Eirene
Transcript of FLOT Line 1010 aired on December 29, 2024
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are
ready to start the new year which is not very far away. It’s a great honor to be speaking to you
this morning. Thank you to all 50 states tuning in. What a great privilege it is for me to bring you
the Word of God every Sunday morning on this radio network. Today we are going to talk about
the wonderful thing called peace, the wonderful peace that God will provide as we go through
the coming year. Luke 2:14 gives these words,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
among men with whom He is pleased.”
I don’t know if you remember who said this but it was
spoken by the commander of the angelic army, an elect angel known as the King of Arms. These
words were spoken the night that Mary gave birth to Jesus, the God-man. Yes, Jesus Christ was
God and man, undiminished deity and true humanity in one body forever. Paul wrote something
about this in Philippians 2:8-11. My very own pastor, Bobby Thieme, taught this recently about
how you cannot really appreciate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ until you understand this
passage as well,
“Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted
Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every
tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Yes, glory to God
in the highest and peace on earth among men through Jesus Christ. This birth of the Lord Jesus
Christ is the single most important event in the history of the world. It’s the one thing that
guarantees the resolution of the angelic conflict and it guarantees peace between God and man.
The Apostle Peter stated the peace that we can have starts with 2 Peter 1:2,
“Grace and peace be
multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”
This peace can be yours today
through a relationship with Christ Jesus. In Philippians 4:7 Paul wrote,
“And the peace of God,
which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This is a phenomenal way to live. This is a phenomenal asset believers have, peace with God –
eternal peace with God knowing that you’re going to heaven and peace with God in time. Jesus
Christ Himself said this as recorded in John 16:33 when He spoke to the disciples,
“These things
I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but
take courage; I have overcome the world.”
The amazing thing about what our Lord says is that
He does not guarantee you a life free of conflict but He does assure you that you can maintain a
relaxed mental attitude in spite of the circumstances. In spite of what you may be going through,
you can have peace if you use God’s wonderful problem-solving devices. We teach this as having
a FLOT line in your soul. We’re going to show you why this is important in your life in the study
this morning. In John 14:27 here’s what the Lord told the disciples,
“Peace I leave with you; My
peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.
[He is not going to take it back like
the world does.]
Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”
This is indicative of
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what our Lord was thinking while He was going through circumstances. The same peace He had,
the same relaxed mental attitude He had, the same trust He had, the same faith He had, He
passed on to the disciples so they could live like He lived. This is the prototype Christian life. It’s
the Lord Jesus Christ showing us how to live. No one in the Old Testament had a life like this.
You have the most unique life in the history of the world. You have the Christian life pioneered
by our Lord Jesus Christ while He was a man, lived by our Lord Jesus Christ as a man. Never
once did He depend on His deity to spare Him. Never once did He depend on His deity to sustain
Him. He always had peace and He leaves this with us. We can have this same peace. He spoke
these words to His disciples in order to prepare them for what was coming once He was
crucified, resurrected and ascended back to heaven. As we approach the year 2025 we need to
remember these things because there’s no doubt national and international conflict are coming.
You can bank on this. Even today there is terror across America as hundreds of drones are seen
flying over homes, airports, as well as military institutions and no apparent explanation from our
government concerning what they are, where they came from or who they belong to. The shift in
political leadership is going to cause great concern for thousands of individuals who despise the
new president and his agenda. There will be no peace for any Christian who does not understand
that Jesus Christ controls history. You must understand this if you want to have peace because the
greatest comfort and peace of a child of God is to know and understand God’s unique plan for his
life; to know and understand God’s purpose for his life; the purpose for his existence and to know
that he has not been left alone to fight it out in the devil’s world. Do you have peace today? Let’s
start with this one. Are you certain that if your life ended today that you would go to heaven? Do
you know this for sure? Are you positive about this? You can know it. There’s no reason you
shouldn’t know it because the Bible is very clear about it. You can know it for sure according to
Scripture. People write to me and say, “You can’t know this for sure.” Yes you can. 1 John 5:13,
“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that
[this is a
purpose clause]
you may know that you have eternal life,”
and that you may continue to believe,
trust, in the name of the Son of God. As a child of God, you’re guaranteed His daily care and His
daily provisions. Not only are you given eternal life, not only can you let your mind be at rest
because if something were to happen, you will be in heaven. There is no doubt about this if you
put your faith in Jesus Christ. As a child of God you are also guaranteed daily provision and
daily care. In Matthew 6:25-27 Jesus said,
“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about
your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will
put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air,
that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour
to his life?”
