Alright, let's do a review. We're in 1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter 3, Peter's about to tell a bunch of. A lot of them are slaves who are about to go through persecution. They're about to be targeted by the Roman government.
He's telling them how to have a good life. Wouldn't you like to have a good life? Where every night when you go to bed, you're like, man, I just like living. You wake up in the morning, it's like, that's another day. You wake up like, man, I can't wait to start the day.
Y'all want to live a good life. Peter tells us right here in 1 Peter 3, I'm going to tell you how to live the good life. And he says, number one, y'all remember the first thing? Guard your lips. Guard what you say.
Watch your words.
Okay. I have found that when I am not living the good life, When I'm anxious, irritated, aggravated. I can trace it back. To my words. It's kind of interesting.
He says, Number one, guard your words. Number two, we talked about this last week. Stop doing the bad stuff. Hey, sin makes you feel bad. Sim makes you feel icky.
Stop doing the bad. Start doing the good. That's the second thing. And then, number three, he says, I want you to seek peace and pursue it. And that's where I'm at.
And I'm just telling y'all. It's changing my life. I told y'all. My health was, I had some health, blood pressure, and blood work, and all that kind of stuff. As I've been practicing walking in peace, all that stuff has cleared up.
I mean, physically, I'm healthier now than I've ever felt. I'm stronger now than I've ever felt. I want to give y'all my bench press, Max, but I can't do that to be that cognitive. I'm just telling you, I feel better now than I've ever felt. I wish I had discovered peace.
Like this 20 or 30 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of trouble. In fact, y'all know who Joseph Prince is? He's a great prince. I don't agree with everything Joseph Prince said, but he said a couple years ago: God gave me.
A prophetic word to give to the church.
Now, honestly, most prophetic words I'm underwhelmed with. I'm like, that didn't come from God. If that came from God, it'd be better than that. But this is a good prophetic word. He said, God told me to tell the church.
If it is a miracle you need. It is a miracle you will get if you keep your heart at peace. What I'm finding is when I'm walking in peace, I'm seeing God move more. It's almost like God said, Look, if you want to fight the battles, you can fight the battles, but I'm telling you, if you'll back off and just hold your peace, I'll do more. By the power of my spirit, than you're doing by your sweat and effort and trying to force it to happen.
I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I am I am less stressed now. I am working less now than I think I've ever worked, and I'm seeing more accomplished because what I'm doing is just backing off and saying, Spirit of God, I'm not going to try to force this to happen anymore. This is your church. I'm going to die.
Look, Jesus, you already died once for this church. If that's not sufficient, my death ain't going to help. And so, Spirit of God, I'm just going to let you have rule and reign in this church. I'm just telling you there's something powerful about walking in the spirit of peace. In fact, if you notice this in the Bible, grace and peace go together over and over again.
The Bible keeps grace and peace, grace and peace. Grace is God's supernatural divine resources, okay? When grace and peace are put together, that tells me that grace operates in an atmosphere of peace. If I can keep my heart at peace, I can see God's divine resources flowing in my life. And so, as we talk about pursuing peace.
Two foundational verses right here. One is Ephesians 2:14 that says this. Jesus Is our peace? Like when you have Jesus, you have peace. Peace isn't just a thing, peace is a person.
When you have Jesus, you have peace. Isaiah 9:6, these prophetic messianic titles for Jesus, he will be known as Almighty God, Everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. Prince of what? Peace.
When you have Jesus, you have peace. Second foundational verse. I want you to look at this. This is in John 14:27. Jesus, incidentally, He gives this to his disciples right before they're about to go through the worst night of their life.
They're going to watch their best friend, Jesus, be tortured and crucified. And Jesus says this: John 14:27. Peace. I leave with you. My peace.
I give to you. Don't as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Wow, that tells me two things.
I want you to listen to this. Number one, Peace is yours already. A lot of y'all are asking Jesus for something that's already yours. He just says right there: not future tense, my peace one day I will give to you. No, no.
Peace, present tense, I give to you right now. I'm going away, but I leave my peace with you right now. Peace is yours as a follower of Jesus Christ.
So I want you to understand this: when you have Jesus, you have peace. Peace is already yours.
