Vince Vitale [00:00:41] Hi friends, Vince here, welcoming you to Ask Away and wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Jo and I will be back in the studio in January with many more conversations inspired by your fantastic questions. So please keep sending them. We love hearing from you about what you're wrestling with, both personally and also as you engage in real conversations with the people in your life. We also have some new ideas for the show, which we're really excited to share with you in the new year. In particular, we're working towards some of the episodes including live conversations with those who have doubts or objections, so that you can be encouraged not just by us talking about how we would have those conversations, but by actually hearing the conversations for yourself. So stay tuned for more updates on these developments. But for now I just wanted to jump on and thank you for your ongoing, awesome support of this podcast. Just knowing that you're listening, and not just listening, but actively living into the biblical truths that we get to discuss on the show. We just feel so thankful that we get to do this and so thankful to you for making it possible by tuning in and trusting us to be a small part of your journey. This week's episode comes from a talk that Joe gave recently at a Christmas outreach event. The topic was peace on earth, which sadly and ironically often seems hardest in the buildup to Christmas, but not this Christmas. That's my prayer and I hope this Advent message is a blessing for you personally, as well as a meaningful listen for any friends or family who are interested in learning more about the true gift of Christmas this year. What it really means for the world that God came not to condemn us or fight with us, but to be with us and to fight for us and to give us his perfect peace. May God himself be your peace this year and may he fill you with renewed hope not only for 2026 but for an eternity together with him. Here's Joe.  

Jo Vitale [00:02:38] One of my favorite parts of Advent season at the moment is that my five and six-year-old boys, they're getting really into carols at this age, but they have no idea what the words are. And so, I just love listening to them sing completely the wrong things to Christmas songs, and case in point, just the other day, I was listening to a carol that goes like, "Glory, hallelujah." And suddenly I heard my five year old yelling, "Boring, hallelujah." I'm hoping it was an accident and not like a more general statement on how he feels about worship. But for any of you who might relate to that feeling at this point, maybe because you're like, you know what, I'm already maxed out on Christmas carols. And at this stage, I have come into a place of boring hallelujah also. Just don't play me any more songs. I'm hoping this morning just to re-inspire you a little by framing today's topic through what is actually, apparently, this nation's favorite carol. And like many of America's greatest cultural emblems, like the Statue of Liberty and French fries, apparently America's favorite carol also originated in France. It was written in 1847 by a poet and wine merchant called Placide Cappeau, which is both like a fantastically French name and a fantastically French job. The carol he called it Minuit Chrétien and it was translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight. In 1855, you will know it as Oh Holy Night.  

[00:04:05] So it goes, "Oh Holy night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth. Long lay the world in sin and error, pining." Pining. What are we pining for this Christmas? Many things, perhaps, but more and more in recent years, the one thing that usually tops my Christmas wish list is peace. And I'm kind of aging myself here, but some of you, you'll be old enough to remember the movie, Miss Congeniality. Does anyone? Some of you will remember this movie, I really hope. When Sandra Bullock she played an FBI agent, she has to go undercover at a Miss America beauty pageant. And there's this one classic scene in the film that you may remember where every beauty contestant is asked, what is the one thing that our society needs? And each one responds in turn, world peace. World peace. Except for Sandra Bullock's character, who says, well, that would be harsher punishment for parole violators, stan. It was like dead silence. And then she goes, and world peace. Everyone applauds. World peace is the dream of beauty queens everywhere. If only the rest of us could sustain that kind of idealism. But it's a hard sell, isn't it? World peace is a hard sale. After all, in most dictionaries, peace is defined as a lack of conflict. And what human being has ever managed to live a life or a decade or a year or even a week absent of conflict? And then you add in another 8 billion or so people on the planet, and we see the scale of the problem.  

