John 14:27 - My Peace I Give You

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

John 14:27

When trying to discern God's will, it is often said that we should find where our passions and God's passions intersect. Frederick Buechner said: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I believe that this is extremely crucial. The thing that you feel the most joy doing is very often where God's deepest purpose for you is.

But I'm going to go a step further and say that God's plan for you is going to bring you the most peace. There are so many different paths life can take, and God can make something amazing even out of the jumbled, misguided choices we often make. He's a master artist working with His craft. He's cool like that.

But... God has a perfect will.

Sometimes that phrase scares me because I know that I'm far from perfect.

I think that the idea of being in His perfect will isn't about being free of flaws but of allowing Him to use us for what He created us for, and when we let the Holy Spirit naturally do what He wants to do in us and through us, we're going to feel all the fruits of the Spirit at our core. There's just something about doing the things God calls you to. 

It's a place where joy and peace meet.

It's the place where the fruits of the Spirit throw a party and dance together.

When you find it, you'll know it.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! - Galatians 5:22-23

Isaiah 53:5-6 - The Story Is Real

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:5-6

Once upon a time there was a couple that lived in paradise on earth. They had everything they could have ever wanted and needed, and they had peace and fellowship with an all-powerful God. God wanted them to love Him by choice, so He gave them a choice. Their choice became the first sin and led to separation from God and ultimately, to their deaths. Their children grew up in a world that was less-than. They were filled with fear and made choices that made things worse. Everything spiraled beyond their control.

But God did not reject the human race. Throughout history, He spoke to just the right people at just the right times to communicate His plan to fix this broken, ugly mess. He would send His son to pay the price, to restore the fellowship that was broken, making it possible for everyone to choose life in Him.

And...

He did it through Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection.

Isaiah 53 contains one prophetic message, among many others in the Old Testament, written long before Christ was ever born.

And it happened.

He paid the price, righted our wrongs, and made it possible for us to live with God forever.

I am a lover of stories. I've studied ways to make a good one in painstaking detail. I love the way the plot of any good story has an all-hope-is-lost moment (seriously, Google it), and for readers to be satisfied by any tale, it has to have sufficient resolution. I am frustrated by writers who intuitively do it all right without having to try as hard as I have to. But the most crazy, amazing thing to me is that the story that does that best, that did it first, is the REAL one.

I love reading and writing fiction on an obsessive level. One observation I can never escape, is that the story that created the framework I love living through again and again is God's story about His love for mankind, the drastic steps of frantic love that He took to redeem us, and how He overcame death in spite of anguish and pain, just like the true hero of any story.

But he's the real hero. His story is actually non-fiction.

He loves us. He made us to love Him. Our lives are all a part of this story whether we know it or not. God is still writing about us, still enacting his plans for the future. We are all going to live in this story forever, and in His grace, Jesus made a way for us to be on the winning side.

Believers will live in heaven forever. I'm not entirely sure as to what will be going on for us all there, but I do know that it will be amazing. God has shown us enough in His word and through near death experiences, visions, and dreams of believers that hint at the ultimate satisfaction of every longing or desire we've ever had on this earth.

As a person that has wanted to climb inside so many stories and live there, it's both comforting and exciting to know that... I am living inside a story. I'm not it's Author, but I get to participate in the role God Himself penned for me.

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” - C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

1 Corinthians 6:19-20: The Holy Spirit's Temple

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

When I think of a temple, I think of a very silent, still, beautifully arranged space that allows people of faith to enter and contemplate the things of God along with prayer and worship, their experience enhanced by their surroundings. I've been in some old cathedrals and beautifully built churches, but the closest I've ever felt to a "temple" sort of feeling, at least as far as the building is concerned, was inside of the Library of Congress, where the beauty of the art and architecture instilled a deep awe (at least for this book nerd) of the things inside the library.

The temple built by Solomon in Old Testament times was a magnificent feat to behold - the finest materials, the most intricate and costly architecture, and all the elements God desired to be symbols of the heavenly temple and of the price Jesus would pay for our redemption (Hebrews 9). This temple had to have been awe-inspiring in many ways, but the part that is amazing is that it was designed by God not merely to be beautiful but also for specific purposes - present and future.

To call a believer's body a temple of the Holy Spirit is not just an abstract or poetic statement. At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit enters each believer to stay, reside, make that body His dwelling place. The Holy Spirit is not a vague force; He is a member of the divine Trinity. To try to wrap my mind around the idea that a part of the Godhead lives in me is intimidating at times.

This passage is referring to believers keeping their bodies holy by fleeing from sexual immorality. Verse 13 in the same chapter also refers to "foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods" as an attitude that a person shouldn't take toward sexual appetites. I believe this also includes a lifestyle of health in addition to remaining sexually pure.

True, the bodies we believers currently have are "weak" and "mortal" and will be changed into "glorious bodies" (Philippians 3:21), but we're talking about the fact that right now they still serve the function of literal temples of the for-real Holy Spirit. 