Well, Chad. If peace is already mine, he left it with me. As a follower of Jesus, why don't I have peace? Listen. My mom is a lot like me.
She doesn't like technology. And a couple years ago, to be nice, my dad bought my mom a brand new luxury car. And when I first saw it, she's like, Chan, you won't believe this thing does. Supposedly, you can, I don't know if it's AI or what, you can talk to it and it'll do this and it'll light up this. And she just started describing all this stuff.
There's so much that car will do. I think I remember this correctly. They actually sent somebody. To their house. to give her a tutorial on all the functions of her car.
Do you know what she uses on that car? The steering wheel, the brake, the gas pedal, and occasionally the blinkers. And that's it. All that is hers. But I'll just use this.
Hey, when you got born again, you were adopted as a child of God. Heaven is your home. God forgave you of all your sins, and He gave you peace and joy and all this stuff. It's yours already. Jesus says it's yours.
But a lot of you are choosing not to use what's already yours, but it's yours. Second thing I see in this verse: my peace, I live with you, peace is ours. That's number one. Number two, You have to make a choice. Jesus says, Let not your hearts be troubled.
Which tells me you can choose as a follower of Jesus. To let your hearts be troubled, to be angry all the time, tore up all the time, upset. You can choose that. Or you can choose peace. See, Jesus doesn't say, I'm going to force my peace on you.
He says, this peace is yours.
Now, you have to make a decision. You can't let your heart be troubled, but if you decide to let your heart be troubled, that's fine, but that's on you. That's not on me. Are y'all with me on that? You have to choose peace.
Jesus ain't going to force peace on you. Let not your heart be troubled. That means you have some control. You have some say in the matter. I Here's what I'm starting to learn.
Have y'all finally figured this out? You can't fix all the stuff on the outside. All you can do is maintain a peaceful heart. You do have control over your heart. You don't have control.
Listen to me.
Some of y'all are upset about the Iran war. Why is Trump not doing X, Y, and Z? Newsflash, you have no control over the Iran war. You can call up the White House and try to give your two cents worth. They're probably not going to take your call.
You don't have control over the Iran war. You don't have control over what's happening in local government. You don't have control over a lot of the circumstances that are happening on the outside. Here's one thing you do have control over: that's your heart. I was reading a book by Gordon McDonald one time.
He said, I had a friend, I think it was like in the 1960s, he was on a submarine, and he said, We were way down deep. And he said, we went underneath a Russian, a Soviet. A Soviet um battleship. And just to mess with us, they started dropping depth charges. They're going off all around us.
And the submarine was just like, the depth charges are going off all over the place. The submarine is being rocked. And the captain Goes to the bridge of the submarine. You know what the bridge is? That's the command center, that's the heart of the submarine.
And the captain looked around to make sure everybody was in place. Everything was neat and orderly. Everything is running the way it's supposed to run in the bridge. That's all the captain was concerned about. He couldn't stop the commies from dropping depth charges up top.
He can't stop that from happening, but what he can do is to make sure the command center, the heart of that submarine, is in good, orderly, working order. You can't stop all the bad stuff happening around you. Yeah. All right, how many control freaks do we have here today? All right.
Control freaks are the hardest people to get this through their head. I wanna tell you something. The quickest way to the loony bin Is try to control everything going on around you. Most of what you're concerned about, you can't control, but you can control this: what's going on in your heart. Let not your heart be troubled, okay?
Now, I'm going to do it. It's going to say a little bit cheesy. I'm going to give you.
Some peace. Peels today. Because people, y'all complain all the time. Channel, I want you to counsel me. I want to do counseling.
Why don't you do counseling here at Cross Assembly? I told y'all before, I love you too much to let me counsel you, okay? You're counseling Uh, your counseling visit to me will probably be: you come to my office, you tell me how bad life is, I'll listen to you for a few minutes, and I'll say, Life's hard, God's good, suck it up, you'll be okay, let's pray. And there's your counseling session right there. I'm I look but listen I counsel every Sunday morning At eight o'clock.
9.30 and 11 o'clock.
So let me give you some peace pills, and I want you to do three things with these. Number one. I want you to memorize what I'm going to give you. Chad, it's a lot to memorize. I can't memorize all that.
