Disruption as Invitation to FAITH - Danielle Strickland - ACS Leadership Summit 2025

Sure. [Music] Hello. Hello. Hey. It is so good to be in Australia. I love it here. And uh all I'm talking about right now are the lollies. That's it. I mean, I think to like my son Moses and I, he's my youngest son uh in the front row, 13 years old. Give a hand to Moses. I don't know. A room full of educators to a 13-year-old boy. I'm not sure how that feels. That must be a little over little overwhelming, but welcome. I think we spent a good like $60 just on snakes. Uh licorice, Tim Tams, uh mint. Uh I mean, you know, we're hitting the we're hitting the heights. And then also your beaches aren't bad either. Uh so it's a great joy to be here. I love it. Down under or what we our family likes to call up over. >> Am I right? >> Yeah. Hello world. Catch up. You guys are the future. All right. I want to talk about disruption and uh the transition of that. This is what I call the transition bridge. And uh it can be really helpful. Anybody here ever heard of Wimhof? >> The cold plunger. >> Anyone a cold plunger in the house? >> Okay, we got a couple couple like-minded crazy people. Excellent. I had a friend who really struggled with depression. Uh Christian, beautiful, did everything uh she could, tried medication, tried uh prayer, you know, did all the right things, but still just could not deal with the depression that she was facing. And uh she gave me a call and she said, "You know, Danielle, I really want to try this Wimhof thing, but I need someone to do it with me. If I bought you a ticket, would you come on a Wimhof retreat?" And I said, "Uh, yeah, sure." Cuz that's what I say. Yes, why not? Let's give this a try. And then I just went all deep dive on Wimhof. So Wimhof is someone who believes that cold therapy or cold plunging breath and mindset might actually help regulate people's nervous systems and uh you know do the natural. So one of his big things about cold therapy is when you're in the cold that your bodies are actually designed for discomfort. They're designed to self-regulate. And so discomfort or situations that are discomforting trigger your body into actually doing what your body's designed to do. And then what happens is your body itself does the healing that it needs to do in the in the uncomfortable situation. But his theory is that we are so addicted to comfort. You know, we're so stuck in our own comfort that we actually don't ever work out our bodies in a discomfort uh in way. And so we don't really have that mechanism uh working firing at all cylinders. And so he invites people into this thing. So I go on a deep dive. I get like a little backyard plunger. I'm like practicing this thing and it's like breath mindset whatever. I read his autobiography just in case I'm going into like some sort of cult world. I'm just like what have I what have I said yes to? And fascinatingly enough if you haven't read you know Wimhof was actually born uh accident like he was a second twin and they didn't know he was coming. He was born really under underweight and his mom was a devout Catholic and uh prayed you know said if you let this child survive I'll pray that he becomes a missionary. and he writes in his own autobiography, he says, "I'm pretty sure this isn't what my mom had in mind, but uh I think last time I checked there were uh 52 million people who follow Wimhof on YouTube." Uh so missional uh 100%. Is he making an impact? Is he talking to people? So anyway, I go to this retreat with my friend and in the retreat we're accidentally, you know, we're introducing each other. So, they do this exercise where you have to talk to somebody and then your partner introduces you. And I just couldn't, for the life of me, I just couldn't scrub Jesus out of my bio. You I tried. You know how it could be awkward in sort of those public spaces where you're just like, "What am I?" Like, I don't want to just shut the whole room down. But anyway, the person who introduced me introduced me as a pastor, which is not even what I said, but anyway, cheers. So, then as soon as he's like, "Oh, Danielle is a pastor." You know, you could feel the room just like everyone just goes like and I'm like, "Oh, great. This is a good start." Anyway, we do this cold plunging weekend and um over the course of a couple days, just two days, uh I'm going to say seven people took me aside, said, "Hey, could I talk to you for a sec?" And I said, "Sure." And they said, "Um, I'm a Christian." And I'm like, "Great. Me, too." And they said, "But my my mother-in-law says like this is totally like not, you know, like this is not okay. What do you think?" You know, and I was think in the session this morning, I was thinking this contextualizing the story of God, the gospel, the good news of Jesus into our times, into our way. You know, I remember saying to this guy, this one guy who was really like, "Yes." I said, "Is this movement, is this practice, is this discovery uh moving you closer to Jesus or do you think it's moving you away from Jesus?" You know, that's just an Ignatius uh by the way, Ignatius spirituality uh principle of discernment. Is this moving you towards Jesus or is this moving you away from Jesus? And the guy goes, "Oh, no. It's moving me towards like I feel God." Like I I sense like an awakening in my own heart. And you know, and I was like, "Okay, great. Then your mother-in-law's wrong. We all suspected it anyway." He's like, "That's good news." I'm like, "On so many levels." Right. Good news on so many levels. there is a there is an awakening and part of my you know practice of this thing has been really interesting. So, I was in the water. I'm in the water at this cold uh plunging thing and I have this memory. Now, I