Christmas at Destiny // Peace

Coming soon!

Man, it's good to be with you here this morning. For those of you who don't know, my name is Jonathan, the pastor at Destiny Church. So thankful to be celebrating with you today. Man, what a good time of worship we've had. I'm really looking forward to some cookies a little later. So it's going to be great. Hey, one real quick thing before we get into today's message.

I want to remind you of something that we do annually as a church and we get the opportunity and some of you just like to have the heads up. I mentioned it last week, but next weekend is not only our Christmas show, Christmas production. Why can't I think of that word? Production.

My glasses, they're mugging me. Okay, so here's the thing. We also next week will be collecting our annual staff offering. Once a year we click staff offering for staff Christmas bonuses that goes towards the staff. And I'm excited about getting a participant that I know many of you are. And so you can begin to pray or think about it. And for some of you, every year I mentioned this, that if you already know what you want to give or you're going to be gone next week and you still want to participate, you can go ahead and do that either on the offering envelope in the line marked other. You can put staff offering and you can drop it off in a box or you can always go to destinychurch.com slash give. And one of the categories that staff offering is opened up and you can give that way at any point between now and next week. And that'll all go towards their Christmas bonuses here, which is exciting. So I'm looking forward to that. Let's do this. Stand with me real quick to your feet while we get into God's word. I want to read this verse.

 We're going to read from Philippians chapter four. We're going to start in verse five.

 And it says this,

 "Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do.

 Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for what He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and mind as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.

 Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me, everything you heard from me in Psalm E doing. Then the God of peace will be with you." Father God, right now we just invite you to continue to extend your presence into this place. Lord, as we speak about the peace that comes from the person of Jesus, Lord, we thank you. That today you just fill our hearts and minds and our imaginations with the ideas and the concepts of what you mean that we get to walk in peace and experience peace that passes all understanding, all knowing of what we can see in our natural concepts, Father. We thank you that we can experience you there. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

 All right, you may be seated. You may be seated. So we are in our Advent series. We're in week two of our Advent series. And for those of you missed last week, Advent is the thing that we celebrate for the four Sundays leading up to the day of Christmas. And we celebrate. In celebrating, we study four concepts or ideas, hope, peace, love, and joy. We started last week with hope. It was really great. If you missed it, you can go back and watch that service online. But the Latin word "advantis" means coming or arrival. And in this time, we're putting ourselves in the place of what does it mean to be anticipating the coming or the arrival of Jesus. And so we're opening our imaginations and our thoughts to what these ideas look like and what Jesus' birth ushered in and created in our lives in this season. And so today we're talking about the word "peace." And peace is a great word because it's one that we've heard, but it's also a tricky word because we use the word all the time in English. Peace is a word we use very frequently, and we use it on two different scales. We use it from kind of more like a political or global or national level piece. But we also use it on an internal personal level of like our own personal piece or mental piece or inner piece. Like we use those words a lot. And typically, just by definition, when we're looking at it like on the national scale, peace for a country is the absence of war. So if you are not at war, then you are in peace by definition. So there's war time and there's peace time. So peace is the absence of war or conflict. And in our personal lives, often when we talk about like, I just want my mind to be at peace or my life to be at peace, we're looking at it from that same definition, but just within a personal ideal. And the way of like, we don't have conflict or we don't have fear or we don't have anxiety or we're not dealing with something that's hard. And so therefore, we're at peace. Sometimes my kids tell me their life would be a lot more peaceful if they just didn't have homework all the time. Like and that's, you know, it's like the presence of homework removes the peace from their heart. And I get it because that was how I felt as well. And that's why when I got home from school, most days throughout high school, I got home, I jumped on my beanbag, turned on my old  UV to PBS Channel . I watched a little Bob Ross, right? Just to bring that peace back. I needed him to paint and just be like, it's okay. And that was all I needed to be at peace. And then I could go and conquer my Saxon math or whatever I had to do afterwards. Some of you know what I'm talking about. But yeah, that's how it is. But here's the issue.

