Fears of the First Half of Life | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:26 one of the keys to living fearlessly. I wanna tell you about a friend of mine, Roger Freed. Roger passed away this last March. We got to know each other in 2013. He was an editor for HarperCollins Publishing House, HarperOne division of that. I lived down in California and I was writing a book for HarperOne called Making Sense of the Bible. And as an editor, you work really closely with the authors. And so we had a great time going back and forth. really it was months of working on this book. And then finally it was published and he and I would continue to stay in contact with each other. And then in 2016, he called me and he said, Adam, I made a big change. I've left being an editor for Harper One and I'm pursuing my dream. My dream has been to be a literary agent. And so he left his wife and his kids in California, going to New York to start off there. He'd go back and forth between his home and New York. And he called me, when he called me this day, he said, you know, so I'm here in New York and I have an idea for a book for you, a book that I really want to pitch. I'd like to be your literary agent on this book. And he said, I think Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the world, I think they would like to publish this book with you, one of their imprints, one of their subgroups. And I said, well, I'm going to be in New York in about a month. I'm speaking up there.

3:33 I'd love to have a chance to talk with you. So Lavon and I went, we sat down together with Roger and he said, let me tell you about the book I'd like for you to write. And he said, you know, I got here just a couple of months ago and I left my job. I left my family pursuing a dream. And I had security and safety. And, you know, I knew, you know, what I was doing. And I came up here, I didn't know anything. And he said, I mean, I knew something, but I, you know, I'm starting something brand new. And he said, within a few weeks of being up here, I found myself walking down the street here in lower Manhattan, terrified. And he said, this is what was going through my mind. He said, I'm asking myself, what am I doing here? What if I fail? How could I take this kind of risk with my family? What if I disappoint them? And he said, my heart was pounding and I was finding it hard to catch my breath. And he was having a panic attack right there. And he said, Adam, that's what I want you to write about. I want you to write a book about how do you live with fear? Because I looked around at these people walking past me on the streets and I'm having this panic attack and I'm thinking, there's gotta be thousands of these people here who are feeling the same thing I am.

4:35 Maybe not today, maybe not now, but at some point in their lives. And he said, I think you should call the book Unafraid. Unafraid. and so you know I came back to Kansas City and I thought I really love this idea on my birthday July 12th 2016 I outlined the proposal for the book and then I thought before I write a book I want to try it out on some guinea pigs and resurrection you were my guinea pigs and so in the beginning of 2017 I prepared a sermon series called unafraid in which I tried out some of the ideas in the book and then finally in 2018 Roger and I and Penguin Penguin's Division Convergent published this book, Unafraid, Living with Courage and Hope in Uncertain Times. Well, I dedicate this sermon to my friend Roger. He passed away of cancer in March. He was 57 years old. I met him when he was 47. And actually, I met him when he was 43 or 44, I think. But this idea and this need to really talk about fear was when he was 47 years old.

5:32 Today, we're going to talk about the fears that we face really throughout our life, but in particular, those that are most prevalent when we are in young adulthood. So 45 and younger, we begin to feel these kind of fears. And we're going to look at the data from our survey we conducted in the end of December, 3,387 people who told us about their fears. And one category of those fears were the personal fears, the things that are intensely personal, existential fears we experience. And I looked at the data by generation. So I looked at the data for Gen Z, 29 and younger, 28, 29 and younger. I looked at the data for millennials. That's the 29-year-olds to the, I think it's roughly 44, 45-year-olds. Then I looked to see Gen X, and then I looked at the baby boomers, then finally the silent generation, 80 and up. And what I found is that the fears of the younger adults were a bit different at the top than those of those who are middle-aged and older. Let me just show you. These were the fears of Gen Z. So I want you to notice that for Gen Z, 63% of their top fear, not living up to the expectations of others or my own expectations of myself.

