Seek Hope (Seek #4)

When we kicked off this Advent series three weeks ago, we looked at the story of Mary and Joseph and saw how, in the middle of genuinely difficult circumstances, they had peace and contentment.

But if we are honest, the difficulties we go through do not always lead to peace and contentment. Sometimes they lead to darkness.

When the Lights Go Out

There is a well-known pastor, author, and conference speaker who also leads a worship music label that has produced albums by many of the artists whose songs we sing.

He has written openly about a stretch beginning in 2008. He lost his mother to a debilitating illness. While he was grieving, his wife developed her own serious health struggles. Meanwhile he was still trying to lead the record label, still leading the large annual conference they host for college students, and simultaneously launching a new church. Add the economic collapse of that year on top of it all.

And one night at two in the morning he woke up unable to breathe, with the sensation of falling down a deep, dark tunnel, and thought: this is what it feels like to die.

He did not die. He woke his wife, they rushed to the emergency room, and doctors found nothing wrong. It was a panic attack. Physically he was fine.

But that began a long descent into deep depression. Nearly every week some physical symptom would appear, they would end up at a doctor, and he would hear the same thing. He eventually saw fifteen different doctors, and every one told him nothing was wrong.

It left him feeling like a complete failure. He was convinced he would never lead again, never preach again. He genuinely believed he was about to become the most disrespected person in all of Christian ministry, and that life as he knew it was finished.

Have You Ever Been There?

Have you ever hit the place where you think, that’s it, I’m done? Where hope is simply gone?

If you have never been there, speaking from personal experience, I hope you never are. It is no fun. It is humiliating. It is debilitating.

All you want to do is bury yourself — in a drink, or in food, or in entertainment, or just under the covers. You do not want to talk to anyone, because you are so embarrassed by what is happening inside. And in that loneliness, it feels like every bit of hope is gone.

And if you follow Jesus, it can feel worse. Because if you claim to follow Jesus, you believe in a sovereign God, and you would say that God is good and in control — which means his light of goodness and love and grace is apparently shining everywhere except in your own heart.

And you do not want anyone to know that. We are Christians. We are supposed to show up here with everything together. So we stay quiet. We stay hidden. We stay under the covers.

So what do you do in that dark night of the soul? What do you do when it feels like you are stuck in a place where it is always winter and never Christmas? What do you do when God has gone silent and hope is gone?

Today, as we return to the Christmas narrative, we meet a man named Simeon.

I do not know whether Simeon was depressed. I do not know whether he had panic attacks. But looking at his story, I see the potential for it. And in his life we will see what he does through what could easily have been a very difficult season.

The Text: Luke 2:22–24

“And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, ‘Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.’”

I realize we are still six days from Christmas, but this story takes place eight days after the birth of Jesus.

According to Jewish law, on the eighth day a male child was presented at the temple, where he would be circumcised and officially named — and if he was the firstborn, dedicated to God. There were also purification rituals the mother went through to be ceremonially clean again after giving birth.

So being faithful Jews, Mary and Joseph load up, leave Bethlehem for the day, make the six or seven mile trek north into Jerusalem, and go to the temple.

And while they are there, they meet a man.

Who Simeon Was

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”

This is the only place in Scripture where we meet Simeon, so this is all we know. He is from Jerusalem. More importantly, he is righteous and devout.

I would go further and put him in the category of a prophet. A little later in this same chapter he speaks a prophetic word over Mary and Joseph. But even in these two verses you can see he has a sense of God speaking to him — and one of the things revealed to him is that he will meet the Messiah before he dies.

When was he told?

We do not know when God revealed this. It could have been days before. Weeks. Months. It could have been seconds before this moment.

But I strongly suspect he was told decades earlier.

Let me be honest: that is not in the text. I am speculating. But I feel safe doing so, because this is the pattern of how God works with people.

Do not misunderstand — just as every human has a unique fingerprint, God’s work in each life is unique. But notice that fingerprints still have patterns. And part of God’s pattern in making people righteous and devout is taking them through seasons of waiting.

The Pattern of Waiting

Look at Abraham and Sarah. They were unable to have children and had been waiting a long time. Then God tells Abraham, at seventy-five, with Sarah at sixty-six, that they will have a son. And they wait twenty-four more years. Abraham is ninety-nine and Sarah is ninety when Isaac finally arrives.

Or take Moses, considered one of the greatest prophets in Jewish history. His thrilling life consists of fleeing into the wilderness after killing a soldier, then spending forty years tending sheep. Then he is called back through a burning bush to confront Egypt and free the people — only to lead them into the wilderness for another forty years.

Forty years leading sheep. Forty years leading people through a desert. That is a tedious existence. And it is through the waiting and the difficulty that God matures him into one of the great prophets.

Or Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph. At seventeen he has a dream that his family will bow to him, and in his arrogance he tells them. His brothers did not care for the idea, so they sell him into slavery. He eventually lands in prison. And then he becomes second in command in Egypt — and twenty years after that dream, his brothers walk in during a famine and bow before him, asking for food, not realizing who he is.

