daily Broadcast

In a World of Violence and Uncertainty, Part 1

From the series Inner Peace

As much as we’d like it to be otherwise, the fact is that the world we live in is violent and very uncertain. What is certain is that God promised His children supernatural peace - even in the midst of conditions that threaten to absolutely overwhelm us. Chip unpacks how God’s peace works and how you can have it – regardless of your circumstances.

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Message Transcript

Our goal today is very, very simple. We want to ask and answer two questions. Question number one: Is it possible to have a supernatural inner peace in such a violent and uncertain world?

And number two, if so, how? Are you ready? God made your brain to process information, because there has always been evil, there has always been violence, there has always been difficulty. But God has made your brain in such a way, that how your process and expose yourself to certain amounts of information, and when you do it, makes a difference in your life.

Now, this is not a message about never watching TV, never watch the news, put our heads in the sand, and become isolationists. But this is a message about: What do you put in your mind and what do you dwell on, and what impact does it have on you?

We have learned for a long time, physically, you are what you eat, correct? You think about your favorite fast food restaurant, I won’t mention any names. Go eat their breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next ninety days and come back, and we will notice a change.

Here’s what I want to tell you: You are what you eat, physically. You are and become what you think – mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

You are the product of your thought life. How you think about God, how you think about yourself, how you view the future, how you view the past, how you view your job, how you treat other people – you are the product of thoughts that you have been thinking for the last six days, the last six months, the last six years, the last twenty-six years, and beyond.

And here’s how your mind works. If you have negative thoughts, and whether they are from family origin or dramatic experiences or putting a lot of negative things in your mind, and if, even unconsciously, I don’t measure up, I’m ugly, I’m not very valuable, no one will really like me, I don’t think the future holds anything positive for me. When you have thoughts like that, it creates emotions. Emotions always follow your thinking.

And the emotions are you feel kind of depressed, you’re not very motivated, it’s hard to get to work on time, relationships don’t seem to work so you go into multiple relationships. And then you don’t feel very good about yourself, so it leads to behaviors.

Behaviors like eating when you’re not really hungry, going shopping when you don’t have money, taking a couple extra pills here, three glasses of wine over here, escapism behavior, multiple affairs, logging on to the Internet, which produce devastating consequences.

And then those consequences lead you to believe, See? I knew I wasn’t worth very much. I’m not…right?

And there are people who live in that pattern all their lives. And the contrast is true. When there are positive, godly thoughts: I am valuable, I am important, I matter, I have a future, God’s in control, He has a purpose for my life, He will use the suffering, it produces positive emotions. Those positive emotions lead to positive behavior. You become others centered, you become disciplined, you care about other people.

And then feedback, what happens? The consequences are people want to be around you, good things happen in your life.

We are the product of our thought life, number one. It’s that simple. Second, our emotions flow from our thought life.

So many people try to change their behaviors, or try to change attitudes. Attitudes and behaviors and emotions all start with how you think.

Third and finally, what we allow to enter our minds is the most important decision that we make every single day. What you allow to go into your mind and what you dwell on, where your mind goes when you’re driving in the car, where your mind goes when, at work, it doesn’t demand something. What you think about and ponder on, it will define who you become.

As you open your notes, we are going to learn that the apostle Paul, his situation isn’t real good. He is in prison writing this letter. He has a very warm and loving relationship, but he is writing to a group of people – their world is not a lot better than ours, and maybe a lot worse.

They live under Roman oppression. And the Roman oppression was ruthless. A soldier could just kill someone at will, or demand this or demand that. They were a minority group. Eighty percent of the Early Church were slaves. Life was hard.

Things like kindness, things like humility were seen as a weakness, because for Rome, it was power.

Then they had the Greek culture was wildly immoral – brothels on every corner, all kinds of different gods. So all I am going to tell you is, what we are going to learn, please don’t go, Oh, well, that was two thousand years ago, and probably life was different. What’s that got to do with me?

He is going to teach them, very specifically, not just how to have peace in their lives, but, literally, to have the God of peace and experience the shalom God of His presence, His power, His protection, His provision with you, in every moment, of every day, in the midst of good, bad, ugly, difficult, chaos, whatever happens.