6:30 And the second, failure or rejection. The top two fears, and you recognize these are really intertwined. They're in different ways of talking about the same thing. Number three was being alone and unloved. Then I looked at the fears of those who were millennials. And you can see they change a little bit because now you're a millennial, you're likely to have family relationships, maybe many are married, having children. The top fear, 56%, failing as a spouse or a parent. And then number two, again, not living up to expectations, mine or others. And then you come down here at number five, I think it was, failure or rejection. These are all three different ways of talking about the same basic fear. So when we think about these fears, these fears of, you know, in essence, the fears we're talking about are disappointing other people. So it's disappointing other people or myself, criticism, and then failure, of course, is a part of that as well. We're gonna talk about failure at the end of the sermon. So today we wanna start by talking about disappointing others, not meeting expectations of others, criticism, then we're gonna talk about anxiety, panic attacks, anxiety disorders, because those come on too in young adulthood, the first half of life, and then finally we're gonna talk about failure.

7:34 So as we talk about these, I want us to recognize that disappointing other people is just a part of life. Like you cannot help but disappoint other people. You'll be disappointed in yourself. You're gonna disappoint others and people will criticize you. And that is true no matter what you do. Unless you just crawl into a box, you crawl into a room and you never come out, you're gonna disappoint other people. And I appreciate, I think it was Colin Powell or maybe it was Ron Heifetz at Harvard's Kennedy School, popularized, at least where I first read it, was from John Ortberg in one of his books. But this statement, it says, leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can handle. You've heard that phrase before. But this is how it works. You know, if you're a leader, you're gonna disappoint people. If you're just a person, you're gonna disappoint people. And we live in a day and time when people are freely willing to tell us how disappointed they are in us. And so that happens in terms of reviews. We constantly are reviewing things and everything we do. You can review your trash collector.

8:28 You can review any company on Google, any church you can review on Google. You can leave your stars. there's five-star ratings, or you can get point systems. So I was looking for a refrigerator recently. Consumer Reports was my source. I subscribed to them, and I was looking for what's the best refrigerator. Their top-rated refrigerator was 79 out of 100. Now, that's a C, right? You'd never buy a refrigerator if you were looking for perfection, but you see there are no perfect refrigerators. You go to restaurants. Now, even the best restaurant, I think, in Kansas City, and you're going to find it gets 4.7 stars. I mean, you're just not going to get fives. I mean, maybe occasionally once in a while, but if you get very many people reviewing you, you're going to have people offering critical words. And that's just how it works. And so the question is, what do you do with that criticism? Do you say based on that criticism, I'm just too afraid of ever being criticized, so I'm never going to do anything that somebody can rate or revaluate? Or are you going to look at the criticism and say, you know, get really defensive and angry at the people? And then, you know, or can you be gracious? Can you listen? Can you try to learn?

9:27 Maybe there's some validity to the criticism. Maybe there's no validity to it. Maybe just somebody's had a bad day and they reviewed you poorly. And that's often the case. But how you respond is really what we're talking about. And so either we respond with fear or we respond with faith. And in our faith, we live out love. All right. And it's hard to do that. And I'm not suggesting you have to do that in every, you know, refrigerator evaluations. I'm just saying that we understand the nature of reviewing. We understand the nature of existence. And there are very few things that are perfect. By the way, you know this. You've experienced this. if you're on social media at all. You know, people comment on your posts. They comment on your pictures and on your posts. You know, and I love it. They put little emojis like this emoji. Like, what does this emoji mean right here? Like, I guess in Japan, it's sort of like a compliment. I don't know. But in the US, it means, you know, either somebody's trying to be funny or it means, you know, what you did just really stinks, right?

