LOOKING FOR WAYS TO RENEW YOUR HOPE?
In this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, we are in part 3 of our Renew series.
Today we walk through the days after Jesus’s death and how we can deal with grief, fear, and doubt in our own lives. If you are feeling distant from God and that there are more questions than answers, then this episode is for you. Let’s go!
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And here’s the three points I want, I wanna take us through today, that you may be stuck on right now, your pursuit to become what God’s created you to be, your pursuit to, to get closer to God, your pursuit to live with peace and passion and purpose. Like we talk about here on the podcast all the time, you may be stuck in one of three areas, grief, fear, or doubt. We’re gonna walk through these three steps today real quick through, through three parts of the story and see if we can’t find, uh, not this information, but I wanna encourage you to dig in until you find the encounter you need to meet you in this place
Created on purpose and for purpose.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast. Darly, wanna hear your host, chilling to the new studio. Stoked to be back with you guys this week. And I just wanna say a big thank you to start off with to everyone. Uh, we ask you to get on, uh, the YouTube channel, start adding some subscriptions to it. And I just found out from Darren Cooper, our producer, that we just passed f o like over 500 and like 90,000 Subscri. Oh no, sorry, an adjustment. It’s 590, I’m sorry, not thousand. It’s just small. You, I told you guys Phil Math twice in college. I’m not sure how I missed all the hundreds of thousands of their, but seriously, uh, uh, I’m not, uh, I’m poking fun at us, but not really. But saying thanks to you, uh, what we did, it’s, it’s a, it’s a big thing.
Like 590 some people, that’s not a small number in my opinion. And I just wanna welcome, uh, those that are brand new to the YouTube channel and listen little by little, right? We’re like the little engine that could, we’re gonna keep going someday. We’ll have 590,000 subscribers. Guy, I’m just putting it out there into the universe. God heard me. You heard me? Boom. It’s happening. Uh, but stoked to have you back. Uh, if you listen on Spotify, apple Podcast, whatever, if you’re just straight audio, no problem at all. Uh, we just love that you’re a part of the podcast community. And, uh, we’re in the series called Renew. And looking at, uh, how do we renew ourselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally, how do we step into becoming who God’s creator is? To be in that process is a constant state of renewal. Week one, we talked about the concept of renewal.
Last week of the second week of this series, we talked about, uh, replacing, okay? Uh, love that episode. We’ve gotten cool feedback from you guys on it. And, uh, if you haven’t checked it out, go check it out. Kind of a vulnerable episode for me, right? But I’m gonna be real. I want you to be real. I’m gonna be real with you. And this week we’re going supernatural, okay? We’re going supernatural. This week we’re gonna talk about, this is the process, right? We’re we, we gotta get a vision for the renewal, then we need to begin to replace some things. And what we do is then we set ourselves up for resurrection. Now, I’m not going back and, and, and pulling back from, from the book, right? My book, right? Death of a Dream, resurrecting Purpose in Life doesn’t go as planned. That is a decent plug.
If you haven’t got the book, go ahead and get it right now. Amazon, wherever you get your online books. But, um, it’s not about the death of dream rep necessarily, but it’s about the reality that, that is what we literally need. And, uh, let’s unpack that, uh, today. I hope you enjoy this episode. And I’m gonna tell you guys a story to start off today that I don’t know if I’ve shared with you before. Uh, but it, it’s, I always say this, like I may have told the story before, but it’s my story so I gotta tell it. But it makes the point of this is when something or someone is missing, okay? Uh, everything changes. Everything changes. And the concept I wanna build the story around is this, and we’re gonna talk about it throughout this whole podcast, is information rarely provides hope, right?
Information rarely provides hope. There’s our baseline. We’re setting up the, uh, the plot line here. Here’s the story. So many years ago, it was a spring, uh, season, kinda like it is now. And um, my oldest son, Cole, he needed a new bike, right? He was kind of graduating from the little kid bike to like a real bike. So we said, dad, we’re gonna get a bike. Promise him we’re gonna get a bike. So it’s a Saturday, we’re going to get the bike and uh, doing some Saturday stuff, you know, like you do yard work, whatever. And uh, then it’s time to go get the bike. So at our old house, we actually had a hot tub, which I loved. I love hot tubs. I wish I still had one. So I was out putting the chemicals in the hot tub, doing all that, doing some yard work course’s, gonna get the bike, yes, let’s go get the bike.
