Unanswered Questions

All right, you guys, we're in a series called There Is More.

I want more.

Do you want more of God?

We want more for our church.

We want to grow more as disciples.

And this is a series in which we are going through the book of Acts chapter by chapter.

And I get the privilege of doing chapter 12 of the book of Acts.

The title of my message is Unanswered Questions.

Have you ever been there?

Unanswered questions, been through something hard where you were thinking, why am I going through this?

What's going on in my life?

Or maybe somebody close to you is going through something and you're like, why is this happening?

We have questions when we go through hard things.

And if you've ever been through something hard, you know what it's like.

So this is where we find the church in the book of Acts.

So let's pay attention to the word.

As I read, it's kind of a long section of chapter, but stay with me.

It's a really interesting chapter.

It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them.

He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword.

When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also.

This happened during the festival of unleavened bread.

After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each.

Herod intended to bring him out

Now, these verses that we start with in Acts 12 are a gut punch few verses.

James just got beheaded, and now Peter's in the same prison by the same king under the same guarding of those soldiers.

It's a gut punch.

They're like, James was one of those closest to Jesus.

Peter, James, and John, they were the closest ones to Jesus.

Why James, Lord?

Why didn't you say James?

He was so close to you.

Haven't we ever had that thought or had that question?

Like, why that person?

Right?

Also, I mean, this is some extreme guarding.

What is going on with this extremeness and how they're guarding Peter in this prison?

So I don't want us to forget, back in chapter 5, there had already been a miraculous escape from prison for some of the disciples by an angel.

And so Herod's like, that's not happening again.

I'm going to put all my best.

I'm going to do all I can in the natural.

Herod looks large and in charge at this point in the chapter, but let's keep going and see what happens.

So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

We're going to come back to that.

That's a very pivotal point in our chapter.

Verse 1.

Verse 1.

Quick, get up, he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists.

Then the angel said to him, put on your clothes and sandals, and Peter did so.

Wrap your cloak around you and follow me, the angel told him.

Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening.

He thought he was seeing a vision.

They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city.

It opened for them by itself, and they went through it.

That's cool.

When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

Then Peter came to himself and said, Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.

When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.

Peter knocked at the outer entrance and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door.

When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed, she ran back without opening and exclaimed, Peter is at the door.

That's so funny.

She was just like ran out like, oh, I forgot to ask you to come in the house.

You're out of your mind, they told her.

They don't even know how powerful their prayers are.

When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, it must be his angel.

But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him,

They were astonished.

Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison.

Tell James, this is a different James, this is Jesus' brother actually, a leader in the church.

Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this, he said.

And then he left for another place.

Well, I'm wondering how the church dealt with these kinds of situations, right?

So we have James just beheaded, and we have Peter miraculously rescued.

That is the book of Acts.

We see miracles.

We see the power of God showing up.

I want that.

We also see a church who knows how to suffer.

how to go through hardship, how to go through loss, how to go through heartache.

They know how to do it, and we're going to learn from that today.

And I think sometimes when we go through things like that, we have questions like, why?

Why did that happen like that?

And sometimes we want formulas, right?

We're like, well, did they not pray right?

Did they not use the right words?

Is that why James didn't get delivered and Peter did?

And sometimes we just want that because it's our human nature to want answers and to want formulas so we protect ourselves from the bad things happening, right?

Well, that's not how...

you were designed.

You weren't designed to know all the answers.

You weren't designed.

You were never meant to know all the answers for all the questions in your heart.

What you were designed for is to know that you're loved and to trust a God that does know all the answers and who is always working in your life to create a beautiful story.

J.B.

Phillips said this, if God were small enough for me to understand, he would not be big enough for me to worship.

So we are meant to worship a God that knows everything.

Amen.

And the truth is we'll very rarely get answers to our why questions.

We'll very rarely get answers.

Sometimes maybe, but most of the time not.

In fact, if you continually ask for the answer to a why question, I just want to say it's going to lead you into emotions that will not be healthy and they'll actually end up being toxic in your life.

If you continually ask why, you're going to start having anger and bitterness develop in your life, maybe hopelessness, because you're just so focused on, I need to know why that happened.

And God says, come to me with your questions.

Come to me and worship me through the midst of whatever that you're going through.

What I would like to suggest to you that is a better question for you than why is what?

