Turn with me to the book of Romans 14:17. This morning I want to begin the 2nd part of this 2 part series entitled "Enemies of peace". God wants us to live a peaceful life. It's a wonderful thing and is part of the covenant that the Lord has made with us. Last week we talked about the 4 dimensions of peace: How we can have peace with God, Peace with ourselves, Peace with others and Peace in our situations. Today we're going to look at enemies of peace. I want us to understand that the Kingdom of God is all about peace. Romans 14:17 says, "The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". What I like about verse 17 also is that it says, "For the Kingdom of God is not just about eating and drinking", it's not just about the things of this world, It's not about the things that we just do naturally but it's about even greater things. "It is about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". That is what the Kingdom of God is about. If you are a believer, you live in that Kingdom and that righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit is something that we can live in.
Father, Thank you for your Word and this morning as we talk about these enemies of peace, as we sang, we thank you that the walls that the enemy has erected against us must come down in the name of Jesus. Father, I thank you that the enemy is defeated and we can walk in victory. Lord, let this Word have impact in our lives this morning. May we decrease and may you increase to the glory of God. Amen
John 14:27, I started as the key verse last week. That verse says this, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid". There is a stand that you can take right there. You either let certain things happen or you don't let them happen. What God is saying is that because we are believers, He has come to give us peace so don't let these things into your life, don't let the trouble come. Into every life some trouble will come but you don't have to be troubled by your trouble. You can walk in the peace of God. Satan is the enemy of the Kingdom of God and you and I must understand as Christians, especially as American Christians we think that we're kind of cruising through life but we forget that we are in the middle of a battle. It's been going on for ages and Satan is the enemy of the Kingdom of God. If you have given your life to Jesus, you live in that Kingdom.
You may be an American who dwells in the United States of America but listen, whether you live in China or Iraq, America, Brazil or any other nation, if you are a Christian you may be geographically placed in that nation but you are a part of the Kingdom, regardless of where you live. The enemy comes against the Kingdom of God. He's opposed to all that it stands for. He attacks righteousness with impurity and wickedness. He attacks peace and joy through our emotions and our understanding and our thinking. We must understand that this warfare is against the way that we understand things, the way we see things because the reality is that God has already won the victory for us at Calvary. The work has already been finished. When Jesus died on the cross, the last thing He said was, "It is finished". That means then that the Kingdom was being able to be established in the righteousness, in peace and in joy. It's done. But the enemy will oppose that so the enemy wants to get to us through our thinking. You see, the peace of God and the joy He brings, many times are unexplainable and doesn't make sense when you compare it to what's happening in the natural. We believe in supernatural things and I don't understand why it is that Christians find it easier to believe for a miracle to happen sometimes than they can believe the Word of God that they can live in joy and in peace regardless of the miracle that they need. It is just as much of a miracle and we can live that every single day.
1st Peter 1:8 says, "Yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressable or unspeakable and full of glory". How many of you have ever had the joy of the Lord in your heart and really found yourself at a loss for words? I believe that's one of the reasons why the Lord allows us to speak in tongues because sometimes we don't know how to say what God is doing. It shows in our worship, it shows in the way we begin to express our life to Him. Phillipians 4:7 says, "And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and minds through Christ Jesus". That's one of the greatest promises in the Word. It is possible as a believer to live in such peace, even when everything else in the world that's going on around you says that you shouldn't be peaceful.
How many of you have ever felt the peace of God in the midst of trouble? How many of you have sensed the hand and the presence of God with you when everything else around you is falling apart? People will look at you and say, "I don't understand how you can feel that way". You can say to them, "In my natural mind I don't get it either but what I know is by faith I have received what God has promised me and now I'm going to live it". This is the great miracle of being a child of God, the fact that he saves us, cleans us and allows us to live in His promises. Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight". It's amazing that as believers, even mature believers, many times we will come back to leaning on what we know in the natural instead of who we know in the spirit. The Bible says that we are to lean on the Lord, to trust Him.
Listen, I believe that Christians should be the most thinking people in all the world but there are just some things we have to say to ourselves that we know we don't understand and there are some things we accept by faith because we trust that God is faithful. God says, "Lean not on your own understanding". Figuring everything out, mulling it over in our mind, having a front door, back door and a side door to get out of or into, regardless of what happens. Sometimes the enemy will come and he'll make sure all those doors are barricaded. But what we need to understand is that we have a God who makes a way where there is no way.