So we jump in the car, put the car in reverse, start backing outta the garage, and my wife pops out of the house and I can tell on her face, right that there’s a problem. And my youngest son’s name knocks at this point, knocks is somewhere younger than two. Okay? So he is little and um, I think he might be about 18 months, something like that. And she pops out from the door in the garage and he says, where’s knocks? And the panic type of sound in her voice makes me know, like, okay, we’ve got a situation here. And I’m, you know, trying to defer, you know, as a husband how this works. If you’re not a husband, I’m gonna just let you into what you need to do as a husband. If you’re husband, you’re gonna get this. If you’re a wife, don’t listen to this part cause I don’t want you to hear our secrets or what we do, right?
But there’s times when your wife says something in a panic type of way, and potentially you’re responsible for whatever’s causing the panic, right? You, it’s key that your response to that, you choose a tone and a pace at which you answer the question mixed with facial expression that tries to distance you as far as you can from being responsible for whatever has caused her stress, right? So she says, where’s Knox? And I go, I, I don’t know. Last time I saw him, he was inside. Uh, she’s like, well, he is not in here. And I’m like, oh my gosh, he’s gotta be in there somewhere. Like, you don’t lose a kid, right? So I put the car in park and I get out and my first little panic moment hits me because I’m like, wait a second, I just backed up the car. A good two, three feet, right?
Panicked, number one, check underneath the car. He’s not their PR guy. Go inside and we scour the whole house, we’re screaming for him, knocks, knocks, knocks, can’t find him anywhere. And then it’s like, let’s check upstairs, downstairs, check the basement. We do all of that. Literally knocks, says nowhere to be found. Okay? Then Julie asked me the next terrifying question. She’s like, did you close the cover on the hot tub? And I knew I hadn’t. So I run outside, look in the hot tub. Praise God, he’s not in the hot tub. That had been really bad. So now we’ve exhausted all the options. He’s not upstairs, he’s not downstairs, he’s not in the basement, he’s not in the hot tub, he’s not under the car. But where is this 18 month old kid, right? He’s missing. So we run outside, I run down one side of the street, I send my oldest son cold down the other side of the street.
I’m like, go scream his name. Go check the retention pond down there. I’m gonna go check the one down here. So we’re screaming his name, we’re running, can’t find him anywhere. He’s not in that pond, he’s not in that pound. So we keep avoiding massive tragedy. But it’s during this time, right? Where I realize like you’ve ever been one of those moments when you realize you are living moments of a story that like terrible stories are made of, right? You realize like, okay, some of those terrible stories I hear on the news, these were the moments, right? Prior to it being a tragic life altering story. So now we’re just running through the neighborhood screaming his name. Can’t find him anywhere. And here’s what I want you to know here. Here’s where we come back to the point is, if someone had walked up to me on the side of the street and said, Hey, I got some information for you, Daron.
I saw Knox. Would I a have gone? No problem. You know what? Let’s get in the car, head to target. Let’s get the bike. Walmart, wherever we went, I’ve got some information that someone has seen Knox. Like, would that have brought transformation to my nerves? My, like, would I have been okay moving on and have been like, I have all the hope I need cuz someone gave me some information that they had experienced it. No, absolutely not. That wouldn’t have happened. Why? Because I don’t need rumors and I don’t need information about my son. I need an encounter, right? I need to see him, I need to hug him. I need to know that he’s alive. So we’re running around and I hear a voice from a couple yards away screaming. We found him. We found him. Now, that did bring a little hope, okay?
But I didn’t stop then either, right? In fact, I picked up the pace of the search and began running towards the voice. Get around the corner of my house. And lo and behold, this entire time my 18 month old son is playing with the rocks in my neighbor’s, uh, fire pit. He’s having a blast. He’s just taking the rocks out and throwing them for him. It wasn’t a big deal. He wasn’t lost, right? He was this next door for us. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my parenting up into that point. And here’s the thing, like I said, when I heard someone said we found him, it did bring a little bit of hope, but it didn’t stop the search. I ran there, scooped up my son, gave him a huge hug. My wife’s crying, I’m crying. He’s okay. And here’s the deal.