[00:05:49] No wonder certain worldviews like Buddhism will teach that if you want to escape suffering and attain enlightenment, then you need to detach yourself not only from possessions, but from people. So long as you remain emotionally invested in relationships, you're only opening yourself up to a whole world of hurt. And once again, this Christmas, it does feel like the whole world is hurting, isn't it? A lot of our news feeds, we're watching real countries, real communities, real families, real people just torn apart, and we watch in horror and we just feel so completely helpless to do anything about it. As a child, I used to wonder how it could be that people could ever get to the point of killing each other? And now I just feel sad that I feel like I can actually trace the trajectory these days because we watch it play out in real time, don't we? From disagreement to devaluing to dehumanizing somebody to destroying them. And these days you don't even need to go outside of your house to go to war, do you? All it takes is a quick glance at your phone in the morning, and it's like, bam! You've been dragged into out waged wars before you've even got out of bed. I mean, it's a weird world we live in where many of us have to gird our loins before we've even put on our underwear in the morning. But in the words of the acclaimed social commentators and prophetic voices of the hair metal generation, guns and roses, welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here every day.  

[00:07:19] You learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play. If you hunger for what you see, you'll take it eventually. You can have everything you want, but you better not take it from me. And to think that that was a commentary on culture when it was written 35 years ago, in 1987, three years before the World Wide Web, cell phones, and before we'd even entered into the jungle of social media. When you live by the law of the jungle, everything is a power play, and we're all driven by this kind of savage pack mentality which demands of us, whose side are you on? Are you for me or are you against me? Are you an ally or an enemy? No wonder we all feel so on edge all the time. And it's not even just the walls outside that keep us up at night. As the evidence increasingly demonstrates, internally, we are just as conflicted. According to today's data, over 30 percent of adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. That's one in three. And 55% of Americans say they daily experience stress throughout a large portion of the day. I was actually surprised that wasn't even higher. We call it a mental health crisis, but we could just as easily call it a peace crisis. Can we?  

[00:08:41] At every age and stage of life, it's like everybody is experiencing this existential lack of peace. One way or another, all our man-made solutions, they just seem to fall short in dealing with it. Some will say, okay, the best remedy is you've just got to get away for a while. Because think about it, when you picture peace, if you close your minds for a second and just picture peace, how many of you are imagining like waves crashing on a beach or the crunch of snow glistening somewhere on a mountain? Basically, when you think about peace, you usually think about a place that has nobody else in it. There are no people there in your picture of peace. So maybe the solution is, hey, you guys just need to be more European in your approach to vacations. Just take more time off. But, of course, that has limitations, doesn't it? I mean, for starters, what incredible luxury it is for people to be able to take time off? And sure, even if you can, that's great for a few weeks, but what about the rest of the year? And so others suggest, well, maybe a better solution to deal with this lack of peace is to kind of mentally get away. So you could adopt techniques like meditation or mindfulness, which around 18 percent of adults in America today regularly practice. And I see the logic to that. I mean, if the primary stresses in your life are external, I can see how it would be helpful to shut them out for a time and just redirect your focus for like half an hour a day.  

[00:10:06] But, of course, what do you do if the wars are not only raging out there, but they're also raging in here? What if the greatest battles that you're engaged in are actually the ones you're fighting with yourself? Because of course the problem for searching for peace by getting away from everybody else, is that there's always one person you can't get away from, and that's you. Which is why others look to secular theories as a tool to battle that internal lack of peace. And one of the most sought-after approaches would be CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. And in brief, CBT kind of takes this approach that those with anxiety are typically overestimating or exaggerating the danger of the things that they're worried about. And so CBT is designed to help us see that our lack of peace, our fear, it's out of proportion with the reality of the circumstances that are causing it. And, of course, sometimes that's absolutely right, isn't it? There are circumstances where this can be super helpful, especially with respect to irrational fears. For example, if you had a crippling fear of spiders in a region of the world where actually there aren't any dangerous spiders, then yeah, let's talk that through and develop new patterns of thinking that align with reality. But the problem is what if our most fundamental fears are actually not out of proportion with reality? What if our fear of spiders isn't actually really a fear of spider at all, but more fundamentally a fear of a loss of control and powerlessness?  

