SEP 16 2018 | Stuff Jesus Said S1E7 | My Peace I Give You

Sea Change Church · Stuff Jesus Said · "My Peace I Give You" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · September 16, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hello, church. My name is Reed Richter. Pastor Adam asked me to share briefly that I'm in the Navy and I'm going on deployment on Thursday. So if you guys could keep in your prayers, I would really appreciate that. Let's read some scripture. All right. John 14, 23 through 27. Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own.

They belong to the father who sent me all this. I have spoken while still with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. The word of the Lord. Thanks, Reed. Reed could be on the poster for the recruiting department, right?

Flipping Aquaman. Every time I look at him, I think he looks like an Aquaman. So cool. Hey, good. Kind of do look like Aquaman, dude. I'm just saying. He's a good swimmer, too. Hashtag man crush. Just playing. Just playing. Hey, great to have you this morning. If you were brand new, welcome to our dojo. It is really good to have you here. Been here 90 years on this corner. And we love fellowship here. And we love having fun.

Fun is one of our values at the church. We also value holiness, things like prayer and worship. And we like to have a good time. And hopefully you do as well. And we're trying to be multi-generational. So you're going to get surf videos and retro hymns. We're trying to, you know, we're not going to give you a separate service for just so you can have exactly what you like. We're all going to live together, like at the Thanksgiving table where you have the grandparents and the two-year-old who's going crazy.

And it's annoying the grandparents and the parents. And we're all going to live together and have our turkey. So that's what we do here. We're looking at the things Jesus said, the words in red. And the words particularly that I think are provocative in what Jesus says. So you have this week. Next week, Pastor Harry will be preaching. Very excited about that on Stuff Jesus Said. Please come support Harry on Youth Sunday.

I will be with the Christian Surfers Group in France, suffering for the Lord on that trip. So excited. In the southwest of France, I'll be thinking about you. Not much, but some. And he will be there, and then I'll come back with that. And then we will finish that series, this series on the words of Jesus. Jesus, in this particular passage, we started in John 14 a couple weeks ago, and we've stayed there. And what is so interesting is I knew I wanted to preach on the Jesus piece, where Jesus says, my piece I leave with you, my piece I give to you.

But I didn't really know where it was. Well, it happened to be at the end of John 14 and the exact same place that I've been preaching out of. So we ended up back at John 14. I thought we'd be moving to Luke, or I'm sure, you know, perhaps it's not in the synoptic gospel. Perhaps he says it in other places. But here we are. And I feel like God really, you know, wants us to focus. He brought us back here for a reason.

This is one of those things that Jesus says that has some teeth to it, right? Because there's a balance with Jesus between invitation and challenge. And when you make Jesus all about invitation, we lose a little bit of things like holiness, perhaps, or obedience, or self-control. Jesus makes some statements that have teeth. And we have to be careful not to dumb those down. And so we don't want to make it all about invitation, but we also don't want to make it all about challenge, where Jesus just becomes this paternal rule giver.

And you're focusing on the hard statements Jesus says. And leave your mother, but you can't follow me unless you leave your mother and your father behind. And he says some radical things. The beautiful thing is if you look at all 66 books in the Bible, we find that there's a balance. And Scripture interprets Scripture. And the one thing that we know is that mercy triumphs over judgment. And we know that because we were under God's judgment and he sent his son.

And so I would say every time I feel the teeth of the challenge, I get pulled back into the invitation of God's love and grace. And then when I start feeling a little too easy going with the invitation, I feel God say things like he does in this passage that challenge me. And I find myself in a pendulum swing between the statements in the Bible of challenge, which sometimes threaten me with guilt, or invitation, which will lead me sometimes to just living how I want and being able to rationalize anything I want to do.

Here we are in this passage. And let me just show what Jesus says. And let me, if we look at it, in the first verse, verse 23. Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teachings. Circle that word obey. It's a powerful statement. And then there's this juxtaposition or this preposition or a pivot. The word if isn't there because the word if is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because it's like, if you do this, I will do this.

But it says, if you obey his teachings, it shows that you love him. But then it says that God will do something. Then, it doesn't say them, but it says, my father will love them and we will come and make our home with them. And what I think is so powerful about that is I look at it and kind of scary, this is one of those challenge passages. Like, so if I don't obey, God's not going to love me. If I don't obey, he's not going to come make his home with me.

