John 14:27-31 - You Will Have My Peace

Main Idea: Jesus has given us unending peace through His work.

You have a certain future — Eternal life with God

You have an awesome God — Father, Son, & Spirit

You have a trustworthy Guide — The Holy Spirit

You have a powerless enemy — Satan and his demons

You have a purpose in life — Loving God openly

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Well, if you have your Bibles today, I encourage you to turn over to John 14 verses 27 through 31. John 14 verses 27 through 31. Right now, we are in a sermon series.

We're walking through John 14 through 16, and the series title is Last Words of Jesus.

During this last supper, this last meal that Jesus has before he will return to the Father, through crucifixion and death, Jesus had some last things that he wanted his disciples, the 12 men that had traveled with him over the course of the previous

three years, he had some things that he wanted them to know. I said 12, though technically at this point, there are 11 of them, as Judas has gone out to betray Jesus.

And as Jesus is telling his disciples the important things that they need to know, we saw in the first week that he said, I am going to prepare a place for you.

That because Jesus is gone, it means that he is preparing an eternal home, an eternal dwelling place with the Father right now for every person that has placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

And what a joy that that is, that whether we go to be with the Lord tomorrow or whether we go to be with the Lord in 50 years, that our God is preparing a place for us.

Then we saw last week that Jesus says, I'm going away, I'm going to prepare a place for you, but I want you to know that it's actually better for you that I am not here because as I leave, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit, God's own presence

living inside each and every one of us that have placed our faith in Jesus. And so the Lord says, I'm going to prepare a place for you, I'm giving you the Holy Spirit.

2:00

Jesusʼ Peace

And then today we're going to see in these, I believe it's five or so verses, that you will have Jesus' peace. We have a anxiety and fear-ridden world. It used to be that you'd say, okay, well, turn off the news and then you won't be scared.

But now you can't turn on Facebook. You can't turn on your phone without it telling you some new terrifying thing, whether it be in health, in politics, in any number of genres. There are horrible things all across our world.

We have people all across our church, even over the past few weeks, with snow and ice tripping, falling, RSV, COVID, eyes being hurt, teeth being hurt, scary moments of children being born and not being sure if that child will be able to make it.

We constantly encounter things that can make us fearful of what we are going to face in any given day. Let alone, as we interact with other people. And we are scared about the relationships that we have.

We are scared about job security. And so, what hope do we have in our fear ridden world? Well, Jesus gives us the answer even in these verses.

And the main thought that I want us to see today is that Jesus has given us unending peace through his work. Jesus has given us unending peace through his work.

Now, when the Bible talks about peace, it's not saying it in the way that sometimes we would talk about it. We would say, I want some peace and quiet.

As a dad of a three-year-old and a five-year-old, that is a common prayer request and thought that I have. I'd love some peace and quiet. We tend to think of peace as the absence of fear or trouble.

But when the Bible talks about peace, in the Old Testament, it's the word shalom that we would know and maybe hear more often even today.

When the Bible talks about peace, it's referencing a soundness, a security of your identity and being, regardless of the circumstances. So you can experience peace even in the middle of craziness.

It is that all around you is disturbed and fearful, but within your own life, you experience, I'm okay. I know who I am. I know whose I am.

I know where I'm going. I know what my purpose is. I know what I need to fear and what I don't need to fear.

And so today, we're going to look at what this means for Jesus to give us unending peace through his work. Would you pray with me today? And then we'll read this portion of scripture and see what Jesus has for us.

Dear Lord, we are so thankful for the fact that you are here with us right now. Lord, that your presence can be known. Lord, it can even be felt.

And Lord, we pray for every person here today that does know you as Savior, that Lord, as we look at your word, that we would receive what your Holy Spirit has for us.

We ask that you would teach and apply the truths that you want for our hearts and our lives today. Lord, we pray that you would impress that on us.

Lord, for those here today that do not know you as their Savior, Lord, they have never turned over their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. God, we pray that today would be the day that they make that decision.

Lord, thank you that you will never turn away anyone that calls to you. And Lord, we pray that you would help today to be the day that someone chooses to follow Jesus with their life. Lord, we pray all of this in your holy and precious name.

Amen.

6:11

Divine Peace

Let's begin in verse number 27. Jesus says, peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you.

