Unshaken | Action Plan (Oct 10, 2021) Mike Armstrong

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church of Canada, Church in New York, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission, for the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hey man, go ahead and grab your seats as you're doing.

Good morning, and uh welcome.

Uh Redemption.

Uh welcome to those of you watching uh from home as well.

Glad to have uh you with us uh just before we get into God's word here.

Uh just a couple of quick things.

Uh as you know, uh as those of you who have successfully registered for uh church this morning, you know that things have been filling up around uh Tuesday morning, Tuesday sometime, uh for us.

And so we've recognized the need to move to a second service uh service stat.

And so uh we are gonna do that very thing starting next Sunday.

Okay, so next Sunday we're gonna have two services available in person here at 9 and 11 a.m.

We did this for I think a couple of weeks in the spring, uh, and then we're able to move back to one service during the summer.

Uh, but just so you know, we've got two offered for you now.

Uh, we never like the idea of our service being full, and so uh pray for us as we get uh uh those services covered off in terms of volunteers and leadership.

Also want to make a quick mention that uh Redemption Kids and uh the ministry we've been offering now uh for a little while here, that's only gonna be available during the nine o'clock service, okay?

During the very first service.

So if you've got young ones who uh uh uh you want to get into the into the ministry here, uh keep in mind that nine o'clock is gonna be this the slot for you uh to be able to come.

And so uh grateful to have uh people here and knocking down the door and uh trying to get in to hear uh God's word and meet with the Lord Himself and God's people.

And so this is uh we look at this as a blessing and a great thing uh in the life of our church.

And then uh second thing, uh not really a minor thing, it's a great thing actually, and that is uh we have now uh back our Sunday morning playlists available to you uh on Spotify and Apple Music.

Okay, so we've had uh we got new people come to the church who are trying to learn the songs and get a feel for what we're about.

Uh we're gonna have those available to you uh on Thursdays, okay?

Thursday uh each week so you can go over these songs and learn them and prepare your hearts, maybe crank them, pump them in the house in the morning as you're getting up and getting ready for church with your families and just preparing ourselves for worship here on Sundays.

And so again, you'll find the links in that, but you can subscribe to those uh to those playlists and uh those will get automatically renewed uh each week.

Looking forward to uh to having that as a resource for you.

All right, well, if you would get your Bibles uh set, get them open to uh Philippians chapter four.

Okay, Philippians chapter four this morning is gonna be our main text here, and as we know, uh our series uh is about becoming unshakable, okay, stable people living in an unstable world.

Okay, as we witness a sociological decline into greater depths of immorality and godlessness all around us, uh it's only natural, I think, that that Christ followers begin uh to think more critically about how to handle ourselves well, how to function properly uh in this world, in a way that is spiritually healthy for us, uh beneficial to other people in our church and in the world, and of course, honoring uh to the Lord.

You know, I don't think there's really any argument uh out there against the fact that things like COVID and uh the racism that is that has come to the surface in our culture, uh the various types of protests that we've seen, uh, peaceful and not so much, uh, sexual identity issues, uh shifting political values, things even recently like the Taliban uh taking over in Afghanistan, right?

All of these things have accelerated for us this acute awareness inside that our world is more volatile than ever.

And it affects our peace, doesn't it?

I think it does if we're honest about that.

We're we're anxious people.

Many of us are angry and angst and irate and frustrated and annoyed.

We're, you know, some of us are fearful.

Where is this going?

What's it all gonna look like here for us?

You know, and and of course, we feel more variations of these things as we just kind of watch and view everything unfold uh in front of our very eyes.

And so I think an important question, one that's maybe lurking in your soul, is you know, how how do we obtain peace?

How can my soul rest in peace?

Okay, well, Philippians 4, verses 4 to 9, uh, I love this passage.

Philippians 4:4–9

I think it really lays out an action plan for you and I to follow as we look for stability, okay, stability in volatile times.

And so I want to read this passage uh for us now, follow along, and then I will pray.

Here's what it says: it says, Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again I will say, rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone, the Lord is at hand.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by a prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Uh, Lord, we read that and our hearts are crying out, some of us just screaming out for peace.

Lord, we uh are very unsettled, I think, as a as a nation and and as Christians, Lord, as we look out and see what's going on in various different ways, Lord.