 Although the biblical definition of peace can mean that, it is a word that is far more robust and it means far more than just the absence of something. And the Hebrew word that we're going to study today is shalom. You probably have heard that word if you've grown up in church, the word shalom. The Greek word that we're going to look at in the New Testament that they translated into this same version, but in Greek is irane. And here's the thing. Shalom is this great word. It's still a word that's used today for anyone of Jewish descent or people who are just cool like that. And it's kind of like aloha. Like I've never been to Hawaii. I think this next summer I'm getting to go to Hawaii, which I'm excited about.

 But here's the thing. I've been told by cool people who have been that like, you know, aloha, like they use it like it's like hello and goodbye. I don't know. I'll let you know after I go. But here's the thing. Shalom is the same way. Like shalom is this greeting for people when they get there. And shalom is also the thing that you say when you go. And the reason is because it means so much. The word means a lot. And I actually have a graph just so we can picture it because we're going to break it down and learn it. But so there's this graph that they're going to put up. So here is from the Bible software that I use. And it's this ring. And typically a word when you look up a word and it'll tell you all the different places where it's found to show you the different like grammar ideas and a bunch of other nerdy stuff. But it'll have four or five, maybe six different rings or colors that gives you different ideas of what this word can mean and how it's used throughout Scripture. As you can see, this one has like five or six like really main categories. It's probably some of the stuff that you would think of like peace, prosperity, success, state of health, friendliness, deliverance, to be at rest, to be at peace, some of those things. But then you see all each one of those other colors, all those little tiny slivers are other marks and other moments and other ways in which that word is used in a regular basis throughout Scripture. And so this is just like a graphical idea. It's used in a lot of different contexts and nuances because the word is really, really robust and the thing that is being promised is also really, really robust. And so here's the thing. When we are studying a word, because some of you are like, "Man, I'd like to study the Bible more. I'd like to get a little bit deeper, but I'm not really sure how to do it." I'll give you a really easy way, a really fun, I mean, for me, this maybe is just like nerdy, maybe like this isn't fountain sign. But for some of you, this will be fun, a fun way to study the Bible and a really easy way to do something. So when we're looking at a word like peace and it's like, I want to know what the word peace means, like I can obviously look it up in an English dictionary, but that's not going to tell me what it meant at the time when the Bible was written. Now, I could go a little step further and I could use something like a concordance, like the old Strong's concordance for some of you old school people out there. And I could look that up and it could give me a couple words of what it means. And that's really great. That's probably better because it's going to use scriptural context to give me some ideas. But if you want to be like, I want to embrace it and understand it a little bit more, a fun thing that you could do on your Friday night or Saturday morning or whenever you find yourself with time is you could actually go through and use some different Bible software. Like that picture was from a program called Logos, which by the way, you can get a free version of that online if you want to. I'm not sponsored by them, but you can have it. Or there's also a great website called BlueLetterBible.com where you can use these things and they'll tell you every verse that that word is used throughout Scripture. Now, peace, I wouldn't suggest starting with peace because it's like hundreds of references. It's like  plus in the New Testament. It's like  in the Old Testament. So that may be a little much for your Friday night unless you wouldn't have a real fun Friday night and then you can read them all. But what you do is you take that word, you look it up, you find the other places that it's used, and then you allow yourself to read and say, okay, I want to read all these Scriptures and allow Scripture to define what the meaning of this word is. To allow Scripture to give the definition by context because we can read both the context and the single. Maybe you came across one verse and you had an interesting word, you looked it up, and that will give you some context how it's used in that word. But the context of both the word that you're using and the word throughout Scripture will help paint a picture of what is meant in those words and what is meant by that. And so when we look at peace, we see this really broad idea of how it's used. So here's a couple examples we're going to look at this morning. There's this idea of shalom, meaning to be complete or whole. So meaning something was incomplete or broken or in disrepair, and shalom will be used to bring everything to make sure that it's complete or whole. So here's an example of how this is used in Joshua chapter  verse .