For you and me, for you and me, there may be really crucial areas of our faith, very crucial areas of relationships of our pursuit for purpose. That right now we’re not finding hope in. Because what we’ve allowed ourself to do is stay in a place of information. We’re living our life off of rumors and we can’t do that. And specifically in our relationship with God, the reality is this is information really provides hope, but relationship does question why, right? We gotta ask questions about our questions, really dig into what’s going on. And we need to ask why, because it’s actually in the answer to why, right? It’s in the, because that we find the plot we need. I love this quote by em, foster, uh, Forster. He says this, the plot is found in the, because the plot is found in the because. So there may be right now for your life, it feels a, there, the, the plot seems like it’s come off the rails.
You’re confused. You’re like, I’m not sure what’s going on in life. And here’s here could be why, because you’ve lost it. Because right in, in this story about Knox, right? The reason that the information, right, didn’t fix the situation, is because I needed an encounter with him. Information rarely provides what informa what information really provides, what relationship needs to, because you and I are created to be relational beings. We’re created in the image of God, who God himself is in a relationship. And so for you and I, the deepest part of our heart, soul, mind, street cannot be quenched, cannot be soothed, cannot be transformed by information. Because you’re not created for information, you’re created for relationship.
And that’s key, right? Because I think many of us, maybe if we’ve grown up in religious, you know, environments is maybe we’re told or maybe even we expect that if I get all the right information, all my doubts, all my fears, right? All my grief will go away once I get all the right information. Here’s what I wanna tell you, it won’t because you weren’t created in four information. You were created by and for relationship. And as we look at the Easter story, right, that’s where we’re gonna actually dig in here. We have three points. I wanna walk us quickly through three points that, uh, of places that we can get stuck. And what’s interesting about the Easter story is this is what happens in the east on Easter Sunday, is that people had interactions with information that did not actually fix their problem. Their problem wasn’t fixed until they had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus.
And here’s the three points I want, I wanna take us through today, that you may be stuck on right now, your pursuit to become what God’s created you to be, your pursuit to, to get closer to God, your pursuit to live with peace and passion and purpose. Like we talk about here on the podcast all the time, you may be stuck in one of three areas, grief, fear, or doubt. We’re gonna walk through these three steps today real quick through, through three parts of the story and see if we can’t find, uh, not this information, but I wanna encourage you to dig in until you find the encounter you need to meet you in this place. Okay? Sound like a plan. Let’s jump in once again. Wanna encourage you. If you got questions, you got prayer requests, always you can reach out to me, uh, and our team, right?
You can just email me directly, Daron d a r o n, daron@blackbirdmission.com. You can always send me a text message at 317 -550-5070. Or you can reach out on all the socials cause we’re out there. Just search my name. The first one we wanna dig into is the weight of grief, right? And that’s the story of Mary, uh, Magdalene at at the tomb. We jump into John chapter 20. This is where all these stories are. And it says early on the first day of the week, so it’s Sunday, right? While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the teen tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. Okay? So she runs to Simon Peter and the other disciple who was John that was there, right? The one that Jesus loved. And she says, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they’ve put him.
So Mary gets there, Jesus has been talking about death and resurrection the whole time, but they get there and she knows she just watched him die on Friday. Now here she is, the first person to the tomb. And the information that she receives, right, is that he’s missing, that the tomb is empty. And what’s interesting is that, that her immediate assumption isn’t he’s risen from the dead. Praise God. Let’s go. He’s risen. He’s risen indeed, right? High fives for everybody. Let’s go get some ham. That’s not what happens in this situation, right? She goes to Peter and she’s like, they stole him. And here’s a quote that I think is interesting from Pastor Tyler Stanton, uh, Staton from his book, searching for Enough phenomenal book. There’s a little resource extra for, he says this, life is more disappointing than hopeful. So the safest way to live is to never get your hopes up.
