Peace - Part 3

Being attractive without having to look good – Peace

God’s Extreme Makeover - Part 2

“But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, He will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”   Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)

I.    The Picture

1. Peace with God

“… by Him [Jesus] God reconciled everything to Himself.  He [God] made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of His blood on the cross.”  Colossians 1:20 (NLT) 

1. Peace with others

“Do your part to live in peace with everyone....”  Romans 12:18 (NLT)

“Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” 2 Corinthians 13:11 (NLT) 

1. Peace with self

 [Jesus said] “I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give isn't like the peace the world gives.  So don't be troubled or afraid.”  John 14:27 (NLT) 

"It's a way of life.  It's a way of bringing all together as one.  I'm still in there [the building].  I'm not here yet."  Bonnie Scarborough, 63, holistic practitioner. 

"The Dalai Lama’s teaching is not easy to do." Jiju Li, 25, graduate student.

"I'm going to get in the car forget everything I heard in five minutes.  That's why I bought the CD."  Scott Frinske, 36, personal trainer

"I would go to hear his message every day."-Brenda Dineen, teacher.

"It's all great, but as a human being, you have a tendency to fall back to the previous old habits." Anyharan Sinnarajah, 27, physician.

“…if the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is life and peace.”  Romans 8:6 (NLT) 

II.  The Problem

1. Enemies of Peace: stress, noise, information overload, relational conflict, myself

1. Coping with Enemies; worry, controlling, consuming, procrastinate

1. Digging Deeper;  fear, anger, guilt

III.  The Plan

F - Filter the noise

“Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right.  Think about things that are pure, lovely and admirable.  Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  Philippians 4:8 (NLT)

I - Investigate for truth

“Keep putting into practice what you learned, what you heard, and what you saw and the God of peace will be with you.”  Philippians 4:9 (NLT)

X- ‘X’ out the enemies of peace

“Don’t worry about anything…Instead pray about everything…Fix your thoughts on…”  Philippians 4:6-9 (NLT)

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”  Romans 5:1 (NLT)

“He included everyone in His death so that everyone could also be included in His life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.  Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look…Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new.  The old life is gone; a new life burgeons!  Look at it!  All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and Him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.” 2 Corinthians 5:15-18 (Msg)

[Jesus]"Are you tired?  Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with Me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. 
Walk with Me and work with Me — watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 
Keep company with Me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."  Matthew 11:28-30 (Msg)

Keep playing games and avoid peace or pursue God’s fix and exchange your restlessness for His rest!

Being attractive without having to look good – Peace

God’s Extreme Makeover - Part 2

This week is Part 3 of a four part series where we’re taking this phrase “extreme makeover” that has become a very popular concept in our culture.  But the reality is as we talked about last week is that this is just a temporary fix.  It’s kind of like the pothole effect.  I hate to describe us as potholes but you’ve got a pothole and what do you do when you see a pothole in the road?  You fix it up.  But eventually it becomes a pothole again. 

A lot of times we’ll do that with out bodies.  We try to become more attractive externally, where we live, what we drive, what we look like – that type of thing.  But the truth is that it just becomes a patch-up or an adjustment.  And at the end of the day we’re left with who we are on the inside.  Your inner world.  And your inner world makes up who you are.  How you live.  The decisions that you make.  Your ability to give and receive love.  Because this outer makeover doesn’t fully satisfy, we’ve got to go after something else that would make us more attractive.  That’s why we’re going after the inner world.  God’s extreme makeover.  That God would do something on our inside that we can’t do on our own.

Galatians 5, had something called the fruit of the Spirit.  “When the Holy Spirit controls our lives He will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.”  This is God’s picture of an extreme makeover that He wants to do in our inner world. 

Peace is something that we desperately want whether we know it or not.  This week as I’ve been talking to people I’ve just been planting the seed: “When I say peace, what do you think of?” just trying to get a pulse of where people are at.  People define peace in many different ways.  Some say peace is vague and they don’t know whether they have it or not.  Some say it’s confusing.  Some says it’s big.  One guy said to me, “Peace seems so global.”  That was interesting.  I kind of understand the confusion because when I’ve seen that bumper sticker “Visualize World Peace” that confuses me.  I don’t really get that.  I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.  Maybe you ought to visualize better bumper stickers!

