Is Peace Possible In My Life

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What a great day it is.

Amen?

All right, if you have eaten too much, today is the day to confess it.

And I know I did for all of the 4th of July celebration.

Our family was over yesterday.

We put stuff on the grill.

I normally don't eat but like three protein bars and then a meal at night.

Yesterday I blew that out of the water for breakfast.

So it's an honor to be here with you guys on behalf of the Shelby Baptist Association.

We have 62 churches.

We're about to add three more in.

In fact, I'm meeting with the Hispanic pastor tomorrow about planting a church in Montebala.

We are getting all the final details worked out on that tomorrow and getting helping get them launched out.

And so it's exciting, but I bring you greetings.

And it's exciting.

I love when I get the opportunity to come to uh CCW.

Pastor Rick called me, and you know, I love Pastor Rick.

I know that many of you do too.

Let's give him a round of applause, all right?

But you know he's a jokester.

He called me, he said, Hey Rick.

I said, Yeah.

He said, You believe in freedom of speech?

I said, Absolutely.

He said, I need you to give one on July the 6th.

Give a free speech.

And so that's probably the way it is.

But that's all right.

I love coming here and I love the opportunity.

I want to ask you a question.

Um, Benji kind of ended it and kind of transitioned it at talking about gratitude and praising God and giving God praise for all the things he has done.

What are you grateful for in your life this morning?

Think about that.

What's something that you are truly grateful for?

I was grateful to have our family all together yesterday.

Honored to have my wife and my daughter, or uh, our daughter, at least I had a little to do with it, uh, with us this morning.

And so I'm grateful for those things.

What are you grateful for?

Let's transition that.

What is there in your life right now that maybe is a struggle?

That you're struggling with, you're stressing over.

What's one thing?

There's something that comes to my mind.

Every one of us probably this morning, there's something going on.

I know that Heather and Rick are probably thinking, yeah, uh, we've got a child about to go to college, and uh, how are we going to pay for it?

Not just a college, but Sanford University.

We paid 10 years while our kids were there and still paying, so I get it.

You know, there are things in our lives that stress us out.

And let me tell you what that does.

It robs us of the peace that God wants us to have.

We're talking this morning and you're working through the series Fruitful, the fruit of the Spirit.

And I'm so glad that I got to come this week instead of next week.

I'd a whole lot rather preach on peace than patience.

Because I just don't have a lot of it sometimes, especially on 280.

But you know, as we look at this particular topic, the older I get, the more that I really want it.

I want a life that's without conflict.

I want a life without issues.

I want a life of peace.

I want more contentment, less challenges, obstacles, and trials or difficulties.

You're probably there too in many of your lives.

In 2023, there was a research team that conducted a survey, and when they finished up with the survey, it was about world peace, and they found out that there were 81% of the people from 28 different countries that said they wanted their country to do more for world peace.

Kind of along the same lines, a recent Gallup poll found that 42% of adults worldwide felt significant stress daily in their lives.

That's almost half.

One other study along the same lines, it finds that over 70% of the people in most contexts long for inner peace and they seek ways to find it.

You know what that tells me?

Worldwide, remove the obstacles that we are seeing with Iran and Israel or Ukraine and Russia, and we lack world peace, even within ourselves.

Do you know what's interesting?

If you go back over the generations that we have been a country, 249 years, there are only two generations that technically have been at peace.

There was not a war going on.

Those generations were from 1815 to 1846, and then again from 1865 to 1898.

But there's a caveat.

The caveat was that there were still the Indian wars going on.

So in essence, our country has never known peace.

We've always been in some sort of conflict.

So the question begs: is it possible to know peace?

Jesus asserted in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, verse 9, he said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

Matthew 5:9

So in essence, he's saying that we have a responsibility to be peacemakers and to try and bring it about.

You go on and look, and Paul, as he wrote to the churches of Galatia, and there were multiple ones, this was a circular letter that went around.

He had a message of the fruit of the Spirit.

And in that fruit of the Spirit, he listed peace as one of them.

But you know what I find very interesting as I look at it?

If you look at the context of this passage, it's in the middle of a conflict.

The conflict was between the old nature, the flesh, and the new nature, the spiritual life.