That’s a reality for a lot of us. Like the longer you live, you, you realize like there, there’s a lot of disappointments in life, right? Like I, I I wanted my kids to do this. Little disappointed. I thought my marriage after, you know, 12, 15, 10 months, years, whatever would be here. It’s not right. I, I, I thought it would be great to have a relationship like this with my mom or dad, but I don’t like, I watched the news for 30 seconds in what I am. What am I disappointed? My finances. I was hoping that you know how to get this job and we can go through every sphere of life. What happens is life becomes disappointing. So that the safest way then to move through life is allow grief and disappointment to steal your hope. And the tough thing, uh, about grief and the tough thing about losing hope, right?
Is that often it begins to blind us when we’re in a place of grief, okay? We often begin first to lose hope. And when we begin to blind ourself to hope, the next thing to follow is faith. And then the last thing to lose is love this story. Discontinues, marries there, right? And, and, and what’s interesting, she stands outside the tomb. Verse 11, right? She’s crying, she’s got this grief, it’s blinding her from what’s really going on around her. And it says, and as she wep, she’d been over to look in the tomb and she saw two angels and white see to where Jesus’s body had been, one at the head and one at the foot. They ask her woman, why are you crying? Like, what’s going on with this grief Mary? Like they know what’s going on and they’re about to give her some really great information.
Here’s the great information. She says, they have taken my Lord away. She said, and I don’t know where they’ve put at this. She turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not recognize it was Jesus, right? She has this interaction with divine, or not divine, but with angelic beings, right? So she sees angels and even the encounter with the angels, even with the information that, hey, he’s not here. This doesn’t fix the situation. But what’s interesting is she turns around and here is the resurrected Jesus staying there. But she did not realize it was him. And I just wonder if, if you’re honest with yourself right now is, have you gotten to the place where the information you have about Jesus, right? You have maybe these promises that you’ve read in the Bible, like God’s going to, you know, redeem this situation. All the different things that we tell each other when we’re experiencing grief, right?
Um, but the reality is you’re still blinded to Jesus showing up in your life because of the weight of the grief. We go on and Jesus says, woman, why are you crying? Who’s it? You’re looking for thinking? He was the gardener. She said, sir, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you’ve put him and I will get him. And Jesus says to her, Mary, she turns towards him and cries out in Air Mag re bon I, which means teacher, what I wanna point out, if you’re in grief, is what Jesus didn’t do right? Jesus didn’t show up, see her crying. And after he asks her woman, why are you’re crying? Who is it you’re looking for? He didn’t fill in the next sentence with Mary. Seriously, what is the deal? Like, why are you crying, right? I told you guys about this all the time.
I’ve healed you from demons. I’ve done all these things. You’ve watched all this. I’ve told you guys, I was gonna die and resurrect. Now I am here I am. Like, and you’re just caught up in your sad little grief. Like, get a Kleenex, stop crying. I’m just, just defeated death. Hell in the grave. Hello, I’m right here. Then I’m standing here. You don’t even recognize who I am. Like, get it together, stop crying and go tell people that I’m resurrected. Like this is ridiculous. No, right? With compassion, with love, with patience. Jesus speaks her name. And and I want you to see that if you’re in a place of grief right now, that’s started to blind you from your hope, blind, you from your faith, blind you from your love, is that Jesus is willing. And because he is actually alive and he’s been resurrected, he’s able to come and compassionately meet you in that grief, speak your name and allow you to have an encounter with the living God.
Now, is he gonna show up in your bedroom tonight, right? You’re gonna be eating dinner all of a sudden, Jesus sitting next to you at the table? I don’t know, right? He could. That’s possible. If that happens, please get a picture of it. Maybe a video. Send it to me. I would really like that to happen. I have now all my life, I’ve never known anybody that’s happened like that. But I know a lot of people that have had encounters that they cannot deny with the living God, with the spirit of God. Mary has that she didn’t settle for information, right?
It was the encounter that transformed him. Maybe it’s not grief free, maybe it’s fear. This is interesting. And, and I didn’t really put these pieces together. I think it’s funny when you get, you read the word, I’ve been, you know, studying the, the Bible and speaking for, you know, 20 years now, whatever. And I’d never really thought about this perspective, uh, until, uh, this past Easter. And so it’s interesting, the next thing we pick up is in verse 19, and it says, on the evening of that first day of the week. So Mary’s there at sunrise, now we’re at the night. What happens is Jesus tells, he is like, she hugs him and they had this moment. She’s like, listen, he’s like, don’t wander me, I haven’t come back to the father yet. Just go tell the brothers that I’m alive. So she runs back and goes to tell the disciples the 10 of them, right?