[00:11:38] What if our lack of peace stems from the fact that the very relationships that mean the most to us, they're not going to last forever? How can they when we're finite beings? Some of you heard me share a couple of weeks ago in church about a miscarriage I went through in 2019. Now, this Advent I'm watching my utterly wonderful 40-year-old big brother go through radiotherapy and chemo after receiving a very severe cancer diagnosis a couple months ago. When your unborn child dies, or you find yourself researching statistics about cancer survival rates, I think that fear of losing a loved one no longer seems out of proportion to reality. What about another common fear that disrupts our peace? The fear of never being enough, never living up to our own potential. I heard a paraphrase of the writer Henry David Thoreau a number of years ago. He said, "Most men live a life of quiet desperation, and die with song still inside of them." And I remember thinking when I heard it, well, if that's how men feel, what about the women? How many women have a song inside them that deep down you fear I'm never going to get to sing it. I'm never going to get to sing my song.  

[00:13:00] It hit me earlier this year that I'd spent most of my life feeling like I was too young to do so many of the things that I always dreamed about doing. And then one day I woke up and I suddenly felt too old. And I was like, where's the middle section? Where is the part where I felt ready and able? But I think for so many moms that is precisely the season where we're parenting so intensely and in such a pervasive state of exhaustion that we can start to feel as if, somewhere in the mix of being like what everybody else needs us to be, we've totally lost sight of who we actually are. It's kind of funny, isn't it, how at the very same time we can feel both so desperately needed and so completely sidelined. We're so filled up by the joys of our kids and our family, and yet at the same time so empty. And upon reflection, it's just not surprising that there are so many wars out there, not when we're constantly fighting for peace on so many fronts in here. As human beings, we're so conflicted. What does that say about us as a species? And should we conclude with the naturalists that, at the end of the day, human beings we're just mammals driven by survival instincts. That actually the lore of the jungle makes right, every man for himself. It's really the best we can hope for. Or does this kind of like irrepressible pining for peace, for a stability not just out there but in here, does that yearning signify that we were created for something more? The 20th-century professor of literature at Oxford C.S. Lewis, he once intriguingly suggested that if I find within myself longings that nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical possibility is that I was made for another world.  

[00:14:55] Could this be true? What if the beauty queens had it right all along? Which is it? Are we hardwired for war, or are we purposed for peace? Well, it all depends. It depends on Christmas. Long lived the world in sin and error pining till He appeared. My husband Vince grew up to become a philosopher, but his parents really weren't surprised by that decision. They weren't surprise because when Vince was six years old and they told him that he had to write a wish list for Santa on a paper plate and put it in the chimney, unlike all the other normal little boys who wrote that they wanted a bike or a dinosaur, or in the case of my kids this year, a Luigi robot and a candy cane, the only gift that Vince wanted that year was that answer to one question. And that question was what he wrote on the paper plate. "Dear Santa and God, was God ever born?" I think it's the only gift his parents never actually gave him. I don't know how to answer that question. I love the logic here. He figured he'd cover all bases. Like if God doesn't know the answer, surely Santa will. But isn't that just like the question of all questions? Dear Santa and God, was God ever born? In other words, is there anyone out there beyond the vast expanse of the universe who actually cares about the wars raging around us and the wars raging within? And cares enough to do something about it, to actually come down and live among us, to be born as one of us, to experience what we experience, to step into the war zone with us? As someone who spent a lot of my life studying questions about the truthfulness of the Bible, one of the things I've come to appreciate about the Gospels, the four accounts of Jesus' life that are recorded in the New Testament, is that they make all kinds of historical and therefore testable claims.  

