Peace unyielded

Don’t get upset about evil people. Don’t be jealous of those who do wrong. They are like grass and other green plants that dry up quickly and then die. So trust in the Lord and do good. Live on your land and be dependable. Enjoy serving the Lord, and he will give you whatever you ask for. (Psalm 37:1-4)

It is easy to get rattled by what we see and hear these days, isn't it? Did you ever stop for a moment to consider the great 'filters' God has given us so that we aren't easily swayed by what we see and hear? His Word, Holy Spirit, and our own conscience can do a 'bang up job' of interfering with those things so we don't become swayed, giving into fear, or much worse - believing and following what we see or hear. Trust God, live uprightly, and give into the joy that comes from doing so. God isn't swayed, nor is he caught off-guard by the political climate, the threats of war, or even the rumblings of this earth along quake lines once silent. He is still in control. We just need to press into his truth more, learn what he says, look around us at the evidence of his grace that still remains, and trust him. 

It is easy to get upset - it is harder to trust. There is only one choice for a believer, though, and that is to trust with all your heart! Begin to be 'dependable' in the way you live, and you will begin to realize all the 'saber rattling' of our enemy is really nothing more than scare tactics meant to sway us from our convictions. Satan has done this 'saber rattling' from the beginning of time and he isn't about to stop now. We have truth and that far outweighs anything he can throw our way! Sometimes he is so proud of himself because he manages to steal away our joy by all these worries. The longer he interrupts your joy in serving Christ, the more you will fear the 'saber rattling' you hear and the attacks you see coming. Settle back into that joy that is based in trusting God with all that is going on and he soon realizes you possess an 'unrattled resistance' to his attacks!

Trust in the Lord - not your own understanding. Do good - even when it seems there might not be any outward evidence that things are changing for the better. Live for him right where you are - being dependable in your work, service, and worship. Let his peace and love bring about a truly 'unrattled' joy within you. Others will see how you live, observe your peace, and they will be curious as to how you can remain so 'at peace' in unsettled times. It is then that God can use your life to be a testimony to those who seek similar peace. Just sayin!

Are you courageous enough?

Has anyone or anything been disturbing your peace lately? If you watch the evening news, there are reports of mass shootings, angry confrontations between this group or that, natural disasters sweeping away those in their path, homes destroyed by fires, and families torn apart by things way beyond their control. Indeed, there are a plethora of things that can disturb our peace in a matter of seconds, but we don't have to allow our peace to be destroyed by any of these things or people. God's peace is capable of surpassing whatever seeks to disturb it. The way peace is maintained is also the way it is attained - we place our trust in the One True God.

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock. (Isaiah 26:3-4)

What are 'fixed thoughts'? If you are like me, your mind can ramble right along from one thought to the next without taking a breather at all. We can get so caught up in our thought patterns that we totally miss how muddled they are getting, all because we don't take that 'breather'. One way of having the peace of God rule over our lives is by learning to take our thoughts 'captive' more than once in a while. Sometimes we need to just 'shut off' long enough to allow God to speak. We cannot hear if we are not listening. We cannot embrace peace is our arms (and our hearts and minds) are so laden with our burdens that we are not open to receiving the embrace. 

I used to think a person who had 'fixed thoughts' was like the monk in the monastery. There would be no outside distractions, peaceful times of prayer and meditation, and some enchanting worship emanating from their lives. Boy, was I off base on that one! Fixed thoughts do not require us to live a 'shut away' life, it just means we will take the time and effort to keep Christ first in all we undertake. We might 'shut away' some of the invading thoughts, then really spend some quality time focusing on him - his Word, some time in meditation, and even a bit of worship. We don't need to live a cloistered life to be at peace with God, but we may need to allow some work with our minds in order to 'maintain peace'. 

When we are instructed to 'take every thought captive', it suggests there is this tendency to allow them to be 'carried away' by the 'loudest' or most 'frequent' influence. The more we control what can influence our thoughts, the more 'fixed' our thoughts will become. I read some research a while back that showed how we can hear ten different reports - nine will be positive, but one will be negative. The researchers showed that the human mind could recall the negative quicker than the positive. Does that surprise anyone? The 'bent' of our minds is to 'fix upon' the negative quicker than the positive. That need to change if we are to know and live in the peace of God.

It took me a while to allow God access to my mind - but it was worth the effort it took to get to the place where I allowed time (access) to my thoughts. It meant I had a regular time to explore the scripture, enough time to consider what he was showing me, and then a plan to allow it to be 'mulled over' again and again throughout the day. That meant I sometimes needed to refocus my thinking - being aware when I was allowing other things to keep my mind in a frenzy and neglecting to allow his peace to enter in. Maybe that is our prayer today - God give us an awareness of the building frenzy and the courage to shut it off long enough to let you speak into it. Just sayin!

Settled, Sure, and Sane

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:6-7)

When we are presented with alternatives, we are being given a choice. If you have ever gone into a restaurant with pages and pages of menu items, bound together in a spiral bound book of sorts, you probably have been so frustrated by all the choices you just chose your old "stand by" because you couldn't read through them all before the waitress returned! When the choices are many, the anxiety associated with making the "right" choice is significantly higher than when the choices are simply this or that. At least we stand a 50/50 chance of getting our choice right with the latter example, but with the spiral-bound menu of choices, who knows what the odds might be? There is something to be said about "limiting the choices", isn't there? I don't give small children a litany of choices - I present one or the other. Why? When presented with each choice, they usually want them both - when presented with fifty items, they want them all - but they can only have one! It is much easier to teach right choices when the options are fewer! God knows this, too! So does the enemy of our souls! He knows presenting us with so many choices which baffle our minds is a good place to get us in the middle of a muddle. He likes it when we are in a muddle!

