WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 Evening everyone. We're going to be, as Derek said, spending a bit of time just now thinking 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:10.160 about one of the fruit of the Spirit. So for if you're visiting the congregation, I've 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:15.320 been looking at this theme, this text over the last little while. We're slightly out 00:00:15.320 --> 00:00:18.359 of kilter and then we're going to be looking at peace tonight, although it's the last of 00:00:18.359 --> 00:00:24.560 our studies. So in Galatians we read about the fruit of the Spirit. We read, but the 00:00:24.559 --> 00:00:31.479 fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, 00:00:31.479 --> 00:00:36.039 self-control. Against such things there's no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus 00:00:36.039 --> 00:00:44.280 have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. So peace is what we're going 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:52.799 to be talking about tonight. How's your week looking? I wonder how you feel as you think 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:58.759 about the next few days, the week, the relationships you have and all that you've got going on. 00:00:58.759 --> 00:01:04.519 You may have 13 urgent diary entries that you have to deal with by Tuesday and it brings 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:09.199 you out in a cold sweat even to think about it. You may have relational problems. You 00:01:09.199 --> 00:01:16.239 may have a very unsympathetic boss you just cannot speak to. And you may have a lingering 00:01:16.239 --> 00:01:21.319 pain in the back of your head that's been causing you for trouble for some time. And 00:01:21.319 --> 00:01:28.359 you feel no peace. How do we get peace? What does peace even look like and what is the 00:01:28.359 --> 00:01:35.359 peace that is being spoken of in this passage? So if peace, particularly the biblical peace 00:01:35.359 --> 00:01:41.079 that's being spoken of here is the opposite of anxiety, which is partly what we've been 00:01:41.079 --> 00:01:46.439 looking at so often. There was a conference and there's another conference next week. 00:01:46.439 --> 00:01:52.959 What is the peace that is spoken of here and how do we get it? I want to look at two main 00:01:52.959 --> 00:01:55.799 things. So first of all, what we're going to do is we're going to look at some ways 00:01:55.799 --> 00:02:01.039 in which it's suggested to us that we may get peace in general terms, if you like, in 00:02:01.039 --> 00:02:06.959 kind of out there. What are the ideas out there that you may receive where people will 00:02:06.959 --> 00:02:11.199 say, well, this is how you could get some peace in your life. And the way that I want 00:02:11.199 --> 00:02:16.000 to kind of bracket this is to say, I think many people understand peace as something 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:23.000 primarily attained and then experienced. So we go get it and then we can enjoy it. But 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:31.639 it's up to us. So a few things just to do with this. The first thing is I Googled how 00:02:31.639 --> 00:02:38.639 do I get peace. It was moderately helpful, probably not very helpful at all. Most of 00:02:38.879 --> 00:02:44.400 the things that came up initially to do with that search and particularly another search 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:51.400 I did to do with quotes about peace, most of them told me to look at me. I was the answer 00:02:52.120 --> 00:02:58.599 to my need for peace. Give you a couple of examples. Marvin Gaye, believe it or not, says 00:02:58.599 --> 00:03:04.960 if you cannot find peace within yourself, you'll never find it anywhere. And the woman 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:11.159 called Elizabeth Gilbert, she wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love. She said this, we 00:03:11.159 --> 00:03:18.159 don't realize that somewhere within us all there does exist a supreme self who is eternally 00:03:18.159 --> 00:03:23.199 at peace. Now that carries the idea a wee bit further, brings in some kind of eastern 00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:30.199 ideas. But the point is this, you, you want peace? Well, you need to give it to yourself 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:38.639 or you need to find it for yourself. Now there's a lot in all of these things. We could spend 00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:43.079 a long time talking about them all, but we don't have a long time. So second thing I 00:03:43.079 --> 00:03:47.239 want to mention, just in this kind of bracket of peace being something that we achieve or 00:03:47.239 --> 00:03:53.439 attain and then experience and enjoy, the second suggestion is change your circumstances. 