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Laura Johnson
Welcome to the weekly podcast of Sisterhood at River Valley Church. River Valley is an exciting and thriving church where you will find friendly people, a casual atmosphere and relevant teaching. We believe in a life-giving, positive church culture where people worship God, connect with one another and find purpose in life.
Well, we are on lesson eight of our study on the identity of the believer. And today, are gonna talk about the part of our identity that says we have the peace of God and therefore our identity is peaceful. That's who you are. Alright. So Jesus said in John fourteen twenty seven, peace I leave with you.
Speaker 1:My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. So Jesus said here, he gave us his peace. Peace is a gift. Can't be earned, can't be taken away, and that's why you and I can depend upon the peace of God being available to us always.
Speaker 1:Always. There's never an instance in our lives when his peace is not available to us. Alright? So, what is this peace? Well, unlike the world's version of peace, God's peace has little to do with our circumstances.
Speaker 1:It's not reliant on them. God's peace is completely different. So, let's look at how he defined peace. Start with the old testament word for peace, that's the word shalom. And, it means completeness, welfare, health, prosperity, rest, safety.
Speaker 1:It means all is and all will be well. It's an amazing word, isn't it? The New Testament word in the Greek is similar. It is the word, means prosperity, quietness, rest, to set at one again. Alright?
Speaker 1:So, if we look at these definitions, can see that if we have peace, we are whole. Nothing is broken and nothing is missing. Now, the world says we have peace in the absence of trial. But God's version of peace, it's not about what isn't there, it's about what is there or rather who is there. See, we will always have peace because God is there.
Speaker 1:He's the Prince of Peace. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, so all is and all will be well. God's peace, by definition, sets everything at one again. It brings everything back together. It repairs what was broken.
Speaker 1:It replaces what was missing. It completes. This is, I mean, this is amazing. Now, for peace to be all of this, it can't be passive, like just a good warm feeling. I feel really peaceful.
Speaker 1:Peace has to be active. In fact, aggressively so. Because look at this definition, look what we're talking about. Peace takes over a situation. It dominates.
Speaker 1:It sees chaos and confusion and it brings that stuff into order. You know, peace to us, it feels blissful and it feels very gentle and we love that feeling, but the truth of the matter is peace is a force to be reckoned with. It is powerful. Now, the world's version of peace is a cheap counterfeit. It is not what we want, it is not what we should settle for, and it is not what we were promised.
Speaker 1:So let's look at what we were promised. Now, the first kind of peace we need is peace with God because we can't have peace in any other area of our lives until we have peace with him. And I want us to look at Psalm eighty five ten. It says, Mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed. This verse paints a picture at what happened at the cross.
Speaker 1:And it does so by speaking of mercy, truth, righteousness, and peace as though they are individuals on separate sides of an issue. Alright? So, on one side of the issue, we have mercy and peace, and on the other side of the issue, we have truth and righteousness. Now, mercy wanted us to have peace with God. Mercy wanted us to be reconciled to God.
Speaker 1:But on the other side of the issue, truth was saying, wait a minute. Sin has to be punished. Justice demands it. So, the two sides were at an impasse. So, what happened is mercy and truth had a meeting.
Speaker 1:And the two of them got that's what this verse says, they met together. They had a meeting where they came to an agreement, and yet neither one of them gave an inch. They didn't compromise, and yet, both of them got everything that their side demanded. And, that's because that meeting was held at the foot of the cross. See, because of Jesus, truth and righteousness got the justice they demanded.
Speaker 1:Sin was punished. Also because of Jesus, mercy and peace were able to reconcile you to God. Yes. Yes. This meeting was so successful, we read in our verse, that righteousness and peace kissed each other.
Speaker 1:Is that not beautiful? Yes. Let's look at Isaiah thirty two seventeen. It says, The effects of righteousness will bring will be peace, internal and external, and the result of righteousness will be quietness and confident trust forever. See, if you're a believer in Jesus, what he did for you at the cross made you right with God.
Speaker 1:And, the result of that righteousness, Isaiah says, is peace, it's quietness, it's confident trust forever. Now, if you don't have this, if you aren't experiencing, this confident trust in God, then peace in any other area of your life is gonna be impossible. I mean, how can you have peace in your life, in this world that we live in, if you don't have a confident trust in God? If you don't have peace with him? So if you have not yet experienced peace with God, then let's take care of that today.
Speaker 1:There's any number of leaders and people in this room who would be thrilled to lead you into a relationship with the prince of peace. Just ask. Okay? Alright. Now, once we have peace with God, we are able to experience the peace of God.