Shift your question from why God to what are you growing inside of me?

What's growing inside of me during this hard time in my life?

That's a question that we're going to answer today.

We're going to look and see what was growing in the church during this hard time.

What was growing inside of them?

I want to preface my message first, though, by saying I know that many of you have been through very difficult things in your life, and some of you are in the midst of them right now.

You're sitting in this room saying, I need this message because I'm going through something right now.

And what I want to tell you is this.

When you go through hard things, you will be emotionally affected.

You will have emotions.

You will be affected psychologically.

It's hard when you go through something.

And my message is not to suggest that you just bury those emotions, repress those emotions, don't think about those emotions.

In fact, what I know is that in order to heal from the hard things of life, you have to process every emotion and take it to the Lord.

And my message today is meant to give you some guardrails, some guardrails of life so that as you ping pong through all your emotions, you have something that's keeping you from going off the cliff, right?

We need guardrails when we're going through a dangerous territory where there's lots of cliffs and lots of things that we could go off the road.

We need some guardrails, and that's my message today.

I want to give you some guardrails so that you don't fall off the cliff as you go through something hard.

You guys okay with that?

Yes.

Okay, so let's look at the first thing that was growing in the church during a hard time in their life.

And it comes out of this scripture, Acts 12, 6.

The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping.

between two soldiers bound with two chains and sentries, stood guard at the entrance.

The first thing that is growing in the church during a hard time was peace.

So peace was the first thing that we see happening in the church during a very difficult time.

And I am just amazed at that.

I mean, can you imagine?

Peter, in the same place that James was, and just about to have the same thing happen, which was chopping block.

He's about to get his head chopped off, and he's sleeping.

He didn't have Xanax.

He didn't have Sleepy Time app.

He didn't have anything that was going to help him go to sleep.

He just had two big guards holding him down, and he was asleep.

And I wonder, what was Peter telling himself?

I mean, James had just been there.

What was Peter saying to himself that was allowing him to sleep?

He had a focus on something bigger than himself.

And he was able to sleep.

Also, here's what I think.

I wonder if Peter is like, I remember going through a storm.

I remember going through a different storm and seeing how Jesus went through that storm.

And in that storm, it's Mark 4.

There's a boat.

They're all in a boat, Jesus and the disciples.

They're on a lake, and suddenly, has anybody been there?

Suddenly, a storm hits.

You're like, wow, that was shocking.

I was just having a regular day, and then suddenly something happens.

That's where the disciples were, and the storm comes up, and they literally think they're going to drown.

And what is Jesus doing?

He's asleep.

He's got a pillow, and he's got his head down, and he is asleep.

And I think Peter's remembering how Jesus went through that storm because Jesus is demonstrating you can have peace in the middle of a storm.

So right when the disciples were like, Jesus, don't you care that we're going to die?

They're accusing him of not caring.

Have you ever felt like that?

Don't you see me, God?

Don't you see what I'm going through?

And Jesus answers like this.

He says he got up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, quiet, be still.

Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

This word, quiet, be still, this phrase is a very emphatic command.

And here is what the original language of quiet, be still actually means.

It means hold your peace, be silent.

When you are going through a storm, you need to tell yourself this.

Hold your peace, Beth.

Hold your peace.

I know all this stuff is going on around me.

I know that I've got all these pressures and anxieties and things that are threatening me with something, criticisms or oppositions.

I don't know what you might be going through.

But in that moment, you need to tell yourself, hold your peace.

And then you need to tell that storm to be silent.

Storm, be silent.

You don't get to tell me anything about me.

You don't get to tell me anything about God and his character.

You don't get to define one thing about my life and my God.

Because what happens when you go through a storm is that that storm tries to tell you what's true.

That storm has no power in your life if you tell it to be silent.

Be silent, storm.

You cannot tell me one thing about what I'm going through.

Hold your peace.

Jesus really teaches us how to go through things.

And there's so many scriptures.

Paul teaches us how to go through things.

Another time that Jesus was teaching his disciples about how to go through something hard was on their way to Jerusalem.

Jesus is about to be crucified, the most brutal death that you can ever imagine.

And he knows it.

And he knows his disciples, too, are going to go through some hard times.

Because he tells them that.

You know, the Bible actually says that trouble and hard times will come.

But Jesus says, take heart.