00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:59.239 Your circumstances make you uneasy, fretful, they take away your peace, change them, go 00:03:59.239 --> 00:04:04.399 somewhere. That's a lot of, the kind of ideas that you'll see if you look into this, go 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:11.400 somewhere and look within. It made me think of a book I had to read, kind of a book I 00:04:11.400 --> 00:04:16.920 had to read when I was at uni and it's this piece that's called Walden by a man called 00:04:16.920 --> 00:04:23.920 Henry David Thoreau. Not an easy read, but what this man does is he, in his life, partly 00:04:24.439 --> 00:04:31.439 for the search for peace, uproots. And he goes and lives in a very idyllic setting. 00:04:31.439 --> 00:04:38.439 And he lives in harmony with nature. He infuses into his kind of processing everything, some 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:46.920 of the mystical ideas that were being mentioned just a minute ago. And there he says, in the 00:04:46.920 --> 00:04:53.920 forest, with the bees and the lake, is peace. So that's another idea. In many ways, in many 00:04:53.920 --> 00:05:00.920 ways, he is the original environmental ethicist. There's so many nowadays withhold that, attaining 00:05:01.480 --> 00:05:07.480 that lifestyle as the gateway to peace. Look at what we've done with the world. How are 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:12.480 we going to make it right? Come back into harmony with the world and then we will attain 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:17.980 a measure of peace. So for him it was all about living one with himself and the one 00:05:17.980 --> 00:05:22.980 with nature. Go somewhere, get out of your rubble, get out of your rubble, get out of 00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:28.480 your rubble circumstances. All will be well. Third thing, final thing in this kind of bracket 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:35.480 that I'm talking about, eliminate the dissenting voices. So you don't feel peace because lots 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:41.040 of people are in your life who oppose you in different ways. They take away your peace. 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:48.040 They disagree with you. They make you feel that your life choices aren't valid. A lot 00:05:48.040 --> 00:05:54.879 of people describe not always in very nice terms the generation that we live in nowadays 00:05:54.879 --> 00:05:58.840 as a snowflake generation. In other words, a generation of people who are incredibly 00:05:58.840 --> 00:06:05.840 precious about themselves because they've been taught all through their lives that self-expression 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:12.200 and being exactly who they feel they should be is the paramount virtue that they should 00:06:12.199 --> 00:06:19.199 hold. And the thing with that is, as soon as people who may feel that way encounter a dissenting 00:06:19.759 --> 00:06:26.599 voice, anybody who would challenge them at work or at university campus, whatever, it's 00:06:26.599 --> 00:06:33.240 incredibly hard to handle that dissenting voice because if freedom of the self comes 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:38.639 with self-discovery and self-expression and that is my validation, then for somebody to 00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:44.959 come and challenge me and tell me I'm wrong is catastrophic to who I am as a person. Maybe 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:49.519 you feel something of that. I think a lot of people feel something of that. And so the 00:06:49.519 --> 00:06:55.159 answer, therefore, is to silence the people or to remove them from your life. You hear 00:06:55.159 --> 00:07:01.479 stories from time to time about certain groups being shut down on university campuses, sometimes 00:07:01.479 --> 00:07:08.479 arising from situations like this. So there's three things. There's lots more. And we could 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:14.200 say a lot more about these things. I realize this is quite general. Look within, primarily. 00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:21.200 Change your circumstances. And silence the bad voices. And very briefly, what's the problem 00:07:22.840 --> 00:07:27.759 with this? Because this doesn't help us attain lasting peace and it's not the kind of peace 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:31.600 that is being spoken of in the passage here that we're going to go on and have a little 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:38.100 bit of a look at in a minute. Well, to say that I will find peace for myself is really 00:07:38.100 --> 00:07:45.100 stressful. It's very burdensome for me to be solely responsible for my sense of peace. 