Finding Your Footing in the Chaos of Life (Part 1 of 2)

It's the mathematical representation for a spiral. and it's tucked within all of nature. A whirlpool galaxy, the shell of a snail, or the ram's horn, the chofar. So there's order and design. It's the blueprint of God inside the spiral you find everywhere.

And I just think that's a reminder to those of us who feel like we're spiraling. You're hearing this today and you're having the hardest time. And I just tell you, it's not random, it's not chaos. God has a plan. He's up to something. And his fingerprints are all over your life.

Life is pretty easy, especially as a child. Most children, a normal childhood. I'm glad you put that clarifier. I didn't have it that way, but I mean, for most kids, it should be that way. Life should be easy. And then you get a little older, take on more responsibility, maybe you get married, you have children, and man, it just gets really complicated.

And sometimes life can knock you upside the head and send you spiraling out of control. And if that sounds like something you've experienced or you're in the middle of, let me remind you: we're here for you. Focus on the family. Would love to talk with you about that moment. We've got great resources. We have counselors. And, you know, it's all free. Just get a hold of us and we will help you in that way.

Levi Lusko is just the guy to have this discussion. He's been through those storms and come out on the other side, I think in a healthy way. We'll find out. He's going to share. What he learned and give you some tools to navigate those moments in your life when it feels like you're spiraling down.

Yeah, and Levi is the co-founder and lead pastor of Fresh Life Church, a multi-site ministry located in Montana and Wyoming and Oregon and all the hot spots. Well, cold spots during the winter. Hot spots, they are. They're great places.

He's married to Jenny and they have five children. And Levi is an author. He's written a number of books. And the one we're talking about today is called Blessed Are the Spiraling: How the Chaotic Search for Significance Can Lead to Joy Through Life's Shifting Seasons.

Look for details about Levi and this terrific resource online. We've got the links in the show notes. Levi, it's great to have you back to focus here. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Such an honor.

Such an honor. I know you're speaking tonight to a youth group, which I think is awesome. Maybe I should pop down there. Come on down. We're talking about it. Yeah, exactly.

Hey, yeah, as a pastor, I'm sure you feel the urge, or maybe. Not feel it, but you have to always put your spiritual self forward. And sometimes you don't feel like it or you don't have it. You know, things life as much of a load for a pastor as it is anybody else.

There's got to be those moments where you're feeling a bit like you're faking it, maybe. It's not really there, but I got to go out and I got to do it. Tell me about that sensation, that feeling, and we'll get into more of your story in a minute.

I think there's healthy compartmentalization and unhealthy compartmentalization. I've always believed that as a leader, you need to heal your wounds, but share your scars. Where you have a healed scar, you can share it and show people like, hey, God brought me through this by his grace, and he can do the same for you.

So it's like Jesus showed the scars to the disciples and it gave them joy and confidence. But what you want to do when you have an unhealed wound that's festering is you want to see it treated. So the way as a leader, I share my scars is I tell my church with an honest level of vulnerability, here's what I've been through.

I've seen healing in it and God can heal you too. But where there's an unhealthy, untreated wound, you want to go to leadership in your life, counseling, and get the right help to get that thing treated.

So for example, I wouldn't get up and be like, hey, church, Jenny and I have really been fighting. I don't know if we're going to make it. But open your Bibles. That's an unhealthy. Like if I'm at a place of unhealth, I want to go to my board of directors.

I want to go to pastoral friends. I want to go to my counselor and get that wound treated. And then when I'm seeing it healing, to be vulnerable. So that's healthy compartment. Right. Unhealthy compartmentalization would be where you're just faking fine and playing hurt and pretending everything's okay and putting a nice face on an ugly thing.

And I think in leadership, it's a tension to manage to walk the line between those two. It is. And I think one of the things I've observed is this desire that we have, I think, born out of our flesh. To put a facade forward, like we expect ourselves to be perfect, and we're not.

It's such an unhealthy thing for Christian leadership, particularly, because people learn out of that vulnerability and they can attach to it because they're struggling in many of the same ways. Without a doubt.

