The Path to Peace
My New Year’s resolution is nothing others will see on the outside of me. Meaning I won’t have a smaller waistline, or a diminishing number on the scale, I won’t make more money, or have more organization or cleanliness, but I will have more peace. My resolution is a detox of the mind not the body. It’s a choice to get rid of the harmful thoughts and all their life-sucking energy and make an exchange for peace. My plan for peace looks something like this: I make a choice, I access the power to implement that choice and then I eat it’s fruit, which will motivate me to make the right choice again and again forming the new habit thoughts I want and getting rid of those I don’t.
The path to peace is but 3 simple stepping-stones away although the distance may mentally exert us; it is more than worth the effort.
Step One: The Choice
“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses” (Deut 30:19). We can know that God really wants us to hear something when He repeats himself. He lays this choice before us in Deut. 30:15-17 and then again in verses 19-20. He adds a pleading for us to make the best choice at the end of verse 19, but the choice is still ours. I can picture myself as a parent pleading with my children to make the best choice, the decision that will lead to the most blessings and the fullest life. “Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life.” The essence of this choice is first played out in our thoughts. Each day we decide if we will let irritations, frustrations, insecurities, fears, stress, and worries go or if we will nurse them. Will we take the thought captive and change it as 2 Cor. 10:4-5 directs or will we hold on to it and wallow? It’s a very simple choice but a very hard choice to implement. “So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace” (Rom 8:6). Letting yourself think on the things that stir up stress, anxiety, fear, worry and bitterness will lead to death, but if we give over those thoughts to the control and leading of the Holy Spirit then we can walk in peace.
Step Two: The Power
God equips us with the power to choose life as a believer. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim 1:7). A mind controlled by the spirit doesn’t live in fear but has the God empowered self control to stop the obsessive negative thoughts and as Phil 4:8 says, “Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].” The Holy Spirit within us is called the Counselor; it can talk us down and bring clarity and perspective. It is called the comforter; it can bring a healing solace and empathetic understanding. It is called the Spirit of Truth; it can lead you into the firm foundation of truth in your circumstances and emotions and reveal twisted perceptions and deceptions. So “casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully]”(1Pet 5:7); we let the Spirit renew our thoughts and attitudes (Eph 4:23).
Step Three: The Blessing
This choice comes with a clear and motivating blessing-Life and Peace! Isaiah 26:3 says this about God, “You will keep in perfect peace, all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” We bring the broken thoughts and exchange them for the Truth and in return we are given a perfect peace. In Phil 4:6-8 this exchange looks like us taking all our worries to him in prayer, thinking instead on what is lovely and getting back a peace that surpasses understanding.
2017/02/09 at 10:18 pm