Practicing God's Peace part P

The first idea that connects the peace of God for me is Presence.  Having lived in so many nations in my life—as of this writing it is 7, people often ask me: Where is home?  Or where is your favorite place to be?

My standard answer used to be very simple—Kenya.  It’s where I grew up and its where I felt most comfortable.  That soon changed though.  Tanzania is also an amazing country that I dearly love as is Madagascar, and even the United States.  Anyone who has spent any time in Colorado would have to concur—it’s beautiful!

When pushed into a corner to only choose one place I often feel stumped.  It is Kenya?  Well…maybe.  Is it Tanzania?  Umm…probably.   What about Madagascar?  Yes…so beautiful.  

Then one day it hit me.  My favorite place to be in the world is in His Presence!  Psalms 16 says it this way, “In your presence there is fullness of joy and at your right hand treasures for evermore.”  I have learned that His presence is the key to joy, not a geographical location or a situational context.   In fact, there are moments when I’ve been on the beaches of Tanzania, or the rainforests of Madagascar, or the plains of East Africa and still felt intense loneliness, anxiety, and fear despite the overwhelming beauty around me. 

Enter the peace of God. I believe it is absolutely essential to maintaining an awareness of the presence of God.  The two go hand in hand.  No peace no presence.  Peace equals presence.  I know there are other factors to consider in this discussion, but I’m speaking very simply for the sake of brevity.   The peace of God keeps our hearts and minds from wandering in the path of dangerous and toxic emotions that would pull us far from His presence.  

Before going any further let’s make this practical.  How do we cooperate with His peace?  Here’s just a few ideas.

1)    Learn the art of being still—too much stress, pressure, worry, etc… will fill your heart with all sorts of unhealthy emotions.  Life is busy.  Let’s be honest. It’s full of stress and pressure.  I’ve found that I must have a quiet time everyday, not so much to accomplish some kind of check-off on my spiritual to do list, but rather because I need to still my soul and know that God is bigger than what is going on in my world. 

2)    Let the Word wash over you—there is a big difference between reading the Word and allowing the Word to wash over you heart.  One is a verbal/mental exercise. The other is a spiritual emotional experience.  I don’t want to sound too mystical here for I am also a very intellectual person who likes to interact with the Word on a more rationale level.  Having said that, there is something so powerful about the Word of God. When my heart is still and I’m able to read the Word I feel like the Holy Spirit gets out a cloth and begins to gently wipe my heart.  The unhealthy emotions, the worry, the stress, soon fade as I hear what He wants to talk to me about.  I believe this is why Jesus compared the Word to being washed. 

3)    Sing—I know it sounds pretty childish. After all this is the 21^st century and who really sings anymore?  I believe the main reason we don’t sing anymore outside of a Sunday morning worship context is because our hearts are so full of heaviness and stress from the world around us. In my English Lit classes in university we had to read several of G.K. Chesterton’s works. In one of them he talks about the loss of the song in modernity.  How only kids sing anymore and interestingly, they seem to be the only ones happy.  I have found that if I can get a good worship song in my mind and then began to sing and hum it out loud I soon find peace covering me. 

4)    Pray- The context for Philippians 4:7 is prayer, and not just any prayer, but specific prayer laced with gratitude.  It’s amazing that Paul instructs us to present your requests to God with thanksgiving.  For me, this looks like bringing very precise and specific needs in my life that often weigh me down with heaviness to the Lord.  I tell Him the need and then I thank Him that he has heard my request according to I John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”  I then leave the request for Him to carry and deal with. In other words, I don’t pick it back up.  This is the essential for restoring peace to practice his presence.