Rick Warren - The Path to Peace - Part 1
If you take out your message notes, we’re in a series on getting through what you’re going through. This last week was birthday week in the Warren household. We had three family birthdays. Sunday morning is Amy’s birthday, but earlier in the week we had Cole’s birthday and Caleb’s birthday. And so on Cole’s birthday, we went to a bounce house, and had a whole lot of fun playing in the bounce house. And on Caleb’s birthday, we went to a trampoline club. You can imagine me on a trampoline. And so I was really getting into this, and all of a sudden Cassi comes up, she’s seven years old, she says, «Papa, I have something I want you to do with me». I said, «Okay, babe».
You know, I’m up for anything. So she grabs my hand and she takes me around to this balance beam jousting contest. So we put on the headgear, we get, this is like American Gladiator. Okay, now it’s me versus a seven year old. I think this is gonna be pretty easy, okay? And so we get up on the balance beam, and it’s over this giant pit filled with real squishy, super soft sponges, so if you fall off it’s no big deal. And, so she’s on one of the balance beams, and she comes at me, she takes one swack and I’m off. Okay, I’m off. So I fall into this pit, and then I think, okay, well that was fun. And then I start to get out, but at my weight, those things just collapse, and you know, they’re up to about here. Okay, so it’s a pit filled with these super soft sponges, and you’re going like this, and you push down, and they just all push right back down. And I thought, I’m gonna die in this pit.
I wanted to do a commercial, «I’ve fallen and I can’t get out»! And actually, I couldn’t get out. I literally, because there was nothing to step up on. And so finally Josh and Amy grabbed my hands and pulled me out. Have you ever been in a pit you couldn’t get out of. That’s why we’re doing this series. Because we all have pits: financial pits, emotional pits, relational pits. Sometimes life’s just the pits. And some things you can’t get around, and some things you can’t get over, you can’t go under, you can’t climb out on your own. You just gotta go through it. And sometimes you have to ask for help.
Now we’re about, you know, two-thirds through this series, we’re in week four. We’ve got three more that we want to look at, but before we do, I wanna go back and review kind of where we’ve been, because we’ve been talking about the six different phases or six responses or reactions to when you have a major loss in your life. You lose your job, you lose your health, you lose your spouse, you lose a loved one to death, you lose credibility, whatever. And everybody goes through losses in life and we all have major losses in life.
Now, these six phases that we’ve been looking at: shock and sorrow and struggle so far, and we’re gonna look at surrender, sanctification, and service, they’re not really linear. In other words, it’s not like you go through one and then that’s it, and then you’re done. You can actually bounce back and forth between these stages. In fact, you could have all six of them in one day, and you could get through shock and then be going through sorrow and come out on struggle and then all of a sudden you find yourself back in sorrow again. That’s normal. These are not linear, like you graduate from them. In a grieving period, you go through them all in different ways.
So let’s just review this. First, we said that the typical reaction when you have a major loss in life is shock. And in shock, you feel numb. And we talked in that message about crying out to God and letting others help me. And we talked about how, really, you need other people in your life. You need fellowship when you’re shocked because you can’t think straight, and other people need to think for you. And you can’t pray straight, you need other people to pray for you. And you can’t even believe straight, when you’re in shock. You need other people to believe for you. And so we’re in shock. Then you move into the sorrow phase, and in sorrow, you move from feeling numb to feeling grief. Remember we talked about how grief is a good thing. Grief is God’s way of getting us through the transitions of life. That there is no life without change, there is no change without loss, there is no loss without pain, and there is no pain without grief. Grief is healthy.
In fact, to not grieve is unhealthy. In fact, grief is the only thing that makes you different from the animals. It’s the most human emotion. God grieves. It’s not a sin to grieve. Jesus wept. We talked about that, that you cannot go around grief, you gotta go through it. And the reason why so many people have so many problems in adulthood is because they have never grieved over losses early on in life, they just stuffed it. And whenever you stuff your grief, you’re the one who’s gonna get sick. You’re the one who it’s gonna come out sideways, with all kinds of bizarre behaviors and things like that. You have to face it to move on. We talked about how men, we’re not particularly good at grieving because we don’t like to feel our emotions. In fact, we’re often afraid of our emotions.
