[Gary Petty] One of the most interesting aspects of where we were at the Feast this year was the history around that area. Here we are in a very remote area that is still – much of it – is wooded, there is farm land, small towns. And, if you go back a couple hundred years, it was really wilderness. And yet what is amazing is the history of that area. There's nothing but warfare.

We went to Deerfield, Massachusetts. I have wanted to go there ever since I read an article in the National Geographic magazine about Deerfield, Massachusetts, when I was twelve years old. What's interesting about the town…you tour the buildings – the houses are still there – and people lived in them – many of them – up until recently. Now there's an historical society there that bought the houses on this street, and they have them furnished the way they were at different time periods. What is unique about Deerfield is that twice in its history – it was right on the frontier at the time – a different tribe of Indians attacked and destroyed the town. But there were always a few buildings left, and people moved back, and they rebuilt the town. Now you can go through this stretch of what used to be the village and each of the houses. Some are furnished like they were in the early 1700s, and some like the late 1700s, and some like the early 1800s. And you can go through these buildings and you can see what it was like. But twice that town was attacked and destroyed because, basically, they were caught between warring Indian tribes. They were constantly at war with each other.

Plus you have that whole area…was constantly involved in battles during the French and Indian War. Just every little place along the lakes there – Lake Champlain, Lake George – where we were – are just remnants of old forts. They go clear back into 1750s. And each one was taken and retaken, and taken and retaken. Some were built by the French and taken by the British, retaken by the French, retaken by the British, burned a couple of times, then rebuilt. The British had it, then during the American Revolution, the colonists took it. Then the British took it. Then the colonists took it. Then it was destroyed again.

Some of these battles, out in the middle of the wilderness, were huge – tens of thousands of men fighting each other in the wilderness. Saratoga is right there during the American Revolution. An army came down from Canada – a British army – and basically got to the place where they were running out of supplies, and they were facing an American army over twice their size. And after fighting the battle at Saratoga, they had to surrender. It was the first time in hundreds of years a British army had surrendered. They were out in the wilderness. They were going to starve to death.

All the war! There were Indian tribes. Every place you went there were little plaques – you know, "This Indian tribe fought this Indian tribe," or "The British and French…," or "The Americans and the British…." And all it is is a bloody place.

We live in a world where there is no peace. We just came from a time when we were celebrating the Prince of Peace – when the Prince of Peace will rule on this earth and there will be peace. For a thousand years there will be peace – although it won't be totally without its conflicts, because, as we're going to go through today…when we talk about peace, we're not just talking about the absence of war, or the absence of violence.

It's interesting that Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace – when He came the first time, made this statement in chapter 10 of Matthew. Let's go to Matthew, chapter 10. Right now we're really focused in on – and it's hard to get back into the daily routine – it's hard to get back into the world, because we're focused in on…yes, we just spent eight days looking forward and picturing a time when Christ rules on this earth, picturing a time when God's way is taught, picturing a time when there will be no more war, crime, picturing a time when Satan is released for a very short period after the millennium, and guess what happens? There's a war! There's violence. That is part of his nature. He's a violent being. There's this violence that takes place. Then he is finally removed. We have the Great White Throne Judgment. Then we have the family offered up to God as the new heavens and the earth and God's throne comes to this earth. And we just spent a time getting that vision again. It's amazing how that vision will start to wear off as we get closer to the Passover – as we get dragged back out into our daily grind – the world that we live in, where there are problems.

Here, the Prince of Peace, in Matthew 10, verse 34, said to His disciples:

Matthew 10:34 – Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Well, wait a minute. How can the Prince of Peace bring a sword? For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And He who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. And he who finds his life will lose it and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

He told His disciples, "Now don't think that I have come now to solve all the problems. In fact, you're going to be so out-of-step with the world that many of your enemies in this life are going to be the people you love the most. They're going to turn against you. They're going to hate you. They're not going to understand why you live the way you do and the decisions you make." You and I live in a great paradox in that you and I have been called to experience peace in the midst of violence. You and I have been called to experience peace in the midst of a violent, conflict-ridden world. And, all too often, our lives are filled with conflict. Our marriages are too filled with conflict. Christians are filled with conflict between each other. That's not what we've been called to.

We have been going through a series of sermons – I started them in the summer, but then I stopped…I started to do this series on the fruits of the Spirit, but then I stopped around the holy day period, because we had to go through the meaning of the holy days, and we needed to go through certain aspects of prophecy, and talked about the rapture. There were all these things we talked about through September here and we got off this series here. But we're going to go back to the series.