And this is one of those passages that has some teeth in it. It's one of the ones that wakes you up. We do not want to follow Jesus because it saves us from hell. That's not the point of Jesus dying on the cross. The point we want to follow Jesus is because we have a loving father that he opened up relationship to us through because of not of our fault, but we were born under the curse. And now through his blood on the cross, we have been saved that we might know our father, not that we can be saved from hell.

So when we make the Bible all about challenge, that it's about hell, and if you don't get your stuff right, you're going to go to hell, we miss the point. The gospel is not about being saved from hell, although that is a part of the gospel. The fullness of the gospel, as I regularly say, and you see the father here again, John is really big into the father. The Bible is big into the father. Jesus is big into the father.

It says that you will be led to the father and he will come and make his home with you. Now, have you ever had a roommate in college? I had a roommate and we were good friends, but I like things organized and linear. So I would line up my books really straight and I would line three pencils in a row and I kind of just like it that way. And he didn't like, he liked things that were non sequitur. So he would come take my, one of my pens and turn it a quarter of an inch to the right.

So I'd walk in and there would be, and I'd be like, no, no, my wife and I have this at our house. She has a very organized clutter. It's organized and it's amazing. I call it clutter. She calls it a work of art. And I should have shown a picture. I just got my desk all right again and everything's perfect and organized. And I really like that. And we go back and forth. But when you have a roommate, it changes the culture of your house, right?

And you roommates can be better or for worse. We'll change the culture of your house. Now, what if God comes in and make, and Jesus, and they make their home with you? That's a powerful culture change. And Jesus and the Father will disrupt the culture of your home if you let them. And what I think, let me just put this scripture in Adam's translation. I'm not saying it's right, but let's just say it's Adam's translation.

The more we obey, the more that we prove that we love God. And as we obey, it seems that the presence of God in the culture of our home is more visible. It's not that God leaves because once you have the Holy Spirit, it's within you. But I think God has to explain things sometimes so that we can understand it. And putting it in words alone puts some limitations on it. So there are some other ways we can explain it. But what I feel like is Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit are always within you.

But when we choose to sin, it's like, and this is Adam's translation because you never lose the Holy Spirit. It's in you. It's full. It's like if you want to live in your disobedience, then they're going to make their home with you. But they're going to say, hey, I'm just going to bounce out right now to the store. I'll be back and about when you're ready. So all of a sudden, like they're there. Their presence is within you.

We don't lose that. But we lose the benefit of the blessing that comes with obedience. Obedience is a big deal to God. It's a big deal. And when we walk in obedience, it's like, hey, I'm back from the store. And I brought all these groceries. And we're going to have a party. And all of a sudden, there is just this overabundance of God's presence and a blessing in your life that doesn't come with disobedience. Now, there is a standard level of blessing that comes with just being under the blood of Christ.

There is, and it's eternal. So, I mean, you're kind of talking about difficult things here. But the Bible is very clear that if you want to add to the blessings. So I was talking about half measures today. If you want to add to the blessing, if you want a full measure of blessing, then go fully in. If you just want to live in disobedience, if you want to live in a marginal apathy. Let's just not even call it disobedience.

Let's just call it apathy. If you live in a spiritual apathy, you're probably going to get a half measure of blessing. Not that God doesn't want to give you more. But he wants to be in relationship with you. And the Bible is very clear with these if statements. And they're so challenging, right? They're so challenging. The Bible is challenge and invitation. But he says, I want to challenge you that if you get your stuff together, then, if then, I will come and give you blessings beyond what is just normative blessing.

That comes with following Christ in obedience. And I will make my home within you. I want to say obedience makes the culture of the home of your heart shift to having more peace, more margin. And the boundary lines, as it says in Psalms, fall in pleasant places because of that. Obedience, as I will say in a little bit, is a highway for the love and the presence of God to become visible. And let's not say that God steps out of the house when you're disobedient.

But let's just say he might get real quiet. Let's just say that. Not going to give you the silent treatment. He's not passive aggressive. But he's like, when you're ready to go, let's do this thing. And so I just want to start, as I said earlier in the worship time, is think about how much measure you're giving. When it comes to forgiveness, when it comes to whatever it is in your life, these things, how is the measure?

And if you're giving half measures, don't expect to get full measures in return. Now, let's talk about this thing about obedience because this is a powerful teaching that might kind of hit you sideways. But I believe it's true. I said in the notes, God, you'll see it up on the screen, God is not wanting you to ultimately, now did they put the quotes there? Yes, ultimately live according to obedience. Wow, that's provocative.

