Help! I Need Peace! [51]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, TJ Freeman addresses the importance of prioritizing responsibilities, especially when overwhelmed by every day challenges. He shares personal experiences and offers insights on how Christians in rural areas can find peace amidst chaos by trusting in God's sovereignty. Highlighting scripture, including Colossians 3:15 and Philippians 4, TJ explains how the peace of God helps believers reframe their circumstances and remain steadfast. He also encourages engagement with other Christians for mutual support and recommends Thomas Watson's book, 'The Art of Divine Contentment,' for deeper spiritual growth.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook
• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

Help! I Need Peace!

If you could just wave a magic wand right now and fix everything wrong in your life, what kind of things would get fixed? What are the things that keep you up at night? The things that make you distracted at the dinner table, the things that frustrate you during the day. What are the things robbing your peace, and what would it look like if peace ruled your life instead?

Great question. Stay tuned to this episode of Back to Rurality. Thank you for joining us for another edition of Back to Rurality. My name is TJ Freeman and I am a rural pastor, which means that like you, yes, I live in the middle of nowhere. It's not a bad thing really, is it? But even living out here in the middle of nowhere, we are not immune to all of the troubles and trials and problems that the rest of the world faces.

And sometimes you might even feel like. Some of your problems are even more significant because of where you live, and that might actually be true. I've been having some troubles lately. Most of them are with my schedule, which is why I have not released an episode of Back to Rurality in a little while.

So please accept my humble apologies. Just so you know, sometimes when things get crazy, you have to prioritize. And I think of it like a pilot. So my dad flies, Cessna as a private pilot. He told me that there's some rules that you need to follow when you get into trouble in an airplane. They are, if I remember correctly, forgive me if I get 'em out of order, dad.

But they are aviate, navigate, and communicate. So the first job of the pilot, fly the airplane. After that, you've gotta figure out where you're going. So you're, you're able to stay in the air. Now how are you gonna get where you're, where you mean to be going? And then lastly, you communicate, reach out and let, the tower somewhere know, here's the trouble I'm facing, or whatever.

And something like that exists in the life of a pastor as well. Before I am a podcaster. I am a pastor of my local church, and so when things get crazy, the primary responsibility I have is to shepherd my congregation. So I'm telling you that. So, you know, I'm not trying to just, you know, pod fade and every now and then I'll throw out an episode and you know, just do it when it's convenient.

I'm just trying to prioritize. What I'm doing in a way that I think most honors the Lord. I've got my family, I've got my church. Then I've got some things like this. So, here's the, kind of tieback into our topic is how do you think about the things that are going on in your life and prioritize? Process?

How do you determine what kind of things you should give a lot of weight to? What kind of things you should put on hold? Sometimes, like even for me with this podcast, it's really important to me, and I want to be able to encourage you as you think about living for God's glory in places that most people overlook.

But I have to choose priorities, and that can weigh on me in a way that bothers me. It can keep me up at night, it can leave me distracted at the dinner table or frustrate me during the day. So when you experience, something like that. What do you do? The world would tell you that's the time that it's okay to be anxious.

You know, when you have too much going on in your life, you're a little too busy, you're a little overwhelmed, you're a little stressed. There's whatever your flavor of the problem of the day looks like. When those things happen, it seems like permission to be anxious, to respond. When people ask you, Hey, how you doing today?

Be like, oh. Super busy. You know, that's like a normal acceptable response. In fact, you almost could be looked down on a little bit if you're not too busy like everybody else. But as a Christian who lives in a town. Where there's not much representation of the gospel. Your response to stuff like that matters, not necessarily more, but differently.

It matters differently because you are there representing Jesus in a place where there's not a lot of representation of the gospel. Remember some of the things we've talked about here, you're made in God's image. For his glory. And then you as a Christian are redeemed even though you've sinned against him and deserve wrath.

Jesus Christ gave you grace by dying for your sins so that your soul could be saved. And when you were saved, you were restored not only to God, but to the responsibility. God created you with to show his glory in everything you do. So God means to be using you in your community to show his glory and in his providence, he's not put many other Christians around you there.

There may not even be a healthy church there. So he's picked you as his representative in this community. So it sounded like. I was gonna maybe tell you how to, how to find peace in the midst of chaos, feels like I'm just putting more responsibility on you here. And the reality is kinda, I mean, you do have extra responsibility because of the salvation that you have received through Christ.

And you are a person who is responsible to live by faith. And yet, in God's kindness, when we walk by faith, according to his word, it doesn't feel like extra hard labor. It's actually quite freeing. That's the sweet side effect that you need to lean into as you think about all the crazy going on in your own life.

So in Paul's letter to the Colossians in chapter three, there's some drama going on in the church apparently, and he talks about bearing with one another in love and letting the word of Christ dwell in you and kind of be the the ruler in you. But he says something really interesting about peace there.

In Colossians three 15. He says, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. He says something similar to the Philippian church in Philippians four. He said, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So. Peace is something that the Lord gives.

It's the peace of God in both cases. It's something that, according to Paul's letter of the Philippians, goes beyond what we're able to just easily comprehend. It's something that guards our hearts, or as he said to the colossian Church. Something that rules in our hearts. So there is a sense in the life of a believer where God gives you a sense of peace that is different from the kind of peace or comfort that the world would experience.

