How To Be Peaceful

"Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." Psalm 34:14, ESV

Peace is something that everyone wants but not many have. The psalm quoted above clearly states that if we want to have peace in our lives we must be intentional in our pursuit of it.These two verses below are a good blueprint for how to seek and pursue peace in our hearts and lives.

"The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."Luke 6:45, ESV

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." Galatians 6:7, 8 ESV

When I think about peace, three different aspects of my life comes to mind: the internal, the circumstantial, and the interpersonal.

The internal aspect of peace is what happens within myself. Specifically, it is how I think and feel about myself. It is important to accept who God made you to be. It is important to stop trying to be like everyone else and be yourself. God made you the way you are for a reason. He has a plan for your life: EMBRACE IT!! Similarly, it is also important to understand and accept that you are not, and never will be, perfect. Life is a journey of growing ever closer to God, of changing, of expanding your comfort zone, of continual learning. Embrace this aspect of life, and be gracious towards yourself for not being perfect. Adopt the attitude that Joyce Meyer expresses in the following quote towards yourself and your life.

“I may not be where I need to be but I thank God I am not where I used to be.” Joyce Meyer

The circumstantial aspect of peace has to do with life events. Whether it is a health condition, financial, or family situation, it is important to understand two things about external circumstances:

1. We all make mistakes and get into situations that eventually become overwhelming and require "rescuing" from. This is part of why we are called "sheep" in the bible. Sheep are continually getting into trouble from which they cannot save themselves. We do the same thing. So, trust that your Shepherd will come to your rescue, even when you get yourself in trouble!!

2. There are aspects of life that we cannot control. Things will happen that we cannot prevent and can do nothing to resolve. When this happens, you have two options. You can either freak out, stress out, and gain nothing from it, or you can accept them for what they are and trust that your Shepherd will rescue you from this one as well.

Either way, trusting in the wisdom, power, and loving kindness of your father/shepherd/rescuer/lover of your soul, is a fundamental aspect of living a life in peace. That is why He says that "the righteous shall live by faith."

The third aspect of peace, the interpersonal, has to do with our relationships with others. Whether it is family, friends, co-workers or classmates, difficulties will arise. Difficulties will even arise with complete strangers in unexpected ways. For example, have you ever been cut-off in traffic by a reckless driver that decided to do something dangerous and put you and your family at risk? This can be quite disturbing. People are imperfect, sinful, selfish, etc., and this will cause difficulties, disagreements, and strife. It is important to make love, grace, wisdom, and humility the centerpiece of the way in which you interact with others. It is just as important to trust that God will protect you from the poor decisions that others make, just as He will protect others from your (or my) poor decisions!!

Living in peace, at whichever level, always requires trusting in God and listening to His advice and wisdom. As we stated earlier, in order to obtain peace, you must be intentional about your pursuit of it. You need to start sowing seeds of peace into all three aspects of you life: the way you see and think about yourself, the way you perceive the world, and your relationships with others.

Are you sowing peace, love, and faith into your heart and life, or are you sowing something else?

Frustration, Impatience, and Control, Part 2

Impatience can be a source of great emotional distress. Dictionary.com defines impatience as "an eager desire for relief or change; restlessness," or "intolerance of anything that thwarts, delays, or hinders."

I got a flat tire on my way to a very important appointment. I had an hour to spare, but when I attempted to change the despicable item, I found myself unable to lift the car because my jack was missing parts! As if that were not enough, once I finally did manage to install the spare tire, it had low air pressure!!!

That was a frustrating experience. My level of frustration escalated as the time of my appointment came and went. My feelings could certainly be described as "intolerance of anything that thwarts, delays, or hinders" by the end of the experience. You could also describe them as rage.

In retrospective, I should have taken a few minutes to collect myself, connect, and talk to God about the situation and proceed to analyze the possible solutions in a systematic way. Instead, I chose to become angry. Anger is a natural enemy of common sense. By accepting the things I could not change (the flat tire, missing parts, and low air pressure) and trusting that God would see me through, I would have been able to resolve the issue much faster than I did.

Being content with your life requires trust in God, because we have to trust that He will take care of those things that we cannot.

Trusting God in difficult times helps keep us grounded and logical during those crises instead of reacting in an emotionally uncontrolled way that makes things even worse.

It is easy to have patience when you are not pressed for time; however, keeping your cool when time is of the essence and you encounter unforeseen delays is a completely different matter that requires a much greater level of spiritual maturity!!

I failed to accept the situation and trust God!!

In the end, it all turned out well. Event though I was thirty minutes late to my appointment, the meeting went on as planned and everything turned out fine. I could have prevented some major emotional distress by trusting God through those difficult couple of hours.

How often do you run into situations like this? How do you respond?

Frustration, Impatience, and Control

I have started to realize that there is a lot of frustration in my life that stems from impatience and the desire to control people and cituations that are well beyond my control.

Do you find yourself dealing with these issues?

Now, it is not a conscious decision. It is more like an attitude, something that happens automatically, in the background, and causes me to want to change things I could never change. The frustration arises from my inhability to change these factors.

The bible speaks about this issue in terms of contentment.

"Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment," 1 Timothy 6:6 ESV

Contentment seems to indicate an acceptance of how things are in the present, specially of those things I can not control. It does not mean that we like the present condition, or that we resign ourselves to living in it, but it does indicate an acceptance of them and, at the same time, a release of our desire to control and change them.

Do your best in whatever circumstance you find yourself, and let God take care of the rest. Identify the things that you can do something about, and do it. Identify the things that you can not do anything about, and release them to God. Try to identify how you got to where you are and learn from that so you can prevent it in the future.

Join us next time as we discuss the relationship between impatience and frustration!