Order; Breath, Stress, and Sleep

Transcript: 

 

Pastor Jeremy:

Today's word comes from Genesis two, verse four, seven through nine, and then 15 through 25. All the words should be above me in both English and Spanish, and I will read in English, hear the word of the Lord. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord made the earth and the heavens, then the Lord who formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed the Lord. God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil for when you eat from it, you will certainly die. The Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them and whatever the man called each living creature that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he had brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of. Ma'am. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Pastor Jonathan:

Such a beautiful story that we read at the beginning of Genesis, and it reminds me so much of what we have been talking about over these past several weeks as we've been talking about contemplative prayer and finding time for silence and solitude. And one of the things that we have continually gone back to is that our times of prayer and silence and solitude are moments for God to order our lives. They're moments for us to remember the order of creation and who God is and who we are and how we exist in this order. It reminds us of the order in which God has gifted us, the order of our connection with God, our connection with ourselves, our connection with our neighbors, and our connection with all of creation in the order to see how we fit uniquely. Each of us, as we say in our opening liturgy, each of us individually and collectively, we all uniquely fit into this order as God created.

And as we have been working through this book, being with God and talking about contemplative prayer, spending time in silence and solitude and surrender, the outcomes that we've been looking for are three. And it's simply this to be with Jesus, to spend time being with Jesus in relationship with Jesus. Did you know that through the presence of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is present with you the formal way we say that in the church as we say the Lord is here and Jesus is with us, and then that's why we respond back by his spirit. He is here because he is with us all. That's what we mean when we say that, that Jesus is here, but Jesus isn't just here in this building in this moment. Jesus is with us all the time. And where as the Shama in the Old Testament says in Deuteronomy chapter six, we are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, and soul.

And then it goes on to tell you basic describes every aspect of your life when you're sitting, when you're standing up, when you're lying down, when you're awake, when you're asleep, you are to remember. And it's the same way with the presence of Jesus, that Jesus is always with us and by the work of the Holy Spirit spending time and the disciplines that the church has participated in since the very beginning, spending time and prayer and solitude, we are formed to be like Jesus. And the reason why that is important is so that we are able to do what Jesus did. Now, I think that I can speak for all of us when I say that to a certain degree. We all recognize that there things are a bit chaotic in the world. Maybe somebody would disagree with that, but I think for most of us we see some sort of degree of chaos.

Some of us might see total chaos. Some of us might see little bits of chaos. But nonetheless, I think we all witnessed to some degree of chaos. But what's interesting is that the way in which the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures began is the exact opposite of that. It's God taking the chaos and providing order for it, which is a bit peculiar because a main message that you hear in the church today is kind of enduring the chaos that we see. But we need to be clear this morning that the Christian message is not about enduring chaos. It is about living an according to the created order and creating order in the midst of the chaos by the work of the spirit in our lives. Our calling is to be examples of grace and peace that exemplify this order of things in our world.

Order is what God began the world as. If you go back to the very beginning and Genesis chapter one, listen to what the scriptures say. It says, end the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. The Hebrew words for that are tohu and bohu. It's words that mean chaos and confusion. So were, it was chaotic and confused. It was formless and empty. There was darkness over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters and then God spoke and said, let there be light, and there was light. And then of course the story continues unfolding from there. So we know that when God speaks, there is order that things happen that we begin to live in the way of Jesus order is what God has been up to in the beginning.

And so since the beginning, if we feel chaos, if we experience chaos, if there is chaos in our lives, the source of that chaos is not the kingdom of God. The law which God gave through Moses was given not because there needs to be rules and God's rules are the best. Sometimes I think that's what we think, that God just gave us rules because we have to have rules and God's rules are better than any other rules. No, that's not the reason. The reason why we have the law of God is because it maintains order in our lives and in creation. That's why Jesus said that his life was lived to fulfill the law. It wasn't to abolish the law, it wasn't to give a better law, it was to fulfill the law. If the law was created to maintain order in Jesus' life fulfilled the law.

Then as we are formed like Jesus to do what Jesus did, then the chaos in our lives begins to be formed and shaped and ordered just like the chaos and the emptiness in the beginning. And this is the point of spending time in prayer and solitude and silence and surrender. If we neglect these disciplines that Jesus practice, then it is impossible for us to live in the presence of the live as the presence of Jesus in the midst of this chaos. And going back to what the book, how the last three chapters of the book Unfold Be Being with God book, he talks about breathing and sleeping and stress and how these rhythms in our lives, if they're healthy rhythms, they add to the beauty and the ability of our lives. If they are unhealthy rhythms in dealing with sleep and breathing and stress, then they begin to take away from our lives.