Because here’s the deal, Judas had already taken his own life. He’s not in the mix anymore, and Thomas is missing. So there’s 10 of ’em. It says there’s these 10 guys and they’re, and so the day has gone on, she’s gone back and told them some information. Guys, you’re not gonna believe this, but lemme give you some information. We’ve, I, I saw the Lord, right? I talked to him, he’s alive and he sent me here to tell you this. But it says here on the first day of the week, they go back it’s night. Should they’ve been, they know this information all day. The disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders. Why? Right? Let’s ask the question. Why. Let’s get to the because cuz in the, because we’re gonna find the plot line. And I think the, because for them is this, because of what they just lived through in the past three days.
All their hopes, all of their dreams, everything that they thought Jesus, who they thought Jesus was everything they thought they would be, right? They watched absolutely crumble in front of them. And I just wonder for a few of them, if, if, if the knight in the garden of Yosemite might be the thing that is, is what was the thing that broke them, maybe even more than watching Jesus be crucified. Cuz many of them were like, we’re willing to die for you. They’ve done all these things and Jesus told ’em, you know, they were gonna rule and they all these things that they thought about in this situation. But what happened was they didn’t become fishers of men. They didn’t become great heroic people in God’s kingdom. When Jesus needed the most, they became cowards. They folded, they deserted him and then they saw what actually could happen to them as it happened to Jesus.
And so even as they get this information, Hey guys, listen, Jesus is alive. We saw him. They’re not filled with strength to go out and fulfill the mission that God gave them. They’re not out there. It’s like you would think, like Mary comes back, tells me, guys, Jesus is alive. Disciple Joe crazy. They high five everybody, they run out of the room and they start telling everybody in town that Jesus is alive and you can believe in him cuz of the resurrect of Christ. No, they’re there in their fear with the Lord’s doors locked because they’re afraid to lose it all.
A quick commercial break here on the podcast, I wanna tell you a story about a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with a faithful podcast listener like yourself. We start talking about Spiritual DNA, the online course that I’ve created that helps you discover who you were born to be. And I said, Hey, have you gone through Spiritual DNA yet? And I’m assuming I listen to the podcast like, hasn’t everyone gone through Spiritual DNA? They said, you know what, no I haven’t. I said, well, why not? I said, I just, I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Uh, but I really want to discover who God’s created me to be. So if that’s you, today’s your day, here’s what you need to do. I need you to go to Daronearlewine.com/spiritualdna. That’s where you can get the course. And I want to give you a discount cuz you’re part of the podcast family. So once you go to buy the course, go to the promo code and use promo code: podcast. You’re gonna get 20% off the course today. All right? That’s your next step. Do it. daronearlewine.com/spiritualdna. Use promo code: podcast and start your journey today. Discover who you were born to be. All right, let’s get back to the episode.
And I wonder for you is, um, it could be a situation where you really have, since maybe you’ve been listening to the podcast for the first, you know, for the first time for the past couple weeks or months, or maybe you’ve been with us for years and you have this, this sense of calling, you have this dream, you have something that you know God’s put on your heart to do. But if you’re honest, you’re like, I haven’t done it yet, cuz I’m afraid and, and I know Daron, I, I’ll listen to the podcast. I go to my own church, right? I know the information right? I know the information is right, but I can’t move forward because I’m so afraid of what might happen. And what may be happening for you is that you’re living your life, right? You’re living your life on crust of hearsay, in crumbs of rumor.
Go back to one of the oldest stories in the Bible. The story of Job. And um, if you know the story of Job right, uh, it’s kind of crazy. The devil comes, asks, uh, God permission to test Job. God gives him permission and he takes everything from Job. And then, um, and then he gets real bitter. And Job starts, uh, you know, slinging some accusations at God. And then guess what happens? He has an encounter with God. God poses some questions to, uh, to Job. And they have this, they have this pretty aggressive encounter. And then Job responds in Job chapter 42, verse five and six. And he says this, I admit, I once, I once lived by rumors of you. Now I have it all firsthand from my own eyes and ears. I’m sorry, forgive me. I’ll never do that again. I promise I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.