And he talks about a battle, a conflict going on within us that is robbing us of our peace.

I want you to read with me from Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

We're going to be reading verses 16 through 26.

I'm going to invite you to stand as we read from God's Word because I consider it his holy word.

We stand in honor of it.

And I'm reading from the ESV translation.

You may have the New King James or another translation, but listen as I read from this particular translation.

Beginning with verse 16, it says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing things you want to do.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and like these, I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And then here is our passage.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

And he wraps it up by saying, let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

You see, he talks about that battle.

And what our role is, is to crucify the flesh and not let it take control of our lives, because when it does, it robs us of the very peace that we want.

Let's pray.

Father, as we open and unpack this passage of Scripture today, let us see how it applies in our lives, affects our life, and guides our life.

And God, I pray that when we leave here, we would be able to say, I know the way to peace, and I will pursue it with all my heart.

In the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Go ahead and take a seat.

As we look at this passage, here's something that we need to grasp.

When God created us in the very beginning, he gave us something called a volitional will.

A volitional will is free will.

We have a choice.

We can choose to do A or we can choose to do B.

God designed us that way so that we would not be robots programmed to love Him, but yet we would choose to love Him.

You see, that's a much deeper love when we choose to love something instead of just being forced to love something or someone.

But as a result of this volitional will, we chose to take what God had ordained and created and abuse it and be disobedient.

As a result, sin came into us inheritedly.

We inherited sin from our ancestors all the way through because it became our default setting.

As a result of this sin, what has happened is we have this battle that's going on inside of us that Paul describes.

There's the old person.

Those who have come to Christ no longer have that old person supposedly on the throne.

And there's the new person.

But that old person doesn't want to give up.

That old person wants to come and rob us of the very joy, the very love, the very peace, the very patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control.

He wants to rob us.

And he wants to destroy us.

And Paul talks about what I call the battle within in verses 16 through 18.

When we look at the battle within, what we're finding is those two natures are fighting one another.

They're coming at one another, the sinful nature, and it's the exact opposite of who God is.

It's the exact opposite of what God wants us to be.

It's the exact opposite of what God created us to be.

It's the complete 180 away from who God intended us to be.

And what it does, it pulls us in a downward spiral, constantly taking us under to destroy us.

Then there's what he calls the spiritual nature.

And in the spiritual nature, that's the inherited new life, the cleansed life, the holy life, where we have been justified and made right with God.

But in that process of justification, being made right with God is something called the sanctified life.

And that's where we're being made more like God every day as we go through choices, we go through difficulties, and God works in our life.

In the beginning with me, he had to start out with a grinder.

Some of you may be there too.

And he is trying to get that old nature away from me.

As we move toward him and get more like him, then he moves and changes to a different type of sandpaper.

At first, it's a rough grit.

And then he gets, as we get closer and closer to him, it changes and it has to become a very fine grit just to detail it out and make it beautiful.

That's the nature that is within us that we've inherited and it's things which God proposes, and we're sensitive to God, and we're listening to God, and we're saying, God, today I want to be more like you and less like me.

But those two natures are constantly at battle.

The two natures at war.

We see that Satan wants to believe and to make us believe that we are defeated.

He wants to whisper in your ear, and he wants to tug at your mind and heart and tell you you're worthless, you're no good, that you don't have any value.

You see, Jesus put it very clearly in John chapter 10, verse 10.

John 10:10

He said, The thief, that's the enemy, comes to steal your joy.

He comes to kill your will.

And he comes to destroy your desire to even try to be better.

That's his job.

And he's fighting you.

But the other side of that is Jesus said, But I came that you may have life, abundant life.

Not just exist, but a life full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.

The key point is we have, as a follower of Jesus Christ, we have victory over the old life.

The problem is we keep doing CPR on it and bringing it back to life.

The two should never come together.

They don't mix.

That's what scripture is telling us.

I want you to look at this picture that they're going to bring up on the screen.

This picture that you will see is a picture of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, whichever it is.

I'm confused.

I guess it's wherever you stand.

But notice all the oil spill, if I remember correctly, it was like 134 million gallons of oil that spilt into the Gulf, creating the largest offshore oil spill in U.S.

history coming from the BP Deep Water Horizon water or oil well.

You see how that water?