This makes a difference in regards to how we should be treating our bodies as Christians. What kind of toxic, artificial substances are we consuming on a daily basis when God, at Creation, created all types of foods to nourish and heal us? What kind of self-destructive behaviors are we engaging in on a daily basis? There are battles that Christians who really love the Lord struggle with on a daily basis: alcohol, drug, and food addictions; eating disorders; exercise addictions; self-harm; sexual addictions.

The ways we are destructive to ourselves and, in consequence, the Holy Spirit's temple, are endless.

The struggle is real.

But the fight is necessary.

Since we have been bought with a price, we belong to God - body, soul, and spirit. We are called to glorify Him in our bodies. In our own human strength, treating our bodies like temples in a God-glorifying manner is, frankly, straight up impossible. But we can allow the Holy Spirit to help us to walk in freedom and to understand the ways we are being led to make our temples beautiful, inside and out.

For me, that is going to involve a focus on spiritual and physical health in the upcoming year. Not for a diet. Not to look beautifully impressive by the world's standards. I want my body functioning in the best way possible so that I can use my body to serve others and not be held back by my own lack of physical health. I want my temple to be as God-glorifying as possible, even the "architecture" of my body. 

Part of Isaiah 61:3, one of my life verses, reads:

In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the LORD has planted for his own glory.

I want that to describe me - body, soul, and spirit.

Life Verse: Hosea 6:1-3 - He Will Bandage Our Wounds

Come, let us return to the Lord.

He has torn us to pieces;

now he will heal us.

He has injured us;

now he will bandage our wounds.

In just a short time he will restore us,

so that we may live in his presence.

Oh, that we might know the Lord!

Let us press on to know him.

He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn

or the coming of rains in early spring.

Hosea 6:1-3

When I had the opportunity to teach English in China for a little over a month in college, to say that I had some anxiety issues would be putting it mildly. Any time I was not teaching or participating in scheduled activities with our hosts, I was literally hiding in my dorm room obsessing over lesson plans and listening to Ginny Owens and Audio Adrenaline on my old school discman, reading 2 Corinthians 1:8-11 multiple times per day, and waiting for my Yahoo Mail to load on the slowest internet connection ever hoping to hear an encouraging word from someone.

As a culmination of the summer school program, each class was scheduled to put on a small skit version of a fairy tale or fable, showcasing the students' increasing English skills in front of all of their parents and the community. I wrote my dramatization of The Three Little Pigs, selected what roles all my 2nd and 3rd grade students were to play, and set about finding props to illustrate the three types of houses. I was able to use construction paper for the straw and stick houses, but I wanted something special for the brick house. It took a lot of effort and an embarrassing language faux pas at the town's super department store to find myself in possession of a cardboard box to use to create it.

The day of the presentation came with many dramatic things planned for our performance, including other skits that subtly declared the gospel in a way that the government couldn't protest. 

Just as we were loading up the bus with the students, a quick downpour occurred ... right on all of my props. The brick and stick houses survived, but the straw house was badly damaged. I was unable to control myself and downright sobbed in front of everyone the whole way to the auditorium.

When we arrived there, one of the Chinese-American interns waited till I wasn't as much of a mess and dragged me into the bathroom with that straw house. At first I was embarrassed and angry because she was the calmest, most self-composed person of the whole group and had really intimidated me for most of the trip. But I don't remember any word that she spoke. She took a pair of scissors and cut the tape that secured all of the construction paper together and then silently dried each warped piece under the hand-dryer until each one was relatively straight and unwrinkled. Then she taped them all back together, good as new.

While she was doing this, I felt God speaking to me: "This is what I am doing in you. You just have to be patient. Yes, it's painful,  but it will all be worth it in the end." It wasn't an audible voice, but those words are the ones I always hear in my memory.

This life metaphor has stayed with me and has proven true for me. More recently, the little and big downpours of my anxiety and depression were turned into a hurricane of circumstances I am not even sure how I lived through. By God's grace, I'm on the other side of it, and for once I really, really feel and recognize the continuing truth of what God spoke over me that day.

My life was absolutely destroyed, and I was in the worst desolation I could have imagined. I couldn't even find any of the pieces, but God kept them in the palm of His hand and is slowly, patiently drying all the damaged and defective parts of me with His Word and fitting them back together into something that I can't even describe and still don't have a clear view of at this point. He knows how to create beauty with the mosaic pieces of the soul.

All I know, is that I used to be living in a prison that - as a daughter of God - I had the keys to, and now each day I wake up surprised to find that I can walk in the freedom of a new day, with new insights, and a new hope. 

The hope that was the tiniest speck of light in the night of my despair has grown and is growing. 

It overwhelms me.

Further thoughts:

• Hosea sung by Shane and Shane

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 - Taking Every Thought Captive

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Paul is using aspects of physical war to highlight the elements of our spiritual battle. Even though we are alive and breathing and have actual people that sometimes oppose us, our struggle is a spiritual one. 