grew up in the Salvation Army and the co-founder of the Salvation Army is Katherine Booth. Um who and also just the booths in general. The founders of the Salvation Army were just crazy. I mean, you do know this about all founders, right, of like move your own movement. Whoever founded your school off the rocker, right? Just like everybody said to them, not going to work. They're like, "Let's see," you know, like there just there is a part you have to be a little imbalanced to do stuff that people do, right? Like you just have to be. So, I don't think we should be ashamed of it. I think we should celebrate it. And I have this memory cuz I'm like a big fan of Katherine Booth, one of the first, you know, female um preachers and then defense uh defenders of females right to preach the gospel. So, just beautiful heritage there. And um and I remember having this memory of like, oh, she was a cold plunger. Did you know that? She's a hydrotherapist, bit really into alter. She was a vegetarian for animal right purposes. I mean the 1800s. Hello. Off her rocker then. I mean like totally right right for our time. But like then women's rights. I mean where is this person? Is she from outer space? Right. In the late 18 Victorian in England. Anyway, and then I had this I was like, "Oh, wait a minute." And then I I looked into John Wesley and And then I found John Wesley, you know, five pillars of healing. I don't know if you guys have looked into this at all. All I know about John Wesley is he's a revivalist. I know that William Booth said that that God only has one prophet and his name is John Wesley. I know that he was uh famous for his revival preaching, but also for his supernatural healing, for God moving in power wherever he would be. I know he's famous for his prayer life. Remember, right? Three, four. I know he was famous for having a troubled marriage. That's the other piece you always hear about John Wesley. If you didn't, I'm sorry I told you. Uh I'm pretty sure it was all his wife's fault according to the record. Anyway, on a side, are you awake? Are you okay? You traveling with me? Okay. So, uh I look up his five pillars of healing. I realized actually that John Wesley uh went to medical school, med medical school before he became a pastor, before he was called to pastor. So, he was absolutely captivated by the way the body worked, by the way science worked, by the way everything was actually a discovery into this incredible uh place that we're living in called Earth, right? And this humanity. And he set up all these medical clinics. All the money that John Wesley made from his like best-selling books and revival donors and stuff all went to these medical clinics for the poor all across uh England. And he was around for the discovery of electricity being harnessed and stuff like that. He would go to these lectures on electricity as this like element of healing, this element of power, this element of, you know, and he was just like this is incredible. I actually think because of the way our bodies are made, we have electrical impulses and because of the way the electricity is possibly being able to harness, I think we could actually electricity could be a healing agency, you know. So, in all of the medical journals in the world, John Wesley is credited as the founder of electro therapy. Did you know that? I know, right? I'm like a fairly decent expert on John Wesley and not heard anything about it. And I was like, what on earth? So he actually created with a friend a machine that is like the EMTR, you know, like the um trauma therapy. Do you guys know EMTR where you put like a little impulse, not like the crazy stuff that shocked people all uh the next iteration, but that early just like enough that it would like reconnect your neurons and things like that, this EMTR, heal you of trauma. And he kept all of these medical records in these uh things of how it he was treating what he would have called then melancholy among the poor that he was uh curing depression through electrical impulse machines that he made. this guy. I'm just like, if John Wesley or Katherine Booth was in a cold plunge right now, realizing and and and experiencing the the phenomenon of your body's own capacity to heal itself through discomfort, right? If they were here right now, there would be cold plunges in every church across like there would just be there would be a revival called cold plunging, right? there just be like this phenomenal revival of like I know what to do to actually help you take on the challenge of discomfort in a way that could actually move you towards healing. And I was in one of these cold plunges and I remember having all of these, you know, having gone on these deep dives and looked at this Wimhof experience. I pray every day, by the way, for Wimhof to come to know Jesus fully, you know, the fullness of Jesus. I I pray for a revelation for him. But I was in this thing and I was realizing, oh, I see we are not healing. And I'm going to say this as a body. We're not healing. The church isn't really healing. We are not healing because we're allergic to discomfort. I I mean, I'm pretty sure this is the case. So, the first transition in discomfort. If you're going to actually move anywhere, right? If you're going to move, I would say this is the settled position. So, this transition is called settled. Just sit. It's all you have to do here. Don't do anything. Just stay where you are. This is the uh status quo. If it's not broke, don't just stay there. Don't do anything. Right. This is I think not only the most comfortable place to be. I think it's actually a place that we have told people they should aim for. I think that we have introduced uh a generation of people to believe that uh