I think this is evidence in the fact that it's right there in the list we've been working through, together with the fruit of the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace. So here's. Something to consider when you became a Christian and you received the Holy Spirit, it's like the seed of peace was planted in your heart, and as you're sanctified by working through trials and challenges and concerns of all kinds, that seed germinates and it starts to.

Produce fruit starts to produce a stalk that then produces this leafy canopy. And on that leafy canopy, the fruit of peace becomes evident. So there's a reframing of your circumstances that takes place where you're going, okay, this is stressing me out. This is worrying me. This is a concern that's really weighing on me.

This is a distraction in my life. And you filter those through scripture and you go, alright. Those things are stressful, and those things are a lot. Yet God is sovereign. He's ruling on a throne, and he cannot be thrown off from it. He's good. He actually cares for me, and he loves me. He saved my soul, so my eternity is secure in him, and he's with me every single day now in everything I do.

So I have. The God of the universe present with me in all of my circumstances, and you start to process your life according to scripture like we've talked about from Romans 12, one, and two. And a piece comes over you that is a gift from the Lord that is meant to rule over the situation. What happens when I start to spin outta control and get stressed is that I forget that reality.

I start to let my issues rule me. I start to think, oh man, this, this problem in my family is so significant and I don't know how it's gonna resolve. So I let that begin to rule, that's dominating my thought, and all of a sudden peace is gone. Or I go, you know what? I'm worried about the amount of dollars that are gonna be left in my bank account.

After all the people who seem to want my dollars get ahold of them. I'm afraid I'm not gonna have enough money. I let that fear begin to rule, and I start to forget all of the things that God has just so clearly done all throughout scripture. On behalf of his people as they trust him by faith. And remember, we are in fact the people who live by faith, not by the things that we see.

I read a book. Here in the last week or so, I finished it, by Thomas Watson called The Art of Divine Contentment, and I just wanna commend that book to you. It's written by a Puritan, so let's be honest. It's not as easy to read as like the purpose driven life, but it's gonna be way better for your soul than any of that nonsense.

It is worth wa into the depths of older literature. It's not that hard. You're a few pages in, you're just already, your brain figures it out. So I would encourage you to grab a copy of Thomas Watson's, the Art of Divine Contentment. You can even listen to it on Audible. I've done both the audible and the book form of it and just found it so helpful.

One of the things he talks about is when we lack contentment, or I think it'd be fair to say, when we lack peace, we are looking at our circumstances through the the wrong lens. An example he uses is when you don't think you have enough, it's because you're comparing yourself to somebody who has more than you.

But if you would look at somebody whose position is beneath yours, somebody who has less than you, you'd realize, wow, I have way more than enough. And you've probably experienced this before. You ever go away, roughen it on a vacation? Maybe you're tent camping or something, or you're in a cabin and you get by totally fine, and then you come home and you're like, wow, like having an oven and flush toilets and all that kinda stuff.

That's all gravy. You know? I was able to live without that stuff. Really thankful to have it. Sometimes when you look at things from a little bit of a different angle, perspective can be renewed. He goes on beyond that to say, when we really trust in the fact that God is real, that he's really present and that he really loves us.

That has a way of balancing out the skewed view you might have without that in mind. We sang about this in my church last Sunday. There's a song called Christ The Sure and Steady Anchor. It talks about waves of unbelief, just lapping it against the ship, and you're kind of like rocking around in them.

But then it says, this, my ballast. Of assurance. A ballast is like a counterweight that will keep you steady even when things are rough. And the ballast that we have in our life, the ballast of assurance, is that God's words are true. He's faithful, he's good, and we can count on those things.

So as you take stock of your life, ask yourself, what are some of the things that have been eaten my lunch? What are those things that are just bothering me? Weighing on me, distracting me, and then process those in light of the gospel. Just go to the Lord in prayer. Ask him to help you have confidence in his word.

Maybe put some of these verses like Colossians three into your heart. Memorize those things. Philippians four, so that you, when trouble hits, you have that ballast of assurance 'cause God's word just speaks louder than those issues that you're facing. And then something that'd be really helpful is for you to get together with some other Christians in your community and share embarrassing things about yourself.

Just admit to those people, you're not as strong as you wish you were. You don't have it all figured out. You're struggling with some of these matters. 'cause I know that they're gonna be struggling too. And as you encourage each other in the Lord with the word, you might be amazed at how God uses.

The presence of the church, universal, the Big C Church right there in your community where there might not be a, a healthy local church. God can use other Christians in your community to encourage you, and he can use you to encourage them. In fact, that's what he means to. So pray about that. Spend some time in God's Word and allow the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.

To guard your hearts in Christ Jesus. Let it rule you. Demonstrate the gospel as you trust in Christ by faith. Well, thanks for listening. This podcast is a ministry of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry. We want to see healthy churches in every rural community. We're starting by thinking about, hey, if there's a Dollar General somewhere, there probably should be a healthy church there because if the Dollar Store can figure out how to survive in a small town, the church surely can too, and you're probably part of that solution.

So keep praying. Keep trusting the Lord with that and if we can be a resource to you, you can go to brainerd institute.com to see some of the articles and other podcasts, other things we've got going on there. Or you can reach out to us. We'd love to be in touch with you. Thanks for now though. Why don't we get back to life, back to rurality.

Bye-bye.