Friday, December 20, 2019
The Wonder of
What God Has Done Through His Son:
An Advent Devotional Guide
And let the peace
of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and
be thankful.
Colossians 3:15
Sometimes we can expect blessings to happen miraculously, but other
times. God intends us to have a part in bringing them to pass. Perhaps the
above verse teaches that fact.
Notice that this is not like Jesus’ statement of blessing where he tells
the disciples, “Peace I give unto you.” There we have nothing
to do with the peace. He supernaturally imparts it to us.
In the verse from Colossians, however, we have to make a conscious
decision to allow our hearts to be at peace. As an act of our will, we
have to allow peace to prevail – in fact not just to be there but to rule! That’s
a pretty strong challenge! When we are concerned about something, the tendency
is to stew over it, try to figure a way out of whatever the dilemma is. In
those cases we are not letting peace rule. We are the ones doing the
ruling! So how do we overcome that?
That’s when we have to go back to the very first verse we had on peace
(Isaiah 9:6), and ask the Prince of Peace do his princely work. We have
to keep going back to the Lord, asking him again and again to be the Lord and
to be in charge. It would be good to do that once and for all, but we’re pretty
slow learners! God has to teach some lessons over and over, and this is none of
them. We are prone to think, “What if. . . .” until we remember that
circumstances do not impact his authority. Either he is in charge of our lives
or he is not. The decision is ours. “Let
the peace of Christ rule.”
Father, We’re trying to let peace
rule. Please help us. Amen
The Wonder of What God Has Done Through His
Son:
An
Advent Devotional Guide
prepared for First United Methodist Church of Homosassa, Florida
Winter 2009
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator
No comments:
Post a Comment