God is not wanting you to ultimately live according to obedience. When you're living according to obedience, it means that you have a sovereign who is telling you what to do. You don't want to do it, most likely, and you decide to do it because you want to be obedient to the sovereign. It is against your will oftentimes, but you will do it. And God blesses obedience even if you don't want to do it. If you don't want to follow God, but you do, he counts that as righteousness.

And he will say, yes, and I want to bless that. But what I believe God wants to do is move us from a place of like, I don't really want to do this, God, to a place of agreement. Where obedience has completed its work in you. You no longer are being obedient. You are living in complete unity with the sovereign. And the thing that the sovereign wants is the thing that you want. And you are no longer having to employ obedience.

It's like if you have a child and your child never runs away from you. I have a daughter named Lucy and she just loves to bolt. She just loves to bounce. So two years old in a city, we'd go on a mission trip somewhere and she could just, next thing you know, she's over at the park. You know what I mean? So if any of you have a runner, I call him a runner, runner. I just look at my wife, we got a runner. Then you have to tell them, do not leave 10 feet.

You see the parents with the leash. I never did the leash, but some parents, you've seen the leash at Disneyland. Okay. Sometimes I might be, I heard somebody say it's necessary. So if you have a runner, they're going to need to be in obedience to that. But what if you have a child who just never wants to leave your side? Perhaps you know that child. On your leg, constantly just wanting to hold your hand. Never take going three feet.

Not that they're fearful. They just want to be near you. They never have that issue. So you never once have to tell them, don't run 10 feet away. They're in complete agreement with you. Are they being obedient? No, there's not obedience. Let me give you the verse that is not in your notes, but you can write down. 2 Corinthians 10, 5 and 6. And this shows, if you read this entire passage of 2 Corinthians 10, you will see that we move as believers from the place of being in obedience to the place where we live alongside with God and make everything obedient to us.

You move from being under the sovereign, living in obedience to alongside the sovereign, agreeing with the sovereign, and making the world and your thoughts and everything obedient to you. God does not ultimately want you to live in obedience. He wants you to live in agreement where that becomes the joy of your heart. Here we are in 2 Corinthians 5, 10, 5 and 6. It says, we demolish arguments and every pretense that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

And we, that means we're in the position now of sovereign with God. We are not the sovereign, but we are in alignment with the sovereign. But we take sovereignty over our thoughts. We take captive every thought. And we make it what? Does anybody know what the scripture says? Obedient to Christ. We take our thoughts now, and we are the one that make them obedient. We are the one because we are in agreement with him. We are no longer made to be obedient.

And so this idea of obedience is we want to move from obedience to agreement. And it says, we take every thought, we make it obedient to Christ, and we will be ready to punish, we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience once your obedience is complete. Did you hear that scripture? Once your obedience is complete. This is the spot that we want to get to. Where we no longer are living in obedience to God. We're living in agreement with God.

As a matter of fact, when a thought comes, when the enemy comes up to your mind or to your heart and gives you a thought that goes against the will of God, you don't have to become obedient to it because you love serving God so much that you never want to go across that line again. And you say to that thought, no, you will be in obedience to us, myself, alongside Christ. And he is always a sovereign. I am not saying that you are in alignment with him because he created the laws.

But you now have become the sovereign of your desires. You have become the sovereign of your mind. And in that video, it was hard to hear, and it was a little bit loud. I understand that. But it says, if you can just get your mind right and get these things underneath, God can release that blessing to your life. We no longer want to ultimately live in obedience. And so is your spiritual life recently, is most of it, just fighting against God to do the things that he's told you?

Or have you gotten to this beautiful intimacy where you just want to do the things of God because you love God so much? That is the promised land of Christian spirituality. That is the place that we want to get to. Now, that doesn't mean that you will live there always. There was no, even though I come out of the Wesleyan tradition, I don't believe in a Christian perfectionism on earth. But I do believe there will be other times where you're going to have to go back into obedience role until we get to that place again where we say, I'm going to be obedient.

You know, I sent a text to my wife this week. I said, you know, I just want to get us in our relationship in every area of our life to a place of obedience because I'm thinking I want to move away from obedience into the joy that comes with being in agreement with God. I mean, how many of us love to obey if you look at your notes? I mean, do you love to obey? You know, think about it. You know, woo! You know, I just want to, you know, there's a law, self-control.