[00:17:02] Christianity doesn't just tell you to blindly believe, just believe. It invites your questions by stating that there is a God who doesn't just stay far off in this unsearchable way, but who steps into recorded human history and walks among us and leaves a historical footprint. The Christian faith opens itself up to be tested, to be found true or false. That is the invitation of Jesus Christ to every one of us. Come and see. Come and see for yourself. Who do you say that I am? If you haven't yet taken him up on that invitation, I strongly encourage you to do so. If you do, I think you'll be astonished by what you find. For my husband Vince, it was in college, he finally got the answer to that question that he asked Santa at six years old after looking extensively into the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then he found himself falling on his knees one evening in his college dorm room and exclaiming out loud, "Oh my gosh, this really happened." And what would it mean for us if that were true? If he really did appear that first Christmas, if it really happened? Well, it would mean a lot of things. But one of the things it would means is that we need to rethink the way that we talk about peace. I mentioned earlier that most dictionaries define peace as a lack of conflict. But if that's all that peace means, that's actually a definition that drives us apart. Because whenever our differences seem unbridgeable, as they often feel today in our culture, don't they? Then our pursuit of peace, it seems to result in us simply resigning ourselves to a kind of life of social distancing. The best thing we can do for peace is just to avoid each other, just avoid anybody who sees the world differently from you in any kind of way.  

[00:19:03] In the Bible, the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, it actually carries a far more robust meaning. It actually means completion and wholeness. It's not about what's lacking or missing. It's about what is actually there. Biblically speaking, real peace is not the absence of tension. It's the harmony that comes when we relate to one another as we're actually supposed to, the way we're made to. In other words, if a search for peace has you trying to get far away from other people onto that beach or up that mountain, and actually, according to Christianity, you're running in precisely the wrong direction. Isolation is not the answer. Intimacy is. But not just any old intimacy. We all know that getting up close and personal with other conflicted people only generates more conflict. What we need is a relationship that grounds us. A relationship that can actually anchor us so securely that we're no longer spent spiraling by the chaos that is going on around us because right at the center of our identity we live from the intimacy that comes from being fully known and yet fully loved. I'm talking about relationship with God himself. Perhaps for some of you this morning it never occurred to you that this might be something that you're missing out on. Maybe it never even crossed your mind actually that there was a God for you to miss. But even as I say it, you're wondering, well, Jo, what does a relationship with God have to do with peace? So glad you asked. Just think about it. If at the center of reality there's a creator God, a God who in his very nature is love and joy, goodness and peace. And this God intentionally created you for the purpose of experiencing all of those things through relationship with him, then it only makes sense that if you're living life disconnected from the one who actually designed you to experience those things with him, to be in deepest relationship with him, then that dissonance is going to have a massive impact and a ripple effect throughout every other relationship in your life, even right down the way that you see yourself and treat yourself.  

[00:21:28] See, according to Christianity, it's this fundamental conflict between ourselves and God and the separation that follows on from it that accounts for this underlying lack of peace in our lives. In the words of St. Augustine of Hippo, you've made us for yourself, O God. And our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. See, by themselves, neither therapy, nor meditation, nor medication, nor detachment, nor time out have the power to bring you the peace that you're actually searching for. There is only one person who can do that, and that's Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, who came to us 2,000 years ago on that first Christmas, as the angels sang on the night of Jesus' birth, "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests." Peace on earth because peace has literally been born on earth in the form of a person. The Bible describes Jesus this way. It says, "For he himself is our peace. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we have access to the Father by one Spirit." Even as I say those words, they may sit uneasily with some of you. Perhaps you're someone who cannot stand the idea of being coerced into anything. And so given the power differential that would inevitably exist between you and God, you feel like any kind of relationship with Him would just inevitably consist of a kind of forced peace. And I get that. If God showed himself to be a tyrant, this would be an absolutely justifiable fear. But just consider how this Prince of Peace comes to us. You notice a warrior armed for battle, ready to crush us into submission for our rebelliousness. But in total humility and weakness, born this vulnerable baby in a contested land at a time when other infants were being slaughtered at the command of their tyrant king until he himself is forced to flee with his parents as an asylum seeker into Egypt.  