You can memorize every lyric of the big top 10 songs in America right now. You can memorize this. I want you to memorize this. I want you to meditate on this. Y'all know what I mean by meditate?
Not get in a lotus position and go, hum. Meditate means you read this with the Spirit of God's guidance slowly and kind of savor this. I want you to memorize. I want you to meditate. I want you to practice.
If after you. Memorize the verses I'm going to give you. You meditate on them? And you practice them? If it doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.
That's about as much as I can do for you here, okay?
So let's look at some of these verses.
Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the first peace pill.
Okay, here's my kind. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the first one because we're going to hit this in a few weeks because we're going through 1 Peter. And I'm going to leave off the last one.
Okay? The next time we're together, I'll share the last one. It takes some digging to get into this. There's a lot of good stuff in that last piece pill.
So we're just going to go over three today. First piece pill is this: 1 Peter 5, 6 through 7. 1 Peter 5, 6 through 7. I'll be honest with you.
Now, look, I tell y'all this all the time.
Some of these sermons I'm preaching at you.
Some of the sermons I'm preaching at us. This is something, I am a work in progress. I'm not here yet. I'm not where I need to be. But I'm seeing progress in my life.
And the verse that got me started on this journey of wanting peace was this verse right here: 1 Peter 5, 6 through 7. Peter says this: Therefore, Humble yourselves. Under the mighty hand of God. That he may exalt you in due time. Casting All your care upon him For he cares for you.
I want you to memorize that, meditate on it, and I want you to practice it. I want to say something that you're going to disagree with me. But I'm right about this. If you believe in two things, if you believe two things. You'll never be anxious, torn up, trouble again.
Two things. If you believe, number one, God is sovereign, God is in control. How many of y'all believe he's in control? Hey! Even in the bad stuff, not that he causes the bad stuff, but he allows the bad stuff.
You believe he's in control? Yeah. If you believe God is sovereign and he's in control, And number two, if you believe he cares for you. He's got your best interest in mind. He wants what's best for you.
If you believe those two things, you will never be agitated. troubled, anxious again. Because what happens is. When we hit a tough time, We either say, oh, this is out of control. God didn't plan for this to happen.
God didn't see this coming.
Okay, we either say, God's not in control, even of this, He has lost control, or we say, He's out to get me. He's mad at me because of the affair I had five years ago. He's upset because I'm not living right in this area. This disease has come into my life as punishment for doing this. He does not have my best interest.
When you go through a tough time, I guarantee you. And you get troubled and agitated and anxious and worried and upset. You either don't think God is in control.
Well, he really doesn't like you. And I see that in these verses. Peter says right here, number one, look at this. He says, verse 6: Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. That phrase, the hand of God, is used 46 times in the Old Testament.
And it always talks about the sovereign control of God. Humble yourself under God's sovereign control. Interesting that he says, it takes humility to do that. It takes humility to say, I don't like what's going on, but he's in control. I'm not.
I'm going to humble myself under God's control. I don't understand what's going on. It doesn't make sense. But he's in charge. I'm not.
That takes humility. Which tells me The converse is true. I want you to listen to this. Anxiety is a sign of pride. Anxiety means I know better than God does how things ought to be going.
If I were God, I would be a good God. I would be doing this or that. This is how I would handle it if I were God. Honestly, look at this. From now on, when you come up to me and say, Chad, I'm really anxious about such and such.
Don't say I'm anxious. Say this. Chad, I'm a proud person, and I think I know better than God how life ought to run. Therefore, I'm upset about this. Humble yourself.
God is in charge. He is in control. And then you said, verse 7: He cares for you. If you believe If you believe she's in charge, And you believe he cares for you, Peter says, then when your anxieties come, what do you do with them? You cast them on to God.
In fact, when I was a kid, I think I remember how this game goes. Y'all remember this game, Hot Potato? Remember that? Like people get in a circle, and you'd have the hot potato, and you'd pass it to the next person, to the next person around the circle. I guess what music was playing or something.
And when the music stopped, whoever's holding the hot potato, you're out.
So, the point of the game was: as soon as the hot potato hits your hand, you get it to the next person because you don't want to be caught when the music stopped holding the hot potato. Therefore, you cast it to the next person. I want y'all to start playing a game, you worry warts. And I mean this with compassion. Those of y'all who deal with anxiety, I want us to start doing that.