Let's go Galatians, chapter 5…because clear back in the summer we started a series, and we still have three sermons to do on this series. Verse 22 says:

Galatians 5:22 – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Now so far, we have talked about self-control, and gentleness and faithfulness, and goodness and kindness, and longsuffering – how these are all aspects of the character we must have developed in us by the Spirit of God. It's not enough just to keep the letter of the law. Now you can't build these fruits if you're breaking the letter of the law, but it's not enough just to do that. It is not enough for us just to keep the holy days, or just keep the Sabbath. These are all aspects of what God is doing to develop this character in us. And the next one on the list – because we started with the bottom of the list with self-control – is peace. Peace.

If you ask the average person, "Do you have peace?" the average person would say, "No." If we ask ourselves – if you ask yourself – "Do you have peace?" much of the time we would say, "No. I don't have peace within myself. I have conflict. I have internal conflict. I'm in conflict with God. I'm in conflict with other people all the time." That's how most of us live our lives. And yet we are called to have peace – not only to have peace, but in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." We're not only to have peace, we're to make peace! Now, we'll go through and show that it's impossible for you and I to make peace in every situation. It takes people who are willing to, also, make peace. You have to have two peacemakers to make peace. But we are to have peace.

Peace isn't the absence of conflict. Now, if everybody had total peace, there would be no conflict. But you and I live in a world where that is not possible. It is not possible to have peace with the world. And we must learn to have peace with each other, whether it be children and parents, husbands and wives, family members and members of the church. We are called to have peace. So, when we talk about peace here, we're not just talking about people not squaring off against each other and shooting each other. We're talking about a state of mind. We say, "Wow, there's peace. There's no war going on." Can you imagine some point where there is no war going on? There are dozens of wars going on all over the world all the time. Can you imagine today if peace broke out and there was absolutely peace for twenty-four hours? There was no crime, nobody was murdered, no war. Nothing for twenty-four hours. You know, the world still wouldn't have peace. It just means people wouldn't be killing each other, because to have real peace means to change human nature. That's why these are the fruits of the Spirit. We have to have a peace of mind. You and I are going to live in a world of conflict until Christ comes back. And, if we're not careful, we will always deal with that conflict the same way the world does, unless we learn this peace – the inner peace.

It's interesting, in John 14…I want to read this, because in a few minutes, I'm going to read another passage of Jesus Christ that I consider the hardest thing He ever taught. John 14:27 – He told His disciples here on that night when He was about to suffer incredible violence…and on that night when He was going to suffer violence – a total lack of peace – He says:

John 14:27 – Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Not only the lack of conflict, He said that we have to learn you can have the ability, through God's help, to overcome our fears – the things that trouble us at the core of who we are.

Peace isn't just about conflict. Peace is about our fears. It's about the anxieties that we suffer all the time. Now it seems that, if God comes to us and says, "Look, I want to give you the help and the power so that you no longer have fear, you no longer have anxieties, and I will heal your differences. I will heal the differences you have with your neighbor. I will heal the differences you have in your family. I can do that." God says He can. And it seems like, if all of us would say, "Yes, do it," then how come it's not happening? It happens sometimes, obviously. I mean, we're moving. We're growing with God's Spirit, but why isn't it happening more often? Why? If peace is part of the fruit of God's Spirit, and we have God's Spirit, why is it we don't have more peace?

Well, we have to come to a fundamental problem that keeps us from responding to God's peace. Much of the turmoil you and I have in our lives – the anxieties, the fears, the angers, the hatred we have towards others – comes from a central problem in our nature that has to be changed. There are a lot of reasons, but I'm hitting at the core central one. Okay? This isn't the only reason.

James 4 – a passage that is read very often in sermons and sermonettes – something we all know very well. So let's go to James 4, because we have to understand this. We're going to look at, today, how to have more of God's peace in your life. You see, if it doesn't happen in your life, you have to ask, "Why?" If you say, "Okay, now I'm learning how to have more peace in my life, but I don't have it," you have to ask, "Why?" And anytime we are struggling with peace – internal peace – there are the stresses from outside that you can't help…. I mean, you go to work, and you're working with someone that's always pounding on you, it's hard to have peace. Right? So you have to struggle to keep peace in that situation. But, if you find that you just can't have peace, no matter what the situation, then there is usually a primary reason. And this is mainly the reason – James 4, verse 1.

James 4:1 – Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? The war is inside ourselves. I thought about conflicts, as I was putting this together, I've had – in fact, I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about this sermon, and thought about three or four scriptures that I had to get up this morning and add to the sermon – because conflicts I've had with other people…and how many times the situation would have been different if I had first dealt with the war inside myself. If I deal with the war inside myself first, I now have a possibility of changing the conflict. I don't have a guarantee, because if that person doesn't deal with the war inside himself or herself, guess what? But, if I don't deal with the war inside myself first, I have virtually no chance of having a positive outcome on the conflict. That would just be driven….

