(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

Let me open in prayer.

God, we come before you and thank you.

Thank you for promising to be here with us.

Lord, no matter what baggage we bring in throughout the week, no matter if we're coming in here barely making it or full of energy, Lord, you promise that you are going to inhabit and dwell in the praises of your people.

And so, Father, that was some amazing praise.

And so we know that you're here, God.

Continue to work in our hearts.

Teach us more about you and draw us closer to you.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said.

If you've spent any time in church at all during your life, you've probably heard that passage read countless times to the point where it's become kind of memorized, right?

And we can say it to ourselves.

We can say it without even opening our Bibles.

But yet sometimes when we've heard something so often, we lose the absolute wonder of what is actually going on.

And so today I want us to get refocused a little bit.

And I want us to begin to grasp once again the absolute wonder of God and how that impacts us right now.

And today I want to talk about chaos, right?

And I want to talk about God's power over chaos.

All right.

Let's see if we can get a little group participation with some amens.

Anyone in here feeling a little chaos in their lives right now?

Amen.

I heard a little kid say amen.

That was awesome.

I love that.

All right.

Anyone feeling like their life is out of control?

Amen.

Right?

Anyone feeling like you are drowning and barely keeping your head above water?

Any amens?

Amen.

All right.

This is fantastic.

And that is why this passage is so important for us right now in our lives, because that power of God over chaos was on full display at the very moment of creation.

It was on full display throughout the life of Jesus.

And that power over chaos, you guys, is on full display right now for all of us today.

And that's what I want us to understand.

Right?

You see, when chaos is in our lives, when we feel out of control, right, it begins with our emotions.

And those emotions feel out of control.

And we have a hard time thinking straight.

We lose focus on God's truth.

And we sometimes can't tell the difference between right and wrong.

And again, this is why this passage in Genesis is so important, not just as believers, but as human beings.

Right?

If you were in here today and you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, I want you to know that the God of creation is alive and active today, bringing peace to chaos, just like he did all those millennia ago.

And so I am glad that you are here because what we see at the very start, at the very beginning of creation, God's very first action was to bring order to chaos.

And the one irrefutable truth about God, there's many, but one that we need to understand for today is that if God reveals something about his nature, about who he is and how he acts and how he responds to people, if he reveals something about his nature, that nature never changes.

Okay?

And so if God brought peace to chaos in the midst at the very beginning of creation, he's going to bring peace into our lives today if we allow it.

Genesis tells us that in the beginning, God created, right?

And that Hebrew word for created is the word bara.

Okay?

Everyone say it with me.

One, two, three, bara.

Okay?

I've got it up here on the board just because Hebrew is such a beautiful language to look at, right?

It's hard to read.

It goes from left or right to left, not left to right like we're used to.

So bet resh aleph is the word bara.

And what this Hebrew word means isn't just create, but it means to create, shape, or form something brand new.

Something that the world has never seen before.

And the thing about this word bara is that it is only used with God as the subject, okay?

And for those of you like me who didn't really do well in English class, what that means is only God can bara, okay?

Nobody else can bara, right?

I can make something, but I can't bara something.

And so only God can bara.

And when God creates the world, it is at the very beginning, it is chaotic.

And all these words that we read in these first three verses of our Bibles, formless, empty, darkness, deep, waters, all of these words that the Israelites read, they would have understood as being chaos, right?

And I want us to understand that we still have these feelings today about words like this, okay?

Imagine if somebody told you like, hey, I need you to go into that formless, empty, dark basement.

There's a certain like, no, I've seen movies, like, no.

It's chaos.

It's an unknown.

It's an uncertain.

There's something that brings fear into me when I think about that.

Or if any of you have ever been swimming in the ocean or a lake where you cannot see the bottom, these words, deep waters, terrify us, right?

I know in my mind, I'm picturing the Jaws movie poster, you know, like I'm just seconds away from just being gone.

He is just going to pop up and I'm out of here.

And so the Israelites would have understood all of these words as just entailing chaos.

And initially creation was totally out of control.

And that's what this passage wants us to understand.

But then we read that over all this chaos, the spirit of God was hovering.

And when things look totally out of control, what we find here is that the spirit of God is over all.

