Grinch #4 - Enlarging My Heart
Developing A Peaceful Heart
Dec 21, 2008
How’s your Christmas gift shopping going? Some of you have your gifts all wrapped and underneath the tree. Some of you haven’t even started yet. Many of you will be involved in some sort of Pollyanna or gift exchange this year with your family or at work. Have you ever brought a really nice gift to exchange and left with some dork gift destined for the yard sale? Several years ago my family had a $2.00 gift exchange. We drew names and I got my cousin who had 3 growing boys. We stopped at Rocky’s farm market down on the pike and picked up 50 pound of potatoes for 2 bucks as our gift exchange. Pretty good gift! We brought home some dorky decoration or something, so bad I don’t even remember it.
That reminds me of our gift exchange with God. We give Him our problems, our sins, our mistakes, our mess-ups and He gives us peace. We give God the garbage gifts and He gives us His Son. Something’s wrong with this picture, isn’t there? I don’t understand it and never will. It is a simple transaction really. It is going to God and saying, “God, I can’t handle this. I’m giving it to you.” The wonder is that God in return gives us His peace. Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and tired because of your heavy burdens and I will give you peace.” Did you hear those words, “Come to me?” That is the invitation. When you go to God and hand over your worries, problems, stressors, pain and all the other stuff, He takes it from us and gives us His peace. Who wouldn’t want a gift exchange like that?
Now, that doesn’t mean that He will take away the problem. If you are at odds with someone and you give that problem to God, God is not going to be a Tony Soprano and take that person out. Peace is not the absent of problems. Peace is the ability to cope with your problems. God gives you the ability to deal with those problems and issues. When you have God’s peace and God’s power then you can obtain victory over that issue.
We are talking about the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas from the Whos of Whoville and ended up having a changed and a peaceful heart. His heart went from 2 sizes to small to 2 sizes larger than normal. That’s a whopping 400% increase! His heart was definitely changed! In the 1950s Sir Arthur Kent wrote a book called the New Theory of Human Evolution in which he wrote this: “The future of the world or the course of human history is determined not by what happens in the sky, but what happens in the hearts.”
By now you are aware that our key foundational Scripture verse is Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.” Over the past few weeks we have looked at developing a pure heart, a passionate heart, a patient heart and now a peaceful heart. What is it specifically that is stealing your peace?
I. The great unfortunate aspect of searching for a peaceful heart is that we most often look in the wrong places. There are four places that people generally go to in attempting to find peace.
A. The first wrong place is having more stuff. When we get stressed, we go to the mall. When we are overwhelmed, we buy a new car. When we are anxious we find our comfort at ShopRite or Acme. What do we get in return? Yes, we get some peace but it is short-lived and what we really get is more bills, a car payment and more fat on our bodies! The search for peace is the number one cause of consumer debt.
B. The second wrong place we look for peace is through activity. If we just keep ourselves busy—fill up our schedules, work harder, be involved—then we won’t have any downtime or quiet time to remind us that we don’t have peace. Our search for peace is the number one cause of workaholism.
C. The 3rd wrong place we look for peace is through artificial stimulants—some kind of drug like cocaine or weed, or maybe alcohol or pornography. Our search for peace is the number one cause of addictions of all kinds.
E. The 4th wrong place we look for peace is through relationships. We think that another person will make us happy. If I could find just the right person, or get into a lasting relationship, or if my husband/wife would just change, then I would find peace. Our search for peace is the number one cause of casual sex and divorce.
God’s desire is that we experience peace in our hearts and lives. Every one of us wants peace in our hearts and lives. How about that! God and we are on the same page! Let me give you a working definition of a peaceful heart from God’s perspective: a peaceful heart is a consistently pure, passionate and patient heart.
If you don’t have a pure heart, you won’t be a peace with God. If you don’t have a passionate heart, you won’t be a peace with yourself. If you don’t have a patient heart, you won’t be at peace with others. I believe that true, long lasting, enduring peace can only come when we have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
We celebrate God’s peace at Christmas. “His name shall be called….the Prince of Peace.” The angels announced to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of goodwill.” When Jesus came to earth, He was the completion of all God needed to do so that you and I could have the opportunity to have a peaceful heart.
The heart as the center of your being is the most important place of all. God wants each of us to experience peace, His peace.
II. On this night before Christmas I want to lay out for you 5 steps for a peaceful heart. We are going to use an acrostic, that is, spelling out the word PEACE to describe these steps. If you do all 5 of these steps you will have a consistently peaceful heart. In fact even if you do 1 or 2 of these steps you will find some peace and probably more peace than you have now. Obviously the goal is to practice all 5 of these steps because God wants the very best for you. So don’t be satisfied with a little peace or a bit more peace, but go for the gusto and get it all! So here is God’s plan for developing a peaceful heart.
