The God of Peace

When we are not enveloped by the peace of God, which has nothing to do with human reasoning or our circumstances (Philippians 4:7), we cannot abide in the rest of God (Hebrews 4:10). Entering His rest is imperative and quite easy (more to come).

Stress is often called the "silent killer". It destroys our body, soul and spirit with its relentless, negative bombardment. We control stress by what we eat, drink, think about, and the kind as well as the amount of activities that we introduce into our daily schedule.

Anxious situations and thoughts keep us in continual turmoil. Our Father God speaks to this issue in so many places in His Word. He used Paul to remind us not to allow anxiety to permeate our thoughts and activities (Philippians 4:6).

Jesus taught us that worry and anxiety cannot change any aspect of our life (Matthew 6:25-26). He taught us that the antidote for the poison of stress is to enter God's rest by seeking first the Kingdom of God. Then, the Trinity will supply all of our needs (Matthew 6:33).

When we focus on the Lord (Isaiah 26:3-4), regardless of the situation going on around us, we allow the peace of God to rule in our heart. Gratitude and forgiveness are two characteristics that help us to access that peace (Colossians 3:15).

When we live in mindfulness of the moment, we view God working out everything for our eventual good (Romans 8:28). By finding items for which to show gratitude, we live in constant praise to our Daddy God, and our inner joy grows incrementally.

With joy in our heart, we have less of a struggle with negative thoughts, stress and worry. We have faith in our Heavenly Father, because of His faithfulness to us in every area of our life. We live in incomparable peace and joy each moment of the day.

Prayer:

Father God, help us to limit our activities to only those in which You lead us to participate. Help us to put Your will above our own and above the constant needs of everyone around us. Remind us to put all of our concerns in Your heart, through turning them over to You every time we find our mind obsessing about them.

Give us the courage to follow Your direction for our life, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel. Remind us to love our self, so that we will have the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual energy to love other as You love them - nonjudgmentally, whole-heartedly and with Your unconditional Agape love.

Thought for the Day:

Living in the moment, fully engaged in and abiding in the rest of God, we realize that He has everything in His control, and nothing can harm us, or invade our life without His knowledge; He works out even negative issues for our ultimate good. - Romans 8:28

Split Personality

 

If we live life with one foot on the dock, and the other foot in the boat, we will end up getting dunked, once the boat moves from the dock for any reason. The slightest turmoil in the water will cause us to lose our balance.

God says that lukewarm people - those who live with their feet in two separate places at once - make Him sick to His stomach! He would rather that we live up to our convictions and either follow Him wholeheartedly or not at all.

To live any other way is hypocritical and smears the name of Christ in front of the world. Even unbelievers know how Christians are supposed to act, and they lose respect for us and for God if we are hypocrites with a split personality.

God prefers that we live in total surrender to His will and way. He knows that Biblical principles allow us to reap only good things in life. If we have a mixture of both secular and Biblical ideals in our world view, we end up reaping the negative consequences from the corruption we sow.

God wants us to follow Him completely, and to give Him His rightful place in our life. At the center of complete surrender we realize that we no longer live for our self, but Christ lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20).

Our obedience proves that we actually know God (1 John 2:3). He circumcises our heart, cutting away the flesh from our life, so we can live in harmony with His Spirit and one another (Romans 2:29).

We walk in the fruit of the Spirit by the power of the Spirit, and Christ's divine life replaces our carnality and worldliness (2 Peter 1:4).

Sanctification has various fluctuating tempos in our life. Sometimes, the process is fast; at other times, painfully slow. It is constant, however; and God gives us His patience and fortitude to press on through this cleansing process until our personality and goals reflect and are focused on Christ alone (Colossians 3:3-4).

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for making us a new creation by Your Spirit - with the mind and divinity of Christ abiding in us. Keep us in union with Your Spirit and hold us close to You as You use us to further Your Kingdom in the earth (Galatians 5:15-25).

Our spirituality is not complete until You give us our glorified, immortal body when we see Jesus. We need You every hour, every moment of our life. Teach us not to speak with words of carnal, mortal wisdom, but to utter only the Words taught to us by Your Spirit and full of Your glory (Philippians 3:10-12; 1 Corinthians 2:13).

Thought for the Day:

Our goal in life is to bring God glory through our every thought, word and deed, living in the fullness of His Spirit by the power of His resurrection; a surrendered life of one who is born of the Spirit and will never perish. - Peter 1:3-4