And I know we've discussed how some of us will land on various sides of some of the current events and issues that we see, Lord, but uh Lord, we can really wrestle with a lack of peace and joy and comfort inside, Lord, but yet we see in your word here in this passage, your desire is to draw near to us and give us peace, Lord.

I pray that we would uh look at these verses here today and see the action plan that we are to pursue and to go after, Lord.

I pray that we would do this from the heart.

I pray that you would meet us in your Holy Spirit.

I pray that you would settle us, that you would calm us, that you would give us joy, you would give us great deep faith in you, that we would trust you, Lord.

I pray that you would use us powerfully in this world, Lord.

I pray that the peace that we long for wouldn't just be about feeling more comfortable and more self-centered or more focused on self, Lord.

I pray that that would not be the case, Lord.

That we would realize that you are at work in this world, even when it doesn't look like it, according to our eye.

Lord, that you have called us into your great plan, your redemption plan.

Lord, that we would be excited and passionate about this.

Father, encourage us, teach us, bring us along, I pray.

Glorify Christ in and through us.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, first thing then today, two things.

But here's the first one.

When the world is volatile and I lack peace, I will spring into action, okay, going all in on rejoicing, reasonableness, trust, prayer, and gratitude.

Now, there's a there's a lot there, okay, in that point.

I understand that.

Uh, but these are the the things that Paul encourages you and I to latch on to, to grab hold of when we lack peace.

Just take a look at the first thing here in verse 4 as we go through it.

He says, rejoice, okay, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

Now, understand here that this isn't some empty call to will yourself towards fake feelings of emotional positivity.

Just try and conjure up some warmth inside you.

That's not what this is saying.

Okay, keep in mind that all through Philippians, Paul speaks very openly, very candidly, about the the serious challenges that we're gonna face in life.

Okay, he himself, remember the context of this, he wrote this from prison.

He's writing this letter to the church, um, encouraging them from a cell.

Okay?

And yet his attitude, his attitude is to look through those challenges, to look past those challenges, if you will, to seeing the opportunity that this gave him, his difficulties gave him to proclaim Christ and the gospel.

We see that in Philippians 1.

He exhorts this church to remember Christ's example of humility, right, and imitate him and imitate others who have modeled faithfulness in times of persecution.

That's Philippians 2.

He reminds these believers that their righteousness, okay, it is it is given to them by grace through faith.

That is where their righteousness comes from.

That is what they stand on.

And he and he and he challenged them to not give in to trying to earn their standing before God through the legalism of circumcision specifically.

Okay, we don't perfect ourselves through through moral behavior.

Okay, that's not the way it works.

Christ does as a gift.

That's where He is where our righteousness comes from.

That's all in Philippians 3.

And then in Philippians 4, where we're camping out this morning, he's just unloading encouragement on them as he concludes his letter.

Because again, I think that is so often what you and I need.

How often, how easily do we get discouraged?

Right?

We don't need to be berated and hammered.

It's uh you know, it's we need a word of uh of encouragement.

And so he does so here by by calling them to rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

Okay, it's it's repeated, as we've talked about many times, for the purpose of stressing the importance of celebrating the right things, right?

Celebrating who Christ is and what he has done for us through the cross and resurrection, to rejoice and celebrate in what he purposes to do in our lives and through our lives as we live in the volatility of a world that opposes God at every turn.

I mean, again, we already know how easy it is to become worked up, right?

To become discouraged, like I said, to become angry people, to get stressed out and to fear or or to complain about the world around us, about what's going on, as all of these kinds of things impact us in various ways.

Okay, but if you if you stop and think about it, literally if you stop and think about it, we all have so much to rejoice in.

We really truly do.

Okay, salvation being at the core of that, reminding ourselves of what God has done for us through Christ Jesus to rescue us out of sin, out of wrath, out of judgment, and out of hell, and bring us into a relationship with Him.

Again, it's all by grace, it's all a picture of God's love.

There is so much, so much for ourselves to rejoice in.

And again, it was just a couple of weeks back that we looked at Romans 1, right?

And while how that is such a heavy passage, it's it's about God's wrath against the moral and societal decline that happens as humanity rejects Christ, it's actually strangely encouraging as we read it as well, I think, to know that God has let us in on how the world is going to go.

Right?

As people reject him, they're gonna lose their minds and be unable to think properly, and they're gonna get engaged in all kinds of foolish nonsense.

