Peace & Joy

0:08 Andy was talking about how peace doesn't come when there's an absence of all of these things. It comes in the midst of all these things. All right. I want to go to some verses here. I'm going to read Matthew eight and 24, starting in eight and 24. Or it says, and when we, and when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea so that the boat was engulfed by the waves. But Jesus was sleeping. That that's that painting we talked about. Jesus was sleeping and the disciples went and woke him up saying, Lord, save us. We're perishing.

0:49 They were in panic mode. I mean, you know, and then again, Of course we would be if we're in the middle of a hurricane and it looks like this boat is being beat up But Jesus was fast asleep. See Jesus was trusting in his father And he knew he had to accomplish some things. He wasn't gonna die Boy, if we can just have that let me speak for myself boy if I can just have that every day Man to Man 360 starts in 3, 2, 1. You've tuned in to Man to Man 360. The show for men, by men, dealing with all subjects.

1:30 The twist here is It's we come from a biblical worldview to encourage and empower men to make it in life through the power of Jesus Christ. All right. Still talking, chopping it up. Men talking about everything you're talking about. Sometimes it's cool and sometimes it's hidden. This is Man to Man 360. Man to Man. Hey, welcome to a brand new episode of man to man 360. And I am your host. Darrell Anderson, and today's episode is in time for the season was off last week basically coming back from the holidays and whatnot.

2:20 So we apologize for missing that episode that you guys were looking for. But I think this week here, we'll make up for it. This one I'm calling peace and joy, peace and joy. And, you know, it's, it's re it's really coming from two different things I heard just on today and I'll explain them in just a minute. But before I go there ladies and gentlemen, if you are listening to this show on the radio and a podcast or whatever else, it's super, super important, especially if you're listening to us on the radio that you subscribe to our show. Let the radio station know that, Hey, we love this show.

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3:46 So that's pretty cool stuff. And we can. You know we'll receive that. And in some cases, who knows, maybe we'll read those on, on the show, but definitely go to man, a man, three, six. com. That's a really cool way to support us. So I was, I was at work early this morning and there was some Christmas music playing. And this one was an instrumental song. It was very old type of. Orchestra music. And I just thought it was a very, very beautiful. I'm going to play you an example of that. It wasn't the exact song. I think the song that I was listening to was a lot more fuller, a lot more richer, probably a little older and maybe a bigger orchestra. I don't know, but I want to play this. And you know, when, when I was listening to it and it just, because it, it had no words to it, I was thinking of the word, I knew the words.

4:35 And then I even pulled up the words and. Bah, as the words hit, it was just so, so powerful. It really blessed my soul. It really warmed my heart and almost made me get a little emotional, but you know, obviously I wanted to control that part of it. But I did, I was really just thinking, thanking the Lord for this time of year as dark and as in some cases as depressing as it might feel for many. It's, it's a great reminder. of why we truly celebrate this time of year. I know people saying, well, Jesus wasn't really born December 25th. I'm not, I'm not even you know, going there. I'm, I'm just saying the holiday is a great witnessing tool.

5:18 To encourage others. I don't care if he was born in April. If this is the holiday that we celebrate Jesus Christ being born, why not take advantage of it? And so let me just play this. I'm going to play the whole song. Hopefully I'm not going to run into some kind of copyright thing here, but You know, we'll see, you know, obviously the credits to the song. It's the it's actually the Philadelphia Philharmonic, I believe it is, who did this song a few years ago. But again, this is not the song that I heard, but this is the best thing I could find as closest to it. Here it goes.

7:39 And, you know, as I was listening to it, I think it had something to do with the orchestra piece of pieces to that music. It makes it so dramatic. It makes it so massive. It, you know, I'm thinking of the sky and the open the heavens and, and, and just this band and, and orchestra and having, and, and, and all of this big, massive stuff while I'm thinking about this song and hearing these, these, the song play. And then I'm thinking about the words. Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king, let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing.

8:27 Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns, Let men their songs employ, While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy. Repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, no more let sins and sorrows grow nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found and then goes, he rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.

9:15 Whatever depression that you're going through. When you, when you hear those songs in your department stores, malls, grocery stores, wherever you are, and it's just, and you don't hear the words, think of those words, because that's the words. And see, most of us have never heard the second and third verses. We usually hear the first and the fourth verses. But there's so much in there and we're talking about Jesus Christ or Yeshua. And not only is this the reason for the season, but this is what, he is what brings us to joy.

