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Beyond The Message is a weekly podcast that dives deeper into the weekend’s teaching. Released after each Sunday service, it offers thoughtful conversation, added insight, and practical reflection to help our community process and apply what they heard. Whether you're revisiting the message or catching up, this podcast is designed to help you go deeper throughout the week.
Welcome to Beyond the Message, the podcast where we take the weekly teaching from Christ
Community Chapel and bring it into your week. And each week I sit down with friends and with colleagues and we laugh usually a little bit, we reflect and we talk about what it looks like to live out what we are learning. If you didn't catch the message this week, not a big deal. Go down to the description and find a link to the sermon there, check it out and then jump back over here to listen to this conversation.
My name is Stacey and I'm joined today by Brooks and by Sara and by Joe. Wow! We've got Pastor Joe on the show with us today, special guest, really excited about that. I feel like I can just sit back and just let him just take over. That's what I said, so he shouldn't take it. Yeah, but I'm going to have a question for you today.
So we talked a little bit first Peter's amazing passage in first Peter, this is week one of Rise Up. And in this passage there's some talk about inheritance. I'm not going to try and compare any inheritance that we're going to talk about here to the amazing inheritance, the, yes, that is ours in Christ Jesus. But, if you were able to pass down and have a descendant inherit a characteristic or
quality of yours, what characteristic or quality would you hope they would inherit from you? Ooh, this one looks like it takes a little more thought. It's pretty deep. Yeah, I thought you were going to stay with just a thing or something you inherited. Like a favorite food or...It would have been a waffle iron. Which child would you choose for.
Yeah. What child would you please please. Or you could choose a favorite child? I thought that's what the direction we were going to go. Yeah, that would have been good. Yeah. You can say something good about it.
It's okay to say a good quality or characteristic about yourself that you wish you could pass
down. No one wants to start. No one wants to start.
Brooks does. I will say one thing that I think has been passed down that I appreciate is an awareness and what I mean by in conversation, even when you're driving on the road, like good with directions, you're able to interact with people well. Self-aware. Yeah, just having a little bit of an awareness of the world around you. Or good directions, which one? People around you.
I think that's an important thing socially.
You're like those are just two totally different.
I know, I'm like, I'm self-aware when I'm great with directions.
Yeah.
Those are two different things.
I'm going to package those together.
I mentioned being handed both of those down though.
It'd be pretty great, right?
Pretty cool.
Yeah.
It's a power combo.
I think for me, something that has just excited for this one, but it's not that exciting,
but I just the ability to laugh at yourself and to just have a sense of humor in everyday
life and not take yourself too seriously.
That's really good.
You sounded really surprised by that.
No.
That was good.
Yeah.
That's a good one.
Thank you.
Mine would be a love for learning, like a desire to learn.
So I think I've had that for a while and I think I get great joy out learning new things.
So yeah.
If I could pass that down that would be good.
I don't think I ever could answer.
You took the waffle iron away from me.
That's the real thing.
Can I change it to being something that I could just pass?
Can I make it an easy one for me?
Sure.
Question.
Yeah.
Sure.
No.
Oh man.
This is not an end all be all.
None of yours are either.
I think something that I would hope, I'm making way too much of this.
This is a small characteristic.
I feel like I stay calm in crisis and that is an easy small thing.
So there's probably something much bigger, broader, more important than I wish I could
give my kids.
But that's something that's small that I know.
I think that's really small in our household.
Yes.
Yes.
That's good.
Okay.
Well let's jump into the sermon.
We had Pastor Zach, week one of Rise Up.
First Peter one versus 1-12.
These three points where life is hard, we'll really just unpack the reality of suffering
and trials that we all will experience at some point in it or another.
And yet secondly that hope is available and had some great kind of sub points in there.
And then the third is really, he kind of even said this, a mashup of those two.
It's one thing to say we have suffering, we have hard stuff.
There is hope.
But what does that mean for those to be together?
So hopeful living in hard times is possible.
There was a great teaching.
I feel like we say that every week probably need to not say that.
It's always a great teaching.
But let's just start with some takeaways or things that stood out to you that resonated
with you.
Brooks, do you want to start?
Yeah, I'd love to.
Yeah, I think just the thought that hard times is not evidence that God has abandoned you,
that God in your faith in Christ is a sham.
But I think hard times really bring to surface where is your hope located?
