Anti-Fragile Faith: Growing Stronger Through Every Setback
You are writing a story with your one life
Have you ever hit Thursday afternoon and wondered where the week went? You woke up Monday, blinked, and now the weekend is almost here. Life moves fast. You get one of these lives, and you are living it right now. Someday there will be a story written about how you lived it. So here is a fair question. Are you becoming the kind of person that story would be proud of? Most of us handle pressure in one of three ways. Some of us are fragile, so when life gets hard we crumble. Some of us are resilient, so we take a hit and claw our way back to where we started. But there is a better way to live. It is called anti-fragile faith. Pain does not break you. You do not just bounce back to normal. You actually grow, and every setback becomes a chance to level up into who God says you are.
The three lies that show up when life gets hard
Faith lives in tension. It is confidence in what you hope for and assurance about what you cannot yet see. You want a stronger marriage, a healthier body, a breakthrough at work, but all you can see is the opposite. In that gap, the enemy whispers three lies. You are alone. It all depends on you. You have no purpose, or you have ruined it. The danger is not hearing the lies. The danger is agreeing with them, because when you agree you hand over ground in your life. This is where lament changes everything. Complaint moves away from God and assumes he has moved away from you. Lament brings your real pain straight to God inside the relationship. It sounds like this. God, here is how I actually feel, here is what I am tempted to believe, what do you want me to know, and what do you want me to do? That is faith bold enough to be honest.
Anti-fragile faith is built on identity
You beat the lies the same way Jesus did. Before he taught, healed, or walked on water, his Father spoke over him, this is my Son, and I am pleased with him. Identity came first. Yours does too. You are a dearly loved child of God, and that is true before any outcome you can see. So when the lie says you are alone, look back at how faithful God has been for generations, and look around at the people he has already placed near you. When the lie says it all depends on you, look in and remember Christ is with you, then look down at the resources already in your hands. When the lie says you have no purpose, look up and look out, because the chapter you are in is not the whole story. God is the author, and he redeems, restores, and resurrects. Your next step does not have to be dramatic. Walking becomes running the moment both feet leave the ground. Call that the faith phase. Take one step toward God today, and keep taking the next one.
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Episode Summary:
When life hits hard, most of us either crumble or, at best, claw our way back to where we were before. Daron Earlewine wants something better for you. In this Summer of Sermons message from Mercy Road Northeast in Indianapolis, he opens Hebrews 11 and 12 to unpack what it means to build an anti-fragile faith, the kind where pain doesn’t break you, it reveals you and grows you. He names the three lies the enemy whispers when you’re under pressure, the difference between lament and complaint, and why your identity has to be the foundation before any of it makes sense.
Key Takeaways
⚡️Fragile faith crumbles and resilient faith recovers, but anti-fragile faith actually levels up through every setback.
⚡️The enemy attacks with three specific lies, you’re alone, it all depends on you, and you have no purpose, and agreement is what gives them power.
⚡️Lament moves toward God and complaint moves away from Him, and learning the difference is how you stay honest without faking your faith.
If one of those three lies has had a hook in you lately, drop it in the comments so we can pray with you, then like and subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the Summer of Sermons.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: DARON EARLEWINE: SUMMER OF SERMONS 4
Hey everybody, it’s summertime. The weather’s nice, sunsets are later, backyard barbecues, all the good stuff. Here at The Daron Earlewine Podcast, we like to change things up too. We’re bringing back the Summer of Sermons. I do the podcast, I do books, I speak, I do all kinds of stuff, and I get a chance to speak a lot of Sundays. I’m usually at a church here in Indianapolis called Mercy Road Northeast, and sometimes other churches around the country. What we love to do in the summer is grab a couple of the greatest hits from the past twelve months and share these sermons with you. It gives you a chance to hear me communicate in a different way and get more immersed in the content. You gave us great feedback last summer that you loved the Summer of Sermons, so we’re bringing it back for 2026. I hope you enjoy the greatest hits from the past year that we pulled out. Welcome to the Summer of Sermons.
Created on purpose and for purpose.