So don’t be worried. Worry is a lack of peace. If you’re worried about making it in
the devil’s world, if you’re worried about surviving, if you’re worried about, “How am I going to
get along? I’m not making enough money,” you don’t have God’s peace. Your Lord knows what’s
you’re going through. He’s not going to strand you. He’s not going to throw you under the bus.
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He will make sure you have everything you need to live your life comfortably, I promise. It may
not be the way you want to live it. Maybe you want to be a millionaire. This might not be in the
plan for you, but He will not abandon you. You don’t have to worry about your clothing. You
don’t have to worry about what you’re going to eat. You are much more important than a simple
bird and He loves you, so relax. Don’t be worried. You should have peace, confident in His daily
care and His daily provision for you. How do I know this? Because Psalm 55:22 tells me,
“Cast
your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be
shaken.”
All you have to do is go to the Father. Hopefully you will do this. When you have a
situation in your life that you don’t understand, when you have a situation in your life that is a
conflict, take it to the Father and He will deliver you through it. He doesn’t say He’ll make it go
away. He says He will sustain you through it and He will never allow the righteous, this is the
righteousness of Christ given to you, to be shaken. What does this mean, I don’t have any
righteousness?
“There is none righteous, not even one”
(Romans 3:10).
“All our righteous deeds
are like a filthy garment”
(Isaiah 64:6). I don’t care how good you are, it’s not going to get you to
heaven because 2 Corinthians 5:21 says,
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
The righteousness spoken of in
Psalm 55:22 is the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ, His righteousness given to you. He who
knew no sin was made sin for you. It was a trade out deal. He took your sin. He gives you His
righteousness. You cannot be shaken according to Psalm 55:22. What a wonderful subject to
consider as we enter into 2025. The word peace you’ve heard me talking about, I’ve quoted it a
bunch of times, is the Greek word
eirene.
It simply means harmony, security, and safety. Security
and safety. Our Lord told the disciples that it was possible to have a complete relaxed mental
attitude in spite of the difficulties they were going to face, difficulties like the threat of death,
animosity and hatred from the religious crowd. Yet there was still a peace they could have.
Again,
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you.”
If you’re not at peace today, something
is wrong. Either you don’t understand the plan of God or you’re not living the plan of God. Now
let me tell you something, this doesn’t mean you won’t have conflict. In Matthew 10:34-36 Jesus
says these words,
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring
peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her
mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the
members of his household.”
When you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, your whole family
can turn on you. If you get serious about growing spiritually and learning the Word of God, your
whole family may laugh at you, think you’re a nut, think you’ve gone over the hill and think
you’ve gone crazy. “Why are you doing all this Bible study? Why are you doing all this praying?
What’s wrong with you?” Your own family may fight you. Jesus Christ our Lord said this. When
you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you fit into the plan of God. Your family might not consider
this. They may think you’ve gone crazy. I have a dear friend of mine who says her family is just
like this. She loves the Word of God. She studies the Word of God but her family doesn’t
understand it. This may happen to you. Our Lord made it clear in this particular passage, the son
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who follows Him will be hated by their own family members. Why? Because this is the cost of
true discipleship. Matthew 10:37,
“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.”
The priority in your
life, the priority in my life is first of all to love God with all our heart, to love His Word, to love
His plan, to have peace and prosperity through His plan, to trust Him, to be comfortable with
what He has for us and put our faith in Him. If we put this down on paper, who do you love first?
Personal love for God is what motivates you to obey God.
