Peace in the Waiting

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Today, we relight the candle of hope, and now we light for the second Sunday in Advent the candle of peace. As we prepare for the coming of Jesus, we remember that Jesus is our hope and our peace. From Isaiah 9, 6, 7, we read. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with the justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. Jesus in his own words speaks the promise of peace in John 14, 27. Peace I love with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Not only does the word we live lack peace, but so often we lack peace in our own personal lives. Peace is more than

Lack of conflict. The peace Jesus enters into conflict and brokenness and brings restoration. It is peace in the middle of storm that knows that Jesus will never let us go. We may find peace as we prepare for our Lord's birth. May divisions in ourselves and in our families be peacefully restored. May there be peace in our city and in the countries of our world. Help us to see the paths of peace in our lives and then give to us courage to follow them. Lord, let us remember that you only are the giver of lasting peace and that you are always with us. In Jesus name. Amen. Heavenly Father, this morning we are gathered here to be your body, to be your community. We want to be representative of your love and the unity that you've created here in us through Christ. Lord, we are together built to be a family. I pray that this morning would be a representation of that. Lord, we do want to just take a moment and pause to pray for Larry Baltimore who needed to go to the hospital this morning and we just pray that you would

Give clarity to the doctors as to what's exactly going on, that you would give wisdom and that you would give peace to his family and peace to him. Lord, we trust you as the great physician and healer and Lord we pray that you would be with them in the midst of that. Lord, this morning as we seek to open your word, I pray that we would be made more into the image of your son, that we would hear and see what you have for us to hear and see this morning, that you would give me both the energy and the clarity to communicate the word that you have placed on my heart. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We are in the middle of Advent or Advent series. Some of you might be like, "What in the world do Pastor Cameron and Pastor Luke keep talking about when they say Advent?" Is that just like a stuck up way of saying Christmas? We're just like Advent and maybe you didn't grow up using the word Advent or maybe you've heard of Advent calendars, but you know it's got

Something to do with Christmas. Really, what's that all about? Why are we lighting candles? All of those might be questions that you might have. If you want to hear more in-depth discussion about Advent and things like that, over the next couple of weeks, Pastor Cameron and I have a podcast where we discuss theology and ministry and things going on in our church called the Uncut Podcast. You can find that on our website and YouTube and all the places, but over the next couple of weeks we're discussing Advent and what it means to be waiting for God because that's really what Advent is all about. Advent comes from the Latin word Adventus and it just means coming. Advent is the season leading up to Christmas that is the waiting for Christmas to come. You guys have heard the 12 Days of Christmas song, right? Right? It goes on and on and on about birds. All of those gifts are birds, by the way. Anyways, the 12 Days of Christmas is not about the 12 days leading up to Christmas. It's the 12 days that happen when Christmas starts and follows after it. The traditional Christian

Calendar had a much more expansive celebration of Christmas than one singular evening and day. Honestly, I think the way that we celebrate it now, we kind of get gypped. I'd love 12 Days off, right? But Advent is the season leading up to Christmas. This is the season of waiting for Christ to come. This is kind of the theme that we're leaning into is waiting for God because if we were to read the Bible and read the Old Testament, we'd find tons and tons of passages talking about a coming Messiah and this waiting and this expectation. We talked about this last week as there were those two individuals in the temple courts who came up to Mary and Joseph and they brought baby Jesus into to make the sacrifices and pardon me, I need a drink of water. And they were both expecting and waiting for the Messiah. They had been waiting for God to deliver Israel. And when they saw Jesus, they were like, this is God. This is God's deliverance, His Messiah. And so we're leading into this to kind of what does it mean for us to wait for God? What does it mean for us to slow down, to not rush ahead, but to be patient to wait on the Lord? And that's where we're kind of

Leaning into. Now I don't know very many of you, but I haven't met very many people who just enjoy waiting, right? Anybody just like, Oh yeah, I'm, I'm signed me up. I'll stand in a line. Like, I haven't met that person. You know, it starts at a very young age. As soon as we start and we learn the question, mom, are we there yet? Right? We begin to despise waiting and, we live in a culture in a time where like, you know, right now we're just like, man, I had to wait three days for my Amazon package. Like, whoa, like you remember the world before like prime delivery when like two day delivery, like was not an expected thing. That was like unheard of. You had to pay like the things for it. Right. And, you know, and now we go through her drive through and like, Oh my gosh, took me five minutes to get my food. Like we live in a culture in a time where everything is so fast paced. We want things faster, more immediate at the touch of our fingertips.

