00:00:00.000 - 00:00:29.000

[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "Are Your Nerves Converted?" As soon as the voice stops on this side of the tape, be sure to turn immediately to side number 2 for the remainder of the message.

00:00:29.000 - 00:00:54.000

This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. [silence] John 14, 23 and following.

00:00:54.000 - 00:01:44.000

Jesus answered him, "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

00:01:44.000 - 00:02:27.000

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I go away and I will come to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place, you may believe."

00:02:27.000 - 00:03:11.000

And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Holy Word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. There is a little story in making the rounds these days, which reports that God became exceedingly distressed over the state of the earth, and in the midst of his distress decided to send the archangel Gabriel to determine whether there was anything on earth worth saving whatever.

00:03:11.000 - 00:03:51.000

Gabriel came and spent two weeks here. At the end of two weeks he returned to the kingdom of heaven and said, "God, things are even worse there than you imagined. They are unspeakably bad. I don't even have the words to describe them. By wry reckoning, there are only three percent of the people on the earth who are worth saving at all. So I would suggest that it's time to blow the trumpet and bring the whole thing to a hasty end."

00:03:51.000 - 00:04:33.000

God said, "Well, that's a rather harsh decision. I don't think I'll do that just yet. Instead, I'll write a letter to that three percent and give them certain instructions about how to deal with the rest of that planet." So God wrote the letter to the three percent. And, Don, you know what God said in the letter? "You didn't get one, huh?"

00:04:33.000 - 00:05:08.000

Don't feel bad, I fell for it too. And in front of a lot more people than this. I want to go from the light, however, to the serious. We might not have gotten the letter, and that's a joke, but it also seems to me that there are many of the words of our Father God spoken through his Son that we have never quite gotten. And that's not so funny, but in fact is rather sad.

00:05:08.000 - 00:05:42.000

I'm thinking very specifically of the passage which is before us tonight, and of these words. "I leave behind with you peace. I give you my own peace. And my gift is nothing like the peace of the world. You must not be distressed, and you must not be daunted." Now those are the words of Jesus addressed to his disciples.

00:05:42.000 - 00:06:15.000

And I would point out to you that Jesus' use of the word "peace" here is quite unique. It was common in Jesus' earthly day for the greeting, the salutation, "peace" to be exchanged among men. When you met another, you would say to them, "Peace." But Jesus does not use the word here as a salutation, as a wish, as a hope, as an expression of greeting or desire for someone else.

00:06:15.000 - 00:06:42.000

Not at all. Jesus uses the word here in terms of a bequest. Jesus says, "I am giving to you peace." Not something he's hoping for, but something he's bestowing. Not something that he trusts will work out in your life, but something which he is giving as his sovereign gift to all of his disciples.

00:06:42.000 - 00:07:19.000

There is nothing capricious about this. There is nothing ephemeral about this. There is nothing indefinite about this. Jesus says quite plainly, "I am giving to you peace." And if that's so, then why is it that so many of his disciples seem to have so little of it? We can laugh if we didn't get the letter, but can we laugh about the fact that somehow or other we've missed the peace?

00:07:19.000 - 00:07:52.000

That lady who was sitting in my office one day a good number of weeks ago summed it very beautifully. She said, "I met Jesus Christ a long time ago, and I offered my life to him, and he came into my life, and I have sought to serve him ever since. And if anyone would have ever asked me whether I were converted or not, I would have responded immediately, 'Yes, I am converted.' But I'll tell you something, preacher, I might be converted, but my nerves aren't, for I seem to have no peace."

00:07:52.000 - 00:08:17.000

So that's what I want to think about tonight. Are our nerves converted? Now, of course, when we talk about our nerves being all shot, we're not talking about the nerves literally. It's a very rare disease which causes the actual deterioration of the nerves within our bodies. The nerves are really just a telephone system which exists within our physical structure

00:08:17.000 - 00:08:47.000

to convey ideas from the brain to the various muscles, tendons, ligaments, organs of our anatomy. So when we say our nerves are disturbed or when we want to get our nerves converted, when we say we are nervous, we're not speaking that which is literally true. What we're really saying is that the telephone system of our nervous system is getting the wrong messages from our brain.

