Sermon Transcript
And if you brought your Bible, turn there with me to Isaiah 26. We’re going to actually talk about peace this morning. If you went on the website, you probably saw we were going to be talking about Everlasting Father, and that was because David Collister was scheduled to preach. But with the situation that’s happened in their family, I’m stepping in, and we’re hoping that he’ll be able to preach next Sunday and talk about Everlasting Father, and we’ll let him share what it was that he had worked pretty hard on preparing. And so we’re going to go out of order.
Order with our Isaiah study, Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6. But we’re going to start today in Isaiah 26:3. So the whole matter of peace— God wants us, he wants his children to live with perfect peace. And of course, there are any number of things that could come into our lives that can rob us of that peace. So if you’re the Collisters right now, waiting for Cindy’s father to die is enough to disrupt a person’s peace, obviously, as he’s in hospice care.
We want to continue to pray for them. But just that whole circumstance, put yourself in their shoes. Jarvis Russell this week died. Maybe you knew Jarvis. Just was an active part of this church for years and years and years.
Always had a smile on his face. In these later years of his life, unable to stand erect because of some back issues, but yet always over here doing things on the campus. Just a wonderful man. When he came in the office, people stopped working and just hung out with Jarvis and talked. And just a great guy.
But still Still, Wanda is living in the aftermath of this, Jarvis’ wife, and the rest of the family. And so that can easily rob them of peace right now. Yesterday I had a phone conversation with a stepbrother who is going to have some tests tomorrow, some kind of ultrasounds and some other things because he’s having some kind of abdomen issues. They’re unsure whether or not this possibly could be a tumor. They already took out his gallbladder.
And things have not improved. And so there you go, you know, waiting for a health exam. I mean, it’s the worst thing in the world, isn’t it, to have to wait for exams and all the unrest that goes into that, and then waiting for the results of the exam? That’s happening for him tomorrow. Many of you as students are facing tests right now.
This is the time of year when exams come your way. Just trying to finish up the year. Maybe you just finished up the year, and maybe there was a lot of stress involved in that, anxiety and worry and all the rest that’s connected to that. And of course, that can easily rob us of peace. I was at the DMV this week.
I was just in there just to get something done and to change on my license, and I thought this would just be real simple, you know, no big deal. And then the lady noticed that my license is going to expire soon, and she said, you know, it would be really to your advantage manage financially to go ahead and just get this whole thing done right now, which means you should take the exam right now. Well, as soon as she said that, you know, I’m like, are you kidding? I’m not ready to take the exam. This takes like 40 hours of study for me or something.
So she, she talked me into it, and I went over and took the exam. And so, you know, just taking the exam is enough to take away your peace, and then waiting for them to grade your exam, you know, and I There were a couple of young girls, one in front of me and one behind me in this line. And the young girl in front of me, she looks like she was getting her permit, and she passed it, no problem, missed none. And what I couldn’t understand was why wasn’t she smiling after that? It was just so odd to me.
I mean, I’d be so happy. Are you kidding? And so then they graded mine, and I missed some. Let me just say that I passed, okay? I actually passed.
I can still drive. This is really cool. And so that was— yeah, I know. I know this is a big moment. I know it is.
It really is a big moment. And then the girl behind me passed, but she actually got everything right on hers too, so there was me in the middle. But anyway, and I looked at her and said, happy day, because she wasn’t smiling either, you know. And after that, she actually started smiling. So anyway, the DMV thing is enough to take away your peace.
There are so many things at this time of year. Just driving, you know, to the store, that’s enough to take away your peace. Or get into the parking lot, try to find a place to park, that’s enough to take away your peace. All the rest of it. You know the Kang story?
I’ve asked Jessica and Daniel to just share a little bit of their story with us because recently they were peace-challenged, I guess you could say, in the birth and the pregnancy with Ezra. And so I wanted you to meet Ezra if you haven’t yet met him. He’s 9 weeks old now, and there were some challenges connected to the, the pregnancy of of, um, well, who came to be Ezra, because I guess you like named him at the last second or something, didn’t you? But tell us a little bit about this. Some of the challenges were related just even to, uh, right before his birth.