V-2 – You lust and you do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have, because you do not ask. And you ask and you do not receive, because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your own pleasures – driven by our own selfishness. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world must make himself an enemy of God. Do you think the scripture says in the vain, "The spirit that dwells in us yearns jealously?" But He gives more grace – now this is very important. He says, "God's Spirit in you is struggling. You're struggling with yourself. The war is inside you." But we believe, "If I can just force my will on the other person, there will be peace." And He says, "First, deal with the war inside yourself, because you need to find out if you're being driven by your own selfishness – your own pride." So many times the reason we don't have peace is we are driven by our own selfishness. We're afraid that God's answer won't be what we want. "But what if God gives me a different answer? What I want is this outcome. What if He gives me a different outcome?" So we resist the peace of God, because we want our own outcome. We've already preordained the outcome, especially when it's with another person. We've already preordained how that person must come back – what that person must do, how that person must respond. We've preordained it in our minds and we've determined it must happen that way. And, if it doesn't happen that way, then we resist God's peace. Our selfishness gets in the way. Notice what he says:

V-6 – He gives more grace. Therefore, he says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

So we find ourselves in troubles, we find ourselves in anxieties, we find ourselves in fears, we find ourselves without peace, we find ourselves in conflicts with others – whatever – that's causing this lack of peace – this worry, this obsession. And what happens is, because we are so driven by our own pride and our own selfishness, we resist God. And God resists us. Right? It says, "God resists the proud." So we have to deal with the war inside ourselves when we're talking about the peace of the fruit of God's Spirit. We are dealing with the fruit of God's Spirit and that begins the war inside of you.

So we're not going to have a lot of points today on conflict resolution and how to deal with it. We'll talk a little bit about it, but that's not where you start. You start with the war within yourself. If we all started with the war within ourselves, most conflict would go away. If we begin dealing with the war within ourselves, most conflict would simply go away – at least, between us and Christians, or between us and our husbands and our wives, between us and family members. It won't with the world, because ah, they're going to beat on you, no matter what. That's just the way it is. We have to deal with that. We're in a violent, confrontational world that's going to beat on you, no matter what. That's the way it is. And when you can learn to smile and take it, you're beginning to deal with the war within yourself.

Part of dealing with the war within yourself, then, is it gives you the ability, through God's grace – that's what it says He gives here – it's God's help, it's God's power to develop this in us – we now begin to have the ability to deal with the fact that we live in a world that is not God's. It is not a world of peace – and will not be until after the millennium begins.

There's a very interesting scripture in Isaiah 57. So we're talking here about an internal state of mind. We're not talking about just learning how to get along with people. We're talking about how to deal with the fact that we are constantly – constantly – at war within ourselves and constantly in conflict with other people, no matter what you're doing. Can you imagine a day where you never had a conflict with one person? Nobody cut you off in traffic, nobody yelled at you – your boss, or coworker, or your children, or your wife, or your husband, or your mother, or your father. Somebody didn't push you or say something to you. Can you imagine one day like that? If you do, you're probably alone. And, if you're with people and didn't have a day like that, I can almost guarantee that you did that to other people! That's probably why you had such a good day! Isaiah 57:19 – God says:

Isaiah 57:19 – "I create the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him who is near," says the LORD. "I want to bring peace," He says. Now the last part of verse 19 is very important if we're going to understand the concept of the fruit of the Spirit is peace. He says, "And I will heal him." You and I cannot experience the fruit of the Spirit called peace until we are healed. We have to go ask God to change our warring nature. We have to be willing to go and just lay it out and say, "I am selfish and I am proud. And please change me." And what we says is, "Boy! Is Bob selfish and proud! Please change him!" Well, that may be true, too, but you have to start with the war inside yourself. That's where peace begins! That's where peace begins.

I mean, how many times did we hear Herbert Armstrong say, "You'll never have peace on earth until there's a change in human nature?" He must have said that a million times, right? Well, you've been called to have your nature changed. You already have God's Spirit. Peace is something that we have to be learning. But you have to be healed. You have to go ask for the healing.  He says in verse 20:

V-20 – But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. If we're always, constantly, just reveling in the mud, never at peace, always being torn apart, always in conflict, always dealing with anxiety, always filled with anger, then we have to say…he says that this is the way the wicked are. We have a problem in our relationship with God. But notice verse 21:

V-21 – "There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked." As long as we keep hold of part of our nature, we will not have peace. You and I have to give up something to have peace. We have to give up the absolute need to inflict our will – to inflict our will.

Let's talk about some principles of peace. (I had a question I wanted to ask Mr. Brooks. How in the world did he talk about commitment and then have a banner behind him about commitment? I want a banner about peace back here! There has to be a way to do that – I don't know…. I thought, "Man, he's really good or really lucky – I'm not sure which here.")

Four simple principles – I mean, we're just scratching the surface of "How do we begin to grow in peace?"

First. You're going to have to seek God's peace. You're going to have to stop trying to force every situation to come out your way. I'm not saying that we have to live our life never having anything our way. That's not true either. But, if we deal with the conflict within ourselves first,  if we deal with the war within ourselves first, we approach everything differently.