I've been in situations where I've felt such peace and people have looked at me and said, "I don't understand how you can feel that way". I can honestly say to them, "You know, all I know is I understand that I trust the Word of God and I'm standing on it and I'm going to live that peaceful life". The peace of God brings us into the supernatural. The peace and joy of God are not natural things. The perfect peace of God is about His wholeness, His quietness and rest that surpasses the mind, intellect and feelings of man. It is possible in the midst of when I am feeling something that I can still know His peace. You will face this contradiction in life at some point or the other when you decide you're going to serve the Lord. Your feelings will tell you one thing but your spirit will be telling you something else. You can choose to go with it.
How many of you have ever realized that I can choose to trust God or ride the roller coaster of my feelings? It's not that the Christian is unaffected by their feelings, as a matter of fact most Christians I know are pretty sensitive to what they know and feel. More than that, we trust the Lord to give us His peace. The peace of God does surpass the mind and the intellect and the feelings of man. Our mind and intellect and our understanding is where the enemy will attack but the peace of God is a miracle. I said this last week, it is a miracle to be received not achieved. It is something that you have to accept from God and not try to work at it and get it. It is something that you say, "Lord, I'm ready" and it is when we take the miracle and try to submit the miraculous to the natural that we begin to struggle. We just need to receive what God says is ours. If I were to hold a $20 bill in my hand today and just say, "Take it". There would be a few of you who would be bold enough to just take it out of my hand, and the truth is If I'm offering it to you I'm not going to crumble it up and keep it like a joke. You can sit there in your seat and wonder, "Is he serious, Is he not, does he want to give it, does he not want to? All you need to do is just get up and take it.
There are several areas that the enemy will attack in our understanding that will affect our peace. They are the enemies of peace. The first enemy of peace is selfishness. Outside of the fact that we are to help other people and that life isn't all about us, the truth is that selfishness is essentially self-worship. Selfishness robs us of peace because self is never satisfied. Even when we are blessed, selfishness will lead us to jealousy and fighting and rudeness. It's amazing in this nation where we are so blessed, how quickly we can become discontented. The enemy will challenge you with this stuff when God has blessed you and He has given you all you need. How many of you have ever known someone who has everything in the world but doesn't have any peace? It's a shame when God has blessed Christians with so much blessing that we wind up responding like the world does. The truth is as Christians we should live in peace regardless of how much we do or do not have. Paul said I have learned to be content with a lot or a little. If the enemy can keep our eyes off of God and callous our compassion for others and when the focus of our life is discontentedness, the enemy will come and steal our peace and joy.
James chapter 4:2-3 describes so many people. It says, "You lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain, you fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask, you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures". One of the reasons many Christians are not walking in peace is because after they have been blessed by God and they look around and see all that they have, they'll look around and see that there is so much more. Their prayers become, "God, I want more, I need more, I need this and I need that", and instead of that love relationship that we have with the Lord, It is like your children who are blessed with everything and you've given them a car and nice clothes and everything you gave them wasn't enough.
How many of you on Christmas had a child who just loved opening all the gifts but they didn't get that one thing that they wanted and they look around and say, "That's it?" How many of you know that as a parent, your face just turned about 3 shades of red. Selfishness will rob you so quickly.
I want to challenge you Christians. Even when there is need God has already promised to meet every bit of it and the enemy will rob us of peace very quickly when we become focused on our self. Proverbs 27:20 says, "Hell and destruction are never full so the eyes of man are never satisfied". Listen, it is possible in America and especially in this area that you can move into a nice house, fill it with nice furniture and look at your cars and say, "God has been good to me" then you can drive down the street and somebody has something bigger than you. How many of you know what I'm talking about? The eyes of a man are never satisfied. That's why materialism, drug addiction, pornography, overeating, overachieving and perfectionists have so much in common. Enough is never enough and it will rob you of peace.
Right along with selfishness is a distorted view of happiness and causes spouses to abandon each other and even their kids. Too many people say, "When life is like this or like that, If I have this or that, or if I marry this person or have this much money then I'm going to be happy. As Christians we look at this and say, "That is so basic". The truth is this, there are no ideal situations. How many of you found that out as soon as you became an adult? There is no such thing as the perfect marriage, there's no such thing as the perfect job, there are no perfect kids, and I promise you there is not a perfect church out there including Harvest Community. Someone say a good amen.
Everywhere you find people, you're going to find those who are full of faults, failures and even fickleness but what we do have is a perfect Savior. Everyday we have a new morning and each day His mercies are fresh, each day His goodness is evident. Listen, be thankful for today and you will live at peace. Take the time to look around even in your hardest day and find just something that there is to take pleasure in and if there is nothing happening in your life that you can find to take pleasure in, take pleasure and peace in the fact that you have a Savior who died for you and gave Himself for you and loves you with all that is in Him.
