Peace (3 of 8)
Series: Fruition
Dave Gustavsen
Philippians 4:4-9
Good morning Chapel family! We’re taking this fall to walk through the famous Fruit of the Spirit teaching from the New Testament. Usually, the only thing you hear is the list, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It’s a beautiful list. But when you look at the whole chapter of Galatians 5, you realize that beautiful way of living comes in the context of a battle. Because there’s a part of you that wants to live in a very different way—with selfishness and envy and rage, etc. Ugly things. And until you enter heaven, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit will always be there. But here’s the surprising part: the way to win that battle is not to just try hard to be good; it’s to learn how to connect with the power of Christ.
In other words, like we’ve been saying every week:
The pull of sin is strong
But the living Christ is stronger
So open yourself to his Spirit
And you will bear his fruit
So that’s what this series is all about—learning together how to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that we bear the fruit of Jesus in our lives. We become like him!
So, the fruit of the Spirit is first and foremost love, then joy. Today we come to the third fruit, which is peace. What a priceless thing it is to have inner peace, isn’t it?
This past week in my small group, I asked the guys, “What’s the opposite of peace?” And I wrote down everything they said—let me give you the top ten answers. See if this doesn’t depress you, just hearing these words—the opposite of peace is: turmoil, chaos, anxiety, stress, sadness, anger, inability to focus, isolation from others, lack of energy, and insomnia. Does that not sound like the most miserable life ever? And it is! When we lack inner peace, it’s a terrible way to live.
So…how do we find deep, inner peace?
Well, let’s look at a passage of Scripture toward the end of ...
Series: Fruition
Dave Gustavsen
Philippians 4:4-9
Good morning Chapel family! We’re taking this fall to walk through the famous Fruit of the Spirit teaching from the New Testament. Usually, the only thing you hear is the list, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It’s a beautiful list. But when you look at the whole chapter of Galatians 5, you realize that beautiful way of living comes in the context of a battle. Because there’s a part of you that wants to live in a very different way—with selfishness and envy and rage, etc. Ugly things. And until you enter heaven, that struggle between the flesh and the spirit will always be there. But here’s the surprising part: the way to win that battle is not to just try hard to be good; it’s to learn how to connect with the power of Christ.
In other words, like we’ve been saying every week:
The pull of sin is strong
But the living Christ is stronger
So open yourself to his Spirit
And you will bear his fruit
So that’s what this series is all about—learning together how to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, so that we bear the fruit of Jesus in our lives. We become like him!
So, the fruit of the Spirit is first and foremost love, then joy. Today we come to the third fruit, which is peace. What a priceless thing it is to have inner peace, isn’t it?
This past week in my small group, I asked the guys, “What’s the opposite of peace?” And I wrote down everything they said—let me give you the top ten answers. See if this doesn’t depress you, just hearing these words—the opposite of peace is: turmoil, chaos, anxiety, stress, sadness, anger, inability to focus, isolation from others, lack of energy, and insomnia. Does that not sound like the most miserable life ever? And it is! When we lack inner peace, it’s a terrible way to live.
So…how do we find deep, inner peace?
Well, let’s look at a passage of Scripture toward the end of ...
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