Yeah, so, uh, we have 3 other boys and they all had normal pregnancies, and this little guy was definitely kind of last minute. Bless you.
He was, um, breech and then not breech, and we were planning to have a caesarean, and by God’s great will, he avoided that, and we didn’t have to do that, which was an amazing piece of peace for us. And then, and that was really a last-minute thing, and honestly, that was like a 10-minute gap that could have changed whether we did or did not do that based on the doctor that was on call. And then we had another moment, moment of unpiece a few weeks ago, and I’ll let you share that. Okay. Yeah, take the baby.
So Ezra was born with something called a sacral dimple, which is an indentation right above his tailbone, and that can be a marker for something called a tethered spinal cord. It’s where the nerves of the spinal cord are bunched together, and as he grows, that can affect his mobility. It can cause paralysis, it can cause incontinence. There’s, there’s a whole host of issues that can go along with it. And unfortunately, Daniel’s aunt was born with that, and it’s caused complications throughout her life.
And the only corrective form that they have is surgery, and the earlier the better. So in order to determine if he does have this, they had to do an MRI, and that’s a little nerve-wracking because he had to be sedated So more so than being nervous for, you know, the outcome of the tethered cord, just the idea that he’s gonna have to be— have general anesthesia and be out, you know, that did— that caused a lot of stress for me because there can be a lot of complications with a baby this small and the anesthesia. You don’t never— you never know if they’re gonna have an allergic reaction or give them too much or not enough, and so they have to monitor when they go under and then when they come out. So that was, that was pretty scary, but we did the MRI on Friday the 6th of December, and on Tuesday we got an email from the doctor that he, along with the neurology team, had determined that there are no issues to remark with his spine, that he’s got a clean bill of health. Oh man.
So is that this Tuesday? Was it just this Tuesday you heard? Last Tuesday, a week ago. Wow. And so, you know, just think about this.
You’re the parents, and of course you have some complications around the pregnancy there at the end, just before delivery and all of that. That’s enough to rob you of your peace. But then to hear that possibly paralysis might be in his future and go through the test of that and everything else connected to that. Who wouldn’t, you know, at that point experience some kind of anxiety and dealing with all of that? But this is amazing, you know.
So how are you guys doing now? Uh, tired. Yeah, absolutely. Got 3 more, so we’re tired. Yeah.
And now you have 4 boys. 4 boys, yes. So there will always be one piece of— We’ll just leave it at that. Thank you guys. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thanks for what God’s doing in their lives. So here we are. This is just a part of life, right?
And you have your own circumstances. I don’t know what it is that you’re faced with right now, but when we come to a passage like the one we’re at today, I think this has a lot of application to us because we live in a world where we love to experience peace, and yet oftentimes we don’t have peace. Because of the circumstances that come our way. And that’s not even to talk about relationships and politics and, you know, international matters and all the rest of it that can certainly cause unrest as well. The Bible says though that there is a God of peace, and this God of peace promises peace for his children.
You may know Isaiah chapter 26, verse 3. Now we’re at that verse. It says, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon thee because he trusteth in thee. And I gave this in the King James because that was the language or the translation that I memorized this verse in way back because it was one of the early verses that I need in my life. At that time I needed it.
And, you know, so often in our lives if you come to the Scriptures in need, you’re going to see that there will be Scriptures that will speak to you loud and clear about something that you’re working through. And this was one of those verses. But I absolutely love this verse. But when you put it into the context, you could begin to understand. I mean, why write about peace?
If you know the book of Isaiah, you know that the people that Isaiah is writing to are people who basically have abandoned God, and the result of that is they were not experiencing peace. Isaiah 48:22 says, there is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked. So they were living lives contrary to God’s will. Isaiah 48:18, if only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea. So it’s a picture of abandoning God, and the result is a lack of peace in their lives.