Peace is a condition of the character of a person, not our state of affairs but the state of our mind and heart. I want to say this, our happiness is in direct proportion to our gratefulness. Gratefulness brings contentment and allows us to quit struggling with what we have and don't have and to have peace in life.
The next enemy of peace that I want to talk to you about is worry. It's one of the greatest enemies of peace that you'll ever find. Seven times throughout the Gospels we are told not to worry. I could spend all day on this point right here but the Bible tells us not to worry about our life, what we will eat, what we will drink, where we will live, what we need to say, what we're going to do. The truth is that God will provide the direction in every one of those areas and if you know that in your heart, you will never worry again. I don't have to worry about being hungry. I've shared with you times when I have had nothing, no money and no food in the fridge and I had to rely on the Word of God. I watched my mom do it when I was a kid and now I can do it as an adult.
There were times in my life when I had to determine what God said was true or it
wasn't. Times when I've had to move and know that there was not a whole lot of time to find a house or have the down payment or do what needed to be done to have it and God said, "Don't even worry about it".
When my wife and I were moving from Okeechobee to Jupiter we had one day to find a house because we were so busy with things that we were doing. I didn't have time to drive around for days looking around.
I said, "God, your Word says that you will provide me with a place to live". My wife prayed, "you know exactly what I like, you know the color that I like and you know my husband can't use a paintbrush to save his life so God, let us get a house that is just ready for us to move right in.
Three hours later, we looked at 3 homes and right after lunch we found it and the next day it was ready to go. How many of you know that's a marvelous thing?
Either we believe we can live in that peace or we can get worked up and worry about so many things but I promise you, the night before we had to go looking for a home, I'm telling you I slept like a baby. The Lord allows us to have that kind of peace. In Matthew 6:34 it says, "Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about its own things, sufficient for the day is its own trouble". Too many people are trying to take on tomorrow's trouble when they have enough on their plate today.
That's the reason why so many of us feel like we're sinking. Remember that old song, "One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking from you, just one day at a time". Luke 12;29 says, "Do not have an anxious mind".
The truth is that worry messes with your mind. Worry messes with our understanding of God's promises. We take things out of the hands of God and we try to figure them out, to mull them over. It is good to have a plan and it is good to work the plan but when worry comes in when your plan fails and you aren't sure what's going to go on next, that's when you trust God. How many of you had some plans that didn't quite work out the way you thought they were going to? Philipians 4:6 says, "Be anxious for nothing". God would never ask us to do something that He wouldn't empower us to do. Worry is an enemy of peace and the truth is it affects every race, every creed, every financial level, not one person is exempt from it. Worry will never change the past but it will certainly ruin your future and it will ruin the present at which you may not have anything to worry about.
Notice this, worry always shows up when you need a clear mind and a peaceful heart and a definite direction the most. That's when worry begins to show up and mess with your mind. I like what one preacher said, "Worry is your personal irritation with God because something is going on in your life or you fear something may happen in the future that he's permitted and you can't control it". How many of you have ever gotten irritated with God? Isn't it silly to be irritated with the one who has the power to change everything? Just trust Him.
Worry robs us of our peace because worry is faith in fear instead of faith in Christ. It is faith that something bad is going to happen and you can't control it and there's nothing that you can do about it. The truth is this, faith in Christ says, "I may not be able to do anything about what's happening to me but instead of worrying about it, I'm going to place it in your hands". People say, "Well, that doesn't make sense". How many of you have ever been in a situation where you know if things didn't go right that things were really going to get messed up? So the enemy messes with your mind about the mess up that's about to happen that hasn't taken place yet. Faith in God calms the mind and it begins to refocus our understanding about who God is and that will change our understanding about our situations. People say, "I don't get that". That's because the enemy is still messing with your understanding. How many of you have walked through and watched God take away that mess the enemy has made and make a miracle out of it? God is faithful.
Worry robs us of rest, It robs us of sleep, it robs us of strength, it robs us of confidence. We need to control our thoughts, surrender those to the Lord and if we do, it will free our destiny to have the good things of God.
Phillipians 4:6-7 says, "The peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds. Be anxious for nothing". Listen to me, God is on the throne, He loves you. Do you believe that? God is in charge, He's a great loving Father, He will never let you go, He will meet your need, He is able to meet that need, He is willing to meet the need, he is faithful at all times, He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, he overcomes death, hell and the grave and if he can do that we have nothing to worry about because he is faithful.
