I was asked this last week,

"Why can't I experience the peace of God which I hear others around SML talk about so frequently?"

I want to say first off in answer that

I don't think anybody experiences the peace of God all the time.

I certainly don't.

In fact most of the time I have to walk by faith and not by sight.

I have found that inner peace is not something you can conjure up.

There is no formula, no exercise, no five step program whereby you receive the inner peace of God.

I have found that peace is something that finds me when I'm doing something to help other people.

Giving my life away to others....

helping, serving, loving...

is what you do.

The result is peace

Peace is a byproduct of giving life away.

I hope that helps.

Been offering a series of soul talks from Jesus's sermon on the mount,

that's Matthew 5-7

Today we're going to look at the third section which talks about the soul that knows God.

Enjoying God on the soul level.

Matthew 6:1-18...

and I'm going to paraphrase them because they're rather long.

Be careful to avoid religious exhibitionism.

Otherwise you will not enjoy the inward blessings of your heavenly Father.

For example, when you give in God's name, don't imitate those who announce their gifts by sounding trumpets so that everyone will applaud them.

I assure you that applause is all they will ever receive.

Instead, give your donations modestly,

and your heavenly Father who sees your inward heart will bless you inwardly.

When you pray do not imitate the grandstanders who pray to impress their colleagues and those who look up to them, or the pagans who pray to appease angry gods.

Instead, go in your private place and pray there with simple humility and plain words and your Father who sees your inward heart will bless your inward heart.

When you fast don't imitate the show-offs who love to look gloomy and disheveled so that people will admire them.

Instead, wash your face, comb your hair, and keep your self-denial a secret.

God who sees in secret will bless your secret heart.

Believe it or not, I have associated with traveling evangelists who drive buses around the country.

Sawdust trail.

When I was in the 7^th grade, our church, with several other churches around town hosted a revival.

I look back on it now and see it was an opportunity to find out how they do it.

It was a four-day event with tents and tables and microphones.
And it was on the lawn of the other Methodist church down the street.

(never been more grateful for anything in my life...

than it was on the lawn of the other church...

and not our Methodist church....

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.)

I was not the "up front" guy.

Didn't have the formed hair or the white suit or the red bible.

I didn't have to scream and shout and jump about.
As the son of one of the pastors, with nothing better to do with my summer, I was volunteered to help out.

And I did.

Carried a lot of chairs, helped pull tents, moved tables.

Anyway.
This revival meeting got rolling on a Wednesday night and Thursday, Friday and Saturday night with meetings and home visitations and service clubs and youth groups during days ...

and the big "Come to Jesus" meeting in the tent again Saturday night...

and in the end we were supposed to have a whole lot of new people in our church on Sunday morning.

We got none.

This visiting preacher was quite zealous...

and kinda entertaining to a 7^th grader.

On Saturday afternoon, one of the other minister's family hosted a dinner in their home for all of us involved.

They had just knocked themselves out..

had all the best of everything.

His wife had cooked and sweated over the stove.
All the ministers were there,

all the helpers,

all the church leaders.

We were holding hands as we prepared around the dinner tables.

The pastor's wife looked at their seven year old daughter and said,

"Our daughter Jane will offer the blessing. Now Janie, say the blessing."

Everything got quiet.

"Janie, you remember the blessing we learned....

say the blessing."

Not a peep.
The pastor got into it...

in his best ministerial tone...

"Janie, say the blessing."

After about five seconds, she said,

"I am so sick of this Jesus business I could throw up!"

I thought her mother and father were going to die.

Everybody else was sucking in their breath.

I started giggling...

cause I remembered the passage from the bible that says,

"Out of the mouths of babes comes the truth."

We were all feeling what Janie was feeling.

We were absolutely exhausted.

And if we'd have expressed our true sentiments would have been applauding Janie.

See, we were practicing religion at its worst.

The leaders were trying to impress each other with their sincerity.

And religion at its worst tries to earn the favor of God by working extra hard.

Truth is you can't earn God's favor.

And the truth is you don't need to impress each other.

Religion at its best enjoys God on the soul level.

Down here in that private room, where you alone know God.

Religion at its best celebrates the joy of God down deep

and that was the point Jesus made in the third section of his first public sermon.

He is describing the soul that enjoys God.
He picked the three pillars of Jewish devotion.

Giving, fasting and praying.

And he uses them as illustration of the soul that enjoys God.

He says three things.

The soul that enjoys God...

First, sees giving as self-enrichment, not self-diminishment.