I've overcome the world.

But on his way to Jerusalem, what he does is he tells them this.

He says in John 14, 27, Peace I leave with you, my perfect peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you.

Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.

Let my perfect peace calm you in every circumstance and give you courage and strength and

For every challenge.

Jesus is on his way to the hardest thing he'll ever face.

And he says, my peace I give you.

My peace I give you.

Did you know that you can't give something you don't possess?

You can't give away.

You can't impart something that you don't walk in.

And as I was actually preparing that part of my message earlier this week, typing out this scripture, praying for you that God would meet you wherever you are and give you peace today, that the Prince of Peace would come.

I was just praying so, like, God, meet your people.

As they hear your word, meet your people.

And as I was doing that, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit.

And he said, Beth, are you in peace?

Are you walking in peace right now?

A little hint for you all.

When Jesus asks you a question, you should stop and ask him the answer.

He knows why he's asking.

And he said to me, and I knew immediately, no, I'm not.

I knew immediately I'm thinking about pressure.

I'm living kind of stressed out right now.

I'm just trying to get things done.

And the Lord said to me, you need to repent and let me come into that space in your life.

So I just stopped right there.

I said, Lord, forgive me.

Because I knew in that moment he had already spoke to me and said, you can't impart something that you don't have.

And I just said, Lord, may I not be the reason that anybody doesn't receive what they need today.

So I repented.

And you, too, can ask honestly, God, am I walking in true peace?

Is the Prince of Peace such a part of my life that I am walking, no matter what I'm going through, am I walking in peace?

I want you to ask yourself that question today.

The peace that Jesus brings is no shallow encouragement.

It's nothing that is just a wishful thought and a hope that you could maybe walk in peace.

When Jesus comes and he says, peace be with you, it is a real peace because peace is not just an emotion.

Peace is a person.

The Bible calls Jesus the Prince of Peace.

We sang about it.

That song, Names, that actually preached my whole sermon.

That song was incredible.

As I'm worshiping, I'm like, Lord, may people hear this, that we can worship the Prince of Peace.

And in he comes, and he comes in, and he meets with us.

The Prince of Peace can overcome anything.

There's no disappointment, hardship, pain, loss in your life.

that the Prince of Peace can't come and overcome and give you everything you need to walk through that.

The Prince of Peace is in the room right now.

And as I talk, I just ask him to come and sit with you.

Ask him to come and speak to you.

Ask him to come and break off every anxiety.

The devil wants to come and he wants to fill you with anxiety and fear and

and bitterness, and everything else that will take you out of the presence of God.

He says, let me in.

Let me overcome every attempt of the devil to pull you away from me, the Prince of Peace.

Now, some people say that the only way to have peace is to know that you are Peter in the story and not James.

Me too.

I mean, I want to be Peter.

I want to have that wake, you know, wake me up, angel.

Hit me in the side as hard as you want.

I want to be Peter.

But that's not, the Bible actually says we're going to have trouble.

And we're going to have things that we have to go through.

And as I studied for this sermon, I was absolutely wrecked.

like bawling my eyes out as I read this the first time.

The story of James, actually, there's a church historian named Eusebius that wrote the church history.

Now, this isn't in the Bible.

I want to make that clear.

Eusebius is a church historian.

There's history books written about some of the other stories that happened.

And

I'm just going to read to you what Eusebius wrote about James' execution.

As James was led to his execution, the soldier assigned to guard him was so moved by James' bold testimony and faith that he confessed that he was also a Christian.

Now, can you just pause with me for just one minute?

That soldier knew exactly where he was headed when he professed to say, Jesus come into my life.

Also notice that James was full of faith and sharing a bold testimony, the last steps of his life before he met Jesus face to face again.

It is the most incredible thing to me that James was walking.

There's no way he wasn't walking in peace.

And there's one more thing that Eusebius said that I want you to hear that actually shows that James too was in peace.

Both James and the soldier were led away to be beheaded together.

On the way, the soldier asked James for forgiveness because he had probably beaten him.

He'd probably done some really difficult things to James.

James paused, said, peace be with you.

Just like Jesus said, peace be with you.

Remember, you can't give something you don't possess.

He said, peace be with you.

He kissed him, and they were both beheaded at the same time.

To me, that is as much of a miracle as the miracle of the angel rescuing Peter from that prison.

