The Missing Peace

If you have your Bibles, I want you to throw them up in the air. I like to make some declarations before we get into the Word of God. They just help to open up my heart and my spirit. So if you have your Bibles, put them way up in the air. I make no delineation between paper or digital, so put your phones up real high. If you don't have a Bible or a phone, definitely put your hand really high in the air because we got to get you a phone. It's the year of our Lord, 2026. You need a phone. It snows up here. Please, real high, real high. If you have a heavy Bible, that's your fault. Hurry up. Hurry up, Tim. Repeat after me. Today, louder. Today, the Holy Spirit is going to speak to me about peace. After today, I will know and fully understand that the peace Jesus promised was not temporary. It is permanent and eternal, and if I receive it, I will have it for eternity. All right, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. If you have your Bibles, I want you to go to the Gospel According to Saint Mark, chapter number four. The Gospel According to Saint Mark, chapter number four. I'm reading from the Tree of Life version of the Bible. It's very Jewish because it was spearheaded by Messianic Jewish believers, and so a couple of words are going to be different than the other translations, but it's going to land with the same meaning. Here's what it says, starting at the 35th verse. Now, on that same day in the evening, he says to them, to his disciples, let's cross over to the other side. After leaving the crowd, they take him along in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him. A great windstorm arises, and the waves were rushing into the boat. The boat was beginning to fill up, but Yeshua was in the back of the boat, sleeping on a pillow. They wake him up and say to him, Teacher! Because there's no way you can read this in context, and they're afraid, and then drone read, Teacher, don't you care that we are perishing? Like, you can't. If y'all would read the Bible the way it was written, you could cancel your Netflix subscription. You could. It is altogether action, thrilling, mysterious, violent, and rated M for mature. Teacher! Don't you care that we are perishing? So he woke up and rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, Quiet! Be still! Then the wind stopped, and it became totally calm, and he said to them, Why are you afraid? Even now you have no faith? They were struck with awe, and said to one another, Who is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him. That's just so good. If you're taking notes on this message,

three words already told you what it was. Spoiler alert, the missing piece. I want to talk to you about the missing piece. Bow your heads. Let's pray over the Word, shall we? Holy Spirit, give us our peace back. Amen. I pray quick. Oh, I pray so quick. I'm the one you went over for Thanksgiving dinner. We will eat it while it's hot. We will pay for all donations later. We're gonna eat this turkey now. Gospel according to Saint Mark is the shortest gospel of our gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Mark is the shortest. I believe Mark is the shortest because Mark was one of the youngest, and as he begins to retell and comprise this gospel based on what he heard from Peter, he only wants the juicy bits. This is just like a teenager. He's like, I don't have time for all this other stuff. In the King James Version alone, the word straightway is used 42 times. And straightway he went here, and straightway he went there, and he immediately went there, and then after that they went there. That's just like a teenager's recap. They're not telling you, he doesn't tell you about the Sermon on the Mount, why? Too long, we don't got time for that. Beatitudes? Nah, fam, let's just keep going. What else did he do? Where's the action? I want to talk about the stuff that he did that's juicy. Oh, he gave all these parables, he gave these stories. I'm interested in this because he's using metaphor. This is like the precursor to rap. This dude has bars. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of God is like a man who finds a field. The kingdom of God is like a sower that goes to sow seed in a field. And some fell on the wayside, and some fell on thorny ground, and some was burned up by the sun, but some fell on good soil,

and it produced a yield 30, 60, 100 fold. All of these details Mark gives us, and it's expedited, it's swift, it's fast, until it's not. It speeds up and then it doesn't slow down. It comes to a screeching halt. These disciples, after hearing their rabbi teach all day through stories, notice that Jesus never talked to the crowds without telling a story, because everybody can identify with the story. Everyone can find themselves in a story. But when he gets them alone, they get to have the real Q&A. Master, what did you mean when you said, and he would start to tell them what the stories actually meant? They get on this boat, they're going to the other side, and it sounds intoxicating. If I'm a follower of Jesus, you've come to my job and asked me to follow you, and I quit on the spot and follow you, then when you tell me, let's get on the boat and let's go to the other side of the lake, oh, this sounds thrilling because yes, anything with Jesus is exciting. And so if you want to go to the opposite side of the lake, I want to go with you. And they get on this boat and they start on the other side of the lake, and then a storm breaks out. This is where you find out that walking with Jesus is not what a lot of people preach. It's not what a lot of people say. Giving your life to Jesus does not mean we will now tra-la-la-la through a lily field. It does not mean that we will do pirouettes