 It says this, it says, In English it says uncut, but in Hebrew it's from stones that are shalom, that are complete or whole, not broken, not cut, and have not been shaped with iron tools. Then on the altar present burnt offerings and police, peace offerings to the Lord. So again, shalom again. So it's this idea of can you bring me these things that are whole stones, that are large stones, that have not been cut or formed to make this altar. They are in a state of shalom because they haven't been broken down. Right? So that's an example. Job chapter  verse  says,

 That's how the New Living Translation does, but safe there is shalom. You know your home will be complete or whole when you survey your possessions and nothing's missing. Right? So that's an example. Now it can not only mean objects that are missing. So there's this whole idea of like, oh, this thing is whole or complete. It also can do with personal standing, like how someone is. And we mentioned this just in this greeting.  Samuel chapter . This is when David was going to visit his brothers who were fighting the Philistines. This is the famous story where he goes and fights David and Goliath. But a few verses before that happened,

 It says, Now remember, what were they doing?

 They were at war.

 He wasn't asking him, is the war off? He literally just went to the front lines where they were like with swords and spears. And he's about to find a giant who's cursing the name of God. He knows they're at war. That's why he's there.

 He shows up and he asks them a question. Not are you not at war. He asked, how is your personal peace?

 How are you? And you know his brothers end up like clearly they're not okay because they start calling them all sorts of names and stuff. But like the core idea is this, that life is complex and it's full of moving parts and relationships and things. And when things are out of alignment or missing,

 our Shalom, our peace, breaks down.

 And life is no longer whole and we're in need of restoration. So in our personal life and things that work, like if your car breaks down on the way to work, guess what? There goes your Shalom.

 Shalom is not good. If it's  degrees outside your air conditioner stops working, so does your Shalom. Something needs to be restored in your life for Shalom to come back. Sometimes in my life, in our house, this has happened and praise God, it doesn't happen as often. Sometimes I just have to get everyone and sit them down. It's not that anyone's doing one thing that's necessarily like breaking a rule or being disobedient. It's not one thing, but just like everyone's acting away and it's like, hey, we need to sit down because the way that we're behaving as a group right now is stealing the peace of our home. Our Shalom is broken down right now. And we need everyone to take a step back and figure out what do we need to do to help restore Shalom, to help restore peace to this household right now. And I can't point or blame one person, but something is off and we need to have it brought back together. So there's this idea of Shalom. And here's the thing, when it's used as a verb in the Bible, like an action, it has this idea of bringing peace. So in  Kings , , it says, "Three times each year Solomon presented burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar he had built for the Lord. He also burned incense to the Lord, and so he finished the work of building the temple." The word finishes, "He Shalomed or he Shalomed the temple." He finished the temple. He brought completeness and the process of building and finishing the thing. And so we can bring this peace that comes to this idea. It also can be meant in reconciling relationships. Chapter  of Proverbs, verse  says, "When people's lives please the Lord, even their enemies are at peace with them." When we live lives that are pleasing to God, that we have peace even with our enemies. We have completeness and holiness and absence of trouble, even with our enemies. And so there's this biblical rich idea that we could go on and on, and if I had more times I would really get in there and we would get into some of the small things. But this idea of wholeness and completeness, which is very different than the absence of something. Because if you believe like, "Yeah, peace, Jesus brings me peace," then what you're saying is like, "Jesus brings me peace, which means I have the absence of trouble."

 And then what happens is you live life for like . minutes and you have trouble. And then you're like, "Jesus didn't bring me any peace, so I don't know what this is about. He says that's what he does, but I'm not at peace because something broke or something's unwell or because someone is persecuting me or because I had someone say something nasty about me on Instagram or someone made fun of my haircut." Like those things happen to some of us here.

 Not you, but maybe me.

