There’s Life in You Yet - Pastor Kristin Mockler Young

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naim, and you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected. [00:00:10] Speaker B: So check out our website. [00:00:11] Speaker A: There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content. If this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it, so share this podcast you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity, and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you. Enjoy. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How y' all doing this morning? Good. Listen, you're allowed to interact with me here. Okay. If I ask you a question, you can say. If something. If something hits you, you're like, amen. Say that, sister. Whatever. It feels natural and right. Feel free. You are welcome to join in and participate. Okay? Thank you. See, Q knows exactly that. Thank you. Well done. Well done. My name is Pastor Kristen, and I am one of the pastors here. And yes, we are in a series called. You probably missed this, because if you actually go through and read the Bible, every now and then, you come across a story that you're like, hold on. What? I did not know this was in here. No one ever taught me this. Why did we never hear about these stories? So that's what we're gonna be looking at for the summer. So a couple weeks ago, Pastor Mike kicked it off by talking to us about Ananias and Sapphira and letting us know what happened, that they both just happened to fall down dead pretty much right there at the same time. Last week, Pastor Naim gave us a key sign that we need to look for in the coming of the end times. And today we're gonna talk about what happens when you fall asleep at the wrong place and the wrong time. I have to tell you, honestly, I have been waiting years to figure out how to make a sermon out of this story, because the first time I read it, I laughed so hard. I was like, God, what are you doing? This is so weird. But also, luckily for us, it is more relatable than maybe it appears at first glance. So in our house, my husband Peter's here. Somewhere in our house, at the end of the day, after we put our kids to bed and we've kind of decompressed, and we've walked through our day and debriefed on everything. We like to unwind by watching TV together. And we're one of those people that we have certain shows that we watch together. And so sometimes it takes us a long time to get through a series, because not only do we have to coordinate our schedules, but also one of us always falls asleep. And I'm not naming names, but if you ask both of us to recap the latest season of the Bear, only Peter will be able to tell you what happened. I cannot help it. Anybody else fall asleep? The couch is just so comfy, right? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Surely this has happened to you before. Even if it's not on the couch when you're watching tv, you've fallen asleep. Maybe doing something important, like you didn't mean to, but it just kind of happened. Maybe you've been trying to be a really good Christian, and you, like, wake up in the morning and you're reading your Bible and you have your quiet time, and the next thing you know, you're waking up again. Cause you didn't realize you kind of dozed off. Or maybe you've been praying, like, with other people, and all of a sudden it was an amen, and you were like, amen. I was really in that one. I was really digging deep for that. Maybe in a meeting, in a phone call, Maybe you've even fallen asleep in church. Not here. Not you guys. Obviously you would never. When I speak other places. But sometimes it happens. And this is what happens to our guy Eutychus in the story that we're gonna look at today in Acts 20. So for context, Paul has been going all over Greece, and he's planting churches, and he's encouraging the other disciples who are also going out and spreading the good news of Jesus. And before leaving this stop that he's at right now, he's like, okay, everybody, come in. Come gonna have church. We're gonna do this one more time. And the way they did their services back then was they did not leave and go to a temple or a tabernacle, but they met in people's homes. And the structure of the home buildings there was that the first and second floors were for animal quarters and living spaces. And then upstairs on the top floor, they would have an upper room. It was a wide room with the most space to accommodate the most people. And if you're like, upper room, I've heard of this before, right? The most famous upper room scene is probably right before Jesus Betrayal. When he gathers all of his disciples and they do the Last Supper. They were meeting in one of these upper rooms in a home. So Paul knows that he's about to leave the next morning to go to the next city. And he's like, all right, I gotta give them the download. And he starts preaching. And in the moment that he's preaching, he decides, I'm gonna keep these people here until midnight. Which is super rude, by the way. Right? If I RSVP to your party and then you tell me how late it's gonna be, like, I hope y' all brought snacks. We're gonna be here till midnight. Can you imagine? No. No. Thank you, Paul. So we're gonna pick it up in verse nine, where we're right there in the room where Paul has already been preaching for hours. It says a young man named Eutychus was sitting in a what? Open window. Foreshadowing. As Paul went on and on. Eutychus fell sound asleep and toppled out the third story window. When they picked him up, he was dead. Which is one