[00:24:00] And his ending was even more violent than his beginning as that baby boy grew up to be condemned as a criminal for blasphemy. He was stripped, whipped, tormented by crowds. He was nailed to a Roman cross. An execution recognized as the most demeaning and excruciating in the ancient worlds. And yet, somehow, despite the terror that book-ended the life of Jesus Christ, despite the conflict that he himself was born into, Jesus never retaliates in kind. So much so that even as he looks down from the cross at those who were killing him with a heart of love, he prays over them, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." Who does that? I mean, literally, who does that? Forget about the law of the jungle, forget about Mike makes right or every man for himself. This wasn't a man who was thinking about himself at all. This was all for us. God's plan was never about survival of the fittest, but about the fittest giving up his life for the least fit. This God who enters into our unrest and bears the scars of violence in his flesh. Also, he could just tenderly whisper to a battered and breaking world, don't be afraid. I'm not your enemy. I come in peace. From the announcement of his birth by the angels to the first greeting to his followers after his resurrection from the dead, at every point Jesus's word to us is peace. Shalom. What does that mean that God would go to such lengths for us? Not because He needed to. Unlike us, he wasn't experiencing a lack of peace, but simply because he wanted us.  

[00:26:02] Well, it means that every single one of you who've ever been wondering if perhaps you will ever be enough, you can lay those fears to rest. Wander no longer. To God, just having you is enough. He says you were worth it to him. He appeared, and the soul felt its worth. This Christmas, you are seen. You are sought. And you are loved more than you could possibly comprehend. A number of years ago, I learned for the first time about the prolonged and painful history of conflict in the country of Colombia. And back in 2010, the country Colombia had already lived through 50 years of civil unrest between their government and the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, this rebel group comprised primarily of young men who were living deep in the jungle and launching attacks on unsuspecting civilian towns. And during that half a century of conflict, over 200,000 people had been killed. And nearly six million were displaced. And yet, despite the hurt and the anger and the devastation, many Colombian families just longed for their lost sons to stop fighting and to return home to them. And so in 2010, the Colombian military, they launched a campaign called Operation Christmas. And heading deep into the jungle, the military, they went to the rivers where they knew that most of the militants were camped out near, and they filled those rivers with thousands of floating LED lights. And then the military went along the main jungle tracks where the rebels were hiding, and they decorated these giant 75-foot trees with Christmas lights, and they would automatically light up whenever anybody passed by. But inside every single one of those lights floating in the river and hanging next to every single one of those giant Christmas trees was written this message, "If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home." And as a result of Operation Christmas, significant numbers of young rebels did lay down their weapons and they abandoned the jungle and they returned home as sons to their estranged families.  

[00:28:27] But you know what, long before the Colombian government ever came up with this plan, it was God himself who first launched Operation Christmas. When Christmas really did come to the jungle, when Jesus Christ stepped into a world where we were at war with each other and at war with ourselves and into the middle of that darkness, the light of the world was strung up on a tree to light the way home for anybody who's lost their way. And all of this was done to fulfill a promise that Jesus makes himself. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. And what a promise that is, that we no longer need to spend our lives fighting just to make it or feeling orphaned by the conflicts around us, not when there's a God who willingly walks into the war zone and lay down his own life to bring us home. This is the God whose declaration of love was announced by those angelic voices in the sky. I don't want to fight with you. I just want to be with you. And how radically everything changes when we come to know peace, not as a proposition, but as a person. A person whose presence is so powerful that one touch can restore a soul. One word can stop a storm. A God who not only acts to reconcile us to himself, but who has the power to heal even the most broken relationships and situations in our own lives. A God who not only invites us to come to him and abide with him, but who took the initiative to first come to us, to make his home in us, to be with us, Emmanuel.  