It's all this kind of fast pace. And so I think that puts us in a disposition where we're even more sensitive to any type of waiting. We get impatient at the smallest things and we can find ourselves waiting anxiously to kind of take it out of the kind of anecdotal and kind of humorous, small moments of waiting in life. But we've all had places and times where we've had to wait and it's been very uncomfortable. Like if we've had to wait for a phone call or we've had to wait for a message or difficult conversation or wait to see a test result, we've all been in a waiting room and waiting to find out what will happen. We know what that is like to experience that anxiety, that uncertainty of what's going to happen. Will my loved one be okay? Will things be all right? And that's really, really tough place to be. And in that there can be a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear. And even more than that, we can, if we take kind of this idea of waiting, like not just in like an acute short term sense, but in a longer term sense, some of us know what

It's like to wait for something over years or months or a long season of waiting, waiting for the situation to change, for this person to come around, for this to happen, for this to finally have a break through. And that can be really tough. And in all of that we can have a temptation to live in bitterness or anxiety, to live in a place that is not full of peace. When I talk about peace, there might be like different ideas that come to your mind, right? Like we're all striving for a little bit of what peace and quiet, quiet. I'm lilies. That's what I want. Peace and quiet, right? And when I think of just like a peaceful moment, maybe you think of a cabin in the middle of the woods where nobody can find you, nobody can interrupt you, you can just kind of be. Maybe your idea of peace is on a beach somewhere, as the ocean waves coming in and you're sitting on a nice chair and just that salt air. Or maybe your idea of peace is sitting by the fireplace late

At evening with a warm drink as there's snow falling outside. Or maybe there's a idea of maybe a peaceful moment for you would be. Well, if I could just be on top of a mountain I see a beautiful picture or vista of a sunset. We all have these pictures or ideas of what peace might look for us. And it's so hard for us to actually find that. We might strive for it, we might long for it, but how do we actually find peace? I want to read for you a verse out of Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 6 verse 14. Jeremiah was not somebody who saw a lot of peace in his life. I saw a lot of turmoil. And Jeremiah in chapter 6 verse 14 is talking about these false prophets who came and spoke to the people of Israel and they gave this message. He says that they dress the wounds of my people as if they were not serious. They say peace, peace they say, when there is no peace. This is the verse that comes to my mind often when I think about this topic because I think it's so often for us to encounter, you know, sometimes we're going through something that's really difficult.

We share it with somebody and someone just might say, oh, it'll be all right. Or this too shall pass. They say something meaning well. And you're just like, gee, thanks. Like you said peace, peace, but I'm not experiencing peace. I'm not experiencing wholeness, wellness and goodness. And so I don't want to get up here this morning and just speak peace, peace. I want to talk about how do we actually experience true and genuine peace? What is peace and how do we experience in the middle of waiting? How do we have that and experience that? As I kind of think about peace, our common way of describing peace is kind of this idea of it's the absence of conflict or stress, right? She's like, oh, peace is just like all of my stress is gone. My conflict is gone. Like these things are just kind of fixed. Like that's kind of done. There's just kind of the absence of something is what we often think of peace. But when I think about this, I don't think that's really got the whole picture. If we were to talk about, say, perhaps World War II, right? World War II was probably

One of the most expansive wars in human history. All of Europe was war torn. It even ended up in Hawaii and affected America. It was over in Japan. It was in South Africa. It was in Africa. It was all over the place. And it was a type of war that really hadn't been seen as like technological development was happening. It was still trenches. So again, trench warfare, but bombs being dropped. It was absolute destruction. And then the end of that war finally came. There was peace declared. Victory was won for the Allies. Peace, right? But if you were to look around Europe and you were to see all the destroyed buildings, all the empty chairs of people who were not going to be coming home from the war and all of the destruction rot, how peaceful do you think that actually was? Sure, the conflict was over. There was no more threat of a bomb raid to come, but there was so much destruction and impact rot that it's hard to describe and say that Europe was truly at peace on the first day, first month, first years of it being declared over. I think peace has

