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Music.

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Lasting life change for your good and for God's glory this week we're gonna be diving into not so much of a topic as much as a.

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Specific prayer There are you know a number of prayers that people might be familiar with probably the most familiar prayer in the entire world is

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Lord's prayer, you know our Father who art in heaven heaven, hallowed be thy name." That's probably like the most well-known prayer

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in existence. It's the prayer that ends up in movies and everybody seems to have

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at least heard once or twice in their life. There's a couple other prayers that,

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rank near that one in as far as popularity and being known by heart. One of those maybe is the Jesus prayer. It's a little bit less known, but that prayer

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simply, you know, Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner, very short prayer.

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And then I would probably put somewhere up in the top three, maybe number two

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would be the serenity prayer, prayer that many people know, uh, and has been made

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popular through the programs like AA, um, Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery

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circles often use this prayer.

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Not always, sometimes it's kind of generalized a little bit to speak about God generally.

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Obviously, I'm talking about this specifically with Christian God, with Jesus in mind.

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It's well known by a lot of people in those circles, and so you may have heard of it from there.

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A lot of times the prayer is kind of said in a shortened version.

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The first part of the prayer is the most well-known part of the prayer,

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but there's actually longer versions of it. The prayer was originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr.

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He was a theologian and pastor, and he wrote this prayer, and it's since then

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been adopted by anonymous programs and 12-step programs across the world.

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So I thought this prayer is well-known for a good reason, because it's got a lot

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of really helpful principles, and it's got some really deep theological and

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spiritual truths that can really help shift us and orient us in our direction

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of recovery of seeking life change.

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So I thought today we would spend some time kind of just breaking this prayer apart.

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So I'll open our time together with just reading this prayer aloud so that you

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can hear the whole thing in its entirety. Maybe you've only heard the first part of it, but, uh, I'm sure that you've

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probably maybe heard this once or twice before, but let's.

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Dig into it. So the serenity prayer goes like this. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

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and the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as

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it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender

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to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with

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You forever in the next. Amen.

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Now the short version of that that most people know is that first four lines there, God grant

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me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things

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that I can and the wisdom to know difference.

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But that other part of the prayer goes on into just such deep territory and reflection

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on Christ's character and all of that.

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So let's unpack this prayer together. see why it has stood the test of time, why it has become so well known, and what truths

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we can glean from it. So let's start with just those first four lines right there.

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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the

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things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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Man, that is a big deal, right? So often, we get stuck because we're stuck wishing we had control or the ability to change

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things we simply cannot change.

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And then we ignore the things that we can probably change, we just maybe don't want to.

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That is a big deal. It seems like we're called in two seemingly opposite directions at once.

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A direction of action and then also a direction of surrender.

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God is inviting us to know our limits. God, we are not God, in case you're not aware of that fact.

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I'm not God, you're not God. We are not supreme. We do not control all things.

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We are not responsible for all things.

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But sometimes we wish we were God. We wish we could control everything.

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We wish we were responsible for everything. We wish we could just kind of micromanage everything.

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Or we treat ourselves like we ought to be. And that's, that's not a way to be living.

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To understand that we are not gods and that we cannot control everything.

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We're invited to say, you know what, that's outside of my control.

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That is such a simple thing, but it's so hard to do, but it's also equally hard to say, you know what, this is inside of my control and I can take action on that.

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We're invited to take what's been given to us inside of our control and to be

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good stewards of it, to say, what is God calling me to do right now with the,

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thing I can control, even though there's things that I cannot control.

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This should ultimately be a relief for us. This should be a calming and a letting go of something.

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We might be tempted to think that we can control everything around us, but we simply can't.

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Can't. We aren't supposed to. And when we offload the weight of trying to control

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everything or everyone, we can more appropriately tackle what God has asked

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us to do. That's big. How many times have we gotten into a situation where we're

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just like, I'm so mad at this situation over what's happening. I wish I could

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just fix it. You can't fix it because somebody else is involved, right? This is

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This happens in family dynamics all the time, right?

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Maybe we've got a family member who is just consistently making decisions that are making our life harder.

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And we're just like, I'm trying to control what that person does.