Let's start playing hot potato with our anxieties. As soon as this anxiety hit, we give it over to God. As soon as this problem comes, we give it to God. Hey, I'm sorry about your cancer diagnosis. Not my cancer diagnosis.
I gave it to God. It's his cancer diagnosis. Hey, I'm talking about your kid who's going off the rail. And Really, it's not my kid who's going off the rail. As soon as that hit, I gave that kid over to God.
It's God's kid who's going off the rail. When we can start casting our anxiety on God, you start to see the peace of God come into your life in a powerful way. But you have to believe. He is sovereign, mighty hand of God. He loves you.
You cast your anxieties on him because he's in charge. He loves you. If you believe those two things, you'll never be anxious again. All right. Have I lost you yet?
Let's go to peace pill number two. I want you to memorize this. I want you to meditate on this and I want you to practice this. Um Now, we usually quote Philippians 4, 6. I I think we have to Quote Philippians 4:6 in context.
So let me give you the background of this, by the way. We got some pastors, former pastors in our church, pastors listening online. Paul is experiencing really what we pastors dread the most, and that's a church split. Honestly, for years. I was concerned about, well, what if this person splits my church?
What if that? When church trouble would come, I lived in fear of a church split. I don't know why. I guess when you have a pastor's heart, you worry about stuff like that. Um Paul is in prison in Rome.
And people come to him and say, Paul, we got some problems. He said, what? Hey, said there's some church splits going on. You've done all these great works in places like Philippi and around the world. And now, Paul, we got these cocky young guys who are coming in trying to split your church and start their own church.
And what they're doing is, yeah, they're preaching the gospel.
Okay, I give it to them, they're preaching the real gospel. But their motives are not pure. They're preaching the gospel because they want to split your work and make a name for themselves. Instead of Paul getting all upset, okay, what's going to happen? I can't believe it.
You know what Paul does? We see this in Philippians 1. He says, I don't care why they're preaching Jesus. I'm just glad they're preaching Jesus. I don't care.
Split my church all you want. I just want the name of Jesus to be lifted up and glorified. That is a heart at peace.
Okay. And Paul says, here's my secret right here. Rejoice in the Lord. Always. And then he said, in case you didn't hear what I just said, again, I will say, rejoice.
Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for what, church? Nothing. It's crazy.
You tell me I can live my life without being anxious? That's ridiculous. God doesn't expect that.
Well, then, why did He put it right there? Be anxious for nothing. He wouldn't tell you to do it if He didn't think you could do it through the power of the Holy Spirit. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Now, I want you to look at the commands right here. Because what we usually do is just say, well, the Bible says, don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. Verse 6. There are a few commands surrounding that. First is this: Paul says, Rejoice in the Lord always.
Which means When things are going good, you raise your hands and you worship God. When your world is falling apart, you say it doesn't make sense. I don't like it. My eyes are wet with tears. I don't understand why God's doing this, but He is in charge.
He is in control. And I lift my hands up and I bless the name of the Lord. You have a good family and a good life. You praise God. Teen of the kids die in one day.
You do like Job does: the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord always. Which I say this again. I don't want to be legalistic and say, stop listening to your gut rot devil secular music, okay?
If the Spirit of God says, go and listen to your gut rot music of hell, keep listening to your gut rot music of hell. What I'm finding is. Back in the days when I would listen to 50% secular, and not bad stuff, 50% secular. And 50% Christian? I had about 50% of my piece.
The more I load my mind with Jesus-centered worship, And praise the name of the Lord, my peace just grows. And that's why one thing that we've talked about on the praise team, I was like, man, I don't want us just to every Sunday come and sing love songs to Jesus and Jesus, hold me, here's how I feel, here's me, me, me. You know, most of our worship in modern worship is me-centered. I don't want me-centered music. I want music to lists up the name of Jesus.
Rejoice in the Lord always, okay? And then here's a second commandment. He says, Let your, you see this in verse 5: let your gentleness be made known among all men.
Now, that Greek word for gentleness is Epiakis. I was reading one scholar, he said it's one of the hardest words to translate from Greek. into English. Epiikis means something like this. Hey, be reasonable and know when to give in.