Speaker 1:And, this is one of those promises that we know is in the word and yet few of us really truly experience it. And, it's not because we don't want to, it's because we don't feel like we can. There are so many thieves of peace in the world and we don't know how to keep ourselves from becoming a victim of them. So, let's talk about these thieves of peace. Things like worry, fear, stress, anxiety, depression, busyness, the cares of this life, anything that robs you of the peace that Jesus died to give you.
Speaker 1:Now, looked up a few of these words in the dictionary and I found out that they have a common theme. So just a few of the definitions. Worry means to torment oneself with disturbing thoughts. Can we just stop and think about that definition? You are tormenting yourself with disturbing thoughts.
Speaker 1:And we're going to get back to that thought later. Anxiety is concern respecting some event which disturbs the mind and keeps it in a state of painful uneasiness. So now worry is at another level. We are kept in that uneasy state. Depression is a sinking of the spirits.
Speaker 1:Dejection, a state of sadness, want of courage or of animation. And, fear is a painful emotion or passion that is excited by an expectation of evil or the apprehension of impending danger. Alright? Just think of some of these words we use to define these thieves of peace. Torment, disturbing, painful.
Speaker 1:The common ingredient is pain. It's pain in your mind. Now, sometimes, this pain can be caused by a chemical imbalance that you have in your body, and I know a few of you deal with that very thing. But if that is true of you, do not disqualify yourself from the promise of peace. Because remember what our definition of peace includes.
Speaker 1:It includes health. Do you know peace provides for every eventuality, for the pain that we can experience in our minds? Even no matter what's causing it, even if it's a chemical thing. And in week five, we talked about how our identity is healed. So if you are one of those people who is dealing with a chemical imbalance, it's causing anxiety, it's causing depression, pursue healing.
Speaker 1:Pursue peace. Do not let up until you have it because this is promised to you. We're talking about identity here. God says you're healed. God says you're peaceful.
Speaker 1:That is what he has for you. Alright. Now, most often, our lack of peace is due to our own bad thinking. And worry is a big part of this. We're going to spend a little time talking about worry because we allow this thief of of peace to rob us of our God given right to be in peace because we are choosing to torment ourselves with our own disturbing thoughts.
Speaker 1:And, we tend to give ourselves a pass on this one because we feel like, well, you know, there's so much to worry about, how am I supposed to not worry? But can I just tell you that most of what we worry about never happens? You know, they actually did a study on this and they found out that eighty five percent of what people in the study worried about never happened, and of the fifteen percent that did happen, seventy nine percent of those situations, the person being studied found out that they handled the situation much better than they thought that they would. In other words, it wasn't as bad as they had worried that it would be. So if you put those numbers together and do the math, which thankfully someone else did for me, 97% of what was worried about either never happened or it was completely overblown.
Speaker 1:Now, think of our definition of worry. We are tormenting ourselves with disturbing thoughts about things that will most likely never take place. Mark Twain put it this way. He said, I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. Do you know this is a misuse of imagination?
Speaker 1:God gave us our imagination so that we could create and so that we could act on our faith by imagining the blessings that he has promised to us. And, we take this beautiful gift of imagination, we use it to imagine every bad thing that could happen to us instead. And, do you know that the effects of doing this are not trivial? No. Stress has been called the number one proxy killer because it is the initial cause of many very serious illnesses.
Speaker 1:And even worse than the physical toll that stress can take on your body. These thieves of peace take born again daughters of the most high God, who have the holy spirit dwelling on the inside of them, and they make her powerless. Not because of her circumstances, but because she's tormenting herself with her own disturbing thoughts. You know, last week, Kristen talked about being redeemed, about being free from not only sin but the effects of sin. And if you haven't, again, it's been said already, but if you haven't listened to that teaching yet, I urge you, go and listen to what it means to be redeemed because God says, you're free.
Speaker 1:See, these things you're worrying about, you're free from that. In fact, do you know his will is that we not worry about a single thing? Let's look at Philippians four verses six and seven say, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need.
Speaker 1:Thank him for all he has done. Then, underline that word, then you will experience God's peace which exceeds anything that we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. So Paul gives here the four things that are required if we're going to experience the peace of God. These are very simple.
Speaker 1:Don't worry about anything. Pray about everything. Tell God what you need. Thank him for all he has done. Can we do that?
Speaker 1:Alright? Paul said, then, you will experience a peace that is so amazing, you can't explain it. Do you know you can have peace when it makes absolutely no sense to have it? You can sit sit in the middle of absolute chaos and marvel at how you are so at rest. Why?