10:23 And you felt that. And maybe you felt the burn of people saying something critical about your, you know, whatever you posted. So here's what you learn. You learn either, it's okay if people don't agree with me. It's okay if they see things differently. And I wanna, maybe I can learn how to better express myself in my social media posts. But here's the thing, you will never publish anything that really is from the heart. If you're worried about somebody leaving a down thumb or a grimacing emoji face. So we all know this, we've all experienced it. And the question is, what do you do when people are criticizing you or disappointed in you or don't feel like you've lived up to their expectations? And here I'm reminded, Jesus, this was his life, right? So here's the son of God, the divine son of God. And he's going into ministry, caring for people, shepherding people, you know, showing love and mercy to people. And he's constantly being criticized, right? And so in John six, you know, you remember this passage I've shared with you before where many of his disciples turned away because of something he'd said when he said, I'm the bread of life.

11:18 Those who come to me and eat of me will never go hungry. Those who drink for me, drink my blood will never go thirsty again. And many of his disciples left him that day. and you can just feel the pathos. He turns to his disciples. He says, are you going to leave me too? Like, I know what that feels like. And this is Jesus, the son of God, right? And so they, you know, the other criticisms, you'll remember they said that he was possessed by a demon. Here he is casting out demons, and they're saying, well, it's by the prince of demons that he casts out demons. Like, this is God, the son. And this is what they say. Why would you think people wouldn't criticize you? But it's easy to say that. It's another thing when it comes to feeling it, and especially when you're younger. This is one of the things I've noticed as I've grown older is that when I was younger, it stung more. And I tried, you know, I had this, the very things I'm preaching to you, I tried to practice that. Like, don't respond, you know, don't return evil for evil. It wasn't evil. People were giving criticism. And most of the time it was healthy and it was positive criticism.

12:10 It was good constructive criticism, but sometimes people can be really nasty. So how do you respond? You get nasty back in return? Well, that never turns out very well, right? But instead, if you respond with graciousness and love and you're humble enough to say, maybe there's some truth in here, I'm gonna try to listen, things go so much better. But the other thing is don't give up. Don't throw in the towel just because you've been criticized or you'll never do anything in life. Jesus said this, he assumed that his followers, if they were living out the gospel, they were gonna be criticized. And he says this, happy are you when people insult you and harass you and speak all kinds of bad and false things about you, all because of me. Be full of joy and be glad because you have a great reward in heaven. In the same way, people harass the prophets who came before you. again, sometimes the critics have something important to say. And by the way, our amygdala is saying, somebody's attacking me. You know, our brain is saying, somebody's attacking me when they're offering some constructive criticism. It's not an attack necessarily. Maybe somebody really wants to help you. I don't leave reviews very often, but every once in a while, you know, I'll leave a review. I had some socks and a hole wore through the toes really fast, like unlike any of my other socks. And I, you know, reached out to the company. I said, hey, I really like your socks. You know, I just want you to know this has happened on a couple of the socks and, you know, no big deal. And they were like, well, we'll replace them. I'm like, no, you don't have to replace them. I just, I like your socks. I just want them to be, you know, I want to know that, I want you to know this is happening sometimes. Like there are people who take the time to do that. And then you go, that's a gift somebody gave you. If you can kind of wrap your mind around that. Now, last week, so I think about this on a weekly basis, what I know is my sermon is going to disappoint somebody, even if it's a non-controversial sermon, you know, somebody's going to be disappointed. It wasn't what they expected or what they hoped for or whatever.

13:47 And that's okay. Last week after, you know, I preached a sermon that's a little harder. It was one that, you know, I was trying to talk about right and left, Republicans and Democrats and political issues and things that are happening in our world. And I got a number of emails this week and comments and notes from folks saying, you know, hey, I was disappointed in your sermon. And my aim was just, and I really genuinely felt this, like, okay, I wanna know a little more. And, you know, maybe I got something wrong and maybe I didn't. Maybe that's really the sermon I needed to preach. And so, but after service, after the nine o'clock service last week, I had a man who came to see me after worship. It was something a little different than what I was thinking, you know, one part of the sermon that he was really focused on. And he said, hey, you know, I just think you blew it on here. And he was kind of upset about it. And I said, well, you know, tell me more. And we're standing out there. And he was, you know, and he told me, you know, what for? He told me what was frustrating. And I stopped. I said, now, we agree that there was a problem back in the 1960s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and I said, so tell me more. And he told me. And I said, you know what? You're right.