And it's amazing to me. And he points this out in the book in talking about scientific discovery, how scientists have been for a while now but are still discovering the benefits that the spiritual disciplines have in our lives, even to the extent of making medical recommendations based on the benefits of the spiritual disciplines that the church has been practicing since the beginning, right? Things like fasting, things like when we're talking about sleeping, our sleeping rhythms or breathing rhythms, these are things that have been a part of the church since the very beginning. There are things that the ancients might not have understood, the depths of which these things are beneficial or they might not been able to explain the scientific method or the research for why they are beneficial. But they knew that we as creations of God we're de designed to live in the created order and that when we live in sync with that order, we see wholeness and fullness of life all around us.

When we practice the disciplines and live according to the rhythms of grace, we see how our lives align with the kingdom of God and we see God's fingerprints all around us. Now, that doesn't mean that everything goes our way. You can be faithful to all of the disciplines. You can be the most faithful and still things happen in your lives that you would rather not. But the guarantee is that when you face those things, when you are living in sync according to the kingdom of God, that there is nothing that you could face that would take you outside of the hand of Jesus. And so we recognize that this step by step apprenticeship with Jesus in love, that we learn to live in the fullness of God and that is the purpose of our prayer life. That is the purpose of scriptures, of Sabbath, of all of the disciplines that we participate in.

Now, instead of trying to pontificate further on this matter, I wanted to offer you a unique perspective or a different perspective to help us understand how this order begins unfolding in our lives, even before we can necessarily identify how everything is going to end up. And I want to do this in a form of an interview, but before we get to the interview, we're going to take a pause from this because we have to recognize something special that is taking place here in the life of journey as we continue to follow the way of Jesus. So I'm going to at this moment invite up Carly. She is getting to come up for round two today.

And while she comes up here, we have another element of official business to take care of. So before you sit down, Carly is recognized with a special designation today. And the designation is twofold. Number one, for almost a year now, we here at Journey have been searching for someone to fill the role of family pastor. And little did we know that this person was right underneath our noses the whole time through a series of conversations with Carly and the things that God is doing in her life, we are at the point today where we get to officially recognize her as the newest member of the Journey crew of the Journey staff. So also in that which this part is to me even more exciting than that, is that Carly is entering into a new order for herself and for her family. And that is that she is going to begin on the journey towards ordination. She is going to be to journey towards ordination as a pastor. And so as the beginning step of that, we get to celebrate with her as the local church Journey community and offer to her another official certificate, a local minister's license. And what this is, yeah, you can go ahead. And

What this is is saying that our local congregation are joining in this journey with Carly. We are cheering her on. We are helping her along this process as much as possible. And of course David too is uniquely involved in this process as well. But this is sort of our stamp of approval that we acknowledge and agree with the work that God is doing in your life. So we want to present that to you today. David, why don't you come on up here to be a part of this as well.

Pastor Carly:

My favorite person.

Pastor Jonathan:

All right. So we are going to present this officially to Carly. This is a license that just as we said, simply simply states our commitment to you as a local church and our commitments to you as you pursue what is next for you in journeying towards ordination. Now, also what you don't see here is the list of books that you have to read.

Pastor Carly:

I've already read

Pastor Jonathan:

'em. I already read 'em. Perfect, perfect. So we're going to present this license to you today, Carly, as a local minister in our local congregation and in the church of the Nazarene. Thank you. And also, every pastor upon receiving their local minister's license is also awarded a meal of tamales. I love it. So we're going to present you with this as well. I love it for you. Miss Mary was kind enough to bring to Molly's for Carly today as a, we wanted to present those with you today. And they're still warm too. David, if you want to go munch under but off duty now. Yeah, you are off duty. So let's give Carly a round of applause. And she's going to stick around for just a minute here as we talk further about her experience and the work that God has been doing.

Okay, so a couple of questions we're going to ask for Carly to help us kind of understand this journey and her life and as journey community. So getting to this point today, Carly has been something that has been working in your life for a while now. And as we said, sometimes God begins working in our lives and we don't know exactly the destination, but we know that God is leading us and our response is just simply obedience to that. So from what you have shared with me previously and prior to your call of filling this specific role here at Journey, this desire for you to pursue being a pastor is something that's been brewing for quite some time. So could you share a little bit about the pre journey journey to this calling to be a pastor?

