Jehovah Shalom: Finding Peace in an Anxious World

In this moment with Gideon, nothing out there had changed, but everything in here had changed. And right now, as we're in this service today, maybe you're watching online, today, in this moment, nothing may have changed out there. Your family situations may be exactly the same right now. Your financial situation may be exactly the same. Your visa hasn't yet come through. Your own own inner turmoil and anxious thoughts are consuming you. But even right now, you can experience Jehovah Shalom, the lord your peace. [01:04:04] (58 seconds)  #PeaceInTheMoment

Isn't this amazing how God has this habit of selecting the weak, selecting those who've been injured, and selecting those who don't have it altogether? And so God speaks to Gideon. I'm not coming to you because you're from the family of of notoriety. I'm not coming to you because you're the strongest or or you necessarily think you're the the most equipped or you've got life together. I'm coming to you for the very reason that you don't think you have everything together because your reliance is solely on me. And so, Gideon, you have everything that you need. [00:57:18] (46 seconds)  #ChosenInWeakness

God's speaking prophetically to Gideon. I know you're the weakest. I know you're from the weakest family. I know the Midianites are outside the walls of this environment. I know that you've lost everything. I know that you've been stripped of everything. I know all of those things, but still, you're gonna overcome. You are gonna overcome. And Gideon's like, god speaks a word of faith. All you need is to hear. Hear the word of god, and faith can be ignited today. If you believe even in the middle of your anxious ways and your anxious thoughts, if you can hear that God said to Gideon, you shall defeat your enemy. [01:01:02] (56 seconds)  #FaithByHearing

It's in this environment that God takes the initiative and he sits with Gideon, not only in the expansive environment, but where Gideon's retreat back into the winepress, God meets him there. And God want God God wants to meet you right now in the middle of your anxious place, in your confined place, in the place where you've retreated to, God is able to come to you. He's able to sit with you, and he says, the Lord is with you. And if you know God is with you, then the Bible says in Romans eight, then who can be against you? [00:54:11] (40 seconds)  #GodMeetsYouWhereYouAre

It's an incredible encouragement that when we are living, when we're overwhelmed by the stuff of life, when we're overwhelmed because the economy's going through the floor and and we can't get that application for that visa approved and we can't find the job that we're looking for and the family situation isn't changing, It's an incredible encouragement that even in our anxiety, God can come and speak to us. Whenever God speaks to us, he brings comfort even in your chaos. [00:49:09] (36 seconds)  #ComfortInChaos

Now you would never thresh wheat in a wine press. If you wanna thresh wheat, what you would do, you bring the crop in, and you'd thresh wheat in an open and an expansive place. Because in that open, large environment, the wind would come and it would blow all the chaff away, all the stuff that you didn't want so that you were left with what you did want and you could use for food. And yet the bible says in Judges six that Gideon is threshing wheat not in an open expansive place, but is threshing wheat in the winepress. [00:52:13] (39 seconds)  #ThreshingInTheWinepress

So I don't wanna be in an open, vulnerable, large, expansive environment because I may lose everything that's come in. And so rather than be in the expansive place God would want him to be, he's in a winepress confined, living defensive, holding on to everything that he's got, hoping he doesn't lose anything. When we allow anxiety to define our life and our experience, what we do is we retreat back into a defensive mindset. We retreat back into isolation. [00:53:32] (39 seconds)  #AnxietyBreedsIsolation

But the truth is anxiety is not just defined by an age demographic or a generation because anxiety is common to every single one of us. Every one of us has bills that come into our emails, and some of them overdate, and we're trying to work out how we're get things together. Or we've got, you know, a relational crisis over here that we're kinda just managing and trying to make things work work out. And we've got a deadline with work that we need to meet, and we've got different expectations of people that we do value their input in lives. And so every one of us has certain degrees of anxiety that we're all facing every single day. [00:41:23] (45 seconds)  #AnxietyIsUniversal