Well, Merry Christmas mer. Merry Christmas. We are so glad that you are here. I, I know it's a special day for a whole lot of different reasons. And genuinely thank you for coming to the 10 o'clock. Hopefully there's lots of kids in the room. Hopefully after service, you guys can have a lot of fun. But here is my belief. My belief is regardless of how you ended up here, whether you're here with family or whether you come all the time, or whether this is your very first time, or maybe you got drug here and you don't really wanna be here regardless of how you ended up here, I, I believe that God wants to do something special today in each and every one of our lives. And that's really what the message of Christmas is all about. Now, it's interesting, Christmas is an amazing time, but, but it can also be a challenging time.
One of the hardest things is, is trying to get the right gift for all the people. And now, I would say in some ways it's significantly easier than it was 20 years ago because of online. How many of you are online shopping people? You did at least some of your shopping online. Alright? And how many of you are in person shopping? You just do the in person and a lot of you didn't buy any gifts. So that's, that's concerning. I would say, here's the thing about online. It is online is very convenient, but there is a risk involved with online. And that is that sometimes, especially now, you can order from all over the world. And, and some of the places that you can order from like the pictures that they show, you're like, that looks awesome. And then what you get is not exactly the same as what the picture was. What we ordered a few of those things just to see what we get here. Here's one of the pictures that that was advertised. It was this big plush beanbag. Now, now, if you look closely, probably has some Photoshop in there. I'm not an expert on Photoshop, but she does kind of disappear into the beanbag. So we ordered that and, and this is what we got from that right there. This is what came .
Apparently it didn't come with any stuffing. So instead of a beanbag, it's like a sleeping bag or a nice blanket. We ordered this as well. It's, it's a bow. And that looks beautiful in the picture. You're like, wow, that would look very Christmasy. This is how that bow came right here. It, it's, it's like, it's like an Ikea bow. It's a lot of like, I don't even know what you, there was no instructions. It came exactly like this. It got, got three zip ties, and then, well, there's some tape. So if you have a little bit of creativity, I'm sure there's some way that you can figure that thing out. But the worst of them was actually this picture right here that we ordered. And, and now what I love about this picture is you don't have to know a lot about AI or Photoshop to know that that is clearly not the actual dog that is in that pool. But you look at that and you think, well, he's gonna have to bring that out from backstage. 'cause That's a giant pool. But, but no, it's not. This is what actually came with that right here. There it is. There it is.
That's, that's the doggy bath right there. Now, I'm, I'm looking at that dog in that picture, and I'm looking at this bath and I'm thinking there is some type of a disconnect that happened. And what's interesting with all these items is they're all discontinued. We ordered them like, like six weeks ago, all discontinued, which means you can't send 'em back. That's impressive how that works. But I would say that that what was promised in the picture looks pretty different than what was received. And, and here's, I think sometimes the struggle that people have with Christmas or, or maybe this is the, the struggle that you have with church in general. Maybe this is the problem that you have with Jesus, is that you feel like there are some promises that you heard about. And then as you've gotten closer to church or closer to Jesus or, or closer to Christianity, you, you said, okay, well, this was the promise, but this is my reality.
This is my experience. And those things seem like the promise was greater than what the reality is. When we think about Christmas, there's a, there's a few famous Christmas passages, but one of the themes that we see get repeated over and over and over again is this idea of peace. Look, look what it says in Isaiah chapter six, verse six. It says, in the Old Testament, it's a prophecy about the Messiah looking ahead to Jesus. And it says, for to us, a child is born to us. A son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, the prince of peace. And so when we think of Christmas, what we think naturally of peace associated, because that's, that's the promise of the Messiah. The Messiah would be the prince of peace. He would bring something new into the world.
And we see that in the Christmas story too. Look what it says in Luke chapter two, verse 14. The angels are declaring and they say, glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased. Peace Jesus himself towards the end of his ministry, talks about the peace that he brings. Look what Jesus says in John chapter 14, verse 27. Jesus says, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you not as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And now I want you to notice something. No. Notice the promise that Jesus is leaving us with that peace is a gift. Jesus is saying, my peace I give to you, the gift of Christmas is the person of Jesus. And he's saying, I'm going to give you this gift of peace.
