Beyond the Message | Beyond the Message — I Am More | More Victory in Life

In this episode of Beyond the Message, the team unpacks Jesus’ statement in John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and reflects on the reality of death, disappointment, and deferred dreams. They wrestle with the tension between trusting God’s future promises and believing he is still at work in the present, even when the answer feels like “no.” Through personal stories and the powerful “jar” analogy, the conversation explores why we sometimes hesitate to ask God for more–and how failing to ask can dishonor his power just as much as presuming upon it. Ultimately, the team encourages listeners to trust that resurrection is not just a future event, but a present Person who is still bringing life in unexpected ways.

Watch the full message here.

What is Beyond the Message ?

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 at Christ Community Chapel and we bring it into your week. Every week, we sit down together as friends to laugh a little bit, reflect, and to figure out how to live out. See you guys figure out how to live out what it is that we are learning. If you didn't hear the sermon yet, make sure you check that out. Drop down to the description. There's a link to it there. And then come back and join in on this conversation. My name is Stacey, and I'm joined today by Canaan Coffee, Jimmy Kozy and Lana Chilton. Welcome, guys. Let's go. Thanks. It's bright and early on this Sunday morning. Come on. Sunday. That's right, Sunday. They don't know what time it is. It's Monday after sunny day by the time they hear this. That's right. I know, but it's okay. We're recording Sunday morning. That's good. Okay. To start things off, get us thinking, just, you know, loosen up a little bit. Wanted to ask you guys, what is a dream you had as a little kid? Not like you dream dreamt it at night or something, but like something you wanted to be. Something you looked forward to as a little kid. Not a night dream, a daydream. Something you daydreamed of. I will. Go ahead, Jimmy. Lana's up. Not yet. I. I dreamt every time my mom or dad would watch the news. I wanted to be a news reporter. A news anchor. A news reporter. And you'd be great at that. Thanks. I can see it. I get to live the dream with free service video announcements. That's me living my little childhood. There you go, everybody. Whenever you see Lana up there, dude, don't ask me. You can be writing NBC, abc. You'd be saying you need Lana Chilton. The irony of this is don't ask me of any current events in the news right now. You should start a TikTok where it's you talking about current events as a news anchor. But since you don't really know what's going on, that would be fun. Just let it fly. That sounds like a good use of time. I like it. Let's stop this podcast. Let's go. Pivot. Pivot news podcast. Tell me, what did you. What's a dream you have? I had a few dreams. My first was that most of them are dead, so that's part of this. my first was to be a professional baseball player. and I gave up on that for a few reasons, not the least of which is. I just decided I didn't like baseball all that much. Why? it's. It's slow moving, there's no clock, and I'm offending every baseball player who's listening to this right now. But maybe you guys should keep going, move around a little bit more, be a little more agile. and then I wanted to be a marine biologist. And big pivot, hard pivot to marine biologist. And that didn't work out because if you listen last week you might chose orca. And I have a lot of good reasons why orca is the king of all animals. But we don't need to get into that here. at one point I wanted to try to be a musical artist, so I tried to write a song. Very different. Yeah, you wrote songs. Wait, do you know what the song was? I was in like third grade. I was listening to a lot of DC talk because my parents wouldn't let me listen to non Christian music. And so I tried to write a song in the style of DC talk. But, that's not really my. Anyway, so here I am. We're gonna have a podcast just about Jimmy's dreams as a child. I will do the TikTok. You are a guest and you do the TikTok and you play your song. Yeah, I'm gonna jump in before Kany. Cause I. That is so superficial that you guys are going to make fun of it. And then I. I like hardcore would dream as a child that I would have blonde hair and blue eyes. What? Yeah. Well, Stacy, I've got news for you. These days it did not come true. Modern solutions you could do. I could. I could. I could. But you shouldn't just picture. Put yourself in little like 7 year old. Stacy, what were you hoping to accomplish? I just thought it was better to have blonde hair and blue eyes. Which is a line of reasoning that has gone really poorly in history. It has. So anyways, then secondly, since Jimmy had like five, I'll just add there was probably a season I was very into music. So I would be like, I think I should be a Christian musical. Hold on a second. Let's go. Okay. But she is. Stacy is on a recorded album. Oh, m. That is right. She toured. She toured a musical album. You guys are making this sound very different than reality. We're going to jump to Kanan. Kanan. What is the dream? That you'll tell you later. I got the album on my m. Computer. That's true. I forgot about that. Yeah. A dream of mine. So I grew up with