through a field with butterflies swarming around us. Walking with Jesus never exempted us from life's calamities. He promised us that he would be with us in those calamities. So it completely destroys the myth that I thought I gave my life to Jesus. Everything should be going great. This is not the Lego movie. Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of a team. Everything is awesome when you're living on a dream. That's not the gospel. The gospel is let's go for a boat ride. You're like, okay. And we set off into the night and Jesus does not doze off. He's not on the bow of the ship with the rest of the disciples. And it's the rocking of the boat that kind of lulls him to sleep. And he's just kind of dozing off. No, this is a strategic nap. And we know it's a strategic nap because there's a pillow involved. You don't accidentally nap on a pillow. If you put your head to the pillow, you mean to go to sleep. The Messiah knows what's about to happen. And his response to the test that he's about to put his disciples through is, I'm going to take a nap. Let's see if your exposure to me. has given you an indication of who I am. I know you've been around me, but that does not mean you know me. So we're going to have a quality assurance check. I'm going to sleep. Let's see how you handle a storm.

So the disciples are topside on the ship and the storm comes through and these are fishermen. These are people that are used to being on the water. This is not their first time going through a storm. This is not their first time experiencing rain. This is not their first time experiencing a tumultuous lake. So when the rocking starts, they're like nah, it's nothing. Well, that was something. But we're good. We're good. Jesus is here. He's asleep. We're good. He's present with us. He's on the same boat. We are good. Okay, that's different. That doesn't usually happen. And then the last one, I don't know how it must have felt, but it's so violent that it goes from we got this to Ah! Get Jesus! The storm has now dysregulated them to the point that they run to their Messiah. They run to their rabbi and their dysregulation makes them misdiagnose Jesus's presence in their lives. Teacher! Do you not care that we are perishing? Can we just stop for a moment?

I don't know which disciple said it. But can they hear themselves? You're so dysregulated, you actually think that Jesus wants you to die while he sleeps? Y'all are on the same boat. He's not on the boat next to you under sunshine in the calm sea. He's in the boat with you experiencing the same thing with you, but not having the same reaction as you. Because he has something that you are missing. And it is glaring right now. I believe the thing that Jesus knew they were missing was so glaring. He doesn't even try to talk to him about it in the moment. Teacher! Do you not care that we are perishing? Jesus wakes up. Goes out to the bow of the ship without addressing them first. Goes out to the bow of the ship. Scripture says he rebukes the wind. This is very, very interesting and subtle. We gotta pay attention to everything the rabbi is doing right now. He rebukes the wind. And then he turns to the waves. And the way Tree of Life interprets it is not the same way that King James, New King James, NLT interprets it. He says, Quiet! Be calm.

Now, we know King James, New King James, NLT, a lot of other versions say peace, be still. And I don't know about you all, but when I was growing up, I've always heard people say, I just want some peace and quiet. I need some peace and quiet. Turn the radio down. Where's your headphones? Close that door. Your TV is too loud. Why are you still playing Call of Duty? But Jesus in this moment, I believe teaches us a lesson. That peace is quiet. It's not two separate things. It's one thing. And the Messiah, when he comes out to the boat, He is the embodiment of peace. Isaiah prophesied accurately that he shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God. Prince of Peace. And so if he is the Prince of Peace, then he would have to be embodying peace. And he comes out and he makes what is external match what is going on internally with him. Yes, this is all chaotic until I come deal with the situation. And here's the thing that takes so much discernment and so much of an attunement, the Messiah knows what to rebuke

and what to tell to keep quiet. A lot of us would have rebuked the waves because the waves are what are directly rocking the boat. But the Messiah is so attuned to the situation that he knows the waves are not the problem, the wind is. So if I rebuke the wind, then it will stop agitating the waves and the waves will stop agitating this boat. We better get this. We need to be a little bit more attuned to figure out what we need to rebuke and what we need to ask to calm down. I think a lot of times in our culture, we are telling things to keep quiet. We need to rebuke and telling things that we need to rebuke to keep quiet. And the Messiah knows which one is which. He goes, wind, please stop that because you're bothering the waves and the waves are bothering the boat. So I rebuke you. Now, will you please calm down? I learned to do this with my kids. Yes, my kids were the ones acting out, but then I had to go figure out what's agitating you that's agitating me. I need to rebuke the right thing that thing is not really you, it's what you've been listening to.