00:07:46.640 --> 00:07:51.280 Change my circumstances. Good. It can be great to change your circumstances. We all need 00:07:51.280 --> 00:07:56.960 a break sometimes. Sometimes a place you are in is an absolute nightmare. And for your 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:02.200 good, you need to leave it. However, to say the ultimate source of peace is to constantly 00:08:02.199 --> 00:08:08.199 be changing circumstances so that conditions are always perfect. The problem with that 00:08:08.199 --> 00:08:13.800 is you still have to live with yourself. You're still dealing with yourself. You still got 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:20.800 yourself as the ultimate source for your peace. Change of circumstances becomes the new normal. 00:08:21.639 --> 00:08:26.839 And of course, the problem is we go somewhere. Usually, we just have to come home again after 00:08:26.839 --> 00:08:33.079 a while and things are the same as they always were. And to eliminate dissenting voices always, 00:08:33.079 --> 00:08:37.759 is that the answer? I think the problem with that in some ways is that actually fuels a 00:08:37.759 --> 00:08:43.839 level of intolerance within us. It actually makes us unable to live at peace with those 00:08:43.839 --> 00:08:49.399 who are different to us. So we literally can't tolerate the other. And I don't think that's 00:08:49.399 --> 00:08:55.439 the answer either. Now, I've said these are brief ways of looking at these subjects. But 00:08:55.440 --> 00:09:00.640 what I want to do is just now is move on to the biblical presentation of the kind of peace 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:06.240 that is being spoken about here. And in contrast to thinking about peace as something that 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:12.120 we have to first of all attain and then enjoy. I think this is what the Bible says about 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:19.120 peace, that it is something attained for us and declared over us. So that's crucial distinction. 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:26.120 The peace that the Bible speaks of is something that is declared by God and then experienced 00:09:26.120 --> 00:09:33.120 by us. How so? Well, a final quote from my extensive Google search of peace quotes comes 00:09:35.279 --> 00:09:42.279 from a woman called Linda Evans, who I believe starred in Dynasty. So we're going back a 00:09:42.279 --> 00:09:49.279 few years, quite a lot of years. She said this, if there's no inner peace, people can't 00:09:53.919 --> 00:10:00.319 give it to you. The husband can't give it to you. Your children can't give it to you. 00:10:00.319 --> 00:10:06.600 You have to give it to yourself. I think she's partly right. I think to come to the point 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:13.600 where you understand that looking for others to ultimately fulfill us is perceptive because 00:10:13.879 --> 00:10:20.879 for me to ask you, for you to ask me to fulfill you to the point where we're at peace is impossible. 00:10:21.080 --> 00:10:25.240 But she then goes on, of course, to come back full circle to what we were looking at at 00:10:25.240 --> 00:10:29.960 the start, which is to say only you can give peace to yourself. Here's where we would say 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:36.960 is the difference in biblical terms. Nobody can give peace to you but God. And that is 00:10:37.680 --> 00:10:42.920 the essential proclamation that the Bible makes to us. The only place that we can find 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:47.519 the underlying peace that is spoken of in a letter like Galatians in Ephesians that 00:10:47.519 --> 00:10:54.360 we read and we're going to come back to is God himself, in Christ himself. And there's 00:10:54.360 --> 00:11:00.680 a rub for us. Maybe you yourself tonight hate hearing that because you don't want to have 00:11:00.680 --> 00:11:07.680 to be before God as somebody who says God, I lack peace in my life. You need to help 00:11:07.680 --> 00:11:14.680 me find it. And the other thing about that is that we hate the kind of peace that God 00:11:14.680 --> 00:11:21.680 asks us to consider that he will give us. Let's look at some of our texts. So I'm going 00:11:21.679 --> 00:11:28.679 to go through just a few different texts now. Here's the thing about God and why he is 00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:35.679 the only one who is able to attain and declare peace. He's the only one who can accurately 00:11:38.039 --> 00:11:45.039 discern our situation. Do I have the wisdom to discern every aspect of my life and to 00:11:45.039 --> 00:11:52.039 pronounce a verdict on what I need in every part of who I am? God is the only one who 00:11:52.039 --> 00:11:58.039 can accurately discern my situation, justly pronounce the verdict, powerfully rescue me 00:11:58.039 --> 00:12:05.039 and keep me safe. And I want to say that we see this first of all in Ephesians passage. 