I could keep going. Noah. Jeremiah. Peter. Look at nearly any of the great men and women of Scripture — the ones described as righteous and devout — and you find seasons of waiting, difficulty, and struggle. And God uses those to shape them into the people he has called them to be.

So I feel safe speculating that Simeon did not receive that promise minutes before holding a baby. I think he waited years. Possibly decades.

And It Is Probably Your Story Too

But I do not think this is only Simeon’s story, or Abraham’s, or Moses’. I suspect it is yours — because I know it is part of mine.

For some of you the waiting has been for a spouse. For some, to have children. For some, the right job. For some, a phone call that has not come.

And when you are in a season of waiting, that is when doubt creeps in. You begin doubting yourself. And eventually you begin doubting God.

My own dark stretch

In 2008 I had a profound moment where I sensed God calling me into church planting. I did not like the idea, so I fought it, and prayed about it for two years. Finally I worked up the nerve to step off staff at the church where I was serving and begin fundraising.

The plan was to go to Kansas City to work with a particular church in a leadership residency and learn church planting. And one piece of advice I kept receiving was: you need to know where you are going.

I did not. But I reached a point of deciding I needed to be obedient. So we went, trusting God to show us the destination after we arrived. All we knew was that it was somewhere in Iowa.

So roughly once a month I would drive north, tour cities, pray, interview pastors, and talk to people, trying to discern where God was calling us.

And month after month, every door I pushed on stayed shut.

The people in Kansas City began to get concerned. Eventually I sat down with three men who interviewed me, asked questions, and tried to help me pry something open. And after I answered everything, they summed it up:

So you are from Iowa. You did ministry in Iowa for nine years. And nothing is opening up for you. Something does not add up. Either you are called to church planting but not to Iowa — or you are not called to church planting at all.

That led to some very dark days.

I lost my appetite. I could not sleep. And I was under constant barrage: Did you really hear from God? Do you even know what you are doing? Did you just wreck your wife’s life and your kids’ lives? Have you made yourself into an enormous embarrassment?

In those moments you doubt yourself and you doubt God. You doubt his goodness. His presence. His wisdom. Eventually you doubt his existence.

And that is when you find yourself in the winter that never ends — where there seems to be no light and no hope.

Two Things Simeon Shows Us

So what do you do there? I think Simeon shows us two things that are simple and enormously difficult.

1. Keep worshiping

Verse 27 begins: “And he came in the Spirit into the temple.”

In the Spirit. That tells me that through all the waiting, Simeon kept worshiping. He kept praying. He kept studying the Scriptures. He kept going to the temple. He kept singing. He kept doing what he could.

And I am telling you: it is hard to worship in the waiting.

That pastor I mentioned earlier writes that God felt so disconnected from him that his prayers seemed to stop at the ceiling. He would open the Scriptures and might as well have been reading a foreign language. God felt so distant that he genuinely began to wonder whether there was a God at all.

So one night, in desperation, he whispered a prayer asking God simply to give him a song.

There is a reason he leads a worship music label. Music is one of the primary ways he connects with God. He would not call himself a musician, and yet he has co-written songs with worship artists, because he loves connecting with God that way.

So when he could not connect through prayer, or through Scripture, or through church, he asked God to let him connect through a song.

A couple of days later a simple melody started forming in his head, and words began attaching themselves to it. And as he pieced it together and started singing it, he realized something unsettling: he did not believe any of it. The words that had come to him were about God’s goodness, God’s grace, God’s love, God’s presence — and his mind actually started mocking them.

But because he had asked God for a song, his heart kept singing it. Day after day after day, the same simple refrain.

And after several days, it was no longer only his heart singing. His mind began to sing too. He realized he had stopped mocking the words and had started believing them again.

And with that, the darkness cracked, and light came through. He found himself back in love with God, back to leading, back to planting his church.

So do what you can

If you are in a season of waiting and worship feels impossible — do whatever you are able.

If you cannot pray, turn to the Scriptures. I have a friend who was in such a difficult stretch that he could not read them and had to listen to them instead. Some people need Scripture set to music. Some need worship music, the way that pastor did. For some it is getting out into nature and being reminded of what God made. For others it is sitting down with a counselor who will listen and help.

Do what you can to keep worshiping, because worship is what will reconnect you with God.

2. Keep moving

The rest of verse 27 says: “And he came in the Spirit into the temple.”

When you are in dark days, it is genuinely hard to go out and be among people.

Let me put it this way. If I were in a blizzard, I would want to be inside. Ideally a cabin in the woods or up in the mountains, with a fire going, a mug of hot tea, a book in my lap or a puzzle on the table. That is where I want to be in a blizzard. I do not want to be outside in below-zero temperatures with forty-mile-an-hour winds driving snow into my face.

When you are going through depression, that is exactly the instinct. You want to stay inside — inside your own heart, inside your own mind, inside your own bedroom. You do not want to face anyone, because they will ask questions, and if you are like me you hate lying, but the lie feels safer than the truth. So you tell everyone you are fine.

Your face shows summer while your heart knows it is winter.