And I've found, like C.S. Lewis said, if you learn how to minister to hurting people, you'll never be without an audience. So opening up about my daughter's death or telling my church honestly, as I did a few weeks ago on a Sunday, I'm really struggling still with my dad's death.

And the grief journey has been challenging. And I'm still to this present day, I'll go to call him. I'll go to text him. I'm like, oh, I can't wait to tell dad about that. And then I'll re-remember.

And so I'm honest with them about that. That's a wound that's being healed in process. Yeah, no, I get that. The midlife crisis, and this is really the core of what you wrote about.

I don't know that I really experienced that. So I'm really interested. I may even identify some of those things through talking with you today and next time. But let's describe that. What you're 38 at the time or?

Yeah, well, the data is that one out of three people will experience a later life crisis. So that's my future. One out of four in midlife crisis. But here's the interesting one. Three out of four are now on data that shows experiencing what they call an early life crisis.

It can happen as early as 18, which is 25% of 72, which worldwide is life expectancy on the planet. And you're saying three out of four. Three out of four for early life crisis.

The point is, just about everybody is going to experience some sort of a challenging transition at some point, whether it's 18, 40, 55, or 60. For me, it was I started having panic attacks at bedtime.

Wow, I read that. It's just amazing. And it came out of nowhere. It was like a switch being flipped. It just started like my heart racing 180 beats per minute, my hands sweating.

And I wasn't self-aware enough to go, oh yeah, this is a midlife crisis. I just was like so confused and felt so out of control. In your faith journey at that point, I mean, you're a pastor.

What was going on? It's like, Lord, what is happening to me? I grabbed my Bible. I opened it to Ephesians. That wasn't helping. I turned on a sermon from my good mentor and friend Louie Giglio, and that wasn't helping.

I'm like, oh my gosh, if Louie Giglio and Ephesians can't help me, this is going to be bad. I woke my wife up, asked her to pray with me, and we got through that evening.

Next morning, called my doctor, called my counselor, and called the spiritual authority in my life. And I will not say it's quick and easy. It was a multiple year-long journey from that moment forward of digging up.

But, you know, it's a lot of decisions stacked together to get you into problems, and it's unfortunately the same way out. Yeah. You know, I was looking with the title of the book, Blessed are the spiraling.

It reminds me of one of my favorite verses where it talks about God being close to the brokenhearted and saving those crushed in spirit. That's another way to say that.

When you're in that process of crushing, it feels like a downward spiral. But you're encouraging us to think. Of the upward spiral.

So, I mean, most of us are just thinking about the downward spiral. What does it mean to have an upward spiral? Everybody talks about I'm spiraling down, going down, going down because it's going to be a lot of fun.

Because that's what it feels like. Yeah, it does feel that way. But if the Beatitudes are true, according to Matthew chapter 5, then when we're poor in spirit, when we're persecuted, when we're having a hard time, or to put it to modernize Jesus' language, if we're spiraling, the truth is we're blessed because it's in those difficult times we're more capable of leaning into God, of Him being near to us.

None of us learn and grow from our good days. We learn and grow from the hard times. And that's why James says, Rejoice when you fall into various trials.

Now, I don't ever get into a trial and think, yay, but in those moments, we should, because we're about to experience God in a way that we can't in the sunshine.

Is there a connection with Paul, who is sitting in prison and writes about being content in all ways? And Sing songs. I was sitting in a dungeon.

I mean, Paul said in Romans 8:I don't consider the sufferings of this present life even worthy to be compared to the glory to be revealed in us.

So, apparently, there's something that God wants to do. There's some unique way that we can experience His presence and His shining face that shines down on us in those hard times.

And maybe it's because when things are going good, it's all too easy for us to trust in our own resources, take our eyes off of Him. And so, we should, in the spiraling moments of life, think, Okay, I'm about to experience God's blessing and I need it.

Yeah, and it is so good to come out of the valley, but if we're mature as Christians, we've got to recognize what we benefit from being in the valley.

