What does it mean to roll our works on the Lord? I believe it means that we genuinely want His will, not our own, and that we avoid getting into works of the flesh by trying to make things take place according to our design.
I am grateful that I can usually discern when I am trying to make something happen and when God is behind it, making it happen. When God is involved, things flow, there is a certain holy ease about the project. He gives favor and opens doors; He provides. When it is all me, I struggle, there is not enough of anything, and I certainly have no peace or enjoyment.
No matter how strongly I want a thing to happen, I have learned it does no good to keep pushing a project in which God is not involved. Our works of the flesh produce no good fruit. Therefore, we should roll our works on the Lord and trust Him to put right thoughts into our minds, thoughts that will be in agreement with His will so they produce good things.
TRUST IS BETTER THAN KNOWLEDGE
We usually think we would like to know the future, yet in many cases if we did know all the future holds, we would be miserable and even afraid to go forward. Trusting God enables us to handle life one day at a time. God gives us what we need. We do not have everything we need right now for our future because it is not here yet, so if we did know the future, we would all feel overwhelmed.
I have discovered that I lose a lot of peace by what I know. Knowing is not all it is cracked up to be. Some things are better left alone. For example, I don’t want to know if someone doesn’t like me and has been talking unkindly about me; all it does is make me unhappy. Sometimes we are quite peaceful and then we receive some information, and suddenly we lose our peace over what we just learned.
I would love to know all the wonderful, exciting things that are going to happen in my future, but I don’t want to know the difficult or disappointing ones. However, I realize both will be in my future. Just like everyone else, I will have good and bad times. I really believe I can handle whatever comes if I take it one day at a time, but knowing it all now would be too much. This is why God withholds information from us and tells us simply to trust Him.
Trust really is better than knowledge. Trust ministers peace, and that is very important. I suppose we can ask ourselves this question: Do I want peace or knowledge? I choose peace. How about you?
SET YOUR MIND ON THINGS ABOVE
The Word admonishes us to think about things above, not things on the earth. This does not mean to sit and think about heaven all day, but it does mean to think about what God would think about.
He thinks of high things, not low things; good things, not bad things. We can think about anything we choose to, but we must remember that we reap what we sow. Thoughts are definitely seeds that will always produce a harvest in our lives.
The Word says we are to “aim at and seek the [rich, eternal treasures] that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). When we do this, we will indeed be raised with Christ to a new way of living. Verse 2 says to “set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things), not on the things that are on the earth.” This clearly means that we seek whatever we think about. Whatever we fill our minds with is what we are looking for, desiring, and will more than likely end up with. Remember, where the mind goes, the man follows.
Set your mind on eternal treasures where Christ is. The mind has a tendency to wander. Our powers of concentration are not too strong. This is partially due to the age in which we live. We have literally thousands of messages coming at us on a regular basis. Just driving down the highway is like driving through an encyclopedia. We might view hundreds of various types of advertisements on billboards and posters in a short drive.
We live in the age of information. As many as five or six things can be advertised during one commercial break on a television program, and this occurs numerous times in one hour. Most of the time, commercials are so overwhelming and even frustrating to me that I will not watch regular television programs. I either watch noncommercial stations or videos that I own. I want peace of mind, not so much information coming at me at one time that I cannot possibly take it in.
The Bible says to set our minds and keep them set. That basically means, think on right things and keep thinking on them—don’t give up quickly. For example, if you think about starting an exercise program, you will need to keep your mind set to do it, otherwise you will quit when you get tired or sore.
Satan steals from us by getting us to change our minds about doing right things. He shows us what is difficult about everything we try to do. We have to remember that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do difficult things and to tell the devil so. Believe that you can do whatever you need to do for as long as you need to do it.
We can live the good life, but not if we don’t set our minds and keep them set on good things. Be careful when choosing what to think about, for your thoughts help determine your future. God has a plan for you, but so does the devil! With whom will you agree?
Any thought that does not minister peace is one we should cast down and reject. God is the God of peace, not confusion and turmoil. Jesus is the Prince of Peace; He left His peace for us to enjoy.
If we begin to feel upset in any way, we should examine what we are thinking about. Sometimes thoughts are so vague that we are almost unaware that we are thinking them. We might, for example, have an underlying bitter thought about someone who has hurt us. Several times a day, this little vague thought comes to us and we don’t think about it long, but it keeps coming back, and by the end of the day we have actually spent quite a bit of time dwelling on something we should not have on our minds.