[00:30:17] When you live life with Jesus, suddenly that dream of world peace no longer feels quite so naive after all. More surely than the sun rises, I believe that one day his reign of perfect peace will come and a thrill of hope that the weary world rejoices as yonder breaks a new and glorious dawn. It's because my brother knows this Prince of Peace so intimately that when I spoke to him on the phone last week as he was going through another round of cancer treatment and I asked him how he was feeling, his response was just the furthest thing from a boring hallelujah. Instead, he said that he was full of hope. And he was doing really well because he said that the scriptures that he was reading and the worship songs he was singing had never felt more solid to him. It reminded me of something my dad said two years before when actually he was going through a rare form of bone marrow cancer and battling for his life. He said this, "I'm not afraid. The future is bright no matter what." Peace on earth indeed. So how are we all doing this morning? My guess is that many of us feel just a bit exhausted, so tired of just having to fight for every little thing all the time, tired of living in this constant conflict out there only to go home and feel just as conflicted in here. More than anything, you're sitting here this morning being like I need that kind of peace in my life today. I just need peace. And if peace is a person, then I need him. I just need more of Jesus Christ. This peace who isn't impersonal or isolating, but this God himself who is our peace and whose very presence is just utterly transformational as he embraces us and he carries us through even the most unbearable situations. And somehow he gives us this peace that just completely surpasses all understanding, but it's real. It's so very real.  

[00:32:41] And so, if you're wondering how can I experience that this morning? How can I get a piece like that that would bring me through both the best and the worst of times? Then the good news is that just like any other gift you're going to receive this Christmas, it's not about anything that you have to do or make happen. This isn't another thing you have to put on your Christmas list to get done this week. You just have to receive God's gift. God says he gives perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in Him. It's a gift. As it says of Jesus at the beginning of John's gospel, "Yet to all who did receive him, to those that believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." And you don't even have to wait for Christmas. You can receive that gift today. You can receive it in this moment. You can receive it right here this morning. If that is something that you would like, if you would like to receive that gift of peace, if you would to receive the one who is peace, Jesus Christ, I'm then going to give you the opportunity to do that this morning. In just a moment, I'm going to pray for us. And as I pray, if what I pray is something that you agree with and you want to say to God, then just feel free to make those words your own in your heart as I pray. But before I pray I'll give you a moment just to reflect, just to think about what am I asking God for this Christmas? What do I need from him this morning? What is the gift that I long to receive from him today? Take a moment to reflect on that. I'll read that carol to us. And then for anyone who does want to receive the Prince of Peace this morning, I'll just pray for us.  

[00:34:33] O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining till he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices as yonder breaks a new and glorious morning. Fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices. O night divine. O night when Christ was born. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Change shall he break for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we. Let all within us praise his holy name. Christ is the Lord. O praise His name forever. His power and glory evermore proclaim. Lord Jesus, we come before you this morning just acknowledging our need of you. Lord, and our complete inability to make things happen for ourselves or to resolve all of the issues out there and to fix all of this stuff that's going on inside us in here. Lord, we need You. Lord, we pine for a peace that by ourselves we just do not have. But God, we thank you that that is who you are. That you yourself are our peace, that you came to be peace on earth and to bring peace to every single one of us who wants to receive that gift from you today.  

[00:36:43] And God, we're so sorry just for the ways that we have been at war whether it's been with others in our lives, whether it has been with you. God, but today we just ask that you would help us just to lay down our weapons. Lord, and just to receive the gift that you have for us. Lord, I thank you for that invitation this morning. If Christmas can come to the jungle, then you can come home. And Lord, this Christmas, we want to come home to you. Lord, we want to abide with you. Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, we just want to be with you and for your perfect peace, to be just at the very center of who we are as you made it to be. So Lord, I pray that even right now you would just fill us up by the power of your Holy Spirit to receive that gift of your perfect love, of your forgiveness, of your freedom. And would you come and be our peace again this year? In Jesus's name we pray. Amen. Jo Vitale We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away. 

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