So we don't need to wonder about or be confused about what we're seeing unfold in the world.

It's that sin has done immense damage to people's ability to think properly.

We don't have sound minds anymore, and because of that, we don't we don't function, again, general society, we don't function in a sensible and reasonable way.

And it was just last week, of course, that we looked at Psalm 2, which shows us that, you know, while kings and and leaders and governments, politicians, all of that, they'll all behave terribly at times.

The Lord remains in control, right?

He remains unfazed by all of it.

He sits in the heavens and he laughs.

That right there is a massive cause for us to rejoice.

Yeah, we might be kind of wringing our hands a bit here and panicking and not sure of the future, but God's got it all.

He's got it, he's got it locked down.

If you and I take even just a little bit of time, I haven't even spent much time right now doing this, but if we take the time to consider these things, who God is, what he's done, and what he's actually working to do, we can authentically rejoice.

It's not fake, it's not a bunch of empty words.

We can actually celebrate in times of great distress and volatility.

Now, of course, we're just kind of getting started here in the passage.

Okay, we're to go all in on rejoicing, but all in on other things too, like being level-headed, okay, being you know, clear-minded, calm, cool, and collected, despite, again, the turmoil that our world is in.

And verse 5 really shows us that.

Take a look.

It says, let your reasonableness, okay, let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

You know, I don't think it's a real leap to say that reasonableness, okay, sometimes translated in your Bible maybe as gentleness, but but really it means to have a gracious disposition to be considerate.

Again, I don't think it's a it's a it's a leap to say that that seems to have all but disappeared in our world.

Right?

Have you noticed that?

Having a healthy, calm, respectful interaction or debate about points of disagreement between us and other people, it seems to be a thing of the past.

Right?

Using logic or or rhetoric is an art form that really appears to be to be evaporating before our eyes in, again, in general society.

And what's it been replaced with?

Right, thinking clearly and and being respectful and reasonable.

Well, it's been replaced by emotionalism.

People sounding off on Twitter and wrecking each other on social media.

It's turned into immense anger and just speaking their minds and lashing out.

It's turned into gaslighting and straw man arguments and other logical fallacies.

Now, more than ever before in our lifetime, are reasonable Christians needed.

To engage respectfully with an unreasonable culture.

Letting your reasonableness be known to everyone, as the verse says, involves having a biblical worldview through which we look at the current issues of our day.

It means having a certain level of emotional intelligence.

Being aware of your own tendencies and your own faults and those types of things, being able to control those things, being filled with the spirit, the spirit of self-control, when you're in discussions with people and they're lighting you on fire and they're ripping you and they're doing all that, to be able to calm ourselves down again requires some serious emotional intelligence, and of course, that we walk by the power of the spirit.

Galatians 5 talks about that.

But before all of what I'm saying here becomes this like overwhelming burden to you, like, oh man, I gotta control myself.

I'm I'm pretty, uh I'm easily triggered these days.

Okay, notice here how he says the Lord is at hand.

Look how he finishes that verse.

The Lord is at hand, the Lord draws near to you and I, intimately so, as you and I engage with culture in reasonableness, in fair-mindedness.

You're not on your own in any of that.

Now keep going with me.

Look at verse six.

Do not be anxious about anything.

Okay, anyone else besides me finding this one easier said than done?

Yeah, like that's that's a tough one.

Okay, Oswald Chambers called anxiety.

Now, I'm talking about like regular everyday anxieties that you and I can have, not you know, maybe the more mental health, chemical imbalance side of anxiety, more the regular kind of anxieties.

This is what Oswald Chambers called.

They called it an unconscious blasphemy.

Which is where like deep down we struggle to truly trust God's goodness and his sovereignty.

Where we know up here in our minds that the right answer is to trust the Lord, but that that head knowledge hasn't really trickled down effectively, where it's become experiential knowledge, where we truly and functionally exhibit, you know, out from us this profound soul trust in the Lord as you and I experience volatility.

But I think not being anxious about anything really links back to what you know we've already covered.

You know, if you and I are genuinely rejoicing in the Lord always, that anxiety lifts.

Because true rejoicing has to go hand in hand with trusting the God that you're rejoicing in.

Does that make sense?

I also think that not being anxious is connected with what the rest of this verse says, verse 6.

He says, But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Okay, so there's the the emphasis on prayer.