14:43 I didn't think of it that way. I didn't think about the fact that that might, you know, leave the impression that this was about blockbusting in the 1960s, that maybe realtors were still doing this. And, you know, we have the Fair Housing Act in 1968 and, you know, that stopped. And I didn't think about the fact that this might leave people feeling this way. And I'm really sorry, you know, I'll actually change that in the next sermon and the next two sermons I preach because I think you made a good point. And he was like, oh, okay, thank you. And he left and I came back and I'm sorry, if you're listening, I don't remember your name. I was gonna send you a thank you note this week and I couldn't remember your name. Please forgive me for that. But I came back and I changed my sermon a little bit. Guess what? It was a better sermon at 11 o'clock and at five o'clock than it was at 7.30 and nine o'clock than the one that I sent out to all the locations because of his criticism. And if you're willing to listen and learn, you find oftentimes you get better by virtue of this. By the way, I got a note from somebody.

15:36 This was handed to me last week. I came to church not to be receiving political points of view. The Bible is what we need to learn. you as a pastor are preaching liberalism, I won't be back. And so I got this note and I just, I got it like Thursday, I think. And it kind of sat there on my desk and I thought, you know, I should just call this guy. He left his phone number. And so I couldn't read his name to find it in the database, but I'm glad he left his phone number. And I just called and I said, hey, I just want to say thank you for coming to church. And I appreciate you being here. And I'm, you know, I'm sorry that this was the feeling that you had when you left church. And, you know, I just, I want to hear a little more. And we talked and I said, you know, And then I shared, okay, here's why. You know, I said, first of all, I might've been preaching liberalism, but to be liberal means to be generous of spirit, means to be compassionate and concerned for other people, means to see things in new ways. And I said, I'm a liberal conservative and I'm a conservative liberal, depending on the issue and the time of day. And I said, you know, I think you probably are that too.

16:29 You know, and we conserve things. To be conservative means to hold onto the treasure things that are really important from the past and, you know, to not let go of values just because they're not popular anymore. I said, all of those things are really important. And I said, you know, I appreciate you sharing that. I really hope you'll come back. And I said, but I do, you know, it was important to me that we understand how people are feeling in our country today, in particular people of Latin American descent, that there, you know, that there is a lot of fear going around. And I said, I'm guessing you don't want people to feel fearful either. And we talked a little bit more and he told me the church he used to go to. And I said, hey, I know your pastor, you know, you had back then. He was, he talked about politics all the time, a little different politics than mine. But, you know, I think that the Christian faith is meant to shape how we look at what's going on in the world. And anyway, so I just ended, I said, once more, I just want to say, really glad you came and hope you come back again. He said, well, because you called, I will be back. You know, thank you for calling me. I can't believe you called.

17:22 And the thing was, you know, when we approach things like that, like I can listen to you and you can listen to me and maybe we find, you know, we find that we're not so far apart after all. And we find that the world is made better and we're made better. And I'm just going to say, if you can avoid getting defensive, it's really hard, but if you can avoid getting defensive and you can be gracious and you can listen and other people listen, you find you might just make some friends when you just thought you were being criticized by an enemy. All right. So I want to mention one thing that I think about when it comes to all the people in the resurrection stained glass window. So this is our window here at the Leawood location. And there are, I don't remember, a hundred characters in that window. And when I look at the window, part of what I think that all of those people had in common, in addition to their faith in God, you know what they had in common? They were all criticized. They had people who were disappointed in them. And by the way, some of the, a lot of the things I received last week were critical on the other side. So for him, he said, I don't want faith and politics intermingled. Other people are like, you didn't go far enough. You didn't, you know, you didn't take seriously these things. And you know, when I would listen to them, I'm like, you know, you're right. There are things, you know, there are things, more things I could have said.