And here’s what I think is, is true for probably a lot of us, is the reason that we’re afraid to move forward in what God’s calling us to do and the person that we know he’s created us to be is because our relationship with Jesus is basically rumors. You’ve heard great stories of how other people have lived in with great faith. You’ve heard stories about your parents or your grandparents or your neighbor or some book you’ve read and you get inspired by it, right? You get inspired. That’s, man, I wanna live like that. But guess what? It’s just a rumor. It’s just hearsay. It’s Mary showing up right in the upper room telling the disciples, Hey, I saw him. I I did it. I saw it. He’s real, he’s alive. And then you’re still stuck in the upper room of your life cuz you’re like, uh, I don’t know.
And so here’s what I’m gonna encourage you to do. I wanna encourage you to be bold enough to ask God to give you an encounter with himself. Because information will not transform your life, but an encounter with the living God will. That’s what happens for the disciples right here they are with their information, with their fear. And Jesus comes, even though the doors were locks, he comes through the wall somehow or something. I don’t know how it happened, but he says this, Jesus came and stood among them and he said, peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. And the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. And again, Jesus said, peace be with you as the Father has sent me, I’m sending you. And with that, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit.
These men received the Holy Spirit. And here’s what happened. From this point on, they went out with amazing, great courage to the point where all of them accept John were martyred for their faith in Jesus. This encounter empowered them and the filling of God’s spirit within them, bringing them the full power and full strength in their faith, in their connection. And with this encounter they had with the living God. And I don’t wanna discount that, right? Because we say like, well I just wish that Jesus would show up. Like I wish I could just see him in the body like they saw him in the body. Well we have to remember this, that Jesus said it was better for us that he went away because us individually being able to connect with him to the Holy Spirit is better, is better than you actually being able to see him. Because here’s what I think would happen if Jesus showed up right now, right at your house and he was like, Hey, hello, I’m Jesus. I am alive. You can go do what you felt called to do. That moment would be an amazing, amazing encounter and it probably would stoke you up for a good couple months or years.
But then it would wane, right? Then it would begin to go. I mean, was it really that real? I mean now and you would have new struggles, you would have new fears, you would have new challenges that would come up in that pursuit and you would not have access to a continual flow of encounter with your spirit interacting with the living, powerful, enabling, teaching, guiding, directing spirit of God. So what God, what Jesus has done for us is better. That’s why he set them up for there, right? He sets them up and says, I’m here guys. Believe it. Right? Here’s the Holy Spirit. And 40 days later he goes back to heaven and then allows all of us to be a part of this. You need an encounter with the living spirit of God if you’re going to be able to move past your fear.
And like we talked about in the first episode, right? The reality is the promise from God is that this can be renewed daily. That we have streams of living water coming through us as we encounter God. Do not settle until you experience that. Keep sinking it with all your heart because the information about Jesus will not give you em, empower you to overcome the fear that’s keeping you from living life. You gotta create you to be, okay. Last thought is this, it’s about doubt. We’re gonna talk about Thomas and I think Thomas gets a really bad rap, right? Like we can all say like, what’s his nickname, right? 1, 2, 3, doubting Thomas, right? I’d like to give, I’d like to put in whatever name, uh, you know, agencies out there I’d like to take, put in for a name change for Thomas. I think his name should become honest.
Thomas, right? I think his name should become honest, Thomas. Cuz here I want you to know, if it’s not grief for you, it’s not fear. You know what? It could be doubt, doubts. And I think sometimes that’s the culmination of all that. You’ve had some grief, you’ve had some fears, you’ve had some disappointments. And what you have now is doubt. And what I love and really appreciated about Thomas is it is actually honest about it. And, and, and here’s what I want you to know, is that oftentimes doubt paves the first couple feet in the road to faith. And so if you’re starting to have doubts or you have a friend that’s starting to have doubts, don’t freak out. Right? Don’t freak out. Cuz here’s the, here’s the reason you freak out when someone has doubts, cuz you don’t actually think Jesus is true, right?
