Power of Peace

Last night I had the honor of teaching our youth during the Wednesday Night Bible Study. Tommy hurt himself Tuesday night in a crazy little fall (that is a whole other post haha) and his neck was so sore Wednesday morning that he didn't feel good about teaching, so first thing he said when he woke up was, "Can you teach about peace and patience tonight?" Over the last few weeks we have started to dig into the Fruit of the Spirit and peace and patience was on the menu for this week. Through out the course of what is usually my busiest day of the week anyway, I had to pray for direction, do research, dissect some Greek, and put all that together into something I hoped would be helpful to the students. I was a little overwhelming, I am used to teaching small groups, usually of girls, but a room full of 50+ faces starring at me was unnerving!

Anyway as I was looking into all the scripture referring to peace something occurred to me; the peace of God, that kind that surpassing all understanding, can have amazing power in our lives! Peace is defined by Websters as freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety or obsession. All that stuff that we worry about steals our peace, when we care what others think about us it steals our peace, when we are obsessed or get distracted with anything it steals our peace. Now I know it is hard to keep all of that stuff out of our minds and hold tight to the peace of God, but the good thing is that God's Spirit wants to help us to focus on Christ and His sufficiency, which will in turn push our anxiety out and pour the peace in. When we remember that Jesus is enough and in Him we can be all He made us to be, the distractions shrink in comparison. And here is where the power of that peace gets even more amazing; when we are free from anxiety, distractions, obsessions, and annoyances we can live way bigger. We can go all out and be crazy for God because we know that when God is in something it is going to be awesome. It may not make sense or look normal, but living the way God wants us to is the most exciting, unpredictable, fulfilling life possible, and with out the peace of God filling our hearts we will be too scared or distracted to get it done. After discovering all this yesterday I am praying for more and more peace in my life so God can do something completely disproportional to anything this little girl could do alone!