18:29 Here's what I was trying to do with the sermon. But, and this isn't about last week's sermon. It's just about how do you respond? And you know, my hope is at 61, I've learned a little bit about this and I still fail sometimes. But to say, I'm not going to quit because I'm criticized. I have a chance to listen and to hear and understand and to grow. And then sometimes to say, you know what, I still stand by what I said, but I still love you. Thanks. Anyway, that leads me to a response to criticism that I've shared this with you before, but this is from Teddy Roosevelt. You remember this? This is the man in the arena. And it says this, it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error or shortcoming. But who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither knew victory nor defeat.

19:39 That's for you, not for me. I'm just thinking you are in a place where sometimes you either live your life in fear of rejection or in fear of criticism or disappointment, or you're just debilitated by it, or you go, okay, I can learn from that and maybe I got it wrong here, or maybe I got it right and that's just somebody's feelings, but I'm gonna keep moving forward. That's what Jesus did. That's how he lived his life. In the face of constant criticism, he refused to give up. And so that's what I want to say to you. Don't give up. All right, that leads me to anxiety. So I want to talk about this for just a moment. And here I don't mean simply being anxious. I mean anxiety disorders and panic attacks, anxiety attacks. And in this case, these also can be debilitating. Now, I'm not going to cover in five minutes in a sermon the answer to anxiety. But what I know is there's a lot of people who struggle with this. 31 to 38% of Americans sometime in their life are gonna struggle with anxiety disorders and panic attacks.

20:35 It's just, it's a part of life for many people. And about one in five people in any given year are gonna struggle with anxiety. I mean, this kind of more serious anxiety in our lives. More women are gonna struggle with this than men. And we find this starts sometimes in yet very young adulthood, childhood, often in young adulthood, in the 20s and in the 30s. And then by the 40s, it sort of peaks, late 30s, 40s, and then it begins to decline from there. And I just wanna show you on this chart, and this is from a couple of years ago. This is the past year prevalence of any anxiety disorder among US adults. This is a data from the National Comorbidity Survey replication or National Comorbidity Survey. And I want you to notice more women than men. This is women, men, but still a significant number of men who struggle with anxiety disorders. And then we look at the ages.

21:27 This is 18 to 29, 30 to 44. starts to decline 45 to 59. And then I want you to notice down here, when you get over 60, I mean, there's a pretty significant drop-off of people who are saying, I'm struggling with these things. And so that's good news. I would just want you to know, if you struggle with anxiety or anxiety disorders, this is not something you're gonna struggle with to the degree that you do today forever. Now, this week I talked to two different women in our congregation who have struggled with anxiety and panic. One woman described her anxiety and panic as a dragon that nearly derailed her life. And yet she came to overcome it. It's not that it's gone entirely, but mostly, and she's been able to do things she never thought she would do. Today, she's a respected member of the Kansas legislature, but even when she thought to run, she was getting ready to run, and all of a sudden, that dragon came back once more, telling her she wasn't good enough, she couldn't do it, making her afraid of speaking in public and a whole host of other things. And I asked her in a nutshell to tell me what helped. And so these were just a few other things.

22:20 She said, professional help, giving myself grace, and accepting that perfection is not a prerequisite for accepting that others can love you. And there's more I'll share with you in a moment. The other woman that I spoke to is Lauren Cook. Lauren is our Director of Online Engagement. So those of you online maybe are connected with her and see her regularly on our online presentations. She began battling anxiety when she was eight years old. And here's a bit of what she said about her wrestling with anxiety. Take a listen. The experience of an anxiety attack often feels like shortness of breath, like you can't breathe, like something's pressing down on your chest and you can't take a full breath. Today, anxiety attacks still occur. They still happen to me. However, I have learned so many tools. My toolbox has gotten so much bigger on how to manage these things. And so I was gifted with a support system who introduced me to therapy, who introduced me to medical help, who introduced me to mentorship, and got me really connected to all the right things and all the right people who were able to teach me how to fight through what is that tornado or fight through that loss of control.