Speaker 1:Because the peace of God stands guard before the door of your heart and of your mind and protects your heart and mind from that chaos. Because again, peace is active. It's not passive. Here we see it protecting. Isaiah twenty six three, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.
Speaker 1:Do you know, I think we could bear anything if we had perfect peace in it. And that's exactly what God promises us here, but he there isn't if in here because it's if your mind is stayed on him and if you trust in him. But here's what I want us to understand. Keeping our minds on him and trusting him, that's our part of this verse. Providing the peace, that's not our job.
Speaker 1:We always need to understand what is our job in a in a situation or in a passage of scripture and what is the Lord's? We don't wanna be doing his job. We can't do it. And so here, actually, one day God said to me, he said, I want you to picture your life as though it were run by a corporation. So if your life was a corporation, there'd be many different divisions in it.
Speaker 1:Maybe a division for career, family, or health, or friends, or what have you. It could be any number of divisions. But what he wanted me to focus on is is that the administration of this corporation called my life was being done from two desks. Alright? One desk was my desk, and the other desk, of course, is God's.
Speaker 1:And what God wanted me to do is get a clear distinction of what is his to do, what's on his desk, and what's on my desk. Not to mix up the two. And ever since he gave me this this visual to think about, which I thought about for a great deal of time, now all he has to do is say to me, you've been to my desk again, haven't you, Laura? That thing you're worrying about, you're reasoning through, you're trying to figure out what you're going to do, that's not even yours to work on. Put it back.
Speaker 1:And he has said to me, do you realize, Laura, that when you take something off of my desk and you put it on your own desk, it's not on his desk anymore. Is that really what I want? And I have to admit, that is not at all what I want. No. This is good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. How then do I do this? How do I keep my mind on him and yet keep my focus on my own work? Alright.
Speaker 1:Well, the first thing that I believe that we need is intentional thinking. So let's go back to Philippians four and read on with verse eight. It says, finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do and the God of peace will be with you. Alright?
Speaker 1:So Paul instructs us here to choose what we think about. And he gave us a list of acceptable thoughts. And he said, if we'll follow his instructions, the God of peace will be with us. So my job, God's job in this verse. I look here and I can see God's responsibility is that he, the God of peace, will be with me.
Speaker 1:That means the presence of peace is on this desk. It's not on my desk. Alright? My responsibility here is to be the gatekeeper of my thoughts. So picture, if you will, that this desk is a receptionist desk.
Speaker 1:And anything that comes in the front door of the corporation called your life has to stop at this desk, and you determine whether that thought gets in or not. Alright. So, Paul gave us a list. His list acts like a litmus test that I can keep here on my desk, the front burner of my mind, if you will. These are acceptable thoughts.
Speaker 1:He said, meditate on these things, true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtuous, praiseworthy thoughts. This is what I am to think about. This is the test I use to determine what thoughts get in and what don't. Okay. So, a fearful thought comes through the door of my mind, you can't keep them from coming through the front door.
Speaker 1:Okay? They have to stop here though. You're the gatekeeper. So now, a fearful thought has come to my desk and I can look at my list and say, well, this thought isn't lovely, certainly not of good report, it's not praiseworthy. Well, now I know what to do, don't I?
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, but you have to go. You're not getting in. See, if I let that thought get in the door, it's gonna wreak havoc in all the different departments of my life. It's up to me to keep that thought out. Do you know we just talked about how much of what we worry about, torment our minds with, isn't even true?
Speaker 1:Like, it doesn't even pass the first test on this list. We have got to take control over what we allow in our minds. You may not be able to keep the thought from coming at you, but you can shut it down. Because if I leave my desk, if I'm not at my post and any thought can just come wandering into my life, then I'm not holding up my end of this verse and I'm gonna forfeit the peace that would otherwise be available to me. Now, the best way for me to choose my thoughts is, of course, to think the word of God.
Speaker 1:So if a reoccurring salesman of fear keeps showing up at my desk, I need to find out what God's word has to say about that situation and keep that on my desk and think that instead. I need to choose my thoughts because my thoughts are gonna impact my life, every department and division of it. Okay. And that second thing you must do is know whom you believe. Second Timothy one twelve, Paul said, I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day.
Speaker 1:Alright. Paul wrote these words while he was in prison. And he said he was not ashamed of the gospel, that he was imprisoned for preaching. Why? Because he knew the Lord.