Yeah, Job said, I'm going to come forth as gold. It's a purifying process, but it takes going into the fire.

But to your point, if we can spiral down, why can't we spiral up? Because I believe each. Wall we run into, which is how it feels when we're spiraling.

We've ran into a wall. We were just going, and all of a sudden, bam, and our nose is bleeding. That's actually the front of a stair step.

And we can be developed. My counselor taught me to look at it that way. When I hit a wall, it's a developmental shift, it's a stair step.

And if we keep taking enough of those stairs as we go spiraling our way, we're gonna go up and in further and closer to Jesus.

You know, let me ask you this because people are listening that are hitting that wall. But it's feeling impossible. to spiral up.

They're like scratching their heads right now, feeling like, how do you spiral up? You don't know what I'm in. And I guess the question right here would be: for that person, what do you say?

Yeah. Well, I think you first of all have to speak in faith and believe I'm being developed. I'm not alone. God said, I'll never leave you, never forsake you.

And if I've hit a wall, I hit a wall with Jesus. And if I'm in Christ, then I couldn't have got to that wall without being in Christ.

So now, God, I believe you have a plan. I believe you're trying to teach me something. What, God? Not how do I get out of this? That's the question we want to ask, but Lord, what do you want me to know?

How do you want me to grow? And what mistakes maybe got me into this? Because we're all able to be complicit in our own suffering if we're honest for a moment, right?

We're all capable of being our own worst enemy. So for me, part of the process was saying, hey, was it God that got me here or me?

And of course, it's complex, right? Was it the enemy? Was it God? Was it me? It's all some sort of an event diagram, perhaps, of all of the above.

But for me, I had been running at a pretty hard pace for my 20s and my 30s. And so there was a lot of death by thousand paper cuts type of a thing.

I mean, I went to South Africa twice for the weekend in that period. Oh, my. Wrote eight books. We launched 10 different churches.

I mean, We were doing a lot and flew a couple million miles with Delta Airlines. I mean, there was just so much going on.

And I think part of it was, you know, the body does keep score. And there was some unprocessed trauma in my life from my childhood.

We had had a daughter die and I'd gone through lots of counseling for that specific issue, but I had really neglected to appreciate the magnitude of some of the ways that my parents' divorce impacted me.

And if you would have asked me all through my 20s and 30s and 40s, or 20s and 30s rather, how did your parents' divorce affect you?

I'd have gone, oh, it really didn't. God was good, but it was hard. But in counseling, through a lot of conversation, I really began to realize there were some ways that shaped me I didn't really understand.

The onion peeling, basically.

Let me ask you on the lighter side, you had an analogy in the book about your daughter losing a tooth. This is being observant, really.

So how did that story impact you in a spiritual way?

Well, this is part of the Boys and Girls Are Different conversation. I had a son lose it. My son lost a tooth, and with blood dripping down his chin, he held it into the air and said, Puberty, puberty, puberty.

And he was excited. My daughter was terrified. What? My tooth fell out of my mouth.

And then we explained puberty to her, and she said, I don't want to do that. And she's, you know, declared war on puberty and vowed to stop it at all costs.

The point is that we all have different reactions to development, but a midlife crisis or any early or later life crisis is really another developmental puberty.

And it can be scary to change because change is scary for all of us. Empty nest. We have a daughter in college now.

That's scary. But that's just God developing you to a next level. Yeah.

You know, a moment ago when you said that you may ask the how of somebody hitting the wall, some of us will say, why? Why, Lord, did you let me hit this wall?

And now it becomes this issue between you and God. And some people even develop bitterness. They may even walk away from the Lord or think that they are.

And the Lord's going to continue to walk with you, in my opinion. But that walk. Why question could be a deep one for people.

Did you battle with that? Well, you know, I think. That was not really a pressing issue for me.

I've always tried imperfectly, but as I read scripture, to assume positive intent on God.