“For this is the love of God, that
we
keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome”
(1 John 5:3). Do you
love your father and your mother more than Him? Then you are not worthy of Him. Again, “
He
who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
He wants to be first in your life.
He wants to be priority number one in your life. This is the only way you’re ever going to have
the peace that you’re looking for. Personal love for our Lord Jesus Christ will come with a cost, I
promise you. You can ask the martyred disciples that when you meet them in heaven because all
but one of them were martyred for their personal love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of them
were married and many of them had children, yet they gave their lives to follow Christ. This may
happen to us someday. We don’t really know what’s going to take place in the future. We have
great hope and great confidence that the leader of this country will keep us safe and allow us to
continue to worship in privacy but you never know. We don’t ever know. When you commit your
life to follow Christ there’s going to be conflict in the middle of the storm but we can have peace.
How? Because we know we are right in the center of God’s will. The promise of peace from God
does not mean the absence of conflict. This is why you have a FLOT line in your soul, to stop the
outside sources of adversity from becoming the inside source of stress. Having stress like worry
and fear is not having peace. This is the absence of peace. In Colossians 3:15,
“Let the peace of
Christ rule in you hearts.”
What does this mean? The heart is your mind. You have two parts to
your brain. The Greeks called one of them the
nous
, the mind. They called the other part the
heart, the
kardia
. This isn’t the organ that pumps blood. It’s talking about the heart of your soul
and you have to let the Word of God rule in your heart, in the memory center, in your frame of
reference, in your vocabulary. This is where the peace comes from. When you know the Word of
God, when you know it, trust it and love Him so much that you can be comfortable with this,
then you can have peace. It comes when you let Christ rule in your heart. After my salvation I
read a book by evangelist Billy Graham entitled “Peace With God.” Allow me to quote Billy
Graham here just for a minute as I read to you. “As we look around we find there is little
personal, domestic, social, economic or political peace anywhere. Why? Because we all have the
seeds of suspicion, of violence, and hatred and destruction within us.” He’s talking about the sin
nature. The antidote to the these sorts of attitudes of suspicion and hatred is found in Isaiah 26:3.
Here is the antidote to hatred. Here is the antidote to suspicion. Here is the antidote to violence.
“The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in You.”
This is the key
to peace. The word trust is the key. For us, the peace we have is built on the foundation of trust.
You have to remember this. If you don’t trust God, you are never going to have peace. So do you
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trust God this morning? Today? Not just for your salvation, but do you trust Him with your life,
with your very breath, with your very existence? Are you willing to put your trust in His
leadership? Then you’ll find it in the Word of God. Many people go through life never
understanding what the will of God is. What is the geographical will of God? Where does God
want them to be? What does God what them to think? What does God want them to do? This is
what you have to learn because this is where the peace comes from. The peace we have is built
on the foundation of trust.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
[100%]
and do not lean on your
own understanding”
(Proverbs 3:5). This is doubt. If there’s any doubt in your life, if there’s any
confusion in your life, there’s no trust. Trust is the foundation for peace. In Isaiah 41:10,
“Do not
fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen
you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
So can you
trust Him? Yes you can. Can you depend on Him? Yes you can. It’s just a matter of whether or
not you’re willing to do it. In order to have peace, you must have faith. In other words, do you
trust God to do what’s best in your particular circumstances or do you panic at the first sign of
adversity? Do you start asking for prayers to induce God to intervene and change your
circumstances? The first time something goes wrong, do you get on the internet and start saying,
“Pray for me brother?” What do you want me to pray for? “Make this go away so I don’t have to
face it.” This is exactly what Paul did in 2 Corinthians 12. He had a thorn in the flesh and he
prayed three times earnestly for it to go away and God kept saying, “No. No. No.” Why?
Because under adverse circumstances your faith grows and increases. Sometimes you want God
to take away the very things that are going to bless you, the very things that are going to teach
you, the very things that are going to help you to grow because you don’t like your
circumstances. At the first sign of adversity, you start hollering for help. “Make it go away. All
you prayer warriors, pray for me. Pray that it will go away.” It’s pitiful. The faith-rest drill is part
of the FLOT line of your soul. Do you understand how it works? If you don’t understand the
faith-rest drill, call me or write to me and we’ll send you the book “
Christian Problem Solving.”
