Bill Johnson - A Lifestyle of Peace
How many do we still have here from the Heaven in Business conference this week? Is there anyone who was a part of it? Oh good, I’m glad you’re here! It’s good to have you. We had such a wonderful time at that event. It’s so fun to see what Jesus is doing all over the world in every area of life. It is so encouraging to witness things that I hoped and believed were true 30 years ago, and they are actually happening. It’s such an encouragement to me.
I do have something to read. Two political rivals found that they were both in a bakery at the same time during their campaign. One was rather sneaky; he came to the other and said, «See how clever I am? The owner didn’t even notice, but I took three of his pastries and put them in my pocket. That’s why I’m going to win the election!» The other one said, «That’s so typical of you—deceit and theft! I’m going to show you how to get the same results honestly.» So he went to the bakery owner and said, «Give me three pastries, and I’ll show you a magic trick.» The baker gave him three pastries, and he ate one after the other. The baker asked, «So, what’s the magic trick?» He replied, «Do you want to see them reappear? Look in that person’s pocket.»
Oh, yeah! Why don’t you grab your Bibles and open to Philippians chapter four? I’ve had two recurring themes in my heart for the last six months, at least. In fact, I wrote out—we’re going to read verse eight a little bit—but I wrote out a whole study on that, maybe as much as a year ago, at least six or eight months ago, just for myself, because I felt what was happening in the atmosphere, so to speak. I’ve been very much aware of the battle that has been going on for many people in their thought life and mind. I don’t like talking about anything negative in a way that fuels it; sometimes we have the ability to discuss problems, and we actually make the problems grow. I’m not interested in that, obviously, but I do want to address a couple of things.
The two items that have been on my mind a lot will merge today in this talk: one is the issue of prayer—our first love relationship with Jesus—and the second is the issue of the mind and what God has assigned for us to do with it. The enemy is very nervous about several things regarding your life and mine. One is that he works to keep us exposed to anxiety and stress because that undermines our creative expression. It’s very difficult to operate from a place of health when you’re anxious and stressed. When you’re filled with anxiety and stress, the goal is survival, not creative expression. The Lord longs to express who He is through His people; His own nature, the way He functions, His beauty, His glory—all that flows through a yielded believer when they are free from anxiety and stress. It is possible to live free of anxiety and stress; Jesus illustrates this. As He’s headed to the cross, He is giving thanks. We’ll look at that a little bit more later.
Both Paul and Jesus illustrate something that’s almost profoundly scary in how they modeled life going into the most difficult situations possible, but they did it not just as survivors or in a positive, stiff-upper-lip way but as overcomers. They went into a hellish situation and came out absolutely glorious because of the way they thought. I’m not talking about mind over matter; I’m not talking about just mental exercise. I’m talking about a perception that comes when we see what Jesus sees, the way He sees. The enemy has several things that he is very nervous about, three of which I’ll mention today.
The first is this issue of creativity. I’m not putting these in any particular order, but I’ll randomly mention them. The first is creative expression. No one who knows who God made them to be would ever want to become anyone else. The uniqueness of every individual is so beautiful and profound that stepping fully into who God made us to be is the greatest privilege in life, and there is no comparison when you look at another person regarding what you could actually become by God’s design.
The second thing is that the enemy is very nervous about our first love relationship with the Lord. That has been on my mind a lot lately, and the Lord has been stirring my heart, so to speak, about this intimate relationship with God. What happens is that anxiety infects love. You can’t be anxious and maintain the kind of fervent relationship with the Lord that all of us long for. I don’t mean that we have rejected Him, nor has He rejected us. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that anxiety exalts another ideal over what He has promised. I am giving my heart and thoughts to that which is inferior to the Word of the Lord. It is true that love annihilates fear, but it’s also true that if I embrace anxiety, I have allowed something into my life that will infect my love. The first thing to be addressed is my first love relationship with Jesus.
I remind you of the passage in Revelation chapter 2 where Jesus is addressing the church at Ephesus, a great church. He honors them for many things, but then He says, «I have this against you: you’ve left your first love.» That burning affection you used to have isn’t what it used to be anymore. You have the structure down, the skill down; you’re functioning the gifts well, but this first love—this burning affection we are to carry for Jesus—is not what it used to be. Then He gives specific instruction.
So we have the creative expression, we have the first love, and the third thing I would mention is the attack on fear. Let me back up. Every thought comes from fear or love, and every word out of my mouth comes from fear or love. So what does the enemy want to undermine? If he can get me to compromise my first love, then he can get me to lose my sense of identity, and that’s what fear and anxiety do. It causes me to lose track of the tools He’s given me and the authority He’s given me. Peace is a huge part of God’s economy for us as believers.