their faith is about this is about being settled and actually so much so that I think uh when people are unsettled or when people get embraced discomfort or when we're in uh eras of time like we are right now where nobody really can sit still or sit comfortable because so much is changing and so you're just like ah We uh we almost double down, right? We almost double down and be like, "Well, that's not God. That can't be God. This can't be God. Discomfort can't be God, right? That that can't be the Lord." And then I just think to myself, and also even people will say this, when you're in God's will, you know, one of the accompanying ways you know you're in God's way uh in God's will is that you'll your life will be >> Yeah. >> Peaceful. >> Peaceful. >> Peaceful. which I think what we've translated peaceful to be is settled. And then I just think to myself, has any one read the Bible? >> Yeah. I if you get to describe I mean just pick a disciple. Just pick a any just pick any disciple. Would you say that the invitation that Jesus gave them to was to a life of settled? I mean, I can't even find a story that would suggest that the invitation of faith is one of settled finally. That's fascinating, isn't it? The first stage of a transition to transformation of some kind, the first stage, the first way we get out of a status, what I would say is the inevitable intolerable status quo. the forget about the common good, just the status quo that like this is the best we can do and this is fine and just don't cause any trouble and don't raise your hand and don't offer anything and don't respond to this. Just quiet down, stay in a box and like stay where you are. The first stage to get out of that is to be unsettled. Okay? And this is stage two, unsettled. And you'll see I just put a little thing under my chair. to be unsettled, which is to say that something is feels off. Something feels disabled. It's disabling. Something feels like it's not quite right. Okay, I want you to read the scripture with me. It's uh taken from Mark chapter 4, which is kind of fun. The devotional start at Mark 6. And so, we're going to go back in time. Mark 4. This is uh Jesus. It's at the height of his ministry really in many ways. He's been ministering on his side of Galilee, right? On his side with his people. There's been tons of miracles. He's been praying for people all day. People have been being healed. All of the rumors are are going, you know, I mean, this is like if you're going for effective ministry, you're killing it right now. Jesus is killing it right now. This is what's happening. And then I'd love for you to read with me this scripture if it comes. Here we go. Mark 4. Read it out loud together, would you? Let's go. Just came [Music] up quiet. Be still down. He said to his >> Yeah, I love this. I love the invitation that Jesus gives to the disciples. Let's go to the other side. In other words, the invitation to disciplehip is to follow Jesus where we haven't been. The invitation is an invitation of discovery. It's an invitation filled with all kinds of things. Man, when the disciples are thinking, "Let's go to the other side." Of course, we're just thinking, "Well, that makes sense. The other side of the lake makes a, you know, maybe it's a good voyage or something." The other side is the dathlon. It's where all the unclean people are. It's where they farm pigs. If you keep reading the chapter, chapter 5, that's where they're going to get off that boat and a demonically possessed man that couldn't be uh contained with chains and is like bloodied and uh the the epitome of unclean is going to meet them when they get off of the boat. I mean, literally, the disciples are going to be like, "That's where my mom told me not to go, right? That is not the place." So I I when I met my husband, I remember I was working in a downtown area with a bunch of uh kids that have been sexually exploited and like were homeless on the street and stuff and he was a volunteer. And uh I mean he was university graduate football player. I mean just like looks so good in a uniform. That's what had me. And um he was actually stirring soup on this outreach van. I remember thinking, "Oh, and he cooks." That was a deception, by the way. That was that was a deception. But anyway, we're still we're still at it. said, uh, he had me at the uniform really. And then, uh, I remember going home to visit him and, uh, and his parents and stuff. I remember him telling me when he was a kid, you know, he could pretty much explore his whole neighborhood. He just couldn't go south of a certain street cuz on the the south of that certain street were was the other side. And I remember going like, oh, like that's where I live. It's like it's like we're in a musical, right? just don't go to I don't know how many you know how much of our formation disciplehip with um our people but even maybe the way we've been formed in our other lives is just not to go to the other side and maybe it's not to judge the other side of course not you maybe not to speak disparagingly about the other side maybe to just keep like the other side to their own to their own one of the things that Jesus does consistently in his ministry is he goes out of the way to get in the way of suffering of injustice of of pain, right, of of religious uh over the line of religious sensibility. I mean, this is what he's doing. His entire ministry is just inviting the discipleships on a journey of the disciples on a journey of transformation. And this is the journey of transformation. We have got to leave the settled position and move to an unsettled one. Okay. On your tables is a stone. Those have been borrowed from the beautiful plant displays all throughout this hotel. uh cuz I'm an