Hope Channel

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2019: Family Seasons

Sebastien Braxton

Justin Kim

Jonathan Walter

Callie Williams

01-The Rhythms of Life

Whether you're single or married, whether you have kids, grandkids or no kids, we have all these natural stages and rhythms of life.

But sometimes these stages get messed up and discombobulated.

Find out on this episode what happens if this is happening to you.

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

Hey everyone, we're so happy and very excited for this next upcoming quarter, next 13 weeks, that you decided to join us here for our first week of Inverse.

Now how many of you out there have a family, or families, or some family of some sort?

We're gonna look at all the components of a family, the anatomy of families and how that works in talking about spiritual and spiritual context.

So we are going to go to Genesis chapter 1, 1, which is where everything gets started.

But before we read scripture, I'm gonna ask Jonathan if you can pray for us.

Father in heaven, we're so thankful for the opportunity we have to study the word again.

And we just ask that your spirit will guide us now as we dig deeper and as we search for answers and direction in your word, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, let's go to Cali, Genesis 1-1.

And we won't read the whole chapter, but out there, if you can follow along, if you have your Bibles or can read on the screen or if you have your phones.

But we're just going to see some macro patterns in the book of Genesis, or Genesis chapter 1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

So the evening and the morning were the first day.

Then God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

And God called the firmament heaven, so the evening and the morning were the second day." Okay, we'll stop there and maybe kind of pause.

Okay, I mean, I know we can do a lot in those verses.

But for the purposes of talking about family and stages and rhythms, what's the pattern that we see in Genesis 1?

Well, I think the first thing we see is that God is a God of order.

We know that as we look in the first 3 days, God is kind of forming the earth and then the latter 3 days God is filling the earth and all the things that he formed.

And so this gives you a sense of structure of a cyclical kind of development, the daily, daily output of the creation that God is making.

So God is not going into things just kind of haphazardly saying, ah maybe I'll make light today, or maybe I'll make the sky, maybe I'll divide the waters today, Whatever he feels like.

God actually has a plan and he's very intentional in what he's doing.

And this order is something that we see all throughout nature.

It's not something that revelation has to give to us.

I love that point in verse 2, the earth was without form and void.

There's no shape and there's nothing in it.

I mean, there's 3 days he's shaping it and 3 days he's filling it.

He kind of goes from like the massive to the detailed.

So at first, you know, he creates the big parts of earth and then he separates the waters and the atmosphere and earth and dry land and water and then he goes into detail how I'm filling it.

He becomes intentional, very focused on details and how to make this earth really beautiful.

I really like how God really values that process.

It also reminds me of the fact that, you know, I used to ask myself the question, on the first day of creation, God says, let there be light, and there was light.

And then he just divides the light from the darkness and you're like that's all he does in the first day so here is God this omnipotent all powerful being and he's like all right what are you gonna do in 24 hours I'm just gonna make light that's it So it kind of shocks you to think that God is not doing everything in a day that he can do, right?

So he allows the day to just say, well the evening in the morning, we're the first day.

Which tells you that as we go through this quarterly, you know, we're gonna be seeing that life is also a process and God is teaching us through Genesis 1 that you need to trust the Process there's a time for light and there's a time for us to create the Sun and the moon and the stars There's a time for the waters and then there's a time for the fish.

Yeah Yeah shows that yeah just the different rhythms of life are different.

And it's not like if you didn't create, because you create light in 1 day, but you didn't do other things, that doesn't mean the first day was a waste.

It was different from the rest of the days.

And so even as our lives change in stages and in rhythms, it doesn't necessarily mean 1 is better than the other.

I like these points you guys are giving out, like the different stages, different...

This is what we just read is a seven-day cycle.

Let's go to Genesis chapter 8, verse 22, and we see seasonal cycles happening after the flood.

8, 22 of Genesis, the Bible says, while the earth remains, see time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.

You see that there's, well, most parts of the world, not all parts, there are the 4 seasons.

