The Grace Of the Lord Be With Your Spirit - Part 5 | Mike Criswell

It is so good to see each of you here this morning.

And perhaps if you're here for the first time in this meeting,

we of course want to welcome you.

And we've been talking in this meeting about the Book of

Philippians. And the book of Philippians is

an incredible book because it's very encouraging.

It is one of those books that Paul just exudes his love and

his care and his his great affection for this congregation.

Now, of course, today is what the world and many of us

consider Father's Day. And you think, well, how in the

world could Father's Day ever fit into the book of

Philippians? Well, I won't dwell on that, but

there is a connection and that is this Father's Day, of course,

is something that the world has designated to honor dads or

fathers in this nation. But you know, really, in the

book of Philippians, Paul is giving credit and glory to the

Father, our Father in heaven. And not only that, but as he

begins this epistle, Paul says, Paul and Timothy.

Now, who was Timothy? Well, Timothy was Paul's son in

the faith. Now, there's no record, we don't

know about Paul being married and having children

biologically, but he had plenty of faithful men who followed him

around, who helped him, who are his sons, as it were, in the

faith. And so my point is this, before

we get into the real points, is that if you're a man in this

audience today, make God your father.

Now, hopefully you're a Christian and hopefully God's

Son is your one that you emulate.

But you know, men have such an important role in our culture.

And I think sometimes in American culture, men have sort

of failed in that role. Now, we're not talking about the

family this morning. That's not our topic.

But nonetheless, I just want to encourage the men in this

congregation and throughout wherever I preach to be good

spiritual leaders, to love your wives, to love your children, to

nurture them up in the in the grace of the Lord.

Be men of leadership, not only in your secular life, but also

in the church. And that doesn't mean being up

here in front. It just means being involved and

being really dedicated to the cause of the Lord.

Likewise, of course, we could say many things for the ladies,

but nonetheless, it all takes us working together to be able to

really make the church, make the Kingdom in this area and in my

area at home, what it needs to be.

And so happy Father's Day to the fathers.

But let's not forget our Father in heaven, the Father of lights,

with whom is no bearableness, neither shadow of turning from

whence all good things slow hallowed be his name, as Jesus

put it in Matthew 6. Well, of course, as we've looked

through Philippians, we took on a task that was really too big

for a five day meeting. Well, it's too big for a five

day meeting, but you know, if you don't stay on task.

And that's kind of my problem because I tend to find rabbit

trails that I want to go down and begin to discuss.

And so even things that maybe I haven't necessarily even thought

about at home, they sort of come to me.

And I think what we need to discuss that.

Well, of course, we only ended up into Chapter 2 in our study

over these last few nights. And so naturally and obviously

we're not going to be able to cover every verse in the book of

Philippians. So let me give you a bird's eye

view once again for those who either have not been able to be

here or maybe those who have been here and kind of put this

together and then we'll go into some new material.

But of course, remember, Paul is the apostle.

This is a prison epistle. Paul is in prison in Rome, and

Paul is writing to a congregation that in Acts 16 he

had established, having been a prisoner himself in the jail,

and the Philippian jailer was converted.

And then also they continued to help him from the first day

onward in his preaching of the Gospel.

And so Paul is writing this thank you note.

Now he doesn't only write thank yous.

There are some things he solves or corrects in this

congregation. Every congregation with people

will have a certain amount of difficulty because we are human.

But nonetheless, he encourages them in the Lord.

He encourages them to remember even his own condition and how

that God had used that condition of being in prison to work

things out. You know, Paul talks in the

first part of this chapter of chapter 1, which we've already

covered, about the problem of being in Jesus.

Now, I suspect that most of you believe in Jesus who are in this

audience this morning, and I suspect that most of you are in

Christ. You've been baptized for the

remission of your sins. But you know, even as joyous as

that is, there are going to be problems for you because you're

a Christian. No, it may not be persecution

per SE. It may not be imprisonment per

SE, but you're going to have to make tough decisions if you're

going to follow Christ. You know, submission is an

interesting concept because submission means you make

yourself vulnerable. Now, you know, when I talk about

the family, I know that of course, wives are told to be

submissive voluntarily to their husband, and that's hard because

she is voluntarily making herself vulnerable.

Well, we are doing that when we accept Jesus Christ.

We're agreeing to Jesus. We're going to make ourselves

vulnerable for your cause, and the world's not going to like us

very much. So Paul understood that.