And so we stuff them, and we don’t deal with them. When you stuff it, your stomach keeps score. The only way to get through it is to go through it, and you can’t stuff it, you can’t deny it. Remember we talked about listing the losses that you’ve never grieved. There’s some things that you went… and a lot of grief is more than just losing a loved one. You can lose a lot of things in life. You can lose your identity, you can lose your credibility, you can lose your health, you can lose a position, and then you identify what you really lost, and then you ask Jesus to heal your broken heart. Then last week we talked about struggle, and if in sorrow you feel, in shock you feel numb and in sorrow you feel sad, in struggle you feel angry, and now you’re starting to get frustrated, you’re starting to get ticked off at God. You’re getting a little angry at God and go, «Why is this happening»? That’s the «why» questions of life.
And remember I talked last week about how you have to learn what the Bible calls «lament». I gave you a little acrostic care. Complain, appeal, remind, express. You gotta complain. Tell God what I think is unfair, and then appeal to God’s nature. You’re a good God, you’re a loving God, help me out here. And you gotta remind God of what he said. God loves to be reminded of his promises. And then I express my total trust in God. And this week we’re gonna look at surrender. And the emotion best described it with surrender is peace. It’s the pathway to peace.
Remember last week, I finished the message by saying the only way you’re gonna win a fight with God is surrender. But when you do, you win, because God pours out blessings on you in that surrendered attitude. And specifically what I want us to look at this week in surrendering in the path of peace, how do you let go of the pain in your life? How do you get on? How do you move through it? How do you get past the pain so you don’t get stuck. Because so many people are stuck. At some point, a major loss. They had a divorce and that’s defined their life. Now, everybody is gonna have bad things happen to them. Everybody does, everybody does. And you have three choices when bad things happen to you. You can let it destroy you, you can let it define you, or you can let it develop you. You can let it destroy you, you can let it define you, or you can let it develop you.
What Kay and I wanna share with you this weekend is how you let even the bad things in your life develop you and grow you by the act of surrender. Specifically, we’re gonna look at a passage where David, King David in the Bible lost his son. He had a baby that died. Now, the Bible says, look there on your outline, Romans 15 verse 4: «Everything written in the scriptures was written to teach us, in order that we might have hope». Circle that word «hope». The Bible says that everything God gave us in the Bible was given for our encouragement and for our hope, and so these stories that are in the Bible, they’re not just there for stories. This story of David losing a child is not just a story, it teaches us the principles of the path to peace, to surrender.
Now, I don’t know what losses you’ve had and I don’t know the losses that are gonna come in your life, or in my life either, but you’re gonna need to know how to respond to them. So let’s look at David, and this story of him losing a child, and then what he learned to do as a result of it. In 2 Samuel chapter 12, verses 16 to 24, it says this, «David begged God to spare the child». Now, let me just say it. Bathsheba was pregnant, the baby was born, and then the baby gets very, very sick. And it is near death, and David is freaking out. And like any new dad, he is on the floor praying and crying and weeping. And it says, «David begged God to spare the child. He went without food,» in other words, he’s fasting, «and he lay all night on the bare ground,» he’s praying to God.
«Now the leaders of the nation,» remember David is the king of Israel, «The leaders of the nation pleaded with David to get up and to go eat something, eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the baby died». So this has been going on for days and days. No food, no eating, just praying. «On the seventh day, the baby died. Now, David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. 'He was so broken up about the baby being sick, ' they said, 'What’s he gonna do, you know, what’s he gonna do to himself when when we tell him that the child is dead? '» So they’re worried about it. «But when David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. 'Is the baby dead? ' he asked. And, 'Yes, ' they replied».
