Advent - 12.14.25 - Lamenting Pain
Today, we relight the first two candles of the advent wreath, the candle of hope and the candle of peace. Now we light the third candle of advent. This is the candle of joy. As the coming of Jesus, our savior, draws near, our joy builds with anticipation of his birth. From the book of Isaiah, we read these words.
Speaker 1:Isaiah sixty five eighteen. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. From the New Testament, Apostle Peter says this, first Peter one eight and nine. Though you have not seen him, you love him. And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
Speaker 1:For you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Joy wells up within us when we receive that which is good and beautiful. When we receive a present, our hearts light up. How much more do our hearts overflow when we receive Jesus' presence and work in our hearts? We carry with us a joy that cannot be extinguished because Jesus has overcome all things.
Speaker 1:Please join us in prayer. We joyfully praise you, oh Lord, for the fulfillment of your promise of a savior and what that means in our lives. Thank you for the gift of salvation through the birth of your son, Jesus. Kindle afresh the flame of joy in our hearts. May we carry it with us each and every day.
Speaker 1:Create us anew as we wait for you and our salvation. Help us to see your glory as you fill our lives with your living spirit. Amen.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Anna and Dario, for doing today's reading. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Luke. I am one of the pastors here at Conduit, and it is my privilege to say welcome home this morning. It is always our prayer, our hope that whether you've been here once or a thousand times, that this is a place you can call home.
Speaker 2:We're all about helping people take one step closer to Jesus. And so whatever that is, we want to be a place where you can do that. Whether you've been following Jesus for a long time or you're still figuring out who Jesus is. We'd love to help you get closer to him. And let's invite pastor Cameron up, and he's going to continue our sermon series on a slow Christmas.
Speaker 2:Heavenly Father, we pray this morning that as we open your word, we would see you. I pray that this morning the message from your word and from Cameron would be effective because of your Holy Spirit's work in us. Lord, we ask that you would open our eyes to see you more clearly and that we might love you even more than we do now. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Speaker 3:Amen. Good morning, conduit. How are you this morning? Good. Who absolutely loves the parking situation that we have going on here right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I just want to say once again, you for your patience with that. We're doing our best to make plans to make more parking spots available in safe locations so you don't have to be even trekking on roads. As it is right now, we may need some of you to park on side streets and whatever, just so we can fit everyone in. But trying to make some plans to push some snowbanks back this week And then in the spring, make some more permanent changes and additions to our parking situation so that we can make just more space available for you all. So thank you for your patience with that.
Speaker 3:I understand that it's not ideal, but we're glad that you're here and that your car is somewhere. This morning, Anna and Dario led us in our Advent reading for the week of joy, which is of course a cornerstone Advent or Christmas theme. Next year, we will probably plan the Advent readings and the sermons a little bit more closely because this morning for the sermon, we're going to talk about how sometimes Christmas is really painful. And while I do think that pain and suffering and joy do have strong relationship, it is a little, maybe we're just going to say we're hitting both sides of that coin this morning. Christmas does have sadness, suffering, and pain.
Speaker 3:And I think that it is really, really important that not just in this scenario, but in every scenario that we are really honest with ourselves about what we're experiencing and about what we're going through or feeling in life. It is a funny phrase, but faking it till you make it, like fake it till you make it is actually not a good strategy for healthy, emotional, mental, or spiritual living. Honesty is good. There is an integrity that we have in relation to our own souls that helps us walk through and process pain and experience healing when we are honest enough with ourselves to admit it and may be honest with others who love us and can pray for us and encourage us. So Christmas does have sometimes these significant feelings or experiences of sadness, suffering, and pain.
Speaker 3:Of course, we know that Christmas can hold some of our best memories of life as well. Some of my very best memories from life, especially childhood, is the Christmas season spent at my grandmother's house up in Watertown. But Christmas can also hold some of our worst memories, some of our worst experiences of people experiencing loss or maybe just a sense of being lonely or having anger or being sad. Some of you are here this morning wondering how you're going to survive the holiday, let alone enjoy it. Maybe your health is suffering or failing.
Speaker 3:Maybe your marriage is falling apart. Maybe you're having a difficult time breaking cycles of addiction, or your kids are in a season of rebellion, or you're feeling particularly lonely and rejected by the people and the places around you. And so the question ends up being maybe for you is like, does this Christmas story have anything to say to me, especially with the season that I'm in? Or is it a season that I just must purely endure? Where really is the hope of Christmas, the joy of it, the peace of it as we've read so far.