adaptive leader. And what I want you to do is I want you to take the stone. Uh so there's one on every table. I want you to put it underneath one of the chairs at the table. Okay? I'm going to give you five minutes. And I'm not even a gym teacher, so it's probably not even going to be the right amount of time, but I'm going to do my best. Uh who here is a teacher? Can you put on a timer for five minutes when I say go somebody? Okay. I want you to put it underneath one of your chairs and I want you to think about and sit in. So I want each of you to just sit in that chair that is da stabilized. Okay? And here's what I want you to do. I don't want you to just think of something that is destabilizing. I want you to thank God for the invitation. Okay? You got five minutes and there are like seven or eight of you. So that's, you know, you break it down. Okay? So, not too long, but I want you to sit in the destabilized chair, and I want you to thank God for the invitation. Okay, go. >> What I did with my phone? You guys don't have one. Oh, you're doing it. Is it at all destabilizing? >> Okay, good. Good. Good. Oh wow. Heat. It's interesting. Everyone's had a totally different. >> Yeah. >> I like sort of situations like that. So, >> yeah. You're build for it. >> Everyone else. >> Yeah. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Laughter] It feels like one of the old You got one minute. One minute left. >> You've got one minute left. Heat. Heat. [Music] All right, 15 seconds. Here we go. I am magically. >> Oh wow. you know, um it can be a bit of a silly exercise in some ways, but I think it's helpful to change our posture and our attitude around discomfort and to see discomfort as an invitation to grow. And not just to grow, but to grow in faith, to go deeper, to go where Jesus invites us, which is always a little outside of our own comfort zone, right? Always. and help. You know, thankfully God invites us there inch by inch by inch by inch by inch. You know, always just a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time. And we can see this all through the life of Jesus. And tomorrow we'll talk about Acts and how the disciples take this and move uh even further. How far can this go? Well, how far can transformation go? You know, it it it's eternal, right? The transforming power. We're going to be transformed to see him face to face. we're going to be ever in this metaninoia, which is not just like I'm sorry for what I didn't know. It's like, whoa, there's more. You know, there's more. Uh, one of my favorite um uh times actually was when my eldest son, I lived in Melbourne for a couple years in Colleenwood, which is why we have to cheer for them. It was just a survivor tactic really. We wanted to live there alive for a couple years. So, um, and so he was started kindergarten. So he went off, it was actually a little Catholic school down the street that he went to. And I remember he went off to uh kindergarten and and he came home on his first day of kindergarten. It was really exciting, like a new country, kindergarten, like your kid, you're w you know, you're letting your kid go the first day and he comes back and I was like, "Okay, tell me everything like uh you know, kindergarten in Australia." Like, and he goes, "It was boring." He consistently yelled at that for his whole education. But anyway, I said, "How could it be boring? Is kindergarten?" Also, hello. He said, 'Well, all we did the first day of kindergarten was just share like all the stories that we did over the summer break before we started kindergarten. And I said, 'Well, that's cool cuz like we moved to Australia, so like what did you share? Like what story did you share? And he goes, "Well, mom, I wanted mine to be really, really good, so I just made one up. How to spot a preacher's kid, right?" So I said, "Oh, well, what did you say?" You know, thinking we moved into this neighborhood to be incarnationally, we're starting a church plant. We're doing all this justice stuff. like tell me like what story did you tell them? And he looked at me and he goes, "Mom, do you remember that time back in Canada when I was in that motorcycle race and halfway through the motorcycle race, my motorcycle exploded and became a race car and then like I finished and they gave me that big gold trophy." And I said, "No, I don't remember that cuz it didn't happen." And he just uh put his hand on my head and he closed his eyes and then he opened them. He goes, "Do you remember now?" Right? It's a better story. What he's after, he's after the better story. And I have this hunch that like when we get to heaven, the first day of kindergarten is going to be just sharing stories of what we did on our earthly break. And I want the better story. But what he's after, I don't want like some untrue story, but I want to live a better story. And the better story is on offer. I hate to tell you through discomfort, through challenge, through struggle, through that. Ah, and here's what's really cool about this story. Every other story, you know, when uh the angel comes to to Mary, for example, and says like, "Hey, you're never going to guess, but like you're highly favored and also you're going to bear a son. That son's going to be this, you know, salvation of the whole world." And it literally, the scripture says, "Confused and disturbed, Mary wondered, what could this possibly mean?" It's my favorite. confused and disturbed. Uh later on in Acts 10, you know, uh Peter's going to be up on a roof praying at the right time in the right place in the Jewish way. And then a sheet's going to come from heaven and a heavenly vision he's going to have. And the sheets going to be filled with all these unclean animals. And God's going to say to him, "Kill