I’ve talked to you in recent weeks and months about this issue for me. Whenever I feel anxious and stressed—I mean, let’s just say it’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and I’m feeling all anxious and stressful—I ask myself, «Where did you leave your peace?» Because I had it; it’s mine. I just have to find out where I dropped it. So I backtrack and go, «Oh yeah, I was feeling stressful there.» «Oh, it was that phone call I got this morning.» It might not even have been a bad one, but my reaction to the information or a situation was to become anxious, and I embraced a lie. I embraced inferior information over the Word of the Lord in my life. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it happened nonetheless.
What I have to do is always repent my way back to where I left my peace. I need to repent, confess my sin, pick it up, and just realize that it’s my permanent possession. Peace in the kingdom is very profound because peace is not the absence of something; it’s the presence of someone. Peace is actually a person—it’s the abiding presence of the Spirit of God in my life. I’m not saying I can drop it or leave it in the sense that He abandons me, but my felt awareness of Him gets laid aside in the world. Peace is always the absence of something: the absence of noise, war, or conflict.
In the kingdom, you can be in the middle of all those challenges and still have peace because peace is a person. So I repent my way back and embrace peace once again, using that as my lifestyle. We’re going to look at why now.
One more comment before we open the Scripture, although you already have it open, right? Philippians 4? You’re so good! I’m here to teach you patience, that’s why I’m here. The other side of this issue that we’ll read about in a moment is the amazing purpose of prayer. Prayerlessness is costly. It probably would be worth a study sometime just to look at the cost of prayerlessness. But let me give you two things right now. In Scripture, it says, «You have not because you ask not.» So the implication in that verse is that prayerlessness creates lack. We often think of lack as God’s sovereign will for our life, but it’s not; lack fills in where prayerlessness exists.
And the second price I will mention about prayerlessness is that Jesus taught, «Pray so that you will not enter temptation.» The implication is that if I am prayerless, I will face temptation for which I have no grace. It doesn’t mean I am prone to sin. I may resist the temptation, but the problem is that prayerlessness created a battle I didn’t need to fight. Prayerlessness put me into conflict—a war of wills and decisions. If I win and make it through, and I don’t succumb to temptation, the problem is that prayerlessness attracted the situation into my life that was completely unnecessary. If God designs for us to face a battle, it’s only because He has already given us the tools to win, and He wants to punish the powers of darkness.
It’s never so that we would falter. If He allows the battle, it’s only for us to enforce His purposes on the earth. However, many battles people face are caused by prayerlessness. I’m just here to encourage you with Philippians 4. Let’s read some Scripture together. We’ll start with verse 4: «Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice!» I remind you, Paul writes this from prison. He’s giving us tried and tested truths out of his own experience. «Rejoice in the Lord always.» I don’t know if you’ve ever looked it up, but that word «always» means always! «Again I will say rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing.»
That’s one commandment I have obeyed one hundred percent of the time because everything I’ve ever been anxious about came to nothing. Maybe that’s not what He meant! All right, «Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.»
There’s a picture painted for us in this part of Philippians 4 of a military guard protecting a person’s heart and mind—the heart, the place where thoughts come from, and the mind itself. That military guard is there because of the previous verse: «Pray over everything with thankfulness.» If you look at the nature of thankfulness, I don’t think we could overemphasize it. I’m not sure it’s possible to exaggerate the power of thankfulness.
Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, broke it, and gave thanks. He’s about to be betrayed by Judas and forsaken by all 11 disciples that He is now breaking bread with. He’s about to face the most gruesome death anyone has ever faced—not only because of the crucifixion and the scourging, but because of the weight of sin itself that came upon Him. You know what it is to sin and feel guilty and shameful; multiply that by billions of people with millions of sins on one individual. When the soldiers came to kill the three on the cross, they didn’t have to kill Jesus because He was already dead. Why? Because of the weightiness of sin. That’s why He said, «God, why have you forsaken me?» In that moment, He became sin and was forsaken by the Father.
The two thieves had to be killed because theirs was just a crucifixion. I don’t mean to make light of it; I’m just saying the weightiness of sin made Him that which the Father despised: sin. But He did that so that we could become what the Father delighted in, which was the righteousness of God. It was an exchange.
So in that moment, which was His most difficult moment, He broke bread and gave thanks. I’d like to suggest that these difficult moments throughout Scripture are the moments where He sets an example for us that must be followed: the thankfulness, regardless of circumstances, keeps us connected to life’s source in a very practical way. Maintaining thankfulness keeps us sane when things aren’t going right; it keeps us connected to what’s right.
So we have this interesting passage. I want you to look at it again: 6, 7, and this time we’ll read 8. «Be anxious for nothing,» verse 6, «but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.»