If you live in Michigan, you only have maybe 1 season and a couple weeks of summer and then another season again.

This shows that there's different stages.

So what are the stages or seasons of life?

Well, I think you start off obviously with youth.

You're born and you're kind of going through stages where you're, that stage where you're learning everything.

You're learning the system, the communication, the languages, the relationships, the authorities, the power distribution.

You know, this person has authority over me.

This is how I need to interact with my friends sharing is good.

So you're you're learning basically how to adapt and to live in the world in which you were born into and your parents are kind of the Facilitators of that experience.

So I think that's where you start off initially in that first stage of life.

And then what's the next stage after that?

Sikhu Daco

Israel Ramos

02-The Choices We Make

In today's consumerist society there are so many things to choose from.

How do we choose what are the principles to select the right thing for the right people?

Now, here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

We're in a special season talking about families and when it comes to parents, we can't choose your parents And when it comes to siblings, unfortunately, we can't choose your siblings But there are some components that we can choose and we're going to talk about some of those aspects today So Kelly, Can you lead us out in prayer?

Father in heaven, thank you for the gift of your word that reaches into our experience no matter where we are.

I pray that you'd guide us by your Holy Spirit and may we be taught and led and may we end up loving Jesus more because of our study today.

So let's go to Matthew, the gospel of Matthew chapter 22 and read verse 35 to 37, please.

Then 1 of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Yeah, so hey guys, it's a philosophical question for the last 2, 000 years, maybe even longer, like are we free moral agents?

And that's another way of saying, can we like choose, or are we like just controlled by these outside forces?

We're like, I mean, I wore this, you know, vest because I was forced, and do we have free choice?

So Israel according to this verse what are some gleans that we can get to help answer that question and I know we're not going to solve this this problem but it can give insights of what Jesus is trying to get.

The passage there in Matthew chapter 22 and verse 37 is first of all is giving us the command that God is giving us that we are to love or Jesus is giving us to love God with our entire being.

Okay wait, verse 37 Jesus saying you should love the Lord with all your heart, all your...

Yeah, so Jesus is essentially saying here, love the Lord completely.

And so how is a human being, what is a human being composed of?

We're to love the Lord our God with our heart, with our soul, and with our mind.

So these are the 3 elements that compose a human being.

And so in Jesus' command to love God in these 3 ways means that we have the capacity to love God in these 3 ways.

So you're saying that free choice is built into the actual ability of love, so it's implicit.

And so essentially what Jesus is saying is that love requires, so normally when we think about love, we think about love as something that we do with our soul we love people with our soul and Jesus saying yeah you do love people with your soul but you also love people with your strength you love people physically not just emotionally and you also love people mentally and so this this component of the heart soul mind combined together to allow us or to express where someone expresses their ability to love God freely.

Love requires this freedom of choice or the ability to not just love emotionally but love cognitively with the mind, making that choice.

And just the very fact that it's love and it's a commandment shows that we have a choice whether to obey or not to obey because if we didn't have to obey or we had to obey then why what's the point of even saying it in the first place?

That's true I mean if we were controlled by outside forces Jesus would just say continue as thou art you know but no he's giving us okay that's that's a very insightful insight.

I was thinking about this command that Jesus gives that we should love the Lord and the way that God invites us to love him is yes It's a command, but what comes to mind is Romans chapter 2 verse 4 where it says that do you despise?

Romans chapter 2 verse 4 you're quoting like you know it and I'm sure you do but I don't know if the rest of us know it.

Romans chapter 2 verse 4 in the New King James and Seek and Be Free.

It says, or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance.

So the way that God draws us to himself, he doesn't command, yes, it's a command, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, but the way that he prompts us to that love is that he draws us with His love.

And so it's actually love, God's love that awakens love in us.

And so even though he's saying we should love God, he's saying the way that we come to this love is because God loved us first, right?

And in response to the love that God has shown to us, we respond in kind.

So love is not something you can force, you know, love me or else.