He says don't be like the hypocrites who love to blow a trumpet to make a scene and announce what they're giving.

In that day they had rams horns, hollowed out and spiraled, and you would place your coins in the rams horn.
Those that were accomplished at spinning the coins just right could make quite a scene.

Jesus said don't do that.

Give modestly, give secretly,

and the emphasis here is on motive, not method.

There are some good reasons to give publicly because it may inspire other people.

The important thing is your motives.

Why are you giving?

Jesus is saying if you want to enjoy God on the soul level

see giving as a way of enriching yourself.

The best thing you can do for your soul is to become a generous person...

be generous with your time,

generous with your talents,

generous with your treasure.

I ran across an article a while back in which the author said the longest fund-raising appeal in the Bible is in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9.

I went and read it and I noticed two interesting things...

Well first, Paul is writing to the wealthy church at Corinth for them to give an offering.

And the first interesting thing I noticed about it is

he never says what it's for, nothing specific.

He says just give to help the kingdom in Judea.

We don't know what it is.

Anybody ever heard of a fund raiser at a church that doesn't say what it's for?

You know...

it's for people going down for the last time

Or the church is going down for the last time

Or we need to build....

its always something...

always a reason...

Paul doesn't even specify.

The second thing I noticed was he promised them only one benefit for giving...

I've been taught you need to use the WIIFM principle.

"What's In It For Me?"

The only WIIFM principle he gives is

they will be given the privilege of knowing the joy of giving

He says,

"You have been picked out by God to enjoy giving."

And I began to wonder why we don't put that out there anymore.

Probably cause we got caught up on carpet and buildings to take care of

and lost sight of the joy that comes with giving.

I got in the mail last week a $10 bill.

Green money from a lady who is 83 years old in a care home here in Tucson.

She wrote a note that said,

"...this is the money I have left over after paying all my bills and I'd like a Sunday morning coffee mug and want to support SML."

It just killed me.

My feeling is that if we're taking an 83 year old's last ten dollars to get by I'm ready to shut down SML.

And so I got a box and put a mug in it along with her $10 and a pen and a bookmark

and sent it to her with a note from me.

Friday I got a phone call.

I took the call.

She said,

"Listen Buster, I am not a charity case and I've belonged to this church for 47 years and don't rob me of doing the one thing I can do for the kingdom of God.

Somebody my age doesn't need $10."

She taught me something very valuable, she understood what it means for a soul to enjoy God

She understood that giving is self-enrichment...

not self-subtraction.

The second thing Jesus says is the soul that enjoys God sees praying as self-adjustment.

For years I thought praying was where you develop a magical technique where you weasel things out of God that she wouldn't otherwise give you.

You hear that now...

"If you only knew how to pray you'd be cured of cancer...

or this or that."

How barbaric.

God is not some deaf God who only hears on one frequency,

who only does what his favored people tell him to do,

who lacks creativity and thought and needs to be told what to do...

and if you find the magic frequency you can get God to give you what you want.

That's not prayer.

Sounds more like manipulation.

Prayer is designed to change the person who is praying.

Prayer is not getting God to change the world to fit me.

Prayer is getting me to change to fit the world that God has given me that I might be a vessel of God's grace in it...

might be part of God's blessing for the world.

Prayer changes the pray-er.

I saw a rerun of an interview Dan Rather did with Mother Teresa.

Maybe you saw it.

Dan Rather's the ultimate journalist.

I have a lot of respect for him.

He always knows how to bore in and ask the questions.

He asks Mother Teresa,

"What do you say when you pray?"

She looked at him for about 4 seconds,

and on TV that's a long time.

She said,

"I listen."

Well, he's the ultimate journalist.

He was frustrated, he said,

"And what does God say?"

She took about six seconds, and said,

"He listens."

Prayer is designed to change the heart of the one praying.

People who enjoy God on the soul level are people who see prayer as self-adjustment,

changing the way I am...

For a while I met with a few pastors of differing denominations for lunch once every other week.

I got there early and went through the line and sat down.
I don't like to pray in public.
I can tell you I think there is physical modesty...

the reason we don't go naked is because there is something sacred about us.

I'll never forget the little British woman who ran up to a super model on live TV.

The super model was wearing over-rated underwear.

This British mom looked like Ms. Doubtfire...

ran up to this beautiful, willowy, model and said,

"Honey, if I had the body you have I wouldn't be showing it to everyone, I'd save it for somebody special."

That's what modesty is all about.

I think there's psychological modesty.

