And when I was a kid, and it's not just when I was a kid, it's just kind of now, is anybody else in here like a history person, like they didn't just enjoy history? Last year from my birthday, thank you. Last year from my birthday, this staff gave me a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. I mean, it's like full nerd out mode for two days a month, like when the new issue comes in.
I've gotten this since I was a kid. And you know, a lot of times if you're a history person, then you're also like an archeology person. I was born in 1980. I think anybody who was born like in the late 70s, early 80s, I think all little boys of that era wanted to be Indiana Jones for a specific point in time in their life.
I think I was very disappointed when National Geographic showed me that archeology was not, I didn't involve bullwips and all that sort of thing. But I still kind of nerd out on it a little bit. And something, it came across my computer feed years ago, and I've kind of always kept up with it. But it's this interesting thing.
And I couldn't find a good picture of it this morning, or I would show it to you. But when you get home, you can Google it. But it's called the Galilee boat or the Jesus boat. And about 30 years ago, some folks that lived along the Sea of Galilee were poking around.
And because of the changing weather patterns, like there's been a lot of storms, there's also been a drought. So the Sea of Galilee is actually just an Inwin lake. It's not a CC. But the waters had receded and a bunch of storms came in and exposed a first century fishing boat.
And so they found it and they were really excited about it and they managed to get it up out of the silt. And it's in a museum now. But what's interesting is they did their work and the samples they were able to take from the wood and the kind of pottery and like lamps and stuff. They found in this boat, they were able to date it to between 50 BC and 50 AD.
And so it's like smack in the middle of Jesus' times. Because that's the best thing to call it, isn't it? But it's about 27 feet long. It's about seven feet wide.
And they estimated it was about six feet deep. And so I saw that. OK, I'm pretty sure I've caught redfish on a boat about that size before. It's kind of an easy thing to think about.
And they're talking about 15 to 20 people would get on this thing. And so it's just really interesting. But what I thought about so much was the idea that it was exposed because of the storms. It was exposed because of changes in weather patterns and all sorts of things like that.
And storms have the ability to reveal things. And they had the ability also to swamp things. Like they realized when they found this, like we have to do something about it quickly or else we're going to lose it. So they use polyurethane styrofoam.
And then they fiberglass around it to float it up out of the water and then to get it to where they did on a trailer. And then they actually immersed the whole boat in wax for 12 years. Like they built a tank big enough to drop this thing in and got enough wax and melted it just to try to preserve it. But there's a museum now.
And you can see it. But I keep thinking about that. The storms they can either swamp or reveal things. And they showed these folks this boat.
And this boat's relevant. We're going to talk about it in a moment. But it also does the same thing in our own lives, right? Like whenever things get kind of gnarly, they get kind of bad.
Like it has the ability to expose things to us that we weren't aware of sometimes that we might realize, wow, OK, that's a lot bigger but deal to me than I thought it might be. Or it has to be like sometimes just overwhelm us. Like, you know, I'm not going to touch this. I'm just going to let this thing make me descend into a ball of emotions right now.
This one's going to either reveal things or they can swamp things. And today we're talking about the what ifs. We're finishing up these series of conversations on anxiety and the gospels of Jesus Christ. But today we're talking about the what ifs.
Because I think all of us live in a what if world at times. So one of our conversation partners these last few weeks has been Dr. Charlie Gagnon, professional counselor with Iungsales and Charlie, Charlie's right there. But Charlie's also going to talk to us on the screens for just a moment about the idea of what ifs.
A lot of times when we get into our head, we don't explore the whole situation. We get this idea in our head whether it's true or false and we let that dictate our behavior. So that's getting into your head. You put something in your head that's going to dictate your behavior whether it's good or not or healthy or not.
For people who suffer from extreme anxiety, the unknown is probably more devastating than the known. Because anything that you can put yourself into, you know, there is an unknown of how I would respond or how it's going to affect me. So that can be debilitating. When we let our minds create worlds that are untrue, our soul has to live in a false world.
I'm gonna say that again, just think about that. When we let our minds create worlds that are untrue, our soul has to live in a false world. So we're going to talk about the story of Jesus and the disciples. It's early on in his life with him.
It's from Mark chapter four in my Bible, verse 35 through 41. My Bible, the heading of this is Jesus' columns, the storm. So let's listen to these words. This evening came Jesus said to his disciples, let us cross to the other side of the lakes.