You know, like when Home Depot gives a manual on the chainsaw, I don't grab the manual and go, oh, they don't want me to have any fun. No, they want me to not chop my fingers off, you know?

And so when God tells me to do something or leads me in a certain way, I generally tend, based on his track record, sending his son to die for me on the cross, how shall he who did not spare his son but gave him to us not freely give us all things?

So I believe God has good plans for me. And I think when we start there and then we get into a pickle, we can assume he has something he's trying to teach me here.

Yeah. You mentioned John the Baptist and his spiral. Tell me about that.

I mean, this guy. Baptized his own cousin as Messiah in fulfillment of God's prophetic timetable, and then ends up in prison and is about to get decapitated.

And his last correspondence from death row is to say, Jesus, are you the Messiah or did I make a mistake? Talk about spiraling.

Did I make a mistake anointing you as the Messiah? And Jesus basically does not diss John.

He compliments John, calls him the greatest born among women. That's a big compliment.

And I think he's trying to develop John. He says, Blessed is he who's not offended on behalf of me.

Tell him that the blind see and the deaf hear. And he encourages John to take a step of trust in his spiraling.

Yeah. You know, the resurrection of Jesus shows that what we think is an end can be a new beginning.

And you relate that to what Gene and I, my wife Gene. It's one of the favorite movies we have, a million miles away, about uh Jose Hernandez.

Speak to that story and how that connected for you. It's unbelievable how many rejection letters this guy got.

27, 35, some number like I think it was the 12th time he applied, he got accepted.

And it's multiple years between rounds of that. So, I mean, literally like 20 years, but 12 different rounds.

And born from a migrant family, he, as a young child, said, I want to be an astronaut.

And he fought for it. And a lot of us would give up and walk away if we hit the wall.

12 times, but he didn't. He just kept developing himself.

He, in fact, developed the MRI machine or the machine that helps detect breast cancer in women during that time.

And so maybe it was for that reason he got the nose because God wanted to save lives with the technology he would invent between now and then.

And he never grew bitter, never gave up on it.

And I think for us, the question is: will we get bitter and get mad and yes, get angry at God and run off? Or are we going to say, God, I'm going to trust you?

You have a plan. This is hard and messy. And we can be honest with him, but then say, though you slay me, I'm going to follow you, like Job did.

One of the best parts in the movie was the depiction of the teacher who believed in him, his elementary school teacher.

And she got to come to the launch room. Some of the launch. I mean, that was like the best part of the story, which is what a teacher did to encourage him to move from the fields picking fruit to being an astronaut.

That is amazing.

And she kind of challenged his parents to prioritize his education, which is really cool.

And Levi, in terms of those kind of closed doors, some people. People get just overwhelmed by the waves of no or disappointment in life and kind of live there.

But you talked about Tiger Woods and some lesson that you thought was appropriate for us.

I liked the illustration. I thought it was really good. Yeah, he had a rule where after he had a bad shot, he would only allow himself to be sad about it for a few seconds.

But he would allow himself to feel sad about it. But then it would be, extra sketch would be wiped and he would be on to the next shot.

So it's almost like you're having a little pity party for a few moments. All right. And then maybe you need to go get yourself a frappuccino or whatever.

But then, okay, now we're done with that. Yeah. And we're going to on to the next thing.

Yeah, I think you called it, he referred to it as the 10-step rule or something. 10-step rule because it was as long as it took for him to take 10 steps of sadness.

And he would just beat himself up, but only for 10 steps. I really like that. Then on to the next thing.

I've got that in golf. I call it the 150-step rule, but whatever works for you. Or the 10-day rule, whatever.

I've had tennis matches like that. The terrible golf. But it really is, it comes down to mindset.

Yeah, that's the thing. Move on. Allow that to pull you down. You know, negative thoughts can't lead to that positive life you want.

And mind really does matter. You know, not that it's like everything in the world is just think positive, but the Bible does talk a lot about how we think and how that impacts our life like a rudder.

Yeah, it's so true.

That leads to a great big question. This is the golden nugget question: What is the ultimate goal in life? That's huge.