And this was months after the original spill.

In fact, during the time that it was open and uncapped, it was three months.

And that's when the 134 million gallons spilled.

And you can see how it just does not mix in.

Makes it a whole lot easier to scoop up and clean up.

But that's kind of what we need to recognize with our old nature.

That we need to get rid of it, that it doesn't mix with this new nature.

We cannot, we cannot, we cannot live in the world, like the world, and expect to have the blessings of God.

And yet we try it day after day after day.

If we do not separate and kill the old nature, we never will have peace.

So you've got to decide.

Am I going to choose the way of the new life, the spiritual life, and go in the opposite direction of the old nature and push it away?

I need to decide.

I can't attempt to go both ways, they don't mix.

I need to know, and Paul shows us here that if we live, walk in the spirit, it allows us to be freed from the ways and destruction of the flesh.

The way of the finding the fruit of peace only comes when we seek and follow the Spirit of God.

So here's the bottom line.

True peace begins with a recognition of who we are and leading us to surrender to who God created us to be.

You understand that?

True peace starts when we recognize this is who I am.

And it leads us to pursue who God wants us to be.

Now, this morning, if you're sitting here and you're like going, but I don't understand.

I don't know who I am, and I don't know what God created me to do and to be.

I'm so glad you asked that question.

Because I want to share with you in the next few minutes exactly what the Bible tells us about who we were and what God did and created us to be.

Which leads me to our second point here is it's the but God win.

You see, there was the battle within, but now we have the but God win.

I want us to move from the book of Galatians and I want us to go over just one book to the book of Ephesians.

By the way, Paul wrote Galatians, most likely from Antioch in about 48 A.D., but then about 12 years later, he's in prison in Rome and he writes the book of Ephesians to the church leaders at Ephesus.

And in this, he gives us a beautiful depiction of exactly what he's talking about here in Ephesians about the oldness.

Nature, or in Galatians rather.

So if you'll look with me at Ephesians chapter 2, I want us to look at the first 10 verses.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And I want you to listen as I read to you very quickly some key parts of it.

In verse 1, it says this, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

You were following the course of the world, following the prince of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of the flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Then look at what it says in verse 4.

First two words.

Read it out.

Somebody read it out, shout it out.

What does it say?

Come again.

But God.

You were, but God.

And look what he tells us there.

Not only does it say, but God, it says being rich in mercy.

What's mercy?

Not getting what I deserve.

I walked out of uh Howard Brothers when I was a kid.

You know what Howard Brothers?

Anybody ever heard of Howard Brothers?

I see no hands.

Oh, one hand back there.

Were you from Sand Mountain?

Okay, I lived in Albertville up in San on Sand Mountain.

We were coming out of Howard Brothers.

It was the equivalent of Walmart, but it was like little Biddy.

Coming out of Walmart one day, well, Howard Brothers one day, and I looked at my mom.

She had made me mad.

So I looked at her and the place was crowded.

And I just screamed out, Mom, did we steal anything today?

I deserved death.

But my mom was merciful.

She only beat me within an inch of my life.

You see, mercy is not getting what we deserve.

And we deserved death.

So let's kind of look at this.

You were but God.

When we read that in the very first part in verses one through five, Paul writes about you were, and he gives us a full description with three different phrases.

I want you to look with me, if you will.

It says in verse 1, you were dead in sin.

Dead in sin.

That's a person who is without the presence of God.

There is nothing within us at that point that can begin to comprehend, can scheme, or even act upon that which is righteous and holy.

God is completely removed from our life.

We are dead in our sins.

And Paul says, and guess what?

That's the way we all were.

Every one of us dead in sin.

Number two, he says, and while you were dead in sin, you were following a destructive path.

This destructive path that he talks about is really, if you go back to Proverbs chapter 14, verse 12, or chapter 16, verse 25, that's where Solomon says this.

Proverbs 14:12

He says, There is a way, in both of those verses, there is a way that seems right unto man.

But in the end, it leads to destruction, to death.

In other words, we're following this destructive path, and the enemy has schemed against us and made us think that we're on this great path, that everything's going great.

And I'm excited about my life.

Everything looks great and rosy, but it's leading to a destructive end.

And Satan is leading the spiritually dead to become sons of disobedience.