What that looked like for me

After God showed us we were to come here, light broke through the darkness. Joy returned. There was real excitement in finding a place. I will not walk through everything it took, but God provided. We got established. We met people. And eventually we knew we had to start gathering publicly.

So we launched. Some people wanted to be part of it. And then that first year, two other churches also launched — after fourteen years with no new churches in town, which had been part of why we chose it. Two started at exactly the same time we did.

Some people helping us had friends at those churches and left to help them. Some decided they did not care for my preaching and left. Others said there was no one else here their age and left.

And then I would talk with other pastors who would ask, you are a year in — what are you running now, a hundred? A hundred fifty? And I was thinking: I would love to hit thirty.

And others told me it was too small, that it was not working, that I needed to shut it down or quit or do it completely differently.

Suddenly all the dark days of Kansas City found me again here.

I would go to the rec center for my swim workout, and people in the locker room would ask how things were going. Good. Things are going great. And then I would get in the pool and cry while swimming laps — because nobody can see tears when your face is already wet.

Nobody knew except my wife. It is difficult to hide that from your best friend.

She encouraged me to talk to someone. So I finally called my church planting coach.

When I first met him he told me plainly that mercy is not one of his spiritual gifts — that he tends to just get after it. Some of you have met him, since he has preached here a couple of times. His instinct is buck up, let’s go, the gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom.

And yet in my hurting moment, when I was honest with him, he did not tell me to get over it. He said, grab your Bible. We opened to the Psalms and started reading. And as he helped me worship, he encouraged me and made me realize I needed to keep going.

So we did.

A Necessary Caveat

Please do not mishear me. I am not saying you may never quit.

I clearly had to quit a job in order to be obedient and plant a church. You may have toxic habits you need to quit so God can establish new ones. You may have toxic relationships pulling you away from your heavenly Father that you need to end so he can become your all in all.

So do not hear me saying you can never quit.

I raise it because I see in myself, and in people generally, a strong tendency to quit as soon as it gets hard. It is embarrassing how easily we give up.

The relationship gets rocky, so we run. The job gets hard, so we quit. We do not like something at our church, so we find another one rather than staying and working through it.

And when we quit, we miss out.

James 1 tells us to count it joy when we encounter trials of many kinds — not because the trial is enjoyable, but because of the joy waiting on the other side.

What Waited on Simeon’s Other Side

“He took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.’ And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.”

The people who most appreciate spring are the ones who have endured the harshest winter.

Simeon has been waiting years for God to fulfill his word. And now it is here.

Through all that waiting he kept worshiping and kept moving. And now he gets to hold the Messiah in his arms.

I wonder what that moment was like. I imagine a grin bursting across his face while tears poured down. He probably wanted to laugh, and the laugh got choked out by a cry of gratitude.

When you have been through hell, heaven is that much sweeter.

That is why James says to count it joy — because on the other side is something beautiful and glorious. But if you quit worshiping, quit moving, quit chasing after God, you will miss it.

More Than He Knew

And in that moment Simeon did not only see God fulfill a personal promise. It gave him hope that God would fulfill his promise to all of Israel.

Remember he is described as waiting for the consolation of Israel. Israel was under Roman rule, and he is waiting for his people to be comforted and set free. And here is the Messiah he believes will bring it.

But what Simeon may not have grasped is that this Messiah had not come merely to free them from Rome. He had come to free them from sin.

Rome had only been over them for a time and would eventually end. Sin had been reigning like a tyrant since Genesis 3.

And this infant would grow into a sinless man who would die a sinner’s death in our place — and then rise again from the dead, demonstrating authority over all things, so that we could come into relationship with God and truly be consoled.

So Keep Going

That is why you have to keep worshiping. That is why you have to keep moving. Do not give up.

If prayer is not working, try something else. If Scripture is not working right now, go somewhere else. Do whatever you can to keep seeking after God.

Because like Simeon, and like that pastor, and like I have experienced — I want you to know what it is to watch the darkness crack and God’s light break through. That will be the greatest joy you have ever known.

So keep seeking. Keep worshiping. Keep moving. Keep seeking hope by seeking Jesus.

Let Us Pray

Heavenly Father, we close by giving ourselves to you and asking that you would give us hope. Let your hope flood our hearts and our minds and carry us onward.

For the person struggling to worship — through this next song and through our time of communion, help them worship you.

For the person who has been sitting still in their heart, letting winter drag on with Christmas never arriving — let them be reminded of who you are and what you have done: that you, Jesus, came to this earth as a baby, grew fully as a human, and then died to pay a penalty humanity never could, so we could have the life you always intended for us.

So for those of us in darkness, help us see a great light. Help us realize that you came to bring peace — peace on earth and peace in our hearts.

And for the person here who is doing wonderfully right now: use them as the comfort. Let them be the ones who help draw others out of darkness and shine your light into those places. And help them remember these words — so that when their own day of darkness comes, and their own winter arrives, they will know to hold on to you, that you will see them through, that you will be with them every step, and that you will bring a spring where they will see new growth and new life, feel the warmth of your sun, and find contentment and joy as you make them more like Christ — perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

So help us today to surrender, by coming to you and by continually turning to you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.