 So here's the thing. You could say like, "I don't experience this." So if you believe that as the absence of conflict or hardship or fear or anxiety, then what will happen is you'll say, "Well, I'm constantly in a lack of peace and I don't know if I've ever been at peace and I don't know if God's word is true about what peace is." But if you realize that Jesus is not offering you just the absence of something, but the presence of something greater, then you realize that what he's wanting to bring to you is far more than peace of mind or far more than the absence of conflict, but something that actually completes you in a different way. And the promise that Jesus brings is not based on circumstances. It is based on the very person of who he is. You see, when Jesus says, "My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you," not as the world give to I give to you, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. He is not offering something that exists separately or some kind of idea. He is talking about my very person will come and live and will die. Yes, in Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but the birth of Jesus leads to the life of Jesus. The life of Jesus leads to the death of Jesus, and the death of Jesus is what purchased your hope, your peace, your joy, your love, your freedom, your salvation, the grace that comes from the cross. Those things were all experienced through the life of Christ. And so the peace that he is speaking to you about and to me about that you can have, that goes beyond all understanding like we read in Philippians, that even in the midst of hard things you can be at peace, even in the middle of a battle, like David's brothers, because guess what? David asked how their peace was, and like, not great.

 But David was at peace. And whenever the giant began to speak and to call people out, and he got angry, even though he realized there was a battle to be fought, David was still at peace. Because his peace was not built on the presence or the absence of something, but it was built on his relationship with God. And Jesus is the peace in your life. There is a peace that Jesus longs to bring to you that is beyond your circumstances, beyond your hardship, beyond what you're experiencing your day to day, or tensioned in your marriage, or with your child, or with a boss. He is something far greater than that. And we see this from the beginning. We actually read some of this last week, but Isaiah chapter , this messianic prophecy about who this coming king would be, it says this in verse , "For a child is born to us, a son is given to us, the government will rest on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Shalom, the Prince of Peace. And his government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven's armies will make it happen." That's why in Luke chapter  verse , whenever Jesus comes and he's born in that manger, those angels showed up and they said, "Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on earth to those with whom God is well pleased." His very birth was announced to those shepherds in the field with the thought of, hey, God just came down and peace came with him.

 Not the Romans didn't just disappear. The oppressors didn't just stop. The unfair taxation didn't end.

 Death, violence, and destruction did not disappear from the world, but the presence of something did show up.

 And the peace that passes all understanding showed up and that Jesus was ushered in with this peace. And so here's this idea. We see this unpacked throughout the New Testament, that Jesus is something, the presence of something that will be transformative to your life, that will completely change the way you view things and the way that you're able to live. You see, if you believe that you can only be at peace when there's absence of trouble, then that's a constant moving target that you will rarely experience. But if you believe that your peace comes through the person of Jesus Christ, that he has invited you to accept that peace and to live in that peace, you realize that he came to bring completeness and wholeness to your soul, to the very person of who you are, that despite what you're experiencing in the world around you, that you are able to be at peace because you are being held by him, the one who's the author and the finisher of faith. When you allow him to do that, it changes the way you look, which is why we can read these verses just like we read last week about hope and this week about peace and realize that my peace is not dictated by what's going on in the global political scale, what's going on in my local government, what's happening in my neighborhood, or even what's happening in my own home. My peace is dictated by the very person of Jesus Christ. And the more that I see him and I press into him and I allow his identity to be my identity, the more that I can walk in peace, even whenever I'm still simultaneously experiencing troubles and hard time, which is why Jesus said, "In this world there'll be trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world, that I can be with you even in the middle of peace." So listen to this in Ephesians chapter . It says this, now remember, and when we get to the New Testament, we switch languages, and we're now using the word "irreni," but the meaning is pretty much identical to what Shalom is. It says this, "In those days," verse , "you were living apart from Christ, you were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in the world without God and without hope. But now you have been united with Christ once you were far away from God, but now you've been brought near to him through the blood of Christ Jesus. For Christ himself brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people in his own body on the cross. He broke down the wall of hostility that separates us. He did this by ending the system of law with his commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the other two groups.

 Together, as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death. He brought this good news of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him and peace to the Jews who were near. Now, all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit of what Christ has done to us. He brought this good news to us, this good news of peace with God, of a restoration.

 Some of you, in your relationship with God, you have these moments where you wonder and you still struggle with your identity in Christ, but more importantly, you wonder if God's upset with you. If you've done enough to find good standing or be at peace with God,

 you still believe that you haven't done enough in your life to be in good standing with him because you did that thing in your college years or because you experienced divorce or because you're still experiencing a hardship in this life and you're wondering if it's a result of you not being faithful enough or you don't pray enough or you don't give enough or you don't spend enough time in the Word and you're like, "I don't think I've earned enough to experience the love of God, which leads to the peace that comes from a relationship with God." And you ask this question, "How much do I need to do to be at peace?" And you answer for yourself, "I don't think I'm ever going to get there."