But we may not come up with a common definition with thousands of us but here’s what I do know.  Even if you can’t define it I know you want it. 

      I know you want it physically.  We want to feel at peace physically.  That’s why so many people medicate themselves.  We’ve become a Prozac nation.  I want to feel at peace with my body. 

      We want peace relationally.  We want to be in harmony with one another in our significant relationships.  We don’t want there to be tension because when there’s tension I think about it all the time and it makes me feel awkward.  And I want to be at peace with other people.

      We want peace for our future.  Isn’t that so much of what politics is about – planning a peaceful future?  Some of you are working so hard for your retirement.  You want to retire in peace because once you retire there’s no worries.  Right?  There’s no problems any more.  You just kick back on your lounge chair, drink your prune juice, become a burden to your children.  That type of thing.

But lets see if we can’t clear this up a little bit and come to a picture of God’s peace.  Like I did last week what I do with peace is I want to take a look at the picture of peace, the problem we have in getting peace, then we’ll talk about God’s plan for peace.

I.    The Picture

1.    Peace with God

The biblical word “peace”, the biblical definition in the Bible is “absence of war.”  That’s what peace means – absence of war.  That there would be absence of war between me and God.  Absence of war between you and me.  An that there would be absence of war in my inner world, in my life – with me.

Colossians 1:20 says “By Him [Jesus] God reconciled everything to Himself.  He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of His blood on the cross.”  Because of what Jesus did on the cross, I don’t have to be at war with God.  I can have peace with God because of what Jesus did on the cross. 

2.    Peace with others

I can have peace with others.  This is a more difficult challenge.  Maybe you’ve heard of Charlie Chaplin.  One of his famous quotes he said, “Oh, I’ve got peace with God all right.  It’s just that I don’t have peace with man.”  We can understand that.  A lot of people in here are going, “Me and God we’re tight.  But it’s the other people.” 

But these scriptures challenge us to live in peace.  Romans 12:18 “Do your part to live in peace with everyone.”  2 Corinthians 13 “Live in harmony and peace.  Then the God of love and peace will be with you.”  So let’s get the picture here.  God wants us to have peace with Him.  We’re challenged to have peace with others. 

3.    Peace with self

Then because of what God has already done, we can have peace with ourselves.

Jesus said in John 14 “I am leaving you with the gift.  Peace of mind and heart.  And the peace I give isn’t like [circle “isn’t like”] the peace the world gives.  So don’t be troubled or afraid.”  The peace the world gives is made up of empty promises.

Last week the Dalai Lama was in town.  One of his subjects as usual, was how to have inner peace.  On Monday, April 19th The Province quoted many people who had gone to his talks as saying this,

"It's a way of life.  It's a way of bringing all together as one.  I'm still in there [the building].  I'm not here yet."  Bonnie Scarborough, 63, holistic practitioner.  (And bumper sticker creator)

"The Dalai Lama’s teaching is not easy to do." Jiju Li, 25, graduate student.

"I'm going to get in the car forget everything I heard in five minutes.  That's why I bought the CD."  Scott Frinske, 36, personal trainer

"I would go to hear his message every day."-Brenda Dineen, teacher.

"It's all great, but as a human being, you have a tendency to fall back to the previous old habits." Anyharan Sinnarajah, 27, physician.

The truth is, it's not easy for us to change, we're going to forget everything in five minutes, and you're going to fall back into the old habits.  That’s why the scriptures make this promise in Romans 8 “If the Holy Spirit controls your mind, there is life and peace.” 

As we get this picture let me be very, very clear.  We’re talking about absence of war with God, absence of war with one another, and the absence of war within ourselves, it’s very different.  It’s different than relaxation.  This peace does not mean that there’s no longer going to be difficulties or hardships in your life.  Actually just the opposite.  Peace is the sense of contentment and confidence in the midst of the difficulties.  When some storms are going around in my outer world that in my inner world I can have peace.  Does that make sense?  That’s God’s picture of peace.  It’s what we want.  But with all things that we so desperately want, they’re not easy to own. 