Recently an individual aggravated me by seeming to be always in disagreement with me. No matter what I liked, this person never liked it, making simple decisions much more difficult. I just wanted to decide something and go on, but this individual always had to make a big deal out of things that were minor issues to me.
Although each time this occurred, I consciously made a decision to forgive the offensiveness and let it go, I found myself feeling irritated several times a day when I thought of this person. My mind reviewed events where we had disagreed, and I even began to anticipate the same behavior in the future meetings. I needed to show this individual another project and found myself dreading it because I “thought” I would face the same opposition as in previous encounters.
I finally got rather violent with the devil. Realizing that he was responsible for injecting these negative thoughts in my mind, I began saying out loud, “I get along quite well with ———, and we are able to make quick decisions together. We like a lot of the same things and enjoy harmony with one another.”
Although I have never experienced agreement and harmony with the individual I am talking about, I desire to do so in the future, so I am calling those things that are not into existence as if they already existed. As I’ve mentioned, Romans 4:17 teaches us that God does this same thing: He “gives life to the dead and speaks of the nonexistent things that [He has foretold and promised] as if they [already] existed.” We, too, can declare in faith what we believe is God’s will for our situations because He created us in His image and encourages us to practice doing what He does.
It certainly is not going to help me in any way to keep thinking and saying what I have experienced in the past; it will only create more of something I don’t want.
What if, even after making this good confession, my experience does not change with the person in question? I will continue to war against negative thoughts about this individual, because those thoughts make me feel bad inside, they steal my peace, and it is not God’s will that I think bitter thoughts. I will continue to fight the good fight of faith, knowing that my reward will come from God.
THE MIND IS AMAZING
No matter what upsetting circumstances are going on in life, if we can get them off of our minds, they no longer upset us—it is as if they do not exist for us. When we recall them, they once again become part
of our reality. No wonder Satan continually brings up things that steal our peace. He even uses other people to remind us of things we want to forget.
If we want to enjoy peace, we need to be willing to tell people that we don’t want to talk about certain things. Recently I made a phone call to another minister I know, and he began telling me about a minister we both know, sharing details of a messy divorce situation, lies, and immorality. He explained the situation but then obviously wanted to go on and on, talking more about it. I started losing my peace and was feeling irritated, so I simply said, “Well, you have told me what I need to know, so let’s go on to something else.”
Was I rude? I don’t think so. Once I would have listened as long as he wanted to talk and participated myself. But those were also days when I did not enjoy a peaceful life and didn’t seem to know why. I have found that being a garbage dump for other people does not promote peace for me, and I want peace more than I want to know what is going on in everyone else’s life.
Don’t let Satan use other people to steal your peace through giving you upsetting information you don’t really need, and make sure that the enemy doesn’t use you to upset other people in the same way.
The mind is an absolutely amazing organ. Thoughts affect our emotions, our health, our futures, our attitudes, our relationships, and much more. Certainly we should be careful concerning them.
What we think about literally becomes our reality. We can think of something that is not even true, but our thoughts will make it real for us. I can imagine that someone is ignoring me and feel hurt when in reality he didn’t even see me. The pain is the same to me although my mind manufactured it all.
Make sure your thoughts are not deceiving you. Find out what the truth is, knowing that the truth will set you free. Paul said,
For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them]. Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and model your way of living on it, and the God of peace (of untroubled, undisturbed well-being) will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)
If we follow this advice, we will please God and enjoy much more peace. Having peace with God and with yourself is the foundation of having peace in life. But there is still more—you must have peace with the people around you. Only then will you enjoy the full, abundant life that God’s Word directs us to enjoy.
Peaceful relationships are the real evidence of living a Spirit-led life. In the next section of this book, I will share with you seven ways to keep peace with others.
Part 3
Be at Peace with Others
So then, whatever you desire that others would do to and for you, even so do also to and for them, for this is (sums up) the Law and the Prophets.
—JESUS, Matthew 7:12
PEACEKEEPER #15
Esteem Others as Higher than Yourself
The only way we can ever hope to have peace in our relationships is if we are willing to humble ourselves and esteem others the way Jesus does. This means that we are not to think we are too good, or too important, to be the ones who initiate the act of making and maintaining peace with someone else.
I realize that the things I will be suggesting in these next few chapters will sound easier to do than they actually are. Your heart may say Amen, but your flesh may cry out, “I cannot do this” when the time comes to act. However, humility inspires harmony in relationships.