Something more to it than just the absence or the removal of something. Peace is more than simply the removal or absence of stress. When we talk about peace in the Bible, sure, it has its meaning of saying, yeah, there's no conflict or no ill intent meaning, but there's also a greater and deeper meaning in the Bible that peace has. The Hebrew word for peace is called shalom. And that word is used so often throughout the Bible. And you won't even necessarily always recognize it in the Old Testament because it doesn't always get translated directly into the word peace, because we don't use peace the way that they used and talked about peace. The idea of shalom was much more expansive than the way we talk about, like I was just talking about. We think of peace as being like, oh, it's a peace treaty or a peaceful time, or it's an absence of something. But no, when they talked about shalom in the Old Testament, it was something much greater. I want to turn to First Samuel. I'm going to go to chapter 17. First Samuel chapter 17 drops us in a

Familiar story that you probably heard in Sunday school. King David is not a king yet, but a shepherd in chapter 17. And he is, he's not a soldier. He's rather young. And his brothers are on the front line of the battle to fight the Philistines. And they've gotten to the Philistines. And rather than having this fight, this big giant Goliath keeps coming out and taunting the armies of Israel. And you know how the story goes. David eventually slays the giant and all of that. But before that happens, David had to get to the front lines and he is sent by his father, Jesse, with some, some supplies to his brothers. In verse 18 of chapter 17, we can read this. It says, take along these 10 cheeses to the commander of their unit, see how your brothers are and bring back some assurance from them. So Jesse, the father is sending David to go check on his brothers. And you don't see the word peace in that passage, but if you were to translate it very literally and directly, the thing would say make careful inspection of their peace. It says to see how they are doing, see if they are well, that's how we translate it. But really what they're saying

Is see what their Shalom is like. See what their peace is like. And you get this sense that peace and Shalom has something much more to do with their welfare, their inner being. How is their spirits doing? How is their soul doing? Shalom in the Old Testament was used as like often as a greeting, it would say peace to you. Shalom was a way of wishing them goodness and health and wholeness. It was something much more than just the, oh, just have a nice night. It wasn't just that. It was like, no, have be goodness with you in your spirit and your family as you go from here. Shalom was an important concept and it gets carried through the Old Testament into the New Testament. So often the letters written to Paul begin with the words peace to you in Christ. It's a important concept. So biblical peace is a state of wholeness and health with ourselves, others, and God. This biblical idea of peace has a sense of wholeness and health that is related on these different dimensions. With ourselves, we're at peace with ourselves. We're at peace with

Other people and our relationships, those around us. And we're also at peace with God. There's this sense of wholeness and at oneness that is going on there. And I think that is so different from the way that we often think about peace, isn't it? Because it's something all of a sudden, it shifts us from talking about our surroundings, right? When we think about like peaceful, we think of maybe like a spa with like some weird music in the background and like a babbling little brook over here and like, you know, some essential oils or something like that. We think of peaceful surroundings or circumstances. What the Bible is talking about is yes, that, but it also has something to do with our internal condition, our own self. There's a phrase that is used in 12-step programs and recovery communities, but there's also just a fairly well-known kind of saying that I think says this really well. Wherever you go, there you are. That sounds kind of silly when you say that, but like, what does that mean, really? Well, it means wherever you go, whatever circumstances

Or changes you might make to your life, there's always going to be one unchanging factor. That's you, right? It doesn't matter if you change all of your circumstances and go to a never place. You're like, I'm just going to leave everything behind. I'm going to go live in a brand new community. I'm going to pretend to be someone else. No one will know me. Sure, that might make some changes in your life. But the fact of the matter is, is that you still brought with you your own heart, soul, and person, and that's going to show up the same way it does here. If you have someone who is very, very stressed, very upset and worried and fearful, you take them out of their everyday life and put them on a beach somewhere at a resort. You have a stressful, anxious, fearful person on a beach, right? It doesn't really change that much. You will find something else to be worried about, to be fearful about, to be concerned about. Changing your circumstances only changes the background of your heart condition. So if our circumstances isn't really the solution

To our, to our peace, then how do we actually find peace? What do we actually do and how do we actually move forward and find peace in the middle of our waiting? So to kind of answer that question, I want to kind of tell a little bit of the story of peace because where is peace found? Where is it? If it's not in our circumstances then, where is it and how do we find it? And the Bible is kind of, you could kind of view it through the lens of tracing peace from the beginning all the way to the end. Now, I have to do this briefly because you guys don't want to be here all day. But we're going to just, what is the main story of the Bible? And so, if we were to start all the way at the beginning of the Bible, it starts with creation, right? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And what does he say after each thing he creates? He says that it was good. It was good. It was at whole. It was praiseworthy. It was good. It was at peace.