9:59 Now that was early, early this morning, probably like maybe six something this morning. Then I went to a Bible study tonight and we had a guest speaker. The guest speaker was Pastor White from End Time, End Time Church. And he taught on the subject of peace and he did it in a way I've never heard this done like this before. And when I put these two things together, I, I, I gotta, I'm going to, I'm not going to try to preach this message, but I'm going to share this message and share at least pieces of it. And the parts that were just powerful, powerful, he did, he did an awesome job with this. I was just blown away and my heart was encouraged because I, you know, I was talking about today.

10:43 When I came home, it was about maybe four 30 ish. And it was very, very gray out. And I knew that in any minute it was going to turn black because the sun was going down around maybe 445, something like that. 415 and it was going to be going down in another 30 minutes. And so it's that feeling of, you know, it's so blah, it's so sort of depressing and it's going to get dark all over again. And, and you saw it in that sort of, I won't call it a funk, but it's just that. Time when you realize we're going from dark to dark, you leave dark, it's, you come back, it's still dark. And it was sort of cloudy and overcast and it was already dark, so you never see any lightness or brightness. So you never have that joy outside and, and so you're going to just deal with that day in and day out for the next several months especially in this part of the country.

11:28 But that song earlier. really brought a lot of encouragement to me. I had a meeting with the staff a little after that, and we just really encouraged each other in some different things. And then that message came, and the message was peace, a gift given from God. Luke 2, 14, and John 14, 27 were some of the verses, and 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, Colossians 3, 15, and Philippians 4, 7, peace of God that surpasses all understanding. But I think the, the piece that really blessed my soul is that I never heard this part of it.

12:09 When he said that stewardship, somehow he brought up stewardship. I'm like, okay, is he's changing the subject? We're talking about stewardship. What does this have to do with peace? And he said that, well, first of all, peace is a state of quiet or freedom from upsetting thoughts and feelings. At least that's, that's what the Webster was saying. And he used a great example of a story he shared about a king who wanted a painting to represent peace and the guy's painters, the first painting, I think it was a painting of like the ocean and a beach and a, and a, and a beautiful sunrise and, and all that. And the king said, Nope, that's not peace. That, that's not it. Then the second guy second painting, the guy painted was of a countryside with birds singing and, and just a calm breeze and that kind of things.

12:57 And nope, that's not it. And if you come back with the wrong one, I'm going to chop your head off. So the guy was really thinking about this and, and then he came back with this painting where there was this huge hurricane or, or just violent storms and it was circling around this one little spot. And in that spot, there was a tree. And in that tree was a bird and the bird was asleep, calmly sleeping. And he presented that to the Kings. And now that's peace. The bird was asleep in the middle of a hurricane or storm or catastrophe, not even realizing that devastation was right around it.

13:38 And if he wasn't realizing he was trusting in someone, and that's really where we are today in this, even in this message here. That you cannot have peace unless you trust God, if you don't trust God, you can't have peace guys. This is super key to all the guys are speaking to. I mean, I know there's also ladies listening to as well, but this is very powerful because if we trust God. we can have peace. If we do not trust God, it is impossible to have peace. The pastor shared a story. I had heard some of the story before.

14:19 Actually, I think I heard a lot of it, but I didn't, you know, he really put it together tonight and he went through a devastating, devastating last four or five, no, about four years where around the COVID time we had some family members and all of them got COVID and and then. I think it was a Was it a son that died? A son, no, no, I'm sorry. It was a son in law. It was a daughter and it was a wife that died like within that year. Where do you get peace in that? And he was talking about how peace doesn't come when there's an absence of all of these things.

15:01 It comes in the midst of all these things, right? I want to go to some verses here. I'm going to read Matthew 8 and 24, starting in 8 and 24, where it says, And when we, when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea so that the boat was engulfed by the waves, but Jesus was sleeping. That, that's that painting we talked about. Jesus was sleeping and the disciples went and woke him up saying, Lord, save us. We're perishing. They were in panic mode. I mean, you know, then again, of course we would be if we're in the middle of a hurricane and it looks like this boat is being beat up, but Jesus was fast asleep.

15:49 See, Jesus was trusting in his father. And he knew he had to accomplish some things. He wasn't going to die. Boy, if we can just have that, let me speak for myself. Boy, if I can just have that every day. We'll pick up from there right after this. The man cave is developed around, we call it the five pillars. There's praise and worship. where we sing a song or two and really just invite the presence of God in and get the guys singing and clapping and whatever, and really make a push on getting guys into the music.

