Christmas is all about peace – it’s God’s declaration of peace towards us, after our rebellion against Him. But what does that actually mean, here and now, two thousand years on from that very first Christmas.   Time with God It is fantastic to be with you again this week. Over the last three weeks on the program, I guess leading up towards Christmas we've been looking at living a life of peace because Christmas is God’s declaration of peace. When you and I turned our backs on God and walked away and did our own thing and do stupid and silly things as we've done in our lives we declared war on God and what we deserved was God’s anger, what we deserve was God’s judgement. And we've been looking at the Book of Ezekiel for the last few weeks and seeing how exactly that befell the nation of Israel when they rejected their God, but God had a peace plan and God’s plan for peace is Christmas, Jesus Christ, His own Son. This week on the program we're going to finish this series off by looking at what it actually means to live that life of peace; and for me there are three key things. We have to make a decision for peace, a decision, a deliberate choice to have peace and that involves spending time with God, getting right with God and relying on God. So, are you ready? We're going to dive into Gods word and just see what God has for us because I truly believe God’s plan for you is to live a life of peace. There’s one thing that being marriage teaches you is that you can't have any peace between husband and wife unless you spend time together, enjoying each other, that’s why God invented intimacy. We go along through life together, husband and wife and our ups and downs and bumps and bruises and stresses and strains but when we spend time together, when we have fun together, when we do special things together and talk and just work through issues, that builds the relationship and we get so close as husband and wife that when those pressures come, when those tensions come, they don't affect us because the relationship is in place and the same, exactly the same, is true in our relationship with God. We need to spend time with God. I have plenty of stresses and strains in my life, people sometimes look at me and go, "Well, must be a pretty easy life really, recording the radio programs." But that’s not the half of it, doing this ministry gig is a tough gig, it all just doesn't happen. Hundreds of stations and the relationships with those and all our blessed supporters and friends and our relationships and communications with those, our finances, our staff and the rapid growth and managing that growth, there are tensions, there are strains, it's hard work and in the middle of all of that, for me, the highest calling on my life, from God, is to do what I'm doing right now and I'll let you in on a little secret, I'm no good in God’s hands if I'm some screaming nervous wreck. I need peace to be used of God to bless you, I need joy, I need that quiet assurance amidst the pressures of life. There's only one place where I've found that, in my quiet times with the Lord, early in the morning when the rest of the world's asleep. On those days when I take that time, 30 minutes, 40 minutes maybe even an hour, just to spend time with Him, I have a quiet assurance and a peace. Jesus knew that, He was the Son of God and He was doing this ministry tour and preaching tour through Galilee and He'd just been casting out demons and healing people, He must have been tired. This is what it says in Mark, chapter 1, verse 35: And in the morning, very early whilst it was still dark, He got up and went out to a deserted place and there He prayed and all the people came looking for Him and said, "Where are you? We're all looking for you." It would have been very easy for Jesus to say, "Well, you know, I'm busy. I've got too much to do; I haven't got time to pray." And we kid ourselves if we think that we can live a life of peace without spending time with Jesus. Jesus, when He walked on this earth, was a man of prayer. He spent time with God for guidance and peace and power. The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter, chapter 3, verse 11 says this, Seek peace and pursue it. In other words, get deliberate about having peace in our lives. What's life like, day by day, every step of the way when we can walk in the quiet assurance of peace? Inside, how do you feel? It's awesome isn't it? And outside, how effective and capable are we when inside we have this wonderful peace? But on the other hand, compare that to those days when we're a screaming blubber of jelly, all over the place like a cork in the ocean driven by a storm. Inside you feel terrible, outside you just can't do what you want to do. It's a no brainer, we need peace. We all have trials, we all have temptations, we all feel like we're the only ones, we feel lonely. But it happens to all of us, I have mine, you have yours and sometimes we get so busy that we think we don't have time to spend with God and that is nuts, I'm sorry but it is. If we want peace we have to pursue it, in other words, to run swiftly after it. That's what that word means that Peter uses, to run swiftly after it in order to catch it, to press into it. A deliberate decision, "well, I don't have any peace in my life." What are you doing about it? "Mm, nothing. I just want peace." Well let’s get a revelation today, the rest of the world isn't going to give us peace, it's just not going to flop into our laps, in fact, the opposite is true. The world wants to rob us of peace. The true, deep, abiding, restful, joyful, delightful peace only happens in one place, with Jesus and we have to make a decision to pursue it and that means making time with Him every day. It's not a guilt trip, it’s not some sort of rule, it's just plain common sense. Time to talk with Him, time to rest with Him, maybe it's on the train on the way to work, maybe it's very early like me, maybe it's a half an hour after dinner, whatever. Time to offload our burdens onto Jesus, time to get into God’s word, to listen to radio programs or teaching CD's or to read a good book, just to spend time with God, a quiet time alone and little by little, day after day, week after week, month after month, God builds in us the most wondrous sense of peace. If we're going to live our lives we have to choose peace, we have to seek it out, we have to pursue it and for me the biggest part of that is spending my time, quality time, the best time that I have in the day, with Him.   Right With God The second part of that, for me, which we're going to look at is just getting right with God. Have you ever had that situation where there's someone you really care about and you've had an argument, you know you do something stupid to hurt them and there's a fight and the more you fight the harder it gets to make up because the more entrenched you get and then there's like a cold war happening that can go on for an hour or a day or weeks. You know what I'm talking about, we've all been there. Our stupid pride stops us from making peace and saying, "Sorry" and all the time there's this coldness and silence even though we really care about this other person. The worse thing about that is that there's no peace, there can never be peace until we set things right and the same is true with our relationship with God, unless WE set things right in our relationship with Him there can never be any peace. As I was saying just before and as we've been talking about over the last few weeks, our rebellion is a war against God and Jesus is God’s peace plan, the Christmas present at that first Christmas is God’s peace through His Son, Jesus Christ but in order to experience that peace, a peace that goes beyond anything we can ever understand,...

Released on 29 Nov 2020