And what we know is that when the spirit of God is involved, something good always happens.

Amen.

And so if you're here today and you're feeling like life is chaos, I want to assure you that the spirit of God is here in this place.

And just like creation, when the spirit of God is involved, something good is always going to happen.

And so in the midst of this chaos with the spirit of God hovering over something truly amazing that happens, God speaks and the word goes forth.

And what happens next is that all of this chaos, everything that seems out of control, all of this darkness and emptiness is brought into complete order.

And that is what we see in the first chapter of Genesis.

So not only is God covering the chaos, he's bringing order to it.

He's bringing peace.

And here, I truly hope we understand to begin to capture that wonder and that awesomeness of God.

If God can not only control but bring order to the chaos of creation, how much more can God do this for our lives right now?

Because in this very moment, God is sending out his word into the world to bring order to the chaos of lives everywhere.

And that is such good news.

And that's what God's word tells us, right, from the very beginning.

And what we have to understand is that this Bible, okay, not this specific Bible, you have Bibles too, but this Bible is the revelation of God to this world, right?

When you want to know who God is, how God acts, what God does, how God interacts with humanity, that's what the Bible tells us.

And what we find in this Bible is in the Old Testament, right, God is revealing himself and his nature to a man called Abraham and all of Abraham's descendants.

And he shows Abraham and his descendants how they are to live in relationship with God in a world broken by sin and in order to be a light to the nations.

Because again, for the people of God, it's not just about our relationship with God, it's the fact that God's saying, have that relationship, but live it out so that the world sees you.

And that's what he's telling the Israelites from the very beginning.

But along the way, Abraham's descendants got lost, right?

They allowed other nations, they allowed other beliefs, they allowed other thoughts to come in and get in their way of following God.

And basically what happened is they allowed chaos back into their lives.

That's what they did.

And then what we see is in the New Testament, God sends his son, Jesus, to not only remind the world about who God is, but to make a way to cast aside the chaos of sin forever and live in a restored relationship with God, their creator.

See, John the disciple and the writer of the fourth gospel wanted people to truly understand who Jesus was.

And in John 1, verses 1 through 3, it says this, and again, this is very familiar because John wants it to be very familiar.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made.

And John tells us that Jesus is that very Word of God that went forth at the beginning of creation to bring order to chaos.

And that now, that Word, that Word that brings peace, that Word that ends chaos is now dwelling among us in human form.

And what John wants to know is, hey world, this is good news.

This is really good news for all of us.

And what we see is time and time again, story after story of Jesus entering into the chaos of people's lives and bringing order and peace, right?

It didn't matter if it was lepers or the blind or prostitutes or demon possessed people.

Heck, he even raised a couple of dead people just so that the world knew how powerful he was, right?

It didn't matter if you were a tax collector.

It didn't matter if you were a sinner.

Anyone and everyone that the world had cast aside, Jesus came to bring peace and to bring hope.

Anyone and everyone who had cast themselves aside as too far gone, Jesus came to bring peace to their chaos.

Any of us out there that at one point in our lives thought, man, I am way too gone, way too far gone for God to even move.

Amen.

And you know, you know what God can do.

You know when that word came forth that you were changed forever.

Jesus came into their darkness, into their emptiness, into their chaos, and he brought peace.

He brought this Hebrew word we know as shalom, right?

And our Bibles, our English Bibles translate that word as shalom or peace, but it means so much more.

It means a wholeness.

It means a completeness, right?

It means an order to chaos.

And what it means is that you are physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually whole.

Doesn't that sound fantastic?

Right?

I mean, let's face it, most of us can count on one hand in a year how many days we felt emotionally whole, right?

Physically not exhausted, relationally not fractured and broken.

And what Jesus does is He says, I've come to bring peace.

I've come to bring wholeness.

And some of you right now in this room, in this building, watching online, you don't have that shalom or wholeness.

And you are worn out from the chaos that is raging in your lives.

And you need to hear these words, God still Baraz.

He still makes things brand new.

His Spirit still hovers and His Word still goes forth.

And all you need to do is to turn away from that old life of chaos and accept the peace that is offered in Christ.

Embrace that new life that Christ offered through His death and resurrection.