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If only they would listen to me or do what I said, then it would be better. Right. and.

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You know, maybe that's true. Maybe if they did listen to you, it would be better, but they're,

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not. And they're a person. They're an individual. You actually can't control what they do. Only you

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can control what you do. You can control how you respond. You can set up a boundary saying like,

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hey, like if you behave this way, like this is how I'm going to respond in kind, right? Like not,

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I'm not trying to be mean, like that's just me trying to take care of myself.

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So we often get stuck because we begin to wish or want or try and control things that we simply

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cannot control. That's so often when we get into a place where we're just running a situation over

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and over in our heads, it's often because we're like, I want to find a way to fix it.

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And we keep running it over in our heads and we're not figuring out a way to fix it is because ultimately we can't fix it,

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It's not inside of our control. We see this,

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Exemplified to us in Job. Job is a phenomenal book of the Bible. It's also Immensely dense. It's really long. It's like 43 chapters, but it's a book that is so often

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misunderstood, misquoted, and not really held up for what it says because so

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How often we get into a place of saying...

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Of trying to figure out why something happened, which is a really normal thing that to happen, right?

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If you're walking in a dark room at night and you stub your toe, you're gonna scream, ow, out in pain.

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And then the second thing after you're done, like yelling out in pain,

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maybe saying an explicative or two, you're going to want to say,

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what was it that I hit my toe on? What was it that I hit, ran into?

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I wanna figure out if it's a toy, if it's a coffee table, what was it I ran into?

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And the reason you wanna know what it was, why did that happen is because you wanna avoid it

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from happening again. We don't wanna encounter that pain again.

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And so, so often and so much discussion over the bad things that happen in our life,

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are stuck answering this, trying to answer the question of why did this happen to me?

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And there's a ton of biblical reflection and people have a lot of answers

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to why bad things might happen to you, but Job is probably the most comprehensive reflection

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on it in the entire Bible, but it gives an answer that we're not very fond of.

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It gives an answer that we're not God, we don't necessarily get to know why.

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And this is kind of exemplified, Job kind of wrestles, and he's having these conversations

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with his, with supposedly friends who keep saying, well, maybe God did this to you, or maybe this is

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happening to you because you didn't have enough faith or because you weren't faithful enough or

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because you've sinned or because someone in your family sinned or something like that. Try, they're

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trying to give him all these reasons and Job just is like, no, none of that's it. Like, and then he

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gets mad and he calls God and he says, God, you've got to give me an answer as to why this happened.

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And then God shows up in dramatic fashion and then when Job sees who God is.

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He realizes that, Oh, actually I'm not God. I don't need the answer because God's got the

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answer and I'm just going to trust him. And this is Job's response here in Job 42,

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Job 42, verses one through three, Job replied to the Lord and said, I know that you can do

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all things. No purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, who is it that obscures my plans

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without knowledge. Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to

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know." Job says, like, God comes out and says, who is it that's asking me this question? Who's.

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Demanding I give them an answer? Who's wants me to explain to them all of the things that I know?

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And Job's like, oh, that was me, God. I spoke without thinking. I spoke of things I did not

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understand of things too wonderful for me to know. He's saying like, God, you know

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what? You're right. Like, you are God. I am NOT. I'm not in control of everything and

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I don't necessarily... I'm not owed an answer. I'm here to kind of trust God and

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submit to him. And that is a radical mind shift. That's so different from the way

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that we operate and live in our world. We want answers. We want explanations. We We want the details.

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We want the case file. We want everything.

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We want to know all the nitty gritty and we want it now, right?

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And we think we're owed it. But Job says, no, no, no, I'm not God. I'm just a man.

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God created me. God is over all things. I'm going to leave it in God's hands.

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And that's a place of surrender.

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And it's a place where Job finally begins to experience some peace in the midst of his

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Yes, awful things happen to Job, and he's absolutely

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torn up about those things, but he's no longer running around demanding an explanation, or demanding that things

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that are outside of his control be given to him, or that he be able to fix things, right?