Yeah, well, a lot of us think it's just better and bigger and more, you know.

And if it's ministry, then it's more people come to the church and more people listen to the message and more people get saved.

And that surely is part of the great commission.

But if we define it that way, then we're guaranteeing failure as we get more and more towards the grave because you can't keep everything up and to the right forever in sales or in ministry or in any performance.

So if that's the goal, then God's calling us to do something we can't do once we're in a wheelchair or in declining years.

So the goal, of course, would be Christ's likeness, that we become more like Him and faithful to what He's called us to do in that season.

And if that's true, there's a glory to our declining years just as there are to when we're in our prime.

And we tend in our culture that's so human-thinking and so, you know, just about this life to focus on only the flower of life when we're young and our hair is not gray yet and we're at the prime of our life.

But God has a plan for every season we're retired. Post-retirement, that we become like him.

And if that's true, then there's a glory to even our deathbed that God can be honored in how we approach all of that.

Yeah, and it's so good. I mean, my 24-year-old is going, I feel over the hill. What? He's going, well, 20 is kind of your prime.

I'm going, oh my gosh. I'm like, that's that person. This is an early life crisis.

Yeah, that's an early life crisis. You know, Jesus shared a parable about a man who found treasure in a field.

You mentioned this in the book. What can we take away from that?

Well, that's the real organizing metaphor of the book: this man who found a treasure, sold all he had to buy the field to get the treasure.

My favorite part about that is the neglected first word. Jesus says, again, The kingdom of heaven is like a man.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a man. I always thought it was a parable of salvation.

You discover Jesus, you give your whole life to him, and you walk away with the treasure.

But what I discovered is you have to keep going back because you accumulate new things in your hands.

And even as a servant of God, we do things, and God blesses us for those things we do.

He doesn't have to, he's so good, he does. And now, all of a sudden, I have some things in my hands.

I get to be a leader, I get to be a pastor, I get to be an author, I get to be here with you guys today.

It's a platform, it's an honor, I don't deserve it, but God's so kind.

Well, that can easily get comfortable in your hands. Oh, I'm a conference speaker.

You know, and in my midlife crisis moment, I spiraled into a realization of I got to be a pastor in my 20s, and I was always the young pastor.

And now that's being tampered with because I'm not old, but I'm not young. I'm the middle-aged pastor.

And so, what I had to do again was to go back to the field and sell everything.

Say, it's all yours, God. If you never do anything through me again, if I don't speak on any stages, if I'm not on radio. Programs.

If I don't get the right books, I just want you. You're the treasure, not what you do for me or through me. You.

That's really good.

You know, you mentioned the book, How to Prepare for These Spirals.

So, what do you do, especially if you're in a good place and you're feeling like you are going up, and then all of a sudden, Boom, you hit something.

How do you prepare for that? Well, I think the most important thing all of us can do that's just extremely practical is to not base our identity on anything that's vulnerable.

Any position, any possession, anything on this earth is very vulnerable.

It can take one stroke, one text message, one natural disaster, or one mistake you make, and that can be taken from you.

So, if your identity is based on anything on this earth, that's danger territory.

But if it's simply that you're a son of the king, loved by God, headed to heaven, and the king's gonna give you some assignments, well, guess what?

That can handle any situation in life that gets thrown at it.

And then the second thing I would say is do your work to connect the dots on any behavior that's informing your shadow side or some of the parts of you that tend to slip out when your flesh is taking control.

And do the hard work it takes to connect those dots and understand how you became the way you did, why you're drawn to what sins you're drawn to, so that you can better keep in control and follow Jesus.

That requires a level of introspection, doesn't it? I think so.

And I think help, community, counseling, depending on what you discover is there, it may need more to help unpack it.

But when you keep the sunshine shining on it, nothing unhealthy can really grow in that.

You know, anybody that's been through a transition of any sort, there's the obvious story in the Bible about David and King Saul and the conflict they had and that transition of their own and how many lessons are in that.

What do you pull out of that in terms of their spiral? Because both had spirals down.