I do not give to you as the world gives. Don't let your heart be troubled or fearful. You've heard me tell you, I am going away, and I am coming to you.

If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. I have told you now, before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe.

I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me. On the contrary, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do as the Father commanded me.

And then Jesus leaves this portion at the Last Supper, saying, get up, let's leave this place.

Here in these verses, we see that Jesus not only promises a home with him forever in the Father's house, we see not only does Jesus promise us the Holy Spirit, but in the here and now we can experience a soundness, a safety of being an identity every

single day with him. Beginning in verse number 27, he says, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Think about this. When Jesus was on the earth, do you think he was ever freaked out about the circumstances that he was walking through?

Is there ever a moment where we read about Jesus having a nervous breakdown? No, we can think about, and thank you for whoever said that, I was gonna mention the garden as well.

But even as Jesus is in the garden sweating great drops of blood, so he knows in that moment, if you ever experience fear, like if you are standing in the street and there's a car coming at you and you're in danger, or as happened to Roger a week or

two ago, when you slip on the ice and you aren't sure what's gonna happen, fear in those moments, that is totally justified. That is how God made it so that we don't do stupid things and die, is that you are fearful of bad things happening.

So fear in and of itself, not a problem. We're told in Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If you want to have any smarts according to scripture, you need to exercise right fear.

But even as Jesus in the garden experiences fear, what does he pray? He says, Father, not my will, but your will be done. There is a sanctuary of his identity and purpose and will found within his relationship with God.

He constantly references the Lord as his father, that one that cares about him the most. And so, the piece that Jesus experienced, he says, my piece I give to you, is the same piece that we can experience.

The other astounding moment with the Garden of Gethsemane is that that was not the only time that Jesus was in eminent danger.

We've talked through John 5 and John 10 and some other portions where people around Jesus literally picked up stones in order to throw them at him and kill him. So this was not the first time that Jesus was in mortal danger.

But Jesus had a peace, a security, knowing in all the times before, this is not God's plan for my life, that I go through this moment with harm. And so Jesus was able to live with peace all throughout his life.

And then even in the moment of greatest physical anxiety, he was still able to find a soundness in purpose. If Jesus did not have peace in the garden, I can promise you, he's not praying, Father, not my will, but your will be done.

In that moment, he finds peace and security. He says, I do not give to you as the world gives. When you think about our world, there are some things that people say, this will bring you peace.

This will keep you safe. You can think of guard dogs. How many of you in the room today, you have a dog?

Okay, good number of you. How many of you would trust your dog to be a guard dog? Okay, I know we have some people that have small dogs, and that would not be a good guard dog.

So, you can have guard dogs. You can have, I know back when I was a kid, there was always the, what was it? Budget.

There's different commercials for these security systems that they really want you to buy. Nowadays, it's all the cheap stuff like Ring.

I know, I forget if it was Ring or someone else that did a Super Bowl ad, and they're like, hey, we will track neighborhood animals so that you can find them. And everyone went, no, we're not trusting that.

The world has its ways that it thinks you'll be secure if you do this. If you make enough money, you will have security.

If you have enough friends or if you find the one, then you will have total relational emotional security for the rest of your life. But the problem is any solution that the world has, any peace that the world will want to give us can go away.

Because if the world gives it, the world can take it away. And you can think about all of the people that have experienced catastrophic financial loss. And you can think back to the Great Depression of the 1920s, or the Great Recession of 2008.

And think of those people that had built their entire lives and security and identity on finances, only to have it crumble out from beneath them.

You can think about people that have staked their lives on a particular relationship, only to have that relationship fall apart and crumble. And they are left not knowing who they are and what their identity and purpose is.

But the peace that we get from God is not a peace that passes away. It's not a peace that is based on things we can do or buy or obtain in the here and now.

It is based on the unchanging nature of our God, that God who is faithful yesterday, now, and always, that is the God that we find our identity and our purpose in. He says here, don't let your heart be troubled or fearful.

The word picture for troubled is when you have a body of water, and I don't know how many of you guys on social media, you see the videos of people, you know, dumping gigantic rocks into a lake or a river or something far down below, and there's the

giant splash, and you can see the ripple effect that what could have been a slow moving body of water, or even if it's a lake or something, water that was relatively still, when you disturb it, it makes those rings and everything in it is troubled.