And oftentimes that’s what happens in our lives as well. As we walk away from God, we walk away from peace. And so Isaiah comes along and he puts peace into its proper place, and he shows them what is required to be people who experience peace in the relationships with each other and And of course the peace that you can have in your soul. And what I want to just point out today is what I’m going to call a 3P plan for perfect peace. And I say perfect peace because again, back to Isaiah 26:3, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon thee because he trusteth in thee.
So perfect peace. So here’s the question we could be considering as we think about this for a few minutes. Am I living with perfect peace? And a lot of us would say, no, I’m not living with perfect peace. So then we would rephrase it and we say, well, am I living with partial peace?
Or am I living with a little peace? Or am I living with just, you know, maybe a smidgen of peace in my life? Well, evidently the Lord wants us to experience perfect peace, and there is a way for us to experience perfect peace. So if right now you’re not experiencing perfect peace, which often is the case, for me, for you, and circumstances that we face in life? What’s it require for us to experience perfect peace?
Well, the plan is wrapped around a promise that’s made. It’s the promise we’ve been looking at in Isaiah 9:6. So again, looking at that with you this morning, Isaiah 9:6, but also want to add verse 7 because it continues the thought at the end of verse 6. It says, for us to 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 increase 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 justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. So here’s God’s plan, and His plan for establishing peace on earth, peace that will not end, is connected to a child. And he says that this child is going to be born, the government will be on his shoulders.
So he’s going to set up a new kingdom, a new form of government, and people in his government are no longer going to live with battles and conflicts and wars, but peace will prevail among each other worldwide, and it will prevail in our souls. And the good news is that the fulfillment of that is connected to the Prince of Peace. It’s also connected to, as we’ve been looking at, the Wonderful Counselor. We talked about that in the first week as Steve helped us understand that we are invited to come to the throne of grace where we can find counsel to help us in time of need. It’s also connected to, as we looked last week, to the Mighty God who we want to get connected with and stay connected to because His power is supreme.
We’ll look hopefully next week at Everlasting Father, but we’re jumping over that to get to the Prince of Peace and this whole matter of peace. And God wants His children to experience peace, so He’s going to send a child who would bring peace, and He would be called the Prince of Peace. Now that all tells me that peace is first of all possible through a person, and this person is the Prince of Peace. And prince, of course, speaks of high rank or somebody of nobility. And so we ask the question, does Jesus Christ fit that descriptor?
Was Jesus Christ, in fact, the Prince of Peace? Was He the peace bringer? Well, if you go back to the beginning of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, and especially the announcement— do you remember this? The announcement that was made by the angels to the shepherds? That announcement included peace.
Luke 2:10-14, but the angel said to them, don’t be afraid, I bring you good news a great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests. So from the outset of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, It was said that Jesus would bring peace on earth and goodwill to men.
Now, that of course had interest in Isaiah’s day because they were in unrest experiencing the judgment of God and about ready to be taken over by Babylonia. It certainly had interest in Jesus’ day when the people were living under Roman oppression. And peace certainly has interest in our day when we’re still experiencing unrest on the inside and unrest on the outside. I think we still long for the same kind of peace. And as we look at Jesus’ life and ministry, we see that he, as the Prince of Peace, not only talked about peace but made it possible for people to experience peace in their soul and in relationships with each other.
And so from the beginning, peace was a part of the announcement that Jesus would bring peace, this child would bring peace. But you also see it all the way up to the end of his ministry. For instance, in John chapter 14, Jesus is with his disciples. It’s the end of his ministry. It’s the night before his death.
And they are troubled because they’ve just found out that he’s going to leave them. And Jesus’ words to them, you’ll remember this, was— it was simply this. John 14:27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives, which is a conditional peace. His peace is not conditioned upon circumstances.
My peace that I give you is not as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. Now that’s to say nothing was going to change in their circumstances. He was still going to go to the cross. He was still going to do what it was he just told them.