If Jesus is alive and he’s true and he’s seeking us the way he did Mary and he seeking us the way he did the disciples, when someone begins to step into a place of doubt, embrace that and encourage them to keep honestly seeking the truth. Keep honestly seeking the encounter. We picked Thomas up. Thomas was also known as Denis, one of the 12. And he was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So when the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord, right? They gave him information. He says, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails are and put my hands into a side, I will not believe. Right? I mean, guys, listen, I’m not, I’m not risking my entire life again on your crumbs of rumor and hearsay, right? Be. And let’s ask the question why?
Well, here’s the plot line, because right. Thomas had gone through all three. Thomas had gone through, he had the grief, right? Jesus died, he had the fear, he deserted him in the garden, right? All of his hopes and dreams of what Jesus would do for him and what Jesus was gonna be. And I think one of the, the, the, the tough parts for Thomas too, like I said about the disciples, is the hopes of, of who he thought he would be. Because just a few verses the chapters before this story, when Jesus is going to Jerusalem right to be crucified, he’s going to the city, Thomas, right? And great courage stands up and says, listen, if we’re gonna go, we’ll just go and I’m ready to die with him. So Thomas had all of these thoughts and hopes of who he was gonna be. Listen, I have the courage that it takes, that I I’ll go and I will die with Jesus. Push came to shove. What’d he do? He deserted him. He didn’t die with him. And so in all of these doubts, Thomas starts to get to a really, really difficult place that we’re gonna just call disappointment.
And, um, when we have grief, when we have fear, when we have doubt that leads or is triggered by disappointment, we do the exact same thing Mary did, right? We put our guard up against hope, which puts our guard up against faith and begins to put our guard up against God’s love. Disappointment, right? Is really difficult. And um, I think one of the most difficult forms of disappointment that we have that fuels doubt is disappointment with God. Right? You know, we’re not afraid to get honest here on the podcast, but, um, my friend Dave Mullins used to have a phrase he would talk about that Jesus, um, is the disappointing messiah. And I remember the first time I heard Dave say that and I was like, Dave, can we say that? Like, is that Sac religious? Like Jesus is the disappointing Messiah, but he is.
And he was every one of the disciples until this moment massively disappointed with the kind of messiah that Jesus was. And the truth is, if, if you’re honest with yourself right now is your disappointment sounds like this in your heart, in your mind, my faith in Jesus was enough until, and then the the next part of that sentence is unique to you. But the the, the first part of the sentence is, is what we all find ourselves saying it sometime, right? My faith was enough until the divorce, my faith was enough and Jesus was enough. He was the kind of messiah, the kind of God that I really wanted to have my hopes up until my dream died, until mom got cancer, right? Until I I failed outta college, until I got fired from the job that I ever wanted until I didn’t get the job I wanted again.
Until we still don’t have a baby, until we had a miscarriage. Until, until, until we have these moments where the information right is no longer able to, to, to meet us, to where only the encounter can take us. And that’s where, that’s where Thomas got. And that might be where you’re at. But this next part is how I wanna encourage you. Cuz here’s what dow and, and, and, um, and disappointment do. They begin to isolate us, right? One of the first steps once we start to fill doubt and disappointment is we isolate. And that’s what, that’s what Thomas did for a week, right? For a week he was gone. We don’t know where he was at. We just know he wasn’t with the other disciples. The grief, the fear, the doubt, the disappointment hit him and he bounced.
And maybe that’s where you’re at right now, right? It’s safer not to hope. I’m starting to lose my faith. I don’t feel loved. So you know what, I’ve been, I haven’t gone to church in a year during your first, this podcast is the first any kind of spiritual thing I’ve listened to in, in four or five years because I have been on my own because I’m so disappointed. If that’s where we’re at, lemme encourage you, take the risk to come back, take the risk to seek again because he is alive and he’s actually searching for you.
We picked the story up in John 20, 20, 26, a week later. So it’s a week later, says his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with him. He came back, he took the risk to come back to community. He showed up in that room with all of his doubts, still had all of his disappointments, the fear, right? He didn’t receive the Holy Spirit like the other guys did cause he wasn’t there. And it says though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and belief. Jesus showed up personally for Mary. He showed up personally for the 10. And he shows up personally for Thomas. Here’s what I want you to know. If you’re gonna place a doubt, disappointment is that Jesus has more patience than you have doubts.
