpower, and they come in, defeat Israel, and then they deport them back to Babylon in three ways: 605, 597, 587. So you have Babylon comes in, defeats Jerusalem, breaks everything down, and takes the Israelites to Babylon. And that moment, you guys, was such an intense moment of grief and pain for the people of Israel. Here's what they say about in Psalm 137. It says, By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion, referring to Jerusalem. There on the poplars we hung our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs. Our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. So here they are, they've been deported. Jerusalem is broken into pieces. They've been brought to Babylon, they're sitting by the river, and they hang up their harps because they have nothing to sing about. They're just in grief and mourning, and the Babylonians are like, hey, sing us. They're mocking them. Sing us songs of joy, you guys. And they have nothing to sing about. Now, again, this is a history sort of thing, because you're not going to understand what it meant for Jesus to arrive if you don't know some of this stuff. About 70 years later, the Israelites in Babylon were allowed to return to the promised land under Cyrus the Great. And you can read about that in the book of Nehemiah. They return and they start rebuilding the walls and so on and so forth. But what you've got to know is that at this time they're not independent. They're not free. They're still under Persian power. And then the Persians are defeated by the Greeks, Alexander the Great, and so now you have the Greek Empire, and that's when Hellenization comes in. There's this brief window where the Israelites revolt, so Maccabean revolt, and that ushers in a brief moment of independence, the Hasmonean dynasty, but then the Romans take over and they defeat that, and they're in charge. And that's where we are when Jesus arrives. So yes, the Israelites are back in the promised land. They're in the promised land, but they're not free. They're under foreign oppression. And they've been under foreign oppression the entire time. The Persians, the Greeks, and now the Romans, and the Romans, you guys, were awful. They ruled by terror. If they even got a whiff that there was something brewing to revolt against them, they'd come in with military might, crucify a bunch of people publicly just to send the message, don't mess with us. And they called that peace. Pax Romana. If there were ever a time where that axiom makes sense, peace, peace, but there is no peace, it was this. They keep saying peace, peace, but there's no peace. There's just terror. And this is the context in which God arrived. So this is the stuck point. The Israelites are still in exile. Yes, they're physically home, but they're politically bound. They're not free. They're enslaved again. Just like they were in Egypt before the Exodus, but now they need a new Exodus. They need God to deliver them again because of their own wrongdoing and their own lack of faithfulness. What's more, though, and this is so important, is it wasn't just like them looking back at the Exodus and going, God, we need that again, and we're going to hope for it. God actually promised this to them. So here's what it says in Ezekiel it says, The people will be secure in their land. So this is God promising something to the people of Israel. The people, referring to Israel, will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the Lord when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslave them, these foreign nations. They will no longer be plundered by the nations, they will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid. And so Israel is sitting in, at the time that Jesus arrives, Israel is sitting in the hurt of exile, but trying to hold on to this hope of a new exodus. And it's in this context, you guys, that God arrives in the person of Jesus. Here's what I want us to understand is that Jesus brings about a new exodus for the people of Israel. God isn't aloof or deaf. He's not apathetic to the pain and suffering that they're experiencing under the Romans. God hears the cries of his people once again. And he remembers his covenant, not because he forgot, but he's getting ready to act out of faithfulness to his promises that he had committed to his people all along. But this time it's so much bigger than it was before because it's not just for the people of Israel, it's for all people. God hears the suffering and the pain and the hardship of every human being, every son and daughter who's created in his image. God remembers his covenant with all of humanity, and he decides this is the time to act. This is the time to intervene, to bring about a new exodus, freedom from slavery, freedom from oppression, freedom from exploitation. And so how does God do this? Well, God takes on flesh in Jesus to rescue and deliver. God, God self takes on flesh. God becomes Emmanuel, God with us. In John 1.14, it says the word referring to God, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God took on flesh in Jesus to deliver us and rescue us. And this rescue mission, you guys, is so much bigger and better than any first century Israelite ever could have imagined. And there were two reasons for this. One is that it was for everyone, not just the people of Israel. It included Israel, but it actually included everyone. You see, when God looks at human beings, he doesn't see their nation. He doesn't first and foremost see, hey, what nation do you belong to? He says, This is my beloved son and daughter. This is someone created in my image. And so when Jesus comes, he doesn't just come to rescue Israelites, he comes to rescue all people, every tribe, tongue, and nation. It's bigger than anyone could have imagined. And it brought about a freedom that lasts. So up until this point, yeah, God saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, but then they end up getting oppressed again. But here, God goes to the very source of oppression, which is sin. You guys, we evangelicals need to broaden our understanding of sin. I'm just gonna name this because oftentimes we just think of sin as moral wrongdoing, like you do something wrong and you're guilty for it, and God's upset. That that is a facet of sin in the New Testament, moral wrongdoing. But actually, on a foundational level, sin infer is first and foremost a power that acts on us and enslaves us. The reason why you do sinful things, the why I do sinful things, is because Because I'm in bondage to a power that's bigger than me. And so when Jesus comes, he doesn't just come for all people, but he actually roots out the source of the problem to begin with by defeating the power of sin itself. So we're no longer in bondage. God hears our pain. God enters into our pain. He takes on flesh. And then God acts in love to free us at cost to himself by going to the cross. If there's one thing you walk away with today, let it be this: that Jesus invites us to exchange our hurt for hope. I know many of you are hurting this holiday season. I get it. And Jesus wants to invite you. He wants to take your hurt and exchange it for hope. Your hurt is real. Don't minimize that. That will do no good. When you minimize and suppress your hurt and pain, it will end up eating you from the inside out. Acknowledge it. Lament it. Bring it out in