Like, does self-control give a rush? No. There's not like a rush, right? If you look at the fruit of the Spirit, I talked about it last week, is, you know, I said most of them. I was talking to somebody that works with brains and brain chemistry. And we realized that most of the brain chemistry that gives serotonin, which is the one that makes you feel peaced out, are, that come from the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience.

I mean, come on. Does patience really, like, stoke you out? No. It makes you peaced out. You know, self-control. These are things that don't get these huge dopamine hits. But God is calling us to live in a peaceful life. And so as we look, when it comes to self-control or obedience, do you want to obey? None of us want to obey. But what happens when you come to love the law so much you no longer have to obey it? And this is what we see with David in the Old Testament.

Psalm 119, 47 through 48. For I delight in your commandments. Look at that. For I delight in your commandments because I love them. I mean, really? I reach out for your commands, which I love, that I may meditate on your decrees. I mean, how powerful is that statement? And can you say that about yourself? I mean, what are the purpose of laws? The laws are to enforce things that you don't want to do. There's going to be no laws in heaven.

Why? Because everyone's going to be in agreement. Could you put that back up there, that scripture again? I want to read it one more time. For I delight in your commandments because I love them. So that thing that you're struggling with to stop doing or that anger that's in your heart or whatever, when God says give them forgiveness, do you love that? Now, look, I'm not saying it's easy to get there and it might take years to get there.

But do you see the difference between living a life of capitulation and completely having to just be in obedience to a life of agreement? And there is so much more blessing and peace that comes in agreement with these things. Because I love them. I reach out for your commands, which I love, that I may meditate on your decrees. Here's another one from Psalm 40. It says, I desire to do what? Your will. That's the desire.

That's not like I desire to become obedient to your will because I don't want to do it. No. Tell me what you want me to do. I desire to do. I love it. God, I love when you tell me something. I love when I hear what you're doing because I love it. That is such a different way to walk. Look, my God, your law is, where is it written? On my heart. The law of God, it says in Romans, is written on your heart. And the point is to start tasting how good it tastes.

Because God gives us laws for a reason. And when we are obedient to the laws of God, we will experience the presence of God that comes with it. And when you start living in obedience and experiencing that present, it's going to be a spiritual place that you've never been to before that once you're there and you get a taste of it, it's going to be hard to want to go back. Took a friend of mine to, I don't know if you guys ever go to Torrey Pines Grill, the one there at the golf course.

We go over once in a while. And I took Pastor Harry there and some others this week. And I said, dude, man, the onion rings here are like the best in the world. Like they're so good. They're like, if you're an onion ring person, it's like dogs versus cat, fries versus onion rings. I'm the onion ring guy. And I gave him the onion ring and I'm like, bro, try this. And he loves onion rings. And so he bit into it. It was so crunchy.

I thought he was going to break his teeth. And he's all, oh, I got a problem now. And I'm like, what is it? He goes, I can't, I've tasted it now. I can't go back. Like every other onion ring is going to pale in comparison. You know, it's only six bucks. So go up there and get your $6 onion rings and try them out and see if I'm right. The same thing with obedience. Once you taste the blessing that comes with obedience, you, you might not want to go back.

But see, very few of us have ever crossed the threshold. Very few of us, myself included. Very few of us have ever gotten to the place where we just want to turn everything over for God, where we've actually tried obedience. I mean, have you really tried obedience? I'm not saying maybe just on one thing, but just try to live in obedience and see what happens. Very few believers have ever thought about what it brings or been on the other side of that threshold.

So we live in a half measure of spiritual apathy and mediocrity, and we wonder why we struggle. Because God says when we live in obedience, he will bring his blessing and make his place with us. Obedience, as it says in your notes, is a road, is the road God loves and love and presence travels upon. Verse 23 and 24a in the notes, Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teachings. It's a way to prove your love to God.

My Father will then love them, will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. That's hard. Like, if you're in disobedience, regular disobedience, and this is the teeth of the scripture, right? So you might have to go grace out a little bit with Romans 8 after this, okay? So just go to Romans 8. Like, so if you ever get overly challenged, you know, just go to Romans 8 and chew on that for a while because you can get overly challenged.