Pastor Carly:

Yes. So I grew up in the Lutheran Church, so my family was very devoted to going to church. We were a very Christian stable household. And then I, you said earlier about chaos. I felt into chaos after we had moved, stopped going to church. And I kind of lived in this world, this worldly world for quite a while from probably 10 to about 23. And when I was 23, I had this moment when God said, this is not your story. And I felt that my foundation had been chipped away for so many years and I had a peace left. And I had in that moment a choice to make. Do I continue to follow the ways in the world or do I obey and follow and recommit my life? So from 23 until about 29, I found a church. I was going to church, I was very active.

I started in, I think everyone starts in youth ministry and then because they always need youth, people started in youth ministry. And that led to young adults ministry that led to women's ministry, children's ministry. I did it all. And then I thought, well, maybe I want to be a missionary or maybe I want to go into seminary because I knew it was on my heart. I knew that God has saved me. So I wanted to obey that next path in my life. So I did youth with a mission because that does both aspects. So went to Bible college and then from Bible college I did missionary work in Thailand and Cambodia. And the part of my mission work was compassion. So we would go into prisons, we would go into hospitals, human trafficking homes, prostitution. We did all this work of this world that I had only seen in movies before and God was showing me the world. He was showing me compassion, he was showing me his heart through things I had never or would never experience. I came back to California and within weeks I met David and I take a break from ministry to start a family really, and then moved back to, and then we moved to Texas and that kind of started a different journey.

Right.

Pastor Jonathan:

Perfect. Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us. It's hard to sum up such a long period of time in just a few minutes. Yes. But you did a great job with that. So for those of you who don't know, a little over a year ago, probably a year and several in a few months ago, we sent out a plea on Facebook to find somebody to help with music here. And immediately David and Jeremy connected that way. And when Jeremy shared this with me, I said him like, Jeremy, let's be cautious. You know, never know what you're getting on the internet. And lo and behold, there was no need for caution because it was David and then that brought Carly. And from the moment we met you all here, it's been like you are a part of Journey community, even with no prior connection or even really no prior interaction other than just showing up here on a Sunday and sort of beginning. So I'm curious if you could share with us how this calling that has been brewing in your life for quite some time now and showing up here, how has this place particularly captured your attention to lead you to the point to where you would consider pursuing your calling to ministry here through Journey?

Pastor Carly:

Yes. So my sweet husband, he is so techy, he found the Facebook post and he said, I think I'm going to do this. When I met him, he was the worship leader at the church that we were going to the church where we met, we got married, all the things. And I knew it was his heart. His heart is to praise. And so when he said, I found this church, I was like, cool, let's go. He's like, you guys don't have just come just one time. And so I was like, okay, we'll come, we'll be part of it. So on the car ride over, we prayed and my prayer was just, Lord, let it be just for the community. We pray for the people that are there. We pray that we're going to have just a time where we can feel you. And instantly, I mean instantly we walked through those doors and we knew something was different. We felt it, we all felt it. We drove home. We were like, what was that? That was different? And it was that feeling that made us never want to not come back. It was the children's ministry, it was the teaching. It was the rituals that we do to never forget Jesus. And so it stuck and it stayed. And so when I realized, I don't want to go into the next

Pastor Jonathan:

Question.

Pastor Carly:

Sorry. Okay. I knew that there was a piece about journey and when I had the opportunity, I couldn't pass it. I couldn't let it go. And that kind of goes into the next question of the still small voice.

Pastor Jonathan:

Yeah. So in talking through learning about prayer and spending time and solitude, spending time listening to do, sometimes we said this the other day, kind of ingest that sometimes we wonder if God gets tired of us just constantly talking to him. Maybe he wants to say something to us. And so not that God would get tired of us, but just the idea that sometimes we need to stop talking and listen. And so as the scriptures talk about it, it talks about the voice of God being a still small voice. It's a whisper. And oftentimes I'm kind of a soft spoken person and there are moments in loud environments where I say something and no one hears it. And if we're not intentional, sometimes God will speak and we won't hear it because it's in a small whisper. And so as you've been paying attention to this voice, kind of share with us a little bit about how God has been preparing you for this moment.

Pastor Carly:

Yes. So there have been a couple times in my life when spoke and said, this is not your story, recommitted my life. And the day that I met David, I knew that he was going to be my husband that instant. And then in December we had a dinner here and they had mentioned something about a family pastor, and it gives me chill bumps. But David and I driving home, we were like, ha, ha, ha, wouldn't that be so funny? And it was in my heart kind of how Mary treasured things in her heart. I just kind of put it in my heart and just kind of kept it there. And I was working at another church and I didn't realize, but I was kind of living in chaos. I was living in that whirlwind of call volunteers, make sure we have people, make sure the rooms are shocked, make sure this, this and this. And it had to be very fast paced and I was missing those stolen with a mom in the hallway. I was missing that handwriting a note to a child saying, I'm so happy you're here.