 But I want to tell you today that if you find yourself at that place, that message is not from God. That message is not from Scripture. That message is not true in any way because the peace that you have is not built on your actions, your performance, your past decisions, or even your current circumstances.

 The peace was purchased through Jesus, and he brought peace between you and God as the mediator between us. So you currently, no matter what you're standing, if you're in Christ and you've accepted his sacrifice on your behalf, you are at peace with God. And his desire is for you to know that you are whole and complete without breakdown, that you can experience the provision and the protection and the prosperity that is a result of being at peace with God.

 Sometimes the only thing that needs to change is not for him to know it's true because he already knows it's true. It's for you to know it's true.

 For you to believe in your mind that I'm at peace with God and that he only wants good things. Just like we're saying today, like good plans, like he has a heart for you, which includes good things.

 And it does not mean that in this world you will not experience hard things.

 But his heart for you is that you will experience good things. Listen to this in Colossians. I want to read this. I'm actually going to jump down to verse .

 It says, "And through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth and by means of Christ's own blood on the cross." This includes you who were once far away from God.

 You were his enemies separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence. And you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the good news, the good news that has been preached all over the world. And I Paul have been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it. I love what it says in verse  and then leading into verse . He says, "You were reconciled to God."

 You were reconciled to God. For those accounting nerds in the room, there was a debt that needed to be paid. There was a debit and God put a credit on your account and now you are reconciled.

 It is over. And if we want to be more technical, he overpaid. So now there's an overpayment on your account and there's no amounts of debits that you can create that will ever overdraw the credit that was given to your account.

 You have been reconciled. Now what does he say? He said, "This is the good news. You have been brought to peace because of that." And that now you can stand for him holy and blameless as a result of Christ. But I love verse . He says, "But," and when you hear "but," sometimes you think, "Oh, this is where the other things. But," you know, you're probably not that good. He doesn't tell you some other action. What he tells you to do is you have to keep believing the truth and stand firmly in it. You must continue to believe the truth about who you are, that you are at peace with God, that you are pure and righteous as Jesus is because he paid the price and reconciled you to the Father. You have to believe it and daily you have to remind yourself, "This is my standing and I stand firm." And guess what? Even in the middle of conflict or hardship or even better, even in the middle of trying to walk through a sin that you cannot seem to break,

 you continue to proclaim the truth of who you are and you stand firm even when you don't see it around you.

 When I was going through this season where I thought I was losing my mind and I just couldn't seem to shake these things and these ideas and these lies that were coming to me all the time, I would constantly sit there and pray and be like, "God, you haven't given me a spirit of fear of a power, love, and a sound mind. I have the mind of Christ and as he is so am I in this world, if Jesus wouldn't think these thoughts, then I'm not going to think these thoughts." And even though I'm thinking really crazy stuff right now, God, and I feel really crazy right now and I feel really far away from you and like there is nothing that I can do that will ever cleanse me from the fact that I cannot seem to break these ideas in my mind. I know what your word says about me and I'm going to choose to believe. That is true as opposed to what I feel in this moment and what I even think in this moment and what I'm even experiencing in this moment because your truth is more real than anything that I can see, taste, touch, or experience. And so I choose to believe that today. And I would literally say that over and over. My wife can tell you it was like constant, constant on repeat to the point where I thought I was saying it so much that maybe I was going crazy.

 And yet the more you begin to stand firm in what God says about you,

 the more it becomes a reality of who you are. The more it becomes a reality of who you are.

 So guess what? If you've got a habit you can't kick and you're like, "I know this isn't God's best for me. I know that he doesn't want this for me. I know this thing I shouldn't do it." Guess what? In the middle of doing it, you can say, "I'm free from this today right now, even though I'm doing it right now." And you say, "That sounds like some kind of hypocrite." No, no, no. That sounds like someone who says, "I know the truth, but I haven't experienced it yet. And until I experience the truth on this earth, I am going to continually preach the good news of the gospel of peace to myself and believe that his definition of it because either God's a liar or it's true."