He creates Adam and Eve and places them in the garden. He's in relationship with them. All of these things are good. But then something happens. Adam and Eve choose to listen to the serpent. They say, no, we want to live life on our own terms. We want to be the determiners of right and good. We want to live life our way. And so, they decide to do that. And in that, what immediately happens? Peace is destroyed. What's the first thing they do when their eyes are opened and they eat from that fruit? They hide. They immediately go and try and cover themselves up with fig leaves and with bushes to try and cover their shame and their guilt. This is kind of immediately a demonstration that they're no longer at peace with themselves. There's something gone on inside of their heart. They're no longer experiencing that peace. And then what happens next is God shows up and what do they do? They hide from God. They're no longer at peace with God. There's been a shift. There's been a break in the relationship. And then what does God say? He says, what's happened? And what do they do? They point the finger at each other. She made me do it. The serpent made me do it.

Wasn't my fault. There's immediately a break in peace between one another. Peace is destroyed. And God enumerates and lets known the curse and the enmity that has happened now between them and creation, how that's going to affect them and their relationships. And then they're removed from the garden. It is a picture of perfect peace, of wholeness, health and connection that is then destroyed by pride and selfishness and rebellion that then leads to the broken and fallen world we find ourselves in. The story continues on with the sons of Adam and Eve Cain and Abel, two siblings who definitely don't have peace between the two of them. Cain kills Abel and the story goes on from there. Genesis in the beginning is one account after another demonstrating the wickedness and consequence of the fall in Genesis. Noah is one righteous man among none and God sees all of the wickedness and the lack of peace in the world and decides it is better to flood it and brings judgment. Eventually God brings out and calls out Abram and his family to make a people for his own, a people that he's

Going to make a people of peace, people of peace with one another and with him. And then he says as people as they're going into the Promised Land and he's given them the covenant, he says, "If you keep my commands, if you follow after me, you don't worship idols, you will have peace. You will flourish in the land. You will not suffer. You will not have all of these foreign powers coming and attacking you." And what happens? They don't keep his commands. They wander astray. They worship idols. They do not follow after God and what happens? They don't experience peace. They themselves become split into two, into a northern and southern kingdom. They have conflicts with each other and with other kingdoms until they eventually fall and then are sent out into exile in their place into Babylon. And at that point, God begins to make clearer and clearer the promise of a Messiah, a Prince of Peace. Like we were just reading here earlier from Isaiah, a Prince of Peace who his reign would never end this promise. And that's where this anticipation for Jesus coming. And if

We were to go to Luke chapter two, we would find this very famous passage that ends up in so many of our Christmas songs. Luke chapter two, verse 14 says, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests." The angels show up to a group of shepherds in the middle of the night and proclaim God's Messiah is here and peace has dawned on earth. What does that exactly mean? Why is peace connected to Jesus Christ? I want to look at two passages in the New Testament that are going to make that a little bit more clear. I'm going to flip forward to Romans chapter five.

Romans chapter five, Paul here is in the middle of what is kind of a famous passage if you're familiar with Romans. But I want us to hear, listen for where peace is mentioned and how it's articulated in verse one. It says, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into his grace in which we now stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God." We have peace with God through his son, Jesus Christ, by faith. That thing that happened all the way back in Genesis where peace was destroyed by the fall, removed out of the fall. Paul here is saying that Christ came so that we might have a restored relationship with God, that there might now be a firmly established unbreakable peace because of the blood of Jesus Christ. His death on the cross was his sacrifice, his way of making atonement, of making that rebellion and that sin right, fixing what we could never fix in ourselves, making peace for us. And that is through faith, not through anything we do or any sort of

