Today we're going to take a posture of peace by living where God lives and I'm not talking about
heaven. Posture is a short audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything.
Together we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
In Psalm chapter 91 verses 1 and 2 it says,
he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God in him I will trust.
I used to think that this secret place was actually a place of escape,
but if you read all of Psalm 91 you'll see it's a place of victory and that's such good news
because many of us deeply desire to live a victorious life. In fact with all that's going
on in our world right now I'm more convinced of this than ever before. We do not want to
live in defeat, we do not want to live in fear, we do not want to live lives in which we have to
constantly escape from. No, our deep desire is actually a victorious life, to live in victory.
And I say I'm convinced of this more than ever before because y'all I see my news feed. So many
of us have found ourselves once again looking around this lost, broken, problem-filled world
and saying it cannot stay this way. And it's because we have a longing in our heart to be
with God, to experience the peace of his presence, the joy of his fullness, and the confidence of
knowing we belong in his wholeness. So with that longing in our heart we're just not going to
settle for things to stay like they are here on earth because we dream of living in a place of
absolute love, a place of victory. And it's actually not a fantasy, it's not wishful thinking,
because did you know that this was God's desire long before it was yours? His dream before creation
was for a people he could live with in fullness and abundance, a people on whom he could lavish
his love and who would remain with him of their own free will. When the Father and Jesus and the
Holy Spirit imagined us, their passion was to make us like them. Genesis 126. Have you ever
thought about, have you ever imagined what that conversation was like between the three of them?
What they talked about in wanting to make us in their image and likeness? I can hear them,
you know, I'm using my God-given imagination here to just hear what they might have said. Things like
we'll love them the way that we love each other. We'll make them joyful the way that we are joyful.
We'll give them our creativity and imagination and we'll walk with them and talk with them and
live with them so that they can learn what we're like and they can become a part of us and become
a part of our community. We see this plan unfold in the Garden of Eden. It was a place of meeting
created just for Adam and Eve to live in absolute love, to be with God.
Now the consequences for man when they partnered with the enemy in the Garden of Eden was that
they came into relational death. Over time, fellowship with God was gradually lost. Intimacy
was replaced by self-achievement and performance. They were removed from the Garden, the secret
place. But throughout all of human history, God's desire to live with us, to abide with us,
has never wavered. Before creation, God knew the choices man would make and in his loving kindness,
he had already made provision for us. Jesus had already agreed to die in our place and the Holy
Spirit had agreed to become the helper, the teacher, and the comforter we would need for a
new life in God. In the Old Covenant, after man left the Garden, God's presence became an event,
a visit, and our heroes of the faith, people like Moses and Joshua and David and others,
responded to God's presence, but a vast majority of people did not. Israel ultimately desired
rules to govern them. They wanted a king to rule over them. So God gave them the law
in commandment form so that people could still
think towards God and meditate on his precepts.
The law became a measuring stick of good behaviors to assess people's righteousness, their standing
with God, and self-achievement was preferred over relational transformation.
Over time, those Ten Commandments became 613 pharisaical rules that dominated every area
of people's lives.
And so we see, as we read the Old Testament, that when the self-achievement and when performance
overrides God's actual preference for relationship, we have something coming between us and God's
desire for relational transformation through Jesus.
That's the nature of a visitational relationship.
And you know, it still happens today, unfortunately.
We go to a conference, we attend a meeting, and we're inspired and motivated towards change.
But so often, somewhere between the altar and the street, the circumstances of life
will contest those revelations that we received in the conference and the meeting and we default
to our previous ways of trying to earn our relationship with God through our good deeds
and our acts of service.
But, but, Jesus changed all of that.
He came as Emmanuel, which literally means God with us.
Jesus didn't come to just give us an experience of God's presence or a taste of the kingdom.
No.
He came to give us himself, to be with us, to be for us, and to be in us.
Relationship was restored.
Instead of a building to have to go to in order to come into God's presence, like the
Old Covenant Temple, we became the building.
We became the dwelling place of God's presence.
Ephesians 2 really highlights this.
Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19 and 22, listen to this.
It says,
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the
saints and members of the household of God.
Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus himself being
the chief cornerstone in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple
in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the
Spirit.
Because of Jesus, you and I are no longer in a visitational relationship with God.
We are in a habitational one.
The dwelling place of God is no longer in brick and mortar.
It's in flesh and blood.
The secret place, it's not a place to escape from your problems.
It's not a place to go cower while the world goes off the deep end.
The secret place within you is a place where you engage with and respond to the empowering
presence of God in you, and that's where you go to discover earth-shaking, life-changing
possibilities and solutions.
So this week, that's what we're going to be talking about.
We're going to talk about the secret place, because the key to living in victory is learning
to live where God lives.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26.3.
In Hebrew, it is shalom, shalom, meaning complete wholeness, nothing missing, nothing
broken.
This is who you are in Jesus, because of Jesus.
You are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win.
With every step you take today, you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's
defeat on replay.
You are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win.
With every step you take today, you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's defeat
on replay.