00:12:05.039 --> 00:12:10.039 I don't know if these are going to come up on the screen. They may do. If they don't, 00:12:10.039 --> 00:12:15.279 I'm going to read them anyway. So in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, here are some of the things 00:12:15.279 --> 00:12:21.000 that we hear biblically. This is what God would say to us that we need to see in first 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:28.000 case. He says, you were dead. There's his verdict, incredibly uncomfortable. You weren't 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:41.000 just needing a wee tweak. You were dead in your sins in which you once walked following 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:44.600 the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:51.600 now at work. Verse 4, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:58.600 He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive. He's literally 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:05.600 saved us from death, spiritual death, and He will redeem the physical death that we 00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:12.600 face. He's made us alive. Can't do that for ourselves. That's a game changer for life. 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:19.600 Let me just go on a little bit in this wonderful, wonderful chapter. So we read in verse 13, 00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:27.600 but now, in Christ Jesus who makes all this possible, you who once were far off, alienated, 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:34.600 we thought that that gives us a lack of peace, doesn't it? To feel like outsiders, to feel 00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:41.600 alone, to feel like we can't get something, we can't go to a place that we want to be. 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:48.600 He says, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Now you're 00:13:48.600 --> 00:13:53.600 speaking in the context of those who were outside the covenant of Gentiles being brought 00:13:53.600 --> 00:13:59.600 in because of the extent of the work of God in Jesus Christ, so that Jews and Gentiles 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:06.600 become recipients of God's mercy. He himself is our peace. Jesus himself is the one that 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:15.600 we go to for our peace. And then if I go down to verse 17, as we kind of scan through this 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:22.600 chapter, he says this, and he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to 00:14:22.600 --> 00:14:29.600 those who were near. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father, something 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:37.600 we cannot do for ourselves, attain to God, to the presence of God, to come into the throne 00:14:37.600 --> 00:14:43.600 room of God, and to be seen as children and welcomed as children with all of the burdens 00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:51.600 that we face and the inabilities that we have and the sins that we carry. He says, I admit 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:59.600 you and I love you because of what I have done for you. I want to look at John. How is this 00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:04.600 possible? We read about how Jesus is the one through whom we have access to this wonderful 00:15:04.600 --> 00:15:09.600 new relationship, this complete change of situation and circumstance. Let me read a few 00:15:09.600 --> 00:15:16.600 verses from John because I want you to see very clearly what Jesus very consciously did 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:26.600 and said in this regard. Jesus spoke about peace. So in John chapter 14, Jesus says these words 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:35.600 to his fearsome, fearful disciples as he's preparing to go to fulfill the work that he 00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:42.600 was called to do. Jesus said, peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do you see 00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:47.600 what he says there? I leave my peace with you. How so? How? The disciples had to go through 00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:53.600 all that happened to Jesus. They were fearful and quaking. But then he comes back, doesn't 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:58.600 he? Then he comes back and he's resurrected and we read in John 20. What does he say to 00:15:58.600 --> 00:16:05.600 them when he appears to the disciples who are