And yet, probably for many people in this room, when you think of what does it mean to have peace in your life, you would say that in your life today, right now, the feeling you have is not peace. And it's maybe a lot of other things, but it's definitely not that. If you look at our culture, I, I think that's true of our culture by and large, that that anxiety is extremely high right now. The CDC, they, they do a national health statistics report every year. And they would estimate that one in every five US adults experienced anxiety within the last two weeks, and not within the whole last year, within the last two weeks. There's a, a famous quote from a, a child psychologist in, in a book from a handful of years ago. And he was looking at teenagers today compared to teenagers from 50 years ago.
And here's what he says. The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. Like, like, that seems crazy. And, and I have no clue if that's actually true or not, but, but he said it, his research said that he believed that it is true. And it, it doesn't take much to, if you look at the challenges of anxiety, there are real challenges that exist with anxiety. Here are some of the common symptoms that are associated with anxiety racing thoughts, worst case scenarios, trouble con trouble concentrating. You have a tight chest or rapid heartbeat or knots in your stomach. You have tense muscles or shoulders, a tense jaw. You can't sleep at night. Or maybe you can fall asleep, but you can't stay asleep. Or, or maybe you wake up worried your emotions have restlessness or you're on edge or you're irritable or you're overwhelmed.
This can lead to a behavior such as avoidance over checking, reassurance, seeking and procrastination. And, and maybe you'd say, well, well, hey, that's not describing me, but it probably describes somebody that, you know, they have estimates right now that between 60 and 90% of hospital visits are connected to or associated with stress. Whew, that's a lot pro probably there's some piece of that that, that you identify with. And so, so here's the, the tension or the challenge on, on Christmas is you see the promise of Jesus saying he's bringing peace. And then you see the reality of our lives around us. And, and it leads to this natural question, how then do I find peace? Well, what does it look like for me to actually experience peace? My my wife hates car washes that there's a car wash that's pretty close by.
And we, we got one of those things, it's funny coming from Texas. We've been here now going on five years, but, but we hardly ever use the car wash there. And you come here and there's car washes everywhere, and you're like, why? And then it snows and you're like, oh, that's, that's why, because it gets very dirty after it snows. And so, so we, we had a relatively new car new to us, and, and she, we got the, the, the little sticker where it's just unlimited car wash, which that sounds great until you're scared of the car wash and then it doesn't work so great. And, and so she doesn't really like driving through it. And so, so typically if I'm there, I, I'm the one that drives through. But, but the very first time you go through, if you've never gone through that kind of a drive through it, it's a little bit stressful because you start to pull up and, and if you, even if you tell a guy, Hey, this is my first time.
I'm not sure what I'm doing. I mean, you got a teenage kid that's like, come on, move the line. Move the line. And so you're pulling up and you gotta aim right in the thing, like you can't be too far to the right or too far to the left. Like you gotta aim right into the thing. And then you put it into neutral, and then this machine just starts to suck you through the void. That is the car wash. And, and we get about halfway through, and every time halfway through, you're kinda looking it around and they got lights, and they got disco party, and they got water, and they got stuff sloshing on your car. And there's a part of you in the back of your mind that thinks, what if this is where it ends right here. Like, somehow I never get out of the car wash, and this is the end of my life.
And that feeling, I, I think rightly describes what anxiety feels like. Like it's an irrational fear. Like, like there's not really a danger. I've I've never heard of somebody dying in the carwash. And yet there's some part of you that you get in there and you start to fear these unreasonable things. Peace, peace would say, God says, Hey, I, I have this gift that I want to give to you. And the question then is, how do we find it? If Jesus came at Christmas to bring peace, how do I find that peace? Peter was one of Jesus's disciples one of the closest Peter to Jesus. What's crazy about Peter is Peter's pretty brash and a lot of times he just says stuff, and a lot of times he just does stuff. And in his letter in First Peter, he is writing to a group of Christians that are persecuted.
So if you wanna talk about a group that probably had some stress in their life, probably had some anxiety in their life, it, it would've been this group that he was writing to. And in first Peter, chapter five, he, he gives us some very practical ways that we can experience the peace of God. He, here's what he says in first Peter chapter five, starting in verse six. He says, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time, he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Be sober minded, be watchful, your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Now, now here's what I love about that verse. It's like, it starts out so kind and compassionate and wonderful, like humble yourself, worship the Lord, cast all your anxieties on God because he loves you.