And God kind of was like, let's take a step back. Because usually when I feel something, when I feel a change, I'm like, okay, change. Let's go. I'm going to quit. I'm going to do this, this, and this. And I didn't do it this time. I sat in this uncomfortable feeling of change. I let the Holy Spirit speak in ways that I never heard the Holy Spirit speak before. I was reading my Bible with eyes in a way of calmness instead of, okay, Jesus, what's the answer? What's the answer? I was sitting back and thinking, okay, what's next? I was listening in silence, which is very hard to do with two children, but I was like, I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to sleep on it. I'm going to see the path that God has already given me. And where does that path lead instead of me making my own path because I was leaving, was leaving comfort. I was leaving stability for something of the unknown, but it was that peace. I have so much peace in the unknown, and that is only, that's only God. God gives you peace in the unknown.

Pastor Jonathan:

Yeah. And just the, the slowness of it all. I think we talked about that several times.

Pastor Carly:

Yes. So this was in December when David and I, when we had heard about it, and then December and then I contacted Jeremy just asking, how can I get more involved in journey? And I first was like, I need to talk to you. And he was like, okay. And I was like, no, no, no, it's a good conversation. And so we talked about how can I become more involved? So then it became, well, you know, could do scripture, let's get you involved, let's get your toe in the water. So that's how it happened. And then we met David and I met with Jonathan and Jeremy and just talk. I think I need, I'm getting a call, I'm being called to something more where God has led me. Everything I've experienced, there is a purpose to it. And so we talked about what that purpose is and what that purpose can lead to. And then we just took it real slow, which to me is very, like I said, when I have an idea, let's do that idea. And I didn't this time and I'm still learning to not be calm because I'm like, Hey, let's do things. And they're like, we are. And I'm like, oh, okay.

Pastor Jonathan:

Yes. Yeah. I think that's one of the foundations of the kingdom of God that we just sort of blow past in our Western, get things done mentality. But the kingdom of God moves so slow and we want to hurry up. And so that's one of the things that I use in my own life that whenever I feel rushed or urgent about something, I try to like, okay, well this is something that we need to take pause to consider. Because if it's urgent and it's a deadline and it's this, then it's probably not the right pursuit. So real quickly, yes, no, this is a new order. This is sort of a new endeavor for all of us as we're journeying toward this. But what are your hopes now sort of your emerging pastoral vision for journey and for your life?

Pastor Carly:

So I wrote this down because I didn't want to forget and I didn't want to fumble these words because this is my heart. So I wrote, my hope is for more people to experience what I experienced walking in through those doors. There is so much hope, there is so much freedom. There's so much of almost like a shedding of your old skin when you walk through those doors. It's a welcoming church, it's a caring church. It's a church that outside these walls, that's where it is. That's where Jesus shines. That's where we can be his hands and his feet. That is his glory is people. And what I am being called and for my family and for the church is to have people experience that love, that deep, deep love and getting there only God knows how we're going to get, we're get there. But I feel like when you know something in your nowhere and it is ingrained in you, you can do, you know, can do it. You don't know how or when or what, but you know why. And that why is Jesus, that why will always be Jesus.

Pastor Jonathan:

Amen. Yeah. Well we are so excited to have you on board and a part of this journey, as we say, the journey. Journey. And sometimes it goes in ways which we planned most of the time it goes in ways that we did not plan. And so we're thankful for the journey. We're thankful for you and for David and your family. And I say, talk about us being hesitant towards David, meeting him on Facebook. And I'm, what I'm finding out is David's just too nice to say that he felt the same way I think about us until we showed up and it was all great. So wanted to make sure we give everybody credit for that. But I want to do something today that's unique for this moment. And something else that's unique about Journey is that we have the privilege, we have the blessing of having several people connected with our church who are ordained clergy in the Church of the Nazarene.

So we're going to invite Mallory and Pastor Bob to come forward. And Ms. Mary, we're going to invite you to come up to, I know Jose is a pastor in the church, retired, but still doing ministry in Jeremy. And we're going to kind of take this moment to pray for Carly over this new portion of her journey. And David, you go ahead and come on up to and the rest of us too. This is our moment as a church to solidify this calling for Carly and this pursuit. So let's take a moment today and pray for her.