00:08:47.000 - 00:09:22.000

And those messages, instead of calming us, are making us jump up and down. Dr. David Fink, in his book "Release from Nervous Tension," teaches us to distinguish between what he calls the forebrain and the interbrain. The forebrain is the cerebrum, that which occupies most of your skull. And that is the portion of your brain which gives itself over to the process of analysis, to the process of judgment and decision.

00:09:22.000 - 00:10:00.000

You read the newspaper, and that which you read is read by your cerebrum. But the cerebrum then takes what it has read and sends it on to the interbrain, what is sometimes called the hypothalamus. And when that part of your brain gets the message, it proceeds to react to it, not in terms of judgment, but in terms of feeling. It is that part of the brain which says to us when a certain fact is delivered to it, "I feel sad," or "I feel good."

00:10:00.000 - 00:10:32.000

That makes me jittery, or that makes me calm. It's the interbrain that does this. And Think, after discussing the interbrain, makes this point. In order to have inner peace, that is, in order to have health, physically, mentally, spiritually, we must get in tune with our interbrain. Which is just another way of saying what this lady said in my office.

00:10:32.000 - 00:11:11.000

We've got to get our nerves converted. We've got to get the thoughts that are being sent over the telephone system of our being to be thoughts which are centered upon peace and calmness, not thoughts which make us flighty and upset. Now, if you think about it for any length of time, you recognize that this is a very urgent concern about which we are speaking tonight. There are many people who are deeply distressed, who are being daunted every day, and who are in quite dangerous conditions and situations because of the fact that their nerves are not converted.

00:11:11.000 - 00:11:38.000

Look at just a few examples. Have you ever seen the person so keyed up, strung at such tightness, that their performance in any given activity is hindered? They're unable to move with maximum efficiency and effect. I remember a boy who was in Hamlet with me years ago, a fellow by the name of John Reed. He's now in missionary service in Egypt.

00:11:38.000 - 00:12:03.000

And his part was Fortin Brass. He had a very minor part in the play. And in the very last scene, he came in and he had a speech that was six lines long. And he took it very casually. After all, he thought a six-line speech, anybody could handle that. So a group of us, being even more devilish then than now, decided it would be fun to shake his confidence in that speech.

00:12:03.000 - 00:12:31.000

So we started to talk to him about the implications of those words and how it was a key scene in the play, and how if he blew that speech, the whole impact of the fifth act of Hamlet would be lost, and how he spoke those words when everybody else on the stage was dead, and that meant every eye in the auditorium would be looking right at him. And we kept at it until he consistently, night after night, blew the speech.

00:12:31.000 - 00:12:56.000

His getting into that kind of a state, you see, hindered his performance. That's what sometimes happens. I use a comic illustration, but it's not always so funny. Sometimes our nerves serve to break down our effective communication with other people. I think of a man tonight who, because of certain anxieties which were within him,

00:12:56.000 - 00:13:21.000

even though he was an effective salesman and had a personality that was beautiful to see, yielded so completely to these anxieties that he eventually could find recourse and support only in the bottle. And it was not long until he had become what can only be described as a slobbering alcoholic, utterly unable to communicate with anyone.

00:13:21.000 - 00:13:51.000

This one who could have sold practically anything, reduced to the place where he could sell absolutely nothing, even to himself. Now that's what anxiety, when it's uncontrolled, can do to a person. It can also lead to very serious physical disabilities. I think of a woman tonight who was raised in a very fundamental Christian home,

00:13:51.000 - 00:14:14.000

in the midst of an extreme rigidity, a religion that was full of authoritarianism and very little grace. And in the midst of that kind of a situation, she established a value system which was most demanding. And one of the values was, "You never complain about anything." So she never complained about anything.

00:14:14.000 - 00:14:31.000

She disciplined herself in all of her life. Every time something went wrong, every time there was some difficulty or vicissitude that confronted her, she never said anything. She hid it inside. She just kept hiding things inside and hiding things inside and hiding things inside

00:14:31.000 - 00:15:07.000

until the effect upon her physical system was such that she developed extremely severe arthritis. Arthritis is largely a disease brought on because of excessive and uncontrolled anxieties, worries, nerves, if you will. Just like peptic ulcers or asthma. These things have their root many times, not always, but many times in this kind of nervous lack of control.