them and eat." And it's going to happen three times because everything has to happen three times for Peter because he's a guy. And that's always the time where God's like, "I should have picked a woman." You know, I'm just saying read your Bibles only one time, three times. I'm just saying all consistently, not just one time. Anyway, I'm saying uh what am I saying? Oh, yeah. And right and then literally the scripture says this what it says. Confused and disturbed. Peter wondered what this vision could mean. You catching the theme in the scriptures. confused and disturbed is an invitation towards transformation, towards a different kind of faith, a deeper kind of resonance, a real uh opportunity for us to grow. So, three chairs. I picked this scripture because the disciples just do it, which I love. Like Jesus says, "Let's go out to the other side." Not at a time where they're like, "We better beat it out of here cuz people are going to beat me up and kill me." Jesus is not escaping. This is not like a I got to do something else because this is worn out. There's a whole other reason maybe Jesus is going to the other side which we'll get into later. But for now all the disciples know is he wants us to go where we don't want to go but they do it. They do it because actually that's what disciplehip is is to follow Jesus into where Jesus is inviting us to go. And often the discomfort is part of the journey. And this is the other thing that has rocked my world in my own faith journey, but even as I've been helping people through their faith journey, is that this is not something we endure in order to be transformed, which is the other posture. So one, we avoid it because that can't be God even though very consistently it is God. Or we endure it as much as we can because by the time we get to that other side, then we'll be transformed. We forget that actually it's not enduring it. It's being transformed through it. The transformation is not once they get to the other side. The transformation happens on the way to the other side. This is the transformative power of our faith and the journey that God invites us to. So they embrace the discomfort. Thank God that the disciples just go. Um, and then they're thinking, great, we go and so we should be good. In the story, do you remember? >> Yeah. The worst possibility happens. These guys were doing what God told them to do and now they're going to die. So, does that mean that that isn't what God wanted them to do? Is that evidence of God not being who God thought who who they thought he was? Is this evidence of Jesus not? Cuz actually it goes from and this is the transformation journey. It goes from unsettled, right? So this is like, okay, yeah, this is getting shaky. We're going somewhere that's not clean. I don't know what I'm going to tell my mom later. Uh it's the middle of the night, you know? And actually interesting stuff in the scripture. It says they took Jesus as he was, which is really interesting because I think well like who of course you take him as he was. How else are you going to take him? But I think they probably carried him onto the boat. He was so exhausted. He spent the entire day in ministry healing people. And uh you know later on in the story we see Jesus was sleeping with a cushion on his head. So the disciples have taken him on the boat as he was exhausted completely spent having done that whole day of ministry and then trusting himself entirely to the care of the disciples to take him to the other side. Right? And then the storm comes. And this is the third stage of transition. By the way, it's chaos. I made it balloons. Often times I'll use an exercise ball, but I couldn't sneak this one out of the gym cuz it's like too fancy. They wouldn't let me use it. So, but this is what happens is we go from unsettled thinking, "Oh, it's okay. It'll settle soon." to actual chaos. So, the third stage of transition is chaos. It gets worse before it gets better. And what I think the biggest temptation for leaders who are Christian leaders who are actually leading in spaces where actually you need to kind of uh settle the ship like every everyone's like ah this isn't going to work this isn't going to work and some of those stuff this morning that you see like you actually have to move towards some things you've got to do some different things you have to stick with those different things is that we get here and people are already going like what what this can't are you sure like the other side like that doesn't seem and you're like, "No, trust me." And then it's like boom, right? Then it's to it gets worse, man. It's when all chaos begins. This is the storm. And here's what happens in the midst of that storm. There are the entire story unfolds with four questions. Okay? Four questions in that text. You can look that up and underline them. But I think it's very fascinating that it's questions that actually form this journey not answers because actually transformation happens through discovery not through solutions. Well, we can't figure this out because we're western thinkers. So we think everything even as a Christian you know I remember a Christian leader uh I remember learning that Jesus asked over 300 questions was asked 168 questions and only directly answered three and I realized what I do with most of my life is just give give answers and how Jesus taught was by questions and I thought I guess I know more than Jesus or I wonder if this technique might not be a technique of discovery. I wonder if actually the questions are meant to get to deeper places, to go to deeper things without this invitation to transition, without the unsettledness of, I guess we're going to do this. Jesus is exhausted, but we'll just load him into the