And I'm telling you, it's not, it's not hard.

All it is, is like, man, God, I'm tired.

Right?

That's a heartfelt prayer right there.

God do something.

God does.

And so, but we might be asking, what about all of us who are already following Jesus, right?

It's one thing to not have Jesus and then to invite Him in to give us that peace to experience for the first time.

But what about those of us who have been following, who have given our lives over to Christ?

Right?

Because the reality is, I have peace, the peace of Christ in my heart, but there are plenty of times where I feel like my life is full of chaos.

And I sometimes ask, is there something wrong with me?

Is there, am I doing it wrong?

Right?

Am I doing this faith thing wrong?

And I want to share a great story from the Gospel of Mark.

This is in chapter four, verses 35 through 41.

And it says, that day when evening came, he said to his disciples, let us go over to the other side.

Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along just as he was in the boat.

And there were also other boats with him.

A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.

Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion.

Jesus is awesome, right?

Like that's just, I'd be throwing up over the side.

Jesus is sleeping on a cushion.

That's awesome.

The disciples woke him and said to him, teacher, don't you care if we drown?

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, said to the deep, said to the waters, quiet, be still.

Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

And Jesus said to his disciples, why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

They were terrified and asked each other, who is this?

Even the wind and the waves obey him.

Now, after going through that passage in Genesis, I hope you caught the mind-blowing significance of this story, right?

In the midst of the chaos of a storm and the fear of being in the middle of the deep, fighting for their very lives to stay afloat, these disciples, right?

These devoted followers of Jesus, not new believers, not non-believers, disciples of Jesus, are trying everything in their power to not drown.

Several of them are experienced fishermen who have no doubt faced many storms in their lives, right?

And I'm sure when that storm started, they were super confident.

Hey, guys, don't worry about it.

We got this.

We've seen worse.

Just let Jesus sleep, right?

How many times have I been there?

How many times have we been there, right?

Storms of chaos in our lives.

And how many have we faced before?

How many times have I told Jesus, don't worry about it, keep napping.

I've got it.

And then something big hits.

And soon we find ourselves worn out, tired of fighting, but afraid of giving up.

That's a hard place to be living in.

And I'm sure many of us know what I'm talking about.

I am exhausted.

I feel like I have given everything to this issue, this problem, whatever is coming up in my life, but I cannot stop or else everything's gone.

And finally, in frustration, we turn to Jesus, just like the disciples did.

And their words are our words.

Jesus, don't you care?

See, what we have to realize in this story and in our lives is that not only does Jesus care, but it was his idea to go into the storm, right?

The purpose of getting his disciples in the boat was to take them through the storm.

But why?

Simple answer is Jesus is a jerk.

I'm just kidding.

He's not.

But there are some times, like, I don't know about you, but when I read these stories in the Bible, like, I picture myself being there, knowing full well what's going to happen.

And, you know, and I hear Jesus say, like, let's go in the other side.

And I'm like sitting there like, oh, and he kind of looks at me and he gives me that nod, like, yeah, it's going to happen.

Like, shh, but don't tell him, right?

Play it cool, Richard, play it cool.

Don't say anything.

And then we go and it happens, right?

But this is who Jesus is.

He's got a reason for going through the storm.

He's got something he wants to teach these disciples.

And I'm telling you, the reason is that there comes a time in every believer's journey where God needs to teach us that our hope and our peace will not come about by struggling through life in our own strength.

There has to come a time in every believer's life where God has to teach us that lesson.

You can't do this on your own.

You're good, but you're not that good.

You're good, but I have bigger plans.

And I need you to not just trust yourself, but to trust me with everything.

Right?

And getting to that point in our faith where our hope doesn't come from us, it will only happen when we reach the end of our own strength and begin to trust Jesus.

Right?

When we get to the point in our faith where we fall to our knees, tired and weary from battling on our own to be better, to be holier, to be better Christians, to be better moms, to be better dads, sons, daughters, coworkers, neighbors, friends, grandmas, grandpas, whatever it is, and we fall to our knees and scream out in frustration, Jesus, don't you care if I drown?

And I know some of you have gotten to that point in your life.

