A few years ago, I started watching this program on Netflix called “Drive to Survive,” and it got me back into watching F1. It was kind of neat for me because years ago, I used to be a fan and kind of got away from it. It was great to come back to the sport and not only enjoy the skill of the drivers, but also see their personality, and those F1 drivers have a lot of personality.
But of all the drivers, would you like to guess who is the one driver that I have the most respect for, above all the rest? It’s Lewis Hamilton. And that is not only because of the fact that he is perhaps the best F1 driver of all time: he’s won seven World Championships, which ties in with Michael Schumacher, and he also holds records for the most wins, most pole positions, and the most podium finishes. But what makes me really respect him is what he does with the platform that he’s been given. He speaks out against racism and human rights abuses. He encourages diversity in his sport, both gender and racial diversity, and in the past, there wasn’t a lot of that in F1. He also encourages youth who come from underserved neighborhoods through his Mission 44 foundation that he has started.
So my ears perked up when I was watching a broadcast, and Lewis was being interviewed. The interviewer must have asked him something like, “Do you get nervous being in the car?” and he replied, “I don’t get nervous in the car. The car is my place of calm.” I heard that and I thought to myself, “How is that possible?” If you have ever watched an onboard camera on an F1 racing car, you know that there is so much coming at you so quickly that I don’t know how anybody could be calm in one of those cars. So, I wondered how could Lewis Hamilton say, “The car is my place of calm?”
As I thought about it, I think what it happening is this: when we encounter risky or dangerous situations in life, imagine that we turn the level of that risk into a height, and the risk we are facing is 5 cm high. But we have some skill and experience in matters like these and when we add those two things together and assign a height to them, it’s twice as high. When we encounter a reasonably small risk, and we have more than enough skill and experience to handle that risk, it’s not that much of a concern for us. We can actually be calm in the face of it.
The thing is, for Lewis Hamilton and many other F1 drivers, they didn’t start their racing career in F1. Many of them began their racing in carts where the risk and danger were low. They gained skill and experience as they progressed through different levels of racing. Even when they reached F1, they were still learning and gaining skills through experience. This is how Lewis Hamilton can say that the car is his place of calm. So yes, the risk and the dangers may be high, but his skill and experience are much greater. Therefore, it’s not that scary of a situation for him.
The same kind of thing happens for us in life. However, there are a lot of things in life where we don’t get to practice them before they happen. So, they come upon us, and we have little or no skill and zero experience. There are things like the first time you go to school, the first time you write a test at school, the first time you fail a test at school, the first girlfriend or boyfriend you have, the first job you get, the first time you get fired from a job, the first time you go to university or technical school, the first time you get married, the first time you have a child, the first time you lose a child, the first time you lose a parent, the first time you get divorced, the first time you retire, or the first time your spouse passes away. We don’t get to practice those things before they happen. So, we’ve got a high risk or danger level and little skill or experience levels. Those things can be very, very scary for us.
So how is it that we can be calm when facing great risk or danger? That’s the kind of thing that we’re thinking about today. To guide us in our reflections, we’re going to be looking at 1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 5:11.
And as we do that, as we look at that passage, what we find is that Paul is writing a letter to the Christians in Thessalonica. They were facing persecution for their faith and Paul is writing to encourage them. Now, this is a risky situation for the people he’s writing to. Some of them probably knew someone who died for their faith. That’s how severe the persecution they were facing was. So Paul is writing to kind of build them up.
As we reflect on what Paul wrote, let’s consider the following as our definition of faith: Faith is trusting in something or someone to help you navigate the risky and dangerous events you face in life. Does that sound to you like a reasonable definition of faith? But there’s a challenge to our definition of faith. When you are being persecuted for your faith, it’s your faith that’s putting you in danger. It’s your faith that’s putting you at risk of losing your job, or even losing your life.
And this raises all kinds of questions about faith for us. And I think that the three most important questions are these:
What does my faith do? What is the value of the result of my faith to me? And finally, is the benefit of my faith worth the cost?
Because when you are facing persecution as a follower of Jesus, you are thinking about all three of these questions. And if we think about them ahead of time, we will actually be better prepared for the risky or dangerous situations we will face in our lifetime, whatever they may be.
Because these questions are so important, we need to be very clear about them because if we don’t know what our faith does, how can it mean anything to us? And if we don’t know what the end result of our faith is going to be, then how can we know what it’s worth to us? And if we don’t know what our faith is worth to us, then why would we be willing to pay any kind of cost to hold on to it in the face of risk or danger?
Paul is writing to people who are facing these kinds of questions. And as he writes the letter, he structures it in a certain way. He starts with a prayer of thanksgiving for the faith of the Thessalonians. Then he writes about his ministry and his love for them. Next, he calls them to continue living a life that pleases God. Specifically, he urges them to avoid sin, love one another, and lead a quiet life. By “quiet life,” he means minding their own business and working with their hands.
He then moves on to the part of his letter where he aims to leave the readers with an unshakable hope in Jesus Christ. This hope will sustain them through any challenges they may face in life, including risks, dangers, persecution, and even death.
In this passage that we are focusing on, he first gives his listeners hope for life beyond death that Jesus offers. He writes, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again. And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14)
Here, he uses the phrase “fallen asleep” as a word picture for dying. He is referring to people who have died with faith in Jesus. He explains that because Jesus died and rose again, and because of our faith connection with Jesus, we have the assurance that we too will die and rise with him.