Three older brothers and I grew up semi. grew up in the late 90s, where the Chicago Bulls were reigning champs. And so to be a Chicago Bulls basketball player was the. Was the dream as a kid, you know, the late 90s, while I was. I was gonna guess that one. Based on your basketball career, you came the closest to your dream. I hope so, too. Yeah, I took a good swing, but, not quite so far. My amateur marine biology is also pretty good. He has a goldfish at home. I don't have any goldfish, but I do have a pond in my backyard, and there are fish in it, so, man, you did. I think you did come the closest. You toured with your basketball life. A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Short stint, short stint. You played professional basketball. Kind of a big deal, y'. All. You fulfilled your dreams. I mean, not the Bulls, but it's close. Some of us toured Europe. Some of us get to do pre. You can still play for the Bulls. Let's go. I could. Okay, maybe this. We're. We're going to pivot again. Once again, we hard pivot into, the teaching from this week, which is from John 11. it's the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead and where Jesus. His I am statement is, I am the resurrection and the life. I loved a few things that Pastor, Zach pointed out that I want to start off with. One thing is, like, you know, this whole year is about more life. And I think, you know, for a lot of things, we consider the fact we already have a little bit of life in this area, and then we're expanding that to being more and believing God for more. And here's a story, though, where we go from, like, zero life, completely dead to, again, an amazing story of more life and Jesus raising him from the dead. The points that Pastor Zach went through, though, just to frame things up as we start this conversation, is, first, death is real. And the reality that death is something that should be grieved. It's not what God intended in creation, but it's because of sin. And. And so that that also spans from, like, physical death to the death of. Of just relationships or dreams or things like that, all sorts of metaphorical things that we, can see take a turn in our life or die in our life. and the second point was just that resignation is real. And this was really great to think through the ways that, as Christians, we can sometimes put off, the idea of the resurrection as this kind of moment in time or something that's Going to an eternal thing, that we're all going to have this future hope that's amazing. Without acknowledging that God's promises are for us today and then the resurrection is real. Pastor, Zach had this jar analogy which we'll talk about more, and that the resurrection is a being, is a person. It's not just this moment in time. So, we're going to jump on into that to start things off. I wanted to think about the promises that God does has for us, because as Christians, I do think we can put off and say, oh, man, we know things are going to be great, but we can be resigned to the reality that this is just the way things are in our life. So what are some things when you think about who God is, the truth of this that God does promise us, in the here and now, I don't know. Lena, do you want to start things off? The first thing that came to my mind is, in Revelation 21, where Jesus says, I am making all things new. And, even, you know, Paul says in Corinthians and 2 Corinthians 2, how we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another that is simultaneous to death happening all around us and sometimes death happening in us. And so those things being true, that he has promised that he is in the process of making things new, those things that are his. And so that means us too, even while we're going through death. And so that can be relationships, that can be hopes, that can be bodies. He can do that. He does sometimes do that on this side of our physical death. So, yeah, that's what came to my mind, is that he is actively making us new even while we're grieving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think sometimes I feel like, if I compare and contrast Mary and Martha in this story, they're really interesting to me because I feel like Mary's super emotional when she says, if you had only been here. She's like, raging at Jesus. Martha, I feel, is just being. She's like me. She's being more sarcastic and, like, logistical and operational. She's like, oh, look who showed up. Like, you're finally here, but let's not open the grave because it's going to smell bad. Let's not do that. and I think, you know, when it comes to God's promises, I tend to think future oriented. Like, you know, those are for eventually, those will eventually be fulfilled. You know, things like. And some of that is, is maybe background related. You know, I grew up in a Pretty traditional Christian background where it was drilled into you that the idea of kind of you, you, you don't want to be a health and wealth person. You don't want to be like, oh, God's blessing is going to be material. And so I think the rebound from that is to assume that like, there's no material promise keeping in the day to day. It's like they're always off in the future and it's this sort of like, stoic martyrdom that you, that you live in. And I think that's so for me, when I think about God's promises, I think what I have to reconcile with