boat anyway. And then in the midst of this, even though we're seasoned fishermen and this isn't even that big of a lake. I've been there. You can see to the other side. I mean, this isn't that big of a deal. Boom. A storm comes up. A supernatural storm probably, but a storm that sort of suggests you're in the wrong place. You're doing the wrong thing. And and what happens is in this place, it stirs up all of these other places. And what it stirs up, I believe, is genuine honesty. When people are in chaos, that's when they get real. This is one of my great delights of working uh in my life with people from the margins is you just have way less stuff in the way, right? Just the facades that people use. Everything's fine. Thanks very much. How's the weather? Meanwhile, they're like dealing with chronic illness or they're dealing with anxiety and depression or crippling suicide watch at their house, but no one will ever know, right? Cuz we've got all these facades. But when you're in a crisis mode, that's when some of those facads start to come down and the truth starts to come out. And there's some questions that happen in this chaotic place in the text that I think are formative for the way this has happened for me in a transition through discomfort. One is the disciples come and wake Jesus up. Well, Jesus isn't in chaos ever actually, but the disciples are. And they come and wake Jesus up. And you remember the question that they ask Jesus, do you even care if we drown? Okay, that's not even Jesus, could you save us? That's deeper than that, isn't it? The disciples are assuming they're going to die. Like the assumption is we're going to die. We're fish. We know this is like this is death. But do you not even care that we're going to drown? That's that's a deeper question. That's a conversation about the character of God. And I don't know about you, but this is a conversation we're having with a generation right now. You remember the Alpha Youth guys saying to me, you know, out of all the research that that they've done through the Alpha Youth program, they realize that all of those old apologetic stuff, you know, Jesus, they're not like people, that age group, that generation is not that concerned about whether or not it's true. They're concerned about whether God is good. And before they accept whether it's true or false, they need to know it's good. They need to know the go. So before they say this gospel is true or false, they need to know the gospel is good. Jesus, do you even care if we drown? I remember uh at a camp with a bunch of kids and we were doing uh just beautiful time of encounter. You know, we just had God just showed up in some beautiful ways. We had some beautiful prayer times and people were encountering God. It was just you can't make that stuff happen. God, you know, shows up. God does what God does. And this one kid, we had this time of testimony sharing. This one kid, just early university kid, he he he grabs the mic and he says, "You know, just last week, I walked across my university campus and I raised my middle finger to God and I said, "F you." And then he said, and then he just crumpled to the floor and he started to weep and he just said, "I didn't know he was real. I didn't know he was real. I didn't know he was real. I mean a faith transition, a transformation is to come into an encounter with a living God. It's not just to know the principles. It's not just even to have high standards on the word. It's an encounter with the living God. The disciples are already believers. They're already Jews. They're already follow. But it's not until they have an encounter with Jesus in the chaos of getting to the end of themselves. We've reached the end of our own capacity. Here comes our faith. What happens is when we're allergic to this, when we when we say, "Hey, that's too hard. That's too deep. That's too outside of my control." We miss the transformation of the encounter of God. So often in our own lives, we put railroads in our own frameworks. We put up, you know, my son Judah, he's the one that was uh he's the Collingwood guy, but he's a good kid, I promise. And I remember it took him a long time to ride a bike himself without the tricycle, without the training wheels cuz he was uh scared. And he loved what he had. He just was like, "This is a perfect setup." Like, "I can't fall this way. I'm set this way." But it went slow, you know. And I remember one day and I just kept encouraging him. He'll he'll he'll get there. He'll get there. And then one day I was out with him on his tric on his uh wheels, training wheel bike, and this little girl from next door, like half his age, just biked by. And I was like, I can't take it now. So then I just turned on my like, "Honey, it's time." Like it's past time. Like we just got to go for it. And I remember him saying, "Okay." I said, "We'll just flip them up. We won't take them off and you can try one time, but I think you're ready. I think you got this." You know, and he said, "Okay, we'll try one time." So I flip up the wheels and he goes on this ride. He thinks I'm holding on to the back, but I'm not cuz he's way past ready. He's just riding like the wind. It's chariots of fire. Everything slows down. A light from heaven comes. The father says, "This is my son." You know, comes back to me. He's just full of, you know, joy. And he comes back and he goes, "I did it. I did it. I'm riding a bike." And I said, "I know, honey. That's amazing." And then he looks at me and he goes, "Mom, you could totally preach this." And I said, "Thanks, honey. What do you mean?" And he goes, "Just think about it. My training wheels were holding me back." And he's right. When we make things so settled and so easy and so protected and