The miracle of peace and the miracle of a man who so understands that there's a God who loves him and is always with him and he's living for the glory of God no matter what he's going through.

That is the way that we can walk in peace.

In order to walk in peace, there's one more thing that I want to say that is really, really important.

Isaiah 26.3, you will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you.

Your brain is designed to work in stories.

Your brain works in stories.

It remembers things best in stories.

It will fill in any gaps in any kind of thought process you have.

If there's a gap, then it's going to fill it in with a story.

Anybody like to people watch at an airport?

Okay, what are we doing?

We're just telling ourselves story after story about all the people that we're watching.

You don't even know you're doing it, but you feel like you know where they're going and what they're doing and what their life is like because you're telling yourself a story.

That's how our brains just naturally work.

Well, when you go through hard things...

Your brain also, because if there's unanswered questions in your life about the hard thing, your brain's going to fill in that gap with something, some sort of narrative that fills in the gap.

So you have to check it.

What am I telling myself?

Because if you're telling yourself things about God that aren't true or about yourself that aren't true, your life, your emotions will follow that.

You'll not be in peace.

You'll be in all kinds of other problem emotions.

But if you're telling yourself, I have a God that loves me and cares about me and with me and will never leave me, you're going to be able to walk through that with the Prince of Peace.

See, what happens is we want our... Sometimes this is what happens, but the things we experienced in the past, whether it's our childhood or something that we've gone through with a parent or a significant person in our life, and then it gets in us like it's truth.

And then anything that happens in our...

Current life, we're just filling it in with that.

Well, my parents, they abandoned me.

So God, you must abandon me too.

God, my parents didn't love me the way I wanted to be loved.

So God, I'm sure you can't love me that way either.

Our brain will fill it in with our experiences, with anything that we've experienced before.

You got to be careful.

And that's why we need to be in the word.

That's why I need to be in church.

We need to be with other believers so that we are getting fed the truth about really the gaps that are in our lives when we have unanswered questions.

Okay.

You guys with me?

Paul writes this incredible verse in Romans 8 that he's addressing this very thing.

He's like, hey, guys, we're going through all kinds of trouble and hardship and famine and death and nakedness and all the things that we're going through as apostles.

And look what he says.

This is Roman 8.

Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love?

Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted, hungry, destitute, in danger, threatened with death?

As the scriptures say, for your sake we are killed every day.

We are being slaughtered like sheep.

No.

He's just like, no.

I will not let that wrong narrative get in my life.

No.

Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us.

Somebody needs to hear this today.

You need the right narrative.

You need to know God loves you.

And I am convinced that nothing can separate us from God's love, neither death nor life.

See, the apostles in this time that we're reading about, they did face death.

They faced death all the time.

They're like, neither death nor life.

angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell.

Anybody ever felt like you had the powers of hell coming against you about something?

It's a real thing.

Not even that can separate us from God's love.

No power in the sky above.

He just goes on and on.

No power in the sky above or the earth below.

Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Somebody needs to put this on your refrigerator or put it on your bathroom mirror where you're not going to ever forget it.

God will not always answer our why questions, but he will always remind you of who is with you.

Until you get it in your spirit that his presence through everything you go through is a more precious gift than an answer to your questions, you'll always struggle.

When you hold on to his presence, his more precious than answers, you'll be able to walk through anything.

That is the gift.

That's the prize.

The prize is him.

The prize is not me knowing everything.

The prize is him.

He already knows everything, and I trust him that he's always working in my life, and he's creating a beautiful story as he does it.

That's what the truth is.

All right.

Let's go to the second thing that is growing in the church during a really hard time of unanswered questions.

What's the next thing that is growing?

Scripture 12.5.

So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

The next thing that was growing in the church was persistence in prayer and community.

When you go through something hard, you need something inside of you that says, I will stay in community.

I will keep praying.

Even when something happens, I'm never going to stop praying.

I will never stop meeting with people.

The persistence that that early church had to stay in community was amazing.

It was something that...

I wish that we were that kind of people today, that we would stay connected no matter what.

Because what happens in our lives is sometimes when we go through hard things, we want to take that step back.

We want to say, I just need to be alone for a while.

I don't want people asking me questions.

I don't want to be around all those people.

But really, all those people is the body of Christ himself that wants to strengthen you and help you during those times.

