“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23
I’d like to paint a picture for you: You are on a family vacation in southern California and you have tickets to Disneyland. You are so excited to enter the park, because you love amusement parks! You’ve been holding on to these tickets for 6 months now and the anticipation has been building inside you.
Today is the day. You wake up before sunrise and dress up in all your favorite Disney gear– Mickey ears and all! As you approach the park you see lines forming at the gates, the park is only minutes from opening. You hustle to the gate so you can be the first to enter.
Finally, the moment you have been anticipating is here! Even the sound of the gates opening magical, although in any other circumstance it’s just a gate in need of WD-40. On the other side of the gates you can see Mickey standing next to a photographer waiting to take a picture with you. Joy is filling up as you approach the gate, all the sudden, just before you enter the park your phone rings. You answer it, on the other line is your cousin Jerry, and he’s calling because he saw on Facebook that you were in the area and he wants to hang out. He tells you just down the street he knows of a great bar that serves drinks all day. He eagerly tries to convince you to go with him assuring you that he found a Keno machine he swears is lucky. You don’t believe him, but after a while he eventually manipulates you into spending the day with him, guilt tripping you by playing the “family comes first” card.
You were so close to entering the park, you held the ticket in your hand, stood at the gate and watched as the gates opened. You could see the rides, smell the popcorn, and even felt the bubbling up of joy inside– yet when the moment came you were “randomly” presented with another opportunity that pulled you away from the joy you had been waiting so long for.
This is often how the enemy deceives us. When he sees we are about to enter into incredible God filled opportunities he’ll do whatever he can to stop us from entering. Manipulation, blackmail, lies that seem true, and past failures are some of the tools he uses to prevent us from entering into the better things God is calling us into.
“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
Matthew 7:25
Where does your peace come from? Is your peace built upon ground that is constantly moving, or is it built upon the strength of God and His unwaivering love for you?
Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” which means He is in charge of, and the sole owner of all peace for the entire planet. If you have any amount of peace in your life you will find– the footprints of peace will always lead back to Jesus as the source. He is always the source. I used the Disneyland example because peace is something you enter into. It might not be a physical location, but it doesn’t change the fact that peace is something you are either inside the gates or you are outside.
Peace is not a reward it’s a gift. You can’t earn a peaceful life by doing things to please God. You can’t develop a routine solid enough to obtain peace through lifestyle decisions. Though doing good things might seem to create an atmosphere of peace for a moment, sustainability is impossible without the power of God as the source.
On the other hand, the fruit of peace does produce good works as well as an overflowing spring of joy. Peace with God will always produce a deeper capacity for joy in your life.
Today if you are longing for peace in your life, here are some things I would consider as you pursue connection with God:
- Humility/Repentance- I’ve recognized in my own life when I have unsettled business with sin, or relationships I’ve fractured peace stays at arms length. Not because God doesn’t want to touch me, but because I am grieving the Holy Spirit. Humility is simply letting God know you want to see life and reality the way he sees it. Repentance is seeing your brokenness from God’s perspective because you realize the sin you participated in has nothing to do with you created purpose.
- Hope/Faith- Another issue I’ve come to understand in my own journey with God is the fact that my mind needs to be trained to focus on heavenly things. When our minds wander apart from the Spirit we quickly lose sight of the things that are true, peaceful, kind, and lovely. Hope is another gift from God. The ability to see life from a restored mindset is the essence of hope. Faith works with hope. It’s one thing to catch a vision of restoration, it’s another thing to believe it will come to pass. Faith is the bridge. Faith brings forth the reality of things hoped for!
In other words, lacking hope means you have some kind of barrier preventing you from entering in. If you have unconfessed or unsettled issues in your heart they must be dealt with. Even though coming clean with your issues is tough– the reward exceeds the cost! If you can’t think of anything like that lingering in your life, the barrier is your ability to see what God sees. Humility is still the first step. But when you approach God with a heart that wants to see what He sees(Hope) I promise you will not be disappointed in His response.
“Perfect Peace doesn’t come from perfect circumstances. Perfect Peace is the result of Knowing your right standing with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus wasn’t crucified so you could have peace with men, He was crucified so you could have peace with God!”
Perfect Peace 