You see, that's who we are, or were.

If you are in Christ, you were.

If you're not in Christ, you are.

We were disobedient.

And because we were born in disobedience, we live in disobedience.

And we have disobedience as our default setting.

What's the default setting?

It's when my phone starts acting up, and I have to do a hard reset and go back to the original settings.

The original settings for each one of us was sin because it's inherited.

Now he says we were dead in sin, we were following a destructive path, but then he leaves on and he goes to one other thing that kind of affirms that default setting.

We were basically fulfilling the desires of our flesh.

Now, when he wrote the book of Galatians, he expounded on that completely in telling us all the things.

And that list, by the way, was not exhaustive.

All the different ways that we live when we're in the flesh.

This leads us to a long to fulfill the ways of the world.

I want to be like the world because it's popular.

Everyone's doing it.

It's the way that everyone wants to live.

Trying to say that they're their own person, which is a joke because they're being like everyone else.

As you look through this, that default setting, listen to how Jesus put it.

He said, Oh yeah, your default setting?

Here's what it is Matthew 15, 19.

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

I know some of us might sit here and say, I've never murdered anyone.

Have you ever had hatred in your heart towards someone?

Scripture says you've murdered them.

I've never committed adultery.

Have you ever looked on someone with lust in your heart?

Scripture says you've committed adultery.

You're slaved.

Ladies say, Well, I would never do that.

I had a date one time.

This was years ago before Lisa was in the picture.

So it was not Lisa.

But I took this petite little young lady to a movie and we went to see Rambo.

In the movie, we're sitting there watching, and if you've ever seen this movie, they dip him in a pool that's full of leeches.

And when they lifted him up, leeches were attached all over her his body.

This little petite thing sitting next to me blew me away.

She said, Oh God, to be a leech.

Paul put it very succinctly in Romans three ten.

There is none of us righteous.

No, not one.

Not one.

So what I'm finding right here, the details are all laid out of who we once were.

Dead in our sin, following a destructive path, fulfilling the desires of our flesh.

And then verse 4 comes and rocks our world.

But God.

Say it with me.

But God.

One more time.

But God being rich in mercy.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Mankind is headed on a collision path, a collision path that was of our own making.

And God said, I will intervene.

I will change this.

And he changes everything.

When everything seemed lost, God intervened.

And Paul lays out and he gives us six points of why God did it and what we should do as a response.

He starts out and saying, Rich in mercy.

He is rich in mercy.

God saw the destruction and his heart broke.

He said, I can't let my creation be destroyed here.

His compassion is tender, it's long-acting.

And it's even when the destruction was of our own doing, he said, I will act.

Why?

Because, number two, he is driven by his great love for his creation.

God's actions are not just because of his tender heart, not just because of his merciful kindness.

It's all rooted in his love.

And I love how Paul puts it.

He says, because of his great love with which he loved us.

In that scripture, whenever you see something that is emphasized and said and then repeated in a different way, he's wanting to get your attention.

He's wanting you to understand that this is something magnificent.

It is something amazing.

It is God's great love with which he demonstrated it, with which he loved us.

But God commended his love toward us, demonstrated his love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I love that part.

But he doesn't stop there.

He doesn't just say, I love you.

He goes on, and the third thing he says is, he made us alive in him.

We were dead, and he said, You know what?

What's the opposite of dead?

Alive.

So I'm going to make them alive again.

And I'm going to give them life, not just life, but life abundantly.

I'm going to give it to them with such magnitude and such amazing timing.

We were dead in our sins.

He made us alive again.

We no longer had to deal with death.

We no longer had to deal with decay.

We no longer had to deal with destruction.

We no longer have to deal with depression.

Because he wants us to have peace.

Don't get me wrong.

Don't go out here and throw away your pills if you're on that.

Okay, I'm serious.

God uses many ways to bring about his means, but he only uses one way to bring about salvation, and that's Jesus.

Now, he made us alive to give us that abundant life, but he said, you know what?

I can go one more step.

I can go another step.

And he says, Not only will I make them alive, but he raised us up.

You think about that.

He didn't say, okay, you're alive, but I'm going to leave you in that stench.

He said, I'm going to take you out of that.

You remember when Jesus was lying in the tomb for three days?