Verse 8: «Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report—if there’s any virtue, if there’s anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.» What do we have here? We have two verses that give us instruction. The first one is to pray over everything with thankfulness; verse 8 says to think on these things. Those two verses sandwich the promise, and the promise is that His peace will protect you, but it comes with responsibilities on both sides. The first has to do with prayer, and the second has to do with what we choose to think about.
Jesus gave an illustration, a kind of parable. He talked about a human being like a house, and in this illustration, he said if a house has all this junk in it, and it’s clean and swept, but the owner doesn’t refill the house with the right things, the enemy that once dwelled in the house comes back seven times worse. But the house, in this example, is actually a human being.
So here Jesus says, «Pray over everything. I’ll guard your heart and mind; now fill the house with the right things.» Do you understand that you can think about anything you want? Nobody has control over your mind. I can think about pink elephants right now if I want to, and I’ve just helped you do the same; you’re welcome! No one controls that part of our life. So what’s the issue? When we begin to submit ourselves to the inferior, we allow anxiety and stress to fill our minds with all the what-ifs that have no life to them. There’s no promise to them, and the enemy is working to undermine our identity, first love relationship, and this authentic representation of Jesus.
He fears it so much that in the book of Zechariah, when Zechariah talks about the four beings rising up in the earth to destroy the people of God, they’re illustrated with the term «horns.» Horns are figurative for authority or powers. The Lord says these four horns rose up in the earth to wipe out the people of God, and God’s answer was to raise up four artisans: the creatives—in other words, the authentic expression of who Jesus is in a human being. He was going to do this in the four corners of the earth, having an honest representation of who Jesus is released through His people, and that authentic expression would be the very thing that would defeat the four horns.
This authentic expression of people who remain in first love and find that is their identity—this is what the enemy works at every time he tries to stir up the stress, the anxiety, and all the junk. Because when I am anxious, I have bought into something that’s inferior.
I love this verse 8. I like it because I like really practical things; I need practical things. He says in verse 8 again: «Whatever things are true—things that are absolute and liberating; remember, truth sets you free—so think about that which is absolute and liberating. Whatever things are noble—that is, honorable and revered. Whatever things are just—that is, righteous, correct, and innocent. Whatever things are pure—that’s holy and sacred. Whatever things are lovely—that’s pleasing and agreeable. Whatever things are of good report—that’s well reported of, it’s attractive. If there’s any virtue, this word virtue is moral goodness but also excellence.
And if there’s anything praiseworthy… sometimes, I’m having a real battle—maybe somebody just did something against what they should have done. I’ll be nice here and say that someone really stepped outside the line regarding what they’re doing and in representing me or us as a house. Like anybody else, I have these thoughts in my mind where I have to make sure I stay aware. I can’t ignore a problem if I’m responsible. But I also don’t have to fuel it with my own stress and anxiety because then I will come to wrong conclusions, and I will misapply truth for my sake and not theirs.
That was more true than you realize, and the Scripture says I’m supposed to fill my mind with certain things. If I’m struggling with that, here’s what I do: I think about my wife. She is everything in verse 8. She is so true, so absolute, so life-giving; she is so lovely and praiseworthy, virtuous, and excellent. All of those things. Honestly, if I’m having a difficult day, I’ll just stop and recalibrate. What is it that I love about my wife? And I start to think specifically about those things. It’s hard to be mad at anybody when I start thinking of those types of things. Are you catching my drift here?
It’s hard if I’m filling my heart and mind, recalibrating what’s important, and recalibrating my thoughts to what’s valuable. As soon as I do that, something takes place in me. I may have a responsibility with this individual that has betrayed or done something foolish. Perhaps I have a responsibility there, but when I recalibrate my thoughts to what is righteous and good, I don’t come to that person I need to work with abusively; I come to them in grace. Does that make any sense to you?
This thing has to be practical, and Jesus illustrated it best. I want you to look at one more portion of Scripture, and then we’ll wrap this up. Go to John 13. John 13. This is something we studied here a couple of years ago now, but it’s a very meaningful passage to me. Jesus is soon to go to the cross. I’ve already described a bit of just the suffering He was to go through: the abandonment by all of His disciples, the betrayal by Judas himself—all of this that He was aware of as He was stepping into it. It tells us what He was thinking in that moment, which floors me: He was doing what we are instructed to do in Philippians 4.
So this is what He is conscious of in verse 3. „Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself.“ In the next couple of verses, He washes the disciples' feet. There are three things that are very specific for anyone in this room, and let me announce why I’m talking about this today. I felt this morning, in praying, that God was actually going to end a mental battle for a number of people, and it will end in here today. I really sense that this morning. I felt like I had a word of promise from the Lord regarding this. If you’ve been here any length of time, you know I don’t throw that kind of statement out often, but I felt this morning that the Lord was going to bring peace to a chaotic, anxious situation for a number of folks.