fearful, trembling, fearful of those who 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:13.600 come and even further destroy their peace? In John 20 verse 19, on the evening of that 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:18.600 day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of 00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:25.600 the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. How can 00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:34.600 he say that? Because of where he's just been. Because Jesus Christ just went to the place, 00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:41.600 went side place, the terrible place with no peace where he cried out, my God, why have 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:49.600 you forsaken me? There is no peace for me here. And Jesus consciously and deliberately 00:16:49.600 --> 00:16:55.600 and with joy for what was set before him went to that place so that he could return and 00:16:55.600 --> 00:17:05.599 say to all his children, my peace I declare to you because I have purchased it for you. 00:17:05.599 --> 00:17:12.599 And so Jesus speaks very, very clearly about the peace. In Romans 5 we read, therefore, 00:17:12.599 --> 00:17:18.599 since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 00:17:18.599 --> 00:17:25.599 An old minister said this, William Still said, commenting on that verse in Romans chapter 00:17:25.599 --> 00:17:29.599 5, and hear this, this is again a crucial distinction to keep in mind when we think 00:17:29.599 --> 00:17:36.599 about this, this is really just the starting point for our consideration of this. He said, 00:17:36.599 --> 00:17:46.599 though we have peace with God of Romans 5, means that God is at peace with us. In the 00:17:46.599 --> 00:17:51.599 first instance, peace is not something God gives us like a feeling, not primarily, that's 00:17:51.599 --> 00:17:55.599 not the first thing he does. So it's not just to say that God kind of magically takes all 00:17:55.599 --> 00:18:01.599 our traumas away and makes us feel serene. In the first instance, the peace of God, he 00:18:01.599 --> 00:18:08.599 says we are here in the realm of God doing something. He attains it for us where we couldn't 00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:15.599 and then he declares it to us, my peace I give to you. He was heralded by the angels 00:18:15.599 --> 00:18:25.599 before his arrival, the one who will bring peace. Good news. So as a starting point where 00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:30.599 we're asking ourselves the question, what will Jesus do for me? What peace will he 00:18:30.599 --> 00:18:39.599 give to me? What do I make of Galatians 5? Love, joy, peace is the deepening knowledge 00:18:39.599 --> 00:18:50.599 of the attainment of Jesus for us, declared to us by Jesus and then experienced with 00:18:50.599 --> 00:18:58.599 thanksgiving and gratitudes. And that understanding is woven into every situation you face as the 00:18:58.599 --> 00:19:07.599 bedrock of who you are as a person and as a person seen before the throne room of heaven. 00:19:07.599 --> 00:19:14.599 One whom God says I am at peace with you because Jesus has paid the penalty that you so clearly 00:19:14.599 --> 00:19:19.599 deserved. Let's finish and ask a couple of questions because we still may be saying, 00:19:19.599 --> 00:19:25.599 well, I struggle with this. I struggle to understand that. How do I get this? How do I take hold 00:19:25.599 --> 00:19:35.599 of this and experience this peace? A couple of verses from Philippians just as we finish. 00:19:35.599 --> 00:19:44.599 Because of course we face in the first case still many, many genuine troubling circumstances 00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:52.599 that breed anxiety and fear. First thing to say is don't look for the wrong thing from Jesus. 00:19:52.599 --> 00:19:57.599 Sometimes as we've seen at the start of what I was saying, there's the idea that we have to first 00:19:57.599 --> 00:20:03.599 of all sort our circumstances out. It's all up to us to get peace and the way we do that is by 00:20:03.599 --> 00:20:08.599 fixing things. And sometimes what we can do when we become a Christian is we can think, 00:20:08.599 --> 00:20:14.599 well, okay, I can't fix my circumstances. Jesus will do it for me. And we're still making the same 00:20:14.599 --> 00:20:20.599 mistake where we're still looking for Jesus to just fix. Now, that's fine at one level to still ask 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:27.599 Jesus, please help me deal with this situation and take away this pain. We can ask him that. 00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:35.599 But he may not. And so if we're relying first and foremost for Jesus to change our circumstances, 00:20:35.599 --> 00:20:41.599 we may well, when we find he doesn't, say well. And that surely conclude that God doesn't love me 00:20:41.599 --> 00:20:51.599 and I have no peace. So don't look for the wrong thing from Jesus. A verse in Philippians chapter 4. 