23:26 Now I'm able to talk myself out of an anxiety attack by reminding myself what is truth, which is truth is that I am good enough. What is truth is that I may have failed, but I am not a failure. What is truth is that I may have disappointed someone, but that's okay. I am not a disappointment. And I've learned that Jesus says that I am good enough. He says that I am loved. He says that I am created in the image of God. He says, I am fearfully, wonderfully made. I mean, there's so many scriptures that tell us who He says we are. I just want someone to know I thought that this would never end. I thought this was going to define my entire life. It was going to be who I was and I was going to struggle with it forever. And that is just not true. And I want people to know that, especially young adults. You are in the thick of part of the hardest, the hardest things you're going to walk through. You're just starting your life and your career and parenthood possibly.

24:23 There's so many different things. And this too shall pass. And again, there are people and there is a God who loves you, who created you for so much more than this. And Lauren would tell you, she continues to struggle with anxiety from time to time, but she's found ways, tools in her toolbox to be able to help her to cope with that. And what I know is looking at where she is today, that's gonna continue. She's gonna find less and less impact of anxiety disorders across the course of her life. And she's doing amazing things in the work that she does. My aim is not, again, to provide a three-minute, here's the cure for your anxiety, or here's the Bible verse, or if you just pray this way, it would make it all better. That's not how it works. But all of these tools together do play a role. Our faith helps us. And our faith, our trust in Christ, our praying, our journaling, our discerning, our worshiping, our connecting with him, our reading of scripture, all of those things are important tools in helping us to be able to live overcoming our fear by faith. Now, although Christ is not the cure-all to all of our anxieties and disorders, he does play an important role in this. And so, you know, anxiety disorders are, they have a variety of causes underneath the surface. So sometimes their fear of getting sick, you have a body that's hypersensitive to, you know, things that are happening and all of a sudden you become fixated or, you know, focused on this idea that maybe you're really, really sick.

25:49 Sometimes it's that you're not good enough or sometimes that you're gonna fail no matter what. But whatever the reason underneath that is to be able to say, Christ, I belong to you. Again, this isn't the sole answer. I'm just saying, Christ, I belong to you. And you have said that I'm good enough. You have said that I am loved. Christ, you're gonna walk with me through this thing. Please help me by the power of your Holy Spirit. See me through this. And my life belongs to you. And I think about, we'll talk at the end of the sermon, but this idea of the acronym of fear, this thought of facing our fears with faith and examining our fears in the light of the facts and attacking our anxieties with action. And then finally releasing our cares to God. All of those things play a role, even when it comes to anxiety. Now, one of the things that struck me thinking about Jesus this week, and I was in a conversation with one of our members about this, is that Jesus knew anxiety too. I love this, that the Jesus we pray to understood what it was like to feel overwhelmed. And he had good reason.

26:41 It was the night he would be arrested and he's in the garden of Gethsemane. And I love how, I think it's Matthew's gospel says, that he threw himself to the ground. He left his friends, you know, aside. He threw himself to the ground and he's praying and pleading with God, take this cup away from me, Lord. And Luke's gospel tells us he's perspiring drops of blood. I mean, he knew anxiety. And Jesus' response wasn't to take Xanax or Zoloft. And I'm saying those can be very, very important. So I'm not diminishing that. Just Jesus didn't have access to that in the garden of Gethsemane. And he didn't even turn to his friends. He didn't exercise. all the things that you were often told to do. You know what he did? He laid there on his face and he prayed and he talked to God and he asked for God's help and strength. By the way, it's interesting. The least anxious generation of all the generations we surveyed, as you already know, was the silent generation, those who are 80 and older, the least anxious generation.