Have you ever, or do you regularly, think of your life as a story that’s being written? And if so, do you ever think about what the story is that I want my life to write? When I’m done living this life, if they were to read my life story, what do I want in there? If you don’t think about that very often, I want to encourage you to start, because here’s the thing. This is your life that you’re living. Have you ever lost focus on that? You know how many of these lives we get? One. And you’re living it. This is it. You are living your life.
Here’s what I think happens too often to us. I noticed it this week. I was driving to an appointment and I thought, what day is it? It dawns on me, it’s Thursday afternoon. And I’m thinking, my gosh, it’s Thursday afternoon, because I just remembered waking up on Monday. You ever had one of those weeks? It just goes, and all of a sudden you’re like, how did we get to Thursday? Then it’s November 23rd, Thanksgiving week. Does anybody remember New Year’s? Does it seem like it was just twenty-four hours ago? You’re like, happy New Year, and now we’re going to overeat this week. On purpose. For some of us, that’s just every week. Anyway, life moves really fast, and the older I get, the more it keeps moving faster.
And I don’t know when my last day is. I’m not trying to make this morbid this morning, but neither do you. In our brains we’re probably thinking, well, I’d like to get to eighty-five, ninety, somewhere in there. But you don’t know. It could be today. Someone is going to die today. A lot of people, actually. I don’t know how much time you have left. I don’t know how much time I have left. All I know is, when that day comes and it’s over, there’s going to be a story written about how I lived my life. So it’s probably a decent idea for me to give some thought to whether I’m doing the kind of things that need to be done, day in and day out, to actually create and live the kind of life I’d want to leave behind. Fair?
There’s an element that will shape whether we live a life we’re proud of, a life that inspires, a life full of faith, hope, and love. I’m stealing the phrase we’re going to talk about today from a guy named Brian Johnson, who wrote a book called Areté. It’s really good, I enjoyed it a ton. He talks about developing the idea of an anti-fragile life. To become anti-fragile.
It breaks down like this. I’m not condemning anyone, and I’d invite you to get compassionately curious about yourself, because John Maxwell says the number one responsibility of leadership is to define reality. If you’re leading your life, it’s a good opportunity to define what reality is. And here’s the reality. Some of us are fragile. That means when life gets difficult, and we walk into challenges, and the pressure increases, we crumble. We’re not very resilient. When I have issues and pressures, those things set me back. Maybe I got to a level two, and then I went to a negative one, and I really struggle to come back. I’m fragile.
You say, at least I’d like to be resilient. I agree, resiliency sounds good. It’s even kind of fun to say. Resilient. Didn’t that feel good in your mouth, just a little? But I was thinking about resiliency this week. If you’re resilient, it means you got to a level five, and then you had a major setback, and you were resilient enough that usually you got back to five. I came back from the setback. But honestly, when I get to the end of my life, I don’t know that I’d want people to say, man, he had a lot of setbacks, but he always got back to where he was before.
I think I’d like to get to this idea of becoming anti-fragile, where I have setbacks, I have pressures, I have failures, I have things come into my life that I would not order off the menu of life. I have situations where I’m walking by faith and there’s a lot of pressure. And in that, what I’d love to do is look back at my life and see that every time I had a setback, I didn’t crumble, I didn’t break, I didn’t give up, and I didn’t just come back, I actually grew and leveled up through every challenge that came my way. I became anti-fragile. Pain doesn’t break me. I don’t just get back to normal. Pain reveals who I truly am and grows me into who God says I am. Anti-fragile faith. You might call it crazy faith, which is what we’ve been talking about for weeks.
Here’s what I want to guarantee you. Here’s what’s coming into your future. Challenges. Disappointments. Setbacks. Failures. Things not going exactly how you thought they would. It doesn’t take long to live this life and realize that’s pretty much commonplace, correct? Name the last year that you racked up three hundred and sixty-five days and said, I just saw all of that going exactly the way it did. Not me.
So if that’s coming into our life, and we know it is, and we’re not in control of our lives, God is, and life is hard with lots of challenges, then we have to figure out, since that’s not going to change, what kind of person am I going to be? Fragile? Resilient? Or could I actually get to the place of having an anti-fragile faith, where I level up every time I walk through a challenge?
