Allen Jackson - I Choose God's Promise - Part 2
Well, I wanna do a YouTube video with you because it’ll end up on YouTube, on applying one of the promises of God, because it’s not enough to talk about them, folks. What’s it mean to choose a promise of God, to make it yours? How do you live that out? See, I could give you 30 promises from scripture that God says belong to you. But I’d be much more interested in walking through the process one time because then you can apply it to all the promises you find. And not all the promises of God begin with, «I promise».
Sometimes God will say something like, «The fear of the Lord will bring wealth and honor and life». I’m like, wow. Maybe I should figure out how to cultivate the fear of God, 'cause I don’t have to chase those things. It’ll bring them to me, like Amazon. It’s a promise. «Well, I don’t believe that». I know, it’s what I’m saying: you could choose that. But you’d have to choose the fear of the Lord. So not all the promises come, like, with a neon light going, «Hey, this is the promise». But I chose a promise, John 16:33, because I’m making the video. This was Jesus speaking, and he said, «I’ve told you these things,» he’s talking to his friends, «so that in me you may have peace. In this world you’ll have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world».
Jesus told his friends we could lead lives of peace. Wow, that’s a promise I’m interested in. We live in a world filled with turmoil and confusion and anger and bitterness and division and everybody with a computer that can find a parent’s basement to put it in has got a loud opinion. Now, Jesus’s peace is not an absence of conflict because he didn’t lead that kind of a life. Jesus’s peace is the calm assurance of God’s abiding presence. Even if you’re in the midst of trouble, if you’re in the midst of a storm and the fishermen wake you up in the boat, you can say to the wind and the waves, «Oh, hush». You can stand before the Roman governor that has the power to condemn you to death, and you can say, «Actually, unless my Dad gave you the Jews, you wouldn’t even have a job». Jesus said, «My peace».
Now, that’s a promise. It doesn’t mean it fills our lives. So how do we appropriate that promise? Well, there’s some facts that Jesus put in the record that I think are worth noting. I can tell you this, at least in my experience, the promises of God don’t come to my life casually. I mean, the one most of us are familiar with, Romans 10:9-10, you can confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you can be saved. You can do that in a moment, but to live that out is not a casual thing. Is that fair? Takes some intentionality. You have to cooperate with the Spirit of God. It’s a lifetime. Well, there’s some facts that Jesus put in record in that verse that I think are worth noting. He said, «In me you may have peace». You can have peace, and peace is a little open-ended. You can have peace with God in Jesus.
In Christ, you can have peace with God. In Christ, you can have peace with yourself. You don’t have to live in turmoil and torment. You don’t have to live a rejected life. You don’t have to lead a life that is scarred by the existence of evil. In Christ, you can have peace. You can have peace with others, people who are not peaceful. You can have peace. That’s an amazing promise. But we need to get the full picture. Jesus said we’d have trouble too. That’s a part that’s in there. I know it. I wanted to white it out. I looked through several translations. I even tried the original language and I could not get rid of, «You’ll have trouble».
So peace is not an absence of trouble. The peace is going to be in the midst of trouble. That’s how you know it’s peace. If there was never any trouble, you wouldn’t know what peace was. The third fact is he said be encouraged. He said take heart, but it means be encouraged. Don’t let your heart melt. Don’t lose courage. So the appearance of trouble, the emergence of trouble, growing trouble, big trouble. Don’t lose courage. You can have peace. I mean, Jesus models that for us. They come to arrest him and, you know, Peter’s ready to, «Put your sword away, I really, I need to go with these fellows». I mean, he gave his life. Nobody took it from him. And you see, you and I are giving our lives to the Lord. So nobody’s taking anything from us. If we serve someone else, the Lord said he’ll reward us, it’s a promise. If we’re generous with our time or our attention or our resources, God said, «I’m taking note of that».
It’s a promise. If we really begin to consider the promise and think about it, when there’s trouble, be encouraged, he said. In fact, he said if people persecute you and falsely say all manner of evil against you, he said, rejoice because great is your reward in heaven. That’s a promise. And the fourth fact he put in the record, is the summary statement, he said, I’ve overcome the world. In this world, he said, you’ll have some trouble. But take heart, don’t be discouraged. I have overcome the world. Nothing in the world is more powerful than Jesus’s peace, no matter what you face. Wow, I’d like to know more about that promise.