16:32 It's typically guys like to avoid praise or lifting of hands or singing and that type of stuff. So we really put a focus on that. And then we go right into the music. From that into prayer, you know, intercession prayer. We ask guys if there's certain things that they want us to pray for, to agree with them in prayer for and we make sure to focus it on them. Sometimes guys will say, Hey, listen, I got this neighbor. Can you pray for them? And we're like, no, no, no. We want to know what is it that you need prayer for? Because, because you're the neighbor. That's your job to pray for your neighbor. From there, we actually. Going to the competition part. Now that's the exciting part of the man cave. It just creates that competitive piece, makes it exciting, but it gets that testosterone bubbling up and everything else.

17:12 And there's a reason to that really too. I've been doing men's ministry now for almost 30 years. A lot of times men don't really have those men focused things at churches. So in some cases, To guys, it can feel a little feminine or emasculating in some cases. And because of that, we want to make sure that there's a masculine feel to men's fellowship. It's both fun. It's inviting. It's also used as a fish bait to get guys out. The other reason that we do competition is so we can create two teams. And in creating two teams, we create a camaraderie between those guys. They stay on those teams for the duration. You don't go from second Friday to second Friday. No, you're contacting guys in between guys able to reach out.

17:56 Guys are able to, Hey man, I'm really dealing with this thing. I'm struggling with this thing. So they can reach out to somebody. We go from the competition part and then we go into the work. We go into scripture. We do some teaching and then we make. Breakout into breakout groups. The breakout groups allows guys to be able to answer some things or share their thoughts on those same topics that we just preached a few minutes ago. The word is a two edged sword, it cuts open things. It exposes us, to ourselves at least. To what's really happening on the inside or the things we've been trying to cover up and hide. And then we break from there and then we, we eat. That's a great time to be able to dive in and just really see how guys are doing.

18:38 Pastors and churches don't have a men's ministry. You're missing out on the opportunity to Free that man from that thing. He's been trapped in that, that stronghold has been in his life. In his ministry allows him to be free, vulnerable, and then free.

19:33 That's what Jesus was showing here. That's what he was showing here. One of the things that the key thing here about that stewardship that the pastor had talked about, actually, I'm going to go to that verse here too. He talked about stewardship. And that realizing so stewardship, what stewardship means one who takes care of somebody else's stuff. That's basically what stewardship is. It's one who takes care of somebody else's stuff. So if I'm a great steward, maybe I'm a renter. And I'm living in and taking care of someone else's house, or I'm borrowing something, maybe I'm babysitting kids I'm dog sitting, whatever it is, I don't own it, it belongs to someone else, but I have to take care of it, that's, that's a form of stewardship, money is stewardship, because money is something that we're given, it's not really ours, but We can be blessed by it, or we can, we can, we can, you know, really take advantage of it and do not so good, great things with it.

20:38 But when we have good stewardship, we take care of everything that God blesses us with. And so that stewardship part was really important when you realize nothing we own. We, we think we own our life. We don't. We think we own our success. We don't. We think that we own our family. Whether it be our kids or our spouses, we think that's my spouse, that's my kids. This is my house. This is my talent. This is my gift. This is my anointing. This is my ministry. This is my business. This is my things. This is my wealth. This is my health. I'm healthy because I do great things.

21:18 I eat right. I work out. I do these things and I have great health and we own these things when in fact we don't own any of it. We're only stewards. God gives us a body. We use it in the time that we're here on the earth. The people that God puts in our lives, both our kids, our, our, our parents, our siblings, our spouses. Even our friends, our brothers and sisters in the Lord, they're all gifts to us. And once we understand they're all gifts to us, how we handle them, that's stewardship. And when we understand that none of them belong to us, that God can take and pull away, whether he, it doesn't mean that they die, it just means that maybe he needs to pull them away to do other things.

22:01 Sometimes people go into areas of ministry where they won't have time to be with you all the time, and they may go to another part of the world. And what are you going to do? Be selfish about it? No, God is using them and you won't have the capacity to see them and talk to them on a regular basis like you used to, but we have to trust God. We have to thank God for the time that we had with them and realize that we don't own any of these things. Just be grateful for the things that God has blessed us with, our family and everyone else. No need to grumble. Our money, our clothes, our health, all these things, we just thank God for it. And even if, if health starts to deteriorate over time, perhaps.

22:43 Then we thank God for the time that we had great health and we thank God for the ability to still wake up and stand up and do all these things that's that's that's stewardship and we have a different perspective when we have to hand these things back to God, whether it be loved ones, friends, money, some people have, Paul said, I was once someone Rich and now I'm poor, I've been a base and I've also abound, but I learned to be content. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So he had to learn how to have some things and then be able to lose some things and then maybe, maybe get some things back. But that spirit of contentment is to know that God is in control.

