His Peace

John 14:27

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Just before Jesus entered His final days on earth, He told His disciples He would be leaving them His peace after He was gone.  He instructed them that His peace was different from the world's peace.  He assured them that His peace was sufficient to carry them through anything that the world brought against them.

Earlier Jesus had told the apostles, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make Our home with him."  The presence of the Father and the Son (our peace) is thus based on our relationship with Jesus.  So it is easy to see that if we are not in good relationship with Our Savior, we will be left with the peace of the world and not His peace.

Why would we settle for anything less than the perfect peace that only Jesus can provide us?  Trusting in ourselves and in the world will lead us down a very bumpy path at best.  Let us set ourselves straight with Our Savior so that we may receive the peace in our lives that He promises - His peace.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You for supernatural peace that we have through Your Son, Jesus.  We rejoice in knowing that we can have peace even when everything in the world is coming against us.  We bless the name of Jesus because His peace is sufficient to carry us through all of our trials.  We ask the Holy Spirit to keep us mindful to always seek the peace of Jesus first and not the peace of the world.  We pray for the grace to keep us in an intimate relationship with Our Savior and the wisdom and the strength to work on making that relationship closer each day.

Cheerful Compliance

Psalm 40:8

I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.

When we pass on food that we love because we have a single purpose of trying to lose weight, we are likely to struggle from the onset.  When we strive to lose weight so that we may have a happier, extended life to enjoy with our loved ones, we are more likely to sacrifice the pleasure of our favorite foods because of the higher purpose that drives our success.

When we seek to be faithful in following all of the commandments with the single purpose of avoiding sin, we are certain to struggle because our purpose is not high enough.  We must find our passion in our covenant with Jesus not in the law.  We must seek to know Jesus so intimately that we can enjoy His peace, His beauty, His mercy, His loving kindness and most of all His forgiveness.  When we have reached this place of passion for Jesus Christ, then we will delight in doing the will of The Father, just as Jesus delighted in doing His Father's will.  We will count it as joy to give up the things of the world for the glory of Our Heavenly Father.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You for loving us so much that You gave us Your Son to come down from heaven to fulfill the law.  We bless the name of Jesus for His perfect obedience in doing Your will.  We ask that the Holy Spirit will help us to set our hearts upon Your law with cheerful compliance.  Oh Lord, we pray that we may take up our crosses daily with the same delight and pleasure that Jesus did when He fulfilled Your will for His life.  

"No" is an Answer

Matthew 7:9

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

As parents, one of our strongest desires is to feed our children when they are hungry?  It is also one of our greatest responsibilities.  Yet, if they ask for ice cream when it is dinner time, our answer is usually "no" or "not now".   While our commitment to them is to feed them, our larger commitment is to see them grow up and become healthy adults.

The Lord promises to hear and answer all of our prayers of need in His Holy Word.  But all of His promises are bound by the higher covenant of preparing us for our eternal life in heaven with Him.  So while He always hears our prayers, sometimes His answers will be "no" or "not now."  Each case will be determined by Him based on where we are or where those that we are praying for are in the path of sanctification.  He will answer in perfect timing in accordance with His will for the lives of all involved.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You for hearing and answering all of our prayers.  We thank You that You often protect us by not giving us what we ask for when it will take us off the path that You have set aside for our lives.  We pray for the strength to endure when the "noes" and the "not nows" seem so painful.  We ask, Lord, that You help us to keep seeking You so that our prayers will come into alignment with Your will for our lives.  

Shutting the Door on the Cares of the Day

Matthew 6:6

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Without question, one of Satan's greatest skills is his ability to keep us distracted from building our relationship with God by keeping us focused on the business of life.  One of his greatest lies is planting the seed in our minds that God does not want to hear about everything in our lives.  Through the perfect work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can turn both of Satan's tactics against him.

The first thing that we should do each day in the privacy of the morning is to invite Jesus to join us throughout the day.  Then everything public in our busy lives will be marked by His presence.  Everything that comes our way as a challenge or a trial can be handed to Him immediately through brief and constant prayer.

Because we have given Jesus the burdens of life throughout the day, we can shut the door on all the cares of the day that usually distract us as we try to pray at night.  Instead of focusing on our cares, we are free to focus on Our God.  We can worship Him, we can praise Him and we can soak in His love.  We can grow in our relationship with Him according to His good and perfect plan for our lives.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing Your Son to be the yoke that we can take to make our burdens light.  We rejoice in His presence with us throughout the day and night.  We pray for the wisdom and the grace to share all of our cares with Our Savior throughout the day.  We ask, Lord, that You teach us how to come to You without distraction in the evening so that we may spend the time growing in our relationship with You and refreshing ourselves for the next day to be spent in the yoke of Our Savior.

Exposed by The Light

2 Corinthians 4:6

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the light, the truth and the way.  No darkness can exist in His presence.  When we accept Him as Our Savior, He comes to dwell within us and the process of removing all the darkness from our lives begins.  

All of our sins are brought into the light by the Holy Spirit.  Repentance is required.  To do otherwise is to suggest that we are sufficient in our own ways.  It is not enough to be sorry for our sins.  We must recognize our unworthiness.  We must recognize our need to be cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb.  We must fully submit to Jesus so that we will have the strength to turn away from the darkness, so that we may live in the light.  This process will continue as long as we are in our corrupted bodies.  It will not be completed until we stand before Our Father in heaven at His Throne.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank You for exposing all the darkness in our lives.  We pray that we will fully submit to the cleansing process.  May Your Light extend to the outer margins of our lives.  May no element of our lives be untouched.  May the complete work of the Blood of the Lamb prepare us to take our place in heaven for all eternity.