Trusting God Day by Day: 365 Daily Devotions (10 page)

In essence, Jesus was saying,
“I am giving you My peace. I am going away, and the thing I desire to leave you is My peace.”
His special peace is a wonderful possession. How valuable is peace? What is it worth?

Peace was worth the shedding of His blood. The prophet Isaiah said, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole” (Isa. 53:5).

Jesus became the blood sacrifice that atoned for and completely removed your sin in order for you to live in peace. God’s will for you is that you live in peace with Him, with yourself, and with others. Peace and enjoyment of life go hand in hand. You can enjoy life more with an abundance of peace.

Are you experiencing supernatural peace and joy? If not, remember the promise Jesus made to you and receive it. Reclaim the peace and joy that are rightfully yours.

G
od wants you to live in peace; He wants to unleash His power and His blessings in your life. But the final choice is yours.

In baseball, an umpire makes the decision that settles the matter. Each team may believe the call should be in its own favor, but it is the umpire who makes the final decision. And once he does, that ends the matter.

Let peace be the umpire that has the deciding vote in the choices you make. If something does not bring you peace, cast it out. Don’t live only for the moment. Use wisdom to make choices now that will satisfy you later on. When you are having a difficult time hearing from God or being able to decide what you should do in a certain situation, follow peace.

You have a unique call upon your life. You are an important part of the body of Christ. God has prearranged for you to have a powerful and productive life. Jesus paid for it. It is yours unless you allow the devil to steal it from you.

Make a decision today:
“I am finished with upset and turmoil; peace is mine, and I am going to enjoy it now,”
and begin to live in peace. Keep conflict out of your life; out of your thoughts, words, and attitudes; out of your relationships. Choose life! Choose peace!

I
f we truly believe our words are filled with life or death, why don’t we choose what we say more carefully? There is a time to talk and a time to keep silent. Sometimes the best thing we can say is nothing. When we do say something, it is wise to be purposeful in what we say.

I firmly believe if we do what we can do, God will do what we cannot do. We can control what comes out of our mouths with the help of the Holy Spirit and by applying principles of discipline. Even when we talk about our problems or the things that are bothering us, we can talk about them in a positive and hopeful way.

One time I was having some back problems, and my daughter, Sandy, called to see how my back was. I told her it was still hurting, but I was thankful it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I said,
“I am sleeping well, and that is a positive thing.”
In other words, I didn’t deny the problem, but I made an effort to have a positive outlook. I was determined to look at what I do have and not just at what I don’t have. I believed in time the backache would be taken care of, and I believed that until then, God would give me the strength to do what I needed to do.

If you will make a decision that you are going to say as little as possible about your problems and disappointments in life, they won’t dominate your thoughts and your mood. And if you talk as much as possible about your blessings and hopeful expectations, your frame of mind will match them. Be sure each day is filled with words that fuel joy, not anger, depression, bitterness, and fear. Talk yourself into a better mood! Find something positive to say in every situation.

I
t’s no wonder we humans want to control things… there’s so much that’s out of our control! But unfortunately, rather than trying to control ourselves, we usually try to control our circumstances or others around us.

I spent years trying to control the people in my life and my circumstances because I was afraid of being hurt or taken advantage of. But the only thing I achieved was constant frustration and anger. It took me a long time to realize that people respond very defensively when we try to control them. Everyone has a God-given right to freedom of choice, and they resent anyone who tries to take that from them. I finally realized that what I was doing was ungodly, and therefore it was never going to work. Not only would I never have peace because of my behavior, but I was also alienating most of the people I wanted to have relationships with.

God desires that we use the wonderful tools He has supplied us with to control ourselves instead of trying to control people and things. He has given us His Word, His Holy Spirit, and a wide variety of good fruit that we can develop. Self-control is actually a fruit of the Spirit-led life. If you have a tendency toward wanting to control the people and circumstances in your life, I want to strongly suggest that you give it up and turn your focus onto developing your self-control.

Although learning to control ourselves requires patience and endurance, it is well worth it in the end. Our circumstances can have much less control over us if our response to trouble is to use self-control.