A. First, is the issue of priority. Priorities are important and they matter. Proper priorities produce peace. All of us have established priorities in our lives, however noble or ignoble, right or wrong they are. The reality is that something is the number 1 priority right now in your life. By the way, there is only ONE number 1 priority. You can’t have TWO number 1 priorities. We simply don’t have peace in our hearts and lives because we have improper priorities. The Bible teaches us that each of us was created to have God as the number one priority. That is how He made us. When He is #1, then everything pretty much falls into place, but when He is not, then life is out of control and becomes a mess. In fact Jesus said, “Get your priorities right by seeking God’s Kingdom first. Then all your other needs will be taken care of.” (Mt 6:33) Put God first in your relationships and you will find peace in those relationships. Put God first in your finances and you will have peace in those finances. Put God first in your career and your job will be full of peace. Put God first in your marriage and you will have peace in your marriage. In every area of your life, if (and that is a big if for most people) you put God as the top priority, there will be peace. That’s the first step.
B. Second, exchange your problems for God’s peace. Sometimes problems come from you. Bad decisions, bad choices, wrongheaded priorities, bad company and more cause problems in your life. No one to blame but yourself. Sometimes problems come from outside of you like your boss, your neighbors, your kids, your spouse, the government, the recession, et al. You have no control over them so why worry? The Bible has a simple answer for that—“Fret not!” There is nothing you can do to change it so why get all tied up in knots over it and have no peace. Exchange that situation for God’s peace by giving it to God. And this leads to the third step.
C. Third, accept your limitations. If you want to develop a peaceful heart, you need to realize and then to accept that you are not perfect, you have flaws and you cannot do it all. In short you are not perfect! So, if we have limitations how can God say that we can have peace? Here it is: quit focusing on your limitations and instead focus on God’s unlimited abilities and power. Ironically with God many times the very thing you think is a limitation is the very thing God will use in and through you to do great things. God takes nothing and transforms it to something. God takes nobodies and makes them somebodies!
The reality is that you cannot give yourself peace. There are some things you can do to help, but it is God who gives the peace. He is limitless. His working in our lives brings us consistent peace.
D. Fourth, confess your sins—daily if need be. All of us sin. We blow it. We mess up. We go against God’s will. We hurt people. We do stupid stuff that offends God and others. And all this is sin. Sins are those things that go against God’s plan and will for your life. Confession is simply agreeing with God that we have sinned against Him and one another and against ourselves. Confession and its brother repentance restores the purity to our hearts, leads to passionate hearts, creates patient hearts and brings about peaceful hearts. The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all that is not right.” Confession results in both forgiveness and cleansing. There is an amazing freedom when you confess.
Some people have a very hard time confessing their sins to God. I don’t really understand this because the Bible says that God knows about it anyway. There’s a great story about a grandmother who had a prized goose. When her grandsons came to stay a few days with her, she told them to stay away from the goose, not to chase it, tease it, or play with it. One day one of the boys was feeling ornery. He made a slingshot and was shooting stones at the goose. One of the stones hit the goose in the head and it fell over dead. Hearing his grandmother’s warnings in his ears, he hurriedly buried the goose behind the barn. That evening it was his brother’s turn to wash the dishes. His brother told him, “I saw what you did today and if you don’t wash the dishes, I will tell.” So he washed the dishes. For the next couple of days, whenever his brother had a chore, he would say, “I know what you did to the goose.” And so he would do his brother’s chore. Finally, filled with guilt and remorse and through his tears, he confessed to his grandmother that he had killed the goose. His grandmother held him close and said, “I know you did. I saw you through the kitchen window and was waiting for you to tell me.” Like the grandmother, God already knows when we disobey, do wrong and sin against Him. He is just waiting for us to own up to it and admit our wrongdoing. Confession brings about a peaceful heart.
E. Fifth, enjoy His peace forever. There is both temporary peace and eternal peace. Oft times we are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. Or to put it another way: when we have peace with God, then we have inner peace and that leads to outer peace with others.
Temporary peace comes from having right priorities, of doing the great exchange, of accepting your limitations, and confessing your sins daily. But there is more than just temporary peace. God wants to give you eternal peace that begins now and lasts forever. When we celebrate Christmas we celebrate God’s plan for our eternal peace through Jesus. Here it is: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes and trusts in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
This Christmas God wants to give you the best gift of all—His Son Jesus to live in your heart and be in your life for time and eternity. Jesus said, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of heart and mind. The gift I give you is not like anything that the world gives you. So don’t be troubled or dismayed.” (John 14:27)
Some of you this Christmas need God’s temporary gift of peace. You are dealing with some issue that is stealing your peace. Maybe your priorities are out of whack. Maybe you are holding onto bitterness, envy, resentments, anger and it is robbing you of peace. Maybe you are tied up in knots because there is something that you cannot change and you have no peace. Maybe in your life you’ve “killed a goose” and you are trying to hide it and it is destroying your peace. Maybe you are not sure if you have eternal peace with God and the haunting doubt is stealing your peace.
Let me this Christmas Eve invite you with the words of Jesus, “Come to me. I will give you peace and rest.” God is offering you His best gift, His Son Jesus. Will you reach out and take that free gift? I pray that you will.