It's stirred up. And what Jesus says is that because I'm giving you my peace, my purpose and identity, you don't have to have those rippling out of your soul, that maybe there might be some stones thrown, and there's that point of impact, but it is

able to stop there. You're able to experience a not total upheaval of your life, your day, your mood does not have to fall prey to your circumstances. Instead, you can find a settled peace and soundness.

Then he says, don't let your heart be troubled or fearful. This is the word for like cowardice, that you do not have to shrink back from what God has called you to do because of the peace that Jesus provides for you.

This doesn't say don't ever have... Man, some of my medical people might know a little bit better. What's the chemical that gets released when you're scared?

Adrenaline, it certainly would be one of them. You get the fight or flight response. This isn't saying don't have an adrenaline response when you are nervous about something.

This is do not allow your existence, you don't have to allow your existence to cling to you and stop you from making choices or decisions or following through on your purpose because you have peace from Jesus.

15:07

Foundations of Peace

Then Jesus in verse number 28, he talks a little bit more about what this peace entails or why you should experience this peace. He says, you've heard me tell you, I am going away and I am coming to you.

Jesus says, if I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

He says, if you loved me, you would rejoice that I'm going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. Here Jesus says, guys, I told you that I'm going back to God the Father.

If you guys loved me, if you wanted what was best for me, you would be excited, because to be with the Father is a better thing than to be here on earth without the Father's presence.

And so here Jesus says, God's presence, eternity with God, is better than the here and now. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. And here where he says, the Father is greater than I.

This is not, as I've mentioned many times, this is not a hierarchy of like, God the Father is the best, he's the greatest. You can look back at the beginning of John 14, where Jesus clarifies that for Philip and for Thomas.

Jesus is saying, right now, I'm in this human body that can be harmed and can be killed. And for me to go to where the Father is, this is a better life circumstance for me.

And much more could be said about that, but I'll leave that there for the moment. In verse 29, he says, I've told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe.

Jesus here gives to the disciples what they could expect in the future, so that they would not be afraid, but that they would be able to trust in Him. And can I tell you, today for every single one of us, we can read through the words of Jesus.

We can read about that home that He is preparing for us. We can, as one song once put it, I've read the back of the book, and we win.

And what a joy that that is, is that as we read through scripture, we don't have to worry about what happens when we take our last breath here on earth.

We can know for certain what will happen to us, because He has told us beforehand so that when it happens, we would believe.

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Powerless Adversary

Then verse 30 says, I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. If He stopped there, that would be super ominous. I could be afraid of Satan and all of Satan's power, because he is the ruler of this world.

As Paul would describe him in Ephesians and 2 Corinthians, he is the prince of the power of the air. He is the God, the over ruler of this world for the here and now.

When Satan offered Jesus the kingdoms of this world, it wasn't at that point an empty promise, as Satan was in charge of this world's kingdoms and rulers. They do what he wants them to.

And so as he offers this to Jesus without the cross, Jesus could have, were he not God and perfect, he could have said, okay, yeah, that seems like a better route to take, a route that would involve less pain for me.

But Jesus refused Satan over and over and over again, not just in his temptations in the wilderness, but even through the mouths of Jesus' friends and his disciples, like Peter, who also tried to get Jesus to not go the route of the cross, but

instead to go the route of this world's kingdoms, of fighting and destruction. But Jesus says this at the end of verse 30, the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me.

And today, if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, and the Holy Spirit of God lives inside of you, Satan has no power over you. The phrase, the devil made me do it, never has to be true of the child of God.

Instead, as John the apostle writing this gospel would, I don't know what the timeline is on this, he would either later or earlier also write the letter of 1 John, where he says, greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

So Jesus here says, yes, the ruler of this world is coming, that one that we read in John 13, that as Judas leaves to go betray Jesus, it says Satan entered into Judas.

And as the ruler of this world, working through one of Jesus' 12 disciples, as he is coming to betray and harm and kill the son of God, Jesus says, he has no power over me.

We are told in Hebrews 2 that one of the ways that Satan exercises power over people in our world is that he tempts them, he tries to conform them to what he wants to do through the fear of death.

That Satan, through telling you, if you do not do this, if you don't say this, if you don't spend all of your time or your money on this or that, you will not make it. You won't survive.