But some of you need to be challenged, myself included. We need to be challenged to get the disobedience out of our life and do anything at any cost to get the disobedience out of your life. That relationship that you know you shouldn't be in. I've been in this 25 years. Christians are so good at rationalizing relationships that they should not be in. So good. Well, he doesn't really know God, but he's getting closer, and, you know, I only stay over two nights a week.

And celibacy before marriage is basic Christianity 101, FYI. I just don't want to be too controversial, but, like, if you're living in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, it's basic 101 Christianity. And that is something where you get that into obedience, and God will start getting the rest of your lives into obedience. And that's just one of the truths of God's word that I don't want to back off on. At this church, we want to continue to have rustic values.

In your notes, you're going to see, and I wrote this before the hurricane came, so I didn't mean to diminish any loss that there's been in North Carolina or South Carolina this week. But I put obedience as a Category 5 spiritual hurricane that releases a storm surge of God's freedom and peace into your life. But some of you have never experienced what it means to be in obedience. I've had seasons. Some of you have never experienced to say, it's all yours, God.

Like, go and say, I'm going to, just try it for a day. Just try a day of obedience. I'm going to do everything I think God tells me to do and to walk in that. So how do we find the balance, then, between obedience and not moving into legalism, right? Because this is the deal. This is the hard part. It's like, okay, you know, like, should I pick the fork up with my left hand or my right hand? You know what I mean? Or, you know, I can never, I'm driving 56 miles an hour.

I had a friend, and it was when the speed limit was still 55. And it was like, he'd get the 57 miles an hour, and then he'd be, like, guilty for, like, two days. Like, oh, man, like, I wasn't paying attention. And this is a true story. And I'm like, bro, it's 57 miles an hour, not 55. Like, how do we not trip out on being obedient and doing what a lot of the Jews are trying to do to find righteousness that comes from following the law?

One of my Jewish friends told me we just passed Rosh Hashanah, and part of it is going and having atonement for your sins, hoping that your name is written in God's book from all the stuff that you did. I shared the gospel with a guy at basketball. It was just me and him sitting in the, this week, just sitting in the basketball court after we were all done playing. And we were talking about life and different stuff, and he goes, man, sometimes I just go down to the beach and clean the beach, because when I get in heaven, I just want to make sure that there's enough good things on my side.

And he started crying there. And I thought, man, now's not the time to share the gospel. So I just shared the gospel about Jesus' death on the cross and his blood. We're sitting in basketball all sweaty like grown men sitting there, and he's just crying because he wants to be right before God. How do we make sure that we're not spiritually picking up trash constantly so it can be right before God? Because, look, if you start feeling guilty, like I said, go OD on Romans 8, and it'll bring you some balance back.

But don't forget these messages of God's challenge, and we want to challenge you. Well, here's, I think, the answer is found in the mission and the work of the Holy Spirit. You see, before the Holy Spirit lived in you, you had to look at the law, and you had to determine what the law meant. And this is why you have the Talmud. This is why you have all these Jewish writings on what it means to follow the law. And they had, well, you can't walk, you can only turn three steps on this day or four steps on that day, or it's actually considered, you know, work and you can't work.

And there was all this religious law you had to follow. But Jesus came and did it all. He fulfilled the law so that now you don't have to. But now you don't have to, but you can because you want to. And that's what Jesus means when he says, I did not come to abolish the law. So now we follow the law because we want to. We walk in freedom. You no longer have to give. You used to have to give or you would be under God's curse.

You no longer have to give. But now you can give because you want to. You can love because you want to. And there's a blessing that comes with freedom because the scripture says, it is for freedom that I have set you free. Now back to how do we know what to do in our lives? We need to be led by the Spirit. And the Spirit of God is never going to lead you into legalism. The Spirit of God is going to lead you into freedom.

I want to show you this verse out of Romans. It says in Romans 8.2. Romans 8.2 says, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Meaning that the law, and God forbid Paul said, that the law was a negative thing. But the law which could not be followed would commit you to death because you could not follow it. But now that Jesus has died on the cross and fulfilled every element of the law, we can now follow the Spirit.

And the Spirit doesn't lead to death. The Spirit leads you to life. And the Spirit will never burn you out. And the Spirit will never lead you into legalism. He will lead you into freedom. And so the answer is, how do we follow the Spirit? How do we become obedient? We listen. We develop a relationship with God's Word and learn what the Holy Spirit sounds like in our life and tells us what to do. A lot of you know that there's things in your life that over and over again, your heart is telling you to stop because the law of God is written where?