M
any Christians are confused about anger. They think that as godly individuals they should never get angry. Anger can be an involuntary response whether we want to feel it or not. A person with damaged emotions from past trauma or abuse may, and probably will, respond in a self-protective mode and display anger more easily than someone who was never mistreated. Thankfully, through God’s help those damaged emotions can be healed, and we can learn to have more balanced and reasonable responses to people, things, and situations.

God’s Word says, “When angry, do not sin” (Eph. 4:26). I recall one morning as I was preparing to go to preach, Dave and I got into an argument. I was studying and he said something to me that made me blaze up quickly with anger. We said some unkind words to each other, and then he left for work. I continued to think angry thoughts and have angry feelings. Then my anger turned into guilt, and I started thinking,
How can I possibly go to church and tell others how to conduct their lives according to Scripture if I cannot control my anger?
The feelings of guilt not only continued but they intensified. As the pressure mounted, I started to feel almost frantic when suddenly I heard God whisper in my heart,
“Feeling anger is not a sin; it is what you do with it that becomes sin.”
That
was one of the first lessons God gave me in understanding that emotions cannot be expected to merely go away because we have become Christians, but rather we are to learn how to manage them.

Controlling the passion of anger, especially if you have an aggressive and outspoken nature, can be one of the more challenging things you will face in life, but controlling it is certainly possible with God’s help.

A
nger expressed inappropriately is a problem, but so is repressed anger. Anger that is stuffed inside and not dealt with properly will eventually come out one way or another. It may show up in depression, anxiety, or any of a variety of other negative emotions—but it will come out. It can even manifest in sickness and disease. If we don’t deal with our anger quickly, we will eventually either explode or implode.

The right way to express anger is to talk to God. Tell Him all about the way you feel and ask Him to help you manage the feelings properly. Talk to a professional or a mature friend if necessary, but do not pretend you’re not angry when you are. That’s not managing your emotions—that is ignoring them, and it is dangerous.

One thing that helps me deal properly with anger is to realize that sometimes God permits people to irritate me in order to help me grow in patience and unconditional love. None of the fruit of the Spirit develops without something to make us exercise them. Ouch! I wish I could magically have all these wonderful fruits working full force in my life
without any effort on my part, but that is just not the way it works. The offending person’s bad behavior is not right, but God often uses their behavior as sandpaper in our lives, to polish our rough edges. He is more concerned about changing our character than He is about changing our circumstances.

If I get angry when someone does something to me that’s wrong, is my anger any less wrong than the wrong they committed? I think not. Sometimes their wrongdoing merely exposes my weakness and I am able to repent and ask God to help me overcome it. Be determined to get something good out of every trial you face in life, and don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

W
e must learn the difference between condemnation and conviction. Condemnation presses us down and manifests as a heavy burden that requires us to pay for our errors. Conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit, showing us that we have sinned and inviting us to confess our sins in order to receive forgiveness and God’s help to improve our behavior in the future. Condemnation makes the problem worse; conviction is intended to lift us out of it.

When you feel guilty, the first thing to do is ask yourself if you are guilty according to God’s Word. Perhaps you are. If so, confess your sin to God; turn away from that sin and don’t repeat it. If you need to apologize to someone you have wronged, do it. Then… forgive yourself and let go of it! God already forgave you, and if you refuse to do the same, then you’ll miss out on the joy of redemption that God wants us all to experience.

Sometimes you may well find that you are
not
guilty according to God’s Word. For example, I can recall feeling guilty when I tried to rest. For years I drove myself incessantly to work, work, work because I felt good when I was accomplishing something and felt guilty if I was enjoying myself. That thinking is totally wrong according to God’s Word. Even He rested from His work of creation, and He has invited us to enter His rest. The guilt I felt when I tried to rest was unscriptural, irrational, and downright ridiculous. When I stopped believing my feelings alone and started truly examining them in the light of God’s Word, I stopped feeling guilty.

Trust God and His Word to reveal to you when your guilt is false and your thinking is wrong.

O
ne of the strongest and most persistent fears that people experience is the fear that they won’t have what they need. We want to feel safe in
every area of life. But we’re constantly attacked with the fear that we won’t have what we need—whether it’s finances, relationships, or the ability to do what God has called us to.