We must seek God's peace. It doesn't come naturally. I mean we just read here in Isaiah that we have to be healed. We have to ask God to heal us of our obsessions, and our anxieties, and our fears. I mean, so much of what we do to each other is driven out of fear, anxiety, lack of feeling loved, lack of feeling appreciated, lack of respect. People do incredible damage to each other because "I want to be respected and you will respect me. I want to be loved and you will love me." And they can't figure out why that doesn't work. 

It's amazing how many marriages I sit down with where the husband is saying, "I will be respected," and the wife is saying, "I can't respect a man who acts that way. And I will be loved." And the man's saying, "I can't love a woman who acts that way." So there's war – war! We live in war.

We must first seek God's peace. "No, no, no, what I must seek first is…." "No, no, no, whatever you're about to say, wipe it out of your mind. You must first seek God's healing, because peace…the first step is to deal with the war inside yourself. That's what James said.

How do you do that? I'll give you an easy way to start. Now, these are just starting points. Take one-half hour a day to do the three things I'm going to say. Now, if you say, "I don't have the time to do that," change your life, because you don't have time for peace then. "I don't have a half hour a day to do what you're going to ask me to do." Then change your life or accept the warfare. Don't complain about it. Accept it. We have to understand that all change has a process to it. All change has a price to it. And you can't not do certain things and expect a different result. So a half hour a day….

First thing you're going to do is take a half hour a day and during this time you're going to shut out all distractions – all noise, all television, all radios. You're going to be some place where you can just…you find some peace. Ah! Find peace – some place where you don't let your mind be distracted by all the things. Now here's what happens to many of us when we do that. You're mind, now, becomes obsessed with everything else. It's just going crazy. Okay, so we have to do something else.

You have to pray for God's peace. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 – this is just an interesting little verse here at the end of this letter that Paul writes. Remember last time we talked about longsuffering. "Yeah, I've got to learn to suffer long." That's why the next fruit is peace. Suffering is going to be part of the process of living in Satan's world. Suffering is part of the process of having corrupt human nature and having it changed. That's a hard thing to accept, but, at some point in your life, you accept it. And then you have a choice. "I can either spend this time in misery or I can find peace." We don't have too many choices in this, right? "I can

either spend my life in misery or I can find peace." 2 Thessalonians – I lost Thessalonians…I was talking here and went right past it. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 – at the end of this letter, Paul makes this little comment. He says:

2 Thessalonians 3:16 – Now may the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always, in every way. The Lord be with you all. "May the Lord of peace Himself give you peace." You have to go ask for this. You have to go ask for healing. And you say, "Well, how come I don't have it," when you get up off your knees. Well, it's because our nature is corrupted. We are…remember what Paul calls people who don't have God's Spirit? …by nature, the children of what?

Wrath. Now, to complicate everything, God put His nature in you and you have two natures at war inside of yourself. Part of the problem we have is, we have a war inside ourselves. And what we're doing is we're feeding the nature that wants to win that is selfish. We are feeding our pride. We are feeding our selfishness. The only way to win this to go ask God to heal you, and stop, and find this peace, and go to this place, and get on your knees and say, "God, please heal me and give me Your peace." Whatever that takes…. Now remember, when you ask this, you're asking Him to win over your own nature. There is a price to be paid. "But God, I really, really, really wanted the raise." And God's answer is, "You're not going to get it." So you're in anxiety, and you're in turmoil, and you're in anger.  And when you to this place every day, and you stop, and say, "Let me have Your peace," and God says, "You can live without that raise," you have to let it happen. You have to let it happen. You have to let God answer that and you have to submit to that. Peace is giving up to God. It's giving up to God.

Quiet place, prayer, and then you open this Bible, and you study and look for the way of peace. I find it interesting that in the Old Testament, in Isaiah, it talks about how "they do not know the way of peace." They do not know the way of peace. And yet, we know that Jesus Christ brings peace. It has to be taught. It has to be learned.

Philippians 4. Now, we usually read one verse here in Philippians 4 – many times – and we miss the context. I want to give it in a little more context. Philippians 4, verse 6:

Philippians 4:6 – Be anxious for nothing…. So you go to your quiet place, and you get on your knees before God, and you says, "You must heal me, for I am anxious." And God says, "Well, give up that anxiety." And you say, "I can't." How many times are our anxieties, "What if? This could happen – maybe." If you really sat down and thought it through, I bet you seventy-five percent of the things we worry about never happen. The twenty-five percent are plenty. Okay? We don't have to tack on the other seventy-five percent that never happen. We make up all this bad stuff in life. Just sit around and wait. Something bad is going to happen, so why make up stuff? Why do this to ourselves? He says here, in verse 6: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything – you say, "Well, how do I do that?" Well, he tells us. Paul tells us. …but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Take it to God! "Here's what I'm worried about." But also, he doesn't just say, "Take it to God." He says, "In that prayer, be thankful for what you do have." So, when we go to our quiet place and we're going to say, "I need peace. Please heal me. Please give me peace," we need to go to God and say, "Now here are my troubles." Pour them out. Say what they are. "I'm having trouble with my mother. And I have this conflict with her, or my dad, or whatever." But also be thankful for what God is doing. Verse 7 – this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, because I have read this to God many times. 

