The Gift of Possibility

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

Sometimes our present feels like a prison. Perhaps you've gone through some challenge this week, a relational conflict, a bad health diagnosis, grief or loss. Maybe it's just the everyday grind of work and raising kids and being part of a family, but you've had some moment in which you feel like your present circumstance is going to last forever, that the current sense of overwhelm and discouragement that you feel will be what happens forever and ever and ever.

And so you feel like the present is a prison because you are unable to see possibility. The other way that this might be true is that your past is haunting you. Perhaps you have some sort of series of decisions or circumstances that are always pushing in on you saying, if you had only done this, if you could have only done this, then your present would be different.

But because you didn't, it's too late and your present life, you're stuck where you are, you're stuck and you're in prison. We're continuing our series called Easter Reverb, in which we look at the reverberations of Easter in our life. And this week I want to talk to you about how God acts as our shepherd.

John chapter 10 talks about Jesus as our shepherd and Jesus as our shepherd offers us the gift of possibility. You and I feel stuck when we feel like there is no other possible future. But what God offers us is the gift of possibility. And he does this in three different ways. He does it through relationship.

He does it by redeeming our life, not deleting it, and finally gives us some tools to help us not get caught in the trap of shame. So John 10, Jesus says that he is the shepherd that he has come to protect his sheep, to help them find pasture. Pasture, like a beautiful spring day in central New York, and he warns that others thieves and bandits have come to steal, kill, and destroy, but that he has come to give us life.

How does he do that? He goes out ahead of us. He walks alongside us through the spirit. He's, he's with us. And ultimately, as Jesus offers life, he brings redemption. So that we might live in this place of abundant life, this place of green pasture. That's what we find in John 10. And so I wanna apply that to our life in three specific ways.

One, if you are feeling trapped this week, what I want you to remember is that God offers you the gift of possibility through relationship. God's relational connection to us. His presence, his guidance, his protection is what offers us new possibility in life. So Jesus says that he goes out ahead of his sheep and he guides them to pasture.

So how exactly does God do this? Well, he's done it in a few theological ways. So the reality of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. In Jesus' life, there's a taking up of humanity and going out ahead of us. That way, in his death, the sacrifice that God has offered that goes out ahead of us in his resurrection, he defeats death.

That's a way that God goes out ahead of us. But then what God does is God offers God's Spirit, and God's Spirit is in our life to guide us to be alongside of us. And so that's a way. I want you to think about it like this. So there's a video series on the web. It's a cooking series that I really like, and basically what they do is they take a pro chef and a home cook, and they swap ingredients.

My favorite one is one on Ramen. And so there's this woman who has a New York City Ramen restaurant, and she takes all of her ingredients and her recipe, and she gives it to the home cook. Meanwhile, what she gets to make ramen with is your standard grocery store fair, a rotisserie chicken, a 99 cent package of ramen that you probably lived on in college, and the whitest plain eggs you could ever imagine.

And in both of these situations, it's an illustration of how I think God goes ahead of us. The home cook is given this curated ingredients. Some of them, the pro chef has actually been building and working on four days to build an amazing broth and is given to this home cook. Meanwhile, the pro chef has curated this incredible recipe over years.

And the home cook gets that too. And so with these incredible ingredients and the recipe, the pro chef has gone ahead of the home cook and guides the home cook towards success. God does that for us too. God offers us hope and Spirit and circumstances and people and new life goes out ahead of us.

Meanwhile, the pro chef takes the rotisserie chicken and the normal 99 cent pack of ramen and does some incredible things with it, and that's how God goes ahead of us and is with us too. Sometimes God is taking our ramen rotisserie chicken life and making something out of it that's beyond what we could imagine.

And so if you're feeling stuck this week, just remember that God's relationship with us offers us this possibility that God's spirit is at work, and you want to tune into that. Remember how possibility has met you in your past when you thought that there was no way that that could happen, and be on the lookout for the ways that God might be bringing renewal to your life.

The second thing I want to talk to you about is how God redeems our life and doesn't delete our life. This is good news. You know, a lot of times when we're stuck in the present, we're living in the past because we're churning over these decisions, which we wish we could have a redo over and do differently, and then somehow, if we could do that, then our present would be different.

The problem with that is that you and I as human beings, we live a story. And you and I have succeeded and we've failed. We've faced challenges, we've been heartbroken. We've had great success, and all of these things make us who we are. And if all of that was deleted, you and I would no longer be us. We'd be someone else entirely.

And so God doesn't delete that. What God does is God redeems all of our life and so God can offer us these new opportunities and these new circumstances that are uniquely shaped just to us. And so this is a way that God offers us this idea of green pasture that feels like a spring day in Central New York.

And so what you want to ask yourself is what does the world need that I can uniquely provide? Maybe it's some set of circumstances and trials and things that you've gone through uniquely make you able to counsel people. Maybe it lets you be a person who just can read a room really well. Maybe you just know how to show up and do logistics and serve people, and you can do that at school.

You can do that at church, you can do that in your neighborhood. But ask yourself the question, what is it that because of my life circumstances, I'm uniquely suited to do. To provide love and guidance to the world because when we're living there, then we're not living in a place of stuckness, of being imprisoned by the past.

But rather what we can see is we can see possibility. Finally, and lastly, what I want to talk to you about is how shame is the enemy of Easter. So Jesus says that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but that he has come so that we might have life and have it to the full, to have it abundantly. And so this abundant life is always shut down by shame.

Shame is us looking into our past in one of two ways. Sometimes we look at the past and we look at all the ways we've failed. I can identify with this. It's something of either failure or success, failure or success, and I'm quick to look at something and say, oh, I failed there. Meanwhile, sometimes we look back and it's the would've should have, could us, Hey, if I had only done this, if I could have done that, could have done this.

But in both of these scenarios, it blocks the future possibility. We negate any sense of learning that perhaps we've had. And so I think we need to shift our mind. We don't wanna look at it through the lens of shame, which keeps us in prison. We wanna look at it as unfolding that our life is a constant unfolding story of grace.

That there's always something that lies out just ahead. What's next? You know the Milwaukee Bucks where the number one seed in the N B A playoffs and predicted to win the N B A championship. But the bucks lost to Miami Heat. Jimmy Butler played crazy, and afterwards a reporter asked Giannis if he considered the whole year a failure because they didn't win a championship. And Giannis fervently, but politely said no I don't think about it like this at all. Every year, whether we win a championship or not is not success or failure. It's all part of the journey. And I think this is really helpful for us because often we can think about life as a room, but it's better for us to think about life as a river. One of my favorite artists is Thomas Cole, and he has a series called The Voyage of Life, and it's a different painting in these different seasons, but one of the things that's common about all of them is they're all on a boat and they're all on water, on a river, a stream that's moving.

And so our life is not one that is static, rather it's one that's continuing to unfold before us. And so we want to trust that the way God meets us in the present is by unfolding grace before us. And so that's our mentality that we want to have. We want to be a people that don't get stuck. That don't live in the sense that the present is the prison, but rather see the gift of possibility. That because God is with us, because he redeems our life and doesn't delete it, and because he says, I offer you grace you don't have to be stuck in a pattern of shame. Wait and watch how life is unfolding. See your life as a journey. Is a voyage in which each part and each chapter is being taken up and used to create a whole you that is able to abundantly love God and the world around you.

Hey, I hope that this message was helpful for you, and if you're in a place of stuckness, I get it.

I feel it too, felt it this past week. But remember what God offers us is the gift of possibility. That the brokenness and death in this world is not something that has the final word. In Jesus life, death and resurrection he overcomes it and God promises us a future restoration. Go in peace. Have a great week.