And he is going to teach them exactly how they could experience the God of peace in their lives, because they had earthquakes and there was injustice and there were all kinds of factions. And if you said, “I love Jesus,” instead of, “I love,” or, “follow the emperor,” they would march you into a coliseum and you would die. And so they had a lot of reason, like many of us, to not have a lot of peace.

If we look at the passage, follow along, he says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.” Circle the word “dwell,” I’ll come back to it.

“The things you have learned and received, and heard and seen in me – practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Circle the word “practice.”

So there is a command about thinking, then there is a command about practice the things that they have been instructed by him – that they have seen, that they have heard, that they have learned, they have applied to their lives, habitually make these a part of your life, and then there is the promise. There is the God of peace.

So command number one is to dwell on these things. The word “dwell” here, Colin Brown is the classic dictionary of Greek words. And he writes, “This word means: to reckon, to deduct, to reason, to calculate, to ponder, to deliberate, to have a protracted analysis and thought. It is thinking a matter, to take into account its character, thoughtful consideration.” And then he goes on to say in this very thick book that is a grammar: “This is not an unemotional word. It is a philosophical thought. But it is the very process of reasoning and deduction, which separates good from evil.”

It is taking something and pondering and dwelling and thinking, and, What are the implications? And meditating on it. That’s what this word is all about.

He says, “Dwell on these things.” And what are, “These things?” That which is pure, that which is honorable, that which is right, that which is holy or pure and lovely and of good repute.

Now, here’s what I did. I did a word study on each of those. And I want to tell you what they mean. And then what I did is I have a preview question, because I am going to try and help you and help me build a filter. It doesn’t mean that we don’t ever allow anything negative in our minds. There is a reality to deal with. But a filter that you could ask six questions to say: Is this pure? Is this honorable? Is this lovely? Should I allow this in my mind? And a lot of it, I can’t control what comes into my mind, at times, but am I going to dwell on this or not?

And what I can tell you is, if you learn to think the way he is talking about, you will radically change, because you are the product of your thinking – both consciously and unconsciously.

So let’s begin. First of all, think on that which is true. Objectively true. The word means to be conformed to reality, versus things that are deceptive, or illusions – promises of peace and happiness.

So, think on what is true. So, for me, every day, I start my day by thinking on what is true. So I have a very specific plan, and I read God’s Word. When Jesus prayed, the last prayer on the earth, “Father, set them apart and make them holy by Your truth; Your Word is true.”

How you wake up, the first thoughts in your day, what you put in your mind begins to orient you. And you’ll begin to filter the rest of your day through that. And so for me to talk to the One who knows what all my day is going to be, who is in total control, who loves me – I want to ponder and dwell on what is true. And so I start with His Word.

The second is, then, I put my identity in Christ. You all have this, right? You feel like, Gosh, you don’t like you – anybody go through that?

You say this or that or just feelings like, I don’t measure up. Oh, why did I do that? Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Oh, I forgot to do that. And so these thoughts of, I’m not a very good person, I’m not a very good dad, I’m not a very good friend, I’m not a very good pastor, I’m not a very good…right?

Don’t look at me that way. Don’t we all have those? Well, if you start thinking like that, well, when I do that, I want to put on ESPN and sit in front of the TV and feel sorry for myself. That doesn’t produce good results.

And so I will willfully say, Okay, who am I? I don’t like me right now. And I’m not sure why. I’m not sure if it’s just spiritual opposition or maybe I didn’t get enough sleep. And then I’ll begin to think, Wait a second, this is what is true, and I’ll say it out loud. I am a son of the Living God. Christ died for me. I have been adopted. I have been forgiven. I am precious in God’s sight. He has a plan for my life. He is with me and He is for me. He has already prepared a place in heaven for me, so I must matter. He has given me an inheritance. He has deposited spiritual gifts in me. I am His son.

See, that’s true. That other stuff is false. That doesn’t mean that when I do something wrong, I don’t own it. But I will tell you, when you begin to think and ponder and dwell on what is true, it will change – it will change your emotions, it will change your thinking, it will change your future.