As you look through different Scriptures, look at this passage in Hebrews 11 that we’ve been walking through. Would we want our story to read like this? Hebrews chapter 11, verse 32. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength, and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning. They were sawed in two. Whoa. They were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, persecuted and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Would you like your life to end up on this list? At least, probably not the second half. The first part isn’t that bad. David, Samuel, cool. Samson, kind of cool. Gideon did some cool stuff. Conquered kingdoms, okay. Administered justice, no problem. Gained what was promised, okay. So far so good, I wouldn’t mind that in my autobiography. And then you read, shut the mouths of lions. Wait a second. Why would there need to be lions with their mouths shut? What was happening there? Oh, these guys were thrown in a den with hungry lions. No thanks. Then it says, quenched the fury of the flames. Which flames? Oh, maybe the ones where three guys got thrown into a fiery furnace to be burned up, and they had to have faith. You start looking through it and you go, I don’t know.
I think maybe if my story was written, it would be something like this. And what more shall I say about Daron? He lived in Fishers. Things were easy. He had more than enough. He liked to sit in his backyard. He went to work and then came home. Then spring break. Destin, until he got sad that Destin wasn’t warm enough sometimes at spring break, so they went to Anna Maria Island. And one time it rained hard and ruined his spring break, but God overcame the storms, and they played Uno inside their condo. And then Daron came back and went to work. And then he died. But first he had enough money to retire early so he could play golf, lots of golf, and have fun for himself.
I mean, what are we really working towards? If we don’t follow Jesus, knock yourself out, do whatever you want, let me know how it works out for you. Seriously. But if you come to the place where you actually want to be a follower of Jesus, we don’t get to just do whatever we want with our life anymore. When we say He is Lord and Savior, He’s Lord. Then we take on the mission and the identity He’s given us, and we get to represent Him. And here’s the cool thing. Yeah, there’s some crazy stuff that happens, but you know what you might actually spend your life doing? Joining Jesus in the redemption of the world. That’s a pretty cool way to use your life.
So what’s the example? Continuing on. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. He is the focus. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Fragile faith? No. Resilient faith? No. Anti-fragile, crazy faith? Yes. How do we know? Listen to these next sentences. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
The author of Hebrews is saying, there’s a really good possibility that you will grow weary and lose heart, because it’s hard to live this life of faith. How do we know that? Look at verse one of chapter 11. Now faith, here’s the definition, now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. That is a massive tension that drives you, a lot of times, to grow weary. I have a hope, a confidence, an assurance about something I’m hoping for, but I can’t see it. What I can see is not what I’m hoping for. There are places in your life right now, I’m sure, where you feel that tension. I am praying and hoping for the kind of marriage I’ve always hoped for, but I can’t see it. All I can see is him, or her. We’re working on it, we’re trying some things, we’re really praying and trying to get better. We want more love and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness, we want our marriage to be the way Jesus would want it. But it’s tough right now, because I have this hope, and I can’t see it, and what I can see is just the opposite of it.
You can put anything you’re struggling with into that. Anything you’re looking for breakthrough and growth in. That is the tension. There’s the preferred vision of how I want to see my life, my relationships, my career, my prayer life, whatever it may be. This is what I’m hoping for, but I can’t see it. And I can see this. Tension. Struggle. Opportunity to level up.
So, knowing there’s going to be tension, if we’re going to walk in faith, there’s always going to be a tension between what is and what we hope for, what we have faith for. When we have these setbacks and we face this tension, we have to begin to change our perspective. Because what often happens, when we get into these situations and feel this pressure, this distance between what we’re hoping for and what is, we begin to believe that struggles mean God has abandoned us, or that God is judging us, or that there’s something flawed and wrong about us and our story. That’s not true. I want to unpack for you how that’s not true, and replace it with some truth.
So let’s talk about a couple of ways we develop anti-fragile faith, so we can look like Jesus. Here’s the first one. The first way we develop anti-fragile faith is we begin to understand the difference between lament and complaint. This is massive. I wanted to teach this a couple of weeks ago, but I ran out of time, which I guarantee you I’m going to do again today. That’s why I put it in the first part of the sermon. There’s a massive difference between lament and complaint, and we don’t do this very well as a culture. I don’t do this very well as a person.