way to get out of a really long sermon. Okay, then it goes on. Paul went down, stretched himself on him and hugged him hard. No more crying, he said. There's life in him yet. No more crying. Who is Paul talking to? He's not talking to Eutychus because he's dead on the sidewalk. So Paul must have been talking to the other people that were also there. The people that were still upstairs in the window. Like, is he okay? What just happened? Paul was actually talking to the church people who assumed that his fall meant that he had gone too far. Maybe that he lost his salvation when he fell. But Paul said, there is life in him yet. And Eutychus came back to life. Yay. Paul did a miracle. He did it. That's not even the best part of the story. Here's the part that cracks me up every single time. It says, then Paul got up and served the Master's Supper. They took communion and went on telling stories of the faith until dawn. Do you get that? My guy said, hang on, hang on. I gotta handle a thing right here. But now we're gonna go back to it, and we're just gonna keep going until morning. Picture it. I walk off the stage. I go help somebody in the parking lot. I come right back, okay, where was I? We're just gonna keep going until morning. Like, what a crazy, crazy thing to happen. And I have really been thinking about this for a long time. And I figured out, I think I know why everybody seemed to be okay with it. Biblical scholars date this time where Paul was in this city where Eutychus, you know, fell out the window at, like, 55 to 57 AD. Jesus had only died in, like, 30 or 33 AD. So even though those timelines go backwards and are confusing, it's only about 25 years since Jesus has died. So when you think about it that way, it kind of makes sense that Paul would have to go on for so long. Number one, news traveled slowly. There was no news channel, there was no radio, There was no social media. So the only way the news was going to travel was by mouth or by foot and how quickly people could go to the next town to share the information. Also, many marginalized people were still not allowed to be in these church services or in the temples at the time. So there were people in the room who were probably hearing about Jesus for the first time. And I don't know if you remember the first time that you heard about Jesus, where you were or what that experience was like, but I feel like if I was sitting there and was hearing about some guy who came back to life with something that was going to change my life and some other wacko falls out the window, I am going to want to make sure he's okay, but I am going to also know what happens at the end of that story. So they stayed and they listened all night. And then the story wraps up and it tells us in the morning, they left Paul going one way, the congregation another, leading the boy off alive. And what's this next phrase? Full of life themselves. Full of life themselves. So the moral of the story is, if you fall asleep in church, make sure you pick the right seat in the back. In the back, yes. No, this is not one of those stories where there's, like, all kinds of spiritual elements and things to unpack in layers here. Sometimes things happen just because they happen. Sometimes stories are stories just because they're stories. And, yes, God does intervene and supernaturally come in to orchestrate things in our lives sometimes. But also sometimes you sneeze because you have allergies. Do you know what I mean? Like, not every single thing. And so this is one of those stories where I'm not gonna tell you that God made Eutychus fall out the window, but I do think that it's a reminder for us that if we don't get the rest that we need, we are also going to fall asleep at the wrong place. And the wrong time. And it matters right now, especially because many of us are experiencing a communal exhaustion from trying so hard to do good. See, Eutychus wasn't doing anything wrong. He wasn't out at the club, the clerb. Excuse me. He wasn't gallivanting around with the wrong people. He was in church. He was trying to do the right thing. He was trying to learn about Jesus. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. But just because you're tired for Jesus doesn't make it holy. That is not something that I was taught when I entered ministry, but it is something that I got to learn the hard way. I posted on my social media this week. It was a wild week to be a pastor at Mosaic specifically. And I posted that pastoring is the weirdest and hardest and best thing I have ever done, because I get the privilege of caring for you guys. And part of caring for you is carrying your burdens. And there are days that you do it for me and you do it for each other. And that's part of what makes Mosaic such a special, amazing place. But it's an honor for me to pray with you and your highs and your lows and to get to be part of the story that God is writing in your life. And I wouldn't change it for anything. And also, sometimes it wears me out. Sometimes I am so just exhausted. And you don't have to be in ministry to understand this. I bet you can relate. You've probably been there. Maybe you had a hard day at work or you're not feeling well and you get a text from a friend, so you're like, all right, I'm gonna do what I can to help this person out. Maybe later in your day, you open your phone to scroll because you just need a break from things. And instead, as you actually find more and more news headlines that you think surely must be satire, but somehow are actually describing the real world that we live in. And