V-7 – And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. I have read that to God many times and said, "You must do something I cannot do. You must bring me a peace I cannot have or I will go slay my enemies." Or, "I'm going to go do something totally wrong here. I'm not going to handle this right." Or, "I'm just going to break down and can't even go on with life." "You must give me Your peace, which surpasses all understanding." You can't figure out where that comes from! I've spent hours praying for that in certain crises of my life. And after hours of praying, it comes. And I'm thinking, "Well, why didn't it come right away?" Usually because we're resisting it, because we don't like the answer. But what I really find interesting here…it says, "This peace will guard your hearts – your emotions and your mind." When the peace of God comes upon us, it starts to bear fruit, and we change the way we feel and we change the way we think. And then, here's what is so hard at this point: "I don't want to change." And guess where you are again? You're right back in anxiety, and fear, and anger, and conflict. "No, no, no God. I don't want to go there. If I go there, I don't get my way. If I go there…. If I do that, I won't make enough money." Or "If do that, I'm not going to marry this girl, because she doesn't believe the same things I believe and she doesn't follow You the way I follow You. And You tell us not to marry someone who doesn't believe in Christ. But I want to marry her, so I won't go there." You see what we do? "But God, that's not the way I want this to end. I really want to see that person hurt. I really, really, really want that person hurt."  He says, "I'm not going to hurt the person." "I'm not going to go there."

If we submit to this peace, our minds – our hearts – become guarded by God. And we begin to change. Verse 8, then, says what we must do. We must do this. This is the verse we always read.

V-8 – Finally brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on those things. Can you imagine only reading internet blogs that do that? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine only having conversations where we do that? Well, if we followed Paul's instructions, that's all we would be thinking. I'm not saying we would be ignoring the sins of the world. We see that. We wouldn't be ignoring our own sins or the sins of others. But we would have a totally different approach to how we do it, because the conflict within ourselves…most of the time, when you're in conflict with somebody else, you have to ask the question, "Is the real conflict within me?" Because when we do this, many conflicts disappear. He says in verse 9:

V-9 – These things which you learned, and received, and heard, and saw in me, these do. And the God of peace will be with you. In other words, you and I are never going to find peace until we change the way we think.

Now I'm working on a sermon I'm going to give sometime in the next three or four months. I'm going to talk about how we change thoughts – how we use the Bible to change thoughts. In doing so, we become principle-centered people. We live by the biblical principles. So much of the time we live by pride, we live by sense of honor, we live by certain things we think are important, not realizing that many times they are the opposite of what God says.

So this fruit must be developed in us. Look at Hebrews, chapter 13. So you have your time where you're going to pour these things out to God and beg for healing and peace, but when you do, sometimes it will take more than half an hour. Sometimes it will take months. Sometimes it will take years. But you keep asking God for this. He keeps working with you. He keeps teaching it to you. And you will resist it. Our first response to God's peace is resistance. That's what it says in James. It is because it's not usually where we want to go. Hebrews, chapter 13 – here, once again, at the end of the book – end of the letter, Paul writes – verse 20:

Hebrews 13:20 – Now may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant – now here is what the God of peace is going to do – make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight through Christ Jesus, to whom be glory forever and ever.

You know, many times we make our decisions because we decide, "Well, this is good and my will." And then we ask all our friends. And what do all our friends tell us? "Oh, that's good." You know, a lot of times, when you have to make a difficult decision, if you have a true friend, that friend will sit down and say, "That is not the will of God." We can justify just about anything in life, if it's what we really want to do. Is it the will of God? Peace comes from doing the will of God. You have to give up. There's part of you that is resisting. There's part of you that is fighting that. And you have to give that up. Or, you have to give in to it and throw God out of your life – push God out of your life. We learn it. That's why it's so hard.

Now, you take this time every day and you do this, you look forward to this time. That's a half hour every day that you do this. If you can get an hour, that's wonderful. As you do this, you're going to find that you're going to be struggling with the whole concept of peace, because you're going to start to learn it – just like when you start to learn self-control, just like when you start to learn these fruits of the Spirit. You say, "Wow! This is a lot more complicated than I thought!" Peace is a lot more complicated than you thought, because part of you doesn't want peace. And you have to come to grips with that. Part of you wants selfishness. And that's part of the reason you don't have peace.