It's something that is awakened in you as a response to the love that you receive.

They want to take this free will, free choice out of the equation so that we're human beings are just predetermined and that just absolves us from all responsibility and all these bad things that happen to us, well that's just the course, natural course of nature.

But really biblical philosophy and I like these, I like thinking in these terms, I mean, free will and love is not an important part.

It's the main thing that this entire great controversy is battling over.

If there was any other way to solve the sin problem, I mean, Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and He said, Father, if it's possible, take this cup away from me.

But the cup wasn't taken away, therefore it was not possible for Jesus to not go to the cross and save us at the same time.

So, in order for love to act, for love to be preserved, God had to preserve our free will, like to give us the choice whether to accept him or not.

And for a Christian, if you do away with free will, you do away with the cross, really.

In some ways it's freeing, in some ways it's kind of scary, it just opens it up, there's a lot of possibilities.

And practically speaking, the importance of the free will is not just important in our relationship with God, but it also translates to our relationship with each other and with other people and so there's an element of there's an element of choice that is necessary in how I express my love to other people and to take away the free will means that I am no longer responsible for the actions or for my role in the brokenness of the relationships that exist in my life.

So we talked about it, we were large, you know, philosophical themes about the last 5000, you know, 1002, 2 years, whatever.

And then we're coming down and then Callie, like, let's bring it really down.

So what are like everyday decisions that we need to make that are sometimes difficult?

Yeah, I mean, we gotta decide what am I gonna major in, who am I gonna marry, but I mean, what's like, what kind of, you know, color shoes am I going to wear for my wedding?

Like, what are everyday things we need to make decisions on?

They're the, kind of the one-time decisions, too, about, you know, what am I going to major in?

Sometimes we change that, but it's still kind of a directional thing, or who am I going to marry?

And there's even decisions that have to be made over and over again.

Am I gonna have this difficult conversation with this person?

Am I going to go to this place and do this activity?

And so not all decisions are as important as others and not even all have the same moral weight, right?

There's sometimes like, okay, I'm at this person.

Well, the Bible says to do that versus should I wear a green or a yellow shirt today?

I don't think necessarily God's gonna strike you if you choose the wrong 1.

So there's some things that do have moral weight and some that don't.

And so just 1 thing that comes to mind is sometimes we can over analyze and like I will not please God if I don't wear the right colored shirt today.

And it's like, Jesus, I mean, there might be some situations where there's some kind of statement by that shirt, but in general, there could be.

So it's like, yeah, but in general, not everything is prescribed.

So Part of free will isn't even just God saying, you have the free choice, but God's like making the right 1.

Sometimes free will is literally you can choose and that's it and it's okay.

And so, I know you gave an extreme version, but I do know some individuals, and I'm not exaggerating in this.

There are kind of, it seems like 2 extremes.

03-Preparing for Change

But what are some principles we can find to anticipate change?

If you've been following us on our season, we've been looking at different components of families, different aspects of families.

And on this episode, we're looking at how to anticipate change and find principles of preparation.

So we're going to get into Scripture, But before we do so, we're gonna have a word of prayer in Sikku, can you lead us on prayer?

Loving Father, we're so thankful that in every season of life, in every change that we go through, we can trust that you will be with us.

And Father, we ask that you would teach us how to be with you as we go through these different experiences.

And now that is we're gonna open your word, guide our thinking, help us to learn things from scripture that the Holy Spirit can speak to our lives that'll make a difference in our lives.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 1 to, I don't know, whenever we feel like stopping there and we'll have Sebastian can you read for us 1st Corinthians 10.

It's after chapter 9 Sebastian in your Bible.

Moreover brethren I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.

But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

And he's talking about, you know, Sebastian emphasized, oh, there's rocks and drink going on.

Well, Paul is kind of giving us a little like a flyover over the early experience of the people of Israel as they come out of Egypt.

And so it says here, I don't want you to be unaware of this.