II.  The Problem

1.    Enemies of Peace

The problem is I have my little list of enemies of peace but I want to hear about yours.  Let me ask you this.  What is an enemy of peace in your life?  Kids!  You didn’t have to think about that did you?  That actually came out kind of violent, too!  Finances.  Violence.  Cars.  Stress.  Doubt.  Work.  Illness. Maybe this is a pretty whacked out service.  I’m not sure.  You didn’t even have to think.  Those came fast.

I’ve got a big list and a little list.  Let me give you my little list, my list of enemies to peace – traffic, bills, long lines,  hostile people, cell phones raining in church, people who litter with cigarette butts, commercials, any amount of time spent in line waiting for a ferry, email, forwarded email, email stories that I must pass on to everyone I know or else my children will die in a fire.  That’s my little list.  My big list is more universal.  These get everyone. 

Stress.  How many of you feel stress during your week?  A lot of people.  What’s funny about that is we live on the Sunshine Coast.  Everyone else in the world thinks this is the most stress free environment and the world.  This is where they come to take their holidays and get away from stress.

Noise.  We love noise.  As a matter of fact, when it’s silent we get bothered.  When it’s quiet we say things like, “What’s wrong?” We wake up to noise – alarms.  We can go all day long with noise.  And that is an enemy of peace.

Information overload.  We’re surrounded by information.  There is always a car accident, a suicide bombing, a child that’s gone missing and other terrible things that I cannot help but knowing about.

      Relational conflict.  If everything in your world is perfect and yet you have problems in your relationships, life stinks.

Me.  I’m an enemy of peace.  You write your own name there.  You are an enemy of peace.  Have you ever gone to the grocery store only to return home to discover you have forgotten some of the most important groceries.  So you have to out again.  We say the wrong thing at the wrong time and it causes problems.

What happens when these enemies of peace come into our life?  They put us in this constant reactive state.  When the enemies of peace come in we want to react to them.  We want to beat them down.  To solve them. We want to fight them off.  We want to take care of them.  They’re always causing us to react.  They put us in this uncomfortable state.  The way that we react, is we cope.  We have learned these coping strategies from when we were little children.  Now we’re older children and we have learned to cope.  You might recognize some of these.

2.   Coping with Enemies

      Worry.  Worry is a coping strategy.  How many of you have a master’s degree in worry?  I can worry about anything.  Just give me a subject.  And those of us who worry, we know that the church wants to help.  Like the sign I heard about “Don’t let worries kill you.  Let the church help.”  We worry to help cope with the enemies of peace. 

       Control.  Say for example an enemy of peace comes in.  Say it’s stress.  We try to control things that we actually think we have control over.  We try to control people or environment or our schedule.  Because if I can control something then my life feels a little more in control. 

Let me open up my heart and my home a little to you.  When I feel out of control I want to go home and I want a clean home.  That’s just me.  Don’t get me wrong!  I don’t want to clean the home.  But I want a clean home.  Because if I can have a clean home then there’s some clean and tidy, some symbolism there of order.  So when I’m trying to control how things are done.  I’m a mess.  I’m just trying to control my environment.  That’s the way I cope with an enemy of peace.

      Consume.  If we have the financial resources some of us will try to consume in order to buy peace in our lives.  Then we always have our eyes on something that I want, that I could get that would bring some peace.  That car, that bigger house, whatever it is.  I have my eyes on a little IPOD.  One of those little IPODs where you can download ocean sounds and porpoises laughing and stuff like that.  I’d put it on and that would give me peace!  That could help.

      Procrastinate.  We say, I don’t worry.  I don’t try to control things, I don’t consume, I just don’t do anything.  When the enemies of peace come in I just don’t do anything.  I pretend that they’re going to go away. 

What these are – worry, control, consume, procrastinate – they’re just coping strategies.  But they put me back in the reactive state.  So that when the enemies of stress come in I react then I cope then I react again.  Just like the young physician who went to see the Dalai Lama and pointed out that we have a tendency to fall back to the previous old habits.  Why?  Because there's a different issue.

3.   Digging Deeper

Behind all of these mechanisms of worry, control, consuming, procrastination to you know what we would find at the root?

