Path to Peace

    

Been working on this for days as I have been very busy lately. 

Some days it seems as though we have everything together. From the moment we get up to the time we fall asleep that night, the day is perfect. Other times, it sucks a sour pickle. The highs and lows of life are a direct result of situational emotions. Each moment in our lives, whether good or bad tends to dictate or mood. For instance, you go to bed late the night before and you know you'll only get five hours of sleep. Right there, when you lay down, you set yourself up to have a bad day because the next morning the first thought is, I didn't get enough sleep. So you lay in bed, in reluctance until your now running late for work, which increases the bad mood. On the commute to work, someone drives 20 mph and makes you later, then all the traffic lights are red, then and then and then and then. It's a cascading meltdown that leads you deeper and deeper into a bad mood, then a bad day. Eventually, your bad day is now effecting those around you and when you get home the spouse and kids are usually in the line of fire too. This is all because of the mindset the night before. 

Now those that are more self centered, or walking in their flesh, will see this as normal behavior and often times others will reinforce you and validate you as you vent about your day. I get it, I've been there and done that probably hundreds of times yet it doesn't make it right. If we are always letting our surroundings, our situations, and others dictate our minds, moods and attitudes then we can be manipulated as easy as a puppet on a string. Others know this and some will use this to their advantage against you. Have you ever regretted the mood your in before or couldn't stand being around yourself because you were so irritated by everyone and everything. Yep, been there before too. It's not a good place because continued thinking and being like that can lead you to darker realms like depression and beyond. If we always think that the world is stacked up against us and we constantly see the world as out to get us, then we have no joy or happiness and we lose hope.

The enemies whole purpose in life is too get you so focused on yourself that each and everything that goes wrong or right will affect you and others around you. Your mood can create a run away affect on those you live with, work with and casually come in contact with. How many times has this happened to you? Your going along great but one person cuts you off in traffic because they did what we described above. They're late and in a complete self focused meltdown to get through traffic and you are just another receiver of their bad mood. Now your in a bad mood because now you'd like to smack the crap out of them and how dare they cut you off. Then that mood you just got goes on to do the same to others. Meanwhile the enemy is laughing his butt off because one thought, one bad situation in someone's life has now effected tens of people and ruined their day.

If they're Christian, and they have multiple bad days in a row that week, they hit the church door ready for God to magically take their stress away. They prepare themselves for singing and worshiping and a great sermon that will tell them God's got this and all we have to do is survive till He comes back or we die. We get recharged for that day and then we go back to work on Monday and lose what we got in the first hour of being awake. So now your left with this situation in your heart, God must be punishing me for all the bad things I have done or am doing and not knowing about. Then a deeper division is wedged between you and Him. You set yourself up as the victim now as you can't seem to live up to His impossible standards which are all set by you and not Him. As life continues to beat you down day after day, God has now become the enemy and you leave Him, curse Him, blame Him and all the while the whole problem started with a whisper from the enemy, "Your gonna have a bad day tomorrow because your going to bed too late."   

I can say these things with confidence because I lived through all that. I lived from situation to situation constantly seeking things that made me happy and avoiding those that didn't. I got so bent out of shape when things didn't go my way. I fell into depression many times over as I thought I was not enough for God. I ran from Him thinking He was the problem. I turned inward on myself and loathed who I was. It was bad. Yet, through the darkness, in my heart I knew the only solution was to come back to Him and figure it out. Guilt, condemnation, self-loathing and much more were my companions back then and that suitcase was heavy. 

God showed me that He loved me one day and all that crap I carried with me was thrown away along the roadside and has never came back. It was out of the blue during a conversation I was having with Him. I was just talking about something and my thoughts led from one thing to another and suddenly the thought, I Love You, popped into my mind. It was so loud I knew it wasn't a thought from me so it had to be Him. At that thought, I opened my mouth and repeated what I heard in my head. I Love You, I said it out loud in my car and I began to shake. Tears rolled down my face as I said out loud, He loves me and I just kept repeating it like a victim of shock would because I was in shock. I knew it was the truth because it was speaking directly to my heart and I was turning into a blubbering idiot. I said He loves me through the snot for the last time and the weight on my heart was lifted and I began to now laugh uncontrollably.  It was such a wonderful moment, it's hard to write about it accurately.

After that, I walked around never feeling sorry for myself again. After all, I was loved by God. It's like a father telling his son that he's proud of him. Even though I was released from all the condemnation I had poured on myself over the years, it was just one step to a higher understanding. The next step was me not walking in the flesh but walking in the Spirit. Even though we can walk in being loved, we can still walk in flesh as well. Sometimes, knowing your loved, makes you think that no matter what you do, He'll still love you. For a long while after receiving His love I would still do things I shouldn't have done, yet I had no condemnation. It was now me attempting to live according to what I thought was right and what He wanted yet I failed too often to do those things. 

It was now a time when I tried to be righteous under my own power and will. I knew I was loved yet I didn't know how to quit sinning. It was aggravating to know He loved me yet I couldn't quit doing things I knew I shouldn't do. For a couple of years I struggled to follow Him and pull myself together, until I stopped trying again. I stopped trying to avoid behaviours I knew were not Christian-like. I just gave up and waited for Him. I was waiting for Him to give my flesh the ability to change and the flesh doesn't change. So I resided in a state of neutrality, neither concerned or condemned. 

My behavior became less and less becoming of a Christian until my wife started to ask me what was going on. I re-evaluated and started to listen to Dan Mohler videos again. I had heard him before but I apparently didn't understand them at the time. In my frustration and need, I renewed my efforts and listened to more of his videos. The key, the one I had missed, was right there. I had no where else to turn so I gave it a try.

The flesh is all about self and in that, the enemy entices us to move and be. They also headline the flesh and its resulting sin throughout the church. It's a focus thing. If your constantly concerned and focused on the flesh, its desires and the sin it produces, then you can't focus on Jesus and what He did for us. It's the oldest trick in the book. Keep the focus on fear and through fear you can manipulate someone to lose their relationship with God. Most teach that the flesh and sin will always be there and so we just need to ask God for forgiveness each time we sin and move on, or they teach to try and control the flesh on our own. It never works either way.

The solution was so simple, a child can get it. Faith was the answer. See, faith was always taught as a means to believe in Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection and nothing more. Faith was to get me to pray the sinners prayer so I can be saved and being saved was a ticket to heaven. That's all I was taught when I started in church. Faith got me outta hell and now I try to live a holy life. 

No one ever told me that the term, walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh was by pure faith. If they did, I never got it. Now, the missing link has been solved. I no longer wake up concerned about what I should avoid or not do. I don't worry about my flesh, its desires or the resulting sin. I trust fully in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to live through me and to be what they are. I've talked about this before so I won't go into great detail but I just want to say this. Set your worries, your doubts, your condemnation, your past, everyone's opinions and yours aside and fully trust that God loves you and He wants to live in You. He wants to take over our heart where His nature is made manifest through us. By having simple faith that He wants to, can and will live in you, you change. It's like carrying heavy luggage full of all your junk all your life and a nice porter comes along with a luggage cart and takes those heavy bags off of you and places them on the cart. The junk is now under His care and you are as light as a feather. 

God wants what is best for us and in our state of being, the best is coming to Him through faith that He will live in us to be people we aren't able to be without Him. Lay down your control and just invite Him to take over. Know that He loves you. Know He is there and have faith that He will order your entire life. Just know He is there to change your mind, change your heart and change your understanding. Walk in the light, as He is in the light and we will have no darkness in us.

To God be the Glory!