myself is to to actually believe that, that those are not just for 60 years from now when I'm dead physically and I'm in heaven. But actually there are things that he's gonna bring today that he can and will and wants to today. That's different way of thinking for me. Yeah, yeah. I think Paul talks about it in Romans 8, 28, that I think that just comes to mind a lot that he is working all things together. you know, not one day it'll all be working things. He will work. Yeah, it's happening now actively. And how often I just don't think about that. I'm like, no, there's no way that there's an ounce of goodness in what he's doing right now. In the midst of whether it is physical death or spiritual, whatever it is, you know, there's a process and he is at work right now. And so, you know, with that mindset, we can see him moving in every single area and we don't have to think like, okay, it'll happen once we get to this point. But it's currently to your point, it's happening right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's also, for me, somewhat of a defense mechanism. And what I mean by that is like, you know, if there's a jar that we're going to get to the jar analogy, I'm sure in a little bit, but a jar that needs to be popped open. And I feel like there's no other way. I think it's easy to hedge on that and be like, well, you know, if it's your will, God, if you want to do it, you know, like, go ahead and do it, but we trust you. If you don't, you're still good. If you don't, he's like, I know I was still good all along. That's right. Yeah. But I think sometimes that for Me is less about trying to honestly, talk about and to God and more about covering, up for the fact that I don't actually believe he's going to do it. Right. Well, that dishonoring God by praying in that type of way was that. I know that hit me. Which we'll maybe talk more about that. I think I was connecting a couple things a couple weeks ago. I think it was Zach that talked about just kind of that day in and day out, just stream of prayer and conversation with God. And so when I was thinking about promises in scripture about God's presence, about his promises of wisdom, about his strength being made perfect in my weakness, and I know those can maybe feel like abstract things, but, I do think that continual conversation with God around those types of things can bring just a reality to that. Because, first of all, your relationship with God is gonna become more and more intimate and close and you will see him at work in your life. but those are real promises. He is with us. He will give us wisdom. He will provide us with the strength we need. And more and more and more. There's so much more to that. So. And I think that kind of continual conversation is going to. You're going to be more likely to ask for the jar to be open to talk about the jar. Yeah, I know we are going to get to the jar, but you said we can dishonor God by not asking. And maybe that's about a comfort level thing. We aren't even getting close to talking about whatever that is, because we're just on this superficial check in, as Joe said, like the consulting with him, but not really communing with him. Yeah, well, let's take a minute and look at this clip where, Pastor Zach does talk about kind of the jar analogy and we'll jump in to talk about that church. Hear me on this. When Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life, he is saying to us, hand me the jar. Hand me the jar. You see, there are two ways we can get this wrong. The first is I'm not telling you that every dead thing we give to Jesus, he will raise to life. I'm not telling you that every dead marriage can be saved, that every dead family relationship can be rescued, that every dead dream can be revived. It would dishonor God if I did that. Here's one way you know that isn't true. If that were true, Lazarus would be preaching the sermon tonight. You see, he gets up this time, but he doesn't get up next time. I Can't write you a blank check and promise you resurrection in every form you want it. We would dishonor God if we said that. But can I tell you something, Church? You ready for this? There's another way to dishonor God. And that is to never ask, to never hand him the jar. To believe that all the good things he has for you, all the power he has for you is in the future and is totally irrelevant today. So to just kind of press into that a little bit, why do you think we approach God or we can't approach God as if. Again, it's the. The jar. It's. Hey, five o' clock has passed. And. And that's when the jar needed to be open. So therefore dinner's not going to happen. Why? Instead of handing over the jar to God or just press into that and that illustration a little bit, I think. No. Oh, sorry, Kane. You go, you go, you go. Hurt. No's hurt. Like to hear no, it hurts. M. It's really good, you know, and as I listened to that, from Zach on Thursday night, I just thought about our fertility m journey and how we had, you know, for five years, like, could we have a child? And asking God for this child and praying and trying to come to a place of contentment if he left the jar closed. And then he did a miracle in my body and we had a child. And then I thought, oh, we got a yes. Now it's all yeses. And we bought a minivan. Cause God's gonna fill this van with kids. Because he said yes. But what ended up happening was he said yes that time and then he said no, and then he said no, and then he said no. You know, and so no's hurt. But I think that's part of relationship is, you know, it's still even that particular thing in my heart when it gets pressed into a m. Little bit, it still hurts even though it's been healed. Does that. I don't. I don't know. So I just think I can say that in a couple of things. In. I think it has been hard to hand it over to him because if he says no, it hurts. And you don't wanna feel the hurt. I don't know. It's better to kind of self protect and go. I can list a thousand reasons why he's just gonna say no. And so I'll just be content. What were you thinking? Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think there's two ways that I think about it in terms of giving the jar to him to open one. I think simply, I overthink it sometimes and I just say, wait, is this something that he wants me to try to figure out on my own? And then I like, I overthink it and I just make it all about me and why isn't anything happening? And realizing I didn't even invite him to open the jar. I didn't even give him the opportunity to do that. And, you know, to shepherd me, like we talked about last week, I didn't even give him a chance to do that. you know, and I think on the other side of it, I think on the other side of it, it's like this, for me being, having a sports background, this thing. Like, okay, if I can't, if he's not opening it, then I need to figure out a way to do it, like, which ties in a little bit. But it's like I'm going to force it to happen. I'm just going to open that jar myself. Correct. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's slightly different way I think about that in terms of, yeah, I got to, I got to earn it. I got to figure out self reliant. Yeah. So I think those two things tie together. But making it more about me and not really even. Yeah. Dishonoring him by saying, nope, I can do this. I'll figure out a way. No matter what it takes. Yeah. I think something Linus said for me, it's self protection. It is, that is like the symptom, the root cause of which is, not having enough faith. Yes. And I think it's like, if you think about like a four box grid, you know, it's like one box is expect a yes, get a yes. Then there's expect yes, get a no, expect a no, get a yes, expect a no, get a no. Like expect a no, get a no doesn't hurt. Expect, expect a no, get a yes is great. Expect a yes, get a yes as well. That's what I thought would happen. So I'm just trying to avoid that box of expect a yes, get a no. but I think I'm so afraid of that box and protecting myself from that, I will just default to, well, all God's promises are in the future. You know, I'm, not gonna hand this to. You know, it's safe there, right? Extremely safe. We know it's safe there. But in the present it's like, okay, yeah, I could feel disappointment still in this. But so to press into that more, I Mean that.Thanks for sharing what you shared, Lana. Like, that is so. Is very powerful. I think there's a lot of people that exist in a space where they have something in their life that has felt that. But I think the truth is that God's m. Goodness is true in yeses and in no's. But it doesn't always feel that way. Right. So how do we. How can we help? Think about that now. How can we help people listening. Think about that now. How? I mean, you shared an experience of that. I don't know any amazing wisdom. I mean, I'll share two quick things I'd love to hear from you guys. One, as you were talking, Jimmy, I thought that was such a great way to explain it. So let's acknowledge that. But as we. Let's encourage one another as a community, though, that. That's the reality. But we can press in together for more. You know, we have people in our congregation now. We're asking God to heal them physically. Right? And I think we can share testimonies of those that have been healed physically. But God wants to be asked to open the jar, even if we're risking hearing a no. So I just think one way is to push each other, to remind one another to ask big things of God. but he could still, you know, he could still say no. And I was just thinking about this passage of scripture over the last couple of days. It's in Romans 5, and, you know, Paul is talking about how through him, we've obtained access by faith into a grace in which we stand. It's like this beautiful passage about how good his promises are and how great the grace is, and we stand in this. But then he, like, makes this pivot. But not only is that true, he says not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. And I wanna be really careful not to paint this as a, you know, do, do, do. We're gonna rejoice in our sufferings. Cause this is the work. It's knowing that suffering will produce endurance, and endurance will produce character. And character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That is around my. Around the circumstance I just shared about. That has been the reality. And it is what I still cling to. And it's not a hope that I'm gonna get pregnant next week. I don't, you know, like. Yeah. But it is a hope that what he has decided to say yes to is exactly what he knows is Best. And it produces a character in me that I believe I would not have been able to gain any other way. I love that passage. I share my no that you knows