Now, that’s the setup of the story. And the rest of the story that Kay and I are gonna share with you are the six things that David does after he has a major loss. He’s been praying all of his life for this baby to be well. The baby dies. I told you that I prayed every day of Matthew’s life for 27 years that God would heal him of his mental illness, and it didn’t happen. It was the number one prayer of my life, and it didn’t happen. Now, what does David do after this? Is he gonna let it destroy him? Is he gonna let it define him? Or is he gonna let it develop him? David does six things. If you ever needed to take notes, it’s this weekend. Write these down. The first thing I need to do if I want to get on the pathway to peace is this. Accept what cannot be changed.
That’s the first thing I have to do on the path to peace. That’s the first step in surrender. I have to accept what cannot be changed. You know, when people receive bad news, what’s the first response to it? I don’t believe it. Exactly. I don’t believe it. We reject it. In fact, usually, if you tell somebody some really bad shocking news, here’s what they’ll start doing, they’ll go like this… No, no, no, no, no, no, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. It couldn’t be, it’s impossible. It’s not real. Because our minds reject shocking news. And the first reaction is no, no, it can’t happen. It’s not supposed to happen like this. That’s the first typical reaction. But slowly reality starts to set in and you can’t deny it anymore. And that’s where surrender comes in. Surrender is accepting a reality.
Here’s what David did. Look there in your outlines. 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 22 and 23: «David said this, 'I fasted and I wept while the child was alive, for I thought perhaps the Lord would be gracious and let the child live. But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? '» The answer is no. What is David doing here? He’s accepting what cannot be changed. And when you have an immediate loss, like, when I had a son who, a few hours earlier he was alive, and then all of a sudden he was dead. And that was so shocking, it wasn’t like a six month, you know, cancer, where you get a chance to prepare for it. It seemed so surreal in those early hours, because all of a sudden he was not there anymore. And really, for the first couple of weeks, I kept expecting him to walk in the door at night.
Now, what I say when I say accepting what can’t be changed in whatever loss you’ve had in your life, no matter what the loss is, the first thing you have to do is, if it’s over, it’s over. And you accept what cannot be changed. Now, acceptance doesn’t mean you stop caring. No, no. And acceptance doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It does. And acceptance doesn’t mean you even think that what happened is good. It’s not! None of that’s acceptance. Acceptance simply means, «I can’t change it». David says, «My son has died, and I can’t change that».
I want you to write this question on your outline. What do I need to accept that’s over in my life? What do I need to accept is over in my life? Maybe it’s that job, and you keep thinking, maybe they’re gonna call me back and give me another chance at it. I made a big mistake. I blew it. I really messed up. I really made a big mess of it. It’s over. There ain’t gonna be another chance. Maybe there’s some relationship that’s over, and you just keep hoping they’re coming back, and you keep hoping they’re gonna come back. You keep hoping they’re gonna call. They’re not coming back. It’s over. Maybe you need to say, «What I need to accept is that season of my life is over».
You know, I one time went to a high school reunion, I will never go again. Because there were some people still reliving the high school catch they made in a football game. I’m going, «Get a life»! That happened 20 years ago. And I mean you’re not in high school anymore. Have you looked in the mirror? That season of your life is never coming back. It’s over, and you need to accept what cannot be changed. And the past in your life, for good or bad, the good things and the bad things, they are seasonal, and they’re not there, and the past is past. Some of you, you’ve had a dream, and it didn’t happen, and it’s over. You need to get a new dream. You need to get a new vision. You need to get a new goal for your life. That’s the first step. Accept what can’t be changed. The second, and Kay is gonna come and talk about this, is remember, it’s not the end of the story.
Kay Warren: It’s not the end of the story. There’s a second step to finding peace through surrender. When we experience a devastating or catastrophic loss of some kind, it’s really normal to feel like this is the end. This is over. Nothing good can ever come from it. Everything is lost. King David, as he experienced the loss of his son, he was able to focus on the hope that was ahead of him, believing that God wasn’t finished. 2 Samuel 12:23: He says about his son, «I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me».
He understood and accepted that his son would never be with him again on this earth, but he was confident that he would be reunited with his child, that his son was not going to come to him, but he was going to go to his child, and that the baby’s death was not the end of the story. I told you a few weeks ago when I spoke that I know that Matthew’s death is not the end of his story. It’s not the end of our family’s story. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t moments that I don’t doubt, because I do. Matthew is in heaven, but I can’t see heaven. I can stare out at the sky, and I can stare as hard as I can, and I can look and I can look, and try to penetrate the veil of this existence to catch a glimpse of heaven, and I can’t. I simply cannot do it.