There's some things worth fighting for. We're going to stand strong for the gospel. We're going to stand strong on moral issues. But most of the things that we squabble with other people about, Has nothing to do with eternity. It's not that big a deal.
Just let it go. Here met somebody. Everywhere you everywhere they go. Drama follows. You miss him by that?
You don't talk to my kid like that. I'm a mama there, and I'll go down to the schoolhouse and I'll jerk a knot in you because you don't talk. Everywhere they go, there's just they fight all the time. And they're posting the keyboard warriors, posting all this stuff. And Ethiopia says, now you got to just learn to just let it go.
In my job, in my business. People like to Debate and squabble all the time. And I used to debate and squabble.
Okay, we'll go at it. We'll go at it. I got my Bible verses. I am well armed. I'll take you down theologically.
That ended a couple months ago. Y'all remember everybody's getting upset with the whole Israel thing? Everybody's mad at me because I support Israel. I get in the lobby, people try to take me to task. They call up, want meetings with me to talk about my support for Israel.
And I just don't do that anymore. I'm like, man, if you don't want to support Israel. If you want God's curses on your life, man, go ahead. I'm just going to bless those who God blesses and curse those who God curses. And I just don't need to fight about this stuff anymore.
Yeah, but Israel did.
Now, look, if I use this phrase with you, you know what I'm doing. I shouldn't give you my little secret here, okay? Here's what I'm starting to say now to people. Yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah.
Maybe you're right. I just don't feel like fighting anymore. And so if we're in the lobby, And you start taking me to task on something, I'm about, yeah. Maybe you're right. All right, so.
So rejoice in the Lord always. Let your gentleness. I'm this thing. I only camp here for a second. I ran out of time last service.
I don't want to do that this service, but I think this is important. I, uh,. I had a friend in college. He transferred from Liberty. He went to our college, but he went to Liberty.
He said, man, I really feel bad about this. He said, there's a guy at Liberty that he had some kind of OCD. like a Tourette's type thing and we found out that if you said the phrase You wanna There's something that triggered it. He'd say, fight! He said, we figured it out that anytime you said, you wanna?
Something happened with it. He'd say, fight. We'd be walking across campus and he'd walk past us and we'd just go, you want to? And he'd go, fight! He said, I really feel bad about this.
He said, one morning in our dorm at 2 o'clock in the morning. I opened the door. And I shouted down the hallway, Yoana? And he said about 30 seconds later, I heard the sleepy voice go, Fight you get at two o'clock in the morning. You ever met somebody like that?
You wanna fight? What were you looking at me like that for? Why'd you cut in on me on the interstate like that? You cut in on me like that? I'll tellgate you.
I'm going to show you who's boss. Nobody cuts in front of me like that. Y'all want to fight? And Paul says, That's not you. Let the world do that.
Let your gentleness be made known to all men. And so look at this: rejoice in the Lord always. Let your gentleness be made known. The Lord is at hand. I just told y'all a second ago.
Jesus doesn't just give you peace, Ephesians 2.14. Jesus. is our peace. The Lord is at hand. Hey, when I realize the prince of peace is with me, everywhere I go, it generates peace.
I ain't lying to you. Y'all gonna think I'm crazy. When I am driving down the interstate, I imagine Jesus is right there in that passenger seat with me. Prince of Peace is right there. It's hard to get mad and cuss at somebody when the Prince of Peace is sitting right there in your passenger seat.
Well, Chad, I think Jesus shouldn't be in the passenger seat of your life. He should be in the driver's seat.
Okay. Try that tomorrow. See how that works going down the interstate. Turn it over to Jesus. Jesus takes the wheel only works to a certain point here, okay?
The Lord is at hand. He's close by. Here's what Paul says: you rejoice in the Lord always. You don't try to fight all the time. Just let it go.
Understand that Jesus is with you all the time. Then he says this: at that point, when worries come, you pray and do what First Peter says, you. You turn those worries over to God. Do you see that? Don't worry about anything, verse 6.
You pray about everything with thanksgiving. There's something powerful when you're going through a tough time and you start praying and you give that anxiety to God and you say, hey, God, incidentally, thank you for doing this and this and this and this. Oh, wait a second. The God who's worked in my life in the past, He's going to work in this situation. You pray with thanksgiving, and then it says this.