They took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind, although other boats followed. But soon a fierce storm came up, high waves were breaking into the boat and it began to fill with water. Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up shouting, teacher, don't you care that we're going to drown?
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, silence be still. Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm and then he asked them, why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith? The disciples were absolutely terrified.
Who is this man they asked each other? Even the wind and waves obeyed him. And storms are actually kind of an interesting thing inside of scripture. This idea of the sea and storms is a recurring theme that we really find throughout all of the Bible.
We think the very beginning of Genesis and the beginning of God created the heavens and the earth were used to that. And the earth was formless and void and the spirit hovered over the deep. And the ancient Near East in this world of scripture, the sea and especially storms, it played an interesting place in the way that folks felt like the world operated with the exception of God's people of the Jews. Almost every other creation myth involved God fighting a storm.
And we think about that and we kind of start flipping through the pages of the Bible mentally in our head and we realize just how many stories that involve this metaphor, the storm, the season. We think about Noah and the ark and we think about the Israelites crossing over the Red Sea. It's just a metaphor that goes throughout Genesis to Revelation. But people really felt like they saw the sea and the storms as a God.
And the Old Testament, whenever you see storms happen, it serves as a metaphor for rebellion over God. And rebellion towards God. And the Jewish people especially in scripture, what you see is that this continues the threat of the force of chaos, which is they define as the unknown. It's a continuous threat against God and creation.
So we think back to the Psalms and the way the Psalms use that idea of a storm and that typology. And so that storms just kind of play this unique role. So this story is not, we can't read this in isolation. Just think, oh, okay, there's a bad storm and Jesus took care of it.
Like this means many, many things to them. And as you're, I was reading this, your mind, mind of God to one of the places where mind went to a few weeks ago working on this. So the idea of Jonah chapter one, the idea of Jonah, there's a great, huge storm and Jonah's asleep, they go try to find him like that. That metaphor and that those two stories tied together is not an accident.
If you were here a few years ago, remember we did an entire like sermon series in the book of Jonah and I introduced this thing that I call the hamburger of chaos. Is this idea to understand how ancient people viewed the way the world was made up? And imagine like an eight year old hamburger like meat and bone only. And that bottom bun is the sea, is the underworld, is this place of chaos, a place of confusion, this place of that just not grounded or attached to anything.
It's a place of unknowing, it's a place of wandering. The earth is the hamburger patty. And at the top bun is the heavens and there's like these distinct layers back and forth. But the bottom bun is always trying to overtake everything and become the top bun.
Like that's just a way that it's a really simple way to explain how they saw the world work. And so this storm meant something. No quarter of the disciples were fishermen. And at this point in time, you know, people didn't mess with the ocean.
Like we think it's fun to go pay somebody a lot of money and go ride a boat out miles and try to catch fish. Like the Jewish people are like, we don't mess with ocean. We don't mess with sea. We don't mess with water.
So just the fishermen were seen to be like these superheroes almost like the bravest of the brave. Like I think about the guys who like parachute out of airplanes and fight fires. Like there's a necessary hero to have in society. It's like the fact that they would do this.
And so the quarter of them were fishermen and the Sea of Galilee is known for being tumultuous. It's not a calm piece of water because of the terrain and the geography and mountains and stuff. Like it's it's known for storms. These disciples had seen storms before.
They weren't freaked out about it. But something about this storm really freaked them out. Like they knew this was worse than others. This is bad.
This might this is the worst one we've ever seen in the past. I know how we'll get out of this. I know we will get out of this. But in this situation scenario, I don't know what's going to happen.
We might not make it out. And there's something really interesting about where Jesus is in this story. So it says that Jesus is in the back asleep with his head on a cushion. Now to us, we think, OK, so it's a boat, a bunch of people on there.
There's like decks and that sort of thing. Well, we know from Roman mosaics and archeology and this gallery boat that was found. Like these were open boats. That there was probably a deck in the back only because the person steering the ship needed to be up higher.
Other than that, it was a complete open boat. And what's interesting and unique thing is what most people say. That there was not a bunch of cushions laying around for everybody had a cushion to sit on. Like if I'm going to go sit on my knees and roll a boat, I'm going to bring a cushion.
I'm not bringing a cushion. I'm going to go to the belt blind for 30 minutes. But this cushion is talked about just uniquely in the story because for certain what everyone has in these mosaics and these archeology ideas is there was a cushion on the back for the person whose job it was to steer the boat. And so I'm imagining the way the story is kind of set up.