You'll perhaps experience homelessness, or you will die, or you will be bereft of any goodness in life. That Satan, through the fear of death and loss, he traps us.

But Jesus knew that his purpose was not to remain alive on earth as long as he possibly could. Jesus was not on earth seeking how he could get rich. He wasn't on earth trying to become the most popular person.

Jesus knew that he was here to accomplish the will of the Father through living his perfect life and then through giving his life as the substitute for us on the cross before raising again. And so Satan's threat of death did nothing for Jesus.

Satan had no power over the Son of God. Can I ask you today, do you value what you feel to be your life or your existence enough that you will disobey God, that you will ignore the commands or the purpose of God in order to feel secure?

Can I tell you, true security doesn't come through anything that you can buy or sell or gain. It doesn't come through another person, another human. True security and peace comes through knowing what your purpose is.

And the fact that we are not meant for this world. Ultimately, we are meant for life with God. And whether that's here, there, or in the air, our God is there for us.

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Living with Purpose

Verse 31, Jesus says on the contrary, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do as the Father commanded me. I think that's so interesting in why he says that he does as the Father commands.

Certainly, he does it because that is his nature. He is the perfect, sinless son of God. He is unchanging God who in his very nature, he cannot sin, he can't lie, he can't do anything other than be the perfect God that he is.

But he says, I do what God commands me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Why do you do what you do?

In your interactions with other people, even over these next couple of days, will you have the purpose to say, I exist, so that other people would know that I love my Jesus, that I love my God, that I love his people?

This is why Jesus existed, may be the reason that we exist as well. So Jesus says, you will have my peace.

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Aspects of Peace

As we kind of bring it to a close today, I want us to look very briefly at these five aspects of why Jesus says that he has peace and why we too can have peace. The first of these that he says is you have a certain future, eternal life with God.

He says you don't have to live in paralyzing fear. You don't have to live constantly upset and turbulent in your life because you know what's coming. You know what happens in the end.

No matter what horrible things you or I might experience in our life, we have an eternity with God. There is an eternity of time in which there is no sorrow, no pain, no crying. And so we can experience the here and now.

We can experience the light afflictions of today, knowing that there is forever with our God.

Myron loves that one section of 2nd Corinthians where I believe he loves the way the message, paraphrase, says it, that the hardships that we experience in the here and now, they are light potatoes.

They are small potatoes compared to what God has in store for us. Think about it this way. If I told all of you here today that you will get $100 as you leave, you won't, by the way.

I do not have the money for that. But if I were to give you a, if I told you all, I'm giving you $100 today as you leave, you would be excited. You might be like, all right, Bryon, shut up.

I want to get out of here. I want to get my 100 bucks. How much more excited should we be knowing that the all loving, benevolent God who created the cosmos says that he has prepared unknown, unseen glories for those that love him?

A great future is coming. And so, I can live tomorrow, no matter what happens, no matter if I get sick, no matter if I get laid off. Please don't lay me off.

But whatever happens, I can know my future is secure. And so, I can have a settled peace knowing what is coming.

Today, if you do not know Jesus as your Savior, if you've never turned your life over to God, that he would be your Lord, that you have repented of your sins, you say, I'm not going to be the one in control of my life anymore.

Jesus is going to be in charge. If you have never done that, can I encourage you make that choice today? You can make that choice even within your own heart.

You can talk with someone else about it, and they can show you from the Bible how you can know that you are on your way to heaven, that you have eternal life with God, because the purpose that God has for you is that you would have peace knowing what

is to come. As Jesus says, I'm going to prepare a place for you. So you have a certain future, eternal life with God, so you can experience peace, not fear. Secondly, you have an awesome God, He who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

I'm certain, knowing the temperament of some of you guys, that on the playground way back in the day, some of you played the, my dad is cooler than your dad kind of game.

Or knowing some of you, your kids probably said, my dad is cooler than your dad. Our God is, if you will, he's the cruelest dad there is. He is the infinite.

He is the holy, the kind, the sacrificial, the good, the just, the eternal one, that we will spend all eternity learning more and more about and enjoying him forever. Your God is every good description that you could possibly place on him.

And he is the one that cares about you. He is the one that knows you. He is the one that pursued you in salvation.