27:34 So one of the questions we asked people in the survey was, what helps you when you're feeling anxious? What is it that overcomes, it helps you overcome your anxiety in those moments? And I want you to see what they said. So this is the silent generation and the number one answer far and away was praying. Then after that, talking with friends, engaging in physical activity. Now, when you look at the younger generations, praying drops way down here and it's talking with friends and engaging in physical activity. So the top three are the same, not the top three, the next two are the same, but I want you to notice that they've missed out on this important key of prayer. And for baby boomers and the silent generation, prayer was number one, that they talk to God, They pray to God. They sometimes sing to God. They sit in silence with God. The very thing that Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. And that reminds me of Joseph Medlicott Scriven. He was an Irishman who had immigrated to Canada and he struggled with poor health.

28:28 He was just devoted to serving the poor and helping other people. He was engaged to be married and the night before his wedding, his wife or his fiance drowned to death. And so he'd had a pretty tough life. And at one point he wrote a poem and this poem was, I think, mostly to himself. but he also wrote it to his mother who was struggling with anxiety and fear. And this, you'll recognize these words, I think. They go like this. What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. Prayer matters. Our faith matters when we're facing anxiety, when we're dealing with rejection or fears of people being disappointed in us. Our faith matters.

29:21 That leads me to one last thing I wanna mention. And this is the prevalence for millennials and Gen Z of the fear of failure. So in so many ways, we've already talked about that, rejection, disappointing other people, criticism, but the fear of failure. And it strikes me that nearly everything that we do that's worth doing comes with a risk of failure. The longer we live, the less we fear failure. So I find that today, I'm much less afraid of failing than I was when I was younger. And it's interesting, the woman I mentioned a moment ago who's in the Kansas legislature, who struggled with anxiety, she said this, while failure was allowed for others, I allowed other people to fail, finally allowing it for myself, allowing that I can fail and it's okay. And I began to put myself out there knowing that failure was in fact an option and that I would survive it. That was a part of the key to overcoming anxiety. And so in that, it finally let me, she said, put God's gifts to work in me in ways that I would have never dreamed of before when I finally decided it's okay if you fail.

30:20 I was talking with a man recently, I may have mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about, he was talking about politics and he was talking about somebody who was thinking about running for office. And he said, look, if you run, what's the worst thing that can happen? You could lose, you can fail. Is that that bad? I mean, if you actually were out there and you're getting your message out, was that okay? Or is that something that would just be devastating to you? And the person he was talking to said, no, that'd be okay too. I mean, I just wonder, is that, are you aware of that? Are you allowing yourself to be able to fail? It's okay to fail. We're all gonna fail sometime. But here's another interesting thing I found in the survey is that while failing was, if you added all those answers up, was far and away the top answer for young adults, a failure and people being disappointed. I want you to see where it is. This is for our silent generation. So here's fear of failing or rejection. Like this is the number one fear up here, loss of mental capacity for those who are older, aging.

31:14 But all the way down here, those older adults, and the same was true for baby boomers. They were just a step above that, have come to the place where they say, you know what, I've failed enough times. I'm really not that afraid of it anymore. It's okay if I fail. But if you allow the fear of failure to control you, you're never gonna try anything. You're never gonna take any risks. You're never gonna do anything worth doing in your life. And you're gonna find you're gonna miss out an awful lot of life because you were afraid of failing. Now, the entirety of scripture is the story of people who were willing to, by faith, risk failing. I mean, they took just ginormous risks. I just wanna remind you of a few of them. So I think about Moses, when he was called to confront Pharaoh, right? He might've been, he was too afraid at first. And God said, don't be afraid, you know? Well, what if I fail? Well, you're not gonna fail. I'm gonna be by your side. And the Israelites were set free from captivity. Samson faced down the Philistines. He could have been killed by them.