the open, and God wants to exchange that. You give it to me, and I'll give you something better. Hope, you guys, in the Bible, is not wishful thinking. We often think, the way we use the word hope is like a wishful thought. Oh, I really hope this happens, or I hope that I hope the Packers win. I hope Notre Dame wins the whole thing, right? This is how we use, this is how we use the word hope. But hope in Scripture is a confident assurance. An assurance of things that are not yet seen. It's a confident assurance in God. Because God is who God is. And in his goodness and in his faithfulness, that God will be true to not only who he is, but what he said he's going to do. And this hope, when you truly put your hope in God and God's promises, Scripture talks about how that gives you tenacity and grit and perseverance and strength. Your hurt is real. Bring it out into the open. Acknowledge it. Talk about it. Do it in healthy ways, and then exchange it for the care and the healing and the hope that God wants to give you. It's not, we are in a very similar situation to the Israelites in the first century. They could point back to this moment where God delivered them from slavery, but they're enslaved again, and they're hoping God will do it once more. Same thing for us. We can point to this moment where God showed up in Jesus, right, and did something definitive for us, and yet we're still longing for the full completion of the kingdom to come. So we've got this thing in the back where we go, oh yeah, God did something for us, and God is continuing to do something, but it's not yet here. And because it's not yet here, we're still living in this tension of brokenness and fallenness, uh, holding on to hope that God will one day complete it just as he said he would in Jesus. This is the tension we sit in. This is the tension. Yes, it's hard. I get it. Life is hard. And yet God has uh showed up in Jesus and promised to bring everything to completion, uh, to a day when there will be no more pain or suffering or hardship or grief. And so here's the choice we have in this season is we can either leverage our hurt for hope, for a deeper hunger and thirst to know God, or we can allow our hearts to callous our hearts towards God. Again, I have been pastoring for a while and I've noticed tragedy hits all of us. None of us are immune to it. And as I observe it, when people experience unexpected tragedy and hardship, hurt and pain, uh generally people move in one of two directions. Either they move closer to God and trust, they name their hurt and pain in God's presence, experiences comfort and healing, and end up with a closer relationship with God. Not free of pain, not ignoring the pain, but they end up closer to Jesus. Or I've noticed other people, they, because of their hurt and pain, start to stiff arm God. And stiff arm people who know God. It ends up like callusing and calcifying and hardening their hearts towards God, and they end up walking away. And here's why this matters is because you have a choice. Oftentimes, at least in my experience, when tragedy hits, you didn't have a choice in that. You feel like a victim. This happened to me, and it did. It did. But you always have a choice about how you're gonna respond to that pain and that hardship. There's that quote from Viktor Frankel, who literally was a prisoner in Auschwitz and Man Search for Meaning, and he says, between stimulus and response, there's a choice. No matter what happens, between that stimulus, that hardship, that pain, that tragedy, and response, your response, there's a space. And that's where you need to exercise the choice. Am I going to move toward God with an open heart, a soft heart, surrendering to his love and giving me what I need in this hard season? Or am I going to go my own way? Am I going to do my own thing? So here's some action steps for you as we kick off Advent. Create some space to pray this week. Uh, what hurts are you carrying into this holiday season? I encourage you to write these down and any feelings associated with those. Write down the hurts and pains you're carrying into this holiday season and your feelings about those. How are you reacting to God given the presence of hurt and pain? In other words, is it opening you up to more of God or is it closing you off to God? What's it doing to your heart? Where is Jesus making his dwelling among you, entering your pain? Remember, at the heart of the Christmas story is God entering into the brokenness of this world, standing in solidarity with us. You're never alone in your pain and suffering. God is with you. Where is God making his presence known to you no matter how hard this season is? Couple practices. One is a resource. We actually recorded a podcast last year with Terry Koshnick, who's a licensed therapist, called Navigating Grief During the Holidays. If that's you this year, you've got some grief, I encourage you to listen to that episode. It will be helpful to you. Again, engage the Advent Guide this week as an expression of hope. Create space to be with Jesus each day. Here's another one. Talk to someone about your hurt and allow them to speak words of hope over you. I know for me, when I'm in a bad place, you guys, um I'm often not thinking clearly. And it's only when I share what I'm experiencing with other people that they can then go, hey man, that's not the full picture. And they can challenge some of the ways that I'm making sense of things and speak a more hopeful message into my brain. And then finally, another practice for you to consider this week is maybe you're in a great spot. You know, maybe you actually thought about coming to uh a service this morning in matching pajamas, munching on chestnuts. Good, good for you. Okay, well, get outside of yourself this Christmas if you're in a good spot and try to bring hope to someone, be a hopeful presence to someone who's hurting. Yeah? Um Cameron misspoke, which I rarely catch him doing. Um the uh Christmas movie is Friday night, not Saturday night. So if you're planning on coming and drinking hot chocolate and doing all that, uh come Friday night, not Saturday night, because this place won't be open, okay? Um again, you guys get double points for being here today. Uh feel free to hang out a little bit afterwards and connect and have some coffee. I'd love to close us in prayer. So if you'd stand, let's pray together. Father God, we thank you that you uh you exchange our heart for hope. Um, you see our brokenness, you see the pain that we endure, and you are moved deeply with compassion and care and concern. And you actually do something about it. Out of covenant faithfulness, you remember us and you take action on our behalf by entering into our mess in order to free us and deliver us. Thank you for delivering all of us, all of humanity, and thank you for for freeing us from the thing we need most, from where we're in bondage and experiencing oppression and exploitation in our lives. I pray for those who are suffering and in hurt this Christmas season that they would get an extra dose of your presence, that they'd feel your comfort and your love. And for those of us who might be in a good spot, give us eyes to see those who are hurting and suffering, that we might embody your loving presence in their lives. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Go and hope.