This is referring to that pillar of cloud in which God was leading the people of Israel.

And then they passed through the Red Sea, the water separating, and they were all baptized into Moses and the cloud and this is the exodus Experience exactly, you know Some of them I mean some of the amazing experiences they had that established a foundation of their relationship with God he's saying this is really important.

Why so Sebastian keep reading verse 6 for us.

He's gonna mention why this is important Now these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted And do not become idolaters as were some of them.

As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did.

Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents.

Nor complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

Well, not skip, but go to verse 12 and Siku, can you pick up from there?

Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.

But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it." Okay, so going back to Jonathan, you were mentioning this is the Exodus experience, and then he's mentioning there's like snakes going on, these are more Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus kind of narratives.

So he gives us, he points out that these are examples of things that will happen to you in your life.

And if we know the greater context of the Corinthians, we know that these Christians, you know, these are all first-generation Christians, these people had struggles with idolatry, they had struggles with sexual immorality, they had these kind of struggles, and he says, hey, this has happened before, here are some lessons you can learn of how to deal with this thing in your life, and here's how God will come through for you.

You know, it reminds me when I was growing up, my dad, when we lived in Chicago and we're surrounded by a lot of drugs and gangs and all these different things, and you know, parents are always trying to figure out how do you get your kid not to go down that road, right, when you're steeped in that environment.

And my dad used to say that experience is the best teacher, but a fool learns by no other means.

So it's like, if you have to learn the lesson by suffering the pain and the consequence, my dad would say, well, if you become addicted to cocaine to find out that it's addictive, you may not come back.

And so the whole idea is learn from other people's mistakes.

And I think that's what Paul is trying to say is that the history of the world and the history of those before us in the Bible, their mistakes are our instruction, They're our warnings.

That's how we learn and that's how we prepare for the things that are coming up in our own lives.

And so I find that that point is really stuck with me over the years, that Sebastian, get the point without the pain.

This is the power of biographies where you learn the lessons of other people's lives without having to live through them Yeah, and there's something powerful about biblical Biographies because there's there's a reason why these guys were in there and others didn't make the final cut That's right.

It says it's something about temptation and overcoming So, how does he come?

How does it impact our day today and Overcoming.

Well, You know in the in the narrative part of it where he's recounting the history he goes through They had this powerful experience with God and then the Israelites the Israelites in the beginning of chapter 10 They had this powerful experience with God and then right after that you say he says but with most of them verse 5 God was not well pleased right So it transitions from this powerful experience with God to apostasy, you know, to sexual immorality and idolatry and all these things.

And so he says in verse 12, therefore, This is what the example teaches us is let him who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall.

So just because you've had a powerful experience with God doesn't mean when, when, when the situation changes, you're not in slavery anymore.

When you were poor, you were being so faithful to God.

You were praying every day, you're praying 5 times a day, right?

But now that you came into money, it's like, yeah, you know, you're going out clubbing.

I don't know, you know, like life changed because of the change in circumstances.

You think that I had a strong relationship with God, but the circumstances change and suddenly you fall.

But then the hope and the courage that he gives in verse 13 is that no temptation will overtake you, that God hasn't prepared a way for you to handle it.

So you go from poverty to riches, God is able to take you through that transition that you're making.

God is able to take you through that transition.

So any situation or circumstance that you come to in life Your confidence isn't in yourself and your past experience with God Your confidence is in that God is able to take me through it.

Additionally, it seems like we're all not that different from the Israelites.

Sometimes in retrospect, like, oh, these guys, there they go again.

But he's not like, you're the same people, you know, and going through the same thing.

I think verse 11 is the message we need to get from this lesson.

Verse 11, now all these things happen to them as examples.

They were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

And it's telling us that all these things, all these stories from the Old Testament are giving us principles on how to prepare for the days that are before us, the last days.

And I think what's huge about that is the spiritual experience was universal.

Series

InVerse, 2nd Quarter 2019: Family Seasons

02-The Choices We Make

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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