So Paul talks about the problem that he has in Jesus Christ, but

then as he talks about his imprisonment, he talks about the

Providence that God had used in his life.

We pointed out the other evening that God is in control of

everything now. God gives us free will, and God

wants us to use that will. But God ultimately has it all

figured out. We don't, but he asks us in

faith to follow his plan. But Paul had been in prison.

And what does he tell us? What he tells us as which we

developed the other evening, that even with him in prison,

the gospel had gone forth. Paul's sitting there in that

room in jail, or at least under house arrest, and he is penning

these letters and a guard is literally chained to him.

And that guard is having to listen to Paul.

And maybe Paul is dictating to Timothy what he wants to say.

Who's really in prison there? Who's really chained?

Well, you can debate whether it's Paul or the guard, but I'll

tell you one thing that wasn't chained and that was the gospel.

And so Paul talks about the Providence, how this is actually

worked out better that he's in prison.

And by the way, even if we don't necessarily get the all the

material I want to cover this one, let me just say this.

Sometimes the situations in our life look dismal and we belly

ache and we complain. And by the way, Paul addresses

that in Philippians, he said, you know, don't be complainers.

You know, I'm sort of an, a, a, a person with my wife and she'll

just kind of walk off because, you know, that doesn't solve

anything. But you know, nonetheless,

sometimes we complain and we don't see where this thing is

going. And God has a plan.

Now, I'm not saying God dictates every single difficulty that

comes into your life. I don't know.

But we can use that difficulty to praise God.

Even a tragedy can be something that draws us closer to the

eternal. 1 So Paul talks about the Providence of God, how the

gospel had reached the other guards and even the household of

Caesar. That's incredible.

And then, of course, he talks about the pattern of his life.

He talks about the mind of Christ, which we talked about

the other night, and how that the mind of Christ is what we

are to carry with us into our daily living.

We show others the love of Christ.

We show others the mind of Jesus.

Jesus was a man of peacemaking. He was a man of perfect harmony

with God's will. He was a man of prayer, He was a

man that really tried to bring others and shepherd others to

God. He of course was the Good

Shepherd. And so Paul talks about the,

the, the, the, the pattern of his life.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

And then he talks about Jesus crucifixion, who, though in the

form of God, did not think it was something to be held on to a

grasp, but took upon himself the form of a servant, a slave, and

became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.

And of course, because of that, Paul says that God has highly

esteemed and elevated Jesus, and we know that's true.

One of the most beautiful scenarios I think that ever

happens in the Scriptures, along with everything, of course, is

that when Jesus is about to ascend to heaven, you know, the

apostles go with him and he's there and he begins to just

ascend up into heaven. And they're just looking and

they're just wondering what in the world now they knew that

Jesus had prophesied or that he's going to go back to the

Father. John 14 But, you know, they

didn't really understand that. And so now they're standing

there looking up and there's these angels that says, why are

you standing here gazing up into heaven?

You know what they're really saying, hey, listen, you've got

a job to do. Get on with it.

You know, Jesus did that same thing with Mary at the tomb.

Now I'm way off topic. That's OK.

You know, Jesus said, Mary, you know, Mary came up to Jesus and

she thought he was the gardener or whatever.

And then when she realized that she's Jesus, she just grabs onto

him and he says, Mary, Mary, don't, don't touch me or don't

hang on to me. He says, but go and tell the

apostles what's going on. She was the first evangelist in

that context anyway. And so anyway, they're standing

there. Well, of course Jesus sins and

they're a little bit bewildered, but in a few days, because

remember, Jesus had resurrected and for 40 days he had been with

him. And then there's 10 more days.

He said you go into Jerusalem and wait.

So 10 days go by. Pentecost comes fifty days

after, you know, the Passover. And so there the disciples are

gathered and there's this great Pentecostal experience, if you

will, in the true biblical sense, and the Holy Spirit is

poured out. Well, I believe that's when

Jesus was being coordinated. Why do I believe that?

Because Peter stands up and preaches that it was at that

moment that Jesus was taking the throne of David.

The old ancestral throne that the Jews wanted restored was now

being set upon by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

It's a it's a wonderful, wonderful story.

And Jesus, of course, then pours out these gifts.

He pours out through the apostles of the Gospel.

And of course, they are guided by the Holy Spirit.

And we today have the Scriptures, we have the apostles

writings that can encourage us. Well, I'm off track.

Let's get back. So what else did Paul say in

this letter? Well, that if we could just, you

know, if we could take a month of Sundays, so to speak, That's

what we used to say down the hills.