so it holds us back, not only us back, but it holds our people back. It holds the ones that we're trying to form. It holds them back from the the unsettledness and then from the total chaos where only God can show up. Do you even care? Is the question. And then what's Jesus's response to the question? I love this. Jesus's response to the question, "Do you not even care if we're going to drown?" is to say, "You silly disciples, you ungrateful ones, do you not even know who I am?" What is What is Jesus's response? >> Yeah, he he deals with it. He gets up and speaks to the waves and silences the storm and it's quiet. the encounter they have with do you not even care? Not only does he care, but he's present. Not only does he care, but he responds. You know, isn't that that that that uh thank God we don't serve an idol who cannot see or think or move, but we actually follow the living God. But do we follow the living God? Do we actually create places in our lives and in our students lives and in our team lives where God can show up to do the responding? That's the question. Because if we want a transformed leadership, if we want to be transformed in our own spiritual lives, if we want to be transformed in our world, if we want to be agents of transformation for the common good of Australia, we have got to have encounters. I I was reading The Last Battle to my sons uh out loud a couple years ago, the series and um we were reading, do you know that one where like the ape nefarious ape finds a kind of ignorant donkey and then dresses him up in an old lion costume, an old lion skin, and then he pretends that that's Alan, but only Alam will only talk to him, you know, the ape. And then he starts saying, "Oh, Alan told me this and Alan told me that." And all of the things Alan said were like things bad for Narnia. Remember? And everyone's like, "Well, I guess if Alan said it, that's what it is." And uh the kids, the final kids that can come show up on the scene, and they're like, "Okay, we got to liberate the dwarfs cuz Alan had so-called told the ape to actually sell the dwarfs off for labor to the country of the south." So he goes over there and he's like, they free them. They're like, "In the name of Alan, you know, you're free." And then they're like, "We'll free the dwarfs cuz then they can join us in the fight and we'll liberate the rest of Narnia just like how all the other books go, you know." And they say to the dwarfs, "Okay, right now come join us." And they said, "Why should we join you?" And uh and the kids say, "Cuz we're with Alan." And then the dwarfs say, "That's what that other guy said." And they say, "No, but we're with the real Alan. Like we just liberated you. I mean, we're with the real Alen." And the dwarf say, "Yeah, that's what that other guy said. We're out." And they just walk away. And I remember reading this. My kids are on the bed and both my kids, young, like 10, 11, they look at me with these wide open eyes and they're just like, "What's going to happen if how will anybody know who's with the real As? You think that's where we're at? Who speaks for God? You think there's a whole generation who's wondering who speaks for Azen? Oh, you're with the real Alen, are you? Oh, you're with the real Oh, you speak for God. Oh, you think God says this? Oh, you think God. And we spend all of our energy and all of our time trying to convince people that we're the ones that speak for God. And I said to my kids, like I'll say to you, like I say to people as much as I can, I've got some better news than comparing who speaks for the real God. It's this Alen speaks for himself. God's real. God's real and God is good. And having leading people into places of encounter might be the primary means of revelation in a world that has infinite knowledge at their fingertips. There is a knowing that is beyond intellect and it's a spiritual knowing and we were made to encounter a living God. That's where all the transformation happens. Do you even care that we're going to drown? Jesus shows up. Silence be still. I care. I'm here. I'm with you. I want to I lead a listening prayer exercise that I use a lot a lot with uh kids too. Actually, just in I was at a youth event in Canada and there were I don't know 1,200 kids or something there and 505 of them ended up deciding to follow Jesus. Hungry, hungry, hungry. And I I led this listening prayer practice there and I thought, h this is a, you know, as a teenage crowd. I was like, this is risky. You could hear a pin drop. Yeah. That generation is so hungry for something real. So hungry for God to be good. So hungry to experience to encounter a living God. H that we would help them, right? That we would help them. And I I was uh leading one of these prayer things at another event and a kid, I didn't know this, but the kid had just lost his father a couple months ago. And before his father had passed unexpectedly a heart attack, he had said they had planned a big fishing trip. And we did a listening prayer exercise, which I'm going to lead in a second. And one of the questions in the listening prayer exercises, if Jesus, if you could take me anywhere, where would you want to go? And Jesus showed up with a fishing rod. And this kid just had a meltdown. I mean, you know, like a proper good meltdown where he encountered the God who not only knew his deepest desire, but also his deepest pain, but wanted to meet it. You know what that kid discovered that day is not the five basic doctrines of my denomination. The kid didn't discover that God is true and we can prove it to the world. God the kid discovered that Jesus is good and here and alive and with him. That kid is on a transition journey of transformation and able to bring other people with him. Let's