Like if it's stopped right there, great, great passage, Peter, and then Peter falls that up with, and there's a lion trying to devour you. Like that seems like an odd connection between, Hey, don't worry, you don't need to have anxiety because God loves you, cast your anxiety on him. And then, oh, by the way, there's a lion trying to kill you. Like, those seem like odd thoughts to partner together, but, but that's kind of who Peter was. He, he just says it like it is. And there's this reality that probably you feel it, that this world feels like it's trying to spit you up and turn you out. And, and there is this spiritual element where, where Satan would love nothing more than, than for all of us to be away from God, apart from God, to never experience God's peace. But then Peter also gives us this very clear step of this is how you get God's peace.
And he starts with the phrase of humble yourself. And he's trying to get us to understand that peace starts with surrender. Or to put it a different way, Peter is trying to point out that oftentimes one of the sources of our anxiety is pride. Now, now pride in the first century was actually seen a little bit different than the way we think of it today. Pri pride was not necessarily being boastful or arrogant. That's what we think of as pride. Pride in the first century. The concept was just making your focal point, making your emphasis yourself. And Peter's trying to say that, that when we make the emphasis of us all around us, that my whole life revolves around me, myself, and I, that that's going to naturally lead to some anxiety. And I would, I would say that social media probably has made that way, way worse.
'Cause What does social media do? Social media focuses on me, my likes, my followers. I see what other people are doing in my life is naturally compared to theirs. And, and so Peter's trying to give really practical advice and he's trying to say, Hey, listen, if you want the piece that God's offering, it starts with humility. And one of the things that humility requires is it requires sometimes for us to ask for help. And man, we're bad at asking for help. Like sometimes I'll be working on something that my wife knows how to do and she'll be like, Hey, do you want me to help you with that? And what's my natural response? No, no, I got it. Hey, I'm good. It's even worse now. 'cause I, I've got kids that are getting old enough to, to start to understand things. And I'm still at that age, like I got a 13-year-old, 11-year-old, 7-year-old.
I'm still at that age where my mind can't comprehend that my children would ever be better than me at anything, or that they would understand technology better than me. Like, I'm like, yeah, hey, I'm not, I'm not my grandma. Alright, I'm fine. I don't need your help figuring out how to use the tv. Thank you very much. And yet, there are moments where like, they clearly know how to fix the issue that I'm having and I don't want their help because of pride and humility recognizes, okay, I've got an issue in my life, and am I willing to ask for help? And maybe you're in here today and you've got some issues and some problems. Maybe it's in your marriage. Maybe your marriage is holding on by a thread. And my question would be, have you asked for help? Maybe you've got an addiction that you've been struggling with for a really long time, or, or maybe it's a secret sin that that nobody else knows about that you've been struggling with.
And Paul would say, Hey, one of the ways to find peace in order to to fight that problem would be through humility. And one of the ways that humility exists is in asking for help. And so he says that first we've gotta humble ourselves, we've gotta worship God. And then he takes a next step and he says that we should cast our anxieties on him, on Jesus. That that word cast in the Greek, it means to transfer a burden. It's saying that I'm going to take the weight that I'm carrying. I'm gonna take the fears that I'm carrying. I'm gonna take the anxieties that I'm carrying, and I'm going to transfer those burdens off of me onto God. And then it gives us the why, the engine behind all of it. The the why is because he cares. It, it's interesting when you got young kids and you go on like a long road trip and you get back home, oftentimes you're asleep in the backseat.
And so what you do as a parent is you, you, you like unbuckle and you try and real quietly, like you turn off the do light. 'cause You're like, if we can do this real careful, then they can stay asleep and all just the perfect transfer from the car into the bed. And so, so you, you do your best. And it's, it's hard getting a sleeping kid out of a car. You got the doors and you're trying to be quiet, then you're trying to get inside the door of the house. And, and that gets more complicated if you have more kids. Now, now you're trying to do it multiple times, but then this thing happens where your kids get older and they know that if they look like they're asleep, that dad's gonna carry 'em inside. And so they'll be awake and they'll be making noise and they'll be going crazy.