I don't know what they say here, but nonetheless, you know, if we

could take time, we could go through every verse and just

pick out so many details. But one of the major points,

besides what we've already pointed out, is that Paul also

saw Jesus not only as a problem in his life, a good problem.

Not only did he see the Providence of Jesus in his life,

and not only did he see things working out, not only did he

see, of course, the purpose of his life and all those things,

but he saw Jesus as the prize. Now, you know, one of the things

I think we should preface our remarks with is the fact that we

all want to go to heaven, don't we?

That's our goal. We want to go to heaven.

But let me back away from that just slightly and give you

another perspective. I don't want to diminish

anything that we've said about going to heaven, but you know,

heaven really, and I want you to understand what I'm saying

begins here and it begins here not in the physical sense, but

in the fact that we are already citizens of the Kingdom of

heaven. In fact, Paul will say that

actually in the later part of chapter 3 when he says our

citizenship is in heaven. Now, remember, Philippi was a

exact replica, an imperial city of Rome.

And people love to be citizens of Rome because it carried A

tremendous amount of rights. And so if you lived in Philippi,

you also had those Roman rights. And Paul is alluding to the fact

that, hey, no matter where you fit in in this culture, some of

us feel maybe a little bit disenfranchised.

Some of us feel a little bit, you know, discouraged from where

we are and where we live. I've always said I'm not really

an American. I feel more comfortable overseas

than I do here. But nonetheless, it doesn't

matter where I am in this earth. Guess where?

Guess where my citizenship really is?

It's in heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven.

Your name, if you're a Christian, is written in the

Lamb's role, the Lamb's book of life.

And Jesus has paid the price for you to get there.

But nonetheless, there's a prize in getting to heaven.

But it all begins here. And I think if we have the right

perspective, what we can come to understand, And I and I work on

this a lot, maybe you do too. You know, we can come to

understand that the blessings and even the joy of heaven can

begin now. You know, again, life is tough.

I was talking to a sister before church.

You know, we wake up in the morning and we're like, oh,

another day. Well, God has given us that day,

but not just for our own selfish interests to please him and to

praise him. And when we take on that

perspective, it gives us really a purpose.

A lot of peas in that sentence. But anyway, if we mind our peas

anyway. So anyway, He's given us a

purpose to be productive and practical and even develop

perfection. How's that in our lives?

And so then you see, it begins here.

So don't only think about the prize.

Don't ever just only say, well, I just got to get to heaven.

I got to get to heaven. You know, for some reason God

has you here on earth. And that may be to leave someone

else to him. That may be to improve yourself

so that you become a better white.

You know, Paul says to these Philippians, you know, you live

in a World of Darkness among whom you shine as lights in the

world. Well, but he does talk about the

price. So let's get back to that.

You know, he talks about in in verse chapter 3, rather in verse

10 or so he talks about the resurrection of Jesus.

He talks about wanting to know the power of the resurrection

and I don't have time to develop that because that's not this

point. But none of us there is power in

the resurrection of Jesus. And someday we will experience

in as much as God has planned for us, the power of Jesus

resurrection and that we will be raised ourself.

We're going to cast off this mortal body and have a body that

is suited for eternality, for eternity.

Now, I don't know what that looks like.

In fact, first John 31, John says we do not yet know what we

shall be when he returns, but we know that we'll be like him.

You know what? That's good enough for me.

That is good enough for me. I know there's a lot of

discussion even among preachers about, well, you know, is that

body that Jesus has now? Is it flesh?

And what is it? This is, you know, there's all

these passages that we could study, but we'll be like him.

And that's the issue. So Paul's been talking about the

power of the resurrection. And then he says this in verse

12. He says, not that I have already

attained. In other words, I haven't met

the goal yet. I'm not in heaven yet.

I'm not perfect yet. And by the way, in the previous

section, he's been talking about having confidence in the flesh

and having confidence in our past and our, you know, our, our

accomplishments. Of course, there were Judaizing

teachers at that point in time that were very stuck on all of

the points of the law and how that they were Jews and how that

they were the blood of Abraham and so on and so forth.

And Paul looks beyond that. But he says, not that I have

already attained or am perfected, but I press on.

I press on. You know, what he's talking

about here is Endurance. If you ever want to read a good,

interesting story, read about Shackleton's adventure.

Shackleton was a sailor who took the ship.

Endurance, I think it was to the South Pole.