So we begin to submit to God. At that point, then, the second step in this – the first is to seek the peace of God – is we have to learn to avoid unnecessary conflict. You can't avoid all conflict. There are times you have to make a stand. I mean, there was a time when Jesus Christ went into the temple and threw out the money changers, right? They weren't supposed to be there. And then He submitted to being crucified. Much of our conflict is not needed.

What is motivating us in our conflict? Why are we doing what we do? Are we doing it because of this sense of pride, this sense of honor, this sense of "you can't tread on me?" – which was a flag during the Revolutionary War – "Don't Tread on Me." Is that what motivates us? Then we have a problem.

You know, there's a part of the Bible that I'd never understood until I started to really understand peace. This is an example – in Genesis 26. Yes, there is a time to make a stand. But most of the time, I think, when we make stands, it's not because we're making it out of the right reason. We're making it out of our own pride and selfishness. If you have peace, you will know when to make your stand – about anything. I mean, have you ever seen people who really want, you know, to help other people – say, a new person. Or you're at work, and there's a person that's floundering around and searching for God, and you start helping them. You start giving them information. And what is your motivation? To help them. But all of us have seen people in the church that have no coworker or family member that wants anything to do with them, because they're not trying to tell people about God to help them. They're trying to tell people about God to show that they are superior to them. "I've got knowledge. God called me. He didn't call you." And they have a different motivation. We can even tell the truth out of a wrong motivation.

Genesis 26:17 – Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham, his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. Now these were his wells. He had dug them. And he called them by their names, which his father had called them. Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley and found a well of running water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, "The water is ours." So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him. What it means is, he called it the Well of Quarreling – the Well of Fighting. What's amazing is, you could argue Isaac has the right…God gave him all this land. He had the right to go to God and say, "Please protect us. Tell all these herdsmen, ‘Take up your swords,' and we're going to have a war here." You can find other situations in the Bible, where the people of God knew when to make a stand and when not to.

V-21 – So they dug another well. He just moved on. And they quarreled over that one. So he called it the name of Enmity – that's what that means in English. He called it the Well of Enemies. And then he did something amazing. He moved on.

It was his land! God had given it all to him. But he realized, it's not worth people dying over this. You know, sometimes it's not just about doing what's right. It's about the collateral damage that you do. Peacemakers are always concerned with collateral damage. What other people do I damage? And there are times when you take it for the good of others. That's hard, isn't it? Oh, this peacemaking stuff isn't easy. You thought longsuffering was hard. Sometimes you take it. This wasn't worth having one human being killed over. But it was his land. He had every right to do whatever he wanted to do with it.

V-22 – So he moved from there, and he dug another well – verse 22 – and they did not quarrel over it. So he called it Spacious – Spaciousness – Big Well – Great Place of Peace – because he said, "For now the LORD has made room for us and we shall be fruitful in the land." "God has taken care of us."

It's hard, sometimes, in this conflict within ourselves, to say, "God, You take care of me." "Yeah, but this person is going to do this to you. This person is going to do that to you." Wait a minute. "God, You take care of me."

Sometimes when you're in conflict with, say, your boss or with somebody at work – and you keep trying to fix it, and you keep making it worse – and sometimes you get into that space of peace with God, and you sit back in that place of peace, and you're reading the scripture, and you're right with God, and the answer is, "Let it go. I will take care of it."

I remember years ago, when I was in the Worldwide Church of God, a situation came up where a fellow minister threatened to fire me, because he wanted me to do something that I felt was quite unethical and I wouldn't do it. It went all the way to the top of the people most highest in the organization. Something dawned on me in that. "Jesus Christ hired me. Jesus Christ can fire me. So I won't worry about it." I never did get fired. Boy, I thought I was going to. There were some angry people. But I wouldn't do what I believed was wrong. And the result was, I found out later, some other ministers came to my defense, and I was protected in all that. That was many, many, years ago, when I first came into the ministry. One of the first things I dealt with, when I first came into the ministry, was a minister telling me to do something that I could not do and then threatening to fire me if I didn't. My first inclination – being who I am – was to take my sword and slay everyone in the village. Some of you have seen that in me, I know. I'm sorry. It's there. You say, "Just sit back and let him go for awhile. Then he'll be okay." I mean, the sword's out and I've got to slay somebody! And that was my first inclination. I'm so glad I didn't, because I would have gotten fired. And guess what? I would have deserved to get fired. I didn't. I went back and prayed about it and realized, "No, Christ is the head of the church, and if He wants me to be fired, then I'm going to get fired. And if He doesn't want me fired, I can't get fired." And I didn't. It was an interesting lesson that went against my nature. You have no idea how that went against my nature. I was so glad I, in that case, learned the lesson.