Let me rebuke what you've been listening to and then tell you to calm down. I had to do this with my kids a few years ago. These are really bougie upper middle class kids. I make no qualms about that. I survived the hood and a very bad environmentally traumatic upbringing. So I'm very happy to be blessed enough to not have to revisit that scenario of my life. My kids ain't been in none of that, but they were listening to music that made them think that they were from that. And so I was like, yeah, that's not gonna work. You, that's, that's not you. You, you've never made a bologna sandwich. You have never had to peel the red tape from around the bologna and put three slices in it when you put it in the skillet so it wouldn't turn into a bowl. You don't know about that life. You're not gangster. I made bologna sandwiches on white bread with French's mustard with a bag of Fritos. And that was lunch, not a Chipotle bowl. The music was the issue, not the kids. I rebuke the music and calm down the kids. The master is demonstrating what this piece is. This piece is so profound that in the upper room when he's having his last moments with them

before he would go to the cross to die for all of our sins, he says in John chapter number 14, verse number 27, I am leaving you with a gift. Shalom, I leave you. My shalom, I give to you. But not as the world gives, which means the world has a version of peace. It's just temporary. The world actually has a version of peace, but it expires. He says, what I'm giving you, the world doesn't give. Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid. He said, okay, you've watched me demonstrate this piece on the boat. But now I'm telling you, I am leaving you with this gift. I'm not leaving you with money. I'm not leaving you with power. I'm not leaving you with resources and miracles. You'll be able to do all that stuff. But if you don't have peace, it won't matter. I grew up Pentecostal. I grew up in the Pentecostal movement. And so Acts chapter number one. is a big deal to us. And you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And so we've walked around screaming about power and the Holy Ghost fire and power, not understanding that we only have that power if we have that person who is peace.

What the Messiah promised was not power, he promised a person who would embody peace. The Ruach Elohim, the Holy Spirit is the peace that Jesus is referring to. And if he resides in us, the question that we have to ask is, how are we still so dysregulated when we have peace on the inside of us? He said, I'm leaving you with this gift, implying you actually won't be able to do anything without this gift. It's not temporary, it's literally going to last forever. I know that this peace literally transformed the lives of the disciples, because who they were after the Holy Spirit fell in acts is not who they were before. Before they were cowards. They were literally locked behind closed doors, afraid to go outside, thinking the same thing would happen to them that happened to their rabbi. And after they were filled with the Holy Spirit's peace, it empowered them to be bold enough to look the same people that murdered Jesus in the face and say, y'all the ones did it. And they were like, look, you cannot go outside talking about this Yeshua anymore. And Peter was like, then I don't know what you're going to do with us because we ain't got nothing else to talk about.

That didn't come from just boldness, that came from peace. A peace that said, this entire world could be chaotic, but I won't be. This entire world can be falling off a cliff, I'm not going with you emotionally. I can scroll through my Instagram feed and your real will not trigger me. Your Facebook posts doesn't own me because I have peace. Our cultural climate, as crazy as it is, doesn't make me doubt the sovereignty of my God. I go to sleep good at night because I have peace. But the taxes, the tariffs, the prescription drugs, the interest rates, my 401k might not be here. Why am I talking like this? This is what a dysregulated person sounds like. Ah! Sound like an old duck. I'm not going to talk like this. I'm not going to talk like this. I'm not going to talk like this. I'm not going to talk like this. Ah! Don't you want to be able to get on, put your head on your pillow and just go to sleep? Like peace

is supposed to make everything quiet. It does not negate the fact that everything else is chaotic. It just means I opted out of participation. So, Jesus gets up on the boat and walks out and his disciples are going crazy, but he's like, I just refuse to join you there. I'm not, this is not the way I'm gonna die. I tried to tell y'all. I told you you had to die for your sins. I didn't tell you I was gonna drown for them. I'm, it's not happening. Peace within the believer is supposed to make us turn every environment that we step into externally into what we are feeling and carrying internally. And you have to fight to keep the peace. Fight to keep the peace. Amen. Red alert. Sirens going off. That's how important this message is. Pull over. You don't have any peace. Autobots, transform. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist it. You have to contend for the peace. Scripture says this, it doesn't say blessed are the peace keepers. It says blessed are the peacemakers.

I have to make this every single day, even on days I don't want to. So let me tell you about last year. Cause so many preachers talk about like the things that have happened, like they were 35 years ago and they've got it mastered. Like it all happened within the first six months of salvation. And so now they're just coming to give you how to live cause they've already mastered it all. Nah, this is last year for me. And this was six months of last year for me. So it was half the year, right before I came here in July. So buck your seatbelts. So I launched a company with a business partner, co-founder, and it blew up. It ended ugly. And I'm ashamed to say that I was not resting in the peace that I'm talking about right now. I wasn't resting in the peace that I wrote a book about at this time. I had to make it a peace in my life. It wasn't coming naturally because I wanted to fight this guy. Can I just be honest? You ever fall out with somebody and you're like, oh, you haven't been punched in the mouth. I need to punch you in the mouth. And then you'll understand why I'm hurt. I wanted to knock him out for six months.