Okay, when the world is volatile and peace is lacking, uh prayer is paramount.

It is.

I mean, a prayerless church is essentially a church on life support, where we become extremely vulnerable and susceptible to anxieties and a host of other issues because we're not drawing near to our source.

You know, I think now would be an appropriate time for me to kind of jump in and plug our Tuesday morning uh gathering, small gathering that we've been doing on Zoom as we pray.

Okay, and for me, I don't know about how your week typically looks, but but Tuesday is my is my longest day, typically speaking.

You know, it's staff meeting, it's it's elders meeting and and and maybe some meetings uh between that.

Um it's an early start for me, but I find myself coming away so buoyed by just praying and gathering together uh with some people in our church and and lifting up our burdens and our anxieties and our and our challenges and celebrating the the goodness, being thankful, being grateful uh together.

I love that.

It sets the tone for my day.

And so I just want to I want to encourage you or to challenge you to make that a priority.

And I and I want to say in the same breath too.

Don't hear guilt tripping from me.

Okay, I'm I'm not doing that.

If you can't do it because you're you know on your way to work or or what have you, like don't sweat.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad for not coming to this.

I'm just saying it's an it's an awesome resource.

It's available to us and as we see the importance of of prayer, of supplication, of bringing our needs before God with thanksgiving and reminding ourselves of the gospel of our of our salvation and what Christ has done.

In the same breath as talking about the Tuesday morning prayer time, I know that I have been so encouraged on those Sundays that we've concluded our service with prayer.

You know, and you move into your groups, and you know, I'm getting my microphone off and I'm coming down off the stage, and I hear the buzz that starts.

To rise among you as you're lifting up your needs and you're celebrating the goodness of the Lord and we're gathering together.

That's when the church is powerful.

Right?

It's awesome, and I love it.

We're expressing our neediness and our gratitude to Him.

When we do that, it gives us that spirit-produced boost of joy and peace.

The peace that we're looking for.

And that's what we really see happen here in verse 7 as we go in on all these things, rejoicing, reasonableness, trusting the Lord, a prayer and gratitude.

It says this, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, what a line that is.

It means that the peace of God supernaturally overcomes our various fears and anxieties and doubts and anger and all of those emotions that we have that threaten our peace.

He overcomes that.

Have you ever prayed or had somebody pray for you and your circumstance hasn't really gotten any better yet?

And yet you feel there's a stability.

The Lord brings peace.

The Lord draws near to you and encourages you.

That's what this verse is talking about.

Notice how it says, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The heart and the mind, often used kind of interchangeably, I think, in the scriptures, is where the war for peace is waged.

Your mind, your heart, that is the battleground.

As you're longing and yearning for more peace in your life.

And so think about it.

What we, what you and I think and believe in our hearts and in our minds is extremely important as we long for that protection, we long for that guarding that God's peace provides for us.

You know, the next two verses really speak to this, it gets into this in a very powerful way.

And so here is the second thing this morning.

When the world is volatile and I lack peace, I will spring into action, setting my thoughts on all the right things as the Lord draws near.

He says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, okay, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Think about them.

Now, you might remember, I wouldn't expect you to necessarily, but you might remember that a year ago uh we did a series called Be Transforms, okay, where we really centered in on Romans 12, verse 2 and unpacked that over a number of weeks.

Romans 12:2

But Romans 12, verse 2 says, Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Romans 12:2

Exactly.

Okay, and these verses here in Philippians played actually a big part in those messages, okay, in those sermons.

The importance of how you and I think and what we think about simply cannot be overstated.

Now, as a bit of recap for us, uh you might recall that every single one of us here has a soundtrack, if I can call it that, of certain thoughts and beliefs and opinions and attitudes, uh, lies and some truths that are running through our minds at all times.

Okay, that's why uh Paul Tripp says this, I love this quote, I think we have it on the screen for you.

No one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one speaks to you more than you do.

How good is that?

Okay, now most of this speaking to ourselves, you know, that this thinking, this belief system that plays on repeat over and over in our minds again, uh happens in our subconscious.

Our subconscious, or or deep down in your heart, your soul, if you can put it that way.

Now, just a few stats here to help us understand a little bit of the biology, a little bit of the science here.

Um, again, this might uh ring a bell for you because we did look at this uh about a year ago.