 That's it.

 So I don't care if you have a habit that you can't seem to kick, an addiction that you can't seem to break, a relationship that you can't seem to let go of when you know it's not good. You can sit there and say, "God, I know the truth

 because your word said it, and you are not a man that you should lie or change your mind. And even though I may not be experiencing it in this moment, I am going to believe that that is the truth that I walk in. And God, my mind's not at peace right now. Can you bring wholeness and completeness to it? And I got things that are in conflict all around me, and I'd love for that conflict to leave. But could I, if I can't have the restitution of that conflict, can I instead experience the peace that passes all understanding,

 even in the middle of hardship and trials, because that's what your word promised me?"

 And here's the thing.

 If that wasn't enough, that I personally can experience this, and I can claim it and hold on to it, and have peace even when the world's in chaos.

 He invites something even more.

 He invites something even more.

 When he said this in John, Chapter , I want to read these couple of verses. He says, "I'm telling you these things." Remember, he's speaking to his disciples, his followers. He's speaking to you and I today.

 He says, "I'm telling you things now while I'm still with you, but when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit, He will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I've told you. I am leaving you with a gift, the peace of mind and heart. The peace I give as a gift the world cannot give, so don't be troubled or be afraid."

 I like in the, some of the older versions said so, "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

 Here's what's wild, the trouble in afraid is literally, don't let it be anxious or fearful.

 Don't have anxiety and don't have fear.

 Why? Because I'm sending you the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that will raise me from the dead will live inside of you and He will keep you and He will keep your peace.

 So let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. What does that mean? Don't let it happen.

 When you begin to experience fear and anxiety and stress,

 turn to the Scripture, turn your mind and say, "Hey, this is how I'm feeling." We don't need to pretend like it didn't happen. This is how I'm feeling, God.

 Can you help bring me back into peace? But it goes even further. Matthew , verse , he says, "Blessed are those, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is describing what His new followers look like. And He gives a whole line of people. But one of them is, He says, "You are called, if you are a disciple of mine, you are called to be a peacemaker, a maker of peace." You see, what's wild about our relationship with God and what Jesus brings, not only did He come and live and die so that you could be at peace with God, He came and lived and died so that in the process of finding peace with God, you could become His representative to partner with Him here on this earth, this broken, chaotic, sinfilled world, and be one who brings peace with you everywhere that you go. Because the peace that's inside of you radiates out, and you are able to be one who is known as a peacemaker. Not one who's absence of trouble, but one who goes into trouble and comes out of it with peace being restored. Now, I already know this about a lot of you. Some of you, I know this for a fact, your bosses don't like when you go on vacation, not because of the work that you do, but they'll say, "When you're gone, everything goes chaotic around here.

 Something about you is a peaceful presence in this place, and when you leave, so does the peace."

 That's not because you've got this really great MyersBriggs type, or because you've really studied a lot, and you're a whatever thing, your strength finder said any of that. Like, those are great. That has nothing to do with your Enneagram number.

 What it has to do is the very Spirit of God, He said, "You are a peacemaker." And so even if you live in an office and no one else there is a believer, you better believe that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, because that is the peace that passes all understanding. And guess what? Some people get to experience peace just because they're hanging around you.

 That is what it means to be a peacemaker, a peace dealer. You are ambassadors of God. Everywhere you step is sovereign ground. It is now new ground for the kingdom. And when you leave that place, it's no longer sovereign anymore,

 because the Spirit of God lives in you. You either believe that you are a high king, priest, representative of God, the very image of who He is, and that His peace resonates through you or not. So I don't care if you have to go into some very dark places in your work, and you're like, "I really don't like going to those places because it's dark and oppressive." Change your mindset and say, "I am going into the darkness as a bringer of peace and light and life, and wherever I go, things are transformed."

 Why? Because blessed are the peacemakers. And is it easy? No. Have you ever tried to bring peace to anybody?

 Everyone wants to just fight. But you, you are one who carries peace with you.