Then you do that. The peace of God. Wow. The peace of God that transcends all understanding. You know what that means?
It surpasses all understanding. It means it don't make any sense. My world's falling apart. I should be running around like a chicken with his head cut off. And I got this piece.
It doesn't make any sense. It surpasses understanding. Everybody looking at you and say, if I were going through what you're going through, I'd be losing my mind. And you got this peace. I can't understand it.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will do what? Guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And that word guard in Greek, it is a military term. Like We darn about to take off to go visit our daughter and son-in-law. They've been at several military bases.
They're now stationed in California, so we'll go visit them in California. I'm looking forward to that. If they let me into California, they'll be like, wait, you're that guy.
So, anyway. It's interesting, every time we go to the base, the military police will say, We got to see your credentials. Give them this, give them that. They'll look at it. And if our credentials are what they need to be, they'll let me in.
If our credentials aren't there, they like, you don't belong here. Get out. I can try to rush the gate if I want. I'll get shot. I can try to push my way into that base.
But if I don't have the proper credentials, that guard will not let me in the base. And what Paul is saying is: look. When you rejoice in the Lord always. When you stop trying to fight all the time and just Just relax. When you understand that Jesus is always with you, when you turn your problems over to Jesus in prayer with thanksgiving, then peace will be like an army soldier.
He'll march right outside of your heart. And when an anxious thought tries to come in, he'll say, uh-uh, you don't belong here. He'll be guarding your heart, and this worry and concern tries to come in. He'll say, uh-uh. And he'll bayonet throw the corpse to the side.
And peace of God will keep going back and forth around your heart. If you'll do what the Word of God says, the peace of God will guard your heart. Church, do you understand the powerful promises of God that He's given you? Let everybody else. Be tore up and upset.
We're different. We have a peace that passes all understanding. Yeah. Let me give you one more piece pill, and then we'll wind this thing down. Again, I'll hit the last one the next time we're back together.
Isaiah 26:3. I love this one. Again, there's just a few that God has put on my heart. It started this 1 Peter passage. This is another one God gave me to start ministering peace in my life.
I hope it helps you. Isaiah 26:3. You will keep him. In perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you. Because he trusts in you.
You will keep him in what kind of peace? Perfect peace. I'm going to say it again. Don't tell me your circumstances are different, that you can't live in perfect peace. If the Bible says you can live in perfect peace, guess what?
You can live in perfect peace. You will keep not in quasi-peace. Perfect peace. It's interesting, in Hebrew, it doesn't say perfect peace. In Hebrew it says, you will keep in peace.
Peace. The one whose mind has stayed on you. In Hebrew, if you want to emphasize something called perfect, you repeat it.
So you'll keep in peace, peace. Like Phils, you had this phenomenon before? Your wife will try and address. How's this look?
Well, honey, it looks good.
Well, does it look good or does it look good good?
Okay, it looks kind of good. And so it's not just peace. It's peace, peace.
Now, again, I want to get into the weeds too much. It doesn't say in Hebrew, you'll keep in perfect peace the mind who's steadfast on you. On you is supplied by the translators. That is implied, but literally it says, you will keep in perfect peace the steadfast of mind.
Now again, I'm trying to Pitch a hissy fit and get on my soapbox. Yeah, um But doing this all day long, and your mind going from real to real to real, post to post to post, video to video to video, keeping your mind going 100 miles an hour, that is the antithesis of a steadfast mind. I'm just telling you, modern technology, I'm not against it. Let's use it, but let's be wise because a steadfast mind is a mind that is focused, not scrolling all the time. But you will keep in perfect peace, the one whose mind is focused on you.
Church, and we'll taste them. We load our mind with the junk of this world. I got conspiracy theorists coming out my ears in this church. You load your mind with conspiracy theories, you load your mind with the news, you load your mind with how bad things are getting, and then you're coming to me wondering why you don't have peace. It's because your mind is not focused on God.
Where your mind is focused will determine whether you manifest peace or not. Like years ago, my wife and I pastored to the mountains. And now look. I'm really cheap. I've always been cheap.