He was going to leave them, but he was going to send the Comforter. So all of that was still going to happen, but he is still able to say to them, I’m going to give you peace, and this peace will calm your heart so that you don’t have to live troubled and you don’t have to live with fear. Call it unparalleled peace, call it perfect peace, call it whatever you want to call it. I can meet your need. I can comfort your soul.
I can give you peace with God in your relationships with others as well. So this whole peace was in focus in Jesus’ life and ministry. And can I just say one other thing related to that? After Jesus’ crucifixion, you’ll remember his followers were troubled, right? So much so that they feared for their lives.
And so Jesus is raised from the dead and he comes back. And what’s the thing that he focuses on more than anything else after he comes back? It’s interesting, and it’s found in his greeting to his troubled disciples. For instance, in John 20:19, on the evening of that last— or the first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews. So this is right after Jesus was crucified.
They don’t know how things are going to turn out. It says Jesus came and he stood among them and said— and what’s— what does he say? Peace be with you. I want you to experience peace right now. You go a little bit farther, a couple verses.
Again Jesus said, verse 21, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I’m sending you. And then you get to chapter 20, verse 26. A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.
See, they still were at unrest in the whole circumstance, and Jesus wants them to experience the peace that passes all understanding. He wants them to experience perfect peace. You may remember he appeared to 2 disciples who were troubled about what had happened, these guys that were on this road to Emmaus. And it says in Luke 24:36, while they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. I mean, that’s an interesting greeting, isn’t it?
You probably don’t greet people that way. Peace be with you. It’s more like, hey, how you doing? Or whatever it is. But Jesus’ greeting when he came back to people was focused on peace.
It was anything but what they were experiencing at that time. And it wasn’t just a nice thought. It was what he could give them in a vital relationship with him. So ultimately, you get to the epistles And the Apostle Paul speaks to this matter in Philippians chapter 4, and in verse 7 he says, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds. And then it says this, in Christ Jesus.
And there’s the connector again. Peace that transcends all understanding, or perfect peace, is connected to a person, and that person is the Prince of Peace. And we believe the Prince of Peace is Jesus Christ. So all of that’s to say that if we’re going to experience God’s perfect peace that transcends all understanding, that surpasses our peace, that’s beyond our capacity, we’ve got to again be vitally connected to Jesus Christ. So it begins with the relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
If you’ve never connected with God through Jesus Christ, that’s the first step to experiencing lasting peace, to experiencing his peace. But after that, it’s the step of continuing to abide with him. It’s the step of living with him or remaining in him. You know, John chapter 15, Jesus says, you need to abide in me. And of course, as we abide in Christ, we become what Christ is in the sense of his qualities.
So you, you begin to manifest— we begin to manifest the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, and peace. It’s all connected to Jesus Christ. So the first thing I think we’ve got to remember is that this peace that we need is connected to a person, and the person is the Prince of Peace, and that person is Jesus Christ. And we need to be vitally connected to him. We need to stay close to him.
We need to listen for his voice. We need to build a an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ. You know, one of the reasons why I was attracted to Bernice— and there are many reasons why I was attracted to Bernice— but one of the reasons was because she was a person of peace. She came from a home that was at peace. My home was anything but at peace.
And whenever I was around her, there was just this sense of calm that came into our relationship. And even to this day, if you know Bernice, you’ll find that she’s a person that just is pretty even-keeled about things and has this sense of peace in her life. I love that about her. Well, in the same way, but even a greater way, when we get close to God through Jesus Christ, his peace rubs off on us. Is that happening?
Is it happening in greater ways in your life right now than perhaps it’s ever happened? If it’s not happening, it’s possible that it’s an indicator that we’re not connected to the Savior like we should be, the Prince of Peace. There’s a second matter I want you to see. Peace is not only found in a person, the Prince of Peace, but it’s also found in a practice, in a practice. Back to Isaiah 26:3, it says, thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.
So there’s a connection here. I want you to see the connection. There’s a connection between peace and trust. Peace and trust. In fact, in the next verse, Isaiah 26:4, it says, trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord is the rock eternal.