He’s got more patience in your journey than you have doubts. And here’s the great thing is that he’s alive and he’s compassionate and he’s patient and he’s personal. He’s seeking after you. I guess the question is, will you allow yourself to be found? I’m hit you with this promise when we’ll be done in Jeremiah 29, 13 through 14. It says this, you’ll seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you declares the Lord. This, um, this podcast episode in this talk, right? I gave it at Merc Road northeast this Easter. And as I prepped it that week and even preparing it to bring this to you guys today, the difficult part was like this, this, this talk, this podcast. It, it pains me because I can’t produce it for you. And the reality is I can’t really produce anything of this type of supernatural connection, God, with my information.
But this hit me as, as how inadequate this is. Cuz it’s like, I wanna tell you this and I wanna be like, and, and here do this and, and you, I promise God will show up in bodily form in your, in your house today. He’ll show up and it’ll be perfect for this. Here’s the formula you can do and here’s the steps I’m gonna give you. And, and, and, and somehow I could manufacture this for you. And the truth is, I, I I can’t, I can’t do that. That that’s where your faith actually has to become activated. But what I love is that we have a promise from God. A promise that we saw with Mary fulfilled a promise we saw with the disciples, fulfilled a promise we saw with, with Thomas fulfilled and a promise that we have seen fulfilled for thousands of years because Jesus is actually alive.
He actually has sent his Holy Spirit to indwell you, right? So you can have an encounter with the living spirit of God. And then he has promised that he can be found. You can have an encounter with God if you seek him with all of your heart. And my guess is this, just be honest with me, okay? If you’re dealing with grief or fear or doubt, my bet is you’ve been like, my, my bet is you may be exactly where I’ve been before and where most of us have been or may be, it may be, uh, we have been or we might be again, is this is, if you’re honest, you’re not seeking him with all your heart, right? The grief, the fear, the doubts, disappointments. You’re, you’re just barely holding on. You know, you might make it to church every once in a while. Maybe you throw a worship on song every once in a while. Spiritual disciplines prayer have been a thing of the past, right? Every once in a while you might read a couple scriptures, but you’re like, I’m just, I’m not, I’m not going after him. And here’s what I want you to know.
If we don’t seek him, we won’t find him the good news he’s seeking us, but he, he, he wants to meet us in the middle in that. So I, I I am I implore you, I I I beg you to begin seeking him again with all your heart to let this be the process of renewal. Maybe there are some things like we talked about last episode, right? That you, you, you gotta replace. And once you replace and, and, and remove some of the maybe negative, what I want you to replace it with is an undivided heart to seek him. And here’s the cool thing the Bible tells us that not only can God give us the desire, but he can give us the power to do it. So just ask him, say, God, would you make me willing to become willing to seek you again with my whole heart, right? That’s the prayer. God, would you make me willing to become, willing to seek you with all my heart? And here’s the good news, he promises, as you do, you will find me.
You need an encounter. I wanna pray for you guys to, to, to wrap up today. I would love to hear from you, uh, of where you’re at. And this what you’re processing. The good news is this, Jesus is alive and he’s seeking you personally, patiently, compassionately. And when he meets you, he can give you hope and peace out of the grief. He can give you courage and your fear and he can give you answers and purpose in your doubt. Jesus. I just wanna pray right now for, for everybody on the podcast that’s listening, that’s watching and, um, God, life is hard. It’s full of disappointments. And um, and sometimes we have those with you and God, I think again, uh, back to the, the, the, the question that, that my buddy Dave Mullins used to ask when he would talk about you being a disappointing Messiah, he would say, can I have the faith right?
When, when, when Jesus isn’t the Messiah I want him to be, can I trust Him enough to be the savior I need him to be? And so God, we don’t get questions a lot of times to all the why. What we see in the Easter stories, you knew exactly what you were doing and you still do. So I pray you give us the faith to allow you to be the Savior, the Messiah that we need you to be. Not that we just want you to be, to allow you to be the God of, of what is not, of what, what if. And I pray God for my friends right now, that you would give them an encounter with your Holy Spirit that makes them willing to become willing to seek you again with all their heart. And when they do, God, I pray that they would find you. You’re the best, fastest in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Appreciate y’all, thanks for tuning in again and, uh, remember until we talk next time, God’s for you not against you. He’s near you, not far. And he’s created you on purpose and for purpose.