32:06 He could have failed, but he chose to fight. David went out there on the battlefield as a young boy fighting the giant Goliath. Or I think about Esther, Queen Esther, who was willing to risk everything, to risk failure and even death to go to King Xerxes and ask him to make sure that the children of Israel were not put to death because of the evil work of Haman. I mean, all of these were people who were gonna risk failure and their failure could have cost them their lives, but they were willing to risk it. and because of that, their stories are still told today. Because of that, the world was changed. Again and again in scripture, Abraham is cited as the archetype for faith, right? He's that great example. And at the age of 75 in Genesis chapter 12, God says to him, he's out looking at the stars, and God says to him this. He says, leave your land, your family, and your father's household for the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

32:59 I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you, I will curse. all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you. And in that one moment, and you know, how did God speak to him? I think God spoke to him through a whisper, a nudge, the sort of voice you feel inside. And in that one moment, you know, Abraham's whole future and actually the future of God's people were held up in that one moment. Would Abraham say, Lord, my family's here. I'm comfortable here. I'm 75 years old. I'm just gonna stay here forever. Or would he listen to that little nudge inside and say, okay, I'm gonna go. Where are you gonna go? That way. He didn't even know where. But here's what we find in scripture. Abram left just as the Lord told him, just as the Lord told him. The people who have an impact on the world, the people who find the greatest joy in life, the people who make a difference are the people who are willing to fail. They're willing to take the risk. There are two leadership principles I teach and I've taught them here at Resurrection before, but I teach to leaders across the country.

33:53 The first one is, and I learned this from the Templeton Time Management course, I think. Successful people are willing to do the things unsuccessful people are not willing to do. That's just so simple. But most of the time, successful people are willing to take risks, not crazy, outrageous risks, sometimes. But to take the risk that says, and you've tested it and you've checked it and you've seen, does it line up with scripture? Does it line up with my faith? You talk to people and find out, is this the right thing to do? You try to discern that. But in the end, you're willing to say, I'm gonna take the risk and I might fail and it's okay. And the other is something I call discernment by nausea. I may have mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. Discernment by nausea just says that oftentimes when there's a fork in the road and there's two paths you can choose, the harder path, the one that makes you feel a little sick to your stomach is often God's path for you. Not always, but often God's path for you. Discernment by nausea. Jesus said it this way, the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few people who find it.

34:49 So that leads me to end with a commercial I shared with you in this fear sermon series nine years ago. And it was about failure. and it's just, I just love the message in it. And it's a very gospel message, even though in this particular case, it's an advertisement for Nike. Take a look. I miss more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.

35:26 I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. I love that. That just captures so well, this idea of having the faith to move forward. Let me just remind you of these four things, the acronym for fear that leads us to overcome. Face your fears with faith. Examine your fears in the light of the facts. Attack your anxiety with action. And release your cares to God. Let's pray. Oh God, you know how easy it is for us to be undone by criticism. How we hate to feel the disappointment of other people. but Lord, we know that you understand what this feels like. You experienced the disappointment of others. You experienced criticism. Help us to respond to criticism in a way that reflects who you are and who you call us to be, to be able to listen, to learn, to be gracious in receiving it, not defensive.

36:26 And at the same time, not to be debilitated by other people's disappointment. Lord, you know that there are people who are listening to the sermon, who are struggling with anxiety, who have found their dreams dashed, who found themselves debilitated by anxiety disorders and panic attacks. And I pray that this one piece of healing for them, faith, trust in you, trust that you walk with them, trust that they are enough, I pray that they might find that today. And that with prayer and journaling and all of the other tools that are important for people struggling with anxiety, that you might help them overcome. And finally, oh Lord, I pray that for all of us, young and old, when we struggle, when we hesitate because we're afraid of failing, that we'll remember, oh Lord, that taking that step of faith is the only way forward in accomplishing your will for our lives.

37:20 Help us not to live our lives terrified of failure, but always willing to risk in pursuit of your will for our lives. Draw us near to you, we pray. Help us overcome our fears with faith in Jesus' name.