The next enemy of peace is fear. Fear is different from worry. There are many Christians who have chosen to follow Christ but live in fear. The peace of God will combat fear on every level. There are some Christians who are so afraid of the devil and what he can do. How many of you have ever experienced real spiritual warfare, where you can just sense the presence of the enemy tangibly in your life? Some Christians walk in fear of that and in fear of all other things. Worry is a type of fear. Fear is an emotion that is meant to paralyze, demoralize and conquer you. Throughout the Bible, one of the things that God speaks to Christians is not to fear. Listen to me, not all fear is evil. A fear of God keeps you from sin. How many of you know we need that in our life? A fear of rattlesnakes will help you to change your direction when you're walking down a path to wisely get out of their way. A fear of my sister's cooking keeps me from accepting a dinner date and eating mystery meat.
Fear is a lack of confidence in God's protection and in God's provision, that's what fear is. Psalms 23:4 says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me". David is saying, "Listen, I want to take this to the extreme, even if I am facing death I will not fear any evil because evil can't touch me". For the believer, death isn't evil, death is a release into the fullness of God's promise for our life.
If you were to die today, where would you go? If you're saved, you have all the confidence in the world. My grandmother is 84 years old and if you pray for her, she's going to have surgery on her leg and she said, "You know, I'm not afraid to die. I am so ready, I know I'm ready for heaven". She says, "The older I get, the more I realize that I'm really getting closer to the end of my natural life and the more I look forward to seeing Jesus face to face". What a wonderful thing. When she speaks that to me, it gets me excited not only because of the heritage I have in my family because someone understands the reality that even when facing death we can have peace.
Fear is the result of unbelief but peace comes by believing God's Word and living it and resting in it. I found this quote and I love it, "Nothing makes a better pillow than resting on our confidence in Christ". What are you afraid of? Failure? Being hurt again? Betrayal? Are you just afraid of people? The unknown? Are you afraid of a fear of lack? What are you afraid of? Trust the Lord. Fear is at its worst when it plays on the imagination or understanding. David called his fear "a shadow of death".
The truth is that all of us at some time or another have been afraid of shadows. Even some of you grown men in this place, you tough guys, you manly men, you've gotten up in the middle of the night and there was a shadow shining in the room and there was a little bit of fear that went through you, maybe your adrenaline got kicking, maybe you picked up something right next to you because you thought someone was in there.
I remember one day I heard a noise and I got up and I went in the room and I saw something and thought someone was in the house. I tried rebuking it and it didn't go away so I knew it wasn't a devil. Listen, when you call on the name of Jesus, if a demon is there and you tell him he has to go, he has to go. I know that because I've done that.
But this thing didn't leave so now I thought someone was in my house and it was just standing there so I took a couple of steps back in my room and I had the paddle there from when I had given my kids a couple swats so I picked it up and that paddle was now my bat. I was going to destroy this thing and fear and adrenaline was going, you know that taste you get in your mouth when you're afraid but you're not going to take it? So now I'm wide awake, I'm coming at this thing and I'm ready to knock it over. What I was going to do was bust a hole in my door because there was a shadow of a branch just shaking right over the lamp. I was going to whoop my lamp, glory to God. Some of you are laughing but some of you actually took your lamp out, you know what I'm talking about. Some of you almost took out your kids and they were just going for a bathroom break.
When I was in Phoenix we always heard about the scorpions and of course we had lots of scorpions there, they would crawl up the walls.
One day I came outside going to my car and I'm telling you that the Godzilla of scorpions was coming out from underneath my car. All I could think about was, "Oh my God, this thing is so big. I'm seeing claws the size of lobsters coming out at me and I'm afraid and trying to get in my car. Listen, shadows will mess with your mind. I'm thinking, Dear Lord, the rapture is happening, one of the plagues has just hit the earth. Then here comes this little itty bitty scorpion and I stepped on that thing and I felt like I was king, glory to God.
Listen, the shadow of things, the shadow of a bear can't hurt me, the shadow of a gun can't shoot me, a shadow is harmless. The Bible says that the devil goes around "like a roaring lion". If you're a child of God, he can't touch you. He'll scare you, he'll intimidate you but the truth is if you stand up and realize that the devil is just a shadow of himself compared to the power of God.
Fear is rendered powerless when we rest in God and when we trust Him. Trust the Lord and don't be afraid. Don't give in to those shadows when they come. Have you ever noticed that a shadow is bigger than the thing that's actually happening? Some of you get afraid of your financial situation, it looks so big, the relationship you're going through or that problem looks so big. The enemy is just behind it magnifying it until you get so afraid of it and the truth is that it's probably just a small thing but the truth is this too, even if it's a big thing it's never too big for God.