And what I’m learning to say is this, «Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief». And if you will be honest about your own walk with God, there have got to be those moments in which you would say that same thing. God, I believe I do, I believe. But there are still these doubts. There are these things that I can’t see, things that are mysterious things that I don’t know what to do with. And so we just end that prayer with God, help my unbelief. There’s nothing wrong with praying a prayer like that. See, God never is content to let a single one of our stories end in ashes. He promises that he will bring beauty from ashes. Where I struggle is sometimes believing not that he will bring beauty from ashes, but how?
How will he bring beauty from these ashes, because I am completely and utterly convinced that he will not let our story end with just ashes. I told you about the hope box that I had all the years that Matthew was ill, and that I believed, and how I stuffed it full of verses that I was clinging to, that God was going to heal Matthew, and then God didn’t heal Matthew. And I told you that what I had now, besides rebuilding this hope box, is that I had a mental picture of a little pot that I was collecting, and I called it the mystery pot, and I was putting all the things that I don’t know what to do with in that pot.
Well, I have a friend who knows that I’m very literal, and I now have a little mystery pot, if you will. And this little pot has questions. It has questions. And every time I think of another question that I don’t know how to answer, that I don’t know the answer to, that I can’t figure out, it goes in the pot. And it sits on my devotional table, and it sits there as a reminder of… this is real, this is real stuff that I’m dealing with. The questions that you have about faith and about the losses in your life, they are real questions. And so if you do something like this, a little pot or something else, but the point of it for me, as I look at it, is not that I have questions that I can’t answer.
The point of this is to remind me that God will not let ashes be the end of the story. In grief, one of the most challenging transitions, I’m discovering, is moving toward the future, rather than hanging around in the past. That’s a really challenging thing for me. Jerry Sittser, who wrote a book that I recommended to you, «A Grace Disguised,» that we have in the pavilion, he lost his mother, his wife, and his four year old daughter in a car accident, and he wrote this incredible book. And he says, when talking about how do we move into the future, he says this, «How could I conceive of a future without them? The very thought was abhorrent to me. Whenever I thought of the future, I still found them there, but they were never going to be there, which only made me more aware of how devastating my loss was. I remembered a past that included people I did not want to give up. And I imagined a future that excluded people I desperately wanted to keep».
And I find this very true. When we think of the past, our loved one is in it. Every time you think of the past, that person you’ve lost is in your past. They were there, they were such an integral part of it. And it’s so impossible in these early stages, at least for us, to envision a future in which our loved one isn’t there. And so what we do if we’re not careful is we get stuck in the present. We get stuck here in this limbo land because we don’t want to leave the past, because that’s where the loved one was, and we can’t envision a future in which they’re not there. We’re disbelieving that they won’t… and so we stay in this very uncomfortable limbo land of the present.
And some of you would probably agree with me that a little nagging sense of guilt can creep in. It’s been 4 ½ months. I’m breathing again. But when you think of going into a future without the one that you love, there’s a little bit of a sense, if I move into a future, am I forgetting him? Am I neglecting him? And if any of you have been in any of that situation, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a very common response in grief, or guilt or denial or deep sorrow. I don’t want a future in which my loved one isn’t a part.
So how does surrender help us find peace in this grief as we think about a future, as we, like David, understand that our loved one is not coming back, or that loss is not changing. How do we find peace in that? Sarah Young writes in a devotional book I love called «Jesus calling». She says this about the future. She says, «Your future looks uncertain and feels flimsy, even precarious. That is how it should be. Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things. 'When you try to figure out the future, you’re grasping at things that are mine, ' Jesus says. 'This, like all forms of worry, is an act of rebellion, doubting my promises to care for you. Whenever you find yourself worrying about the future, ' Jesus says, 'repent and return to me, and I will show you the next step forward. And the one after that, and the one after that.'»