And here we have Isaac saying, "This isn't worth the collateral damage." One of the hardest passages in the Bible is in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew, chapter 5. In Matthew, chapter 5, and verse 38, Jesus said:

Matthew 5:38 – You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," but I tell you, "Do not resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away." You have heard that it has been said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy," but I say to you, "Love your enemies." Now He didn't say, "Let your enemies do to you whatever they want." You can read other passages where…that's not what He's saying here. But He's making a principle. And the principle is, if you have internal peace, there are times when you are willing – if you have this fruit of the Spirit – there are times when you are willing to give in to another person, even if they're wrong, because it's the right thing to do at that time. That's not easy. He said: "Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. And pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you" – and here's why – "that you may be the sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" The bottom line is that even evil people love people just like them. Even evil people love their own children. "And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore, you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven in perfect."

That is one of the hardest passages of scripture – at least for me. For some people, that may be easy. That's hard for me. But it's what Jesus Christ taught. Now there's only one way you can do that – you have internal peace from God. And there are times that you say, "No, it's not time to make a stand. No, it's not time to do damage. No, it is not time to fight. No, this is the time to just go ahead and take it." I mean, this is the only way you can understand what Peter says, when Peter says, "If you are mistreated and accused falsely, and take it patiently, this is commendable before God!" You say, "How in the world can I do that?" Only because you have internal peace. Inside, you have peace with God. And God is greater than whatever is being presented to you. God is greater than whatever is happening to you. That's hard. That's where we have to go.

The third point – and I'll just briefly touch on this, but this is something we talked about quite a bit in the last couple years in some sermons. Colossians 3 – we really have to learn that when we forgive that we have to just forget. Just forget it! Colossians 3:12 says:

Colossians 3:12 – Therefore, as the elect of God – Paul says – holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another…. Now we read this scripture when we talked about longsuffering – what it means to bear, what it means to suffer for each other. …if any man has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you must also do. But I want to read on. We stopped there. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Now, verse 15:

V-15 – And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the peace of God – because you've forgiven because Christ forgave.

Now, I want you to think about this. Do you want to appear before God some day and have Him say, "You know, I forgave you, but here are ten sins you did in your life that I just cannot forget." Do you want that? And you look at the people that you say, "I have forgiven, but will not forget." See, I can forgive people, but if they hurt me…. Now, people come and tell me their sins all the time. And then they're always surprised when they come back two years later, and I look at them and say, "You have to refresh my memory, because I forget what happened, because I don't want to remember your sins." But, if you did something to me, ooohhhh – or my wife, or my kids – oooohhhh. Right? Now I'm going to remember that! Nah, you've got to let that go. I have to forget that.

Now, if you haven't repented of the sin…I mean, we're not stupid! If someone is an alcoholic, you don't put him in charge of the bar at the social. Right? We have to think these things through. But, do we still look at the person and say, "You are unworthy. I remember that you used to be a stumble-down drunk!" Or, do you look at them and say, "Praise God that you're now not that person anymore?" It would be horrible to think that someday we get to appear before God, and He says, "I forgive you all, but here are the things I won't forget. And a million years from now, I'm going to bring them up. I'm going to bring this up a million years from now."

Unfortunately, today, you and I – and I've talked about this before – we all still suffer the temporary results of our sins. And that's not always fair, but it's the way it is. But eternally, once we're changed, they're gone! That's the way God looks at it. So we're going to have to learn to do that more with each other. We're going to have to let it go. It's not always easy.

And the last point I want to make is – I want to balance this a little bit with – don't confuse being a peacemaker with a person who tries to solve every problem. "I'm a peacemaker. I have to make peace with everybody and everything." I tried that and just about drove myself insane! I'm not big enough to make peace with everybody. I'm not big enough to make peace. I can only deal with me and the person right in front of me. And sometimes, I can't even do that.  Romans, chapter 12, and verse 18:

Romans 12:18 – If it is possible…. Paul writes, "I know you can't always do this, but if it is possible…as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. It's not always possible, because it doesn't always depend on you. But Paul's instruction is, "Do everything you're supposed to do, even at the price of personal pain. Even at the price of personal hurt, even at the price of personal abuse, do everything you're supposed to do, and then, when it can't happen, it's not your fault." That takes a strong person. We think, "Boy, that would be a weak person." No, it takes the opposite. It takes the exact opposite.

It takes a strong person to be a peacemaker, because you have to have an internal peace – that while all this is going on, and this turmoil and anxiety of life around you, and the conflict you have – in the midst of all that and this conflict that's going on inside of you, you keep going to God, and you keep tapping into His peace. You're in the half hour every day, where you're in your Bible and you're on your knees, and you're asking God to take this book and to make it your life. When we're doing that, we find, sometimes, "Well, that's just my pride. That's just my selfishness. That's just my need – my need to be loved, my need to be respected, my need to be recognized, my need for control." How much trouble do we have in life because we have this feeling – "If I'm not in control, it's going to be messed up." Well, it's messed up because there are thousands of us trying to keep control. There are only seven billion of us! And some people aren't control freaks, but the rest of the five billion of us…we're trying to control everything. I'm a firstborn. I understand. I've got to control everything. Nah, you can't. You just make it worse. So the other two billion are saying, "Why are these five billion trying to control everything?" And we're thinking, "What's wrong with you people?" And so we fight.