Speaker 3:One of the scriptures that we read almost every Advent or Christmas season, we will read it on Christmas Eve night is Anna read one of them for us today from the book of Isaiah, but another portion of Isaiah, which is a messianic prophetic book where Isaiah was foretelling of the coming Messiah. Isaiah says this in Isaiah chapter nine, verse two, he said, The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. And on those living in the shadow of death, a light has dawned. You may be feeling as though life feels like living in a shadow in the midst of darkness, and that you're more surviving than you are thriving. Well, Christmas is the exact season where the hope of the light of God in Jesus Christ is shined in your life.
Speaker 3:That's where I hope to take us to this morning. So if we're honest enough and willing enough to say, and to admit that, yeah, I'm not going to put on a facade. I'm not going to fake it till I make it this Christmas season. I'm simply going to sit for a moment in the reality that Christmas for me, maybe this year or maybe every year does seem pretty sad, pretty lonely, pretty painful, and I am suffering. I want to say to you this morning, you may not be too surprised by this, we're going to talk about why I think this is that Jesus offers an answer.
Speaker 3:Not only does he offer an answer as if like he knows the answer to the question, but Jesus in himself is the answer to our sadness, our suffering, and our pain. Not just in the advent or the Christmas season, but in all seasons. Why do we think this? Or how can we understand this? Well, I don't know about how you feel, but often when I'm going through something painful, something difficult, maybe a dark season, one of the greatest encouragements for me in those seasons is for someone to come alongside and to simply say, You're not alone.
Speaker 3:You think you're alone, right? When you're in the middle of it, you think you're alone. Like there is no one else that could possibly understand what I'm experiencing. There is no one else that has ever gone through this situation like I'm going through it. I can't talk to anyone about how I feel or what I'm thinking or what I want to do or don't want to do, because there's no one in all of creation who could possibly understand how I'm feeling right now.
Speaker 3:And in some cases that is true. Everyone's experiences is unique. But on the larger, if we zoom back just a little bit, we can see that we actually aren't alone. One of the most significant things that Jesus offers us as an answer to the sadness, suffering, pain of our life is empathy. Now that might not be a super spiritual word according to you.
Speaker 3:It might not be a deeply theological word, but this is actually a pretty significant cornerstone to understanding who Jesus is and what he came to do and be. Jesus, instead of staying in heaven on the throne where he belongs, saw it through the will of the father to put on flesh and come and make his dwelling among us. This is what we celebrate in the Christmas season. The coming of Jesus, the incarnation, the God made flesh. And so at very heart of the at the very heart of the incarnation is an empathetic response to the human condition.
Speaker 3:Is that God did not see fit to simply stand far off and be the savior or the God, the Messiah that we needed, but instead to step into all of life with us to say, You are not alone. And Jesus is one who personally understands and has experienced sadness, suffering, and pain. You are not alone. Additionally, I think it's important for us to make this really clear, sadness, suffering, pain, hardship is not necessarily evidence that you have done something wrong or that God is angry with you. The writer of Hebrews writes this about Jesus, speaking of his, essentially his ability to connect with our own pain and suffering, to know it like we know it.
Speaker 3:He says this, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin. Jesus understands. Jesus knows. Jesus has experience. Jesus was misunderstood in the things that He said and the things that He did, even by those who were closest to them.
Speaker 3:Jesus was betrayed by a close friend that He poured into for years and years. Jesus was abandoned by those closest to him in the exact moments where he was needed, he needed them the most. Jesus was yelled at. Jesus was cursed at. Jesus was hit, mocked, and literally spit on.
Speaker 3:Jesus knows your pain. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood. He knows what it's like to be betrayed. He knows what it's like to be abandoned and lonely in the worst possible moment of his life. He knows what it's like to be yelled at and cursed at, hit and mocked.
Speaker 3:Jesus knows what it's like to be you. He felt it and he experienced it just like you do. We do. So if we are to take any encouragement, it is this, is that even though you feel alone, let your heart take root of this promise. You are not alone.
Speaker 3:The second thing that Jesus offers as an answer to sadness, suffering, and pain in our life is hope. Hope. Maybe one of the primary questions here then is, what exactly is hope? Why would we want it? I hope the Bills win today.
Speaker 3:That is not the same kind of hope though. Hope is not wishful thinking. It's not wish upon a star. I really hope it happens. I really hope this happens.