I think that’s an amazing phraseology that’s found there. How— what is he saying? He’s saying that the Lord is Lord. Do you really believe the Lord is the Lord? The Lord is the Lord.
And if you believe that the Lord is the Lord, then you will trust the Lord, not just for a moment, but you will trust the Lord forever. So here you have peace and trust connected to each other, but then you have the expression of trust as you continue to read down Isaiah chapter 26. Look at verse 8. Isaiah 26:8: Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we will wait for you. Your name and renown are the desires of our hearts.
And I think that’s an interesting way of saying that too. Your name and renown. What’s the renown? It’s who you’re known for, God, because of who you are. That’s the desire of our hearts.
My soul yearns for you in the night. In the morning, my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness. And then verse 12, Lord, you establish peace for us All that we have accomplished, you have done for us. What’s this?
As you just look at this unfold in Isaiah chapter 26, what do you have? Well, you have an injunction. What’s the injunction? The injunction is to trust in the Lord, right? And if we trust in the Lord, we experience peace.
Well, then as the passage continues to flow out, what you have is an expression of that injunction, or you have the practice of that injunction. And what’s the practice of trust here? It’s prayer. It’s prayer, isn’t it? And so Isaiah is praying on behalf of the people.
You see humble dependence upon God in prayer. Trust then is expressed through prayer. Have you noticed that often God connects in the Scriptures transcendent peace to dependent prayer? Have you seen that connection? Transcendent peace or perfect peace, which we’re talking about that God wants for us to experience, oftentimes in the scriptures that transcendent or perfect peace is connected to dependent prayer.
You’re probably familiar with Philippians 4:6-7 where it says, don’t be anxious about anything.
That deals with all of us here, right? I mean, like, we’re going to walk walk out of here and probably immediately be hit by something that can create some anxiety. Don’t be anxious about anything, Paul says, but in everything. So whatever it is that hits you— does God want us to pray about everything, even the little things? Yes, that’s what it says.
I mean, everything. In everything, what should I do? By prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And there There’s the connection again. Transcendent peace, verse 7, is connected to dependent prayer, meaning without prayer, peace is absent.
With prayer, there’s the possibility of my heart and my mind being guarded with peace. Now notice the kinds of prayer we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about, you know, this, this minuscule prayer in the sense that, you know, I— well, when I get desperate or something, that’s the only time I pray. No, we’re talking about an ongoing pattern of prayer in a person’s life. Notice this: it’s prayers of petition.
Notice the word petition there. That’s to say to the Lord, Lord, would you please, please intervene in this particular situation that I find myself in right now? These are prayers of thanksgiving. You notice the word thanksgiving thanksgiving that’s found there. So these are grateful prayers.
And of course, when we pray with thanksgiving, we’re basically praying with trust. Lord, I trust you in this circumstance for what you’re going to do, and I thank you that you’re working right now. So to thank God is to trust him. In fact, one of the reasons we don’t trust him is because— or we don’t thank him is because we don’t trust him, right? So thanksgiving is an expression of trust, and then it’s a request prayer.
Notice the word present your request to God. So here he’s talking about specific requests connected to specific needs. Lord, I need your help right now with whatever it is. This is how David prayed in Psalm 34:4. I sought the Lord and he answered me, and he delivered me from all of my fears.
So I take it that David specifically sought the Lord for whatever fear it was, and maybe it was a list of fears, I don’t know. No, it’s not one, it’s plural. He’s delivered me from all of my fears, and I take it that he took every one of those fears to the Lord and trusted the Lord with them. Peter advises us to do the same thing. 1 Peter 5:7, cast all of your anxiety, not just some of it, all of your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
So what you have in the Scripture, what we want to see, is that God has intentionally— watch Watch, God has intentionally linked peace to intentional prayer. Do you see that?
He has— God has intentionally linked peace to intentional prayer. See, He wants us to have a part in this. And it could be that the reason that we’re not experiencing peace right now is because we’re not intentionally Praying and praying and praying. Because if we pray in this way, this passage says that peace will flood our stressed-out souls. Peace will guard— do you notice the word guard that’s used there?