Here’s what can happen. Growing up in the church and in churchy, religious-type cultures, we don’t know how to lament, and we’re told not to complain, so we become fake about our emotions. We spiritually bypass pain. Something happens, your dog dies, which is very traumatic and really sad. Somebody asks you about it and you say, well, you know, praise the Lord, He’s faithful, amen, I’m glad for the dog, but I’m not sad, because Jesus. [Spiritual bypass example, a few words unclear in the audio.] We spiritually bypass pain. I shouldn’t complain, but I don’t know how to lament, so I just fake it. And I become fake. I don’t actually allow pain to transform my life. I just quote a Scripture I don’t even understand and make you think I’m okay. That’s what makes it tough sometimes, when you get around Christian people and you’re really going through a struggle, because you think, I’m not sure what kind of theater play you’re in, but it doesn’t look like real life. At least that’s been my lived experience sometimes.
So lament, here’s the difference, I love this. Lament is expressing pain in the context of relationship. And lamenting moves us toward God. I’m in this covenant relationship, this connection with God, so when I have pain and struggle, I need to tell God the truth about what I’m really feeling and what I’m really believing. So when I’m lamenting, I’m in this pain and I’m expressing it in the context of relationship, moving toward God in confession. Complaint is moving away from God and feeling like He’s moved away from you.
The Israelites got in trouble a lot in the Old Testament, on their journey to the promised land, for complaining. It’s not that God is saying, stop crying, suck it up, get tough, stop being a wimp. That’s not what He’s saying. Ann Voskamp says it like this. Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has an ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust of the love beat of the Father’s heart. True lament is the bold faith that trusts perfect love enough to feel and cry authentic.
If we’re going to develop anti-fragile faith, we have to get comfortable with lament, because God is comfortable with our lament. That looks like coming into the context of relationship and telling God the truth about what you believe. God, right now I’m in this situation, and I’m telling the truth, I feel like I’m alone, I feel abandoned, I feel like You’re not here for me, and I don’t know what to do about that. So God, and I gave you these questions a couple of weeks ago, God, what do You want me to know about this that I’m believing about You? What do You want me to know? Then, what do You want me to do? Not, why is this happening, God, why, why, why. No. God, here’s the truth about how I’m feeling, here’s the truth about what I’m believing, what do You want me to know? As God guides and instructs you in that, then you go to your next move. Now, what do You want me to do? Lament, not complaint.
This is key, because in moments of struggle and setback and pressure, here’s what the devil whispers to us. He whispers three lies when we’re under pressure, in the tension of having faith to believe something we can’t see while all we can see is the opposite. Here’s the first. You’re alone. How does he say it? Through your emotions, through your feelings. Have you ever had a moment when things were going crazy, and you had an outcome you didn’t want, and you had this overwhelming feeling that you were isolated, that there’s nobody here, I’m by myself? That was not from God. The Holy Spirit does not come in and say you’re alone, ever, because it’s not true. The enemy says, you’re alone. It’s a lie.
Here’s the next lie. It all depends on you. It’s all on you, you better figure it out, you better be perfect in your execution, because you’re alone and it all depends on you. No one’s coming to save you. Everything with your kids, your job, your career, your health, you’re alone in this, and it all depends on you, so good luck. That’s not from God. That’s from the devil.
Then he follows up with this one. You have no purpose. Or, this has no purpose. Or, you’ve ruined your purpose. You try to walk in this crazy faith with God, and something happens, and the devil says, He’s rejected you, you’re alone, it all depends on you, and you don’t even have a purpose. In fact, this suffering has no purpose. In fact, you’ve been so bad at following Jesus that you’ve ruined your whole purpose. So why don’t you just quit? And when we’re fragile, we do.
