/strive/ : Silence in the Noise

Welcome back to another week here at Making Waves! Today we are continuing into our third part of the /strive/ series. For any of you who may be joining us for the first time in this series, here’s a brief summary. In the first week, we studied the key passage of the 46^th Psalm, in which the poet states, “Be still and know that I am God.” We found that “being still” had been translated in certain circumstances to the phrase “cease striving.” We discussed what that meant and acknowledged that we are a striving people. Last week, we talked about the second part of the phrase in which the poet encourages us to KNOW God. We talked about prayer and about cementing our relationship with God by knowing who He is and saying no to things that would put God lower on our personal totem poles. This week we are going to talk about what naturally happens next in this process of ceasing our striving. But, before we get too deep into that, let’s dive into the Word.

^“35 On that day, when evening had come, he (Jesus) said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷ A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸ But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

-Mark 4:35-41

Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be forever glorified in Your Presence. You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Well, once again this week I wanted to start out by saying that we ARE striving. After another week of intentionally keeping an out for this, I have found that it’s more true than ever. There are so many of us out there who are striving: for more money, better jobs, more friends, more success. This can take over our lives and become something so important to us that we take our eyes off of the ball. This week I noticed our striving in a bit different of a place… this week I noticed it in our music.

These obsessions with success can lead us to developing this lifestyle known as the “American Dream.” If you’re not familiar with the Christian Rock band “Casting Crowns,” then first things first, stop reading this and familiarize yourself. Done? Good. Now, Casting Crowns is the brilliant band that I have followed since I very first fell in love with music. They wrote these songs that hit you so deep in the heart that you couldn’t help but end a song either in tears or with a fire burning in your heart. On their very first album, they recorded this song “American Dream.” It tells this story of a man named Jack and his family. Jack is a successful businessman who drives his fancy BMW and works holidays and stays late on workdays. He sometimes goes in to work on the weekends. Meanwhile, his family is crumbling to pieces and he just keeps telling them that everything will get better in time. He just has to make his castle a little bigger. He has to make his fortune large enough that it will stay standing. But what Jack doesn’t realize, is that he is building it on a pile of sand, and that it’s a windy day. The American Dream that he’s trying to build is actually a nightmare and, in the end, it’s only going to crumble.

It’s shockingly similar to the 70s classic, “Cats in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. I’m sure most of you know the one… The cats in the cradle, and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon, when you coming home dad, I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then. The song tells this heartbreaking story of father and son. The son only wants to spend time with the father, but the father is too busy working. The son idolizes his father and says, “I’m going to be just like him.” Just like his daddy. And then time passes (as it always does) and the dad is old and wants to spend his final years of his life with his son, but the son is now a father who is busy now. And the circle comes around.

We don’t need these songs to remind us: we are busy people. And somehow we find ways to make ourselves busier by the day. I’m not sure how many of you have been actively practicing the message these past few weeks, but if you have been really trying to cease striving then you are probably all experiencing a range of similar things. First off, it isn’t easy. Second, there’s this concept known as the “Jesus high.” Or the “tingly feeling.” Think of that moment that the preacher says something that resonates with you or the pianist hits a note just right and you get that shiver down your spine. Like a flick in the back of the head from the Holy Spirit itself, you just FEEL good. You are ready to take on the world, right? Ten feet tall and invincible. Not even the devil incarnate could knock you off of your high heels. But then Monday rolls around. You learn that the devil is a bit sneaky. Maybe you could’ve taken a blow from then front, but the devil finds a way to attack your back. Or worse yet, he finds a way to make you attack yourself. Like the Road Runner making Wil. E. Coyote punch himself in the face or something along those lines. The next thins that you know, it’s Saturday and you couldn’t feel smaller. You’re beaten to a pulp and you don’t even remember how it happened. It can happen to the best of us.

See, the reality is that we CAN stand against our striving. But it’s what we do NEXT that can cause the whole plan to crumble.