I think man, I loved how Zach's are talked about whether it's hard times in the news
or hard times in your living room.
If you don't have a stable hope that's going to endure, that's going to last, it's going
to wreck your capacity, I think to really survive well in this world.
So just the thought that I think sometimes people think, man, if bad things happen, how
could God allow that to me?
And I think the better question is to say, no man, bad things are going to happen regardless.
That's the reality of living here on earth.
And the fact that we have hope is the only way that you're going to be able to survive
living here on this earth.
So just the importance of man, if you don't have hope, you're hopeless.
And if you're hopeless, it's a pretty bleak way to live.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I was, he made this point that oftentimes, especially in church, and I'm not
sure why, but we feel like we need to be polished and have it all together.
And something I thought of as like, man, church is not for perfect people.
Church is more like an AA meeting than a beauty contest.
And so sometimes I just want people to know like, your brokenness, your hard thing is like
when you're at church, you're at the exact right place you should be, because this is
where we should just go, God, I don't know what's going on, but I know I need to.
To look towards you.
Yeah.
To have the answer that's going to actually sustain me through it.
Yeah.
I thought, I mean, dude, there's a ton of good stuff with that.
I thought it was really good.
The first time I ever kind of connected that we try to make church a very inviting, we
on staff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I thought, oh, yeah, there's a there's a problem like an unintended consequence with
that.
Yeah.
Oh, we're all like, Zach Thursday night had that phone call.
That's right.
Yeah.
Tell him that a family member, family member, I had pancreatic cancer.
Terrible.
He got up and preached like it didn't happen.
Yeah.
Right.
Because he had to.
Right.
And so he couldn't get up there and cry.
But there are a lot of good takeaways.
I love the way contextualize the beginning.
I look at it probably differently than you guys look at it.
Yeah.
Tell us what you really.
I like the way he set up the series really well by contextualizing it saying Peter was
talking to a growing church and a hostile culture.
Yeah.
And you're just going, okay, that's us.
I love and he's used it before that watching a movie with a child.
I think that is so true.
You know, I've watched, I remember watching the Lego Batman movie.
Yeah.
That's a good one.
I was like, I'm a kid's and when he got sucked up and he hit the ceiling, came back, my
grandson started just sobbing and I was going, it's, it's, it's okay.
Keep watching.
It's a cartoon.
Come on.
You know, but it is mine.
He thought, but I thought I want to, how many times I've done that where I have thought
I, I got to remind myself it's a chapter.
I thought that was a great takeaway.
So I think I would like to unpack more actually in a couple of those things.
Let me just share my takeaway, which mine, it comes in the sermon right after past two
sisters act talked about watching that movie with, with a kiddo and kind of their response.
But let's take a look at this real quick and then we'll, we'll jump back in.
So what the writer is saying is you don't, you don't, the Christian call in the midst
of hard times is not to minimize the difficult chapter you're in.
If your marriage is falling apart, that's awful.
If you're sick, that's awful.
If you don't have a job and you want one, that's awful.
And God never asked you to pretend.
He never asked you to, to not feel.
You read the Psalms, half of them are someone going, God, where are you?
What are you doing?
God is unflinching in wanting your honesty.
God wants intimacy with you.
That means fully knowing you and fully loving you.
But what the writer is saying is that if God is writing a story in human history and that
story is going to us being with him, then that means no matter how dark the moment you're
in, it is just a chapter.
It is not the end.
So yeah, that clip just really stood out to me because it's so important.
And I know I lose track and minimize often, I think, acknowledging difficult things and
will instead, you know, brush it aside or think it's not that bad.
And you know, what pastors acted there and just talking about man saying that it is awful
is an okay, it actually kind of can increase your intimacy with the Lord.
He calls us and talks to us all throughout scripture.
We see just people crying out and being vulnerable in that way.
So I don't know if that resonated with you, but I know it hit me and made me realize I
need to be more real sometimes with the Lord.
And he wants me to be about how difficult chapters can be.
So I think for, okay, I think for me too, it's this idea that, and it's funny because I think
about all the different sermons we've talked about, but that whatever was happening in
our lives, it's not meaningless.
So I that was a big point when he said that struck me to it.
He said the hardness of your life is not random.
That's right.
That was really, really good because I think kind of like what you were saying, Stacy,
that is our kind of natural inclination is to be like, Oh, this is just something hard,
you know, whatever.