Speaker 3:Hope is this, hope is a firm and certain confidence that God's promises are true and will indeed come to pass. It firm and it is a certain confidence that the promises of God are not a maybe, but they are a definitely. Not in It's not necessarily like if it will happen, it's when it will happen. God's promises are true and will come to pass. This can be encouraging for us in seasons of suffering and pain because suffering often feels like it has no end.
Speaker 3:When you're in the midst of something, right, this is going to go on forever. I see no feasible way out of this or beyond this. This is a hopeless feeling that makes most people want to quit. I was watching a documentary on YouTube. It was a couple months ago.
Speaker 3:And I thought that this particular example was appropriate for us in understanding how hope and the loneliness in the middle suffering really affects our souls. It was a documentary about the Navy Seals and about one specific Everyone kind of knows by folklore the training process and Hell Week that they go through. One of the instructors was talking about the part of Hell Week that gets the most Navy SEAL recruits to quit. Most people would think that it would be like the hours upon hours in the cold surf in the Pacific Ocean or the hour after hour, day after day not sleeping, or some kind of physically grueling challenge that they just physically cannot go any further. But what he said was, by design, the element of their training that got the most people to quit was a run down the beach of one mile, but that the recruits were not told how long they were to run.
Speaker 3:There was a cone down the beach one mile long that they could not see with their physical eyes. And all they had to do is run one mile to the cone and back. Very simple for these young men in the fittest condition of their lives. But that rotation within the first 500 yards was the thing that washed out the most because they had no idea when that suffering that they were in would be over. And because they could not see the end, they quit when they were just here.
Speaker 3:And that's what suffering and pain does to us. It puts us in a position of feeling like this is never going to end. But hope shows us the finish line. Hope shows us God's future for us. Hope speaks the promises of God in the midst of the uncertainty of our suffering.
Speaker 3:Hope anchors us to the promise of a better future, and it helps us to recognize the way that God is working in the present. Most importantly, hope does not deny the reality of difficult circumstances. It does not try to spiritually bypass that which is difficult so that we can put on a Christian smile of I am hopeful and joyful in the midst of suffering. It absolutely recognizes the darkness or the pain or the suffering that you're in, but takes your eyes and moves them from the midst of the circumstance to the finish line of God's fulfilled promises in your life. Changes, hope changes your perspective.
Speaker 3:It changes your viewpoint. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans says this. He says, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings.
Speaker 3:Like, what are you talking about, Paul? We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Listen, important here to Paul's words about the way that hope is developed through persevering in suffering is that this is a promise made to those who have been justified by faith through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3:What does that even mean? This is a promise that has been made to those who are the sons and daughters of God, who have surrendered their life and the Lordship of their own life, who have repented of their sins, who have trusted in Jesus for their salvation, and who are living in obedience to his word. They have been They are his. This is a promise for Christians, for Christ followers, for those who have given their lives to Jesus. Suffering is not just pain.
Speaker 3:He says, he starts out this section in Romans five, but for those who have been justified through faith and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who have been justified by faith, here is your promise. Pain is not just to make you squirm. Suffering actually has a purpose to produce something in your life. And when Christ changes our hearts by faith, we are given a different lens to see pain than the world has.
Speaker 3:When we have trusted in Christ, we see pain through the lens of its sanctifying purpose to produce something in us that could not be produced otherwise. When we have not, when we do not have Jesus, pain and suffering is simply just that, pain and suffering with no redeemable or eternal purpose to it. But what Paul says here is that when suffering and pain is endured, when we can persevere through it, it develops in us a greater sense of and promise of hope. And again, this is not a kind of like a dead wish upon a star, wishful thinking type of hope. One of arguably the closest disciple to Jesus, Peter wrote this later in his epistle.
Speaker 3:He said this, The epistle of Peter, one Peter especially, is written in the context of the suffering that Christians are experiencing in that time. They're experiencing suffering and pain. And Peter writes to encourage them, to exhort them, to help them move through the pain that they're experiencing. And he says this in first Peter chapter one, In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into what? A living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you.
Speaker 3:This is the promise of God, right? That in His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you, who through faith, you're being shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this, you greatly rejoice. In what? In the fact that God has made a promise to me that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is something kept for me in the courts of heaven that the world and all of its pain and suffering cannot steal away from me because I am being shielded by God's power for it so that I may look forward to the salvation that is coming.
Speaker 3:But then he says this, he says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief of all kinds of trials. But again, Peter comes back to this Jesus centric perspective of pain and trial and suffering not being purposeless. It has a purpose. And what does he say it is? He says, these things have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by the fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus is revealed.