Have any of you ever read any of C.S. Lewis’ works? If you haven’t, take the time to read some of his book summaries and give them a shot. He’s the writer of The Chronicles of Narnia, yes, but he also has written several others literary works of art worth mentioning. Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to see a play based on one of his books known as “The Screwtape Letters.” If you haven’t read this book, spoiler alert, Luke is Leia’s brother. Just kidding. That obviously was written in for the second movie. I digress, this book was written as a bundle of fictional letters sent from an old, experience demon from Hell known as Uncle Screwtape to his young and naïve tempter nephew, Wormwood. Each letter contains advice on how to tempt those pesky human beings. The play became a dramatic reading of the book itself in which Uncle Screwtape dictates to his demon copyist the words of advice that he is giving to his nephew. It’s an intriguing concept because the demon isn’t some kind of gory cartoon character that can be easily fooled by four teenagers and their dog. No, the demon is nefarious and brilliant. He doesn’t use sin to control the humans, he instead uses the humans to cause sin.

The reason that I bring this up is because of what we discussed last week. Like I mentioned earlier, some of you may have left on a spiritual mountaintop. But then once you leave the doors, the devil isn’t going to immediately try and get you to change your mind by coming right out and asking you to do so. Instead, he is going to subtly and carefully try to distract. Like a baby duckling and a loud duck call, the devil just wants to pull you away from your safe place. There is just so much noise in our lives. The noise only gets louder when things are going good for us, spiritually.

So, what do we do? How can we deal with this noise? Clearly the disciples couldn’t handle the noise in our passage we read earlier. Well, just like last week, when in doubt, we turn to Jesus’ example. The whole reason that Jesus came to us in the first place was to show us how to live our lives as Christians. So, what does God do in the old testament and what does Jesus do in the new testament that we can learn from?

First, look to Elijah in the book of 1 Kings. In Chapter 19, Elijah is literally on the run for his life. His people want to kill him, and they’ve already killed others like him before. So what does Elijah do? He looks for God. Elijah looks in the wind, he looks in an earthquake, he looks in the fire, he looks to his cell phone, he tries to find the bottom of the bottle, he tries yoga, he goes to Starbucks every Friday to read, but he doesn’t find God in those at all. But after all of these things, Elijah has probably given up and is sitting in hopeless silence. And then, there He is. God finally comes to him in the silence.

So, what’s our first step in dealing with the noise? Do we frantically try to find something to fill that hole in our lives, or do we stop? Like Elijah learned the hard way, we have to stop dead in our tracks and then in that moment of total silence God will show up. Once we stop trying so hard to talk over God and medicate ourselves by shoving the square brick into the round hole, then we finally let God have a turn in our lives.

Okay, so we’ve stopped where we are. What now? The noises are still attacking us. We’re on board the boat during a crazy hurricane and, as far as we know, this could be the last day we get to be alive. What does Jesus do in this situation? Guys and girls, this is LITERALLY (I don’t sue this word often, so enjoy it) one of my favorite Jesus moments ever. Jesus is straight up snoozing. He is busy catching z’s while the disciples are pulling a classic George Clooney from “The Perfect Storm.” Jesus doesn’t even let the storm bother Him in the slightest. He just gets rudely awakened and brushes the sleepies from His eyes and calms the dang storm. Wow. I get spooked whenever I even hear the Doppler radar sound on the news pop on top of American Ninja Warrior. And Jesus, in the midst of a crazy storm, just lays His little head down for a quick wink. What is He trying to show us here? He is trying to say to us that we need to tune out the distractions. We need to try to be like Jesus and not let those things even phase us. The power of this world doesn’t hold a candle to the power of God.

Finally, we’ve stopped, we’ve tuned out the noise, and now what? Just like in both of these stories, we listen. We stay calm and we hear God. We have finally stopped our panicking, we’ve ignored the pestering of the world and then we are left with the greatest gift: God.

I pray that you will try to do these things as you go throughout your week. And I thank you for joining for another week as we tackle the issue of trying to cease our striving of these worldly endeavors. Instead, let us join together and try to reach for something greater.