00:15:07.000 - 00:15:29.000

And that's exactly what happened to this woman. You see, when we're talking about this matter of bringing our lives to the place where our nerves, our interbrain is in line with the peace which Christ promises, we're not talking about something which is only a minor matter.

00:15:29.000 - 00:15:51.000

Now, it's important to notice that in this passage, Jesus says that this peace which he's ready to give and which we need lest we get into one of the difficult situations I've just described, this peace is given by him not in the way which the world gives it. The world, you see, has certain ways in which it seeks to calm the nerves,

00:15:51.000 - 00:16:09.000

in which it seeks to bring a person to the kind of peace we're talking about. I think essentially you can divide the world's methods into four. One, there's the method of just trying to deny that you're nervous. Just pretend that it isn't so.

00:16:09.000 - 00:16:37.000

Live a life which evidences that it is not so, if you can. I think of a lady tonight who had a very great bitterness against her husband, and this bitterness within her led her to a nervous tension which was a horrible thing to see. But she would never admit, even for one moment, that the root of this nervousness was the bitterness.

00:16:37.000 - 00:16:54.000

She could never confront the reality of that. She denied it till the moment she closed her eyes in death, a death, incidentally, much hastened by the debilitated physical condition which was hers because of this very nervousness.

00:16:54.000 - 00:17:20.000

That's one of the ways that the world suggests, just pretend it isn't there. It won't change anything, of course, but a lot of people try it. Or the world says, "Avoid what causes it. Avoid what makes you feel anxious." I have in my mind now a man who was at the very top of his field of endeavor and work.

00:17:20.000 - 00:17:38.000

He was, in fact, the national leader in his field. That man was utterly unable to bring himself to go through a tunnel. He had a phobia about tunnels. What the source of that phobia was, he was afraid to look or to ask.

00:17:38.000 - 00:17:59.000

He would go hundreds of miles, literally, out of his way in order to avoid going through a tunnel. They made him so anxious that he couldn't stand the trauma of it, and so he simply went another way. That, of course, did not change the situation either. But that's a method sometimes recommended by the world.

00:17:59.000 - 00:18:27.000

If you know individuals who procrastinate a great deal, who keep putting things off, beware. You may very well be talking to a person who has the kind of anxiety we're describing tonight. Procrastination, you see, is a way of avoiding the actual challenge which makes one anxious. That's all it is, nothing more than that.

00:18:27.000 - 00:18:51.000

Another way which the world suggests is to rationalize, to try to come up with some other explanation as to why it's so. I heard two men talking about new automobiles which they had bought. They were very similar automobiles, both very, very luxurious automobiles. The one man was trying to justify his purchase of such an expensive automobile, and he said he didn't buy it because of his looks.

00:18:51.000 - 00:19:14.000

He bought it because he did a lot of traveling and it had power steering, and that was a great benefit to him, and it was very smooth riding so that it didn't wear on his nerves, and it had very good gas mileage, astonishingly so, for such a big automobile. And he went on and on with one kind of rationalization after another, and his friend listened to all of this, and he said, "I bought mine because it's a status symbol."

00:19:14.000 - 00:19:48.000

Well, that's the kind of freshness and openness we need when we talk about the kind of thing we're discussing this evening, not the process of rationalization. I had a student assistant once. He was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, and I shall never forget the Sunday morning that he was to take, for the first time, his part in the worship service. We were standing in the hall outside the sanctuary about two minutes before the service, robed, ready to go.

00:19:48.000 - 00:20:19.000

And suddenly, he reached inside of his robe, pulled out a brown paper bag, proceeded to open it, vomit in it, close it up, and put it back under his robe. I've never seen anything like that in my life. I said to him, "What are you doing?" He said, "This always happens to me before I get up to speak to people." I said, "Well, what have you done about it?" He said, "Oh, nothing. It just helps to keep me on my toes."

00:20:19.000 - 00:20:57.000

It just helps to keep me on my toes? But some people try to rationalize in ways almost as absurd as that the anxieties which they experience. And then, of course, there's the method so common today, and that is to narcotize the problem. That is, just take enough pills or drink enough alcohol in order to eliminate your feelings of anxiety.

00:20:57.000 - 00:21:25.000

In Concord, California, three weeks ago, a lady came to see me who was a tranquilizer addict. A pathetic thing to behold. Those pills did not one thing to make her cope more significantly with her difficulties in life. All they did was make her feel less threatened by these things.