God made him alive.

He raised him up.

He brought him out of the tomb.

And that's what he's saying right here to us.

There's some of that kind intertwining here, that thing.

I love how King David wrote in Psalm chapter 40.

Psalms 40 · chapter mention

Listen to the words that he wrote.

He says, I waited patiently for the Lord.

He inclined to me and heard my cry.

That word inclined, I love this.

Have you ever been talking with someone and you really were trying to share with them some intimate things going on in your life, some struggles, maybe something there?

And have you ever noticed their body language?

If they're kind of laid back like this, what does that mean?

And they got that look.

What does that mean?

They're not interested.

But if you start talking and all of a sudden they sit up and they lean in to you, what does that mean?

They're paying attention.

They want to know what you're saying.

They're highly interested.

He inclined to me.

He leaned in.

And he heard my cry.

It's a beautiful story.

And it's a beautiful thing.

He goes on and he says, not only did he listen, but he drew me up from the pit of destruction.

Out of the miry bog.

And he set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

Now, listen, he doesn't just stop there.

He then goes on, then he put a new song in my mouth.

A song of praise to our God.

Isn't that beautiful?

The power of God literally raised Christ from the dead.

It's now coming in spiritually and raising us from death in sin.

And he's saying, you know what?

I'm going to lift you up.

I'm going to put a new song in your heart.

I'm going to give you peace.

You don't have to worry about that life anymore.

Follow me.

Follow the Spirit.

Walk in step with the Spirit and don't go back into that mess.

It's beautiful.

But then he's got one other thing that he does before he asks us to do something.

This one is off.

This one is off the charts.

It says he seated us beside him.

When Jesus was brought back to life, he was raised from the grave.

He walked on the earth and gave some assignments to his disciples.

And then he ascended into heaven.

And he was seated at the right hand of the Father.

Before he did that, in John chapter 14, he tells his disciples, he says, Listen, I'm going away.

John 14 · chapter mention

But don't worry.

Here's why I'm going away.

I'm going to go prepare a place for you.

And then I'm coming back to get you.

And then I love this.

He says, because where I am, I want you to be with me also.

I'm come on now, listen again.

I'm going away.

Prepare a place for you.

Coming back to get you because where I am, I want you to be also.

Amen.

Isn't that exciting?

It says that he has seated us in heavenly places with him.

He's taking care of us.

I love that thing.

And you know, five different things it says he's going to do for us, and he asked us to do one thing.

One thing.

Here it is.

Displayed his works.

He wants us to be a display of his great works.

He wants us to go out and show the world and say, hey, listen, let me tell you about something.

I was dead in my sin.

I was in this bad place.

And then I met a man named Jesus.

He brought me back to life again.

Not only did he bring me back to life again, but he raised me up out of that mess.

And he has raised me up, and he has set my feet on a solid ground.

And now he's got a place for me with him that I'll be able to stay with him eternally.

It's a place of peace.

And when I don't go back over there, I've got peace in my life.

But when I go back and dabble, woo, I'm a little uneasy.

I'm a little out of it.

You know what?

The psalmist said in Psalm 139, 14, it says, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Those two words, they give the idea that this artist is fashioning for him this beautiful masterpiece.

I don't know if we've got any artist in here.

I'm not.

You know, when I drew a car as a kid, it looked like a Tesla cyber truck.

If any of you got one, I'm so sorry, but that's what I think it looks like.

It wasn't good.

But God is this artist.

And he made a masterpiece, and that masterpiece is you and me.

And I know some of you go, yeah, but when I look in the mirror, I don't see a masterpiece.

God does.

His masterpiece.

He says, and I want you to go out and tell people what I've done for you.

The peace that I've brought in your life.

It's a beautiful picture.

It's a beautiful picture.

I want to share with you some of my story about my struggles.

I could be here and tell you butt God's stories all day long, but I'm going to tell you one of when I was already in Christ.

I had settled the fact and I had come back to life, but I was still in one of those things where struggles and difficulties still come.

Lisa and I were living with our two small children.

At the time, our son was four and our daughter was nine.

We were living in Mobile, planting a church.

God was doing some amazing things, not because I was so good, but because I would have no idea what I was doing.

I said, God, you gotta help me.

