Friday: Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:6-8 (NLT) They will receive the Lord’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior. Such people may seek you and worship in your presence, O God of Jacob. Interlude Open up, ancient gates! Open up, ancient doors, and let the King of glory enter. Who is the King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty; the Lord, invincible in battle. Psalm 24:5-8(NLT) Reflection: Gratitude, appreciation, thanksgiving – these are key to experiencing deep and lasting peace. As we discussed Tuesday, in this world there are storms. We’re going to get upset. Things are going to go wrong. The winds and rains will dampen our spirits. Life isn’t going to be fair. In this world we will have trouble. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes resent it when the rain and wind slap me in the face. I tell myself, “Hey this isn’t right. I’m trying to do the right thing here. Shouldn’t God make it a little easier for me?” But the reality is that God doesn’t make life easy when we follow Him. Life often gets much harder when we choose to do the right thing: give up our addictions, practice patience, commit ourselves to love. We find ourselves trying to swim up-stream against the current. The friction that comes from resisting the pull of the world, the pressures of our own bad habits, the extreme discomfort of refusing to go with the flow - we pay a price for all of these. It’s not the price Jesus paid, but it still can sting. God can be trusted. He’s got our back. He’s giving us everything we need in this moment. He’s going to provide for us, but we best not be too picky about the accommodations. He had His own Son born in a stable. For crappy beginnings, it’s pretty hard to beat that (get it... Crappy??? In a stable??? ;0). The hard truth is that easy isn’t what we really need. In our heart of hearts we long for meaningful, beautiful, powerful and satisfying. We want our lives to tell great stories. We want to do the hard work of being one of the good guys. The unfortunate reality is that an easy life doesn’t bring out our best game. The key to peace is looking at our lives, with all our frustration and friction, and reminding ourselves how much God loves us. Even when nothing is right, we are okay. Our foundation is firm. Our hope is secured. We can still feel the wind and the rain, but we can focus on our solid foundation. We let ourselves feel our doubts and anxieties, but then we remind ourselves to take heart. We encourage ourselves in our discouragement by remembering who God is. Paul expected us to have worries. His instructions are to take those worries and translate them into prayers. He teaches us to remind ourselves that even on the most annoying day, there are still things to be grateful for. And he tells us to make our requests to God in a spirit of thanksgiving, telling ourselves that whatever God does in response, He does because He loves us. Prayer: Father, Forgive me for resenting the hard work You send my way to turn me into the person You dreamed of when You created me. Instead of giving me easy, today I ask for the strength to handle whatever exciting things You may have in store for me. In Jesus’ Name, amen.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:02:42 +0000