And let me ask you this, you can respond with an amen, that's usually when God starts doing his greatest work.

Amen?

Amen.

See, look at what we see from Jesus.

It's just like in Genesis 1, God speaks and immediately chaos is gone and peace comes in.

But again, the question we ask, why is that a lesson we need to learn?

And for that, I want to share a story from my own life.

Today, my oldest son turns 18, right?

Yep, he gets older, I stay the same.

Just kidding.

Actually, we found a picture of Mackenzie and I when we were dating.

When we started dating, I was 17, she was, I'm not going to say, because some of you, she was 14, okay?

We knew it, I know, so I heard that snicker, that was good.

But we found out, somebody gave us a picture of that time and I showed it to my kids and they were just like, who is that?

And I'm looking at that picture, I'm just like, I haven't changed at all, what are you talking about?

They're like, dad, you were skinny in that picture.

I'm like, ouch, right?

But my son turning 18 and I was thinking this week that this is where all of those years of parenting and guiding and all of those lessons I tried to teach are put to the test, right?

This is when, by our society's rules, he is an adult and, you know, he's making his own decision.

Don't worry, I didn't have his bags waiting for him at the door when he woke up.

He's still living at home, it's all right.

But again, he is starting to make his own decisions as an adult.

But today, it's not the lessons that I taught my son that I want to talk about, it's the lessons he's taught me.

You see, in the last 18 years, right, the person that I am today, I've been shaped by a lot of people.

Many of you in this room have helped shape me to the person I am today.

But over these last 18 years, no one has taught me more about God and understanding God and growing in my faith more than my son.

For, yeah, he's awesome.

For those of you who don't know, all three of my kids are adopted, right?

And so, when I think about that, like, there's this added pressure, like, oh my gosh, God handpicked me to be the dad of these three kids, right?

Like, I better not mess this up.

And I'll tell you, there was, for a long time, I didn't feel like I was up for the task of what God had called me to.

At a young age, Graham was diagnosed with an adolescent mood disorder.

And basically, what that means is that anything would set him off, right?

And I know, if you're a parent in here, you've dealt with temper tantrums.

No.

Like, when I say set off, I mean like, set off to the moon, set off.

You know, there were times where police came to our house because of the yelling and the screaming and the fighting and everything like that.

And it didn't matter if it was school or church or at family gatherings or at home.

It could happen anywhere.

And, you know, it was fun because so many people would give me the typical advice, like, you need to be firmer with him, right?

And I, again, I did that the first year.

I don't know why I do a lower voice in that.

Probably because mine's so high.

But, you know, you need to be firmer with him.

You need to let him know that you're the boss.

And, you know, you know what my daddy would have done to me?

I added a Southern twang in that in case you didn't catch it.

But all of these things basically meant the same thing.

He needs a good whooping, right?

And so being a new dad, like, I didn't want to, you know, people to look at me and be like, oh, God, what a terrible parent.

And so I started, okay, I started to meet Graham's outbursts with my own outbursts.

And he would yell and I would yell and he would escalate and then I would escalate.

And I was like gasoline to his fire, right?

And the only problem was, and I've just realized this in the past couple of years, and this was a real humbling thing for me.

He couldn't control it, but I could.

And that doesn't say a lot about me.

And all that was happening was that a wedge was being created between me and my son.

And after every fight, I would walk away more frustrated at him.

And I know, I know he was always more frustrated at me.

And this is what really hits me hard about this is in a world where so many people, teachers, friends, church people, were pushing him away, labeling him, and writing him off, this little boy that God had entrusted to me personally was getting the same thing from the dad who was supposed to love him.

I was trying to stop chaos with chaos.

And my relationship with my son was being destroyed.

And then I came to the end of fighting in my own strength.

And I remember talking with a friend of mine who knew and loved Graham.

His name was Bob McCorkle.

Doesn't that just sound like a happy name?

He was a happy guy.

I loved him.

Bob's awesome.

But he was one of those people who saw Christ in everyone.

And I needed him because he saw in my son what I knew was there, but my choices had started clouding that.

And so what he told me was, Richard, you need to teach him about grace and about mercy and about forgiveness because he's not going to learn that from anyone else.

Because I was so frustrated by this time.