00:21:25.000 - 00:21:48.000

That's a sad thing to see. Whenever you encounter the individual who throws themselves into an orgy of business, the person who's going and going and going and going all the time, beware. You may be talking to the person who's trying to narcotize their anxieties by an orgy of activity.

00:21:48.000 - 00:22:13.000

It's a way of escape. These, then, are the world's ways to deny, to avoid, to rationalize, to narcotize. But none of these are Jesus' way. Jesus has a different method of giving release, of converting our nerves, of bringing us to peace with our interbrain.

00:22:13.000 - 00:22:38.000

And I want to just notice what his method is. The first thing he does is this. He causes us, when we think of our anxieties, to think of them in terms, always, not of ourselves as individuals, but of ourselves as part of the family of God.

00:22:38.000 - 00:23:00.000

When Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you," he was not speaking to an individual. He was speaking to the company of the disciples. And he was saying that this peace, this inner restfulness, this calm, this well-being, this completeness, this wholeness, is something which belongs to the family of God.

00:23:00.000 - 00:23:28.000

And it is as you are involved in that family that you experience and enjoy that peace. In Jerusalem this last year, we were driving along a valley and I looked up and there were some huts, shacks up on a hill. And I said to our guide, "What are those?" And he said, "Oh, that's a colony of hermits." A colony of hermits.

00:23:28.000 - 00:23:48.000

Well, we may as Christians be somehow inclined to give ourselves to the hermitage, but it must always be at least as a colony if we're to know the peace of which Jesus speaks. It is something that is given, you see, to the group. And that means that in our relationships with each other within the body of Christ,

00:23:48.000 - 00:24:22.000

there is to be the kind of openness and sharing which allows us to walk around inside one another's lives and in walking around help to solve those tensions, those anxieties which bring us so low. I know a lot of people who pray to be delivered from certain fears or anxieties or certain physical ailments and all the time they're praying, they're praying for the wrong thing.

00:24:22.000 - 00:24:45.000

They've never brought themselves to the place where they've really sought out what in them makes them the way they are. And the reason they haven't brought themselves to that place is because they're unwilling to face those realities in their own lives. And one of the ways in which we become willing to do that is to open ourselves to one another and to let a person put his hand right into the middle of our heart

00:24:45.000 - 00:25:13.000

and put fingers, loving, tender, Christian fingers on the spots that need to be touched. And when they're touched, we can confront them and begin to deal with them. And it's not until we deal with them that we're going to be dealing with our anxieties. Cecil Osborne tells of a woman who came to him and asked him to pray that she would not have a heart attack.

00:25:13.000 - 00:25:30.000

She very much felt that she was going to have a heart attack. She frequently had palpitations and she thought for sure she was going to have a heart attack. She said, "I've been to my doctor and my doctor tells me that it's nothing but anxiety, but I'm convinced that I'm going to have a heart attack. Please pray that I don't have one."

00:25:30.000 - 00:25:51.000

And he began to talk with her about the situation. He found out that these feelings had come to her with a special frequency right after the death of her mother. And he began to explore the situation of the death of her mother and he found eventually, after a lot of conversation, that this woman really hadn't felt too bad about the death of her mother.

00:25:51.000 - 00:26:18.000

And not only that, but she did feel very bad about the fact that she didn't feel too bad about it. I mean, after all, you know, you get pretty guilty when you think you're not too sorry that she's gone. And in the midst of that kind of guilt, burying it down inside, this woman began to have these palpitations. And as he explored this with her even further, he discovered that she understood death in terms of punishment.

00:26:18.000 - 00:26:47.000

Dying was to her a punishment inflicted by God. Now put that all together. Here's a woman, you see, who loses her mother, is guilty because she doesn't feel bad about it, and understanding herself to be guilty expects punishment and understands punishment to be death. And very soon she starts having palpitations and starts thinking about whether she's going to have a heart attack or not.

00:26:47.000 - 00:27:12.000

She was praying all the time about the heart attack when she should have been praying about the guilt feelings. When she opened herself, and when Osborne was permitted to go into her life and to touch some buttons that needed to be touched, things changed. We cannot confess to God what we are unwilling to confess to ourselves.