But what do we do when these lies come against us? Because I know they do. I get to coach and disciple people all the time, and this is what the devil says to all of us. Here’s the really dangerous part. The danger is when we come into agreement with the lies of the devil. When we agree with his lies, we give him permission to take ground and build strongholds in our life. How do you agree with a lie of the devil? You just agree with it. The devil says, you’re alone, and as you process the emotions and feel fragile, you say something like, I’m all alone. You’re going through an opportunity to level up in your faith, you can’t see the results with the kids or the marriage or the career, you’re feeling overwhelmed and alone, you’re thinking about praying, but then you just say, it all depends on me. Sometimes you say it out loud, and sometimes in your brain you just begin to agree. I am alone. I am rejected. I am abandoned. It all depends on me. When we come into agreement with the lies of the devil, it’s really dangerous.
So what do we do? How do we develop this anti-fragile faith? We have to identify the lies and replace them with what is true. And this starts by building off the foundation of identity. Identity is where we start. Jesus is our example. He’s the author and perfecter of faith. So what happened in Jesus’s life right before He stepped into His entire mission? He came to be baptized, to be obedient. He came up out of the water, and His heavenly Father shouts over the edge of heaven, this is My Son, in whom I am well pleased. Son, I need You to hear Your identity before all the struggle, before the anti-fragile faith, before the mission, before You teach, before You heal, before You walk on water, before any of the things people will talk about for thousands of years, before multitudes follow You. Before any of that, here’s what I need You to know. You are My Son, and I am well pleased with You. I love You, You’re My Son, this is the context of everything. That’s Your identity. It’s never what You do, it’s never what anyone says about You, it’s never what You accomplish. This is Your identity. Dearly loved Son of the Most High God.
Identity has to be the foundation for us to actually overcome and see past the outcomes we see, to what God is doing. So when we hear these lies, when they attack and we hear, you’re alone, we counter with an identity statement. Anytime you use any kind of statement that is about I am, you’re speaking identity over yourself. The three core lies of humanity, this is what Henri Nouwen says, are these. We believe one of these three is core for us. I am what others say or think of me. I am what I accomplish or do. And, I am what I have. That last one isn’t about possessions like boats or cars. It’s more about security, a sense of safety, information, freedom and options. One of these resonates with you more strongly than the other two. Some of you think it, some of you feel it, some of you have it in your gut. One of these lies has the biggest hook in you, and they’re common to all of us. So the devil comes in and says, you’re alone, and you think, well, I am what others say and think of me, and I just lost my identity. The devil says, it all depends on you, and you go, I know, and I am what I do or accomplish, I have to get things done. Fragility, fragility, breakage. I am what I have, and you have no purpose, or you’ve ruined it. These come together to try to destroy us.
So we have to start from a place of identity. Once we know the truth of what identity is, what God has said is true about us, I’m going to believe that as fact over the feelings I have, or the outcomes I’m seeing right now. And in that tension, I’m going to see this as God inviting me to level up my understanding of faith, my confidence in Him, and in who I am and who He is.
Here are a few steps. When you hear the lie that you are alone, here’s what to do. Look back. When the enemy says, you’re probably not going to make it through this, because you’re alone, what do you do? You look back. What are you looking back for? Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. It’s not about you individually, and we betray ourselves here, because in common North American Christian culture we say things like, Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior, this is my faith journey. It becomes this individualistic journey, and that’s not what it’s about. Jesus is not your personal little trinket God. You are part of receiving the salvation of Jesus, but Jesus is the King of the world. He has brought salvation to all people, He’s been doing it for generations, and He will always be King of the universe, forever. You get to be included in that, which is amazing, and guess what it means? You’re never alone. Ever. Because no one connected to Jesus ever has been. You look in and realize, I have Christ in me, the hope of glory. God’s Spirit resides in me, I’m in Christ and Christ is in me, and the Father is in the Son. I’m part of this. I’m never alone. And this isn’t just my journey. I can look back and realize that for thousands of years, God has been showing up and being faithful to people’s faith, over and over. It’s not just about my little journey. Let us. We. Us. This great cloud of witnesses. You’re not alone in this. This isn’t the first time someone’s ever done this. God was faithful then, He’ll be faithful now, He’ll be faithful always. Look back. Take your next step.
What’s the next lie? It all depends on you. Here’s what we do when we hear that. We look in, we look down, we look around. It all depends on you, that’s a lie, so let me look in. What do I see? Christ is in me. He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. He has given me everything I need for life and godliness through my knowledge of Him. So this doesn’t all depend on me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So I look in, and then I look down. What’s around me? What are the resources? Who are the people? What is God doing around me that I need to see? Look around at this great crowd of witnesses.