00:20:51.599 --> 00:21:00.599 I'm going to read from verse 4 where Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I'll say rejoice. 00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:05.599 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone the Lord is at hand. Don't be anxious about anything. 00:21:05.599 --> 00:21:11.599 But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. 00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:17.599 Do you see what he says there? In your difficult circumstances, while you are bringing them to God, 00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:24.599 be giving thanks. So in other words, knowing that he may not change our circumstances, 00:21:24.599 --> 00:21:29.599 but because we are in his presence and because we're in the presence of the Lord of the universe 00:21:29.599 --> 00:21:38.599 who has said to us, I give you my peace and I love you, then we give thanks even in that circumstance. 00:21:38.599 --> 00:21:45.599 And we need to ask for grace to be able to do that. And finally, a couple of verses later, 00:21:45.599 --> 00:21:50.599 beware the death of the attention span. That's the final thing I want to say. 00:21:50.599 --> 00:21:55.599 Beware looking for the wrong things from Jesus or having the wrong emphasis. 00:21:55.599 --> 00:21:58.599 Beware the death of the attention span. Many people say it in our culture nowadays, 00:21:58.599 --> 00:22:02.599 nobody's got an attention span anymore. Maybe that's not quite fair. 00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:06.599 But we're used to sound bites and being distracted by a million texts a day 00:22:06.599 --> 00:22:09.599 and the computers is always being on and everything. 00:22:09.599 --> 00:22:15.599 And listen to this verse in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 8. 00:22:15.599 --> 00:22:21.599 Finally, brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, 00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:26.599 whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any excellence, 00:22:26.599 --> 00:22:34.599 if there's anything worthy of praise, think about such things. 00:22:34.599 --> 00:22:43.599 Now, think about what Jesus went to to gain you peace. 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:48.599 Think about it often. Make it something that you sit before you. 00:22:48.599 --> 00:22:51.599 Now, that's hard because your day is busy. 00:22:51.599 --> 00:22:56.599 But in some way, that is the business that we were in as disciples is saying, 00:22:56.599 --> 00:23:04.599 I will set before me and I will pray and ask my friends to pray for me as we do it together. 00:23:04.599 --> 00:23:13.599 Jesus, help me to see the peace that you have attained for me, which is of eternal significance. 00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:19.599 And may it be the starting point for the change in me, the experience, the knowledge and the gratitude 00:23:19.599 --> 00:23:24.599 and the wonder of that peace that he has achieved for us that becomes the experience. 00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:31.599 And it also, should I say, becomes the starting point for the way in which we change in our behavior to others 00:23:31.599 --> 00:23:39.599 because Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who have known the peace of God 00:23:39.599 --> 00:23:44.599 and whose life is then about in difficult circumstances with people who contradict us 00:23:44.599 --> 00:23:52.599 and who even hate us bringing peace because of our Lord Jesus. 00:23:52.599 --> 00:23:58.599 Let's pray. 00:23:58.599 --> 00:24:06.599 Lord, you are so great and wonderful. Your perfection is amazing for us to consider 00:24:06.599 --> 00:24:09.599 and we maybe don't consider it nearly enough. 00:24:09.599 --> 00:24:12.599 And we are so struggle with these things so often. 00:24:12.599 --> 00:24:18.599 We've read and studied through the fruit of the Spirit now and it's so helpful for us to do so. 00:24:18.599 --> 00:24:25.599 And we can feel so inadequate. And so we rejoice because this is the fruit of the Spirit. 00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:34.599 And so we pray, Holy Spirit of God, would you be at work in us, counseling us, comforting us, 00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:42.599 leading us and showing us Jesus, our wonderful Savior, and speaking to us of your grace to us 00:24:42.599 --> 00:24:51.599 and enabling us to be people who are loving and joyful and have peace and are peacemakers 00:24:51.599 --> 00:24:56.599 and all of these fruit that are to be at work in our lives. 00:24:56.599 --> 00:25:12.599 Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.