Upon your heart. And the Holy Spirit is continuing to convict and remind you of that thing. But the Holy Spirit wants to move you into a life of peace and to move you into a life. And so when you obey now, you no longer have to obey with the fear that you didn't obey quite good enough. You obey through the Holy Spirit, which leads you to life. And that's how we don't live in legalism. One of the things I try really hard to do is not to live in legalism, but not to live in so much freedom.

Here's that balance again, that we just besmirch holiness. Finding that balance is difficult. Holy Spirit will teach and remind you, it says in the earlier scripture, of everything. And so if you go back to that passage, when Jesus says in verse 25 of the original John 14 passage, all this I have spoken while I'm with you. But the advocate, that's the Holy Spirit advocate, so he's advocating for you constantly. Like this is my daughter.

You know, this is my son. You know, constantly advocating in your favor. Constantly praying for the, you have a partner in the Holy Spirit that is loving on you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. That's super powerful. Because you don't have to sit with a divining rod saying, Oh, okay, I wonder, oh, did I mess it up?

Or what does God want for me? The scripture promises you that if you slow down to sit, just every day, if you take 10 minutes every day and sit and say, Holy Spirit, speak to me, lead me. You might not have some giant angelic revelation. But then it's in God's court to do that and to lead you. And so it says that he will lead you and will remind you of everything in the right time. It'll be like, you'll do something, you'll get to a left-hand turn, and he'll say, no, it's time to go right.

That's the power of the Holy Spirit. Now here, as we come in, we come in for a landing. I said obedience, as we, I've got to turn my page over. The answer is found in the mission and the work of the Holy Spirit. And as we move down, this passage, I believe, and I don't believe a lot in spiritual equations and algorithms, but I do think it gives a pathway here. Because Jesus then goes on to say, which is the point we're trying to get to, is my peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you.

That is a radical statement. Because the Jesus peace is the peace you want, right? Very few people have peace today. Look around. Very few people. Maybe you're one of them or maybe you're not. But before he gets to that final bit about the peace I leave with you, the peace I give with you, he gives you that entire teaching about obedience. And what we see is that obedience, when we are in obedience, being led by the Holy Spirit into obedience, all of a sudden the margins in your life, the boundary lines of your mind, the boundary lines of your soul, the boundary lines of your emotions, will be out in a wider, more manageable place.

And so the road to peace, according to this scripture, the algorithm of this scripture, if I may, is to live in obedience, following the Holy Spirit. And then you will have the peace of God upon your life. You want to know what the problem is? We try to live in marginal obedience, listening to the Holy Spirit on occasion, and wonder where the peace is. We try to live in marginal obedience, half measures. God's not a fan of half measures.

He's not. He'll put up with them. Not a fan. We live in marginal obedience, with perhaps a tip of the cap to the Holy Spirit, but not really asking the Spirit to lead us, or not trying to be sensitive, or slow ourselves down enough to hear the Holy Spirit. And then we wonder where the peace is. If you don't have peace in your life, there are many ways the scripture tells of how to have it, but the Jesus peace that he speaks about in John 14 falls in the camp of obedience.

And if you don't have peace, look at obedience. And if you start feeling tons of guilt, and tons of worry and fear, go to Romans 8, and read about how you won't be separated from God, and how much he loves you. And then when you feel better, go back to this passage and look at it again. And realize why you don't have obedience and peace in your life, and where you need to get better, and where you need to follow God more.

And then you're going to be wallowing in guilt, and as soon as that happens, go to Romans 8 and read that again. One of my favorite quotes is, I find the balance of my life like a pendulum every time I swing by from extreme to extreme, and it's right there in the center, just for a moment. So this is the final question as we close. Have you ever experienced the rush of comfort, peace, and blessing that comes with obedience?

I mean, some of you have. Some of you haven't. Some of you have been following Christ for like 20 years. And like you've never experienced what it's like to be fully obedient to God. Like he saved you from hell, and you're stoked on that. But you haven't been obedient. What does obedient mean? And that's what I was sitting here talking about earlier. I just decided, either I'm going to follow Christ 100% without a half measure, I'm done.

Like I'll just go open up my coffee house, I always talk about. I might open that up one day anyways, even in obedience, but nonetheless. Obedience is a road to peace. Try it. Amen?