And they prayed.

I mean, they prayed earnestly.

This word earnest is the word ektenos.

And it's a medical term describing the stretching of a muscle to its limit.

So Luke, when he uses this word that the church was earnestly praying, it's the same word that he used in the Gospel of Luke to say how Jesus prayed when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane right before he was going to go and be crucified.

Ektanos.

It's this picture, like think of a prisoner in a jail cell, and that key for his release is right down there on the floor.

He sees it.

He's reaching out as far as he can.

He's stretching that muscle as far as he can to get that deliverance from this cell.

That's the kind of praying that the church is doing in this time of unanswered questions.

And I know sometimes it is hard to pray.

when you go through something hard, especially trauma, something like that.

Sometimes it's just hard to pray.

Sometimes all you can pray is, Jesus, Jesus.

You just say, Jesus, Jesus, over and over.

But what I've also learned is that when I'm in that place where I can't pray anything but that, I need the body of Christ around me at that time.

I need people around me at that time.

And the church knew that.

They were praying.

And they knew that they strengthened one another.

The Bible says in Acts 12, it says, Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.

That's what they were doing.

I believe that James' family was in that prayer meeting when Peter went to that prayer meeting and he found them all praying in the middle of the night.

I believe James' family was there.

because they were getting strength.

They were mourning with those who mourn.

Proverbs 17, 7, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.

We're born to walk through things with each other.

I mean, when you're a friend and you have a friend that's going through something, doesn't it feel meaningful to actually walk with them through that and be a source of comfort and encouragement?

This is how the church lived.

You know, Herod thought he had all the strength in his natural.

The natural means he had prisons and iron gates and he had big guards and he had all of that.

But the church had prayer.

And the church knew that our weapon is way stronger than anything that Herod could have.

You know, I think Pastor Caleb was saying this in his transition today, that the government of God is here today.

And he defined it.

He said the government of God.

God's in control.

The church knew that.

The church knew Herod looks like he's in control.

And you may be thinking, it looks like there's things in my circumstance that are in control.

But God is actually the one in control.

The church knew that.

That's how they could pray at Tinos.

That's how they could pray earnestly because they were praying to a God who knew all things and was always working.

Life is so full of ups and downs, and you want to be in a place where when you go through something that you have the church beside you.

I'm just going to stop and make a plug for just a minute for our life groups.

You saw as you came in, I mean, we've got all kinds of things going on in the parking lot today.

It's our life group sign-up Sunday, and I want to encourage you, like, get in a group, right?

We need each other.

My dream is that every single one of you would be in a group and that you would be gaining strength from other believers and that you'd be growing in the Lord with one another.

God is doing something new in this earth.

He's doing something new in the church.

I don't want to miss one thing.

I want to be right in the middle of it all.

And I want you to be in the middle of it all too.

And if you'll get in a life group,

You're going to grow and you're going to go on to new things and grow in new ways and meet new people.

You're going to have strength.

The Lord was talking to me about this today or actually yesterday.

I feel like I'm a pretty strong person.

Like I'm pretty strong.

I'm pretty independent most of the time.

But I don't know everything and I don't have all the strength I need all the time.

When I'm going through something, you know, you feel weak.

When somebody comes along beside you, it's like suddenly there's a multiplication of the strength that was inside of me.

Now I suddenly feel something new.

That's what life groups are meant to be, a protection over you, a strength to you, a place of growth for you.

So be in a group.

Get out there.

We've got directories.

We've got all kinds of life group leaders out there to talk to you.

Find anybody with one of those orange lanterns and say,

Hey, I want to be in a group.

That lady up there, that crazy lady, she said, like, be in a group.

So go find somebody and say, can you help me find a group?

They'll help you find a group.

You guys good with that?

Yay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm going to end this message with a question.

First of all, we're asking the question, what's growing inside of you when you're going through something difficult?

Peace?

Persistence?

Those are two things.

The Bible talks about many other things that can grow inside of us during hard times.

I'm picking two today.

But also, I asked this question of myself as I was doing this message, like, how?

How did they do that?

Like, sometimes that feels hard to have peace in those moments or to be persistent.

But here's what the Lord showed me.

He showed me that they were a people that had surrendered their lives to something much greater than themselves.

They weren't living a life for self.

They weren't living a life just to have fun, just to make it through a comfortable life.

