The God of Peace: Choosing Faith Over Fear

Yahweh Shalom. First time the word Yahweh shalom, the God of peace is introduced in Judges six is to Gideon. And if you're familiar with that story, they were being overtaken by the Midianites. They had no peace and yet there is God saying, hey, I'm the God of peace. Before they ever had circumstantial peace, they had positional peace in the presence of God, Yahweh Shalom. That word peace means completion or wholeness. [00:46:55] (26 seconds)  #YahwehShalom

That name of that sickness doesn't hold any power over my life, and it doesn't hold the power of my present reality. He said, the power is in the name of Jesus, and I'm gonna put the name of Jesus over this. And I'm gonna put the name of Jesus over everything in our life right now, and we are gonna pray fervently, and we're gonna pray faithfully because we trust in the ever present God who brings peace through his ability, his ability to heal, his ability to care, his ability to see, his ability to take care of all those minor details that you can't even begin to worry about or they just slowly consume you into nothingness. [00:53:32] (39 seconds)  #JesusOverSickness

We're told to anchor ourselves in the God's word. We're never told not to do something without being in something to do. If we're told to not sin, we're told to flee from sin, we're told to pursue righteousness and godliness. We're told to pursue the word of God. You can't just stop sinning, you have to pursue godliness. You have to pursue righteousness. You can't just stop worrying, you have to pursue the God of peace. [00:48:19] (21 seconds)  #AnchorInGodsWord

You see, we have to stop thinking about peace as the absence of something. A lot of times, if someone were to say do you have peace in your life, you begin naming all the things and all the reasons why you don't have peace. And you would think, if this stuff would just go away, I would have peace. And we begin to frame peace from the idea of the absence of something. No. All throughout scripture, peace is the presence of someone. [00:38:05] (27 seconds)  #PeaceIsPresence

Way too often in life, we just simply show God our problems. We show God our requests and then we then we pick them back up and walk back off with them. We just carry them back away again and then just try to figure it out on our own. Alright God, we talked about it. Right? We've got to start leaving them at the feet of Jesus. [00:49:46] (18 seconds)  #LeaveItAtJesusFeet

The things that seem so far out of our control we're gonna drown. Those things start happening in your life and Jesus is calling out to you. The word of God is in your life. It is being proclaimed. You're reading it. It's being preached and yet you can't hear the voice. You can't recognize the voice of Jesus because of all that's going on. If you don't get in the proximity of Jesus and get really close to him, you're gonna miss his voice. [00:42:22] (22 seconds)  #GetCloseToJesus

Because if you have the ability to structure yourself to worry in compartments in such a capacity, you actually have the ability to do God's word and follow God's commands. In Philippians four four and nine, this is a wonderful passage on the God of peace that surpasses all understanding and this is what we're trying to obtain. [00:26:58] (24 seconds)  #PeaceThatSurpasses

It means that we have been made whole with our great God. We have been brought into that relationship, and anytime that word is used for peace in the New Testament, it's Irene, and its root word means that which is woven together or brought together into wholeness or completion. So you've got Yahweh Shalom, the God of peace, and you've got Jesus Christ who through his blood and sacrifice has woven us into the beautiful redemptive story with our heavenly father [00:47:21] (27 seconds)  #WovenIntoWholeness

That is the God who shows himself mighty. That is the God who shows himself able. That is the good and gracious God that we serve. That is the good and gracious God that invites us into a relationship with him. You see, peace, it's not the absence of all these things in our life. Peace is the presence of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. [00:46:32] (23 seconds)  #GodIsMightyAndGracious

That is the error of our ways when we allow ourselves to get consumed with worry, anxiety and fears. And it paralyzes us to the point that we cannot fulfill the promises of God. We cannot be obedient to the truth of God's word and that's where the Israelites were. This became known as a generation of unbelief. Think about that. This entire generation, only Joshua and Caleb get to go to promised land, but for the next thirty eight years they get to wander. [00:37:18] (26 seconds)  #FearParalyzesFaith

They don't get to seize God's promises. They don't get to enjoy all the goodness that God had for them because they allowed fear to reign supreme. They allowed their worries, their fears and their anxiety to get the best of them and it paralyzed them from seizing God's opportunities. That is not peace. That is the exact opposite of peace. [00:37:44] (21 seconds)  #DontLetFearStealPromises

You see, you can see the perspectives of the 10 that came back with a negative report and the perspectives of the two that came back with a positive report, can't you? It was a land flowing with milk and honey but see what happens is is there is a truth. Again, are there things to be concerned about? Is there a truth? There are truths that we can see that aren't necessarily the entirety of our reality but if we're not careful it begins to shape our reality and determine our actions. [00:33:57] (25 seconds)  #DontLetPartialTruthsDefineYou

the whole community jumps on the negative side. Negative Nancy begins to reign supreme throughout there and it gets pretty bad. And it goes from bad to worse where not only are these things true but then it goes to the lies because that's what the enemy ultimately will do. Is he'll take you to that place where you didn't want to go and that place ultimately is rebellion against God Almighty when they begin to say things like God is not good because he's just gonna take us over there to kill us. [00:36:21] (24 seconds)  #ResistFearfulNarratives

Well this is one of those things that when I read it I felt like somebody's like it's up there. It's up there in the survey. Because I got really patronizing in my own thoughts when I started reading this. It says one of the ways that we can manage stress and it's starting to get pushed by influencers, it's being pushed by secular counseling, it's being pushed a lot of different ways and it says ways to manage stress is you begin to schedule worry time. I want you to think about it. Just fixate, that's it. See that's Steve Harvey. What? So worry time. [00:25:49] (30 seconds)  #NoScheduledWorryTime

What happened was is they went into the land and they did see certain things. It is very truthful in what they saw. They go in and they see numerous people. Right? Again, there's 600,000 strong but they go in and they see all these places. They're like the people are vast. They're numerous. They're strong. Their weaponry is great. They are mighty. Their cities are fortified. Matter of fact, there are giants in the land. That whole place wants to kill us and destroy us. If we go over there, we're gonna die. [00:34:22] (31 seconds)  #FaceGiantsWithFaith

And it is something that in a broken world and an enemy that is trying to rob us of peace each and every single day, it is hard to obtain, it is hard to have. And so we've been going through all these things and this is one particular message that I just felt resonated with our people and it's one that I wanted to share with multiple people. [00:23:07] (16 seconds)  #MessageThatResonates