He is the one that has given you purpose and joy. He is the one that has given his own presence, the Holy Spirit, to live inside of you every single day of your life. He's the one that says, I will never leave you or forsake you.

And so we can have peace knowing that my God is with me. And whatever circumstances that I find myself in, I am not without my God. And that is enough.

One confession of faith from the 1600s gave the purpose of mankind as to know God and to enjoy him forever. God saved you so that you would get to know him more and more throughout all of the endless ages.

And because our God is infinite, even though we have eternity ahead of us, there will never come a day when we know everything there is to know about our God.

And day by day, century after century, millennia after millennia, we will be able to know him fuller, deeper, and in a greater way, all through the endless ages. For you today, are you learning about your God? Spend time learning about him.

The more you know him, and the more you know about him, the greater peace you will have. For my wife, Samantha, we've been together. It will be...

Oh, man. My brain is exploding. I think we'll have been together 11 years this coming April, that we started dating, and then got engaged and married.

I have much, much greater security and peace in knowing what Samantha would do, or what she would say, or what her reaction would be to things.

I know that better today, because I have almost 11 years worth of spending most all day, every day with my wife. For many of us, we get scared in our relationship with God, or we get scared in our life, because we don't know what God is like.

We don't know what his thoughts or opinions are. We don't know the way he operates. But he has not left that to go, all right, well, you better just guess how I feel about you.

You better guess what you're supposed to do. No, my friends, he has given us his words so that we can know him intimately and personally.

If you would like some book recommendations as well on great treatises about who God is and how he operates, talk to me afterwards. I have some written down, but I won't take up time with that today.

Third, you have a trustworthy guide, the Holy Spirit. Why should we have peace? We've got eternal life with God ahead of us.

And so we know where the story ends. We have an awesome God who is with us each moment, the Father, Son, and Spirit. And we have a guide that guides us through every single day, if we will allow him, the Holy Spirit.

As we learned last week, the Holy Spirit is the one that will teach us and remind us and apply to our hearts what the word of God says.

The Holy Spirit, as we heard, is the down payment of God's purchase of us for himself, that he has guaranteed that he will bring us to himself, that we will not be discarded or thrown away or abandoned because he has placed his Holy Spirit on us.

And so in our lives, the Holy Spirit is there. And the Holy Spirit is one that works with your conscience and with my conscience to tell us what the will of God is for us in our situation. So very shortly, the conscience is not very complex.

It gives you yes or no. It gives you, yes, that was great. What you did, you should feel good about that.

Or, nope, you should feel bad about what you did there. That was not good.

And as the Holy Spirit moves into our lives, we want to always be shaping our conscience with the Word of God so that what the Holy Spirit would say is good, we feel that in our conscience, or what the Holy Spirit says is bad.

We feel that in our conscience as well. And scripture says that as the Holy Spirit is doing that, we can quench the Holy Spirit, that we can say, no, I'm going to do that anyways.

It doesn't matter what you say, that we can silence his voice within our life. Not totally, but we can, if you will, the sound dimmer on many devices, you can turn down that volume.

And so much so that scripture says you can have a seared conscience or something that has been burned so many times that you no longer feel when God says, nope, like Myron, Bryon, that was not right. You should not have said or done that.

So God has given us the Holy Spirit. And so we can listen to him because he is always trustworthy. He will never lead us astray.

You see, you need someone that knows the way to live to show you the way to live. You can ask the guys that were at the men's retreat at Camp Umito. What happens when you follow someone that does not know the way to go?

But the Holy Spirit does know the way to go and he will guide you in the right way. Your impulses or your thoughts are not the Holy Spirit.

And you and I need to stop for long enough in our days and in our weeks to hear the Holy Spirit's voice in prayer. How do we recognize when it's the Holy Spirit's voice versus just our own thoughts or impulses? We have to be in the Word.

If we don't spend time in what the Spirit has already said through the prophets and the apostles, we will not recognize what he is saying to us today. Let's learn his mindset, his values, and his way of thinking through the Word.

Forth today, not only do we have eternal life awaiting us, not only do we have an amazing God, not only do we have a trustworthy guide, but we have a powerless enemy in Satan and his demons.

Now, Satan is very powerful, and he has many temptations and many tests and trials that he brings into our lives, but he can never separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. He can never take away our home in heaven.

