We had plenty of potential peace robbing situations on our recent vacation to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
To start off, we had to arrive a day late due to scheduling conflicts with our cabin. Peace reigned as we focused on the truth that God knew how many days we needed to relax and to hear from Him.
Next up, due to the heavy snow the Eastern Sierra’s got this year, the creek running at the entrance to our cabin was a river! We tested it out and thought we could cross. Wrong. We got stuck. We laughed about it, though, and asked God to get us out of it. After trying a few things, He sent an “angel” in a Jeep with a tow rope to pull us out! Peace wins.
This, however, meant that we had to leave our van on the opposite side of this river, where God saw fit to guard it with a head of cattle! Pretty cool, huh? Yet, this raised another potential peace robber. We now had to walk across this ice cold river every time we wanted to do things we had planned. Victory came as we simply focused on Jesus, put on our water shoes (had them for kayaking – who knew we’d need them to cross a river!) and walked with our God, literally.
I’ll finish with one last story, though I literally could go on. We had three straight days of rain; so, we got the weather report before kayaking on Gull Lake. There was a 40% chance of afternoon rain, which meant a 60% chance of sunshine, right? So we got out early and hit the lake. It was a beautiful day. We kayaked around Gull and were about to take another spin, when both my wife and daughter said we should call it day. It sounded and felt to them like rain was coming. If you know me, you know what I wanted to do. The truth is, however, God is changing my life in this area. I don’t have to conquer anymore, which is a definite peace robbing feeling. It was okay to have only kayaked a couple of hours. It was okay to head back, which is exactly what we did.
Praise God He’s changing me. The moment we got our kayaks out of the water, the afternoon showers showed up early! And it rained hard. So we hung out in the van and waited patiently on God to let up on the rain so we could load the kayaks to travel home. He did. We did. And not one minute later did it hail…hard!!
There’s a saying in the Sierras, “Give the weather ten minutes and it’ll change.” Yes it does, but your peace doesn’t. This vacation constantly changed from what we had expected to the crazy unexpected, which could have led to great internal stress and a bummer vacation. Yet, we focused on the truths Jesus gave us and let Him keep us in perfect peace just as He said He would.
Life changes come from all directions. Your peace doesn’t, however, as it comes from knowing and being in relationship with the Truth, Jesus, throughout those crazy unexpected changes.

Peace and safety are not the same.
I’m talking about the kind of peace that can be experienced no matter how unsafe or stressful the situation you might be encountering.
Jesus said He didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34ff). He wasn’t talking about religious wars as some have interpreted this verse. He was referring to the kind of conflict that occurs between people when one chooses to follow Jesus and others don’t like it.
Jesus also said blessed are those who are persecuted for following Him (Matt. 5:10). This at times can mean physical harm where the believer can still experience peace despite being put in an unsafe situation.
If you want a healthy Jesus faith, don’t seek safety and comfort. Instead, seek peace with God through what Jesus did on the cross. If we choose to listen to and follow Jesus, not Christianity or traditions, others may not like it and become the very “haters” they claim Christians to be.
Safety and comfort may feel good in the short term, but never over time. Compromises here and there ultimately bring peace robbing guilt. The internal peace, the kind that says, “It is well with my soul” only comes from making the hard choices that can land you in unsafe places.
Loving Jesus isn’t always easy, but it sure is the best way to live.

Someone or something will be your King.
2 Chronicles 35 and 36 tell an interesting story. One king is replaced by another who is ruled by another, all foretold by the one and only true King, God Himself.
The story begins with Judah’s King Josiah going to war with Egypt’s King Neco without getting instructions from God, Israel’s true King. Why? He wanted to be his own king. This resulted in his death by Neco, who put Judah under tribute. This effectively made Neco king of Judah, who then made Jehoiakim “king” of Judah. Will Jehoiakim surrender and make God his king?
Nope. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, defeats Neco at the Battle of Carchemish (predicted in Jer. 46:1-12) who now becomes Judah’s king. Jehoiakim, like his dad, wants to be his own king and rebels against Nebuchadnezzar. This resulted in his being hauled off to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, who also guts the temple and installs Jehoiachin as “king.”
“King” Jehoiachin eventually wants to be his own king so he also makes the decision to rebel against King Nebuchadnezzar with the same results: he takes more stuff from the Temple and installs Zedekiah as “king.” What does Zedekiah do? He repeats this losing cycle of trying to be his own king. This led to Nebuchadnezzar getting rid of all “kings” in Judah by destroying Jerusalem and the Temple.
God, Israel’s true King, sent message after message to the Israelites – make me King and all this losing ends. They refused to listen.
Someone or something will be king of your life. The question is, who or what will that be – God, yourself, or your drug of choice? You can stop the losing cycle and experience victory by stop trying to be your own king! Choose to listen to and follow Jesus, not yourself or your drug, to victory through Spirit empowered faith choices.

To be full of Jesus means to know emptiness without Him.
We sing a song in our Sunday service that says “I want more of you, Jesus.” Well, we must first experience emptiness or we wouldn’t even know to make such a request.
And what does it take to experience emptiness? The Spirit to show us that we have bricks taking up valuable space in our lives. I grew up in the days before the latest water saving toilet technologies. We’d put bricks in the water tank in order to conserve water. This way the tank would be “full”, even though it wasn’t, in order to shut off the water.
We are just like that toilet bowl tank. We have bricks taking up space where water should be. As finite beings we can only hold so much water; and yet, our drugs of choice/our ways of living take up space making us feel full, when we’re not.
If you want more of Jesus, the living water, it will mean giving the Spirit permission to remove those bricks – your pet sins – so you can experience emptiness in order to start asking for more of Jesus, the only source of true living.
Remember, Jesus didn’t come to add Himself or new behaviors to us. In the tank illustration, it would lead to wasting water as it overflowed the bowl spilling onto the floor. No, Jesus came to replace us, those bricks, with Himself.
More of Jesus and less of you is a sign of a healthy Jesus disciple, one who loves and becomes like Jesus.

Loves needs forgiveness to keep loving.
We need forgiveness, especially from God. Yet, have you ever stopped to think about forgiveness from God’s perspective?
He is not forgiving for your sake alone, but His as well. The Biblical God is both love and wrath. He loves His creation with such a tremendous love that He keeps reaching out to humanity even though they hurt Him over and over again through their words and actions.
In order to not lash out, He forgives…for His own sake! If He didn’t, do you think He’d want to keep loving you and me? And yet, even love can only take so much pain before it must take action: in humanity’s case wrath or in His children’s lives discipline.
May we never take lightly our daily choices to follow Jesus. Yes, Jesus will forgive and cleanse us from our sinful choices when we confess our sins to Him. But, not for a second should we ever think that what do doesn’t hurt Him. Remember, even in His glorified state, He is both fully God and fully human.