Like it's absolute worst storm ever. There's sales on these boats. You get some of the disciples trying to take down sales whenever sales to position themselves where they need to be. The other ones are rowing trying to get the whole boat positioned.
And then they're just storm their life. They think they're about to die. They're experts. They've seen storm before.
And all of a sudden for some odd reason they let Jesus steer the boat. It's one reason he'd be close to the cushion. They're in the middle of all this. They look back and not only is Jesus not steering.
Jesus is asleep. And you can hear the panic when they say, do you not see that we're about to die? And then Jesus wakes up. My grandfather slept through Hurricane Camille in the back bedroom of the house while the rest of the family was in the storm shelter in Hattasburg underneath the house.
And I think that's what I think like how we always said, how did, how did. Oh, that was his name. It's country name. Right.
Oh, how did. Oh, sleep through Hurricane Camille. Oh, Jesus slept through the storm. They wake him up.
He doesn't. He's really interesting. He did the way the story kind of tells it. It's like he stands up and he rises up against the storm facing from the back of the boat.
Like very Charlton Heston, like 10 commandments type moment and says silence be still. And the interesting even more interesting thing is Jesus says those three words three times in the gospel of Mark. The other two times Jesus says the exact phrase silence be still is when he's performing extra systems. And one commentator points to this storm as not a natural reality, but as a supernatural reality.
And that Jesus is showing command and power and force over the world. He stands up silence be still. Now our fears and how they control us are spiritual issues. And the story shows us that he cares about our fears.
But our fears are also not just a natural battle. Our fears are also a supernatural battle. Last week I talked about how anxiety. I really feel like it's the primary emotion of sin and not that like it's the way that we primarily sin, but it's the way that our bodies, our minds and our hearts and our souls are affected by sin.
If you think about it in the garden when the serpent came to Eve, he made her begin questioning things. That the sin that let sin enter into this world was to create a false world of question in the eyes of somebody. Was to create a what if scenario among humanity for the very first time. So what if we begin to think about our stress and our storms and what they reveal?
We begin to think about the untruths that control us as a formational issue of anxiety. And the what ifs are bigger than just what ifs. And what ifs? Y'all know I'm a big what if guy.
So I'm talking about what ifs and what if a lot. But what ifs are a spiritual battle for the peacefulness of our souls? That begins to make us think about them a little bit more seriously. See the purpose of this miracle for the disciples was for them to know that Jesus has powers, for them to have greater faith.
It was for them to know that Jesus is absolutely and completely in control. Jack Lockaby, our director of discipleship and I were having lunch this week and we were talking about just discipleship and what does it mean and if Paul has a metaphor that he uses for our life with Christ like running a race. And we were talking about how hard it is sometimes just to get to the starting line, like just to get to the starting point. And some of y'all know my wife Meredith and my wife is crazy.
My wife does all sorts of crazy things. She runs 50 mile trail races. She runs 100k trail races. She's doing another Iron Man later on this year.
So like a two and something miles slim, 110 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile marathon in one day. And I'll go to these big ones to support her but I get really intimidated. I get really psyched out because we go to the place where she like registers and picks up her number. And there's all sorts of booths of people selling things.
And I get intimidated because I'm going to tell you right now. I'm always the fattest person there. Like I walk around and they're trying to hock all of these wares to you. Like there's a guy that's trying to sell me a bicycle that costs more than my first three cars combined.
Like they're all like in spandex and we're both a fan of stretchy clothing for opposite reasons. Like I get intimidated. I don't want to go to the starting line. Like I'm not one of you.
This is like no I don't belong here. You want to get some stairs and a thing like that. Walk through the large pizza. Trust me.
You know just making it from the registration table to the starting line is a really tough thing. And what Jesus did was he showed these disciples. He's like I'm going to show you right now. We've got the power to do this.
So quit all your wood ifs and let's get to work. Because of the scripture, the sea immediately became calm. It's not like silence be still and then two couple of hours in the kind of storm well that like storm is new. It instantly went from like oh my goodness we're all about to die to can we get a little wind over here to help us out.
Jesus did this miracle so the disciples could see the power and truth of who he was and so that they could have greater life. So let me ask you this. What if we allowed our anxieties to build our prayer list? Psalm 139.
It says this. Search me. Oh God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts.
We find anxiousness and how we deal with what we can't see. And that what ifs about I can't see this. I don't know this. I can't predict this.
I'm only kick regard to philosopher who has a wild back said this. The most painful state human can have is remembering the future. Particularly the one you can't have. So what ifs not about your dreams your aspirations are these cool things you want to have.