One of the things I meditate on is God’s goodness. You might jot down Psalm 84:11. When I think about the future, sometimes I have fears or I think about my grandkids and the world that they are going to grow up in. And then I think, The Lord God is a sun and a shield; the Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. And I dwell on the goodness of God. He has a good plan, even in an evil world.

And so I ask the question – before I watch the program, before I keep listening to a conversation: Is this the truth or a lie? When someone talks to me and starts saying, “You know, this marriage isn’t worth it. And, you know what? I’m just, ah, forget it. And I just think I’m going to bail out of this thing.” Is that a truth or a lie?

When I’m watching a movie or a commercial and they are telling me that this toothpaste or drinking this kind of beer or if I would only go online and do this, then I can rich in ninety days. Is it a truth or a lie?

See, if you are passive in your thinking, your brain doesn’t know. So you tell your brain what is true and what is not true, and dwell on things that are true.

The second thing he says, “Whatever is honorable.” The word translated means “grave, worthy of respect,” it’s the dignity of holiness. It refers to things, which reflect the seriousness of purpose of a believer’s life. I like, in parentheses, what is it that you think on that inspires awe?

For me, what inspires awe is the holiness of God. There are certain passages that I will read Revelation 4 and Revelation 5 – when I see, pictured, the throne of God and angels with six wings, and with two they cover their eyes and with two they cover their feet. And they cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

And I think, Whoa. God is unapproachable light. He’s not the Man Upstairs. He’s not my buddy. He is awesome. Do I honor Him? Does what I am doing honor Him? Does what I think honor Him? Does this program honor Him?

The second thing I do is I think in terms of that which inspires awe. Have you ever just thought about how amazing life is? The awe of these two cells coming together, giving birth, and something growing just from this single cell and then there’s a sacredness.

Ephesians 2:10 says that I am His workmanship, you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to walk in a good work, that from the foundations of the earth, He prepared for you to walk in. Just to think of, What am I going to do with this little thing called time, in this one, little life that I have? What a sacred stewardship. Am I using it well? Am I moving in the right…? You think about that.

It inspires, gives awe. And so I ask myself, Does this honor God or dishonor God? Does this conversation honor God or dishonor God? Does this movie honor God or dishonor God?

We are living in a world where you are bombarded with trivia. You are bombarded with information. And as you just like, like, tweet, retweet, YouTube, Oh, that’s funny, that’s funny. Am I saying there’s anything wrong with ever going on Facebook or doing this or that? No. What I am saying is, how much of life has distracted you and your world is filled with getting back with people on email and Facebook and tweeting and liking. And forgetting the seriousness of life!

I was tired a couple days ago, and there is a show I really like. I like shows that have certain things. One, is I like the good guys to win. Justice! I like that. I like it when they do it and they are super creative about it. And I like it when I can’t figure out how they are going to do it.

So if a show has those three things, I like it. And I like to try and figure out the writers and what they were doing and how they are setting me up to believe stuff. So I am analyzing stuff. It’s fun. That’s how I relax.

And so I am watching, okay, my mind. I can’t help it. So I am watching this show that I really like. I actually recorded it and the whole deal. And so I am watching it and it’s developing. And this lady, it’s one of those where the bad guys are trying to rule the world or something. And so they found these moles. And so this lady wants to find out who. And this guy looks like he has been beat up. And this lady is supposed to tell the truth.

Now, and she says to him, to this lady, “Now, this guy gave me some information. Now, you tell me what you know, or I am going to blow him away.” And she starts crying. And she goes, Bam! And, I mean, just, the gun right to his head. And this is just a regular primetime show. And it didn’t show the actual bullet, but it flashed to her and then it flashed back, and just blood spatter behind him. And him like this.

And the Holy Spirit whispered, Does this honor Me? Does this honor Me? Now, I’d like to say I said, No, Lord! And I turned it off. But I didn’t. I wanted to find out: Is she going to tell? And how is it going to come out? And so there was a two minute delay. And I never found out.

But as I continued to watch, the Spirit just said, Chip, does this honor Me? Life is sacred. You keep watching people get blown away like that, you’ll be desensitized to the most precious thing I have ever done. And what I did is I created life. And then I remember turning it off.

Because what I know is, what I let in my mind and what I dwell on will produce the person that I will become. And I never, ever want to think that life is not sacred.