I'm still cheap. And so we passed into the mountains and we had this little house in a little valley, and we couldn't get TV reception. None at all. And so my wife said, uh They want to get cable. In those days, it was a struggle in those days to pay the bills.
I said, cable. What do you think? I'm King Charles. That costs $10 a month. We don't have money for cable.
And I was walking through the woods one day near the house, and I found this piece of metal. And I pulled it out and it was an old, y'all know these big old TV antennas that are about 15 foot long? I found it is an old TV antenna. And I propped that thing next to the house. It still had vines and stuff.
It was all rusted, vines hanging off of it. And she said, you're not going to do it. I said, yeah, I ain't going to do that. And so I ran. an antenna line from our TV.
Through the window. and attached to that thing and it actually worked Here's the challenge. If we wanted to watch a TV show in Charlotte, I had to turn that antenna where it was facing Charlotte. If we wanted to watch a TV show out of Asheville, I had to turn it where it's facing toward Asheville. And I'll never forget, it's like 10 o'clock at night.
We'd watch one TV show, and I was like, you know, I wanna check out this new show. I said, honey. That shit's out of Asheville. She said, well you know what to do. And so I went out back at 10 o'clock at night and I turned that.
But what it taught me was where the antenna was directed. determined what would manifest on my TV. If your antenna is, and I'm not saying sticky head in the hand and saying, don't watch news, I'm not saying that. But if. Your antenna spiritually is focused on how messed up this world is, how bad it's getting, Trump this, Democrats that, and from morning to night, that's where your antenna is focused.
Don't be surprised if there's no peace in your life. You will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on thee. When I start focusing on the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God, that God is in charge, he's in control, I stay in the word and I realize my Father loves me. I am my beloved. He belongs to me.
He loves me with an everlasting love. As messed up as this world is, according to this book right here, one day Jesus is going to come back and make it all right. When my mind is focused on that, it manifests peace in my heart. You will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind has stayed on boots. All right, we got to get wrapped this thing up.
So let me look, let me close the way I started. Peace isn't just a feeling. Peace isn't just an it. Peace is a person. And when you have Jesus, you have peace.
And I'm not trying to denigrate what's going on in some of y'all's lives. I know what's happening with some of y'all. the kids and the cancer and this and that. I'm not downplaying that. It's tough.
But you can still have peace in the midst of a cancer diagnosis because when you have the Prince of Peace, you have peace. He's with you. That's why this whole thing in Philippians 4: the Lord is at hand, the Lord is close by. That is so critical to understand He is with me. He told me this.
I don't know if He told you this. He told me this: I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. You believe that? He's with me. There's an old legend.
I don't know if it's true or not, probably not true, but it's kind of an interesting legend. They say it was a Native American tribe, either Cherokee or um or a a plains tribe. But At rite of passage. When a young boy wanted to become a man. He's age 12, age 13.
It's okay, we have this rite of passage. Got to be sworn to secrecy. Don't tell the other boys about this. You want to be a man? Yeah.
All right. We've got this rite of passage. They would take This little Indian. Out in the middle of the wilderness. and set him down on a stump.
and put a blindfold round him.
So, you want to be a man? You sit here all night with that blindfold on. Don't take it off. And when the sun rises in the morning, you'll start seeing the sun kind of peek through that blindfold. Then you can take it off.
See, little boys out in the wilderness. He hears wolves howling. Are the wolves coming to get me? Crunch, crunch, crunch through the woods. Is that a bear coming to get me?
All night long, he sits in the middle of the wilderness, blindfolded with all these sounds. And then the morning comes, and you can see that morning light starting to creep through that blindfold. And it takes the blindfold off, and it's still kind of dark. He sees the trees silhouetted. Sees the mountains silhouetted.
And he looks on this hill and he sees a man silhouetted on that hill. And he looks a little bit closer. He was like, that's my dad. My dad was on that hill watching me all night long and I didn't even realize it. And you may be going through a major storm in your life right now.
And if the man was true when he said, I'll never leave you and I'll never forsake you, it may be the darkest night now. And spiritually, you can't tell which way is up and which way is down. But I'm going to tell you something: Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is sitting right there on that hill, and He's watching over you and He's going to protect you and He will be with you always. You are not alone. The Prince of Peace is with you and He gives you peace.