And the enemy attacked.

And we didn't know if one of our children, our daughter, was going to die because of a disease.

You see, I got a phone call while I was out making a visit from Lisa, and she said, You need to get home.

Reagan is having seizures in her sleep.

And I'm like, Are you sure she's not just cramping up?

You know, that's the guy thing.

Uh it'll buff.

She said, No, it's serious.

I get home, sure enough, there's some issues going on.

We get her set up with the uh pediatrician.

Pediatrician does all these exams and orders all these tests and goes beyond the scope of the pediatrician, sends us to a neurologist.

Neurologist orders an EEG and the EEG bait came back inconclusive, ordered an MRI, the MRI came back inconclusive, ordered a contrast MRI, and then he calls us into his office and he said, We want to send your daughter to St.

Jude in Memphis.

I said, You excuse me, what?

Your daughter has a brain tumor.

We're gonna send her to St.

Jude so she can have it removed.

And in my mind of initially, here's what I thought.

I saw the pictures of the St.

Jude commercials.

With the little children, very pale and anemic and no hair.

And here's my beautiful brown-eyed, brown-haired little girl, nine years old, that looks like her mother, an absolute angel.

And the first was a gut punch.

We go through the process, we get her everything set up for the surgery, and they sent us actually to Labonor to do the surgery, which is a sister hospital works with St.

Jude, and which is right next door.

But before the surgery, we wanted to have fun in Memphis.

So we did this touristy things.

I don't know if any of you have ever been to Memphis, but you know, you got Graceland.

And we went there.

My recommendation is don't.

Okay.

We went and made it rendezvous ribs.

My recommendation is let's go after lunch.

I mean, left there's church today.

And we stayed at the Peabody Hotel one night.

It's all we could afford.

I don't know if you've ever been to the Peabody, know what it is, but this is a really nice hotel.

There's a chain.

But in Memphis, like some other places, they have something called the Duck March.

And on the roof is a pet house for the ducks.

And every morning the duck master brings them down the elevator, across the red carpet, into the lobby, and they get in the little fountain and they swim in the fountain all day long, afternoon, reverse, and go back up.

You can submit to be an honorary duck master.

So I submitted Reagan and she was chosen.

So it was supposed to be the afternoon that the duck master, and then she took them back up.

As we're down there, he's given us all instructions before the ceremony begins.

He says, I need everyone's attention in the lobby, please.

I need you to be quiet.

And by the way, it's the fountain is located right in the middle of registration, a bar that's kind of an open area, and then the entrance.

Everyone was dead silent.

And he told Reagan's story.

And he said, We're going to pause for a word of prayer for this young lady.

Silent prayer.

Would you pray for her?

Afterwards, he looked at Reagan and said, Reagan, I want to give you my personal duck master cane.

This was his.

Said, I've never done this before, but I feel impressed to give this to you.

So he gave her his cane, and we thought, well, that was cool.

That's kind of neat.

It's kind of a good thing.

Thank you so much.

And we go to the hospital for surgery.

Of course, during this whole time, you would think that we were extremely anxious and to a degree, yes.

But inside, I had this peace.

God kept telling me, trust me.

I've got your baby.

Trust me.

The doctor or the surgeon did the surgery through that whole time.

Then he comes out and says, We've got good news.

The tumor, we've got a clean margin all around, and we feel like we got it all, and we're pretty confident that it's benign.

Praise God.

However, yeah, you don't want to hear those words.

He said, because it was located on the left side on top of the motor skills, she is paralyzed on her right side.

There's that gut punch again, dads.

But immediately I had this peace again.

I got this.

About 15 minutes later, he comes back out and says, Your daughter has movement again, but she's extremely weak.

What that meant was that she could barely move without assistance.

And she would have to learn to walk again.

When she left in the days and months to come, she relied on this cane to help her get around at times.

You see, God knew we were headed on a path, but God stepped in and said, Don't worry.

Remember, love, joy, peace.

I got this.

Fast forward, Reagan does learn to walk again.

That was in May of 2004.

By the fall, when school started back, she was walking again, still had a little bit of a limp, had to wear some combat boots that she hated, but because it wasn't in fashion.

So you know how that is with little girls.