Uh this comes out of uh some of the work that Dr.

Carolyn Leaf has done.

She's uh a neuroscientist and she's also a believer.

Uh her and many others have have studied uh what goes on in the brain, what goes on in our minds, and it's amazing what they've been able to learn just in the last 10 years alone, as they feel like they're just scratching the surface of how God has actually made us and wired us.

But here's a couple of stats.

These are kind of wild.

Okay, your conscious mind, okay, so our conscious mind can process 40 bits of information per second.

Okay, so think about that.

40 bits of information per second, that's that's quite a bit.

That's our conscious mind.

But get a load of this.

Our subconscious mind can process 20 million bits of information per second.

Okay, that is power right there.

It just goes to show us how how much more powerful the subconscious mind is and and why it tends to control uh so much of our life.

Okay, our our subconscious mind, okay, so again, what we think about and what we believe way deep down there controlled, get this, 95 to 97% of what you and I do in a day.

They're our subconscious uh subconscious mind controlling 95 to 97% of what you and I do, how we behave, what we think about, what we go after, what we're motivated by, all of that.

You know, listen to this.

A research shows that 70% of the average person's subconscious, okay, so their thoughts and their beliefs, are negative and redundant.

Okay, 70% of just the average person in this room, that their subconscious thoughts are negative, okay, and redundant, meaning over and over again.

Meaning that that most of us here, just the average person here in this room, think about and believe and are driven by, motivated by lies and negativity.

Okay, lies and negativity.

Again, 70% of our subconscious thoughts and beliefs are that way.

And that junk, think about it, that junk is just on repeat over and over and over and over again all day.

Okay, I don't know about you, but I find that equal part fascinating and appalling.

Right?

That's that's that's crazy to think about.

Now, if that's what the research is showing, and again, they're just scratching the surface on this.

Can you see why?

If that's what the research shows, can you see why the Bible, why God Himself, who is the creator of our minds, keep in mind, right?

Conscious and subconscious, can you see why he tells us here in Philippians 4 verse 8 to think about these things?

Philippians 4:8

To think that the importance placed on that, to set our thoughts on the right things.

Whatever is true, he says, truth is so important, whatever is honorable, just lovely, pure, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.

Because he knows that the peace that we long for as we live in a volatile world is massively influenced by the quality of our thoughts and our beliefs deep down.

And because you and I, we've all been affected by sin, our own sin, the sin of others, all of it.

It means that a big part of our natural, you know, or or default thought process, our our natural mindset and our default focus is largely negative and wrong.

Okay, so so whatever it might be that causes you a lack of peace in this crazy world, you know, and experience, again, whatever the emotions are that tend to rise to the surface and flow out of you, the anger, the fear, the anxiety, maybe just the jadedness of it all, instead, begin to think carefully.

Begin to think very critically about what is going on under the surface of my actions.

Okay, so so for example, if if you tend towards being fearful of all things COVID, right?

If if you're gonna get worked up about that, and what's gonna happen in our world?

Am I gonna get sick and how is this gonna affect my loved ones, my aging loved ones, my kids, and you know, should we, you know, we should be wearing masks, and why aren't those people doing their part to help?

If if that's the side that you tend to go down.

Or if you're you're more on the other side of the equation, and and maybe for you, you tend towards harshness or or being really judgmental towards those who get the vaccine, for example, and and you're hard on them, and why aren't they, you know, you know, looking at the real evidence, and and and again, you go down that path.

Regardless of which way we go on this, ask yourself questions about which belief systems you subscribe to deep down, subconsciously, even, that leads you towards this lack of peace you experience.

Start to ask some of those questions.

Are your thoughts and beliefs in line with what is actually true and honorable and just and and etc., right?

The rest of that list, according to God.

Is it according to that?

Is it lining up with that?

Beginning to identify where your deeply held thoughts and beliefs are off base and anchored to lies specifically, allows us to now start to re-anchor them to the right things, to the truths of scripture.

Now, verse 9 actually tells us very simply how to go about setting our thoughts on the right things.

Look what it says.

It says, what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.

Okay, so he's taught them lots.

He's modeled, you know, this list that he just gave them in verse eight.

And so he tells them, practice these things.

Practice them.

Literally practice thinking about the right things.