It got stuck. It's a great story.

But anyway, Endurance, it means persistence, and it means, you

know, not giving up. So Paul says I'm not perfect.

I'm not there yet, but I press on.

Now it is in the press that we find difficulty, but it's in the

press that we grow. You know, everything in life

really is carried out in tension.

In the process of tension, growth happens.

You know, you take that little egg with a little bird in it and

it has to Peck its way out. There's tension there.

Maybe not tension as in stress as we think of it, but he has to

work the bird or the, the, the, the butterfly in the little

chrysalis has to, has to work together.

There's tension there and yet out what comes from this, this

worm is this beautiful butterfly that then floats into the air.

There's tension there. And you know, sometimes we see

our difficulties and our persecutions and our trials and

our hardships and there's tension there and it's hard to

press on. We want to throw in the towel.

Well, I understand that most of the time I'd rather throw in the

towel too. And sometimes you do things out

of duty. You know, brother asked me not

long ago. He said, you know, I said, I

don't think I've really ever been happy.

He said, oh, that's so sad, so sad.

Doesn't anything make you happy? Well, I don't know.

But I said most what I do is I do out of duty.

Now, that's not a bad thing because duty is a good

motivator. But nonetheless, there's

tension. It's a press, It's a difficult.

It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, you do things

because it's the right thing to do all the time looking of

course, for things that give you joy too.

Now, again, if you just live your life hoping to find joy in

everything, well, good luck with that.

It's not going to happen because joy is elusive.

And well, let's say this happiness is even more elusive,

but that's another topic for another time.

So he says, brethren, he says, I press on that I made a hold of

that for which Jesus Christ has laid hold of me.

You know, on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, Jesus laid

hold of Paul. You know, he sees that bright

light. He's on the way to Damascus to

persecute Christians. And all of a sudden, boom, he is

face to face, so to speak, with the Lord, the risen Savior.

And Jesus is, you know, he's rebuking him.

Paul, it's hard for you to kick against the goats.

Jesus had laid hold of Paul for a purpose.

Now, you know, if you're here and you're a Christian and

you've heard the gospel and you've been convicted and you

decided to follow Christ, that's Christ laying hold of you.

You can call it, you know, the power of the gospel.

You can call it the conscience. You can call whatever, but

there's a certain lane hold where now you're Christ's.

So what are you going to do with that?

What are you going to do with that?

Are you going to, are you going to go on and and press forward?

You know, the Christian life is compared to a race.

It's compared to building. All of those things take

tenacity, or shall we say stick to itiveness.

That's the Ozark way of saying tenacity.

You got to stick with the program and sometimes you don't

know if it's going to be successful, but here come again,

the Providence, God will see us through.

So he says again, Christ laid hold of me so that I could lay

hold of the prize. Heaven, yes, preaching the

gospel, yes, that also is included.

Then he says, Brotherhood or brethren, I do not not count

myself to have apprehended or to have grasped everything.

But one thing I do for getting those things which are behind

and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press.

Here's that word. Press again.

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God

in Christ Jesus. Now let's unpack that a little

bit, brethren. I'm not there.

He says, You kidding me? Well, it's certainly not in

heaven at this point, although he said he wanted to go.

But Paul's going to be the strongest Christian I ever read

about in my life. And yet he did not see himself

totally as having apprehended. Now, in the previous verses,

he's talking about all of his accomplishments in Judaism and

all of the fact that he could not be self-righteous in spite

or despite of all of those accomplishments.

He was a Jew. He had the blood of Abraham.

He was circumcised on the 8th day.

He was on the tribe of Benjamin. He had, you know, he had all

these things. In fact, he says, you know, when

it comes to observing the law of Moses, I was blameless.

He certainly did it all right. But then he says, you know, I

have to forget those things, forgetting those things that are

behind. I press forward.

Now, let me just try to find some practical application

because we're not under the law of Moses.

We're not, you know, of the tribe of Benjamin and all those

things. But what point?

What concept here is applicable to us forgetting those things

that are behind? Well, I don't know what your

life is like. Maybe you were raised in a

church environment. OK, that's good.

Do we still need to forget all of that?

Well, only in a sense that we begin to ask where we talk

correctly. Do we have things in our life

that we continue to need to work on or whatever.

But let me give you another example.

I often meet people and when I moved to Kansas City, first of

all, we were dealing with a lot of folks who come out of very

difficult backgrounds, drugs, you know, broken homes and they

were broken. They were very much hurting in

their hearts and in their lives. And you know, one of the things

that is so difficult is you get folks to to come to the Lord

because they know the need. It's sincerity.