Not as bad as the other person or someone else.
And I remember going through a really, really difficult time.
And it felt really meaningless because it was just, it was like, I don't even know how
God's going to use this in my life because I can't see any good in it.
And I remember we, someone sent me this little clip from John Piper.
And he's a he's a teacher writer.
And it was based in second Corinthians four, 16 to 18 that talks about our light and momentary
affliction and how it's doing something in us.
And he said, it that means nothing is without God's intent.
Like it is not random.
Those things happen because God is working.
And I think in all of that, it's also saying that God is in control.
Yeah.
And he's sovereign.
He knows.
And so there is great hope in that.
Yeah.
It was that was really powerful for me.
Yeah.
That gives us a different stream that in trying to silver line everything like you have Christians
a lot of times, well, hit suffering and they'll try to have the silver line up for a friend
instead of saying, yeah, that's we can sit in that.
But just because you don't know a reason doesn't mean there's not a reason.
So I think that's a good thing too.
I just made me think of it.
I had someone come up to me this morning in between services and share with me that,
you know, their father died this week.
And I was like, I'm just so sorry.
And they're like, well, no, no, no, that's okay.
That's okay.
I was like, no, right.
That's not okay.
That's awful.
And that's hard.
And that's okay that it's awful and hard.
But yeah, we can't.
I know I mean, I do it all the time.
Like, oh, don't worry about me.
Do you think it's because people feel like they don't trust God?
If they acknowledge how hard it is, like I'm wondering like, why do we do that?
I don't know.
Yeah.
And it goes to some of the Polish church piece.
Yeah.
It could be part of it too.
But I think one of the things that Zach said that was really good too is that the Peter
wasn't saying, just hang on until you die, then it gets good.
You know, and said he was saying they gave there's something that can happen now that
will make life better.
I think we tend.
I don't think any of us sit well in pain or discomfort, especially with a loved one.
All right.
So you want to go want to make you want.
I mean, it's a it's a good inclination to want somebody to feel better quickly.
Right.
I think we all had it have it with our kids or with, you know, but I think that's a tendency
of the fight if you're going to, as we go older, and we understand more and that's why
I think I think Zach gave some tools for that that I thought were really good.
And I think to Zach's point, it's the capacity as a Christian, right?
To see the world around you and have a paradigm and understanding, hey, this isn't how it
ought to be.
All right.
God is making his promise that things will be made new, right?
But in that waiting, we're experiencing that.
Like that's the story of our own lives.
Yeah.
Like the gospel is quite literally telling you you are way worse than you could have ever
imagined.
It's not something to brush over.
It's not something to silver line, something to recognize.
And then by the grace of God and faith in Christ, he's making your life new and he's
making the world around you new.
Like the story of our relationship of the gospel and our own lives is kind of the hope
and the story that we get to look around the world and have a capacity to grieve, but to
be those who grieve with hope, right?
His first Thessalonians acknowledgement of that grief and hard makes the hope all that
more powerful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you have any questions for us?
What do you think?
Turn it on.
Yeah.
So I think there's three things.
Like I just said, that's I gave us some tools.
I want you to pick the one that's been that would be most meaningful for you during a
hard time or the one that you have maybe used the most or will use the most of it.
The one thing he said was it's a chapter, not an end, which I think I've used it before
just saying, you know, my story ends well, I got to remember that my story ends well.
The second is to take you can take some wise off the table, which is always really
good to say, I don't know why this is happening, but I do know something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's not the why answer?
And then that the hardness of my life is not random.
So out of those three, Sarah, which is the one that you feel like you would want to have
in your toolbox like when you're going through a difficult time.
I think for me, it's probably that the hardness is not random because it's important for me
to see that there's purpose in it.
And that God is way bigger too than even the thing that's going on, even even if it's
really, really like really painful.
I think that's something too that I want to make sure I live in for my kids because
I want them to see that.
And that's something I want them to be able to also experience when they're gone through
like a really, really hard time.
And I think that that is no better exemplified than then when Jesus died.
Because it feels like, and I feel like Zach kind of said that he said this on Thursday
night, I don't remember hearing it on Sunday morning, but just saying like Jesus died,
the disciples have given everything.
They watched this.
The crucifixion is the worst day of their life because they're thinking, what is happening?