Paul also writes that our death has already happened. It occurred when we were baptized. Through baptism, we were buried in the waters with Jesus and raised to new life with him. Therefore, in Jesus, we have the promise that no matter what risks or dangers we face, even death, there is nothing truly at risk for us. We cannot lose the life that Jesus has given us. Our life is secure in him, and we can be confident in the hope we have through him.
Then Paul writes about something called “The Day of the Lord” and he does so for a very special reason. He wants to encourage the Thessalonians as they go through very tough times. They are facing deadly persecution where people are trying to use their faith against them, and threatening them with suffering or even death to try to get them to change what they believe. With this kind of persecution is the implied threat that, if you stand firm and your life is taken from you, you have no hope of wrong being done to you ever being made right.
And so Paul is writing to tell his readers, and us, that all the suffering and all the injustice and all the wrongs are going to get straightened out on the Day of the Lord when Jesus comes back. So Paul writes, “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7) Paul is writing to give the people of the Thessalonian church hope, hope for life after death, hope that Jesus is going to come and make all the wrongs right.
But they also need hope for today and tomorrow and the day after that. So he uses a word picture of people of the night (those who do not belong to God) and people of the day (those who do belong to God), and he writes, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting faith and love as a breastplate, the hope of salvation as a helmet. [Paul is using an “armor of God” word pictures here. See Ephesians 6:10-17.] For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, whether we are living life in this world or we have died to life in this world, we may live together with him. (2 Thessalonians 5:8-10)
Your life with Jesus began in the moment you were baptized and it will continue on forever. And the promise that God has given to you in your baptism is that Jesus has formed a bond with you that from his side of the relationship, he will never, ever, ever break. And so whether you are awake or asleep, alive in this world or dead in this world, you will live with him.
So, with the hope that we have in Jesus, we can make a shift when we’re facing risk or dangerous situations, a shift from despair to resilience. What despair does is it tells us that we’re not going to make it with all the resources and wherewithal we have. “You’re never going to pull through!” That’s despair. But resilience says, “You are going to make it, and it doesn’t matter how great the danger or how high the risk, Jesus is going to carry you through.”
Jesus will get us through the greatest challenge we will ever face in life, and I suggest to you that that challenge is death. It’s the ultimate cutoff from all the things we know, all the things that we tend to trust in, and we have no resources going into something like that. It’s a test of faith. Jesus has promised us that he will walk with us through death and carry us into the life that He has prepared for us beyond that.
Jesus has also promised us that He will make all things right, one day in the future, including us. All of the evil and injustices of this world will be met with God’s perfect justice. All of the brokenness in the world, including the brokenness, will be fully healed and restored. And we will live in perfect fellowship with Jesus and with each other in the new heaven and earth to come.
So the question that I’m asking you to think about is this: How do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as a product of your circumstances and your human connections? Or are you a beloved, forgiven child of God who knows that they have been placed here in this world to be a beacon of light and hope who has compassion and empathy for others just like Jesus has had for you? When you see yourself in the second way, Jesus is the one who’s regulating your emotions and he fills you with hope and love instead of fear and anxiety.
So my prayer for you and for myself is that we would grow in seeing ourselves as Jesus sees us and that we would live as his person in this world.
When Monica Zuniga Bailey was younger, she would often go out with her friends to a bar. She would dress very attractively and invariably she receive lots of attention from men. Eventually, she began to get her sense of self worth from the attention she received.
One night, while she was in a bar with her friends, somebody drugged her drink. When she woke up, there was a stranger on top of her, and he raped her. Monica was devastated. After that, she saw herself as damaged goods because her virginity was taken from her that night. Prior to the experience, she had high standards for the men she interacted with, but she lowered her standards for them and for herself. She became sexually active and went through a series of relationships, breaking each one off and starting over again a month later.
One night, she was in a bar again with her friends and she was drugged again. However, this time she realized what was happening and told her friends that she needed to go home immediately. She got home safely and the next morning, she realized that things needed to change.
She did something she hadn’t done for a very long time – she had a conversation with God and asked Him to speak to her in some way. She felt in her heart that God was telling her to look up the meaning of her name. She discovered that her first name, Monica, means “the only one, alone, or lonely.” She was angry with God because she already felt alone due to her experiences. She had kept her rape a secret and she felt immense guilt and shame. She even thought that she may have brought the rape upon herself. Now it seemed like God was telling her something she already knew.
Then, she heard God’s voice again and this time He said to look up the meaning of her middle name, Amanda. It means “worthy of love.” Every time she searched it on Google, “worthy of love” came up repeatedly. She realized that God was telling her that she was not only worthy of love, but that she had always been worthy of love.
In that moment, she surrendered her life to God and said that she would do whatever He asked of her. She sensed that He was calling her to gather women together and invite them to share their stories. One night, she did that and that was when she shared her own story for the first time. Over half of the women in the group had experienced something similar to what Monica had, either as a child or as an adult. These women encouraged Monica and assured her that she was not damaged goods.
Now, Monica creates safe spaces for others to share their stories and begin their own healing journeys, for it was sharing her story that began her own journey of healing. She is now enjoying life on the other side of that healing and is married to a wonderful man. She now personally knows the truth of Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The terrible thing which she experienced no longer defines her. Monica emphasizes that God doesn’t want us to hide. She shares in her “I am Second” video that when she is completely transparent with God, she finds that she is becoming more and more herself.
I will conclude with John 14:19-20, where Jesus says, “Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.” The challenge that I will leave with you is to simply live the life Jesus has given you with him. Amen.
Farewell to Shadowlands 