And then right as we're pulling into our street, I mean, we are 35 seconds from the house, all of a sudden it's like, I'm out. I'm out. Like they got the one eye open looking around and they pretend to be asleep. And sometimes I think my kids think that, that I, I don't realize what they're doing, but, but obviously parents, we, we know, we know what's happening. And yet there's some part of me that, that still likes to carry my kids up. Now, I, I gotta remind you, my my 13-year-old, my 11-year-old, they're like a hundred pounds. Like there's gonna come a day where they're gonna pretend to be asleep. I'm gonna open that door and be like, yeah, no, not happening. And I'm just gonna shake 'em until they wake up. But, but I'm still in that zone where in the back of my mind, I'm like, someday there's gonna be a last time that I get to do this.
And, and I don't know what day that last time will be, but it's not going to be yet. And so I will somehow take their, their raggedy end all body of a hundred pounds, and I will take them and I will carry them up to bed. And there's something about that that I love as a dad. Why? Because it's this, this literal sense of carrying your kids' burdens. And and why do you do that as a parent? 'cause You love your kids. And what what Peter's trying to get us to understand is, is he saying, first we we've gotta humble ourselves to God, then we've got to take our anxieties and and cast them on him. And, and here's the challenge with that verse is, as I get it, the maybe you're walking in here today and you have debilitating anxiety. And, and a Bible verse for you is not gonna make all your anxiety go away.
And I don't want you to hear some false idea that I'm trying to tell you that. But I do think no matter who you are, no matter where you are in this room, whatever your level of anxiety is, that God does want to give us this peace, there is this offering of this peace. And so there's this pathway of wherever I am in life that, that there's a benefit of having this relationship with God. So I humble myself, I I transfer my burdens onto him, off of me. And I do it because He loves me, because I trust, I believe that he cares for me. And I think one of the biggest challenges is simply this. Do I believe that he cares for me? Do I truly believe that God, the creator of the universe stepped out of heaven, Emmanuel God with us, put on human flesh and did it because he loves us?
That when we think of peace, we think of basically, well, no war, no, no struggle, no pain. We, we tend to associate peace with circumstance, but that's not what the Bible's talking about, that word peace in Hebrews the word shalom, it's the picture of wholeness. I, I hate doing puzzles. I think they're, they're, they're terrible. But my, my wife and her family and, and now our kids, they love doing puzzles. And so they'll, they'll set out a puzzle, especially Christmas time. They'll start a puzzle and they'll put it together all Christmas. And unfortunately for them, we also have a dog that loves to eat puzzle pieces, puzzle. And what's crazy about it is, is he knows that he's not allowed to eat puzzle pieces. And so he's very nonchalant about it. Like they'll have it on a coffee table and he'll just go walking by and he'll just snag it like on the way with his tongue.
And it is just gone. It just disappears like that. And, and, and the problem with the puzzle is you could have a handful of puzzle pieces missing, and you don't know it until when, until it's done. Like you get the whole thing together. And then right smack in the middle of the puzzle, there are these three holes. And that, that's the most frustrating feeling in the world. Why? Because it's not complete. Like there is a whole, which means it never got finished. And the Hebrew idea of peace, Shalom is wholeness. It's this idea that you and I, we are born with a hole in our soul. We're born into brokenness because of sin. And Jesus is saying, I want to bring peace. I want to bring wholeness. I I want to be that puzzle. Peace that fixes the problem and the issue that you have.
Peace is the wholeness that God gives us when we are made right with Him through Jesus. And here's the thing about that type of peace, that type of peace holds us steady. No matter what is happening around us, then my circumstances can be busted or broken. But, but if I have the peace that Jesus offers, that doesn't mean I'm always gonna be healthy or wealthy or, or never have challenges. Peter is writing to a group of people that have a lot of challenges, but he says, in spite of those challenges, there is peace that's available to us. It reminds me of a, of a story that I, I heard a few years ago. It was a local story. Colorado Public Radio picked it up. It was a story about a father and a son that this is a picture of Frank and his son Tommy.
