When Life Goes Sideways, God Stays | Shawnee Community Christian Church

We’ve all had those moments where life gets complicated, heavy, or completely upside down. We sit in the quiet, or we lay awake at night, crying out into the dark, “Where are you?” It is an honest, weary question that every human faces sooner or later. When the world feels fractured and we are navigating a tough season, it’s easy to look up at the sky and feel like we’ve been left to figure it out all on our own.

But this week, as the global church recognizes Ascension Sunday, we are reminded of a powerful truth: God is not a “peace out, y’all” kind of God. God is the God who stays.

“Before things got incredibly difficult, Jesus sat at the table with his friends, shared a final meal, and looked up to heaven to pray for them. He basically said: ‘Father, I’ve done what you asked, and now I’m coming back to you. But my friends are still out there in the thick of it. Protect them. Keep them close and keep them united, just like you and I are united. And I’m not just asking for the people sitting at this table right now—I’m praying for the ones who will believe down the road because of them. I want them to know they belong to us, that they are completely loved, and that they carry our joy inside them no matter what happens’.”

John’s gospel doesn’t give us a dramatic scene of Jesus floating up into the clouds while the disciples stand around staring blankly at the sky. Instead, it gives us an intimate table conversation. This prayer was spoken right on the edge of the most painful, grief-filled moments of the disciples’ lives. Jesus knew they were about to enter a confusing, liminal space.

He didn’t pray to take them out of the hard realities of the world; he prayed to sustain them through it.

When Jesus repeatedly tells God, “They are yours,” he is establishing an unbreakable boundary of ownership and love. You belong to God. That prayer didn’t stop in the upper room; it has traveled generation by generation, trailing after us through our happiest days and our most challenging nights, echoing all the way to us today in Shawnee, Kansas.

For centuries, we’ve called these final chapters of John the “Farewell Discourse”. But what if we changed our outlook? What if we called it the Beginning of the Conversation? The Ascension isn’t a story about abandonment or God becoming distant. It’s a transition of responsibility. We are a family of neighbors tasked with living out Jesus’s compassion, love, and healing in real-time. We aren’t doing it alone—we are riding on the coattails of a faith handed down to us, covered in prayer, and walking forward with the Holy Spirit. God goes with you to complete the work you’ve been given. Let’s step off the porch and get to work together.

YouTube Chapters

• 0:00 – The Vulnerable Front Porch: Sitting Beside Jesus
• 1:15 – The “I am in You and You are in Me” Breakdown
• 4:32 – Grounded Insight: What to Do When Life Goes Sideways
• 7:15 – Active Hope: Turning a Farewell into a New Beginning