Increased demands are just as befuddling to us as are too many choices! When the demands on our schedules, skills, or services are many, the anxiety associated with the increasing demand increases. If choices and demands can increase our anxiety to fever-pitch, maybe it is time we learn how to collaborate with the only one who can really direct us to the right choice and settle us into a place of inner peace in the midst of the chaos. Learning to shape our choices and stressors into prayers is fundamental to keeping ourselves out of the middle of the muddle. Too many think prayers have to be these elaborate, well-orchestrated, divine sounding, stop all activity, get on your knees kind of words lifted to the heavens. The Lord has heard more "fly-by" prayers from me in my times of increased demand and uncertain choices than I can shake a stick at! If I waited to get down onto my knees, I'd never get things sorted out! All God desires is for us to make our concerns known to him - he doesn't care if it is on the "fly" or on our knees! He just wants the opportunity to connect.


I cannot tell you how many times I have been in the middle of a mess of stress and just asked him to give me guidance - short and sweet. Right there, he begins to settle in around me with his peace and I can focus on what matters, getting direction on how to proceed and then it seems like the stressors get put into the right perspective. When things are in the right perspective - or at least I can see them from that perspective - they look a lot less "anxiety-laden" than they did before! "It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life." Life happens at a pace we can barely manage sometimes. In those moments of "over-activity" and "increased anxiety", it is good to re-center, re-connect, and re-commit. We change our focus from the increasing demand and innumerable choices toward Christ and his leading in those moments. We take a moment or two to just offer up those prayers and then just listen. We may think we don't have the time to listen but remember this - the amount of time you invest in listening equates to less time in the midst of the muddle. Re-committing is really the outcome of the first two - when we get our focus right and allow our hearts to be connected to the one who knows the answers, the ability to make the choice in front of us or deal with the demand which is the most urgent becomes apparent. Most of the time it only takes a moment to allow the sense of God's wholeness to permeate our inner core and settle us right down. Just sayin!

Rest now

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. (John Lubbock)

Lubbock also reminds us that a day of worry is worse than a week of work! We spend a great deal of time 'working on things', only to rework them a little later. We clean today, but by next week this time, the cleaning must be repeated. Why? Life happened and dirt came. As with our living environment, life happens and dirt comes into our lives in the areas of our emotions, thoughts, and even our relationships. We must constantly be aware that life will 'happen', but when we have prepared for it, we are able to face the challenge of the 'dirt' as it arises. I have extra cleaning products in the house - not just enough to keep it clean today. One way we are always ready to deal with 'life's dirt' as it comes is to be 'rested', for a tired mind, body, and spirit will succumb to the stresses of a 'dirty life'.

I stretch myself out. I sleep. Then I’m up again—rested, tall and steady, Fearless before the enemy mobs Coming at me from all sides. (Psalm 3:5-6)

Rest doesn't always indicate idleness, though. When I am resting, my mind is still working - as it does, I have given God permission to enter into that 'working' and give me insight, new ideas, and even sort out a bit of the muddle that exists in my inner man at times. Rest means we 'settle in' for a bit and actually take time to just breathe. Worry has no place in our rest time, but how many of us 'worry away' our rest? We ruminate on all the things not done, things done poorly, and the things we didn't need to do, but did. Then we wonder why our 'rest time' seemed a bit foggy and not all that restful. We didn't really rest - we just faked being in a 'restful posture'. When I go fishing, I rest. I observe nature around me, read a bit, listen to others around me, and share a bit of excitement at that first fish reeled in by whoever it is that brings it in. Rest isn't about the location as much as it is about the frame of mind and spirit we place ourselves in as we are resting.

Rest doesn't always involve a bed - it can be a great afternoon just hanging out with your BFF. It could be taking on a challenging crossword puzzle, or even reading a book. There might be food with family and ruckus laughter abounding. Rest isn't hard, but getting ourselves to the place mentally, physically, and emotionally where we can really enter into rest might be. I actually had to train myself to rest - something that seems to come much more naturally to others. I had to give myself permission to lay down all that caused me so much anxiety in life. I had to open myself up to the possibilities of missing out the good stuff in order to pursue the urgent stuff. Life will happen - dirt will come - we don't have to always be so focused on what happened and what came as much as we need to be concerned with what God wants us to realize in the moment. 

Rest is a state - not a location. It is a sense - not a fact. It is personal - but it also may be corporate at times. We all need it. We all crave it. The next time you see a group of clouds in the distance - stop - take ten short minutes to just watch them. Do that thing we did as kids and think about what each one resembles. It may seem frivolous at first, but it could just spur some sense of deeper rest you desperately require. If so, find time to explore that 'sense' of need and get that desperately needed rest for your spirit, mind, emotions, or relationship that beckons to be found. The enemy to rest is worry - the solution to the 'dirty problem' you worry so much about might just be found in the rest. Just sayin!