00:27:12.000 - 00:27:36.000

And we best discover ourselves when we open ourselves to one another. And that's the reason when Jesus talks about peace, he talks about it in terms of the family of believers. "Get together and you'll have my peace." This is the second thing he says.

00:27:36.000 - 00:28:00.000

"Fill your mind with thoughts of calmness." The scene in which Jesus is speaking these words is the scene before he goes out to be crucified. He knows that his death is just ahead, and wishing to calm the disciples in advance, he tells them these things. He is sealing to them memories of himself.

00:28:00.000 - 00:28:28.000

He is filling their minds with the promises which are to sustain them when the time of difficulty and anxiety comes. We ought to be forever filling our minds with the things which will speak to us of peace and calmness. I have special reference here, of course, to Scripture. There are a lot of people who are always anxious to learn Scripture verses in order to witness to other people.

00:28:28.000 - 00:28:54.000

I think that's probably the second poorest form of witness that I know. Did you ever notice, for example, that Jesus never quoted the Bible in an attempt to witness to someone, to win them? The only time Jesus ever quoted the Bible was when he was fighting with the Pharisees. I got a letter from a family the other day that told me that they were no longer going to be coming to this church

00:28:54.000 - 00:29:18.000

because I was not preaching expository sermons, which is a verse-by-verse exposition of the Scriptures, which I sometimes do, but not regularly. I wrote them and expressed my regret, and I also went on to point out the fact that there's not a single expository sermon in all of the Bible. The preaching of the Apostle, the preaching of the New Testament, is not expository preaching.

00:29:18.000 - 00:29:49.000

The Bible is essentially God's Word to be hidden in our hearts that we might not sin against him. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace," who what? "whose mind is stayed on thee," and here is where we learn about him. I'll never forget, I was sitting here looking at Ruth Gold out there, and I remember when I came out here the first time, second time, to meet with the pulpit committee of this church.

00:29:49.000 - 00:30:10.000

And it was a real rush meeting. Oh, it just went like this. So many things to do, so many people to see and everything, you know, and I made a mistake. At the very end of the day, I said to Noble Trenum, "Could you show me a little bit of Los Angeles as you're taking me to the airport?"

00:30:10.000 - 00:30:25.000

And I had a plane that wasn't going to wait for me. Well, Noble cut it very close. He cut it so close that we had no time even to check in my baggage. We ran all the way from the sidewalk to the plane, carrying the suitcases,

00:30:25.000 - 00:30:50.000

and literally threw them onto the plane as I got on after them. Never forget it. And I was shaking like this. My heart was pounding and a sweat was running down, you know. I'd been very anxious about coming out here anyway, didn't know what kind of a decision I should be arriving at, didn't know how to approach the whole thing, and I got on that plane a disaster area.

00:30:50.000 - 00:31:14.000

And I sat down and I tried to get calm, and we took off and we flew out right here over these mountains, and there were forest fires all over these mountains, and the flames were leaping up. I'll tell you, it looked like a view of Dante's Inferno all down below. And I tried to go to sleep, and I can usually sleep on airplanes. I couldn't go to sleep.

00:31:14.000 - 00:31:40.000

So I thought, "Well, I shall review the promises of Scripture that I know." And I began to quote verses to myself, and then because I didn't think that was as good as it ought to be, I began to quote them out loud, which must have been intriguing to some of the people sitting around me. But I just began to say things. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-ridden."

00:31:40.000 - 00:32:01.000

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give." "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not..." And I went through a great number of these verses, and I fell asleep. And as we landed at the Pittsburgh airport early the next morning, it was the red-eye special overnight flight, a flight which I've made many times

00:32:01.000 - 00:32:27.000

and always leaves me ruined for two or three days. I awakened. I felt tremendously refreshed. I walked down the ladder from that plane and was met by a colleague of mine who knew why I was out here. And he said, "How was the trip?" And I said, "Great." And he said, "What are you going to do?"

00:32:27.000 - 00:32:48.000

And you know, for the first time I knew exactly what my response was going to be. Just like that, without even being conscious of having gone through the agony of making decision. Focusing, you see, on the things which have been given to us. Not only focusing upon Scripture, but focusing on a lot of other things as well.

