A Peaceful Life

Peace.

I have come to give you life and that more abundant.

God has never promised me an easy life.

I struggle with fears and when I go to God with them, usually I don't get the answer that I am hoping.  Such as 'don't worry, everything will be okay'.

Instead there is this peace.  This circling of truth.  "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

I am not promised that people will not fail me, that pain will never come, that life will be safe and easy.

In fact just the opposite.

In this life you will have tribulation, but!  Be of good cheer.  I have OVERCOME the world.

We Christians often cling to the word, "Your burden will be easy, your yoke light".

And yet we have been promised that things will be hard, that we are foreigners, that we are different, that there will be sufferings, and persecutions.

In the middle of this we are told not to worry, we are told not to strive, not to fear, to rest and be of good cheer.

My very being struggles against this, I desperately call out for the peace and ease of an abundant life.

The nature of worship is to look outside of ourselves and with everything in us glorify another.  Our full body reacts, our hearts explode, our beings give honor and praise.

In the middle of pain, in the middle of terror, in the middle of heartache, he has prepared a table before us.  When we are rejected and reviled he has called us to a place of peace, to sit and eat.

Loving Jesus does not come as a safety blanket.  It comes as a heart promised pain and in the pain, peace.  In that pain, rest.  In that pain, joy.

I worship him, not for what I long for, but for what he is.  The fullness of glory, the holiness of his nature.  His goodness.

So often we cling to God's goodness and believe that it means we will never experience the hardships of life.  Rather his goodness carries us through.  His mercy sustains when we have lost everything and are face down and broken.

His yoke is easy and his burden is light, because we are yoked to him.  If we try to pull ahead, carry it on our own, it will break and destroy us.  The only way to walk in this life is letting the Great I AM pull the weight.  I like to picture myself leaning against him, resting into him as he keeps us moving forward.

I simply am not strong enough to shoulder the heaviness of this life.  I don't have the ability to weather the storms that have come and will continue to blow through.

I must live heaven minded.  Keeping my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith.

The promise is that he will walk with me and carry me through the storms of this life.  He will sustain me.  He calms the storms and stills the waves.  He is the Prince of Peace.

I hope this makes sense.  It is the place of my heart, my thought process right now.