15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
We live in a world of turmoil and uncertainty. Every day there is a new scare. Some are real, like Judgment Day. Some are made up for political reasons like Global Warming. We see it in the commercials for hand sanitizers and disinfecting products. How I ever survived childhood I don’t know! I know I ate dirt. But the scares sell products. So how can a Jesus-follower live with some sense of normalcy in a world that sells catastrophe? Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart! We must take time to let that peace settle into our being, into the center of us. It will not happen automatically or quickly. We must purpose to spend time in God’s presence, listening to His Word, confessing our sins and waiting. But in our world of instant, we don’t have time to get this peace. We need to spend time with other believers and have growth-filled and challenging interactions. No one likes to be admonished, called on the carpet for some spiritual infraction, but we all need it from time to time. If we want peace with God, we must allow the crucible of fellowship with other believers to do its work. We also need gratitude filled worship in our lives. We did not get to our present spiritual position by ourselves, unless we are proud and therefore are out of sync with God. God’s grace, His work not ours, is working in and through us to bring us into right relationship with Himself. It is God’s work in us. We did not get here through our own efforts. I think of the Olympic athlete. It took parents and coaches and trainers and sponsors and encouragers and lots of their own perseverance to make it to the competition. Without all those others they would not be there. In our spiritual journey, we need to take time to be thankful to God for what He is doing in and through our lives. We can only be thankful if we have our sense of self-worth in proper perspective. If we are big-headed, we cannot be truly thankful. I pray that the air would be let out of our spiritual balloon so that we see ourselves as God sees us, valuable because He is breathing life into us, not because we are filled with our own hot air.
The Arnold Journey 