Humility has an enemy called pride. Pride is the enemy of us all. While we reviewed in previous chapters that it is important to love ourselves and to be at peace with who we are, we must never consider ourselves as more important than anyone else. In fact, the real test of humility is to regard others as a prize, better than ourselves. These verses hold important keys to our keeping peace with people we encounter:
Do nothing from factional motives [through contentiousness, strife, selfishness, or for unworthy ends] or prompted by conceit and empty arrogance. Instead, in the true spirit of humility (lowliness of mind) let each regard the others as better than and superior to himself [thinking more highly of one another than you do of yourselves]. Let each of you esteem and look upon and be concerned for not [merely] his own interests, but also each for the interests of others. Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility]. (Philippians 2:3-5)
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul was telling us how to avoid strife through the true spirit of humility by regarding each other as better than and superior to ourselves. That is a difficult challenge because our flesh wants to shout, “But what about me?”
Yet, this Word clearly exhorts us to be of the same humble mind that Jesus displayed: to think of others as better than ourselves, to be more concerned for their interests and welfare than for our own, and to do nothing from conceit or empty arrogance. If we are obedient to this instruction, if we humble ourselves to tend to the needs of others, we will live in harmony and therefore be pleasing the Lord. Jesus taught us to respect all men and treat them with kindness.
Sometimes a person who does everything fast will look down on a slower person, even showing irritation. This kind of arrogance often shows up in people who are waiting in a line to be served at a fast-food restaurant. And a person who learns quickly may become impatient with someone who has to hear more than once how to do something. Truly humble people demonstrate patience, and even an eagerness to help the person who is weak where they are strong.
But we all have real faults, and this Scripture tells us very plainly how to handle the faults of others:
Brethren, if any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also. Bear (endure, carry) one another’s burdens and troublesome moral faults, and in this way fulfill and observe perfectly the law of Christ (the Messiah) and complete what is lacking [in your obedience to it]. For if any person thinks himself to be somebody [too important to condescend to shoulder another’s load] when he is nobody [of superiority except in his own estimation], he deceives and deludes and cheats himself. (Galatians 6:1-3)
I have personally read and meditated on these Scriptures hundreds of times. I have a natural temperament that avoids humility, so I need all the scriptural help I can get. I do want to please God, and I am willing to do things His way, no matter how difficult it is. Reading these Scriptures reminds me that while misconduct should be confronted in a loving way, I will also have times of needing simply to bear and endure the troublesome faults that others have. Humility allows us to be patient with the mistakes of others. As we walk in love and pray for people, God will intervene and deal with their faults. We reap what we sow: If we sow mercy, we will reap mercy when we need it.
Even though we find it difficult at times to bear with the weaknesses of others, the Word of God actually strengthens and enables us to do God’s will. When you are being tempted to be prideful, study and meditate on the Word, asking the Holy Spirit to do through you what you certainly cannot do by sheer willpower. Remember, pride is a sin, and it is the culprit behind all broken relationships.
The signs of pride include an unwillingness to admit fault, to take responsibility for one’s actions, and to initiate making peace. Pride wants to do all the talking, and none of the listening. Pride is stubborn; it does not want to be instructed, it wants to instruct others.
Pride was Lucifer’s sin; he said he would lift himself and his throne above God’s! Therefore, we see that pride manifests in one’s esteeming himself above the value of another, b
ut God says we are all equal in His eyes. Lucifer, of course, was not equal with God, but as far as human relationships are concerned, no one is better than another.
AVOID UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
We all have personal standards that we expect other people to meet, and we are disappointed when people fail to act the way we hoped. But is it really what they do that hurts us, or is it our own unrealistic expectations that set us up for the pain we feel when they don’t perform to our standards?
God’s Word tells us to expect things from God, but not from man. But how can we have relationships and not expect anything from people? In reality, there are some things we have a right to expect, but there are also expectations that we place on people that are not rightfully their responsibilities to fulfill. For example, my joy is not my husband’s responsibility—although I thought it was for many years. If he was not doing what made me happy, I became angry. I thought he should be more concerned about my happiness and do things differently. It was what I thought that caused the problem, not what he did.
Dave and I have very few arguments now that I know my personal joy is my own responsibility, and not his. Dave should do things for me that make me happy, just as I should try to please him, but there were many years in my life when it would have been practically impossible for anyone to keep me happy. My problems were in me; they were the result of abusive treatment in my childhood. I was filled with bitterness, resentment, rage, anger, and self-pity.