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So much of our own suffering and pain and being stuck, particularly when we get stuck in suffering,

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when something awful has happened to us, to us or we're in a bad situation and we get stuck,

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we're just running it over and over in our heads,

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it's because we wanna control something, we wanna change something, we wanna figure it out,

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when actually we need to kind of let it go.

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We're not going to be able to control it or figure it out or have the answer as to why.

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But that doesn't mean that there isn't things for us to do, because that's the second part of that prayer.

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Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

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And then the second thing is that it asks is the courage.

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The courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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See, God also invites us into a new way of living. You are invited into an integrity of being,

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by living out the teachings of Jesus. In 1 John 2, verses 3-6, this is the apostle John

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talking about the obedience to what Jesus Christ taught here. He says,

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We know that we have come to know Him. He's speaking about Jesus. We've come to know Jesus

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if we keep His commands. Whoever says, I know Him, whoever says, I know Jesus,

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but doesn't do what Jesus commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.

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But if anyone obeys His word, obeys Jesus, love for God is truly made complete in them.

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This is how we know that we're in Him. Whoever claims to live in Jesus must live as Jesus did.

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So have you ever felt stressed or overwhelmed in anxiety? Or maybe you're just reliving something

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over and over again. It might be because you're holding on to too many things that are not inside

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of your power to change. Jesus is inviting you to say, come, lay them down at my feet.

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And then you can begin to discern what are the things that you can change in obedience,

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and what are the things that you can't. Christ is saying, what is too heavy? What is not

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fair for you to carry? Come to me. We talked about this last week. Come to me all who are

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weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest for your souls. Take upon my yoke and

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learn from me, for my yoke is light." Christ is saying, let me bear what you cannot bear,

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what is out of your control, what you simply wish you could control, what's painful, what

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you wish you could change but you can't, what you wish you had answers to but you won't

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have them, come give that to me. Trust me with those things. And then, what's left?

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If you give over all the things that you cannot change, that are outside of your control,

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what's left? What's inside of your control? Those are the things where Jesus says, all right, let's start.

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Small steps, beginning to live into these things that are inside of your control in

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a way that's like me. In a way that's like Jesus.

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WWJD is a helpful question for a reason. What would Jesus do?

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How would Jesus live in or respond to this situation? Someone does something that I wish they hadn't done.

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It puts me in a difficult situation. How can I respond like Jesus would have responded?

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And how can that be a freeing experience? So that's the first part of that prayer.

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And that's the most powerful and not most powerful, but it's the most familiar part

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of that prayer for a reason, because it's a place of just simply saying, you know what,

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like I need to figure out what's outside of my control, surrender it to Jesus, what's,

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inside of my control, and then ask Jesus to help me live like him in the midst of it.

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And the wisdom to know the difference. So often we get stuck into places where we don't have

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control, and that's when we run into our addiction. It's when we run to our coping mechanisms. It's

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when we run back into old habits because we want to control it, and we don't want to deal

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with the emotional unrest that is welling up inside of us because of what's going on.

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And Christ is inviting us to experience serenity, experience peace in the midst of the storm by surrendering it to Him.

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Now let's go on to the next couple lines of this prayer. It goes as this,

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Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as

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it is, not as I would have it.

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Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway

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to peace, taking as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

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See Jesus entered into the world to save it. God has turned the understanding of glory and redemption upside down.

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And so what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that we have one particular way that we would like things to kind of play

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out. If you were to think about like a new skill that you're learning or the change you're

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trying to make in your life or your spiritual life or the way things go, we want things

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to go from good to better. And we generally want that to be a straight line. If you think about like a line graph, right?

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You've got your axes here and it kind of goes up as it goes along time and you're just like,

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yeah, like, you know, we want things to get better over time.

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Maybe we'll have a small dip, but it will just jump right back up to where it was

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and it'll go keep and go trending upwards.

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That's what we like to see, right? Whether it's in our business profits or if it's in our finances

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or if it's in how the change or habits,

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we like things to be constantly going in the direction we want them to be going, positively.

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We might say, okay, yeah, yeah, We know like there will be some tough stuff.

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It'll bounce right back, right? But that's not life. That's not my life, that's not your life, right?