The last enemy of peace that I want to give you today is uncontrolled anger. Uncontrolled anger will rob you of peace fast. Proverbs 15:18 says, "A wrathful man stirs up strife but he who is slow to anger allays contention". The NIV puts it this way, "A hot tempered man stirs up dissension but a patient man can calm a quarrel". Anger is caused by many things: Irritation, frustration, but just like fear all anger is not evil but uncontrolled anger is. It will rob you of peace. When we say something is eating at us because we are so angry, science has proven that those who are angry all the time and are just walking around clenching their teeth, then there is something literally eating away at you.
Anger is one letter short of danger. If you are living angry all the time because of past hurts or past circumstances, I want everyone to look at me right now because some of you in this room have been hurt bad. Some of you have been through divorce, some of you have been abused as kids. I have sat with children and you know my background working with the "Real life children's ranch", I have sat with children that have been through some horrible, horrible things. Some of them express it with such anger and if they continue in that, the rest of their life becomes a danger. I know one kid right now who has been treated so badly that he has become a danger and will probably be locked up for the rest of his life. Listen to me, a danger. I hope you'll pray for that boy because he's still just in his teens. How many of you believe that God can heal him?
Some of you in this room have been through some stuff and when we allow that anger to rise up in our lives and become uncontrolled and to just dwell on those things and allow hate to build, then that begins to control us. It becomes dangerous because peace is missing. Many people today do not live in peace because they are angry over their past situations, angry at people and then you're unable to forgive. The truth is that many of us could live at peace if we would learn to forgive and allow God to heal. You see, this Gospel that we talk about and we preach is so very powerful and it meets us right where we're at with real life, with real stuff. Christian, I want to tell you that there's no greater testimony and no greater joy when you've allowed yourself to receive the healing that God wants to bring and allow that anger to be given to the Lord.
The first step in receiving peace when you're angry is forgiveness. Proverbs 19:11 says, "The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger and his glory is to overlook a transgression". I want to encourage you to learn to release others because the truth is when you're angry at others who have hurt you, I don't care if it's the worst abuse in all the world, if we're angry but we take it to the Lord, he is the one who will heal you. It's not easy to forgive those hurts, it's not easy to forgive the offenses. Forgiveness is one of the greatest acts of faith that you will ever do in your life, to say, "Lord I trust you with the most sensitive thing in my life". If you will allow the Lord to heal that it will change the relationships that you have on a daily basis. How many of you have ever met someone who is just mad all the time? Always underneath the surface, there's always been this thing where you find yourself ready to explode at just the slightest thing. We don't even understand it and all of a sudden it turns on.
God says, "Listen, I want you to live at peace. The truth is what happened to you in the past has happened but I can deeply touch you and heal you. Forgive and release that person, let it go. Quit dwelling on it, quit thinking about it, quit allowing yourself to be troubled by past trouble. Listen, what has happened in the past doesn't have to affect today". Someone say a good amen.
One of the greatest promises of God is that not only when we make past mistakes can we be forgiven and move on but when we have been hurt by others, we can forgive them and receive His help and we can go on with life so that our present is better than our past and our future is brighter than we could have ever dreamed it could be and we can move towards it peacefully. I want to encourage you to forgive. I need to speak this too because for some, and this might seem hard but some of you have been there for a long time. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Remember we talked about selfishness, listen, and I want to say this in a very kind way, Self pity turned inward is depression, self pity turned outward is anger and rage, self pity turned to the Lord is peace and wholeness.
We don't have to feel sorry about ourselves or our past, God can redeem it. I want to speak to you this morning that God desires for you to have peace on every level. All 4 dimensions of peace are ours: to have peace with God, to have peace with ourselves, to have peace with others and to have peace with our situations. I want to tell you this, allow that Word of God to be applied to your heart and it will bring you that peace. The truth is this, people who have a Bible that's falling apart have a life that's well put together. Phillipians 4:7, "And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus".
Heavenly father, thank you that you are the author of peace, that you are the God who heals us, restores us. I thank you Lord that it is your desire that your people live in joy unspeakable and full of Glory, that its your desire that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds through Christ. Holy Spirit, in this room we recognize that you have been powerful today, you have been present and we're grateful for that. With every head bowed, with every eye closed, some of you have been in the greatest battle of your life, some for a long time, for some it's just started.
I want you to know that there is peace for you today, peace for you.
