Feeling the Peace of Christ is one of the most treasured and coveted aspects of the Christian faith; it is a reward for obedience and is our harvest for believing, and living our lives as Jesus instructed us. Do we have the Peace of Christ today? Do we understand the difference between the peace of the world and the Peace of Christ?
How do we pray in intercession? Do we give our own instruction to the person for whom we are meant to pray, or do we place their suffering and other needs before God by praying that His will be communicated, and done, for them? One of the greatest snares in intercession is to allow our own sympathy and will to step in between the person needing prayer, and God. When this happens we are not interceding for them, but counselling them instead. We are attempting to provide the aid ourselves that only God is qualified to give.
Are you an individual? Do you see yourself as physically distinct? How about your personality? In fact, your physical traits describe what you are, while your intangible characteristics identify who you are… together they are you. Interestingly, when we are telling someone who we are as individuals we typically refer to our physical selves, but this is quite a limitation. Although we look alike in many ways, God has made each of us somewhat unique, but, on the other hand, our personalities are experienced more than seen, and their permutations are so boundless in nature that only God can truly understand them in total. When Jesus speaks in John 17:22-23, which of these is he referring to?
Do we attempt to hide who we are from God by covering ourselves in some fashion? Do we pretend to be spiritually in control when in fact we are anything but? Are our sins hidden within us where we feel they are safe from God’s eyes? Who are we fooling, but ourselves? Let’s lay our iniquities before us and seek God’s help in dealing with them, because He has known them all along... even when we hid them in the recesses of our heart.
We are creatures of both natural and spiritual construction. It is God’s desire that our natural selves be disciplined, and come under the authority of the spiritual, but that wild and unschooled nature is not a passive student in this transition. Have you gained control over your natural self? Are you waiting for God to make this choice for you? Well, He has His desire, but the choice remains yours.
Have you given up everything you are to Jesus Christ? It is easy to lay down the sin, and bad things in our lives, but have you also laid down the good? Abandoning those things that we naturally identify as good is the most profound test of our faith. Being able to leave behind anything that is contrary in order to immerse ourselves in God’s will for us is the epitome of faithfulness and obedience.
We don’t enter into heaven to live an eternal life because we deserve it. That kind of thinking is based upon our own vanity and arrogance. Our salvation and everlasting life is sealed by covenant, and that covenant comes by God’s acceptance of the death of Jesus Christ as our blood sacrifice. Only through Him can we be redeemed, perfected, and sanctified. Only through Him can we claim the covenant of grace.
Do you feel grief today before God? Is your heart breaking within you for some sin that convicts you unrelentingly? I am not speaking about a superficial knowledge of having done something wrong, but rather the deep understanding of a sin that emanates from your very soul. Are you seeking repentance for wrongdoing that has brought you to godly grief?
Are you in a covenant relationship with God? Have you accepted the blood of Jesus Christ as the offering that sealed your covenant with the Lord? Has God’s forgiveness of the world’s sin through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus become your covenant? Many of us see the cross and say “this is the covenant”, but it is only a sign. We see the rending of the temple curtain and say “this is the covenant”, but it is also a sign. Then we see the empty tomb and say “this is the covenant”, but it too is only a sign. The covenant is forgiveness, and the blood of Jesus is the offering that seals it. Is His blood upon you? Are you forgiven?
Do you have your body under control? Have you let yourself separate your spirituality from the physical manifestation of that faith by which your body represents itself? By this I am not asking if you treat yourself as a narcissist, but do you do those things that are godly and good with yourself, and treat your body as a temple of God? Our spiritual and physical portions walk hand in hand in faith, and in our bodies we find the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
Are you concerned because you are constantly at war within yourself? Does it bother you that there is a struggle going on inside you between good and evil, holy and unholy, or salvation and damnation? Well, take heart because although this conflict is the natural state of man, we have a champion who not only helps us realize the good within ourselves, but helps us to achieve victory over the evil by having already defeated sin for us.
Do we depend solely on our own intellect to search out the wisdom of God? Do we study and ponder His Word ourselves in search of truth there, or do we use our intelligence like a shovel to feed our spirit God’s Word, while it works hand in hand with His Holy Spirit to seek and sift through it for those things that are of great spiritual value? When we depend upon our intellect alone it brings us very few of those wonderful revelations that we recognize as being of Him, but when our spirit is engaged with the Holy Spirit, it mines the most fantastic treasure for us from the glorious depths of God, and we encounter those wonderful “Ah Ha” moments of faith.
Are we approaching our faith through study and hard work to further perfect ourselves each day? Every evening during our nightly prayers do we kneel before God and tell Him of our academic progress? If this is so, and it is all we do, He will speak words similar to these back to us...”Yes, but when I walked in the garden where were you?” or, “As I love you, do you love me?” God wants our journey towards perfection to be more than memorizing scripture, or blind obedience. He wants the true manifestation of our studies to be a loving relationship with Him. Our academic perfection is not His ultimate goal for us.
For a God who created the universe, breathed life into man, and on more than one occasion raised him from the dead... what is death? We are so small, and our experience so limited to this body, and this existence, that all of our judgements have become founded on this little slice of physical reality that we inhabit. Because of this limited view we have of life and death, as if through a drinking straw, we convince ourselves that we know what it is… but do we? Let’s take a higher level look at death.
God works in us each and every day. He brings us to the doorstep of His will, and then perfects us as our efforts join with His in accomplishing it. However, none of this achievement is possible without His efforts in us, and none is possible by our own doing. So when His will is done, in some manner, how should we respond to others when they acknowledge it in gratitude or amazement?