can. The no that I have was. I was just thinking about the reality of when my dad passed away, like, a year ago. That's the verse that I shared at his. At his funeral. But the reason was, is I felt like in that no, I was able to. It was so. God's presence was so real. And the reality of that truth, of, like, seeing what suffering did and what it produced and then went. And I'm gonna forget the order of all the things. But ultimately, hope became so, like, physically real to me. I remember you saying that and that it was. It was so true. I was able to see God's goodness now, again, my dad had lived a very long life. It's very different than different pains and hurts that people have when they're in their teens or 20s or 30s. Right. But the reality is his goodness is true. And sometimes it's whether we feel it or not. Right. And I think that's the other tension to point to is that, to continue to grow as we pursue Christ in a way that we can realize our feelings can. Sometimes they deceive us. They deceive us. Yeah. So. But, yeah, yeah, I can speak to that, too. I think, you know, we talked about it earlier, but I had this dream of playing basketball and playing it as long as I could. And there came a point in time where it felt like there was a shift from basketball into what was next. And, you know, not really. That was my dream. And I felt like there was a. It was a healthy dream. You know, I feel like there was. You know, there was a reason I wanted to do it. I wanted to have a lot of goals, and all those things worked hard. but I got to this point where I had to recognize, okay, my dreams might be healthy dreams, but they might not be the dreams that God has for me. And that was a pivotal point for me of just realizing, okay, those nos might not necessarily be like, oh, those dreams are gone. It's just new dreams have been forming and taking place and recognizing those as being the ones that actually matter. And so holding dreams loosely, I think, is a really challenging concept while still pursuing them. but, yeah, just trusting that, whether they shake out or not, that, again, God's working all things together for us. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, to wrap things up, I just thought, there was. So Pastor Zach does a Q and A. And after the 7:30 service. Pastor Joe does it as well. But, in that he. It reminded me of something I feel is true that I can speak to as well. And that's just that there are jar popping moments happening all the time. And sometimes as Christians, like, it's so important. Again, we talk about a lot on here to be in community, because in knowing other people, seeing other people's stories, you can increase even your faith to trust in his goodness, even when yours might be one that is not feeling awesome right now. Right. So when I look around a room on a Thursday, on a Sunday, I feel like it's amazing because of just the relationships I have, the job that I have, that I can look around a room and point to probably dozens of people that I'm like, wow, God healed that marriage, man, the mental health battle that person went through and how God has restored them right now, man, the physical healing of cancer that that person experienced, that there's no other explanation besides God. so I don't know if there's any other jar popping, but just as an exercise of even increasing our faith in this moment as we head out to the week, anything else you'd want to press into in that it might feel like. You know what? This question made me think about what happened at church last week where, you know, we baptized a bunch of people and I did some of the baptizing. And there was one particular point, I think it was during the 1145 service where I realized that I was baptizing a daughter and then a mother and a father back to back to back. Just like an entire family. Yeah. Popped like their jar has been. It just got me to thinking about, you know, like, Well, maybe this is another way to say it. My dad came to faith in Jesus watching a televangelist like 40 years ago. And I was just thinking about the generational impact of that, popping jar. You know, what that means for me, for my brother and sisters, for 19 or whatever grandchildren now where, save for that one moment, who knows would I exist? I wouldn't be following Jesus. But it also went backward. Like he led his parents to Christ. and just thinking about that, you know, thinking about what the significance of those three people being baptized last week, who knows what that could be? That's right. But that's a generational popping of jars that could be reverberating for decades. And it's just amazing to see. Yeah, Yeah, I love that. That's great. Well, that's pretty amazing. I think we'll just we'll wrap things. On that note, it's been great to be together. can't wait for next week. We have a couple more weeks at least, and two weeks till Easter, so pretty pumped about that. but thanks for joining. Until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to beyond the Message. Before you head out, make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss next week's content. And all week long, we want to provide you opportunities to grow right where you are. So check out our YouTube channel, our app, for more opportunities to catch content from Christ Community Chapel. Thanks so much for tuning in and we'll see you next time.