Video Transcript: Phrase One
All right, welcome back. This is a mini series on the Serenity Prayer. And we're going to be taking apart the first phrase in the Serenity Prayer phrase one, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change. Serenity is an interesting word. I don't think it's a word that we use that often. And if English is your second language, you, you may not know this word at all. Serenity comes from the word serene. The quality serenity is the quality or the state of being serene. Well, that definition doesn't help a lot. If you don't know what serenity or serene means. How's this gonna help. So let me add to it. Serenity is marked by or suggestive of utter calm, and unruffled repose or quietude. I think of mothers, you know, with little kids at home, and the kids are making all kinds of noise and making a mess. And you know, mom is trying to bring a little order to the household, and it's hectic and it's pressure filled, or someone goes off to work and, and where you're working. There's a lot of things happening, a lot of people, a lot of moving parts, a lot of pressure. Life can be filled with, you know, all this pressure. And then in the middle of it, in the middle of all the chaos of someone's life. The person is just handling it well. They're not getting ruffled, they're not getting riled, they're not getting upset. They're not anxious, they're not angry. They're not filled with all these extreme emotions. They're like, they have the attitude that even though there's chaos around me, it's all going to be okay, that sense that it's all going to be okay. That's what's powerful about the Serenity Prayer, because people are going through difficult times in their life. They're going through difficult times in their families, they're going through difficult times in their careers. Maybe, maybe you're taking classes here at Christian leaders Institute, you want to be used by God in some sort of ministry, and you've been nothing but frustrated about that. It seems like it's one closed door after another. In fact, the church you go to, it seems like they're not interested in your services and all the things that you're learning, and it's just frustrating. Life is filled with all kinds of frustration. So how can you maintain a serene composure In the midst of all this conflict, and confusion? That's what the Serenity Prayer is all about. Okay, the Serenity Prayer starts out with God. Okay. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. This is not something that I can just do. I need help. You know, I've been talking about when life is hectic and chaos, and then a person, you know, the godly responses to have some trust is serenity that we don't just muster, that in and of ourselves. It's, it's a prayer. We're coming to God and saying, God, I'm filled with chaos, I'm filled with conflict, I have anger, I have frustration. And I want those feelings replaced with serenity. So I'm coming to you and pleading that you help me do that, because right now, this is not how I feel. God grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change. Philippians 4:6-7. Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and then this phrase, and the peace of God, and the serenity of God, which transcends all understanding. The peace of God, that
serenity of God sometimes doesn't even make any sense. You're going through a really stressful difficult time. And then all of a sudden, in the middle of the stressful situation. You feel a peace that you can't even understand. Haven't you experienced that? Maybe you've gone through the grief process. Someone close to you died and you were crushed, and your heart was as empty as it could be. And then all of a sudden, one night, you're praying to God, or you're reading from the Scripture, or you're singing, worship songs, or the minister says, Some words and all of a sudden a piece comes over you that you can't even explain. Like, where did this come from? I'm sure you've experienced that. And if you haven't, this is what the Serenity Prayer is all about to pray for this. The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts. Won't let your heart devolve into anger and frustration in the sense that you just want to give up and guard your minds in Christ Jesus, so you won't go down dark paths. That's what people do, bad things happen. And then their minds take them down these dark paths, where they end up thinking that there's no hope that the future won't change that their life is, you know, on this downward spiral. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Well, what things do we naively often think we can change? Number one, we often think that we can change our spouse a lot of times, you know, we're attracted to someone, you know, in our dating or courtship time, and, you know, we like, you know, 80% of who they are, but there's 20%, we think, you know, well, I like them. But you know, I'd like to change that 20%, and we marry them thinking, that's what we're gonna do, I'm going to change that 20%. Are you? It often doesn't go that way. Or your children. In often in situations, we, most of us have sort of a controlling nature, we want to control our children, we have this picture of what the family ought to be. And then we want to make that happen. So we want to control our children into being what we want them to be. Or if you own a business, you try to control your employees to be what you want them to be, we're trying to control life. But there's so much of life, we do not control the people around us. If you think you're going to control all the people around you, you're going to be disappointed a lot of things about people you cannot change doesn't mean that people can't change. But generally people change because they want to change not because you want them to change. There's so much in life that we don't control. I didn't control, you know, the color of my hair, or whether I lost my hair, or how tall I was, or, you know, what kind of physical specimen I am or how smart I might be, I mean, there's certain things that I can do, I can, you know, work out, I can be in shape, I can eat, right, I can exercise, I can take classes and learn things, but they're, you know, the basic parts of who I am. You know, this is, this is the body that God gave me. I remember as a kid thinking, you know, I'll never be, you know, I was pretty tall when I was like 13, 14, but I never grew after that. And that's, you know, my father is six foot three, and I thought that that was gonna be half that was gonna happen to me, and it
didn't. And I remember when it did not, you know, I have to go through my whole life being this shorter person, when I had an image of what I could be, accept the things that you cannot change. There's a lot of things that, you know, we end up worrying about things that we really can't do anything about. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change. So is brought this up instead of accepting what do we do? We end up worrying. Matthew 6:25-34 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life. Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? How much of our lives do we spend worrying, or worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow with our jobs, we worry about what is going to happen in relationships, and many of those things we don't control. We worry about the economy. We worry about the direction the world is taking. Most of these things I mean, I'm not saying we can't have anything to do with change, you know, making things happen in our world. But there's so many global things that are out of our control. What what is it that you do control? If we just spent our time praying about and working on the things we actually control? Instead of all the things that we can't control, we'd probably make more progress. Instead of accepting, we ended up complaining. complaining, I think, I think human beings spent, like half their lifetime complaining. And, and why do we complain? We often complain about things. Number one, we either can't do anything about. We complain about the government, we complain about our workplace, we complain about our spouse, our family, our friends, our church. And a lot of times, we have no influence over some of those things. We complain about things that we can't do anything about. But we also complain about things that we can do something about, but we don't. complaining, generally is not doing. There's doing and then there's complaining. And if we're complaining, we're not doing. If you're going to complain about something, then you should do. The minute you start complaining, you should ask yourself, Is this something I can do? Or is this something I can't do anything about? If it's something I can't do anything about? What are you talking about? If it is something that you can do about it, do about it? Then Then why are you complaining? Why aren't we just doing something about it? So in other words, complaining is never the answer. Philippians 2:14-15 Do everything without complaining or arguing. Then you will be pure and without blame. You will be children of God without fault among the sinful and evil people, then you will shine among them, like stars in the sky. Bottom line, bottom line with this opening phrase of the Serenity Prayer is to trust in the Lord. That there are things in your life that you can't do anything about. You have to leave those things to the Lord. Proverbs 3:5-6, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. So it's not like we, you know, there are things in our lives, chaos in our lives, that often we can't do anything about. That doesn't mean you can't do anything. You can leave these things to the Lord. All in all your ways. submit to Him. As part of the Serenity
Prayer, it's about giving the things that you cannot control the things that you worry about the things that you want to complain about. Give those if you find yourself worrying about things. Or if you find yourself complaining about things, this is your list. This is your list, to give to God submit these things to God, and you know what God will do God will make your paths straight. God will take care of these things not always in the direction in the manner or in the timing that you want. But in God's perfect timing. God oversees the whole, He knows your life. He knows what he's trying to accomplish, and he will make it happen. Our job is to trust him. So that's the first phrase. We'll come back and look at the second phrase.