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Life is a lot more messy than that. Things rarely go in a straight direction.

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We often wish that our stories were in a straight line from, even if they start out bad,

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we wish they went from bad to good to better.

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And the thing is, is that what we often do is we often feel like we go from bad to good to bad,

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the worst to better, to good to bad, the awful all the way back up to just okay, right?

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We feel like we're just kind of spinning our wheels that we're constantly in this place of,

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running around in circles, and that just doesn't make any sense to us.

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And I think this is an interesting question. If you and I were to imagine,

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all right, God's going to save the world.

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How would he save the world? What would he do?

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Well, I don't think we would come up with Cross. And what I mean by that is that when you think about a superhero,

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a superhero swoops in to save the day.

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And how do they save the day? By kicking the bad guy's butts, right? They swoop in, they're just like, yeah, here I am.

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Have no fear, underdog is here, right?

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I'm strong, I'm gonna take care of this. I'm gonna save the damsel.

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And they're gonna do it all, looking good. and they're all powerful, right?

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And even if they've got like a weakness, they still, they overcome it, right?

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That's the story that we tend to write, and it's the story we want for ourselves,

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but it's not the story that God chose.

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God, the creator of the entire cosmos, decided to come into human history,

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into the mess of humanity,

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take on human flesh and all of its frailties, and then die on a cross.

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That's upside down, that's not the way our brains work. It's not the way we would think it would work,

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but God did choose that, and in choosing so, he brought about the redemption of the world.

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If the death of God on a cross can save the entire world, what can God do in the midst of your difficult circumstance?

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In the midst of your suffering, in the midst of your pain, what might God bring about through it?

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Now, don't you mishear me. I'm not saying that that's the reason why something bad happened to you.

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Not saying that God caused something bad to happen to you because he wanted to do something better.

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No, no. I'm saying that God doesn't waste anything. I'm saying that something has happened to you.

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You don't know why. I don't know why.

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And God wants to do something in it. That God wants to bring about something glorious in it.

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This is one of my favorite passages when I think about this concept in 1 Peter 1,

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verses, starting in verse three. Peter says, praise be to God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ.

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In his great mercy has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection

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of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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Saying like, that's the hope is the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection gives

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us a hope and we have been given an inheritance that can never perish, never spoil, and never

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fade. This inheritance is kept for you in heaven, who through faith you are shielded

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by God's power until the coming salvation is ready to reveal in the last time. There

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is coming a day where Jesus is going to reveal himself and he's going to take all of his

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believers and make all things right. And in all of this you rejoice greatly.

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Though for now, right? There's this promise of this future of God making all things right,

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But there is a for now Though for now a little while you have been made to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

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These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith Greater worth than gold which parishes even though refined by fire

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may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you,

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have not seen Him yet, you love Him, and even though you do not see Him now, you

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believe in Him, and you are filled with a joy, an inexpressible glorious joy, and,

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you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your soul. God

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might be bringing you through something that feels like a fiery furnace, that

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feels like the heat has been turned up, feels like it is just melting everything

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away, and it's because He's refining you.

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He wants to bring out something that is worth more than its weight in gold, salvation of your soul.

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God does not waste anything. And so what we're invited to in that prayer of serenity is to accept the

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world as it is, to find a pathway through peace of, through suffering, through

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suffering, suffering has a role.

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We'll talk more about this in coming weeks, but we so often want to run and hide from suffering, and of course we do, there's nothing bad with

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avoiding suffering if we can. But what do we do when suffering does come? Because it will indeed come.

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Can we see it as a pathway to peace?

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The Serenity Prayer goes on with this final section saying, Trusting that you will make all things right,

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If I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

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life, and supremely happy with you forever in the next.

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Is the goal the avoidance of pain altogether, or does God promise us a life free of discomfort

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if only we would follow Him? The answer to that question is no. If you're listening to any Bible,

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teacher or preacher or pastor or book writer or author who says, if you follow Jesus, everything

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Everything will always go exactly the way you think it should, where you will never

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experience suffering or pain if you follow Jesus.

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All the right things will happen to you if you start following Jesus. That's not true.

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Jesus is a great example of that. He was God.

