There are times in life, when you are an avid believer in God and His Word, that God will open the eyes of your understanding and show you something that will absolutely change your life! Just such a thing happened to me this weekend. The subject of the teaching was accessing God’s peace in your life and how, in order to experience and enjoy that peace, you have to take the time to settle the things in your heart that remain unsettled, unsolved and unresolved.
Peace typically occurs at the end of a conflict. It has been referred to as the absence of strife. Peace can follow accomplishment or a job well done. Peace is also defined as undisturbed well being. It is knowing that everything is going to be okay. Peace is something God gives to us as His children. Yet for all the magnificence that God’s peace is in our lives, we often fail to access it. We fail to access it because we go about obtaining it in the wrong way. We tend to believe that peace is something we have to work for by “living right” or by giving up something; by adding something; or by abstaining from something. Such is the life of the typical Christian believer, ever condemned and guilty, never measuring up, always unworthy! I cannot tell you how many Facebook and Instagram stories promote how unworthy we are before God, implying that if we only “did better” or worked harder we would arrive. Well, here’s newsflash for your weary soul – there will never be anything you can do that will make you worthy before God! Making you worthy is something God had to do for you! The sooner you come across that realization, the closer you are to enjoying God’s peace in your life. What a cruel, dreadful, awful trick the enemy of God has placed on God’s people since the world began. Who the hell wants to worship and serve a God that is perpetually unhappy and displeased with His children? Are you perpetually displeased with your children? Don’t you have a little forgiveness for their foolishness? Do you not extend them some mercy at times? Don’t you just love them for who they are irrespective of their behavior? Well, it’s fair to say the God of love can do even better than that! When you find yourself caught in that arduous trap it isn’t God that you are serving anymore, instead it is the commandments and doctrines of men, made by men in an attempt to access a God they neither know nor understand. There is no peace in living that way (and definitely no love).
Peace is something that God freely gives to His children. In order to access that peace in your heart you have to settle things in your heart. You are not going to be able to settle all the things that aren’t right in the world, but you can settle them in your own heart. You do so by believing and accepting what God says over what everyone and everything else says. You remain unpeaceful because you (and I) have all these things going on inside of us that are not resolved. God says that He gave us His son as a payment for all the sins we may commit in a lifetime, past, present and future. Accepting Jesus Christ’s finished work for you leads to peace. BUT (and it’s a helluva big but), your failure to accept that reality in your heart leads to a lifetime of dwelling on and living in every stupid thing you ever did throughout your life! Of course the sin and error is wrong and leads to pain, You don’t need me to tell you that. But, remaining in it is worse, especially when God, the only true judge, has already forgiven you in the life of His son. God solved your sin problem and mine forever. Our Savior’s work is finished, it’s done. Until you resolve that in your own heart, you won’t enjoy the peace God has freely given to you.
Another way believers get talked out of the peace God so dearly wants for His children is by living under the negative judgment of man, including yourself. You do not have the right to judge yourself. When you negatively judge yourself, you reject God’s plan of redemption already enacted for you. Judging yourself and allowing yourself to be judged by other people is wrong. It is not humble to refer to yourself as a worm for God, lowly and defeated. Thinking this way not only robs you of God’s peace, but it serves to work the purposes of your insidious enemy, the accuser of the brethren before God night and day. Similarly, living in the past, rehearsing and cataloging your every mistake, remembering and cleaving to your lowest moments, denies God’s true opinion of you as His child and crucifies afresh His son that died for you. You may not be able to forget all the dumb stuff you have done throughout your life, but you can resolve to settle the matter in your heart. Leaving it unsettled and undone leads only to fear and an incessant focus on what is not right about you! (Have you ever been there?) Settle it in your heart. Forgive yourself and let it go. Let it ALL go and simply move ahead. Walk out a new man, a new woman, fresh, alive and vital for the day at hand. Walk out with your head held high, a son or daughter of the most high God! Once you really decide to let it all go and refuse to unearth it, you will find yourself living in the peace God has already given you. Resolve it in your heart once and for all.
The good life you dream of is not found in riches and cars and houses and more and more stuff. It is found when you know and understand Him, the God who so loved you that He gave His only begotten son for you. It is found in the joy and love and peace that only God can provide for you. It’s not about you, for goodness sakes, it’s about Him. You don’t have to spend your life feeling like you don’t measure up before God which leads only to increasing fear and doubt and defeat. You have not been found wanting and there is literally nothing you have to do in this life to be at peace other than fully accept all that God has already done for you. Settle the matter in your own heart. Resolve the matter in your own heart. Solve the matter in your own heart by believing what God says is true in every situation that ever confronts you. You will surely be challenged in this life, but God will make sure you always win! Always…
Get peace…
Just some good thoughts…
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Nice Tony,
You mentioned,
“God says that He gave us His son as a payment for all the sins we may commit in a lifetime, past, present and future.”
That would be a cool verse if I know that one, which I don’t. I ask, because when I hear that, or in this case read that, I question the future part. Not the past, that easy to understand, and not the present time, that one is as well, — Live in the now, right? That’s cool, but the future sins that I will commit will be or are forgiven already? This is where my logic has a hard time fitting it in with this logic in my head. hmmmm this future concept, I don’t know, just asking.
jim
Great question Jim. God has foreknowledge and has already forgiven you for all sin by the work of His son. Future to you, already known by God!
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