Speaker 3:Jesus brings us empathy. The realization that we are not alone, and he brings us hope. The sure and certain confidence of God's promises being fulfilled in our life and being sealed for us in all eternity through faith in Jesus Christ. But where does this lead us? When we're experiencing pain, suffering, grief, there's not a single one of us that wants it to go on longer than it already has.
Speaker 3:Right? Even though we may recognize the redeeming qualities of it and what it does to bring about character and hope in our lives, we still want it to end. And so we often rush through the process of the pain in order to get to the end and the finish line quickly. I'm gonna propose to you that instead of rushing through the pain, we actually need to slow down in order to speed up the healing. The question really is, what do I do in the middle of my hopeful waiting in pain?
Speaker 3:Between the pain and between the promise, how can I make that process more intentional in my heart and my life? How can I walk through my painful season, not rushing past all that God wants to show and teach me, but creating an intentionality of process that allows me to slow down long enough to actually hear and see what God desires to do? I'll say this in my experience is that healing cannot be fast tracked. If we slow down, take a deep breath, and meaningfully engage with questions like these, we can begin the process of healing. Begin the process of processing pain, suffering.
Speaker 3:Question number one, have I stopped the busyness of life long enough to understand what is truly going on in me and around me? What do we do in between the pain and the promise? Well, the first thing we might consider doing is slowing down enough. Stopping the busyness of life long enough to understand what is truly going on in and around me. You know why Sabbath is avoided?
Speaker 3:I my opinion on why Sabbath is avoided like the plague in most Christian circles these days. I think one of the reasons Sabbath is avoided a lot is because we don't like what we hear and feel on the inside of us when we stop and don't move anymore. This is why you might experience a higher level of anxiety, fear, or emotional dysregulation at night. And like, I am just exhausted. I just want to fall into bed and go to sleep.
Speaker 3:But when I try to go to sleep, feels like emotionally, my life begins to fall apart. Life has slowed down just enough for your body and your mind to catch up to the reality of what you are actually feeling and experiencing, but that you have not allowed yourself to process through. You've kept yourself busy with movement so you don't have to meaningfully engage with the pain that exists inside. Men are especially good at this. When I was going through a particularly difficult period of my life, there was a lot of leadership transition here at Conduit, and then my mom died kind of in the middle of it.
Speaker 3:I met with a counselor for a number of weeks and months, and one of the things that they told me has been something that I've been struggling to get better with for a long, for every day since. He said to me this, he said, You cannot heal what you refuse to feel. You will never heal past your willingness to feel what you're actually feeling. Grief, loss, sadness, loneliness, anger, despair. So question number one, have I stopped the busyness of life long enough to understand what is truly going on in and around me?
Speaker 3:Question number two, do I have a redeeming or a fatalistic understanding of pain and suffering? We talked about this briefly already, but it is an important question to ask yourself. How do I view pain and suffering in my life? Is it simply pain and suffering? Purposeless beyond Like there's no purpose beyond just the pain that it's causing me in the moment.
Speaker 3:Do I see pain and suffering as a way in which God is punishing me for not being good enough Christian? Do I have a redeeming or a fatalistic understanding of pain and suffering? Will I trust God's word? That pain and suffering can actually be redeemed by God for good purposes in my life. Or is it just meant to hurt me, punish me?
Speaker 3:Is there something that God is doing in me that He couldn't have done otherwise or wanted to do, but I simply wouldn't listen or pay attention? We talked about this already briefly at the beginning of the sermon, but we have, there is this kind of common belief in a lot of Christianity that struggle, pain, and hardship is an indication that God is absent, angry, or that you're not actually a good Christian. Because if God was actually here or present, or if God was actually pleased with me, or if God was actually good, then I obviously wouldn't be going through all of this pain because God's job is to make my life as smooth as it can possibly I don't know about you, but I learn all of the most important lessons of my life when things are really easy. That's when I grow the most, right? Most I grow in my faith.
Speaker 3:I grow the most in my trust. I grow the most in my relationships. I grow the most in my prayer life. When I have nothing wrong whatsoever, and I'm just coasting happily upon the life that God has created for me as a good and faithful Christian. I don't know about all you guys that are going through it, but get on the right track, right?
Speaker 3:And you can experience a life like mine. Like this ridiculous, okay? But is it or is it not a soundtrack that plays on our minds? Like, man, if I could just get my stuff together with God, maybe life would be a little bit more easy. If we re reference the first Peter passage that we read a few minutes ago, it speaks of our faith being greater worth than gold.