In Ephesians 6:12, Paul states:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

We wage our war against Satan and his demons, against his influences in the world, against his lies.

These faulty ideas (imaginations, arguments, lofty things) create strongholds in our lives. In ancient times, strongholds were the fortresses created to keep the enemy out. There is also what is known as field fortification, or building up places to stand against an enemy using the natural landscape, digging trenches, etc. Since Satan's enemy is us, he makes use of our weaknesses to build up places of power for himself in the territory of our lives.

If there is even the tiniest place we are not grounded in truth or not submissive to the will of God, the enemy can and does use it to maximize his hold on us. The more undefended areas in our minds, hearts, and lives, the more places he can gain the advantage and influence us.

So what do we do with this? We're imperfect people, and life is incredibly complex. We have so many distractions and so much information coming at us that it's often difficult to discern where certain ideas or behavior patterns even came from originally.

It's easy to give in to fear or to just pretend this cosmic struggle doesn't even exist, but this passage says that the weapons of our warfare are mighty enough to cast down strongholds. We don't have to wring our hands helplessly because we are being attacked.

We attack.

Other versions talk of demolishing, destroying, pulling down these strongholds. I picture us with a crowbar tearing out drywall or US soldiers tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein and covering his face with an American flag or bombing terrorist foxholes. This is the kind of destruction we as Christians have been called to wreak on Satan's kingdom.

What weapons are we supposed to use? This has been detailed in Ephesians 6:

• Belt of truth
• Breastplate of righteousness
• Shoes of the gospel of peace
• Shield of faith
• Helmet of salvation
• Sword of the spirit (word of God)
• Prayer

Sometimes it's hard to disengage these concepts from a flannel graph we may or may not have seen in Sunday school as a child. But the words in the Bible aren't just random scribblings: they are the knives, swords, semi-automatic weapons, rifles, grenades, missiles, and atom bombs in our arsenal. 

Satan is seriously messing with our minds, trying to destroy us using the destructive forces in his arsenal - lies, evil, anxiety, fear, doubt, condemnation, false propaganda, and hate. 

The ultimate battle has been won by Jesus Christ. Believers can have the assurance that, even when these fortresses do form in our minds, the power of Jesus can help us destroy them. 

The problem that I find with myself and other God-loving Christians that I know is that, for the most part, we leave these areas unchecked. We aren't even paying attention while certain lies and habits grow and grow. We leave our powerful weapons unused and wonder why we aren't experiencing the victorious life we have been promised.

We have to bring EVERY THOUGHT (yes, capslock means yelling here) to the obedience of Christ. There is no middle ground area for thoughts. Either they are based on truth and influenced by the Holy Spirit, or they are based on lies and influenced by the evil one. When we bring it back down to black and white level, it's a lot easier to see areas where we need to start bombing the lies we believe.

Every thought should belong to Christ.

Life Verse: 1 Kings 19:11-12 - A Still Small Voice

Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

1 Kings 19:11-12

Elijah has just shut down all the prophets of Baal in a major showdown over who is really God. Literal fire from heaven provided an amazing proof of God's presence and power. It was an enormous victory of faith for a man whose lifestyle was hardcore - living in the wilderness and praying so effectually that God listened and mightily displayed His splendor.

This victory placed an enormous target on Elijah's back. Jezebel's threats and maybe just physical exhaustion took their toll. Elijah is depressed and anxious to the point of wanting to give up, begging God to take his life because he is "no better than [his] fathers." 

His perspective drops from an in-your-face Satan attitude to one of total defeat. He seems to believe that God's unique calling on his life is, after all, not valid. That he will be yet another failure that cannot be used for God's purposes. All he can see are the obstacles that still stand in the way plus his own tiny abilities. This happens to Christians so easily when we are not focusing on God's power in us. Considering the prospect of standing against the enemy in our own strength is legitimately terrifying. 

So God sends a strong wind, an earthquake, and a fire to Elijah as he stands on the mountain before Him. All these seem to be stereotypical ways we would expect God to speak. Awe inspiring, somewhat terrifying. But the Lord was not in any of those. Like Elijah, we expect our walk with God to always entail big, dramatic things we can look at and say, "Yep, there's God at work." Obviously, God does things like that. He has just done that with Elijah prior to our focus verse.  But that's not the only way He works.

Last comes the still small voice, or gentle whisper. More often than not, we experience God in a much subtler but just as real way. A still, small voice - the Holy Spirit - guiding us through situations, speaking truth into our lives, telling us where to go next.

In this case, God reveals other prophets who have not worshipped Baal. Soon after, he sends Elisha to comfort Elijah and take up the torch. His gentle whisperings offer hope and perspective. God can and does send fire from heaven in miraculous displays, but he also directs our path in ways that we don't expect and works his purposes in ways that aren't always immediately apparent.

God constantly reminds us that it's not just us working by ourselves against all the dark things in this world. It's Him that gives us strength to do the impossible and to become more than we actually are, ever reflecting his glory as the Spirit makes us more and more like him (2 Corinthians 3:18).