Speaker 1:He knew God well enough to know that what he had committed to him, put on his desk if you will, was going to get done. Now, if you are persuaded, then you are convinced, assured and confident that what you believe is true. So Paul said that he could could endure what he endured because he was absolutely sure that God is who God says that he is. We need that assurance. Alright?
Speaker 1:So coming back over here to my desk. If I'm going to keep myself focused over here, looking at my own work, doing my own things, I need to have confidence in the person who occupies the other desk. If I'm going to keep myself from going over there and taking stuff that doesn't belong to me, I need to know who's doing those things. I need to have confidence in the one I have believed. Now, in order to have this confidence, I need to know him.
Speaker 1:See, how can I have confidence in him if I don't know his character? How can I trust him if I don't know that he is faithful? We need to know the Lord. And, the better we know him, the better we will trust him. And, the more we commit to him, the more peace that you and I are going to experience.
Speaker 1:Alright. Third thing that you need to do is cast your cares. Let's go to first Peter five verse seven says, casting the whole of your care, all of your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all on him, for he cares for you affectionately and he cares about you watchfully. See, here's what's really cool. God doesn't want me taking things off his desk, but he has absolutely no problem with me putting things on it.
Speaker 1:So I'm over here. I've got all this. I'm worried about this stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do about some of these situations. I've got too much to handle.
Speaker 1:I'm so bogged down. I'm so stressed. And God says to me, why don't you bundle all that stuff up and bring it over here and put it on my desk? I'll take care of it. See, he tells us to cast our care upon him.
Speaker 1:Verse eight, Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. Alright. So Peter told us to cast our care upon the Lord, and now he immediately follows that up to telling us to be on watch because the enemy is looking for someone to devour. These are not unconnected thoughts.
Speaker 1:We resist the devil, we keep ourselves from being devoured by casting our care upon the Lord. See, because how can the enemy get you worked up about something if you're not carrying it? If he comes over to your desk, he tries to get you worked up about something, some fearful thought, it's worked in the past, he tries it again. So he comes over here and you say, you know what? That's not here anymore.
Speaker 1:That's you're gonna have to take that up with the Lord. That's on his desk. Do you see how powerful this is? Do you know what he doesn't want you to know your enemy? This is his big secret.
Speaker 1:He cannot manage you if you will remain in peace. Because again, we've said it already, peace is powerful. Peace dominates. Peace looks at chaos and confusion and it brings it into order. So how can your enemy have victory over you if you refuse to step out from under that realm of peace?
Speaker 1:He can't do anything with you. Adam Clark's commentary says this. It says, cash all of your care, your anxiety, your distracting care on him for he careth for you. For he meddles or concerns himself with the things that interest you. Whatever things concern a follower of God, whether they be spiritual or temporal, whether in themselves great or small, God concerns himself with that.
Speaker 1:What affects them, affects him. He who knows that God cares for him need have no anxious cares about himself. We need we can have no anxious cares because God has actually offered to meddle in our lives. We think of that word in a negative sense sometimes and the word meddle means to interfere, to invade, to in to intervene. But how many of us want God to invade and intervene in the affairs of our lives?
Speaker 1:Well, if that's what you want, then take all of that stuff off your desk that needs his attention and cast them on him. He'll care for you. Alright. Now, I'm just gonna step on a few toes as we wrap this up, and I'm gonna step gingerly but without apology because I love you, and I want you to experience the peace of God. But for some of this us, this is gonna require a shift in our perspective and maybe in the way that we behave or the way that we speak.
Speaker 1:Now, we have established that Jesus gave us his peace. Correct? Okay. Our identity then is peaceful. Correct?
Speaker 1:Okay. With that in mind, would there then be anything wrong with me praying the prayer? God, will you please give me peace in place of my depression? Or, God, I am dealing with my anxiety again. Will you please give me your peace instead?
Speaker 1:Okay. There are two things wrong with that prayer. The first one is that you're asking God to do something that he's already done. He said, I give you my peace. Now, I'm not saying don't pray about peace.
Speaker 1:I'm saying pray with the mindset that it's already been given because that'll change the way you pray. Alright? Now, the second thing that's wrong with this prayer is that you're using personal pronouns to, in effect, own the problem. See, please, stop using phrases such as my depression and my anxiety. You don't own those things.
Speaker 1:They're illegally trespassing. See, I'm not saying that they don't exist. I'm not saying that they're not real and that you don't deal with them. I'm saying you don't own them. They don't belong to you.
Speaker 1:And stop saying things like, you know, I can't help but worry. I'm just a worrywart. My mother was a worrier. My grandmother was a worrier. And so, there's nothing that you can do about it.