And what God, everything, I felt like a failure.

I felt like the worst father in the world, right?

I just felt like the disciples, like, God, don't you care about what's going on here?

But then just like in the story of creation and just like Jesus calming the storm, the word of God came forth through a good friend.

And this is what I heard.

Bring peace instead of chaos.

Richard, I handpicked you to be Graham's dad.

You are the one I entrusted to not only teach him, but show him who I am.

If you want to bring peace to his life, you have to let me bring peace into yours.

And honestly, like, I wish I could say everything was calm from that point on, but it wasn't.

But what did change was my response to that chaos, to those outbursts, right?

Yelling and shouting was replaced with calm words of reassurance that I loved him.

And I remember him screaming and me just whispering, son, it's okay.

I love you.

We're going to get through this.

We'll be okay.

Right.

Sometimes I would get hit.

I would get kicked.

I would get bit.

And I just took it because I heard Jesus in my head saying to me, Richard, the people I love the most crucified me.

And I would do it all over again, just for them.

And it got to the point where I would tell my son, if you need somebody to hit or yell or scream at or punch, come find me.

Right?

I wasn't looking for it.

I wasn't like, you know, begging him for it, but I knew I could take it.

And I knew that this was my son and he needed me to be that for him at that time.

And I'll tell you, it is amazing to see what God has done.

Like I said, this was an adolescent.

And, you know, all those years, the counselor said he'll grow out of it.

And I'll tell you, 18, 17, 18 has been a lot better than 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Actually, when he hit 15, you know, and maybe that's the old youth pastor in me, but man, it was awesome.

It was awesome.

That's what my son needed me to be for him.

But more importantly, I needed him.

See, my son taught me that most people that the world tries to write off or push away, all they need is someone to just see past the exterior, right?

To know that there might be something else going on underneath and that all it takes is a little love, a lot of patience and some help to fix it.

They need a safe place where they know they belong, where they know that they are loved, where they know that no matter what happens, you are going to belong here.

And I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful like, like the way Jesus treated people, right?

Jesus gave people a place to belong, to let them know that they were loved.

Now, some of you might not agree with the choices I made with my son and that's fine.

My son's not perfect and I've never expected him to be.

He is not Jesus, all right?

There's only one of him.

But I will tell you this, every day before my son heads out to go to school, he gives me a hug and he tells me that he loves me.

And right now, I can sit and have conversation with my son about God, about anything serious, about things I'm concerned with in his life, and he just sits and he listens and we talk.

And I'm grateful for who my son is because he knows that even if the entire world has written him off, and I can guarantee you that there were times when I know he felt like that, his dad will always love him.

And so church, this is why for all of us believers, all of us disciples, all of us committed followers, that we sometimes are allowed to go through storms, because not only do we need to learn to be like Jesus himself, but we need to learn to be people who can bring peace into the chaos of those we love.

And that's what we're called to as the church.

Let's pray.

God, we love you.

Thank you so much for calling us, Lord, to make a difference, to be peacemakers.

Lord, in a world that feels like it's getting turned upside down every other day, to have that hope that we can actually bring change because of you is mind-blowing.

And Lord, I want to pray right now for the people in this room who, Father, they need to come back to you, or maybe they need to come to you for the very first time.

And Lord, I pray that their heart's prayer would be this, God, I am tired.

I now know that you do care that I'm drowning.

And Father, I want to come and experience the peace that only is offered through your Son, Jesus.

I invite him into my heart as my Lord and my Savior.

And Father, I pray that today would be the day where things begin to change, where my life is ruled by peace and no longer chaos.

And Father, for the rest of us here who are committed followers, Lord, we know that you're calling us to more.

We know, Father God, that we have been called into storms, and maybe sometimes we've gotten lost in those and we wonder what you're doing.

But Father God, what we know is that you don't take us through a storm for no reason.

Lord, you're teaching us how to rely on you.

You're teaching us how to stop fighting in our own power and to trust in yours.

And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to be the church.

Help us to be those people who will stand on your truth when the rest of the world seems to be falling apart.

God, we love you and we thank you so much for this day, for this place, and for these people and all you're doing in our lives.

And it's in your mighty name we pray.

Amen.