And that is why. You have to be born again. For any of this stuff to work.
So I'm going to do this. If you're watching online or on the TV, or you're another campus or you're here. You're here. And you don't know that you have eternal life. You don't know if you're going to go to heaven when you die?
Let me give you the good news in a nutshell. You're a sinner. Hey, look, before I give you the good news, I can give you the bad news. You're a sinner. I'm a sinner.
Somebody's got to pay for that sin.
Well, God will just let everybody off the hook. The moment God does not punish sin, He ceases becoming the holy God.
Somebody's got to pay for that sin.
Either you'll have to pay for it. in the eternal place of punishment. or somebody else will. 2,000 years ago, God became a man. A man's name is Jesus Christ.
He is the Son of God. He never sinned even once. And when Jesus Christ died on that cross 2,000 years ago, every sin that should send you or me to hell was put on Jesus. He paid the price. He was buried.
Three days later, he came back to life. And now, if you will turn away from your sins, you repent of your sins and turn the control of your life over to Jesus Christ. He will forgive you. Wash you. adopt you and when you die he will take you to heaven.
If you don't know that you've ever done that before, everybody bow your head right now. But you do two things. Number one I want you to imagine there's only two people in this room right now: you and Jesus. Forget about it, everybody else. And then, number two, I want you to say this to Jesus, but you're not just repeating a mantra, mantras don't save anybody.
I want you to repeat this to Jesus. And I want you to mean this with all of your heart. Say to him right now, Jesus, I am a sinner. I deserve to be punished. But Jesus, I believe.
You died for my sins. Say this to him. You took my punishment at the cross. Say this, you took my hell at the cross, you died in my place. I believe you were buried.
Tell them this: I believe three days later, God raised you from the dead. You're alive right now, Jesus.
Now this is so important. Tell him, Lord, I turn away from my sins. Yeah. I might turn to you. Please forgive me of all my sins.
Come and take control of my life. And when I die, Take me to heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. You said that's it? Yeah.
The Bible says all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Now that you're saved, listen to me. You can't keep this to yourself. You gotta let people know. And the first step in letting people know is to text cross to that number, or you can scan this cross 919-551-3036. And if you do that, we're not gonna ask you for anything.
Conversely, we're going to give you something. We're going to give you some materials and let you see how now to grow in Jesus Christ. This is not just an add-on to your life. That decision to follow Jesus is the most important decision you will ever make. It is vital that you get some follow-up.
And so, send that, okay? Hey, stand with me right now. We got a little saying here. It's all about Jesus. Demons are cast out by the name of Jesus.
Bodies are healed in the name of Jesus. I get peace in the storm because of Jesus. It's all about Jesus. Raise your hands, raise your voices, praise the name of the Lord Jesus right now. Let's lift up his name.
And that cold. You Jesus, I call you, I call you, healer, prison and reigning in power.
Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call you, Jesus, I call you, I call you sauce, worthy of the glory forever.
Something comes out of the grave. Every time I call your name, chains break, dry bones away. And every time I call your name, the gates of hell shake. And every time I call your name, chains break, dry bones away. And every time I call your name, the Gates of hell stay.
Every time I call your name, dead things come alive, dead things come alive, dead things come alive in the name of Jesus, dead things come alive, dead things come alive, dead things come alive in the name of Jesus, dead things come alive, dead things come alive in the name of Jesus, dead things come alive, dead things come alive, dead things come alive in the name I call you Jesus I call you Heathen and reigning in power something comes out of the grave every time I call you Jesus I call you I call you Savior, burning your glory forever.
Something comes out of the grave. And every time I call your name, it's all about Jesus. He is our oak, he is our rock, he is our fortress. Hey. You're going to leave this place today, and every room you go into, if there's a demon in that room, they're going to scream and run like a little baby.
Not because they're scared of you, but they're terrified of the Jesus you bring with you. Everywhere you go, when Jesus is with you, strongholds go down, the kingdom of God is advanced, miracles happen, because you bring Jesus with you everywhere you go. And so nowaday him who's able to do immeasurably more than all we ask. Or magic. According to his power.
His power. That is at work within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. throughout all generations forever and ever amen and amen god bless you beloved go change the world for jesus christ Uh