Here’s how this looks in real time. I’ve got a buddy who was in my huddle two years ago, and I love this guy. I’m always impressed and inspired by his steps of faith. He genuinely loves the Lord. During huddle, he was growing in his anti-fragile faith, his crazy faith. God led him to an opportunity to quit his job, take a whole new risk, start a whole new career. He stepped out in it, felt like God was with him in the process. Then it was a huge step for him to believe that maybe God would be with him to go and disciple other people in a huddle. So he and one of the other guys in my huddle started their own huddle. God’s doing cool stuff, they’re like, this is crazy faith, God’s showing up, it’s amazing. And then his wife left him. There’s more to the story, but their marriage is no more at this point.
What? Following Jesus, crazy faith, take the risks, start the huddle, disciple people, and then this happens? God is good and faithful and all these things are true about God, but all I can see right now is that my life has imploded. So I can be fragile, I could be resilient, but could I become anti-fragile? Could I get to a place of crazy faith? He started to hear all the lies. You’re alone, you’re a failure, you have no purpose, it all depends on you. I sat down with him a couple of weeks ago, and he ended up writing a whole testimony about this and sharing it at his church. In the midst of this valley of the shadow of death, he began to look in, then he looked down, then he looked around to these guys he was in community with in his huddle. And he said, there’s no chance I would have made it through what I was walking through if it wasn’t for these men in my huddle. He said, I was supposed to be the leader of the group, but I wasn’t leading them, they were leading me. They were loving me, walking with me, continuing to affirm that I’m not alone. It doesn’t all depend on me. God has surrounded me with a great cloud of witnesses right here.
Another thought on looking around and looking down. I have three boys, I’ve talked about them, they all play or at least played football or baseball. My youngest son, Knox, was a freshman this year at HSC, and he had a phenomenal year. He had big goals. He had sixty tackles, two pick sixes, two touchdowns. It was a great year. I loved watching him dominate as a middle linebacker, as a dad. It was so much fun. But there was a less physical moment that was the highlight of my year, and it’s this picture right here.
It’s the last game of the year, and his friend Jackson is our leading receiver, who’d been absolutely killing it all year long. We’re about halfway through the last game when Jackson goes out for a route, plants his leg, and obliterates his knee. He collapses, writhing on the ground. He said it was the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life. They carried Jackson off the field and set him on the bench. He’s fearing the worst. All my dreams are over. I’ll never play again. They had told him he might play a little varsity during sectionals, a couple of routes. Those dreams are gone. Will I ever be as fast again? Am I going to need surgery? I couldn’t get inside Jackson’s fourteen-year-old brain, but I’m guessing in that moment, on that bench, he was thinking, I’m alone, it all depends on me, I have no purpose, this is going to end everything for me.
I’m up in the booth running the music for the team, that’s what I do. I see that he’s okay, we’ve got him on the bench, and I go back to watch the game and figure out my next song. Then from the booth I glance back over and I see this. I see my son Knox knelt down in front of his friend, laying his hand on his shoulder, praying for him in that moment. Praying for God’s comfort, praying for God’s healing, reminding him he’s not alone, reminding him that God is with him, that Knox is with him as a teammate, as a friend, as a brother. Proudest moment of the year for me as a dad.
Here’s the deal. You may be going through something, or walking through something with someone, and they’re hearing the devil tell them, you are alone, it all depends on you. And God is sending you into their life to be an example of anti-fragile faith. Look up, look in, look back, look around, and see God’s faithfulness.