Peace will guard our hearts and our minds. So peace will guard our emotions and peace will guard our thoughts. And this word guard here is actually a military word that speaks about protecting with a garrison, protecting with a garrison or an army. So as soldiers were assigned to watch over a certain area, peace is going to garrison our hearts and our minds, our thoughts and our emotions in Christ Jesus. And this peace that we’ll experience will transcend all understanding.
It’s a perfect peace. You experiencing that kind of peace right now? It could be that you’re not connected to the person, the Prince of Peace. It could be that you’re not practicing prayer in your life in intentional ways. Haven’t you seen this?
You know, sometimes, for instance, you share with somebody a prayer request and you say, would you pray for me?
And just the sharing of that request oftentimes lifts the burden, doesn’t it? Can we take it even farther than that though? You see, the peace that that person needs isn’t just found in the sharing of the request. We are to bear one another’s burdens, but we are also to pray for one another, aren’t we? So it’s not just the bearing of the burden, but it’s also the praying for one another.
And in the praying for one another, God has said, if you will pray, I will garrison your heart with peace. Now that is trusting prayer. That’s prayers of thanksgiving. That’s prayers that come to God and say, God, you’ve got to take over. And that really needs to be instinctual in our lives.
You know, some of us have an instinctual response when we’re hungry, don’t we? We know what to do. You’re sitting at home, you’re hungry, you go to the refrigerator and pray that there’s some food in the refrigerator that you’re going to eat right now. Or you’re on the airplane and you’re hungry or thirsty, and you know, you get up and you go to the galley back there where the flight attendants are and you beg for some food or whatever it is. Or you’re here at the church office.
If you’re on staff at the church office or you ever come in the church office, a little secret for you: if you’re hungry, you go into the workroom. There’s always food in the workroom. I don’t know what it is. People around the campus, they know, we’ll just dump this food in the staff workroom. And so some of us staff spend a lot of time in the workroom.
It’s really kind of funny, actually. But it’s just a habitual thing. It’s an instinctual thing. When we are hungry, we stop and we eat. And what this passage is saying is when you’re anxious and you’re stressed out and you’re worried, your first habitual response ought to be to stop and pray.
The kids are out on a date and you’re filled with worry— stop and pray. The medical report says you need more tests— stop and pray. The loved one who’s overseas in a war situation— it’s to stop and pray. The frustrations are building up because of deadlines that you’re under right now. It’s to stop and it’s pray.
You’re faced with an exam at school or a hard conversation. It’s to stop and pray. So peace is connected to a person, it’s connected to a practice, and a final thought, it’s connected to a pursuit. Isaiah 26:3 says, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. There’s an old hymn called Like a River Glorious that says this: Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace.
That’s what we’re talking about this morning— God’s perfect peace, what he wants his children to experience. Over all victorious in its bright increase, perfect yet it floweth, fuller every day, perfect yet it groweth, deeper all the way. I mean, those are great words just to envision and understand. The writer is saying here that this peace ought to be something that we experience in fuller ways, and it ought to grow in our lives. And then the refrain, or the chorus, says, stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed, finding as he promised perfect peace and rest.
And I love what Francis Havergal said here. It’s just just, if you ask me, brilliant, because she understood that you could not experience peace one time, but it’s something that’s got to come as a result of staying on the Lord, or something that comes of staying on the Lord. I mean, we would love it. Wouldn’t it be great if we just prayed like one time, we said, Lord, would you just take care of this situation and then fix me with peace for life? It doesn’t happen like that, does it?
You see, the The Bible absolutely demands that we stay completely dependent upon God, that we pursue this relationship with Him, that we stay upon Jehovah. Frances, the writer of that hymn, when she wrote that, she had already been writing several songs previous. She actually began writing when she was 7 years of age. She went on to learn Greek, Latin, Hebrew. She memorized the Psalms.
