Finding Peace in the Storm...

April 9, 2009

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” John 14:27.

Still struggling with peace? Okay, now that you know who your enemy is lets get to work. Let’s talk about who you are, how to find peace, and how to keep it even through the storm that seems so horrible.

FIRST STEP: GET AGGRESSIVE AND DIG IN THOSE ROOTS

You have His love, you have His grace and forgiveness and you didn’t do anything to get it. Want peace? Then get to work.

You are a seed planted with the purpose of becoming a beautiful fruit tree. The tree needs roots to absorb what it will need to grow and flourish. If it does not get what it needs it will either die or it will produce rotten fruit. How do you grow? Do you sit there and wait for someone else to come along and grow your roots? Do you wait for someone else to glue some pretty fruit on your branches?

No, dig in your roots and get aggressive. If you want good fruit, which was already given to you as the purpose for your seed, then dig in those roots! “He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.” 1 Peter 3:11. You want it? Go and get it – “seek” and “pursue” are not passive words. Nothing is going to rain down and give peace to you so you better start looking at your tree to figure out where you are going wrong if you don’t feel it.

And if you don’t feel it, don’t blame anyone else. Don’t say, “Well I would have peace if she would stop…” or “I would get some peace if he would just realize that…”. When you say those very words you are taking a gift given to you and put into your spirit by the Almighty Savior and allowing another human to dictate whether or not you are going to use it. You give that other person control. You allow them to control whether you have peace or not. One more thing – you are making Satan’s job easy. He knows that peace was given to you as a gift from our Heavenly Father and His Son. He knows that if you use it you will become “better” and not “bitter”. And trust me – that is the last thing he wants you to do.

Think of it this way. Think of times when you are going to do something important or fun in life (something that makes you better) such as host a huge holiday meal, gather up the family to go to church on Sunday, go and give a speech that is going to impress your boss and gain you a big promotion, recruit friends to help with a volunteer event, etc., does it always go smooth? Do you get stuck in traffic on the way? Can everyone find their clothes to get in the car on time? Do you find your shoes that you are going to wear with your suit for your speech (and I mean BOTH of them)? Or are you running through the house yelling at everyone else that you can’t find your shoes like a frantic maniac? Are you yelling at everyone to get in the car or you are not going because you hate being late? Are you yelling at your friend because she slept late and you have to get to the volunteer function? Are you laying on that horn in traffic or on the cell phone cussing and yelling to your friend that everyone else drives so slow? Do you yell and scream to your spouse that you are tired of cooking for everyone at the holidays?

Many of you will be on the anger side won’t you? At that moment, anger is your weakness and Satan will thrive on it. Don’t let him. Recognize it for what it is. He doesn’t want you to gather for holidays with family, go to church, recruit friends to volunteer, have a smooth ride home in traffic feeling good with no frustration, or get a promotion and do good in your career. If you don’t yell or honk at someone else in one of those situations then you don’t give him the chance to affect you and allow you to affect someone else negatively. “Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” Galatians 5:26.

When you are angry with a certain person and you release all your negative energy publicly on them in a store, or a parking lot, or in traffic, then all you manage to do is leave it out there for the rest of us to inhale. The people who are the most likely to be kind and gracious to you are the exact ones that you will turn away from you because of your behavior, and the person you are mad at is the one that really won’t care whether you are mad or not.

Stop giving control of yourself over to other people. They will let you down repeatedly, and then you will whine about why this or that happens to you. Know better. You cannot change people, so why do you spend countless hours worrying and getting angry about things you will never, ever change? Jesus said it best, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:27. You can’t– so stop worrying about what you cannot change. If you do, you let Satan win a battle over something you are worrying about that you could not change if you wanted to. Get stronger than that.

I can write all of this now because I was that person. I was the one blaming the house that I couldn’t find one of my own shoes that I didn’t bother to put up the day before. I thought I could change people and my way was the right way. If you didn’t agree with my way then I had a few good words to tell you. My husband, who I always say has that natural “What Would Jesus Do?” attitude about him would remain so calm and most people would love him so much for his peaceful demeanor. Honestly, I thought he was nuts. He never got mad and I was always frustrated with something. I used to provoke him to anger just to make sure he was still alive.

Praise to God, I finally learned better because I decided that instead of searching for things to wail and moan about, I was going to search for peace. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24.

Now I know it was not my husband’s attitude, rather it was the fruit of his tree. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23. He was calm because his tree did not display a weakness for Satan to use against him – anger, frustration, impatience, anxiety. My tree did, and Satan took advantage of it time and again to make me and everyone around me miserable. My circumstances did not change. Things still made me angry all the time. But I dug in my roots and kept growing past it.

SECOND STEP: EXPECT THE STORM

God never tells us we won’t have troubles. To the contrary, Jesus tells us, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33. Just as the scripture at the beginning of this note states He gives us His “peace” but he does not give to us “as the world gives”. Yet he lets us know not to let our “hearts be troubled” and we are not to “be afraid”. John 14:27.