Fear.  For some of us in here you’ve got fear and oftentimes this fear is future related.  Some of you have got that in your life and you’re fearing things that are out there ahead of you.  It’s gripping at your heart. 

Anger.  You can’t have peace when you’re filled with anger.  When you’re easily triggered.  I can’t have peace when anger is there. 

Guilt.  Most of the time we feel guilt or shame of something we’ve done in the past.  As we pull back and we dig a little deeper.  We find that many of us are living with fear of what’s in the future.  We’re living with anger over our current present situation and we’re riddled with guilt from our past.  They can interrelate to one another.  I can get angry about something then all of a sudden I feel guilty that I got so angry.  Then I get fearful that I’m never going to change and nothing’s ever going to happen in my life.  They work into each other and it just creates this chaos where there is no peace. 

Now the plan has power.

III. The Plan – a spiritual fix. 

What I’d like you to do this week is… two weeks ago I challenged you to memorize the nine fruit of the Spirit which I know many of you made attempts to and many of you did.  This week I’d like to challenge you before we come back next week to take this passage in Philippians 4 and read it over and over and over this week. 

You want to take some steps towards peace in your life?  The F in this word Spiritual FIX is…

F - Filter the noise.

This is doing the possible – filtering the noise.  Notice I didn’t use the word “delete” because you can’t delete all the noise in life.  But you can filter it.  If you want to delete it you have to go live a monastic lifestyle somewhere.  Find a cave and maybe you’ve got some possibilities there.  But in the reality that you and I live in, we can only filter it.  I would define noise as this, “sound in busyness.”  That is noise, sound in the busyness in our lives.  Why do we filter the noise?  We filter the noise so we can focus on God. 

I can’t focus on God when I’m always surrounded by noise.  I can’t focus on God when I’m always on the run.  It says in verse 8 “Fix your thoughts on what is true.”  I can’t do that when I’m busy.  I can’t do that when I’m always surrounded by noise.  “What is true, honorable, right.  Think about things that are pure, lovely and admirable.  Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  You filter so you can focus.  The more time you spend with God you allow God’s presence and His truth to flush through your life and be a part of your life the more peace you’re going to have.

Let me give you a little coaching on this.  Unplug some of the noise.   You’ve maybe heard of fasting.  The Bible talks about fasting.  They would give up some food so you can take that time and spend with God and spend more time with God and focus on God.  Maybe you take a media fast.  Where you unplug sound from your life.  I’m not saying a month, I’m not saying a week.  For some of you I’m not saying a day.  Try a half-hour.  See if you could go with silence for a half-hour.  In my life everything that is plugged in is the opposite of pure, lovely, honorable, true.  Unplug.

Another thing is “Lighten up.”  I’m not referring to your personality here.  I’m referring to your schedule.  Some of us in here, we need to lighten up.  You are so, so busy that you can’t focus on God.  We need to take a hard look at our schedule.  You can’t focus on God when you’re surrounded with noise and busyness.

I think it makes me think of a question, Are you afraid to be quiet?  Does silence bring you some fear because you might have to face what’s going on?  If it does you probably have need of some quiet time, some time where you connect with God. 

So I do the possible, I Filter the noise.  The I in the word “FIX” is

I - Investigate for truth.

Paul in this letter to the Philippians, he’s writing to the church in Philippi and he says “Keep putting into practice what you learned, what you heard, and what you saw and the God of peace will be with you.”  The challenge to investigate for truth is if Jesus is the Prince of peace don’t you think it’s worthy of investigation?  If Jesus said, “I’m going to leave you but My peace I give you.”  Don’t you think that’s worthy of investigation?  If the fruit of the Spirit says, When the Holy Spirit controls your life you will produce peace, that’s worthy of investigation.  To seek after that. 

For those of us in here who are believers, followers of Christ.  That we might also investigate truth.  That we might seek to be different.   I want to investigate and to understand God better.  I want to know more about him because as I know more about him, he changes my life.” 

Filter out the noise.  Investigate the truth. 

X –cross out the enemies of peace. 