That's where our our our Bible reading and the meditation on the scriptures and and going over that, it's the scripture memory and things like attending church and sitting before uh gospel-centered preaching and attending small group, or we're going over these things together and having solid accountability relationships and things like listening to worship music, where that is flooding our souls.

All of all of those things help so much.

They really do, because they get us in the practice of thinking about all the right things.

That's why we urge us towards all of it.

I want to share with you just a couple of verses here that have meant a lot to me and have impacted me, but just as a way to start to get you to see that it's not just Philippians 4 that talks about this, or Romans 12, I've noticed over and over and over again the importance of setting our minds and our thoughts on the right things.

Okay, take a look at Colossians 3, 1 to 4 with me.

Notice what it says.

It says, if then you have been raised with Christ, okay, so if you're a Christian, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated, or where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

And then look at this.

Set your minds.

Okay, there's the thinking, there's the beliefs, right?

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

For you have died.

Notice how it reminds us of our salvation again and our identity, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Set your minds on things that are above.

The importance of thinking well.

Okay, and he is pouring out his heart uh about the the judgment that God's people Israel has been receiving, and how they have strayed so far, and he's he's crying out to the Lord, and he's grieving, and and he talks about tears.

He actually says in a verse there, my bile is poured out on the ground.

He is he is physically sick, he is ill because of the sin of God's people.

But then in verse, or in chapter 3, verse 21, it all turns around.

Notice how he does it.

Okay, he's in a dark place.

He says this, he says, but this I call to mind.

He's like, My emotions, my anxiety, my fear, my frustration, it's all there at the surface.

It's all coming out of me in gross bodily function ways.

He's like, but but here's what I do, but this I call to mind.

I'm remembering what's true.

I'm thinking.

Okay, and therefore, notice, I have hope.

And he just locks it in.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

He's like, this is what I'm gonna cling to, this is what's true, this is what I'm gonna center my mind on.

His mercies never come to an end, ever.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

He's not feeling it emotionally, but he calls to mind this.

The Lord is my portion, says, my soul.

He's like, I'm I'm ministering to my soul right now, and I'm gonna get my place, myself to the place where my soul believes this and is saying this.

Therefore, I will hope in him.

Listen, there was such a huge turn uh turnaround, turning point in my approach as a Christian when I made a shift from reading the Bible to learn new things.

Okay, now I'm not saying that I I've learned everything about the Bible, okay, just to make that really clear.

But I just changed my approach a little bit.

I've read the Bible, I've read all the different passages, and I think I have a decent grasp of what it's about.

But I made the shift from reading the Bible to learn new things to reading it for the purpose of reminding myself of the things that I already know, but easily forget.

Because that's what we do.

We're forgetful.

Our minds get off of the scriptures, off of what's true and honorable and just and lovely and commendable and pure and lovely and excellent.

It gets off of those things.

What we set our minds on is a massive indicator of whether or not you and I will experience peace.

Okay, and the rest of verse 9 here indicates that.

Okay, as Paul says that as we think about and practice thinking about the right things, look what it says.

It says, the God of peace will be with you.

How good is that?

Notice how it's not just a peace from God that he will give you, though he does.

Verse 8 said that they called it the peace of God.

But it's not just that.

He says, the God of peace himself will be with you.

Okay, what grace that is for us.

What comfort to those of us who are weary, what joy to us living in volatile times.

Listen, as I invite the worship team back up on the stage now, remember this action plan.

Remember these verses here as you fight for, claw for, cling to peace in the crazy world that we live in.

Let's pray.

Now after we pray, we're gonna sing a song.

And then there's a family chat.

So I encourage you, especially if you're online, to stick around for that.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your kindness to us.

We thank you for our your incredible mercy, uh, your incredible grace, Lord, how you uh provide us with peace.

You provide us uh comfort uh for our souls uh when it is tumultuous inside.

Lord, we thank you that that you are a rock, God, that the righteous can run to you, our strong fortress, uh fortress, and find safety, find protection.

Lord, I pray that as believers uh we would learn to handle ourselves in these ways.

Lord, I pray that you would be immensely gracious to us and pour yourself out for us, Lord.

Show us your glory, show us your goodness.

Use our weaknesses to humble us, God, and to show us your greatness.

Lord, we know that the days are evil and and life can be pretty dark sometimes, and so, Father, I pray that you would continue to transform our church and make us into the image of your son.

Lord, encourage us along the way, Lord, I pray.