paired with those headlines are other people giving you calls to action to call your senators and make good trouble and sign petitions. And so you make a mental note to do those good things, too. And then you get home, and maybe someone that you live with also had a hard day and needs to process, and so they just emotionally and verbally erupt on you like a volcano. So you bring in all the empathy and compassion that you have left to try to listen and be there for them. Or maybe you have a kid that needs help with emotional regulation because they had their feelings hurt and they don't yet have the words or the strategies to process. You probably even get to a certain point where you start to pray about it and you're like, whoo, God, give me the words to say, help me to know what my next step is. Because God, isn't there some kind of Bible verse about, you said you wouldn't give me more than I could handle, and you're trying to do the right thing. Meanwhile, your phone pings and there's another need. And by the time you get to the end of the day, it's not your fault that you fall asleep on the couch when you're watching tv. Anybody understand what I'm talking about? Okay, thank you. It's also deeper than that. This is the kind of exhaustion that a nap is not going to fix. Because it is not just physical, but it is spiritual. Spiritual exhaustion is what you feel deep down. Because we live in a world that feels broken. You might be experiencing spiritual exhaustion if you're trying to do too much on your own. You're operating out of obligation instead of desire. If you find yourself striving and working for a place or for God's love, if you're overlooking his goodness in your life right now because you're overwhelmed by just making it through to or if the spiritual practices that used to bring you joy or peace now just feel like a task that you need to check off and move on from, you are likely experiencing spiritual exhaustion if you're afraid to rest because it's when you pause that the weariness hits. In Matthew, Jesus was talking to a group of religious leaders who were actually exhausting their people by teaching them that the only way to please God was by performing and proving their righteousness. And then he stops them. Jesus stops them and he says, hey, hey, hey, hey. Aren't you tired? Aren't you worn out, burnt out on this religion? Come to me, get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me, work with me, watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and what's that word? Lightly. See, Jesus wants to do a trade with us. No take backs. He wants to do a trade where we give him all of the things that make us tired. We give him all of the things that exhaust us. And he shows us how to live lightly out from under the weight of the world. That's the Only way that we can then begin to find rest, real rest, in his unforced rhythms of grace. And it's not a one size fits all. You're like, excellent. Tell me what to do. How do we do it? But using those very words of Jesus, I've got four steps for you, four different ways that you can find rest this week. And the first one is to get away. You have to get away from everything that needs you to do something. Everything that needs you to fix it or improve it or care about it or even fight for it. I mean, you need to physically get away from it and go somewhere else. No matter what season of your life that you're in. Go for a drive, go for a walk. Find a place where no one knows who you are so they can't actually then ask anything of you. Get away with God and ground yourself in his presence so that you can be reminded of who he is. Another way that you can get away is maybe by saying no to something that you would normally say yes to only out of obligation. Even if it's a good thing, even if it's for God, if you're entering into it in obligation instead of joy, you might have to get away from it for a time. But that doesn't mean quitting. Getting away and taking a break does not mean that we quit. Maybe it means that we shake up our rhythms or the things that we're doing. If you are feeling obligated to read your Bible, try a different translation or put it away altogether. Find an audio app that will read it to you while you're on your walk or while you're getting ready in the morning, shake it up and do things differently. If you're showing up to volunteer at Mosaic, like, a little bit later and a little bit later and a little bit later. Maybe you need to take a break. Maybe. Maybe you need to switch teams. Maybe that's it. If you've just kind of fallen into a routine and you need to shake it up and join, like, I don't know. M kids, where we're always looking for volunteers. Okay, start a rhythm of Sabbath. Some of you need to go into a Sabbath. That is a word that scares me. I hate it. I'm just gonna be honest with you because I think of them like, okay, I have to sit still and do nothing for the day, and then that makes me more stressed out than I was before I even thought about having a Sabbath. That's not what it means. You can take a whole day. You can take a half a day. You can start with an hour. And basically you're just gonna fast and from something that feels like work. And maybe it's activities, maybe it's your phone, maybe it's social media. Whatever it is for you, can you put that into your routine of your week? Because God is speaking life into you right now, but you might not be able to hear him over all of the other things that are going on. The second thing that Jesus says is to take a real rest. Have you ever taken a vacation with kids? Have you