I’ve not seen a season like this; in fact, there have been several suicides across our nation of high-profile people, even in ministry, and it’s one of the most horrible things. Bitterness is immature murder; self-condemnation and self-hatred are immature. Suicide is just undeveloped, and it’s the reason we have to stay far away from those kinds of thought patterns. It’s not that I’m going to go kill myself; it’s just that it is already killing me. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Even people who don’t murder speak unkindly and release death into a given situation.
So in this passage, it tells us Jesus knowing. So that tells me what Jesus was conscious of as He was about to head into this betrayal and crucifixion situation. What does it say? „Jesus, knowing all things had been given to Him by the Father.“ There’s an interesting twist: you’re about to lose your life, and what you’re thinking about is that everything is yours. You’re about to suffer the greatest loss anyone has ever experienced, and what’s on your mind is that I’ve inherited everything.
This is practical. He says, „Jesus, knowing all things had been given to Him by the Father,“ number one. Number two: He came from the Father and was about to go home. In other words, He was going to step into eternal purpose and eternal destiny. So what was He thinking about when He was about to be betrayed? Unlimited resource and a destiny that can’t be challenged or changed—that’s as practical as it gets. Facing betrayal, crucifixion, all the stuff; what’s He thinking about? „I’ve just inherited everything now as the Son of Man, and I’m about to ascend to the Father into eternal destiny, eternal purpose.“
And the third thing He did was wash the disciples' feet. What’s the point? Come back next week, and I’ll tell you! Just kidding, it seems to me the serving is the practical demonstration connecting his own confidence in His destiny. It was through serving that He was made secure.
Watch your stance now. In a moment, I’m going to give people an opportunity to meet Jesus. It’s the most important thing that could happen today. So I’m going to ask everybody to not walk around because I don’t want anyone’s restlessness to affect anyone else’s opportunity to respond to an invitation. I want you to respect that there’s always a chance when we have a large group in a room that there are folks here who have never had a personal relationship with Jesus. The Bible calls it being born again. It’s simply faith that we put in Christ to follow Him alone, which brings a transformation to the heart of a person—born again from the inside out, changed—and that is available to everybody here.
I want to give the opportunity: if you would be one who would say, „Bill, I don’t want to leave the room. I don’t want to leave the building until I know that God has forgiven me of sin and that I’ve been brought into His family. I want to follow Jesus.“ If that’s you, then I just want you to raise your hand, and I’ll acknowledge you where you are. If that’s you, just put a hand up right here. Yeah, I see you. Bless you for that! Wonderful!
Is there another one? Back over here? Yes, another one back over here. I bless you! Wonderful! Beautiful! Is there another one? Where? Over here? Okay, oh, excellent! Beautiful! Is there another one over here? Thank you! Oh, it’s the greatest thing ever! It’s the greatest miracle ever! Anyone else, real quick? I see three that have responded to this invitation.
Here’s what I want to ask: we have people who we know and trust that I want to pray with you and talk with you. It’s not about Bethel or membership; it’s about your walk with Jesus because we want you to experience His love in a way that changes everything from this moment on.
So I’m going to ask two things to happen at the same time. I want to ask the ministry team to come to the front, and I want to ask the three people who raised your hands, and any others I might have missed, just to walk right up here to this team where this banner is. These folks will talk with you and pray with you. So if you would, just leave your seat wherever you’re at and come down here right now. Ministry team, come quickly! Yeah, those who raised their hand, come on down here. I want to make sure—yeah, bless you, bless you, bless you right here!
All right, I love that! Here, now I want to pray over you because I really felt strong this morning that the Lord was going to end a mental battle that has been going on for a long time for many, many people. In fact, I just feel I should announce that this is the end of that season of anguish and anxiety.
Nothing ends; circumstances don’t always immediately end. Sometimes it’s me who needs to change so that they can change. I really believe the Lord is releasing your grace for this right now. So let’s pray together, and then I’ll turn it over to Tom, and we’ll wrap it up.
So Father, I thank You for the fact that You give us tools that work, and that we can expect and anticipate things to be different simply because we have anchored our hearts into the superior, not influenced by the inferior. I’m asking now for grace over the hearts and minds of the people of God that our thought life would accurately represent who You are and the resources You’ve made available for us. I ask all of this in the wonderful name of Jesus. Extend a hand toward those receiving Christ today; we pray again, Lord, that the power of the Spirit of God would come upon each one. Anyone else in the room that still needs this—that the power of the Spirit of God would come so mightily that there would be permanent transformation rippling through their entire family line. In Jesus' name, everybody said amen! Amen, Tom, come hang out a moment!