Last thought, and we’ll close. Band, you can come up, because obviously I’ve completely destroyed the time again. You have no purpose, or you’ve ruined it. You hear this lie, what do you do? You look up, and you look out. Jesus is our example. Think about Jesus’s last week. We forget sometimes that Jesus was fully man and fully God. He lived a perfect, sinless life, but does that mean He never felt the same emotions we do? No. He understood our emotions. He was familiar with suffering. Can you imagine the onslaught of lies the devil threw at Jesus from the Last Supper to the cross? Think about it. If you were living Jesus’s life, You’re God, You have this mission, this purpose, and in Your last meal with these twelve guys You’ve discipled for three years, You’re washing their feet, trying to show them servanthood, and You know one of them has already betrayed You. What’s the enemy telling You? You couldn’t even lead twelve dudes. You had three years with twelve guys, Jesus, and You couldn’t even do that perfectly. Then it gets worse. They head out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and they all desert Him. But before they completely desert Him, one of His key guys grabs a sword and cuts off someone’s ear. And Jesus is like, oh, let Me fix that for you, and He puts the ear back on. What is He thinking? For three years all I’ve been saying is turn the other cheek, and in the moment I need you to show up, you’re cutting people’s ears off? Then He’s arrested, and He’s sitting inside the temple court, and He looks over and there’s His right-hand guy, Peter. Do you even know Jesus? Nope, never heard of Him. He watches Peter deny Him three times. You think in any of those moments the devil might have been shouting into Jesus’s spirit? You’re alone. It all depends on You. And You’ve ruined Your purpose. I bet he did.
But what do we see in Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, for whom the joy was set before Him? He knew His identity. He knew the Father was in the Son, reconciling the world to Himself. He knew He was not alone. He looked up and He looked out and said, the circumstance I am in right now is not the whole story, because I serve a God, and My Father resurrects, My Father redeems, My Father restores. Even though the circumstance I’m in and everything I can see right now, this is not the whole story. This is just this chapter. And I’m writing a story. Actually, I’m not. The author and perfecter of my life and my faith, He is writing the story. So this chapter looks really dark. But guess what? Stick with Me. And let me stick with Him in a very anti-fragile way, where I’m going to keep seeing my identity, I’m going to look back at His faithfulness, I’m going to look in at how He’s with me, I’m going to look around at what’s near me, and I’m going to look out to where He’s taking me. And for Jesus, three days later, He’s back from the dead, and He has overcome all. His faith became sight.
If you’re in that place, friend, don’t give up. Look back, look around, look up. God is faithful. He’s not abandoning you, He’s not punishing you, He’s giving you the opportunity to level up, to see your anti-fragile faith become something that will stand the test of time.
So what’s your next step? You take a step. It says, therefore, run with perseverance the race marked out for us. We’re going to run, and take communion. Not run, just kidding, we’re going to walk. It’s just your next step. Don’t get overwhelmed by this, thinking I’ve got to become so anti-fragile, I’ve got to do everything. No, you just have to take whatever God’s next step is for you. We’re surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, so let us throw off the weight and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run. And we run one step at a time.
I thought about this this morning, and I had to look something up to figure out the difference. When we think run, we get this overwhelming picture. We’re praying this afternoon that JT runs for about two hundred fifty yards, praise God. Or you think about Usain Bolt running super fast, and you go, I’m barely making it through, I’m not going to look like that when I run. But you know what running actually is? It’s just taking one step after the other. You run by taking one step at a time. So I checked this morning, what’s the difference between walking and running? It’s fascinating. When you walk, you always have one foot touching the ground. Walking becomes running when, in the stride, both feet leave the ground. It’s called the flight phase. We might even call it the faith phase. That moment where you say, I’m going to step out in faith, I may not look like Jonathan Taylor, I may not run like Usain Bolt, but I’m going to take my next step, and I’m stepping out in faith, and I’m running, God, toward You. I’ll look back, I’ll look in, I’ll look around, I’ll look up, and I’ll know that You are the author, You are the perfecter of faith.
God, remind me. Let me step into an anti-fragile faith that joins You to write a story that brings You glory and brings me joy. We’re going to take time for communion right now. There’s communion down here, back here, and in the back, with gluten free options as well. We’re going to worship God during this time. Let the focus of this communion be remembrance, where we look back, thankfulness for what He has brought around us, and faith for where He’s taking us. God, we pray for this time of communion. We pray we would meet with You powerfully, that You would bring our minds to how You have been faithful in the past, how You’re currently surrounding us with people now, and bring our eyes up to where You’re taking us in the future. We love You. You’re the best. In Jesus’s name, amen.