It will explain the faith-rest drill in detail, I promise you. In the Old Testament, faith-rest was
normal for believers who God used to change history, to pave the way for the Lord Jesus Christ.
They didn’t have the spiritual life you have. They didn’t have the canon of Scripture. They didn’t
have the filling of the Holy Spirit. They only had faith and this is what God tested them for, to
see what kind of faith they had. Moses at the Red Sea in Exodus 14 is a good illustration.
Pharaoh’s army in hot in pursuit was going to kill them, angry because they left Egypt. Listen to
what Moses told the frightened Jews as they tried to escape the Egyptian captivity. In Exodus
14:13,
“But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear!’”
What does this mean? There was no peace.
There was no trust. There was no faith. They were afraid.
“Do not fear! Stand by
[quit being
nervous, quit jumping around, just relax]
and see the salvation of the Lord which He will
accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them
again forever.”
Pharoh thought he had them cornered. He had the Red Sea behind them and he
had his army coming after them. He thought for sure, “We’ve got them now.” The only people
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who got it were Pharaoh and his army. God opened the Red Sea and they went across in perfect
peace. When Moses said, “Stand by [hold your peace],
”
it meant relax. Trust God. Use faith. The
Lord will handle this for you and the same thing is true for you as well. In the case of certain
death with the Red Sea in front of them and Pharaoh’s army behind them, Moses said, “Hold
your peace. Don’t panic.” This is just another opportunity for God to demonstrate His
omnipotence and rid the world of an evil ruler. I encourage you today to hold your peace. Don’t
panic regardless of the circumstances. Trust in Him. Lean not on your own understanding. It’s
very simple, do you love God? I hear people tell me this all time, “I love God.” Really? Do you
trust God? “Yeah, I trust God.” Really? Then relax, enjoy the ride. Remember what the Lord says
in Psalm 84:11,
“For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord gives grace and glory; no good
thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
The only conditions God asks of you is
to love Him, obey Him and follow His leadership. Do you love God? Do you obey God? Do you
grow daily? Do you stay filled with the Holy Spirit? Do you replicate the life of Christ to those
that you meet? Or are you so self-centered that you think all you need to do is show up at
church? Are you the nod to God crowd? “Hello God. Goodbye God. See you next Sunday God.
Bless me God. Have a good day God.” You’re never going to have peace with an attitude like
this. You’re just using church to go through some ritual that has no reality to it. The reality of the
Christian life is a wonderful way to live with total peace, total confidence, total trust and total
love in the heavenly Father who loves you much more than you love Him. Remember what Jesus
said,
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His uniquely born Son”
(John 3:16). He loved
you before you were even formed. In eternity past He knew who you were and who you would
be and He still loves us, in spite of what you have done and what I’ve done. We don’t deserve His
love but He loved us. If we love Him we can experience this wonderful life I’m talking about,
this wonderful peace, confidence and assurance. It comes from the act of faith, trusting God,
putting your trust in Him and living by the faith-rest drill. Do you know the faith-rest drill?
Again, let me remind you of our book
Christian Problem Solving
. I’d love to send it to you. It’s
free, we don’t sell anything. We don’t hustle people for money, you know that. Simply the Word
of God is what this show is about. We teach the Word of God clearly for you. I’m not a pastor but
I want to get you to a good pastor where you can learn God’s Word on a daily basis. If you don’t
have peace, you should have. You should have a lifestyle of peace, trust and faith because this is
the lifestyle God set out for you. This is how you can enjoy your life to the fullest. Get the
monkey off your back and put the monkey on God’s back. Let Him worry about the details and
circumstances while you cruise through holding your peace. Don’t let it go. Put your faith in
Him, okay? I hope you’re listening. I hope you’ve learned. I hope you will apply this
information. If there is anything else that we can help you with, don’t hesitate to contact us. Until
next week this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT Line