do that now. Let's just I'm going to test your sear first. Okay, just a super. We're going to use our imagination like a screen. Okay, that's all we're doing. Just sort of trying to sanctify our imagination. So, don't worry too much about like is it God or is it the coffee, the flat white, you know? Don't worry. Um we're just doing a fun thing together. I want you to close your eyes for a second. Just try to get comfortable. And I want you to imagine uh this is the test. Just imagine your favorite lunch. Okay? And when you can see that in your imagination, just raise your hand. Yeah. Great. So, your seers are working fine. Okay. So, that's that same place that you imagined your lunch. That's where we're going to try an experiment of listening prayer. Okay. So now I want you to imagine yourself in the safest place you can. It could be real, could be imagined, but just where you're completely safe and then I want you to invite Jesus to show up there. So even now, Jesus, the living God, Jesus of Nazareth, the one who is alive and working, we invite you to come and reveal who you are, what you're like to us in our imaginations. Pay attention to how he comes. And then I want you to ask him a couple questions. Jesus, what do you like about me? Jesus, what's making you happy these days and why? Jesus, what are you sad about and why? Jesus, if you could take me anywhere, where would it be? And why? Jesus, if we could play a game together, what would it be and why? Jesus, if you could ask me one question, what would it be and why? Yeah, God, we're so grateful that you are alive, that you speak, that you're here, that you're present, that your invitation is an invitation to trust and to follow and to be transformed again and again and again. Thank you. We're here for you. Amen. Amen. I'd like you to just share with the person beside you. So, your partner for that last one. Okay? You just got a couple minutes. I want you to share just one thing. Maybe it's a struggle with the exercise. Maybe you're just like, "This is ridiculous. I'm not doing this." Maybe it's a surprise about what the safe place was. Maybe it's what Jesus or how Jesus came. Maybe it's one of the questions that you got an answer to and you're like, "Huh, that is fascinating." Would you do that? I give you 5 minutes. That gives you 2 and 1/2 minutes each. Are you ready? Go. Heat up here. You know, I Heat. Heat. Evan, >> I just have two more questions, but it'll be really Are we okay? >> Started Sunday. >> Okay. So, 1210. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat up here. Oh, One minute. Morning. One minute. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. That's great. You guys are so lovely. Uh, do you not even care is the question that the disciples ask. The next two questions are Jesus asking cuz what we're after is a relationship. Right. >> Right. >> Yeah. And that's why this uh uh listening prayer exercise is called friendship questions. We're actually just interested not just in getting stuff from Jesus but knowing knowing Jesus developing relationship connection friendship. And the next two questions are Jesus asking the questions. The first one is why are you so afraid? Maybe the most important by the way this is after he silences the storm and then the scripture says they were terrified. What? What? You would have thought that would have done the deal. They should have been amazed. They should have been ecstatic. They should have been excited. They were terrified, right? They're still here. They're actually moving out of the chaos into the next stage of transition, by the way, which is unsettled again. And this is one of the great temptations for us to head that way is because we think by the time we get here, everything should be fine. But actually, it's unsettled chaos, unsettled, and then settled again. And then we do it again because that's transformation. It just keep the invit invitation keeps coming, right? So they're unsettled chaos, unsettled again, terrified. What is happening right now? This is outside of our realm of possibility. This is, you know, and there's tons of stuff. You can study it, but the water and especially storms are like chaotic voids. It's sort of back to Genesis. This is the stuff we have no control over. This is where God, you know, where uh chaos reigns. Uh this is the stuff. This is death, you know? This is this is culture winning, right? This is that that like, oh no, what are we going to do in this culture? It's like so messed up. Yeah, it is. But God is the creator of all things. As a matter of fact, the pericurosis of God, the earliest church doctrine is that God hovered over the chaos. The starting place of all creation was not nothing. It was chaos. Sounds perfect. We're right there again. There might be like another possibility of God creating beautiful things right in our generation as the spirit hovers over the chaos right here. Why are you so afraid? And I used to view the questions of Jesus all throughout the scriptures as sort of passive rebukes kind of like my mother-in-law. Like are you going to wear that outfit, right? Like I used to be like, "Why are you so afraid?" Like it was like a And then I I felt like God told me, "You should read those questions as though they were genuine. Why are you so afraid?" As though God might want to know, "What are you so afraid of? What are you so afraid of?" Let's talk about that. Since fear is the currency of oppression, let's talk about fear. And then where is your faith? Now, the NIV says, "Have you no faith?" That's not what it says. It says, "Where is your faith?" Which I think's different. We know it doesn't have to be a lot. He already told us it's the size of a mustard seed, too. But where is it? [Music]