How to Experience True Peace

March 15, 2020: We long for peace, but what is it and how do we get it? The world tells us that we get peace by acquiring stuff and insuring ourselves against an uncertain future, but Jesus had a very different idea of what truly calms a man’s anxious heart. Today, it is the Coronavirus. Yesterday, it was Ebola, polio, nuclear war, foreign invaders, leprosy, or a happenstance shingle that falls off a roof. If Jesus promises, “…my peace I leave with you” and then follows up with a command, “Do not be troubled or fearful,” do we have permission to insert, “unless….”? In this hour, like every hour since and every hour henceforth, we need His peace.

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Pastor's notes

How to experience true peace
Philippians 4:1-9
Intro

 
How to experience true peace
Trust the Lord – vs 1
-Begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ
 
-Belong to Christ’s family, the local church!
 
-Read quote from C.S. Lewis
 
-Our current crisis alerts us to what we often forget- death is certain and true peace comes from knowing our eternal destiny
 
Practice reconciliation – vs 2-3
 
Rejoice in the Lord always – vs 4
 
Offer grace like Jesus does – vs 5
 
Replace worry with prayer – vs 6-7
-Worry Free Prayer
Talk with God
Ask God for help
Thank God for what you already have
Trust God’s promise
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”
 
-John 14:27  “Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.” 


Know Jesus = know peace
 
No Jesus = no peace
Think positively – vs 8
 
 
 
Lead by example – vs 9
-Paul said “Do what you have learned and received and heard
                  from me, and seen in me.”
-Can people see this in you? 
-Jesus is waiting to give His peace to the whole world!
   -He
 
 
 
Are you experiencing true peace today?
“And the God of peace with be with you”
-not just peace…GOD will be with you!
  -He will be with you, accompany you, empower you
 
What must you do?
-Accepted Christ as Savior Today
 
-Return to Christ today
 
-Walk together in Christ
 
-Share your hope in Christ- “Who’s your ONE?”
 

 
C.S. Lewis quote-  (just replace atomic bomb with COVID-19)
 
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
 
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
 
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
 
“On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
 
Found at www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/cs-lewis-coronavirus
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