Recompense or repentance, although that's important, but it's not a thing that we earn, it's a thing that we receive through faith. If we flip forward to Ephesians, I want to turn to Ephesians chapter two. It's a couple books forward, past Corinthians. Ephesians chapter two. This is Paul writing again and he's writing to the church in Ephesus and the early church was marked by having two different people in it. The Jews, those who were the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, the Israelites, and then the Gentiles, those who were not Jews. And there is this big division between the two people in the church and it was always a point of conflict. And Paul here is speaking saying that this does not need to be Ephesians chapter two. I want to look at verse 14. He says, "For he himself, " who's he talking about? He's talking about Jesus. "He himself is our peace, who has made two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace and in one

Body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those of you who were near, for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." Who's our peace? Where's our peace found? It's not in a place. It's in the person of Jesus. Jesus is himself our peace. Jesus is our source of peace. That's where peace is found. Peace isn't found somewhere else. It's not found in the program. It's not found in a hack, not found in a trick or a tip. It's found in the person of Jesus. The author, C. S. Lewis, put it this way, and I think he said it very well. He said, "God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself because it's not there. There is no such thing." There is no such thing as peace and happiness that isn't connected to the person and work of Jesus Christ. You can chase peace and happiness all you want. You can chase it all. You can try and find

All the things. You can try and fix all of your circumstances in the middle of your waiting, in the middle of the messiness that you find yourself in the anxiousness. You can try and fix it all you want. But that peace, not just the absence of something, but a peace that sits inside of your heart and soul is only found in Jesus Christ. That's what peace is. That's something that wells up in the sight of us. I think Jesus said this in the gospels. He said that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. What's inside of us at the core of us is what comes out of us regardless of what circumstance we find ourselves in. Circumstances are hard. I'm not saying that if you find yourself in a difficult place or hard circumstance or a place of waiting and of anxiousness, that you have to have, well, it'll all be all right. You don't have to have some sort of like fakeness to it. You can experience difficulty in life and be real about it. But there's something different when you carry a peace inside of you that isn't shaken by the circumstances around you.

When someone goes through the difficulties of life, what comes out of us, what comes out of my mouth isn't caused by the circumstance. It's a result of what's already inside of me. The circumstance is just revealing it. If I'm angry, if I'm bitter, if I'm fearful, if I'm anxious, and that's coming out of me in a circumstance or a situation, that's not because of the situation, it's because that's what was already there. So what do we do if, because this is the thing, is I think that we are tempted to chase peace dependent on our circumstances. When we make peace dependent on our circumstances and desires, we will live in bitterness and anxiety. If you are in a place where you're like, you know, if this was fixed, if this was different, if this was the way I wanted my life to play out, then I would have peace, then I would be happy, then everything would be just right. You are in for a lot of bitterness and a lot of anxiety because I don't think we have that much control over our lives. I think that's an illusion that we have.

You might think, here's a couple of things that we might be tempted to put our peace on to say, if only this thing, then I would have peace. One thing I thought about was other people's behaviors, right? That's the holidays. You get to see all of your family, the ones you like and the ones you don't like. And like, you're sitting down at Thanksgiving meal and ah, that person that has that one opinion that they seem to always want to talk about at Thanksgiving, right? If they would just, they would just understand how stupid they were, right? Or maybe if, maybe my spouse, if my spouse would only behave this certain way or treat me this or would do this thing, then I'd have peace. Or maybe if my kids behaved or if my boss was a little bit nicer, we could find a whole bunch of ways of just people in our lives that we wish would just be a little bit different. That would give us peace. Or maybe we want to say that, you know, if I just had X amount of dollars in my bank account, then I could take a deep breath. I would have peace then, right? Because having

More money means you don't have any more stress. Maybe, yeah, it's not true. Maybe, maybe we put peace on a relationship status. We want to be able to have X kind of relationship or maybe we want to have kids or maybe we want our kids to be a certain way. We want them to have a certain achievement or they want them to have a life or behave and be a certain thing that we wish we could have been. Then we'll have peace. Or maybe we just want our surroundings to be different, right? If my house just looked like Joanna Gaines designed it, whatever the thing is that we want to hang our hat on, that would give me peace. That would give me happiness. That would finally, everything would be just the way it is. And the thing is, is that if you can find or can name the thing or the situation or circumstance that you wish was changed, that you could have that peace. The thing is, is if you ever manage to see that thing happen or come to fruition, you're not really