So I’ve given us a little, it’s «Peace for Dummies». And that’s not about you. I’m the one that built the outlines. It was the one I could understand. I looked at «Peace for Geniuses» and I couldn’t understand it. I looked at «Peace for Mature Christians» and I couldn’t interpret that one either, but the «Peace for Dummies» I can read, so I’m just sharing the part that made sense to me. And it starts in Matthew 6. It’s Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, or a portion of it. He said, «Do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat? ' or 'What will we drink? ' or 'What shall we wear? ' Pagans run after that, and your heavenly Father knows you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,» wow. «Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own».
So how do we start to appropriate this peace? Well, Jesus himself gave us a clue. He said don’t worry. But worry is the expression of my life force. You know, I find in Christian world, when we do something that’s unscriptural, we come up with Christian language for it. Most of us wouldn’t come to church and say, «You know, I’m very worried». But we might come to church and say, «You know, I have a burden. The Lord has put something on my heart».
So if I’m a smart aleck, I cough, that’s not a good thing. Jesus said we don’t have to worry. He didn’t say we won’t be tempted to. He didn’t say there won’t be things that could be worrisome. He said it’s not helpful. The old English word for worry, means literally, it was to choke the way a wolf would worry a lamb when it grabbed it by the throat. Worry will choke you. And Jesus said worrying about tomorrow is not fruitful. It would change us. We’re bullied, we’re intimidated, we’re threatened. We often respond with fear, and the effective lever in that is worry. Then we forfeit our peace.
Now, one of the things that’s helpful for me when I’m tempted to worry, when worry starts and that circle starts in your head and you get on the treadmill of being anxious, I have to stop it with another message. So I’ll just stop and begin to thank the Lord. God, I thank you that you’re faithful or you’re just. I thank you for your goodness and your mercy, that you’re a God who delivers, that through the blood of Jesus, I’ve been delivered out of the… you take something that you can do repetitively. Take the blood of Jesus and say it until it becomes memorized for you. Take a psalm. You put something else on the tape, or on the digital loop or whatever the appropriate 21st century version of a repetitive message is. Put it in your cloud. But don’t spend your days worried.
Some of you have to change your speech patterns. 'Cause you’d rather talk about the things that worry you than about the victories that the Lord’s made available. And you keep reigniting the fuse. So the first one is we’re not gonna worry. Jesus is not coaching us to be passive or timid. He said, listen, you’re gonna be arrested. You’re gonna be beaten, you’re gonna suffer, that if you looked at the church over the last few years, you’d think our goal was to stay undercover, incognito, we’re camouflaged. That’s not what Jesus is coaching us towards. The second component of this, remember, it’s peace for dummies, 'cause that’s the only one I could understand, is don’t be afraid. Doesn’t mean we won’t see frightening things.
The fishermen in the boat with Jesus were terrified of the storm. The waves were breaking over the boat. They could tell they were losing ground. They couldn’t bail as fast as the water was coming in. Wake the carpenter, he’s going to drown. And we will face some frightening things in our lives, all of us. Psalm 56 says: «When I’m afraid,» says, «I’ll trust in you». He doesn’t say I’m never afraid. The psalmist didn’t say I’m never afraid. Frightening things happen. Fear exposes something in our lives. When fear is present, you recognize something is absent. I don’t have enough trust in God in that place. And so my emotional response, my visceral response is to withdraw, to run, to shut down. But I would rather trust the Lord here.
So I’ll not be afraid. I’ll tell fear to leave. I treat fear like a person without a body. When I find myself truly wrestling with fear, I’ll say, «In Jesus’s name, you go». I prefer to trust the Lord. «Holy Spirit, you give me your direction. You show me your responses». And I’ll get my Bible out and I’ll start to read until I can find the emotions and the thoughts that go with that trust in God that I want to cultivate. I’m not going to give fear a place. There’s frightening things happening. There’s frightening messages that come to us. «When I’m afraid, I will trust in you». Look at Isaiah 12: «Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid». Think of it as a graph and the continuum is trust and fear. Where are you?