Speaker 3:It perishes, which perishes even though refined by the fire. That it may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. The scripture talks about how our faith is like gold that must be refined. The refinement process is a violent process. Like, I really wanna be refined in my faith.
Speaker 3:That's great. Like, buckle up. Okay? Because refinement is a violent process where intense heat is applied directly to the metal. I saw an interview online about what the refinement process of heavy metals is like and how the jeweler knows when the metal has been purified and refined to the greatest extent that it can be.
Speaker 3:And he places the flame underneath the metal, which is held in this kind of like, this big metal cask, and it's heated and it's heated and it's heated and it's heated in the dross, or the impurities are scooped off the top, and then it's heated and heated and heated and it's scooped off again, all those impurities coming up. And then finally, it's not an objective process. It's a really subjective moment when the jeweler knows the metal has been refined, when he can look in the pool of molten metal and see his own reflection. Becomes like a mirror. And God's refining processes in our lives are high heat, lots of scooping away of what does not belong until he can look inside of us and see himself.
Speaker 3:Probably one of my favorite quotes, which has rooted me in a acceptance of suffering and pain is by Charles Spurgeon, an old preacher. He says, I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me against the rock of ages. Thank you, Lord, for the pain. Thank you, Lord, for the suffering that teaches me and refines in me and perfects in me something that could not be done on my own. It is a gift.
Speaker 3:Question number three, where do I sense and see God doing a new thing in me through this season? What is what is God showing you about himself? What is God showing you about yourself or about others or your circumstances? Maybe God is building my capacity to trust or providing me with the things that I need, resources, friendship, peace, the grace of community. Number four, what am I asking God to do?
Speaker 3:It's an important question. When you're going through pain and suffering, the question is, well, what exactly am I asking God to do in this moment? If pain and suffering is ultimately good and God has a promise at the end of it, do I really want it to be over? Well, I mean, I want it to be over. And it's okay to be honest with that.
Speaker 3:But maybe some of the things that we ask God to do is, God, would you reveal the purpose to the pain? If you don't know why you're going through what you're going through, the obvious next step is the thing that we often miss is, have you tried asking God? Lord, why am I experiencing this? Why is this going on in my life? Lord, would you show me what you're trying to do so that I could get out of my own way and get on your plan and partner with you in the sanctification of my soul?
Speaker 3:It's important to ask God to reveal to you the purpose of it, but equally as available is to ask God to bring an end to it. Lord, would you bring an end to this pain? Would you bring an end to this suffering? Would you restore me, father, to wholeness and healing? So these four questions.
Speaker 3:Have I stopped the busyness of life long enough to understand what is truly going on in and around me? Do I have a redeeming or a fatalistic view of pain and suffering, or can I see the refining attributes of pain as they burn away what is unneeded in my life so that the image of Jesus Christ can be developed in me more fully? Where do I sense and see God doing a new thing in me through this season? What what what is on the other side of the finish line that this pain and suffering going to bring before? What am I asking God to do both in the moment and in the future?
Speaker 3:Listen, Advent is a season that we fix our eyes towards what is coming. Fix our eyes towards Christmas, the celebration of Jesus' birth, the coming of Jesus. But listen, in suffering, we do the same. In suffering, we fix our eyes on what is coming. Hope, healing, growth, God's promise.
Speaker 3:Advent's a season of suffering. Suffering is what reminds us that Advent doesn't end on December 25. We are always watching. We are always waiting. We are always expecting and longing for the coming of the savior that will make all things new.
Speaker 3:And in this, can actually repurpose suffering to re affix our eyes on the hope of Jesus coming. As the worship team comes forward, I'm gonna read to you this last scripture here from second Corinthians chapter one as our prayer to end this portion of our service. From second Corinthians chapter one, verses eight through 10. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the hardships we have suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure.
Speaker 3:You ever been there? So that we even despaired of our lives. Indeed, in our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises us from the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us.
Speaker 3:On him, we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us. Church, let us continue to set our hope upon him who is our great deliverer. Amen. Father, you are worthy of all that we have to give. Yes.
Speaker 3:Lord, and so we give ourselves to you. Lord, we we give our pain to you. We give our suffering hardship to you, Lord. We surrender our control over it. We surrender trying to white knuckle it through every single situation.
Speaker 3:Lord, we we release it, Lord, that you may use it to do exactly what you need to do in us, that we may be more like you.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Father, continue to deliver us. In Jesus' name, amen. Condo, you are loved.