Yeah.
Worse like 48 hours of life.
God, how could you let this happen?
Right.
And then Sunday happens and you could just got to go, okay.
Yeah.
Right.
None of this is random.
Yeah.
You're always thinking that with Paul too, I think Paul being thrown into prison, I'd
be gone.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I'm Paul writing some good stuff down.
That's right.
I'm writing what you want me to write.
But that's where all the epistles were written.
But I'm just in that.
And my Bible reading, or Paul is, he's just getting beat up and then thrown in prison.
And it seems like he's been neutralized by the enemy.
Yeah.
Well, I think the passage from last week was we were talking about he's writing this in
prison and his prayer is going like that I can get out of here so I can go share Jesus
with more people that there's an urgency and it's going to have that posture, that
outlook in the midst of all of that is because he had hope because he had his purpose.
So yeah.
Do you have one of those that I would say the removing and the why, some of the why's off
the table, I think all of us, right, when you're in hard times, you're in grief, everything
just starts to become clouded.
Right.
Right.
You say things that, hey, when you're when you're not in grief, you wouldn't imagine that you're
saying you're thinking, you're feeling.
And I think having the stability of what is true, the reality that no matter what grief
you may feel like you're in right now, the right hand of God, Christ has scars in his
hands.
Like that is true.
The resurrection.
Yeah.
And I think it's so good when you're talking to somebody in pain, they're always asking
the why question and you have to fight the urge to try to give them an answer.
Sure.
Sure.
Like I remember when my little brother died, it was like, well, you know, God, God
wanted him home or God was saving him from something or God was going to use this for
his going and all that could be true.
But I'd rather them say, I don't know why, but I do know that it's not because he doesn't
love you and he doesn't love your brother.
That would help me.
And it's no, we said that.
That's right.
And if anything, you start to recognize, hopefully by God's grace that the prayer becomes not
a discovery to every why answer, but that the trajectory of your soul is clinging to God
more than ever in the why questions and the absence.
That's where hopefully dependency is born.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I resonate with the same one.
I think, you know, the best is yet to gum.
This chapter is going to be over.
All the things are true.
The reason that one does taking the why is kind of off the table and knowing what is
true.
I just think it's actually probably what I practice the most.
And so that helps me the most.
So whether I'm just talking to God and just saying, I know that you love me.
I know that you are I know that this the best is yet to come because my hope in you
is sure.
And just so yeah, I just think it's maybe it was more my go to, but all three of them
are really important and really great truth.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah, there are.
I think the chapter one is really good too, just because I think all of us are old enough
Brooke barely maybe not Brooks.
Yeah.
But just got my terms.
Got my.
But I always think we're old enough to look back on times we thought, ah, this is the
worst.
I mean, from the time of, you know, teenage love gone bad.
Yep.
And just you watch a teenager and it's like the whole world is ending.
And I wonder if I mean so much and we think, oh yeah, but now this is really serious and
this is really bad.
And I wonder in God's eyes you're going, yeah, and God would say, yeah, it's a little bit
worse, but it's not.
I mean, I'm still, I still got this.
So I really like that even as I, as I get older, just going, okay, I can look back
in my life and now that I've been through hard times and it's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The storms pass.
Yeah.
So how, I mean, anything that has helped you to have that perspective, because even when
you're in the midst of a chapter, so none of us might be in the middle of a really hard
chapter right now, we, but you know, as Steven Zach mentioned, sometimes it's, it's
chapter after chapter after chapter and maybe you die, like, and the, so how in the middle
of that chapter, whether it's a short one or a longer one, have you had any tools?
I mean, we talked about some, but just seeing it from that perspective, and it felt.
Well, this is going to sound weird, but one of the things that has always helped me is
that of what I'm reading the Bible, I always think, like Paul, he's been dead for 2000
years.
Yeah.
Right.
For 2000 years, he's been experiencing.
Yeah.
Real life.
And I do a lot of funerals and I just did a funeral where I was saying that this woman
who was kind of known for joy that now she is going to the, the headwaters of all joy
and all love that has ever existed.
And I just think, okay, I mean, you know, my life is a, is all that I know, you know,
right?
That's right.
Now it's 66 years old.
And if I have 20 more years, that'll be great.
But I'm going to die.
But when I die at one point, I'll be dead for 2000 years.
It'll be great.