I had to wake up every day for six months and say, I choose your peace so that I could regulate and not be so angry. But I wanted to be angry. And that's why he says, blessed are the peacemakers. Are you gonna make peace with this? Or are you going to let it eat you up? So let me tell you what it's like to make peace, not with him, not with her, with the situation. Holy Spirit, you know I wanna punch him. I receive your peace. Help me not to look at it any other way than you look at it. I won't say immediately, but after a while my body would regulate. And then I stopped seeing it through my carnal lens and I started to see it through the spirit. And here's what happened when I saw it through the spirit. Yes, I fell out with this guy and the way our business ended, I didn't like it. And he is a professing believer that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. He is God's son, which makes him my brother. And even though I'm mad at my brother, I can't punch my brother in the mouth. I want to, but my rabbi said I can't. My daddy told me I couldn't. So now I think about him and I'm like, oh, you love him. I love him. I love him too. That's your son, he's my brother.

Bless him Lord. Ugh, bless him over there. Please don't let me see him get blessed. Please don't do it in my face. And then after a while, it's just, that's my brother and I loved him and we had a fallen out and that's just what it is. We don't have a company anymore. And if I see him, I'm gonna throw my arms around him and give him a big hug and tell him that I love him. And then there's no shutter and there's no anything because I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ that lives on the inside of me. Because I'm contending for that peace. It's not just something that Jesus demonstrates, it's something that he promises. It's not just something that he promised, it's something that he planted. He put it on the inside of us and I refuse to let any person, place or thing take me out of his peace. There's a man that practice peace. In a way that's so profound to me that I was just gripped by the context to what is one of the most famous hymns that have ever been written. There's a man named Horatio Spafford who, in 1873, penned one of the most famous hymns of all time. It would have been easy to write this hymn if his life was perfect. I think it would have been great for him to write this hymn if his life showed all the markers of every prayer answered, everything that he wished positively coming to pass,

coming to pass, great health, great wealth, but it's just the opposite. His son dies of scarlet fever. Most of his real estate was burned up in the Chicago fires. His wife and his four daughters, traveling over the Atlantic Ocean, wind up shipwrecked. His four daughters die. His wife sends a telegram notifying him that she is still alive, two words, saved alone. Horatio boards a boat to cross the same Atlantic to reunite with his wife. And somewhere over the space where the ship that was carrying his family wrecked and his four daughters died. I don't know if this is something he started humming first, if it was words he mumbled first or if it was pen that he put to paper first, but already having lost a son who had scarlet fever, all his possessions burned up in a Chicago fire, four daughters dead, one family member remaining, traveling over the same space where his daughters drowned. This dude writes, when peace, like a river, attendeth my way. When sorrows, like sea billows, roll. Whatever my lot, can we stop there? That's a guy that says, I know I had plans, but they don't matter. My peace isn't contingent on everything going right. Whatever my lot, this next line lets you know he has a savior and not just, that he has a Lord and not just a savior. We're happy to talk about the person that saves us, but the person that tells us what to do, sometimes we resist that. Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. You can't sing it without peace. That's what the world is missing. The reason why they're so triggered and dysregulated is because they don't have peace. Quiet, calm. It doesn't take away that the marriage is funky.

It does not take away that the kids are rebellious. It does not take away that you're barely making ends meet. What it does take away is a whole sleepless night figuring out what's going to happen next. I don't know what's going to happen next, but where's my pillow? I'm going to bed. I'm going to sleep this off. But the eviction notice. If they knock on the door and it's time to leave, we'll go. But right now. I'm going to sleep. Well, that can't be well with your soul. You got a divorce. That's not well with my soul. It is. If you think my it is about the divorce and you don't know what I'm talking about, my it is peace. When peace. Like a river. Attended my way. If you've been missing that. Today's your reminder in between sermon series today is your reminder. Let's not go. Into the rest of this week. Missing the peace we so desperately need. Would you bow your heads and close your eyes? What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message? My hope in my prayer is that as I was talking, the Holy Spirit was speaking. And that he would highlight areas in your life where. It's been really tough to find peace there. You don't try to keep it, you make it. Paul says as much as life within you. Live at Shalom. With everyone. Not saying it's easy. But I'm saying is permanent, eternal. And it's the only thing that literally regulates your nervous system. So Holy Spirit, I thank you. For this reminder. For my brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters. I ask and I pray, Lord Jesus.

That the peace that you promised through the Holy Spirit. Would be tangibly felt by every person. In our rooms. And may we carry this peace. Into a very stormy, tumultuous world. And Holy Spirit, would you. Make it clear. What we need to rebuke. And what we need to tell. To calm down. In Jesus name we pray.