Your fear your anger, your guilt.  X out the enemies of peace.  X is not just to fit my cute little acronym although that sure does help.  But the reason why I like X is because X was the symbol or the initial of Jesus, the Christos.  X was the symbol of that.  And only Jesus can X out your fear and your anger and your guilt.  Only He can do it.  No counselor can.  No pastor can.  No self-help book can.  No spiritual guru. But only Jesus. 

“Don’t worry about anything… Don’t worry about anything, is that possible?  I know if you want to worry less you'll pray more.  Only by the supernatural power of God can He X out the deeper issues that are keeping peace from your life.   “Instead pray about everything…Fix your thoughts on…”  You memorize the rest of this.  The good things, the pure things the important things.

Above all remember that God has taken care if your greatest problem.  And now you now have peace with him.  Romans 5 says “Therefore since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith we have peace with God because [Circle “because”] of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”  You might say, “what has Jesus Christ our Lord done for us?”  Because of the cross, Jesus hanging on the cross, He can take my fear.  Because of the resurrection I don’t have to fear the future.  That God has given me hope for the future.  Because of His death on the cross, my sins can be forgiven.  The guilt that I am feeling, the shame that I live with was nailed to the cross.  God has given me a plan for today and that plan does not include for me to be fussed up and controlled by anger.  What the cross did was He took all of that, He took our old nature and He got rid of it. 

I want you to see the new.  As you see the new would you look at this beautiful passage from 2 Corinthians 5.  It’s kind of long but I want you to see it.  “He included every one in His death so that everyone could also be included in His life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.  Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look [That’s all the external stuff.  Now watch this] Now we look inside.  What we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start is created new.  The old life is gone.  A new life burgeons.  All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and Him and then called us to settle our relationships with each other.”  The new life burgeons! 

Let me ask you a question.  Where are you spiritually?  Have you experienced this new life in Christ?  Has God done this for you?  And if He has, do you feel His peace?  Is He producing peace in that new life?  And if not, what does that mean?  Chances are we’re probably in the revolving cycle of coping with enemies through worry, controlling, consuming and procrastinating. 

Or when I say where are you spiritually, you’re sitting there going, No I’ve never experienced that new life that you’re talking about.  Can I tell you the good news, the best news of the day for you?  God promises to take your old nature to fill you up with His Spirit and allow that new life to begin so you an say goodbye to the cycle of coping and saw hello to peace. 

Explain response card and Offering

In just a minute, I’d like you to take this "Making Contact" section of your bulletin, fill it out and you put it in to the box as your prayer to God saying, “God I want You to X out my fear, anger, or guilt. ”  I’d like you to do is put a big X on there.  That means I’ve never done that before.  I’ve never asked Christ into my life to rid myself of my old nature and begin His peace process in me.  The reason is a couple reasons.  One, I want you to actually feel that as your submission to God.  And the other reason is that if you put your name and maybe your email or address on there we will send you some material to help you understand what that means and what the journey that’s taken place and some frequently asked questions and some ways that you can begin growing in that relationship with God and for that peace to begin to develop.

A lot of stuff to think about.  If you forget everything I’ve talked about just capture this one last verse as if Jesus is saying these words to you, “Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion.  Come to Me.  Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life.  I’ll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with Me and work with Me.  Watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you.  Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”  That’s what I want.  I want to learn that from Him.  I want to accept that from Him.  It’s available to me. 

Here’s how I’d summarize everything.  The sermon in a sentence.  You and I have a choice.  We can keep playing games and avoid peace or we can pursue God’s fix and exchange our restlessness – the fear, the anger, the guilt – for His rest. 

Prayer:

      Maybe just in the silence of your heart if you want peace in your life repeat these words after me.  Just say something like this, “God, I want peace in my life and I can’t get it on my own.  I’ve been playing games to find it and it’s left me a unsettled in my heart and unchanged in my behavior.  I need Your supernatural help.  I invite Your Spirit into my life to X out the fear and the anger and the guilt that’s gripping my life.  I recognize that only You can do it.  I want Your peace, the peace that is different from the world.  I ask this in the name of Jesus, Amen.” 

Let's sing the first verse together and then during the second verse step out at anytime you like and place that slip of paper in the box.