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He got crucified on a cross, right? We follow a Savior who was wrongfully murdered on a cross.

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Job, another perfect example, there are so many people who were faithful to God who still

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experienced suffering in this life and.

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So we're not trying to seek this perfect life where we never experience pain,

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We're trying to experience a life where even in the midst of pain even in the midst of the storm we can have serenity

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See, that's the thing about the serenity prayer, is we think of a very serene kind of picture in our head.

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When we think of serenity, we might think of sitting by a lake that's perfectly still in the morning hours,

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and there's maybe some ducks, and there's a little fog on the lake, everything's just so quiet.

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And the and everything's so peaceful it's very serenity it's very just you know and there's a little babbling sound water and there's nothing to disturb it

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right that's what we think of in serenity when what I think is probably a more accurate picture is when Peter is walking with Jesus on the water in the

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middle of a storm Jesus calls Peter to step out of the boat and walk on the

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water with him and Jesus doesn't say hold up Peter wait wait wait don't get

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out of the boat yet I'm gonna calm storm and then I'll have to get out when all

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the all the waters all calm down he says no no while the storms happening get out

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of the boat and walk with me right that serenity is walking in the middle of the

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storm with Jesus and knowing that Jesus has got you that's serenity because we

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can't control the storms of this life. We can't get them to go away by snapping

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our fingers, but we can walk with Jesus and we can know that he's got us, he's,

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It's got all the things we can't control and that it will be okay.

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That is what serenity is. God is not a vending machine, maybe like we wish he was.

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We don't come up to God and say, you know what, I'm going to pray this prayer,

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I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to do it like this, this many times,

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and I'm going to get exactly what I want. That's not how God works. God will give us good gifts, and he does provide what we need.

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But God also will uphold us when we're fainting in the middle of the storm.

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Let this last passage be an encouragement to you. This is Psalm 121.

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I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?

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My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip.

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He who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

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The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

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The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

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The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life.

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The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.

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Serenity is not the absence of pain or suffering.

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It's not everything going exactly our way. It's the quiet, quiet assurance that God is with us and that you sit in his hands.

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It's saying, I know that my help comes from the Lord.

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I look up to the mountains, I look up to the high places, I look up to where, where else

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can I look and God comes and he meets me. He will not slumber, he will not abandon me, he will not let my foot slip.

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He watches over me in the midst of the difficulties I'm going through.

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That's serenity, that peace that comes when we understand that truth, when we've let go

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and given God the things we cannot control, and then we've sought to be obedient in the

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things that we can, and then we say, God, what is the thing that you're doing through

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suffering in the midst of this circumstance?

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And Lord let me trust you and find serenity here and now, even though things are not serene.

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Ciao. That's just some reflections on the serenity prayer. I'll have it linked here in the description if you want to read the full text and use that in

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your own personal life. I recommend you maybe take it and save it as a screenshot for the back of

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your phone, or you can put it and print it out and put it on your mirror, put it on your window,

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like find a place where you can commit that to memory, learning to constantly come and say,

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What Lord I'm gonna surrender this to you and once you memorize it It's not something we just say and it makes all things better. It's something it's a heart movement

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We move our hearts through in order to become more in aligned with Christ,

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Let me give you a question or two to wrestle with today I might encourage you to ask yourself. What might God be calling you to surrender to you him that you've been holding on to

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What's that thing that you are holding on to and you're like,

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I don't want to surrender. I don't want to give it up. What's that thing?

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What's that thing that you need to let go of so that you can find serenity?

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And what might God be calling you into deeper obedience in? Right.

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Okay. If we're surrendered this thing, because I simply cannot control that.

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What am I supposed to be obedient in? What do I have control over?

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Control over and what is Christ calling me to do in that place.

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And then the last question is, what does it mean for you to have serenity in life right now?

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What would it mean? Not for all your circumstances to magically get better, but what would

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it look like if you were to experience right now today, as you were listening

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to this, serenity, a assurance that God's got you in the midst of your difficulty.

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What would that look like? Thank you for joining me this week. I hope to catch you all next time.

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Time. Send me any messages in the comments.