I don't think we need to share everything with everybody we meet about what goes on in the soup of our life..

I also think there's spiritual modesty.

And that's what Jesus was talking about.

Don't be an exhibitionist.

When you pray, use plain words.

Now back to the preachers at lunch story.
I got there early, got my food, said my grace as I always do, to myself...

didn't move my lips, didn't close my eyes, didn't get down on one knee,

and I start eating.

All the rest of the preachers began to arrive and one of them says,

"You are ruining our witness, we should all join hands and kneel down and pray so all the people in this restaurant will know that we believe in God and that we're men of God."

I said,

"They already know we're preachers."

He said,

"How do you figure that?"

I said,

"Given the number of hushpuppy shoes, weird ties and leisure suit jackets...

I think it's rather evident."

Jesus said,

"Don't use prayer as a manipulation to gain the admiration of people."

I believe in prayer,

but I believe in the kind of prayer that is between me and God.

People who enjoy God are people who see prayer as self-adjustment.

What about your praying? What about your giving?

Do you see your giving as self-subtraction or self-enrichment?

Do you see your praying as self-realizing...

getting God to do what you want

or self-adjusting?

Fasting was a popular thing...

the purpose of fasting was to subject your appetite,

your basic urges

to God on a regular basis...

a way of focusing on God,

as a way of saying

I am not subject to my urges...
I, through the grace of God have control and discipline.

I do not take orders from my urges.

This is not self-denial...

it is self-love.

It is not ruining myself,

but building my self.

That's what Jesus was teaching.

When I was a boy,

7 or 8 years old,

I would go down the to Lime Springs public library in the small town where I grew up.

The librarian there was a nice older woman.

One day I was trying to find some new reading material.

I had checked out the Richard Scary books many times and all the books for kids.

She put a book in my hand.

I checked it out and read it.

I don't remember the title, who wrote it.

If you have it or know I sure would appreciate you telling me.

I remember it vividly.

It was a fable.

It was about a hermit, old man who had no family, no friends, and didn't like to be with people.

He lives by himself in a little shack.

He finally found something he loved,

it was a stray puppy.

He took in the puppy,

and the puppy was very hungry

and so he fed the puppy.

Immediately the dog began to grow.

The larger the dog grew the hungrier he got,

and the more the man fed him the larger he grew.

Finally the man fed him everything he had in the house.

In the end, he had the dog on a leash...

and in the end the dog ate the leash

and the dog ate the man.

The end of the fable is that the dog's name was ego.

It was a grotesque story for a small child and I didn't get it then.

I think I do now.

I think about it as I battle with my own self,

my own ego.

There is nothing more destructive than an unmanaged ego,

unmanaged self.

I want to say something about our culture and where we are...

There are two concerns I have and I don't hear anyone talking about this...

in fact it might be very unpopular...

what I'm about to say.

The first concern I have is the idea that curbing our natural appetites is somehow self-destructive.

That is a God-awful lie.
People who say

if you suppress your basic urges and control them

you're somehow making yourself sick

must live in a different world than I do...

and must not know the broken lives that come from following basic urges and lack of self-control.

In fact, I find it quite refreshing to think that this world and my life is not all about me and what I want.

An un-curbed appetite is destructive.

I rigorously object to that belief.

Second concern I have is that somehow we've come to a time where self-indulgence is a civil right.

I have a right to indulge my voracious ego all I want

as long as I don't hurt somebody else.

Hedonism may be a sign of monetary wealth,

but it is not a sign of soul wealth.

Let me tell you something...

we do not live in a vacuum.

I am responsible not only for what I do

but also for what that teaches you and others about what is right and wrong.

Show me a child whose parents give them everything they want

and I'll show you a spoiled brat.

Show me an adult who gives themselves everything they desire

and I'll show you a spoiled brat with a very unhappy soul.

If I indulge myself and don't control my desires it inflicts pain on all of society.

I object to those two rising forces...

one: to curb natural appetites is destructive

and

two: we have a right to self-indulge, to do anything we want too.

I don't have a right to do anything but be responsible for what my actions teach others.

People who enjoy God on the soul level see self-denial as self-love,

the best thing they can do for themselves and for their society.

Question:

Tell me about your giving?

Think about that for a moment.

How do you see giving?

Self-diminishing or self-enrichment?

Tell me about your prayer life?

Do you try to change God to fit you

or can you be open to change yourself to fit God?

And tell me about your basic drives and urges in your life?

Have you submitted those appetites to God?

Blessings to you and the decisions you make.