He can never mar our inheritance that we are storing up in heaven through the good works that we are doing now in the power of the Holy Spirit. Satan and his demons, they can never take the Holy Spirit from us.

He can never remove us from being a part of God's family. And so Satan can never ultimately harm us in any way that matters. Think about that for your life.

As we see in the story of Job, he can affect your health. He can affect your possessions or your job. He can affect a lot of things around you, but he cannot change who you are in your relationship with God.

What a joy that that is. That the most powerful evil that exists in all of creation cannot touch you in any meaningful way. Now, don't be glib, don't taunt Satan.

Never a good idea. You can look at the book of Jude, it has a lot to say about that. But as we encounter difficulties in our life, we can know, yeah, Satan's kicking up a fuss.

He's trying his darndest. He gives sickness after sickness after snowstorm after this or that. But he's mad and cannot hurt me.

He can't get his goals accomplished. He wants me to curse God and die. But I don't have to.

What a joy that we have a powerless enemy. Today, I'm not scared of toddlers. Toddlers can hurt each other, but they cannot harm me in any sort of meaningful way.

My three-year-old, except maybe emotionally, earlier this week, I told Evelyn that she had to play nice with her brother.

And then she was like, went off and cried in another room, and then was like, I wish I didn't have a mom or dad, just because I told you she couldn't be mean to her brother.

But a toddler cannot harm me or hurt me in any sort of meaningful way, except maybe emotionally. When we interact with Satan, the god of this world, the lord of darkness, he cannot harm me in any sort of meaningful way.

And so that can bring peace into my life. If you will, it's kind of a snubbed nose at him to go, he is so mad that I am forgiven, I am redeemed, I am adopted, I am beloved. My eternity is with God in his presence, experiencing his goodness forever.

And Satan knows what his eternity is. And so he can rage all he wants. He is powerless to my God and to the Holy Spirit living inside of me.

Today, don't fear Satan. Know that you walk in the power of God Almighty, victorious over his every temptation and trial. The devil can't make you do anything.

And there is no satanic attack that you cannot have total victory over through Jesus. And then last, today, you have a purpose in life, which is to love God openly. Why should we have peace?

Because we have a certain future, eternal life with God. Because we have an awesome God, Father, Son, and Spirit, who we can know and trust. We have a trustworthy guide in the Holy Spirit who can be with us each moment of the day.

We have a powerless enemy in Satan and his demons who want to do his harm, but cannot hurt us ultimately.

And then every day that we live, every day that you wake up, you have a purpose in life, which is to love your God and that it wouldn't be a secret that you keep from those around you, but that you would love God openly.

Whatever circumstance you find yourself in, you are safe within your purpose of loving God. If your purpose is to be rich, to be comfortable, to be healthy, to be popular, then various circumstances can threaten your identity and your purpose.

You lose some money, someone robs a bank and takes your stuff away. If you have a house that you just love, it can break, it can burn down. If you want just health in your life, your health will go away one day.

If you want to be popular, there will always be people that do not like you. All of those identities and purposes will crumble. But if your purpose is to love God, then nothing can ever assail that purpose.

Today, would someone look at your life and say, that's a real Christian who follows what they say that they believe? There are three easy ways that we can do that this week.

I want to encourage you to speak or type kindly to those that could deserve a verbal beat down from you. When you choose kindness and graciousness towards others in your speech, that can show the love of God openly to others.

Choose to live consistently with your profession of faith as a Christian. Don't say or do things that would then shock people to hear that you are a Christian and participating in that.

And then thirdly, share your Christian life with those that are around you. For many of us, we can view evangelism or sharing our faith as a scary thing.

But a lot of what that entailed in Scripture was just, hey, spend time with me as I am living my life. And so you're going to hear me mention Bible verses as I go about my life, because that's just who I am. That's what I love and what I think about.

I'm going to go to church, and so I'm inviting you to go to church with me. It's just inviting people to be a part of your life as you love God. This was the purpose of Jesus.

Why he did what the Father commanded was so that the world would know that he loved the Father. For you today, you can experience the same peace in Jesus.

Because if you know Christ, you have eternal life, you have an awesome God, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, you have a powerless enemy, a defanged enemy, if you will, and you have an unassailable purpose in your life.

If that doesn't give you peace in stormy times, I don't know what will.