23:26 And that's where, when we know that God is in control, that's the trust aspect. That's the trust aspect of stewardship. I didn't say that was easy, but once we have that or have a different perspective, once we think that things are ours and that it's being taken from us, now we feel like we're being robbed. But when you realize it was never ours to begin with, it's a different perspective. It's a different perspective. And this was from a man who lost a lot. I mean, really lost a lot in a short amount of time, high levels of pain, and then yet so found peace in the center of that eventually. I think that was a great perspective.

24:08 I think that was a very good perspective. And, and, and so guys, when I say peace and joy that song that I played. joy to the world. It was a reminder of the time of year we're in, that Christ didn't come here for us to not have joy. And joy is not glee, glee, happy, happy, joy, joy. No, joy is when we're going through this life, We know that He is in control. Christ rules the world. What were the names, what were the words of the song again? Joy to the world, the Lord has come.

24:50 Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing. Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns. Let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, repeat the sounding joy. No more let sin and sorrows grow, no thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. And that last one, he rules the world with truth and grace and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love.

25:32 This is Christ Jesus, He's a, we're on His side, we're on His side of all the billions who might not have made it. We were the ones he chose as in the song with the wine, and I was one of the ones he who he did he chose and that same Jesus is the same one that falls asleep on a storm ridden boat and has complete peace. Now I want to go somewhere else here because this part I got a revelation as I was coming home.

26:15 I believe it's John 14, 27. So John 14, 27 says, peace, I leave with you my peace. I give you, I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be trouble and do not be afraid. And Philippians 4 and 7 says, And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Isaiah 26 and 3, You will keep, you will keep in perfect peace the steadfast of mind because he trusts in you. Now going back to that main verse in John 14, the revelation I got with that one, peace I leave with you.

26:58 My peace I give to you. I do not give it to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled. Do not be afraid. When he talks about giving us his peace, as I was coming home, the thought that I, I thought was that it's, it's like him putting on a cloak or not a cloak, a coat or, or, or a, a sweater or I think that's the right word. Putting something on us and he's giving us, and putting on us are his piece. It, it's sort of like being cold and, and, and, and, and, and not warm. And then someone putting a really big, comfortable.

27:41 Big old coat, heavy, warm coat on us on a cold, windy, windy day. And this is what that piece is. He's putting it on us. And as a matter of fact as we talk about Stewardship. It's not even our peace. It's his peace. Peace. I leave with you my, my peace. I give to you. I do not give it to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid. We're going into the darkest part, part of the year. The.

28:22 Shortest day of the year is the the first day of winter, winter solstice, solstice or stolsis, whatever it is. And it's the darkest day of the year. That's it. That's the darkest. It's going to be, it's going to be darker, longer than it will be light. And depending on where on the earth you are, the further up north you live, the less sun it is. As a matter of fact, in some parts there will be not, there won't even be sun. Like in parts of Alaska, they haven't seen the sun for months. So if you're in that dark place, you have to know, especially if you're a believer, especially if you're listening to this right now, you need to know that there is peace and there is joy.

29:04 And both of these things, peace and joy, neither of them live in a peaceful, serene environment. Joy is what you find when there is no peace or I'm sorry, where there is no serenity. Peace is where, is, is, is found where there's storms, both of these things, joy and peace, peace and joy are both found and needed and required when there's chaos, storm, darkness, fear, both of those require that we trust in him. I hope this was an encouragement. I was really blessed with this today.

29:45 Because, you know, I know that this time of year sometimes, man, it just gets so gray and so and it feels a little depressing, you know depending on what you're going through, add that to it as well. But man, I heard that song this morning. It really started the day and those words and those lyrics and the majesty of the song and the majesty of a king coming into the earth. All those things was a reminder, and He is for us. He is for me, and I am for Him. In other words, He favors me. He favors me. Brothers, I love you.

30:26 He favors you and ladies who listen, whoever's listening to this, he favors you too. He favors us and peace, a gift given from God, I think thank God for Pastor White and that message. I just put those two things together. Peace and joy. This is what you're going to need. I hope to have messages like that for the rest of this rest of the year. The rest of this month the next few weeks. I guess, just to encourage us as we go into this holiday season for you to enjoy the holiday with your family and your friends, and your loved ones, and not to take anything for granted. Again, this is Man to Man 360. I am your host, Darrell Anderson, and we're out.

31:11 This episode of Man to Man. 360 is a wrap. But you can check us out next week, wherever you get your podcast and listen on demand to earlier or exclusive content, visit us at man to man 360. com. That's man. The number two, man, 360. com. This is an ambassador media production.