«The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation». You’ve got to deal with the fear. You can’t ignore it. It’s real. Doesn’t make you weak, it makes you human. It means you’re alive. But you don’t have to capitulate to the fear, you don’t have to give in to it. I’m not suggesting it’s easy. I’m telling you it’s a pathway. And the opposite is to trust in the Lord. I say to the Lord, «Lord, I wanna trust you in this place. I need to trust you in this place. I don’t wanna trust myself. I don’t wanna trust my experience or my strength. God, I need your help. Holy Spirit, I need your help».
Stop sitting in church nodding. Let’s start to live this stuff. It’ll change our futures. It’ll change our families. This can be implemented in the same way you would build something out of physical parts. You can build the peace of God into your life. The third one is to cast all of your anxiety on the Lord. This is 1 Peter. This is the fisherman Jesus recruited again. 1 Peter 5: «Cast all your anxiety on him. He cares for you». This is Peter that almost drowned trying to walk on the water. I don’t know, do you imagine biblical scenes? I do. You know, when I’m reading them, I kind of put them into my head and then I try to walk around the scene. What do you think it was like when Peter walked on the water? It’s stormy. There’s some waves. It’s late at night, the disciples are tired, they’re grumpy. It’s not a friendly boat. Here comes Jesus. They’re terrified. It’s a ghost.
Peter says, «Lord, if it’s you, I wanna walk». This is Peter, you know, that said, «The rest of these guys may betray you, but not me». So in my imagination, Peter climbs over the edge of the boat and he takes a step, a little tentative. He takes a second step and he’s doing okay. So now he’s looking back at the boat. And he starts to sink. Of course he does. So now he’s writing us: «Cast all your anxiety on him. He cares for you. I denied him and he cared for me. He sent me to Caesarea to that stinking Roman centurion’s house. And he opened my heart to a whole different kind of a world to live in. He cares for me». He didn’t care for Peter because his life was easy. By this point, he’s been arrested and beaten, driven from one place to the next. He’s had to oversee turmoil in the church and turmoil outside the church. And what’s his message: «Cast all your anxiety on him. He cares for you».
Now, let’s finish. «Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith. You know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings». Remember the goal. This is peace. And Peter says, «Cast all your anxiety on him». It’s not the absence of an enemy. He said there’s a lion in the camp. It’s not an absence of conflict, it’s none of those things. It’s not a passive response. He said, listen, collect all your anxiety, bundle it up, put it in a bag, do something with it. God gave my bride a hypersensitive olfactory sense. She can smell the garbage at your house. Which means if there’s any organic material in the trash in our house, it’s offensive. Not so much to me.
I grew up in a barn. Whole different odor experience in my profile. But there’s a sensitivity to that. And I’m reading this when Peter writes and, you know, he said, «Take all that anxiety. Get that trash out of here. Don’t accept it. Don’t live with it. Don’t fuel it». «Well, I got reasons to be anxious». There are reasons to be anxious. $37 trillion in debt is a reason to be anxious. I mean, incredible people with lots of education and they can’t determine whether we’re male or female. That would make you anxious. Church is saying the Bible isn’t the authoritative Word of God and Jesus’s redemptive work was not unique. That will make you anxious if you make that your focus. I don’t intend to. It’s not where I’m gonna give my thoughts. I have to pay enough attention to know what’s happening.
People that say to me they don’t want to read the news, they don’t wanna know what’s happening, that’s as foolish as not reading signs. The sign might say bridge out. You need to know, you need to know the landscape, you need to know the season, you need to know what’s happening, but you don’t have to be anxious about it. Why? 'Cause I give the anxiety away. I need to know so I can navigate appropriately. I need to know so I can respond appropriately. I need to know so what, I know which promises are more important in this season. But once you see them, yeah, I know there’s enemies. They make noise and they growl and they’ve got the ability to do some real damage. But I’m not the only one that faces enemies. I’ve got brothers and sisters around the earth facing greater threats than anything I face.