This is obviously from a handful of years ago. But Frank loved his son Tommy and, and Tommy. And maybe you've experienced people in your life like this. Tommy, when he, when he got older and was a young adult he struggled with a lot of different addiction. And that addiction, they tried a whole bunch of different things to try to help him. But, but ultimately he kept going back to that addiction. And so there was a season when, when Frank and his wife, they lived in San Diego and their son, they lost contact with and their son through this season of addiction, he had become homeless and was living on the streets. And they knew that he was living on the streets of Denver. And so Frank, one day, he's, he's actually gardening and he just has this epiphany 'cause he loves his son.
He misses his son. He doesn't know what's happening. So he goes into his wife and he says, Hey, I'm, I'm just gonna go there and I'm gonna live on the streets with our son. So that's what he does. He, he connects to a ministry here in Denver that that works with, with homelessness. And he connects with that pastor and says, Hey, I'm trying to find my son. And he kind of points him the right general direction. And Frank finds his son living homeless on the streets of Denver. And he goes up to him and he just gives him a big hug. And his son's not sure what to do with that. And, and other people are asking him, Hey, why are you here? And his answer was simple. His answer was, I'm here because I love my son. And so for that whole week, he, he lived with his son.
He didn't have a bed. He ate whatever his son ate. And he lived where his son lived, and he slept where his son slept. And, and he got dirty and he got gross. And, and he did all of that. Why? Why, why? Because he loved his son. And it is such a perfect picture of what Christmas is all about, Emmanuel God with us, that God looks down from heaven and he sees the brokenness. He he sees the lack of peace in his creation. And he doesn't just shout advice from a distance or from afar. No. Instead, God steps out of heaven into his creation. And he lives in his creation and the brokenness he lives in, the pain and the anxiety and the suffering and the sin he never sends himself, but he lives around it. And he loves on the homeless because he himself was homeless.
He loves on the broken and he loves on the needy. And here's the craziest part. Being homeless wasn't the lowest that Jesus went. No, the cross was the Jesus goes all the way to the cross and dies for your sins and my sins. But the cross isn't the end of the story. The story starts with the manger, but the manger is looking ahead to the cross. But the cross is looking ahead to the empty to that, the real purpose and meaning of Christmas is this, that God didn't shout peace from a distance, but instead he enters into our world. And my my challenge for you today is, is maybe you're in this place and, and you don't know Jesus, you've never experienced the peace that he offers. And I, and I don't want you to falsely believe, well, if I say a prayer and I become a Christian, then, then I have no problems in my life that that's not what the Bible promises.
The Bible does promise though that if we will humble ourselves, ask for help, say, God, I I need help believe that he loved us enough to die on the cross for us, put our faith in our trust in him, that there is a peace that surpasses all understanding. That, and that idea of peace in the Bible is not no problems. That idea of peace is wholeness. That that brokenness that I've been carrying for so long, God wants to fix it. And so in a moment, we're gonna have a beautiful moment in just a second with candles, and it's, it's gonna be an awesome, cool moment. But after service, when we're done, if you're in here and you'd say, I don't know Jesus, but, but I would love to learn more about that piece, we're gonna have some of our staff and pastors right down here, and as we're done, as everybody makes their way out, I would just encourage you after we're done, if you need prayer, if you wanna talk to someone about Jesus, just walk on down.
We'd love to have that conversation. And the, the picture of God, Emmanuel God with us coming out of heaven and stepping into the darkness, is that he is the light. So when it says in John one, four, and five, it says in Him Jesus was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. One of the coolest things about Christmas Eve is that the candlelight moment, and it is beautiful if you just wait a moment, you don't need to try and light your own candle. We'll have some, some ushers that are come down. I'm gonna light their candles and then it will spread throughout the entire room. Create something that's absolutely majestic. But the meaning behind it, the purpose behind it is to recognize that Christmas was God stepping into darkness and bringing a light.
Heavenly Father God, we thank you so much for the beauty of Christmas. God, I pray for anyone in this room that does not know you, that this will be the Christmas that they make that decision and fall after you. God, we give you this time, we give you this service. We pray that you would be glorified. We pray for the peace of Christmas with all the frustration, all the anxiety, all the fears that exist in the room. God, I pray that the peace, the wholeness that only you can offer comes clear. It's the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