ever needed a vacation from your vacation? Right? That's because you've not taken a vacation with kids. You took a family trip is what you did. And there's a very big difference, right, Cass? Very big difference. Because just because something sounds like it should be restful doesn't mean it is. That's what we have to pay attention to. We need to give ourselves time to actually recover a real rest. And sleeping at night isn't always enough. I actually think that rest is a lot more encompassing than sleep. Some of you can't sleep because of the emotion that is churning inside of you all of the time, because you haven't allowed yourself to stop and to feel those things you might need to lament, grieve, mourn, process, and let the Holy Spirit meet you in your discomfort. Because it's the only way that you are going to find peace or healing. If you don't rest in that, you're just going to continue perpetuating the same sense and the same feelings of anxiousness or anger or being on edge. And rest doesn't have to equate to stillness. My family went to Pastor Mike's block party a couple days ago, and we were out there wake surfing and tubing and doing all kinds of things that were physically exhausting on our bodies. And I woke up the next morning feeling more spiritually refreshed than I had in months. So hear me. Rest does not mean that you have to sit still. What do you need? What will help you breathe? The lake? Being outside. Working out. Having coffee with a friend. Doing something that makes you laugh because it's just silly and ridiculous. Getting lost in a book. Maybe you need to create a playlist so that you can trick your brain to slow down and be reminded of who God is and why you're doing all of the things that you're doing to begin with. Where can you start a rhythm of rest? Because you don't have to earn your rest. It's given as part of a life with Jesus. But we do have to make the time for it and choose to take it. Third thing, work with Jesus. Not work for Jesus. Not work ahead of Jesus. Work with Jesus. I need all of my advocates and empaths to lock in right now. I'm talking to those of you who are this close to giving up on taking the gospel seriously. Because it feels like the harder you work to live it out, the more disappointed you become with the result. You have that heart burden because God gave it to you, because you allowed God to open your eyes and see the darkness in this world so that you can partner with him to bring his light and his spirit into it. And it is hard and it is exhausting and it is important work. When we are trying to bring hope into despair and peace into division and joy, into fear and freedom, into oppression and justice, to inequality and inclusion, to. To the stranger. It's not enough anymore for us to just love and comfort our neighbors because now we also have to push back the people who are trying to harm them. It is exhausting trying to be a Christian and do the right thing right now. But we cannot allow our exhaustion to be an excuse to stop. As followers of Jesus, it is our responsibility to hold each other accountable to the words of Jesus and do what we can to bring heaven to earth for all people. But we can't let our convictions be the only thing that fuels us. And we have to make sure that they're not pushing us ahead of what Jesus is actually doing. Because what happens is that puts us in the position of being the Savior, where only Jesus belongs. And then we begin to falsely believe that the outcome is on us alone. Jesus says, walk with me, work with me. So maybe the rhythm that you need to start is including God in your work, even your holy good work, you can pray and ask him, what do you want me to carry? And what am I carrying that you want me to put down? God, what burden is for me that you want me to pick up, that you need me to step into with you? Where do you need me to work with you in the world? And what burden actually isn't for me, but I just keep holding onto anyway. Even in the face of injustice, Jesus pace was much slower than many of ours. He was interruptible, he had margin and he didn't move until God spoke. We will persist in doing the good work God has put before us and even find rest in it only when we work with him. Lastly, Jesus says to live lightly. Live lightly. That means whatever you're experiencing right now, and I do mean right this Very second, I want you to name it and hold it in your brain. If talking about rest is not bringing you peace, but if talking about rest is instead bringing you guilt or frustration or overwhelm with the thought of how you're going to do rest when you already can't do everything else that you're meant to do, I want you to hold onto that thought and then we are going to take a deep breath together because I want you to practice something that you can do at any point in your day, which is taking those thoughts captive that are not of Jesus, that God does not want you to hold onto, so that you can take a breath and then let them go. So we're going to practice name that thing, and everybody take a deep breath and let it out and let that thing, that thought, that feeling, that emotion, let it go as well. Once you start to do this a couple of times, you should feel physically different in your body. You should start to feel a lightness. In John 10:10, Jesus said, It's a thief's purpose. It's the enemy's purpose to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. Jesus wants you to have a satisfying life. Not one that you have to suffer through. Not one that you get to enjoy once your kids are out of the house, or