05/15/2023
Peace
Often when we pray for peace, we are praying that God will remove the things in our life that are causing us heartache, we pray that God will stop the storm, because we think that is the pathway to peace. But what if instead of praying those things, we pray that God will give us peace during the heartache, peace during the storm. There is an enormous amount of trust that must come from us when we pray for God to give us peace thru the heartache and storm. You see that means we welcome the heartache and the storm because we know who will get us thru it all. Welcoming heartache and storms is not in our nature, we would rather run from them to protect ourselves. When we put our trust in God to heal our hearts when they are breaking, we trust God to be our life preserver as we go thru the raging storm.
Visualize with me for a moment.. you are standing on a barren mountain top, you see the approaching black clouds, you hear the thunder, see the lightening, you smell the storm, you want to run but there is nowhere to run, you want to hide and seek shelter, but there is nowhere to hide and no shelter. You feel the storm brewing, growing larger, you feel helpless. You know within minutes it is going to reach you and there is nothing you can do to stop it. What will you choose to do? To lay down, scared, and give up? Or look the storm in the eye, with confidence and faith that God will see you through?
I wonder what the outcome would’ve been for the disciples in the boat if instead of Jesus calming the storm He let it continue? If when Peter walked out to Jesus on the water, saw the waves and heard the wind, got scared and started to sink, what if Jesus let him sink due to his lack of faith? How many of us today would sink because of our lack of faith? Luckily, Jesus did not do that.. no Jesus saw the fear in Peters eyes and instead of leaving him to his own demise because of his lack of faith, He had mercy on him.. He immediately reached out His hand and caught Peter. That is what our God does. He catches us when we fall, when we make mistakes, when we do things we know we shouldn’t do.
Even when we lack faith in troubling moments of our life, He is standing there with an outstretched hand waiting for us to grab it so He can give us the peace we long for in the midst of our storm. It is up to us to look our storm in the eye, declare Gods peace over it and believe that God will carry you through. That is how we gain peace, through prayer, belief and grabbing Gods outstretched hand. We all mess up, daily.. God still loves us. He still forgives us when we ask. He will never turn His back on us. Accept the hand that The God of peace has outstretched for you today.