So I’m gonna put my anxiety in perspective and go, yeah, it could be a little threatening, but nothing like it could be. I’m getting that trash out of here. It stinks. What’s the goal? Peace. I’m not gonna worry. I’m not gonna be afraid. And I’m not hanging on to anxiety. I’m not foolish. I’m not uninformed. I don’t have my head buried in the sand. I’ve just got my hopes someplace else. Number four, we gotta go. I gotta get done. We gotta persevere. I don’t like that word. Persevere presupposes resistance. Hebrews 10: «Don’t throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded». Ugh, you know what’s implied there, right? If you throw away your confidence, you throw away your reward. «Don’t throw away your confidence; it’ll be rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he’s promised».
How do you get to the receiving the promise? By choosing to do the will of God and persevering in it. It’s not random or accidental. It’s not just gonna come find you. I want to honor God. I choose to do the will of God. I intend to move. I’m not staying in Egypt. I’m not staying on the wrong side of the Red Sea. I’m tired of making bricks. Well, how are you gonna eat out there? I don’t know, I’m following. Yeah, that may be your inheritance, but it looks like giants over there. «There may be, but they got… better be moving. You all’s got giant trucks. That’s my inheritance». «Aren’t you afraid»? Yeah, I was, but I’m working on some trust. «It makes me anxious».
I understand. Why don’t you throw it out? I’m amazed, we will use language where we embrace things the Bible tells us not to embrace. Imagine somebody saying, «That makes me wanna be immoral». We probably wouldn’t say that, would we? «Ooh, that worries me». We take some of the things Jesus said to us pretty lightly. And then we wonder why we don’t live in the promises. We have to persevere. Look at Ephesians 6: «Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints». Why does the Bible say, «Always keep on praying»? 'Cause we want to stop. I’m tired of praying about that. I prayed and nothing happened. It’s far more frightening when you pray and something does happen. Luke 18: «Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up».
I think I took that out of your notes. I ran out of space, but it is in the Bible. It’s Luke 18:1. And the last piece of peace for dummies, our little YouTube video, all right, we’ve got to decide that we’re not gonna worry, that we’re not gonna be afraid, we’re gonna cast all of our anxiety on him, we’re gonna persevere, we’re gonna finish. The last component is we’re gonna rejoice, always. Always. Look at Psalm 40 and verse 16: «May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation always say, 'The Lord be exalted! '»
When they feel like it, the Lord be exalted. When they don’t feel like it, the Lord be exalted. When it looks like they have the upper hand, the Lord be exalted! When it looks like the enemy has come in like a flood, may the Lord be exalted. I will rejoice. «Well, I don’t know why you’re rejoicing». 'Cause the Lord will be exalted. The Lord will be exalted. I read the end of the book. It’s a white horse and all the angels and the glory of God, he will be exalted. Well, it’s hard to see that in your circumstance. I understand. Think of Jesus on a cross. Hungry, thirsty, naked, no friends, humiliated, labeled as a criminal, and it’s a triumph over Satan and all of his kingdom. «My peace I give to you. My peace. In this world, you may have a little trouble. But don’t lose heart. I have overcome the world».
There’s a promise there for you and me. It’s not arbitrary, it’s not abstract. We can have the assurance of God’s abiding presence, no matter. But if we’re going to appropriate that promise, we’re gonna have to determine to choose it for ourselves the same way you have to choose to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth. You can’t take a poll at work and then get to that decision. And you can’t take a poll and get to the peace of God in your life. But let’s take those promises and make them ours, amen? I brought you a prayer. I brought you a prayer. It’s kind of a summary statement. It’s a good prayer, you could put it in your phone or someplace and repeat it. Why don’t you stand? We can say it together. If you’re at home, say it with us. I got an email this afternoon, says: «I’ll be watching in the morning and I’ll put down my egg sandwich». Have you found the prayer? Together:
I choose the peace of Jesus. I repent of worry and fear. I choose to put my trust in my Lord and King. I know God cares for me, even in the midst of troubles. I will lift my voice in prayer and rejoicing to my deliverer. Your promises secure my life and my future. May the Lord be exalted throughout the earth, amen.