Speaker 1:Do you know, think back to our definition of worry. We said that worry is to torment oneself with disturbing thoughts. Don't treat torment of your mind as though it's a heritage, something that's passed down through the generations like an heirloom. It's not a pet. It is not something we are to coddle.
Speaker 1:Alright? So, think of the words that you use as though you are, in effect, signing for a package that's delivered to your desk. Okay? So, here comes your enemy. He's carrying his fearful thoughts with him, anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1:He comes to your desk, tries to dump them off. If you say, oh, there's my depression again, what have you done? You've just owned. You've just owned that package that he's delivering. And if you sign for that with the words of your mouth, he now has a receipt showing that you have accepted it.
Speaker 1:You've taken possession of it. This now authorizes him to operate in your life in that area. Don't accept his packages. Send them back. That's right.
Speaker 1:Because here's the thing, as much as I would love to stand up here and tell you that God's peace is automatic, it isn't. He gave it already. It's always there, but walking in it is not automatic. It requires a decision on our part. We have to align ourselves with what God said he has already done for us because we choose what we think about.
Speaker 1:Now, this isn't complicated to have God's peace, but it does require a choice. So we're gonna go back to John fourteen twenty seven. We're gonna read it this time in the amplified version. Jesus said this, Peace I leave with you. My own peace I now give and bequeath to you.
Speaker 1:Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed, and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled. Now, Jesus said these words just before he went to the cross, and he was speaking to his disciples who were about to be in the trial of their lives. Understand and appreciate, they had left everything to follow him.
Speaker 1:They staked their reputation on who Jesus said that he is, and they were about to watch him die. And it was gonna look to them like all was lost. And in the midst of that trying, trouble time, Jesus instructions to them were, do not let your heart be troubled. See, because Jesus gives us his peace, but he leaves it up to us to choose it. Colossians three fifteen.
Speaker 1:Paul said, let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body, you were called to live in peace and always be thankful. So Paul said, we are called to live in peace and that we must let it rule our hearts. That word let is a choice word. It implies you choose to let it rule.
Speaker 1:Because here's the thing, now we've talked often about emotions in sisterhood, and we've talked about how, you know, they're they're not reliable sources for truth, and how they're always changing, and how they're, you know, sometimes wrong. But, emotions aren't useless. They're actually really wonderful prompts to alert us when the wrong thing is ruling our hearts. See, if I think about every horrible thing that could possibly happen to me, of course, my emotions are going to respond to that because emotions will typically follow your dominant thought. So, if you're thinking wrong, you're going have icky emotions rise up inside of you.
Speaker 1:Use that as a prompt to say, wait a minute here, my mind has clearly gone somewhere it should not be going. And use that then to stop and examine what you're thinking about. Are my thoughts aligned with his? Am I thinking about my situation the way God thinks about it? Because see, here's here's what we always have to remember.
Speaker 1:The enemy isn't gonna give up. He's just gonna keep coming by. He's just gonna keep trying to show me fearful things, things to get me worked up, things to get my attention off of the Lord and onto him because what is he trying to do? Draw me out of that realm of peace. It's up to me to shut it down.
Speaker 1:It's up to me to choose my thoughts. Let's close with Hebrews four eleven. Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest of God to know and experience it for ourselves. Alright? According to this then, entering the rest of God requires effort on our part.
Speaker 1:This is a diligent a diligence to the job that we have been assigned to do, which is to think intentionally, to know whom we believe, and to continually cast our care on the Lord. See, this is our diligent work. We must let peace rule. Amen? Alright.
Speaker 1:Let's pray as we close. Father, thank you first of all for so graciously giving us your peace. We see it this morning, Lord, as a a force to be reckoned with, powerful. We're grateful for it. We're we're grateful that your peace sets everything at right and at one again.
Speaker 1:Thank you for for the cost that you were willing to pay to give us this peace. We receive it this morning, Lord, with gratitude. Father, I pray against any chemical imbalance that is represented in any woman in this room. We command that body to come into order in the name of Jesus. I speak healing over these women.
Speaker 1:I speak health. Shalom. I speak shalom over this room, That the peace of God would bring health, that it would dominate, that it would bring everything to one to write again, that it would balance everything. But God, I also pray for the minds and the hearts of these women, that we would be committed to thinking the way you would have us to think, that we would cast our care upon you, that we would refuse to torment ourselves with disturbing thoughts. God, help us to replace those thoughts with thoughts from your word.
Speaker 1:We love you. We're so grateful for all that you have done for us. And again, we receive it with gratitude today in Jesus' precious name. Amen.