They really do. They're sincere.

But that old world continues to to pull them back.

Their minds oftentimes are set on those things and they can't

they can't get over it. And sometimes they can't forgive

themselves. You know, Satan loves that.

Satan loves it when we cannot forget, forgive ourselves.

And I don't want to get off into a bunch of psychology this

morning, but self forgiveness is important.

Of course, it's predicated ultimately on God having

forgiven us because we've confessed our sins and he's

faithful and just to forgive our sins first, John.

But nonetheless, when we don't forgive ourself or when we again

are living in the past, it thwarts our future.

Now Jesus even said don't even take thought for the future, but

the that the corollary of that is that they weren't to take

thought of their past either. You can't change the past, no

matter if you have come from a terrible background or a

background of abuse or drug and drug issues or, or just personal

difficulty, mental difficulties. You, you might not change, you

can't change the past. But you could say how do I press

forward and all you got to do is live 1 moment at a time.

You know, I tend to project into the future and say, well, I

don't think I can get there. And so I never tried.

No, I can't get there if I don't take the first step, you know,

it takes that first step with the Lord.

And so really what that ends up being is when we say, well, you

know, I can't go forward. I live in the past.

That really becomes a form of self righteousness.

It's kind of a twisted form, but we are looking and depending on

our own strength. You know, sometimes people come

to me and they say I can't live the Christian life.

And I say, you know what, you're right, you can't live the

Christian life, not alone, you can't do it.

But Paul, as he will say later on in Philippians, I can do all

things through Christ who gives me strength.

You can live the Christian life if you are yoked to Jesus.

And so Paul understood that. He says I forgive those things

that are behind my accomplishments.

You know, Paul could have been. By the way, Paul was a Pharisee.

He had been schooled under the PhD, the highest PhD guy in the

ancient world, Gamaliel. He was a man who was bright.

I mean, he was sharp and he gave all of that up, counted it as

garbage for Jesus. But he could have written his

own. He could have written his own

ticket. He was brilliant.

You read Romans, you'll see that.

And yet he gave all of that up. And see, he doesn't dwell on his

past accomplishments. And that's another really.

And not to get again, too far off on this point, but that's

another thing. Maybe you've been successful in

the past. Maybe you've been financially

successful, maybe you've been really, you know, even

spiritually successful and something happened and you were

all you lost all that. So what you got the future, move

forward, he says again, I forget those things were behind and I

reach this is the idea. You know, when I watch the

Olympics, I see the baton run. I think that's what they still

call it. But anyway, you've got the

runner who comes around the corner and of course their their

teammates are lined up and they've got this baton and they

stretch out to give it to the next runner.

That's the idea here, the stretching forward to move on

into the next part, if you will, of the race.

He says, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call

of God in Christ. One more point before we leave

this little section. And that is as we noted, let's

think about the journey too. Let's not just think about the

prize, but let's find joy in the journey.

There's an old song by a guy named Michael Card just kind of

came to my mind just now. He was sort of a religious

singer, but he's talking about the joy of the journey.

The joy of the journey. Well, I'm telling you what, my

journey has been pretty mentally challenging for me.

Maybe you too. But there is joy in the journey.

Well, let's notice very quickly one more point.

This is found in Chapter 4, and he's talking now about joy.

He's talking about joy in the journey, and of course, if

anybody knew life in the difficult sense, it's Paul.

In first, in Second Corinthians Chapter 11, he talks about

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

having been shipwrecked, having been stoned, having been beaten,

having been hungry, all of these things for the cause of Christ,

but he still had joy. Joy is something that we can

decide. You know, happiness may depend

upon happenstance, but joy is something that we can decide.

So notice what Paul says in verse 4 of chapter 4.

He says rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice

now really Jesus the Lord is the only stable thing to rejoice in.

Of course God and spiritual things, but you know what I

mean. Joy can come from a relationship

with Jesus because as we noted the other night, comfort comes

from Jesus. And no matter whether we are on

the ship being tossed out by the waves of life, Jesus is there.

You know, one of these little stories you find in the New

Testament is one time the apostles on another occasion

were in a boat, small little fishing boat, and they were

being tossed and turned and they look around and want to cry out

to Jesus and he's asleep. He's asleep over there.

He was exhausted from preaching. Well, he made the waves.

