Living In God's Peace

It's still just a rough thought, but I'll take a stab at it. I'm not sure it's a thing I'll ever have a totally concrete answer too. I think it's more of a fluid and alive sort of thing. To be alive, living in God's peace is surely something that changes and grows as we do.

I think for myself, living in God's peace has a lot to do with acceptance and submission. It's not a certain set of things a person does, it's more of a mind set.

The acceptance part seems straight forward, but I think most of us miss it for a while. See, the whole Jesus died on the cross for me thing is relatively well known. If you run around saying you're a Christian, you even understand that you have to choose to accept this gift from God and that you are to say all the right things like, I choose Jesus to be my savior, I understand that He died on the cross for my sin, etc. You get that part.

But, there's always some extra baggage. There's always a left-over. Let's assume Christianity for a moment, and then continue our thought. So you choose to believe, Jesus died on the cross for my sins, He is my savior. Good. We only sort of half grasp this idea. It's easy to understand that Jesus stood in as the substitute for the punishment we deserve for our sin. It's hard to accept the total forgiveness that goes with it.

We get on our knees and confess our sin to God. Intellectually we understand to repent and if someone asks us, we easily say, yes, I've been forgiven. Inside our hearts is the problem. We harbor guilt over the sins. We only partially, at best, accept the full measure of forgiveness given to us through God's mercy and grace.

Keeping that guilt in your heart after confession and repentance is simply rebelling against God. Your standing before Him and saying, I know you gave your son for my sin, I know that I'm sorry for my sin, I know that I want to change my sinful ways, I know that you've forgiven me fully, but I still need to be punished. I know better than you God and so I'll continue to punish myself even though you've forgiven me.

The second part of living in God's peace has to do with submission. Maybe it's trust. Somehow those two go hand in hand for me. It's easy to submit to God's will as long as I trust Him. The minute I stop trusting, it gets real hard to do what He asks of me. Even when God asks me to do things I don't want to do, or things that seem impossible for me to do, as long as I'm trusting, I can submit. When I get caught in the trap of worldly life, other people's judgements, my fears, my desires, my expectations and loose sight of Him, then I get in trouble.

It seems like far to simplistic an answer to a very complex and difficult question, and yet, that's often how Christian life is to me. I find most of the Bible to be startlingly clear in instruction. God makes his requests and commands pretty straight forward. Jesus speaks to us pretty plainly in many areas. I'm not saying the Bible is as clear and easy to use as a reciepe, but in a lot of places it really is. There certainly are parts that are difficult, complicated and confusing.

Maybe it's just me personally. I've never needed to know everything. I'm content to have the general understanding. I don't have a need to understand everything in Revelation for example, or to know what God will do tomorrow. I'm good with knowing to trust and obey. In fact, for me, it's even better that way. See, I only have to be responsible for me, my obedience, my behavior. I'm not on the spot to make the plans or save the whole world. I don't have to worry about what happens next or all the what if's. I simply have to make sure that I'm obeying.

I know, I see the world in a funny way. You will see it differntly. That's the beauty of it. We all have a different view, provided by God, and that creates the whole. We each see something different, we're each asked to follow and do in different ways. We're all simply just a part of the whole.