Decision Making: How Do I Stop Being a Sleazy Charismatic? Stop Praying for Peace

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim. On this episode of Bible Bash, we will be continuing our discussion on decision making, answering the question, how do

I stop being a sleazy charismatic? Now, as we've said, these episodes are for individuals who want to stop being false prophets, but just can't seem to quit.

And the third step to help these repentant mystics is to encourage them to stop praying for peace.

Now, as you think about a common tactic that many Christians take in order to discern the secret plan of God that God hasn't revealed to us, what

Christians typically do is when they encounter a situation that requires them to make a decision where they understand and know that they have limited access to information, one of the ways that they try to short circuit this process is essentially to pray for peace.

So you can imagine the kind of scenario where an individual has a job opportunity that comes up, and there's many questions that an individual with that kind of job opportunity might actually have in the moment.

Am I going to like this job? Am I going to get along with my coworkers? Will I like working with my boss, or is he going to try to micromanage me?

Are there opportunities for advancement with this job, or is this going to be a dead -end job? This is the kind of job that's promising me certain commission sales, and are these realistic?

Will they allow me to pay my bills, or am I just going to be struggling and straining to get by?

Is this a good job to take? Is it a wise job to take? And in lieu of actually taking responsibility to make a decision with limited information, trusting in the

Lord to guide and direct your steps as He does without revealing the next step ahead of time, instead of doing that, what many individuals want to do is just simply ask

God, God, if this decision is something that you want me to do, please give me peace about it.

And then if they have peace about it, then they take that as a sign from the Lord that they should move forward.

And if they don't have peace about it, then they should take that as a sign that God doesn't want them to move forward.

Now, the problem with this is the same problem that we've mentioned with every single one of these common approaches to making decisions.

And that is the problem that God does have a specific plan for each individual's life.

You might describe that in the language that many theologians describe that as, as God's ordained will.

So everything that happens is in some sense ordained by God and will come to pass.

And so God does have a very detailed and a very specific plan for your life. The problem, though, is that you don't have access to it.

All you have access to is what might be described as God's decreed will, which is going to be found in the

Scripture, or God's revealed will, which is in the Scripture. If you want to know what God's will for you is, it's better to consult

God's revealed will, the Scripture, than it is to try to discern ahead of time what

God's secret will for you is or God's ordained will for your life. Now, as you think about this passage, many people try to find support for this idea of praying for peace in Philippians 4.

So Philippians 4, 6 through 8 tells us this. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

Let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

So as we think about what's happening in Philippians 4, 6 through 8, one of the things you find is that peace in this passage is not a mechanism that God gives to help you to make a decision.

Peace is actually the byproduct of a heart that trusts the Lord. Instead of being anxious, as Christians are told, to let

God know your request. So instead of being anxious about something, instead of being worried about something, let

God know what you need. And then we know that God knows what we have need even before we ask, and we know that God's all powerful and He's omniscient and He's all good.

And if there's anything that we actually need to accomplish His will and accomplish His purposes, that He will give it to us if we ask.

And so the logic of the passage is don't worry but ask God. And if you know who

God is and you trust in His character and you understand His promises, then what you'll realize is that there's actually no need to worry about something.

Now, it's true that there's no need to worry about something, even though you might not know all the entailments of how a decision might actually work.

So as you read through this passage, what you'll realize is that this peace of God is actually the byproduct of a heart that trusts the

Lord. So instead of praying for peace, what you should be praying for is, And here's what

I have need of. You know what I have need of before I ask. You clothe the grass of the field and you feed the birds of the air, and you can do the same thing for me.

So I'm going to let you know what I have need of, and I'm going to ask you, please give me this day my daily bread, and I'm going to trust you to do that.

And then when a Christian trusts the Lord, what happens is that they're going to experience peace. So we shouldn't be praying for the byproduct of a heart that trusts the

Lord. We should be praying for a heart that trusts the Lord. And then once we trust the Lord, the natural result of that is going to be that we're going to have peace.

Now, is there any sense in which the Christian should consult their feelings in any way at all to understand whether or not something is well -pleasing to the

Lord? So for instance, if an individual doesn't have a peace about a situation, should that be significant in helping them to know whether or not to pursue a specific situation?

And if they do have peace, is there any sense at all in which that should be instructive to them to help them to give them confidence they need to move forward?

And I would say that you can't in some simplistic way look to the presence or the absence of peace in some sort of decisive way to help you to know exactly what to do.

So what I mean is that there's been many a false prophet who's come along and basically said, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

So if you reject the things of the Lord and you harden your heart towards His truth, your feelings are not going to be a clear, absolute, infallible guide to know

God's pleasure. But then at the same time, there might be many situations where you simply don't have peace about a situation.

And that's the result of a conscience that God has given you, which is going off about a particular course of action.

And the only way to know whether or not your conscience is informed by the truth or your conscience is basically defiled is going to be to once again consult

God's revealed will and then compare the feelings that you're experiencing, the lack of peace that you're having with God's truth.

So there can be an individual, for instance, and just think about some of the scenarios that we've seen in COVID.

There are many individuals who did not feel peace about leaving their house in order to go to church.

They didn't feel peace about it. And it wasn't because their conscience was held captive to the scriptures.

They didn't feel peace about going to church because their consciences were held captive by the fear of death.

And instead of prioritizing what God actually says to do, they prioritize this fear over and against God's actual commands to not forsake the assembly of the saints together.

So you can have a conscience that is either informed by the Bible or you can have a conscience that is informed by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

So your conscience is not an infallible warning system. But when your conscience is going off, you should seek to ask the basic questions.

Is this because I'm about to violate the scriptures in some way? Or is this because my belief system is being held captive by some sort of alien commands that God has not given that are outside of myself in some way, some kind of legalistic standard that I've set up.

And so if you basically are operating under this false standard, thou shalt always be safe and never do anything that remotely requires even the slightest kind of risk, it might be that your conscience is screaming at you, do not go to church because of this 0 .001

% chance of death with exaggerated statistics. And so one of the things that you want to do as it relates to this topic is you can't just use the presence or absence of peace as if it's infallible proof about the nature of God's will.

What you have to do is you have to look at God's word, his revealed word in the scripture, and you have to compare those feelings that you're experiencing with what you actually might find in scripture.

And there's plenty of warnings in scripture that tells individuals, there's plenty of scenarios that individuals can find themselves in where the

Bible will tell them to be strong and to be courageous and to basically ignore this absence of peace and to interpret this absence of peace as an actual absence of courage.

The Israelites refused to go into the promised land because they were too afraid, but their lack of peace came from a lack of trust in the

Lord. And so their lack of peace was not decisive proof that they were making the right decision.

Their lack of peace was decisive proof that they were experiencing cowardice and refused to trust in the promises of God.

So you can't in some simplistic way, the short of it is you can't in some simplistic way look at the presence or absence of peace as infallible proof that God wants you to make a decision or doesn't want you to make a decision.

You once again have to return to his word and see what he has to say there. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.