Right.
Those 2000 years will be so much better than the 60 or 70 or 80 years that I lived here.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So when I read the Bible, I'm always going to go and man, they've been dead for a long
time.
Yeah.
I loved, I mean, the passage talks, talks about our living hope, right?
And like that, that has a person that's Jesus Christ.
And even just knowing that Christ is someone who is sympathizing with you, that when he's
going to see Lazarus, right, he is weeping, right?
There's something powerful about the closeness of Christ.
I love how Zach said that hope is not something that's way down the road.
You're just white knuckling your fists, biting your lip, trying to get through hard
things to arrive at hope.
But it's something, man, you can experience today because as you abide in Christ, he's
abiding in you and he's sympathizing with you.
And the union that you can share with Christ in suffering in hard times is profound.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just thinking about, you know, the people that are stuck in even just not physical suffering
or family suffering, but personal, just even depression or mental illness that can feel
like I don't even know how to access that.
And I think this sermon brings some really good tools and a note that you can just kind
of just put a stake in the ground to just keep even repeating to yourself to keep holding
on to.
I think it's okay to go before God and be like, I don't, I don't, like you can cry out to
God.
He asks us to do that.
And he listens.
He hears us.
And I think it's okay to acknowledge like, I don't understand this or I am really angry
or all these things.
And I think you need to ask God, like, show me you're real.
Show me this hope.
Like I have done that.
And sometimes God has in his, you know, small, quiet voice said, all right, Sarah, what do
you know to be true about me?
And you know, that's when you go, okay, I know, like, because the Bible has shown us
who God is, like, I know that he's faithful.
I know that he loves me.
I know these just, and I think sometimes it's as simple as repeating those things to
you.
So that you are actually believing the truth of who God is and not what your circumstances
are telling you who God is.
Yeah.
And I think too, I think one of the things that Zach brought out early on that I really
like is the honesty of the Bible that the Bible doesn't tell us kind of what, what,
what in my heart I expect from God.
Like I expect a really nice life.
Right.
I expect things to go well.
I expect, you know, a health and all of that.
And when it doesn't, I'm going, well, what's going on?
But if I read the Bible, I'm going to God was trying to let me know.
Yep.
Yeah.
It's going to be hard.
You're going to, you're in a broken world.
You're, it's a broken place.
Someday I'm restoring all things.
In the meantime, you have this, you know, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now that's great.
Any challenges or as you think about the week ahead and we think about everybody listening,
probably there's been something everyone can access and grab hold of, but anything
else we'd want to leave someone listening or watching with.
Yeah.
Just one thing with the sensitivity of the complexity of emotion hard times, right?
Just want to give a challenge.
Right.
Hard times make really great times to share the hope of Jesus.
So in total transparency, the state of our nation and since the Charlie Kirk assassination,
I've gotten more texts from friends that I've been praying for and praying would have opportunities
to share the hope of Jesus than ever imaginable.
Yeah.
And so even in hard times, news, you know, I had the Zackset in the news or in your own
living room, what an opportunity to make much of Jesus.
Right.
And to remind ourselves that Jesus, religion, it's not a game we play.
It is the life that we have is the hope we have in Christ.
Let the hard times make you run towards Jesus.
That's right.
And, and yeah, share that with others as you know.
Yeah.
That's good.
Anybody else?
I'm trying to create a sermon that has something for everybody.
And I think this does that bit.
There are plenty of people that are going through difficult times.
So this has been a really hard week nationally and then for personally for a lot of people.
Yeah.
But I always think too that if you're not going through something hard right now, you're going
to just wait.
Mm.
Yeah.
Just wait a few weeks, wait a few years.
This is a sermon that you should keep somewhere so you can review it when you are going through.
If you're, if things are going well, that's great.
Yeah.
Enjoy that.
But no, it won't last forever until you're dead.
Yeah.
So you will have a chance.
Then it lasts forever.
Yeah.
But right now it's coming.
So be prepared for the storm and yeah, listen to what Peter says, what Zach said, Peter said.
So, yeah, that's great.
Well, thank you so much for sharing.
Thanks for taking this time to talk about this weekend.
We're looking forward to next week.
I think we have Pastor Zach on next week.
Yeah.
I want to be nice to him because I'm preaching next week.
That's right.
Oh, good job.
That's good.
Yeah.
Okay.
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