Here is a big lesson to remember when it comes to having peace: Peace is not something you get when everything is going right, rather peace is what you seek when everything is going wrong. For example, assume that you know how to speak English but you do not know the name of a single color. You have never heard the words purple, yellow, orange, etc. If I show you a red piece of paper and try to teach you that it is red will you understand what I am saying? But if I show you a red piece of paper and then a white piece of paper and I point at the white piece of paper and say “white” and then the red paper and say “red”, you may get it right? I have to show you the opposite to get you to learn the name.

Keep that example in mind. Whenever you tell yourself “if God can control everything including the devil then he could stop my pain” think of it. He has so many wonderful things He wants to do through you, but He has to make sure you appreciate them and have faith in Him to get through the bad. How will He teach you? You won’t learn one without seeing the opposite. He will watch you go through the opposite of peace and if you let Him guide you and seek Him, He will bring you to the other side better than you started off. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13.

I started not to write this, but am finding I am not in control of my hands anymore (thank you God :). Know this, I am a sinner (as are we all), and I have been through horrible circumstances that you won’t know about unless I am extremely close to you (for no other reason than God is working on them with me right now). But some other circumstances are worth mentioning, so here goes. One day after I had been working at this faith thing for about six months, I got extremely sick. Anyone who knows me knows I hate any kind of stomach bug that makes me throw up. Just being honest. Then over the few days while I was trying to recover I noticed that every problem in my life I had mentioned or complained about was blowing up around me and actually becoming completely worse. I sat there shocked. Normally I would call everyone and complain and whine about how unfair this is. Instead, I went to God. I didn’t answer the phone, and I sat there and prayed. I didn’t tell myself “I will have peace”. I said “I HAVE peace”. I do! As a Christ Follower it is given to me by my beloved Savior. But I have to use it. I decided instead I would command it into my circumstance, so instead of “I will” it became “I have”. I kept saying it over and over and the anxiety was still welled up in my chest. I still felt horrible inside and was hurting and confused. But I kept saying it anyway.

One of the things I had to do at this time was go and deal with one of these problems that had come to light, and trust me I would have rather hid in bed. But I would not. As much as it was killing me to do it, I told God that I was in His hand and I was going. I was terrified. I kept saying, “I have peace”. Then while driving to deal with the problem I looked up while sitting at a red light and on the corner saw a huge Cross in the ground with purple cloth draped around it. The cloth was blowing in the wind.

Then it hit me. For so long with my so-called educated mind I would ask God why He would allow His Son to die for me when I was so unworthy. I did not get it even though I loved Jesus more than I could say. That is because as humans it is hard for us to understand “unconditional” love. At the red light when I saw that Cross, in the middle of my storm, I KNEW PEACE! Everything hit me – the love, the sacrifice, His grace, His mercy, forgiveness, salvation, and peace. Tears poured from my eyes to the point I could not even breathe. But they were happy tears – tears of understanding. If you have ever had an encounter with the Holy Spirit you will know what I am saying. It is that overwhelming out of this world understanding that puts EVERYTHING (even the bad) into perspective. Read the sentence I just wrote (the one before the one you are reading now) out loud – that is my definition of peace. Get it?

There will be trouble. In fact, I should have expected it that very day and the few days before because my husband and I were scheduled to be baptized the next Sunday. Why would Satan take that week off? Should have seen that battle coming. Remember your enemy.

You are not looking for peace to expect to have no more troubles in life, but isn’t it better to handle a bad situation while you are calm? Whenever something happens that is sudden and frightening such as a person choking in a restaurant on food isn’t it the person that remains calm and walks over and performs the right maneuver to help dislodge the food the one we remember? The one who keeps his composure and remains “cool under pressure” is highly regarded to us usually. So why don’t we set the same standard for ourselves?

Go and get peace – don’t wait for it to come to you. Talk to Jesus and ask God to allow the Holy Spirit to work within you to give you that peace. Shake Satan off every time he tries to interfere with it. Recognize his schemes – if it makes you feel bad then don’t do it (this includes worry).
When things get bad in your life, tell yourself this is an opportunity to get better, no matter how bad they are. You have peace. Take those bad circumstances and tell Satan to go away because you are going to use them for good. Don’t let your suffering be in vain. God is asking you not to. Then God can show you His peace.

Praise to Him! He has showed me His peace. That moment when I was at the red light, and realized so much, took me from thinking I was extremely faithful, and it brought me to my knees. By the way, that day was yesterday. I have SO much more to learn, and I am ready to. Instead of complaining about how bad my day was, I spent it thanking Him for allowing me to experience the bad because I loved Him even more, and for giving me a story to tell others. And trust me you can do the same, ask anyone that knows me. No one would have EVER thought I would be that person (except one, Thank you Jesus:).

If you are anxious, hurting, worried, and feel the world is against you then give it to Him and let Him grow your peace. If you are already in that bad enough of emotion anyway, what do you have to lose? How great would it be to put Him in charge of every little thing and be able to look back and not second guess whether or not you made the right decision on an issue because you know He guided you at the time? Trust me and words would never do justice to what I am typing, you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be the same, and you will be strong. The word “amazing” doesn’t even cover it, and as my friend always says I “never lack for adjectives”.

Praise you my Lord – it is not about me anymore.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7.