We get ourselves worked up into a frenzy. This might happen. This might happen. This might happen.
Next thing we know what will never probably happen in our life is actually controlling our mind. This is my anxieties favorite party trick. I like to be prepared for things. I like to freak out about the future that's probably not going to happen.
Our worries of what if create a false future that we hope never happens. We waste our time trying to get a plan or to avoid something that probably will never occur. What Jesus is showing his disciples in this story. He's saying I want the freedom of your future.
We let our minds create worlds of untruth. Our soul has to live in a false world. Both are one of our conversation partners. We become fearful because we have to stand on our own.
Weaning into Jesus during anxiousness is not sin. We convince ourselves that even acknowledging this is sinful. It's not sin. But clinging to the power that he has and offers us during anxiousness is what he desires for us to do.
We will lose our anxiousness at the level that we are willing to appropriate the freedom and truthfulness of Jesus. That's when we find the end of it. Now I was talking with Jamie Champagne this week about this series, but this last year of just doing gospel stories. What I'm realizing is amazing is all the times and all the wild things Jesus did, and he always spoke in the present tense.
All the things he declared before the resurrection. Like in the complete fullness of him being fully God and fully man, he declares these things. He declares these things. It's present and real and active and alive and alive to the disciples.
Prior to the resurrection. The resurrection is even that much more powerful than we saw in our very first week of these conversations that Jesus has anguished that he had over the cross. The cross is not without pain. The cross is not without struggle.
The cross is not without question. But in his own life we saw this, but what we're called to do is to simple appropriate and take on the example of Jesus, remember he parades that God either take this from me or make me stronger. Either take it from me or make me stronger. I know in my own life so many times I stop at the first one.
Just take it from me. Jesus, take it from me or make me stronger. He got his answer and said, all right, make me stronger. So, notice all of our sickness, the boundaries of anxiety are blurred in which we disappear into the person and work of Christ.
So, what if we let our anxieties make our prayer list? Show us the things that we need to focus on, the things that we need to yield. So, what do we do with all this empty space? What do we do with what we have in our life where we know there are gaps of holiness that we talked about last week?
What do we do with these places we know our what ifs dwell? I think we simply invite the presence of God in. John Mark Comer is a pastor and I found his book on anxiety three days ago and I read it in one day. It was so good.
His book was called My Name is Hope, Anxiety, Depression and Life After Melancholy. And I would encourage anybody who struggles with this or is interested to go. It's on sale on Kindle right now for $2.99. Go buy it and read it.
It's fantastic. But this is what he talks about. He really builds this through Philippians, chapter 4, 6 through 9. I'm just going to read this to you and just begin to think about the power that this gives us in our life.
Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then you experience God's peace which exceeds anything we can understand.
His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, give brothers and sisters one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Keep putting into practice all you've learned and received from me. Everything you've heard from me and saw me doing, then the God of peace will be with you. We could end right there I think. We can't say anything stronger than that.
What John Mark Coamer said is that we realize that we have to rebuild our mental patterns through scripture and through prayer. That we rebuild our mental pattern of God being the center of our world. We read scripture and we pray and we absorb the word of God, absorb the voice of God and let him transform how we think. To where his thoughts become our thoughts, to where his mind becomes our mind.
And it's not easy. It's going to be messy. Most people don't go through this. Most people never have their mind transformed.
But the cross is not easy. The cross was messy. The cross caused questions. It's all those same things.
But we want to live in a life where our lives are full of the truth of Christ so that we may be for the world. The truth of Christ. We're going to close from a couple of verses from 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And how it encourages us in this.
We now have this light shining in our hearts. But we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles but we are not crushed.
We are perplexed but not driven to despair. We are hunted down but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down but we are not destroyed. Through suffering our bodies continue to share the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.
Jesus wants to transform our what ifs so that we can have testimonies to the truth of his power. Let's pray. Jesus, we give you our what ifs. The ones that are new and the ones that we have kind of helped for our entire life.
God, we give you these questions, these cares, these anxieties, all of this. What we give them to you because we know that where we come out of this on the other end is better. That it's better for us. God, but we become more fully devoted to you on the other side.
We are with strong testimonies to your transforming power in our lives, testimonies to your faithfulness. God, this makes us resilient people, whole people. So God, we offer you the empty spaces in our life to come fill completely with your presence. Shimmy pray.
I'm in. We're standing in worship.