They had given themselves over to something much greater than themselves, something that would last forever.

And this chapter ends in a very interesting way.

You know, we saw the contrast at the beginning of, you know, between James and Peter.

You know, one goes this way, one goes this way.

We see God in the midst of both of those situations, right?

The other thing that is a contrast that we see in this chapter is the way it ends.

The way it ends is that Herod, who looked like he had all the control and all the power at one point in the story, at the end, he's meeting with a group of people from a town that depended on him for food.

And as they met with him, they began to praise him.

And they said, a voice of a God and not a man.

And they began to call him a God.

And the Bible says that what happened is, is because he didn't give glory to God,

An angel of the Lord came and struck him dead.

I don't know, maybe it was the same angel that rescued Peter.

He came and he's like, he didn't give glory to God.

But the very next verse, I think Luke does it very much on purpose.

The very next verse says, but the church multiplied and more people came to know the Lord year after year.

And I absolutely love that kind of ending to this story because what it teaches me is this.

When you're surrendered to giving glory to God in all the things about your life, no matter what you go through, no matter what unanswered question you have, if your life is surrendered to an eternal God that can use whatever you're going through for good and for his glory, God wants to bless that.

If I'm living my life for self,

to only live for what's here on earth and only live for my own comforts and my own pleasures.

There's something about that.

that God wants to remove from us, really.

And so I want to give us a chance right now to just, I want us to pray together.

I'm going to pray for two things.

I'm going to pray for those of you who have never given your life to the Lord.

Or maybe you have given your life to the Lord at an earlier time in your life, but today you want to actually rededicate your life to the Lord.

Maybe you're saying, you know, I know the Lord, but I haven't surrendered lately.

And so I'm going to pray a prayer in just a minute for that, for anybody who wants to surrender your life fresh and new to the Lord.

And then I'm also going to pray that we would all experience the peace of God, no matter what you're going through, that you would encounter the Prince of Peace in your situation.

So I'm going to pray that first.

Can we just all just take a minute, just bow your heads, close your eyes, and just ask the Lord, am I in peace right now?

Is my life living in peace, or am I in stress, anxiety, bitterness, anger, depression?

God wants to meet you, and God wants to say something to you.

God wants to encounter you.

So God, I just pray right now that every person, every person would know that the Prince of Peace is walking around this room and meeting with every person.

The Prince of Peace is here today to meet you and to speak to you and to say something to you that is going to help you walk through whatever you're going through.

The Prince of Peace is here today.

And we say, devil, you got to get out of this room.

We cast every...

every spirit of anxiety, every spirit of bitterness and anger.

We say you must leave and the Prince of Peace will come in and reside in your heart right now.

Prince of Peace, we thank you.

We thank you that you give us far more than we could ever accomplish on our own.

We can't make peace happen.

Jesus, you are our peace.

So God, bless your people with peace today.

In Jesus' name.

If you've never surrendered your life to something bigger than you, to Jesus, his kingdom, and wanting to advance his kingdom on this earth, today you can do that.

Here's what it means.

It just means that you're going to accept Jesus' forgiveness for your sins.

He went to the cross to pay the price so that you could have peace with God forever.

If you're not living in peace with God, he wants to do that right now in your life.

So in just a minute, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand if you want to surrender to God.

Maybe for the first time, maybe because you're surrendering again to something that is bigger than you.

So if you want to surrender to Jesus.

Raise your hand.

Raise your hand, and we're going to pray together in just a minute.

I'm not going to ask you to come down.

I'm not going to ask you to do anything other than let me just see your hands if you want to surrender.

If you want to surrender to God, I see your hand.

I see your hand.

I see your hands.

I see your hands.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for these people that are surrendering to you and saying they want to live for something greater than themselves.

I see your hand.

So God, I just pray right now for every person with their hand raised.

Just, you pray this prayer in your heart as I pray it.

You guys don't need to say it out loud.

Just say it in your heart.

If this is a prayer of your heart, God, thank you.

Thank you for forgiving all my sins.

Thank you, Lord, that you went to the cross on my behalf so that I could have peace with God forever.

Prince of Peace come into that person's life right now.

And may they know that they can now live for you forever.

They can live a life of serving you and living for something greater than themselves.

We thank you, God, for it.

In Jesus' name, amen, amen.