He didn't worry about it. There was peace in his heart.

He left it all in God's control. Well, Paul really wants us to do

that too. But he says rejoice in the Lord

and then he says, let your gentleness be known to all men.

Let your let your peace that you have in Christ exude forward so

that others find this peace. Have you ever been around

somebody? You know, I'm a little high

strung sometimes. Have you ever been over

somebody? They're just, they're just so

calm. Even in a difficulty, they're

just calm. And and that sort of wears off.

That sort of bleeds over into you.

He says. And then he says, you know,

don't be anxious for six. Don't be anxious.

I told my wife and I think I may even mention this, but you know,

coming to this meeting, I wasn't anxious about you guys.

I know many of you and crowds don't bother me, but I was just

anxious, probably because I'd studied Philippians and I didn't

know what I was going to say. And I said maybe it's ironic

because or maybe it's providential is what I told her.

I said, because Paul says don't be anxious.

In other words, don't get so wrapped up in your emotions and

in your connection with the things of life that you can't

focus on Christ. We're all going to be concerned.

We're all going to have anxiety to some degree.

That's understandable. That's normal.

But he says don't, don't let it control you.

Be anxious for nothing. And so how do we let that not

control us? What he says by everything in

prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving prayer.

My grandmother, she was a dear lady.

Ruetta knew her and she was the lady who lived a very hard life,

not from her own dealings, but just poor and had seven girls

that she trying to raise and grandfather.

It was a little bit on the hard side.

And she had this thing on the refrigerator.

I don't know if I remember it perfectly, but it said something

about if something is worth worrying, worrying about, it's

worth praying about. And if something is worth

praying about, it's not worth worrying about.

That's pretty good, isn't it? Well, we're all going to worry,

but the point is, is that we back away from that and trust in

the Lord. So he says by prayer and

supplication. I I take supplication here to

maybe be and then a little more intensity than prayer in self.

Another you're you're supplicating.

It may last longer than a simple prayer, but then he says with

Thanksgiving, one of the hardest things to do is to be unhappy

and be anxious when you are giving thanks to God.

Because you see, when we're giving thanks to God, we are

realizing that no matter what, God's in control.

But also, it may very well be that this circumstance that is

before us, God having allowed, will bring us closer to God.

So we give thanks. We say, God, thank you for

testing my faith. You know, a faith that's not

worth testing, is not worth having because that's how we

determine where we are in our spiritual development.

But we thank God that he gave us prayer, that he gave us Jesus,

that he gave us that Ave. of prayer.

He could have left us out. He could have said, you know

what, Romans 5, you're sinners. I don't want anything to do with

you. But while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. And so then he speaks here of

the peace of God. Make your request known to God

in Thanksgiving and prayer, and the peace of God, which

surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds

through Jesus Christ. The internal comfort, the

internal blessing of having that relationship with Jesus is going

to give us a stability that this world does not know and can not

know without Jesus. Our culture needs Jesus so bad.

It needs Jesus. It needs Christ.

It needs not only the correct religion, of course, but it it

needs the peace of Christ so bad.

I watched in horror this week as Tel Aviv was being bombed and

all. Likewise Iraq and Iran rather

being bombed and bombing each other.

Well, I was in Tel Aviv years ago when Saddam Hussein was

threatening to send his Scud missiles over to Tel Aviv.

It's very scary. There's terrifying things.

This world is filled with unpeaceful situations.

We need to pray for that, of course, but we need to pray for

the peace in our lives. And that comes first of all by

having a relationship with Jesus.

Sometimes our anxiety, sometimes my anxiety, I don't know about

you, comes from latent sin, hidden sins in my life and they

work on my conscience. But when you can correct that,

you can pray and you can cast those cares on the Lord, there

will be a peace, at least for a time that really, you can't even

put a price tag or you can't even put a definition on it.

It's a good thing. But those are the thoughts this

morning. We could ramble along for a long

time, but if you're here this morning, you're not a Christian

and you don't have that peace of Christ.

You know, really Jesus made it simple to be his follower.

It will get difficult, but he made it simple.

He said, come to me. We come hearing his word, we

believe it, we accept him, we repent of our sins, we confess

him as the Son of God, our Lord and our Savior.

We have his blood that washes away our sins in the waters of

baptism. And then of course, we rise to

walk in a new life and we press forward.

We forget that which is behind and we live for him.

You're here this morning. We can assist you in that or

anything else. We'll be happy to do that while

we stand up while we sing.