Well, King Saul to me is the classic example of a midlife crisis gone wrong.

You know, he's obviously wanting to hang on to youth and his power and him being at the prime.

He likes being king, but God's got David around and all of a sudden people start singing, Saul has slain his thousands, but David is tens of thousands and Saul can't handle that.

Now he should go, hey. I'm king. David works for me. Those are my victories too.

And celebrate David's victories. But instead, he tries to destroy David and tries to take him out and sabotage his success.

And he just becomes this caricature of the worst parts of himself.

And in the end, it destroys him. And people he loved get hurt in the process, Jonathan and others.

So I think the better example in the spiraling of I feel this way is to be honest, admit that's hard, but then try and embrace that, you know what, everything that I helped David do is a win for the kingdom and ultimately a win for me as well.

You know, it's interesting, David, the character of David.

He's one of the people I'd love to run toward in heaven to ask him questions because obviously God Himself said He had a heart for me, even though He committed the big ones, right?

Adultery and murder. But there was something in His heart.

I think that something was humility, which you think of a king, that's hard for a king to possess.

But I think at the core, that may be why God said that, because that's God's character.

And doesn't it take humility to take as much joy in the accomplishments of someone else than yourself?

And I think that's the thing. I think we're afraid we won't have value if we don't get to keep operating at the level we are comfortable operating in.

But if we have the humility to say, hey, if you want me to decrease, you can increase.

That was John the Baptist. He's, I don't care what part I get to play.

Think about how at the beginning his crowds were huge, but then everyone followed Jesus.

And he's like, hey, come on, that's what I want to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a perfect place to end.

But let me ask you on the final question. That person that's been listening and they're going, wow, okay, this is really helpful.

I feel like I'm in that downward spiral. They're grasping for some kind of control as they're falling, obviously.

What would you say to them to encourage them today as they're hearing this or watching it on YouTube?

It's been said that there are three seasons of life. The first season is you're building a container.

The second season, you get to choose what goes in the container. And the third season is you have to give the container and its contents away.

And most of the despair, I think, in the transitional moments of life comes from failure to appreciate and properly respond to the season of life you're in.

So you're trying to get a bigger container, more houses, get the company bigger, but you have nothing in your container.

You don't have relationships that are fulfilling. You perhaps are in season two and you're not realizing that you need to begin to prepare for that third season of giving it all away.

72% of Americans don't have a will. Think about that.

So there's no preparation and planning for the only actual certainty in this life.

So today, ask God, what season am I in and how do I need to respond?

That's really good. And that's a perfect place for us to pick up next time.

If you can hang out a little while and we'll come back and do another day's program.

And I think those are the things we want to get into: how to recognize where you're at and what you got to do to be healthier, which is really good.

It's been great. Thank you.

Liva, it always is so good to be with you.

I mean, if you're talking about it, let's keep talking. Yeah, it flies by.

So, and thanks for all the preparation and life learnings that you're able to articulate so well.

You're a terrific communicator, and that's obviously something God's given you as a gift.

No, it's true.

But listen, if you're there, wherever there may be, whatever we've talked about today, and you're going, they're talking about me, get a hold of us.

I mean, we're here to help you. You know, that's what the donor community does.

The folks support us to the extent we can have free counselors here for you.

You can call us and they'll schedule a time for you to talk with them.

We have a mound of resources here to help you.

That's the hidden secret of focus.

We are just a resource center, and we want to be there for you.

We want to help you in this journey with the Lord to make you as healthy as you can be so you can touch others.

That's the goal.

Get healthy yourself and then be able to reach out to somebody who's hurting around you.

And there are plenty of people spiraling down.

And all you need. What you need to do is give us a call to get that started.

Yeah, we're just a phone call away.

Our number is 800, the letter A and the word family: 800-232-6459.

Donate generously when you get in touch.

We'll send the book to you as our way of saying thanks for being a part of the support team.

And again, the title of that book is Blessed are the Spirally.

On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Levi Lesko and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

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