Going to be able to get off the treadmill. What I mean by that is, sure, that's great. That's a great thing. Whatever the thing is that you were hoping for that you wanted peace from, celebrate it. But chances are is that your heart is just going to stay on this treadmill and it's going to say, well, you know, now that I'm not paying attention to that, really notice this thing. I really want that. That's the thing I need if I want peace. Or, you know, I didn't realize that this was going to result in this. And now this is an extra thing that I'm worried about. The heart is constantly searching for the next thing. And I've yet to meet someone who has gotten off that treadmill. Someone who has, oh, yeah, I chased all of the things on my material list that I wanted to have perfect peace and I achieved it all and I'm perfectly content. The wisdom I hear from people who've got the things that I say I want is that it doesn't really fix anything because why it's not in

Our circumstances, it's in our heart. Peace isn't something we get by obtaining something or controlling a thing. It's something we carry with us from Jesus. The obstacles to our peace are the roots for our bitterness and anxiety. Really, whatever that thing is that you're like, oh, that's the one obstacle to me having true peace. That thing is an idol. And it's an idol that becomes a thing that we become enslaved to and eventually beats us over the head. Because we get into this place where, ah, if so and so would only do such and such. Well, that's a miserable thing to beat yourself up with every single day they don't do or behave the way that you want them to. That's a miserable thing to be reminded of. Or whatever the thing is, as long as you don't have it, that becomes a thing that every time you think of it just kind of hits you over the head, oh, I don't have that. I don't have that. I wish I had that. If I had that, I'd be at peace. And that's miserable. And it creates this anxiety over us because we're going to be striving and wanting to control and manipulate and find a way to get that thing because we've

Laid ourselves and made it into an ultimate thing. I want to flip to the book of Philippians. Book over or so Philippians chapter four. Philippians chapter four, verses six through seven. This is a passage I like to pray over people because I think it's a really important passage. I think it's really true. Four verses six says this, "Do not be anxious about anything." Now, it's a good thing that's not the end of the verse, right? Because if I was just to say, "Stop being anxious." Doesn't do you a lot of good, does it? But the verse goes on. It says, "Do not be anxious about anything, " but gives us what? "But rather, in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." And then what happens? The peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. "We will never, ever have peace if we are busy chasing our idols rather than waiting on God." If you are busy chasing whatever the thing is on your list that you say is going to give me peace, will finally let me just relax,

Will get rid of my anxiety, will make me happy. You will keep adding to that list. You will keep chasing that list. But if we were to finally just say, "You know what? I'm going to give this list to God. Give everything in all circumstances by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to the Lord." And then the peace that surpasses understanding. A peace that is above my circumstances, a peace that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of logical sense will rest in my heart with the Holy Spirit because I know that God is good and I've trusted Him with my welfare. And I know that whether my circumstances be difficult or good, that God remains with me and I will wait for Him in that circumstance. I wish I could tell you that Christianity was this promise of, "You know what? You just pray it to God and it will immediately work out." God does tell us to pray to Him. He does tell us to ask and say bold prayers. He does say that He is a good Father who wants to give good gifts. We absolutely should pray with faith and trust the Lord. But the Bible also talks about following the Lord in the midst of sufferings, disappointments, and difficulties.

It is in both things that we meet God, both when He answers our prayer and also when it doesn't work out the way we hoped it would. Both of those are opportunities for His glory and for His story to be written in our lives. So if that's what peace is, how do we experience it? How do we go about walking in that? Well, the first thing is the thing that I've already said here is that we cover our lives in prayer. We want to experience more peace in the waiting, more peace in the circumstance that we find ourselves in, cover it in prayer. That's what this passage in Philippians is talking about. All things, all circumstances with prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God. We ought to say prayer is not just the thing we do to signal the start of something, to signal the start of church or the start of eating. It's a thing we do to meet with God, to stop, to slow down, to wait for Him. Cover our life in prayer. There is no thing too small or insignificant that God would not want us to pray about. So let us cover all of our concerns in prayer. The second thing