First year she couldn't do any contact sports or anything like that, but she got back into cheering right after that first year, and she went on and cheered through upward, middle school, high school, and then four years in college.

I want you to see my favorite picture of my daughter.

This was at Mississippi State.

She's cheering for Sanford University.

That's her senior year.

Notice that she is an aerial, she's doing the crane or whatever that thing is.

That is the leg that was paralyzed.

But God.

The enemy wants to rob us of peace, but God says, I got this.

I got this.

Now, here's what I want to ask you.

What is that stressor that I asked you about at the beginning?

What's that that's going on in your life?

By the way, what's she doing now?

God had another plan.

She is a, she spent the first uh, what, six years out of college as a hematology and oncology nurse at children's hospital in Birmingham, Atlanta, uh Tucson in Houston.

Now she's back at Birmingham as the hospital in the pediatric intensive care unit.

But God, but God.

And by the way, she did not know I was sharing this story until we got coming here this morning.

She looked and she said, Oh no, you've got the king.

Told her I was gonna get her up here and do the, but she said, mm-mm.

Here's what I want you to think about with me.

What is that thing or thing?

What are those things that are robbing you of peace today?

Here's what you need to understand.

Paul wrote to young Timothy in 2 Timothy 1.7 that God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love, and sound mind.

Here's the thing.

We were walking with God.

And even in the midst of walking with God, we had trials.

So what are we gonna do?

Let me wrap it up with this.

The best way to peace.

Three things, and these are not like, you I promise you, if you do these, you will be have peace every time.

It's a discipline, and you're gonna be in and out of them.

But number one is trust him.

Despite the overwhelming obstacles and oppositions.

Trust him.

Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not lean on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Number two, draw close to God.

Listen to him.

What he's telling you to do and obey them every step.

James 4, 8 says, Draw near to me, and I will draw near unto you.

That's walking in the spirit.

Number three, proclaim his might, his majesty, and the ways that he has moved in your life.

I love what Psalm 145, 4 says.

It says, one generation shall praise your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.

John MacArthur wrote this.

Listen to what he said about peace.

He said, if the Father is the source of peace, and the Son is the manifestation of peace, then the Holy Spirit is the agent of that peace.

Walk in the Spirit.

Now here's the last thing, and then I've got some scripture.

True peace is a dichotomy.

A dichotomy.

You're like, a what?

There are opposite, polar opposite points.

Polar opposite.

Just because we say and we're talking about peace, true peace isn't the absence of conflict.

It isn't the absence of hardships and trials and difficulties.

We're going to have them.

We're in this world.

They're all around us.

Jesus said, but take heart.

I've overcome this world.

True peace is knowing you are not alone.

True peace is knowing that there is a God who cares for you and walks with you.

He says in 1 Peter 5, 7, cast all your anxieties on me because I care for you.

Some of my scriptures that I pull together, some of them are my favorites.

Give us some direction on peace.

And I want you to watch and listen with me.

John 16, 33.

I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulations, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

Isaiah 26, 3.

You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

John 14, 27.

Peace I leave with you.

My peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives, do I give to you.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Neither let them be afraid.

May the Lord give strength to his people.

May the Lord bless his people with peace.

Two more.

Matthew 11, 28.

Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Colossians 3, 15, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.

Want to give you three passages of scripture.

Write these down.

I'm not going to read the chapters to you, but you go back and read these chapters, all from Psalms.

You see, these Psalms speak to my heart when I'm going through difficult times.

Psalm 46 came to me when my niece died of crib death.

Psalm 91 speaks of how God's going to gather us under his pinions, under his arm, and care for us.

Psalm 121 talks about where does my help come from?

It comes from the Lord.

I don't know where you are this morning.

I don't know if you're dead in sin and you're still trying to figure all this out.

I want you to know something, but God, being rich in mercy, is waiting for you.

I don't know if you've already come to life, but you're still struggling with that old nature.

Why don't you crucify it this morning?

And I don't know if you've got a but God story that you're struggling with.

Know this.

There is a God who cares for you.

Pastor Riggs' gonna come and he's gonna continue and share this invitation to you this morning.

So my question for you today is this Do you want peace in your life?

Not the absence of troubles, but just peace in the midst of the storm.

He can offer it.

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