 You can be a peaceful experience. You can drive through your favorite coffee shop, and you can be maybe the only peaceful customer that they have that entire day.

 You can go into the store, and you can bring peace everywhere you go. We are in the season where everyone is in such a hurry that we treat other people like they don't even exist, or like they are just a bunch of meat sacks that are taking your money at a cash register. Those are human beings back there.

 And you can bring peace to those for  seconds, but it may be the only  seconds of peace they got that whole shift.

 And in a day that may look really bad, they can be like, "But you know what? There was that one lady that came through. There was that one guy that came through.

 You bring a peace that passes understanding because he is in you."

 Galatians , , it says, "But the Holy Spirit produces these kinds of fruits in our life. Love, joy, peace, completeness, wholeness, prosperity, health,

 patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and selfcontrol. There is no law against these things. The Holy Spirit is living inside of you, and He is producing peace in your heart.

 He is working on your behalf.

 And the invitation is twofold. One, will you believe that it's true today?

 Will you believe that any way that there's brokenness or fear or anxiety or absence or lack that Jesus wants to step in and fill those cracks and to bring peace and wholeness to those things,

 to bring the presence of something, not just the absence of something else?

 And then secondly, will you believe even further

 that you can be the person who brings completeness and wholeness to somebody else through the Spirit of God that lives inside of you,

 that you can be a peacemaker, that you can go to this Christmas gathering that maybe you're dreading because you're like, "Oh my gosh, they're just going to talk about politics and this guy and that guy and this girl and that girl, and I just can't stand it. It's the worst. It's so much conflict and everyone feels different, and it just gets awkward. Can you be the one who says, "I will be the peacemaker"?

 I don't know what that means you have to do or not do in your context, but good news, the Holy Spirit will be remembering and bringing to your members everything that you need to know.

 So you don't have to dread about that family gathering. Instead, you get to pray about it and be like, "Holy Spirit, I pray that you will bring to my remembers everything that I need to know so that in that moment I can usher in peace into my family.

 I can bring that, not because of how good I am, but because of how good you are to me and through me and that you invite me to partner with your Holy Spirit today."

 So that's my encouragement for you this morning, church, to be one who ushers in peace, who experiences peace,

 who allows your peace to be based not on your circumstances, but the very person of Jesus Christ,

 who's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

 He is unchanging.

 And if you find yourself anxious or fearful or worried or with doubt, you invite the Holy Spirit.

 Say, "God, I'm going to pray to you. I'm not going to worry about anything. I'm going to pray about everything."

 And then your peace that passes all understanding will guard my heart. Guard my heart, Father.

 Stand with me today.

 Lord, right now we just celebrate the peace that we have in you, the peace that was purchased by your son Jesus,

 the peace that you have invited us to live in personally, and the peace that you've invited us to bring to everywhere that we go and touch.

 Help us experience peace in this season.

 Help us bring peace to others in this season.

 With every head bowed just where you're at, maybe you're here today and you've never made the decision to accept Jesus.

 It is that decision and that decision alone that brings peace between you and God,

 that brings the forgiveness of sins, that brings the eternal decision and idea of salvation. It is that very thing that is all you need to do.

 And so today we're all going to say a prayer, and if that's you, I just want you to pray this prayer with all your heart. Just repeat after me. Say, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus to die for me so my sins could be forgiven."

 And my heart could be set free.

 So in Jesus' holy name I pray.

 With every head bowed for just a minute more, if anyone here in this room made a decision to accept Jesus,

 all the heads are bowed and eyes are closed, but if you made that choice just real high, would you raise your hand anywhere in the room? I just want to thank God and celebrate. Anywhere in the room, just put your hand up.

 All right, any hands that are up can go down.

 Lord, we love you.

 Give us your peace this morning.

 It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen and amen. Church, can we give God some praise this morning? Come on.

 A couple things, couple things. Don't forget about the cookie walk. You can go through there. If you want to stick around for the show cookie, it's always a lot of fun. You usually get to try some of those out if you're in the audience, so it'll be a lot of fun. So go get your kids, have some fun, enjoy the time, have a conversation with someone. We love you and we'll see you next week.