If we want to grow in living in peace and experiencing that with Christ is to live in the now, not in the past or the future. Turn with me to Matthew chapter six, first of the gospels in the New Testament. Matthew chapter six is in the middle of Jesus's famous teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. And Matthew, the second half of Matthew chapter six is a fantastic passage that deals all with worry and anxiety and striving. And Jesus says this in verse 27. He says, can anyone of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? Have you ever gotten anywhere faster because you were anxious about it? I haven't. All right. Who, what's, what does my worry, my fear, my anxiety add to my life actually probably takes hours from my life rather than adds to it. Christ here is simply saying like your anxiety, your worry about your needs, your wants aren't going to solve anything. He looks at creation. He's like the birds have a place to nest. The flowers are clothed with their petals is, are you not more important than that? Will not God take care of you? And it's this encouragement

For the followers of Christ as followers to not spend their lives worrying and so fixated on all the other things, but stay fixated on following God. This is just a general point of wisdom that I think is reflected in this passage. If you find yourself in a place where you are living in anxiety consistently or worry or fear, or you find yourself in a place of living in depression and regret and despair, I would ask you or one of the questions, one of the things, one of the many things that may or may not be happening is you might be living in the past, might be living where regret and hurt and pain was and is, or you might be living in the future about things that have not yet happened. And if you're living in the past or the future and you're reflecting on things that you have no control over and they're inciting all of these emotions that are causing you to spiral, that sounds like suffering to me. And the solution to that is not to worry more. The solution is to live in the moment, to live in the now. It's kind of what Christ is saying there,

Who is worried and solved anything. So live in the now, not in the past or the future. And then if we go down to verse 33 of this chapter, Christ says this, he says, but here's the rather, rather than worry, do this. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. The third thing we can do to experience peace in our life is to seek God's in his kingdom in each and every new day. It's an opportunity to say God in the middle of this circumstance, in the middle of this new day, how are you showing up? How do you want me to show up? How do you want to display your glory in this moment in this time? What good work have you given for me to be here and to do? If we want more peace in the waiting, more peace in the middle of our uncertainty and all the things that we wish were fixed in our middle of our circumstances, we need to be covering our lives in prayer. We need to be living in the now and then we

Need to be seeking God in his kingdom first. There's a quote from Henry now and that I think says this very well. He says the Lord is coming. He is always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment in your life. Life is advent. Life is recognizing the coming of the Lord. The Lord wants to come into your life every single day. He wants to show up in a way that displays his glory, that is good to you and that sustains you through whatever circumstances come your way that day. I know that as I'm giving this sermon that there are many of you who came in here today who are experiencing circumstances that you wish you weren't. You're just like, "Yeah, Luke, that's a great idea. I wish I had it." But I'm telling you that the piece that is described here in Christ is a piece that I can't really explain any more than I have because it's a piece that surpasses understanding. It's a piece that comes with the presence of the Lord, presence

Of Christ in us. It's through faith. It's through abiding. It's through seeking Jesus. I'm going to read for us out of Numbers 6, Book of Numbers, chapter 6, all the way back at the beginning of the Bible. It was a really important passage to the Israelites. This was a blessing that was said over and over again. It was used all throughout Judaism. It was the way that God gave his priests to bless and impart the Lord and his blessing with his people. So I'm going to read that for us. It's Numbers, chapter 6. I'm going to start in verse 22 of that chapter. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, 'The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." Shalom. "So they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them." Peace does not come from something without, does not come from a tip or a trick or a circumstance. It's ultimately something that comes from the Lord and his presence with us. It's knowing that God is good regardless of what's going on in our

Lives, knowing that he is faithful and that he is present with us. If we carry that with us, we'll have a peace that surpasses understanding and that is with us throughout all circumstances. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, this morning, we come to you in so many different conditions and places this morning. Some of us have had weeks where it was chaotic. Some of us have had years that have felt chaotic. Lord, we long for that peace that is described in your word, a peace that surpasses understanding, a peace that does not leave us or forsake us, a peace that is independent of what's going on in our lives. Lord, this morning I asked that you would wake us up to how you are here with us today. That we would know your presence among us. That we would reject the voice in our head that is screaming, "There's no peace to be had." That we would reject the enemy as he tries to tempt us to look at other things for sources of peace. Lord, might we fix our eyes on you? Lord, might we behold your son on the cross crucified and know that his blood has bought us peace? Lord, might we, whenever we encounter difficulty, trial, or suffering, look to the cross and behold Jesus crucified. Might that speak to our souls? Lord, be our peace. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.