once you retire, or once you find that right person, or once you get the right job. A life that he wants you to be satisfied in right now. You don't have to work so hard to earn your rest. You don't have to know enough about God and the Bible and Scripture and what it means to be a good Christian in order to experience God's peace. You don't have to come up with the right plan or Excel spreadsheet to even know how you're going to do it. You just have to trust that God is in you and with you. And that if you are awake today, whether or not you fell out of a window, if you are awake today, right now, it's because God has something that he wants you to see and there is goodness that he wants you to experience. Do you remember what Paul said when Eutychus fell out of the window? When it seemed like he would never recover from his exhaustion? He said, there is life in him yet. And it wasn't just for Eutychus. If you remember the last line of that story, all of the other people who were surely just as tired as he was also walked away full of life themselves. Rest can bring life to not only you but also to the people around you. And it didn't happen for them because all of a sudden, their burdens were gone. It didn't happen for them because Paul gave them a vacation. He didn't even let them go home early. He kept them there. But maybe as they listened and they heard Paul talk about what it means to live with Jesus, they accepted that he wants to help us recover our lives as we live them. Now, in just a couple of moments, we have the honor of getting to baptize Rue and Emily. And these are, yes, it's exciting. And clap for that. These are not people who have lived perfect lives. These are not people who have even lived easy lives. These are not people who have more checklists items checked off on their spiritual righteousness list than we do. But these are people who are choosing to be baptized because they realize that living with Jesus has more peace and freedom and hope and grace than living a life of trying to do it all in their own strength. And so this could be a turning point for you, too, where you say, you know what? I'm tired. I don't wanna keep doing this on my own. I can't keep living under the weight and the need and the expectations and the burdens of other people, because I am not going to make it. If that's you, let me say again, you were not meant to live that way. You are not meant to live under the weight of all of those things. And you can decide today to trade the exhaustion and doing it all on your own strength for a better way forward with Jesus, where he says, hey, guess what? Here is my Holy Spirit. You can have it. Here is my Holy Spirit for you that is going to go with you and be with you so that you can rely on me every step of the way. And if that's you, as Qu' Nisha mentioned earlier, we have clothes and everything that you would need to get baptized today. All you have to do during this next song in a couple minutes is walk over to Pastor Mike, who's standing there in the corner, and he will get you all set up so that we can help you take this step into submission, of letting go, of trying to do and control everything. You know that passage in Matthew where Jesus was talking about rest? In other translations, it says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Light. You know that word has two meanings, right? The word light. What if, when you think about your burdens this week, light didn't refer to weight but to illumination? What if light actually referred to the light? Of God that we as Christians carry around inside of us? What if the only burden that you were ever meant to carry was that light, the presence of God that we get to bring in to dark spaces? And I know it's hard to find your light sometimes. Cause you're like, my light is dim. It has been snuffed out. It's hiding under a bushel. It's still there. Your light is still very much there. But if it feels dim, it's just because it's been buried under all of the things that have been weighing you down. What can you do this week to find rest for your soul so that you can continue to carry a burden of light, to push back the darkness in a way that refreshes instead of exhausts you? Will you stand with me so I can pray for Holy Spirit to reveal your next step for you? God, we thank you for who you are. Lord, we thank you that even as we breathe in our physical bodies, God, we can find spiritual rest. God, because you created and designed us body, mind, heart, soul, all to work together so we know that you care about all of it. You are with us in all of it. God, I pray for the person right now who's feeling maybe a heightened our increased heart rate. God butterflies in their stomach, Lord, a thought in their mind maybe about getting baptized. God, that is just holding onto them. Lord, we pray for the courage to step forward and go get baptized today, if that's what you're calling them to do. God and for the rest of us, would you show us the places that we're tired? God, would you help us to see which of the four steps really is for us today? God, show us the good work that you have before us so that we can partner with you in it and take the time to rest so that we can continue doing what it is you have for us in this world as we don't come in and go to church on a Sunday, but God, like Paul and the others, Lord, that we would go out and be the church in the world, rested and rejuvenated, relying on your spirit, bringing your light into every dark corner that we see. In Jesus name, Amen. Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.