She She memorized the book of Isaiah, and she memorized almost the entire New Testament. And I would say that what she was doing when she was memorizing Scripture was she was putting in place a means by which she could stay upon Jehovah. Stay. And one of the reasons why we don’t experience peace is because our minds get off on every other thing. A person comes into our life and they cause disturbance in our life.
And so instead of staying upon Jehovah, we’re on that person. And the problem that we’re faced with right now, that’s what we’re stayed on. We just keep going over and over and over that problem in our mind instead of staying upon Jehovah, instead of saying, Lord, you’re in control. You know my circumstances. You see what I’m going through.
You have a plan for my life. I thank you. I trust you. I’m going to lean on you. I’m not going to lean on my own understanding.
I mentioned last week at the beginning of the message that I have a friend right now who’s experiencing seizures. These seizures came out of nowhere, and he’s been posting on Facebook how he’s been processing this. On Saturday, November the 30th, he wrote, I’m at Simi ER, emergency room, with some sort of seizure. So this was just the beginning of it. Just finished lots of tests.
I’m still alive. He still had a sense of humor. Please pray for my healing. And then he writes, God is our help in time of trouble. My help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
I love you all. 2 days later, my convulsions are stronger and longer now, 2 to 3 per hour. My help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Much fighting the good fight, strong in the Lord, keeping our eyes on Jesus. Amen.
A couple days later, Wednesday: My episodes have remained about the same, that is 4 to 6 every hour. So they’re increasing. Jeremiah 32:27: Is there anything too hard for me? He brings that to mind. Is there anything— is this situation more difficult than God could handle?
Is it impossible? This world— then he writes, this world is not my home. I’m just passing through, leaning on Jesus. Now that sounds to me like somebody who stayed upon Jehovah, isn’t it? He’s leaning on Jesus.
He’s keeping his heart and his mind on the Lord. He wrote to me this week and he said, Dave, can you send me some scriptures that I can just reflect on? So I took some time and I sent him a bunch of scriptures, and he wrote back about a half hour after I sent those to him, and he said, you can’t believe how encouraging this is. He’s just staying on the Lord. I talked to his daughter and I said, how you guys doing?
And we had a great conversation, but at this one point in the conversation she said this, and I had to write it down. She said, God is working it out. He can give us peace when we don’t know all of the answers.
Do you believe that? He can give us peace when we don’t know all of the answers. You know, every one of us here know how to pursue someone or something. Some of you right now are pursuing a degree. Some of you right now are pursuing a relationship with somebody.
Some of you right now are pursuing a job. Some of you are married. You learned long ago how to pursue somebody. It’s just been a part of your life. And what this is saying is we’ve got to pursue that kind of relationship with God.
We got to get close to God, and we get close to God through a person and through a practice, through the practice of prayer and through the pursuit of staying on the Lord and trusting the Lord with whatever circumstances that we’re faced with in life. You know, I don’t know what the thing is in your life this morning that’s probably robbing you of peace. And there are a number of things that I face constantly. And so this is a constant battle, and yet the Lord wants us to win this battle in him. He wants for his children— listen— to live not with a little peace, not with some peace.
He wants for his children to live with perfect peace. And that perfect peace is connected to the Prince of Peace, is connected to a practice, and it’s connected to a pursuit. When Cindy wrote this last letter to us sharing how things are going as they wait for her father to die, she in this letter said, our family is grieving but at peace, which can only be the Lord. We’re grieving But we’re at peace, and there’s only one explanation for that right now. It’s the Lord.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, you know our circumstances that we face in life. You know how troubling they can be, how much they hurt, how much we worry, how anxious we are.
And we are so much like the people in Isaiah’s day, the people in Paul’s day. We easily, easily can lose sight of you and our relationship with you and trusting you. And so we just ask that you would help us, Father, through the work of the Holy Spirit, Spirit, you would multiply in us this fruit of peace. And when we are troubled, we would come back to you again and again in prayer, and we would stay upon you. And so even this morning, help us do that.
Whatever it is that’s troubling us, would you just take it? We give it to you.