It's not always possible. So you can't think peacemaking and appeasement are the same thing. Remember, what you're looking for is internal peace, where you may be in a situation where there's anxiety, but underneath that anxiety there is a core of strength. Underneath that turmoil, there's this core. You can't not feel anxiety. You're wired to feel anxiety. You're wired to feel fear. You're wired to feel anger. But underneath it, there has to be a core of strength that comes from God. And underneath that, those other things dissipate. Do you see what I mean? They're temporarily there, but they dissipate. The anger dissipates. The fear dissipates. The need for retribution dissipates, because underneath there is this core. And at this core, there is God's Spirit. And it's won. You've submitted to it. And so it guards your mind and your thoughts. We're not obsessed. I know what it's like to be obsessed. You know, you wake up thinking something every day, and you go to bed at night thinking the same thing, and then you wonder why you're in anxiety all the time. I've been there, too. Do you know how you get rid of that? You go ask God to heal you. You have the God of peace guard your mind and your thoughts and you change the way you think. And this book – this information – becomes in charge and you submit to that Spirit, and you give up your selfishness. You give up the outcome you want. Do you know how many marriages would be better if we'd just try to stop getting your husband or wife to have the outcome we want? And try to force that on them?

You know, Aesop's Fables – I always quote Aesop's Fables because I love Aesop's Fables…. There's one about what it means to appease – when you just try to appease somebody. A man got married to two women – fatal mistake to begin with. One was an older woman and one was a younger woman. And the older woman said, "I don't like you having dark hair. It makes me look older." So every day she would get up and pull out one of his dark hairs. But that's okay, because he liked the attention. She'd always give him a big hug. Well, the younger woman said, "I don't like all that gray hair. It makes you look too old." So every day she'd get up and she'd pluck out a white hair. He loved the attention. He loved the attention until one day he was bald and neither of them wanted him. I know, there are men here without hair, but this is a fable, okay? And neither of them wanted him. And he ended up a man without any wife. Well, there's a point to that fable. You can't appease everybody.

Peacemaking doesn't mean, "Okay, I'm going to let you have your way." It means, "I will not be in conflict with you." I've stood up to you. I've made the point. What am I going to do? Punch you in the nose? There's part of my nature that wants to punch people in the nose. Now I have to admit that, as I get older, that's dying out. It's not as bad as it was when I was younger, but every once in awhile, I want to punch somebody in the nose. Fortunately, I haven't for a long, long time.

One last story. I think I've told this story before. I was playing basketball. I'm in my thirties. I thought I'd conquered this pretty good. But I'm playing basketball and two guys fouled me on purpose. Now they're in the church. They knocked me on the ground, stood over me and did a high-five. I got up off the ground, I didn't say a word, but I started toward them. And we had this one man – we were a really bad basketball team – but we had this one guy – he was about six foot four, about two hundred and forty pounds – he was our center – and suddenly he reached out and he grabbed me around the shoulders, and I was like this – uuuhhhh. I mean, I couldn't move. And he said, "Mr. Petty, are you feeling okay?" "Uhhhh…." I couldn't even talk. And he turned me away and walked me down the court. And after about four or five steps, it was like, "You can let go of me now. I'm okay." "Okay, Mr. Petty." He just smiled and let me go. I said, "Thank you so much." You don't want the associate pastor to walk up and punch somebody in the nose – which was what I was about to do! He said, "Yeah, I thought it best we just go in another direction." Thank God for that man!

We have to fight that nature. I could have sinned. God sent somebody to keep me from sinning. He was just twice my size. I couldn't have sinned if I had wanted to. (Chuckle) The God of peace helped me. Okay? But we have to fight that internal battle.

Real peace can be achieved only when human nature is changed. You and I have been called to have our nature changed by the indwelling of God's Spirit. That means we must develop a peace of mind as a way of life. You're going to have anxieties and fears and anger and conflict. You can't escape that. It's the peace of mind we must be struggling to have. And that internal change will change the way we deal with all those other things. And then we have to become peacemakers.

The strange truth is that humanity can only enjoy peace when it's forced on them. On the Feast of Trumpets we commemorated a time when Jesus Christ is going to come back and do what? Bring God's Kingdom. The Prince of Peace has to fight a war. Part of us resists God's peace so much – because we want our will enforce – that we will fight Christ – humanity will – fight Christ. We don't want that peace. We want peace on our terms. Well, we've proved something. There is no peace on our terms. It doesn't work. You and I are going to be there to help Jesus Christ teach. That's why you and I have to learn peace now.