00:32:48.000 - 00:33:09.000

There are a lot of books that can speak to us in times like these. We've got some of them on our book table. I want to mention some of these titles to me. "The Touch of the Master's Hand," or "The Will of God," or "The Jesus Person's Pocket Promise Book," a record of all the promises of Jesus.

00:33:09.000 - 00:33:30.000

"The Problem of Pain," "Guide to Confident Living" by Norman Vincent Peale. Or if you're not such a good reader and you want a tape that will speak to you, well, some of these tapes that are available at our tape desk. "Five Flags Flying," "How to Fight Your Fears,"

00:33:30.000 - 00:33:54.000

"For Those Pursuing Peace of Mind," "Where Great Things Fashion Themselves." Reading these words, pondering upon these truths, sealing these things inside, helps to make you calm at the communication center so that the messages that go out over the system are not so confused and troubled.

00:33:54.000 - 00:34:14.000

And one last thing. Jesus not only promised peace to the group and gave them memories feeding into their minds those things which would calm them in storm. He did one more thing. He promised them the presence of the Holy Spirit.

00:34:14.000 - 00:34:41.000

The Comforter is coming to be with you. Now, we aren't conscious enough of the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When I was in Egypt this last summer, I had a guide named Haji Haji Suleiman Abdullah Gabri. And he told me one day that he was going to take me to the most significant thing I would see on the entire trip.

00:34:41.000 - 00:34:59.000

And he took me back. The roads were so narrow in that part of Cairo that you couldn't take a car. And we walked back to this mosque. And he took me to one corner of the mosque. There was a block of stone.

00:34:59.000 - 00:35:15.000

And in this block of stone were two depressions. And he put his hands in these depressions. And he put them on his forehead and on his heart. And he asked me to do the same. And I said, "What am I doing?"

00:35:15.000 - 00:35:31.000

He said, "Those are the very footprints of Muhammad. And we come here to bless ourselves." It is Muslim belief, you see, that when Muhammad walked upon sand, he left no footprints. But when he walked upon stone, he did leave footprints.

00:35:31.000 - 00:36:04.000

Which you've got to admit is an interesting twist. And you know, as I stood and watched him do this on those footprints, I thought to myself, "How sad to build your faith upon footprints. Something left a long time ago instead of upon the present reality

00:36:04.000 - 00:36:23.000

of a living, loving, holy Spirit of God." Norman Vincent Peale tells of a businessman who came to him very distressed and said he never understood the presence of God and the Holy Spirit. And Peale said to him, "Then I'll tell you what you do.

00:36:23.000 - 00:36:37.000

Every time you sit down somewhere, put a chair beside you and understand the Holy Spirit to be sitting in that chair." The man laughed. He said, "I'm perfectly serious. You need some way to visualize the very real presence of the Holy Spirit.

00:36:37.000 - 00:36:50.000

When you go to bed at night, put a chair beside your bed and understand the Holy Spirit to be sitting up all night while you sleep. When you sit down in a restaurant, have an extra chair at your table and understand the Holy Spirit to be seated there.

00:36:50.000 - 00:37:05.000

Put a chair beside your desk in your office and understand the Holy Spirit to be at your side." And the man did that and his life was transformed. Now, I'm not suggesting that method for you, but I am suggesting that we must come to the place

00:37:05.000 - 00:37:17.000

where we are more dependent upon the very presence of God. Too many times I've said to someone, "Do you believe that Jesus did miracles?" "Yes." "Do you believe that Jesus could do miracles today?"

00:37:17.000 - 00:37:29.000

"Well, if he was here, yes, I believe he could." That's a wrong answer. He is here. He is present in the Holy Spirit,

00:37:29.000 - 00:37:50.000

and he's still ready to do miracles, including converting your nerves. Does this sound too simple? Well, one of the ways we have of deceiving ourselves is saying that something is too simple for us to believe.

00:37:50.000 - 00:38:06.000

Don't make that mistake tonight. Hold the family of God's people in openness. Think the thoughts of Jesus after him. Practice the presence of the Holy Spirit.

00:38:06.000 - 00:38:35.000

And I promise you, you will not be distressed or daunted. You will find that peace which Jesus promised to all those who believe. And I know of no better place to experience the family and the presence and the power and the peace than at his table.

00:38:35.000 - 00:38:58.000

Let us pray. O God, convert our nerves, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.