STABILITY RELEASES ABILITY
I believe that stability releases ability. I think a lot of people have ability because God has given them gifts, but they’re not stable Christians, and so God cannot use their gifts publicly in ministry. They would end up hurting the cause of Christ because of their unpredictable behavior.
We can’t be stable just when we’re getting our way. We have to be stable when we’re having trouble and trials, when people are coming against us, and when people are talking about us. Paul knew a lack of stability would hurt Timothy’s witness and anointing; it would prevent him from hearing from God. We don’t enjoy life unless we develop an ability to remain stable in the storm.
When we’re upset, we are usually not listening. People don’t hear because they don’t get quiet enough to hear what God is saying. God isn’t going to yell at you. He usually speaks in a still, small voice, and to hear Him, we must maintain an inner calmness. Actually, peace itself is a guideline for what God is approving and disapproving of in your life. We must all learn to follow peace if we intend to follow God.
You have to choose purposely to stay calm, to put your confidence and trust in God, and to be a ready listener for His voice. Then you have to be willing to make whatever adjustments are necessary to have peace in your life.
Some people might say, “Well, it’s not fair for me to always be the one who’s changing and adjusting to keep harmony with everyone else.” It might not be fair, but God will bring justice in your life if you do what He’s asking you to do. It might not be fair, but it will be worth it.
Just because somebody else is hard to get along with, we don’t need to be hard to get along with too. We have to stop letting somebody else’s bad behavior steal our joy.
I’ve mentioned that in the early years of our marriage, when I threw temper tantrums and didn’t talk, Dave just stayed calm and happy. He went around the house singing and whistling; he went to play golf and watch football and play with the kids; he continued to enjoy life. When I was about to blow my cork in another room, he was steady and stable, and even though it made me so mad that I couldn’t get him upset, he eventually won me over by the peace that he always maintained.
Unhappy people want to make other people unhappy; it irritates them to be around someone happy. But people who are full of peace can positively affect unhappy people. I saw Dave’s example and became hungry for what he had. I know, without a doubt, if Dave had not had that stability in his life, I wouldn’t be in ministry today.
I needed an example of peace because I grew up in a house of strife. I actually did not even know how to remain peaceful when I did not like my circumstances. Even someone preaching it to me would not have been enough; I needed to see it. His example was very important for what God had planned for me.
So, if you are in a relationship with somebody who is like I was— angry, upset, out of control, throwing temper tantrums, making bad choices—you can influence him or her to receive the grace of God to change if you will be stable in the power of the Holy Spirit.
It won’t do any good to leave gospel tracts around the house or play my teaching tapes real loud. It won’t help to leave books opened with underlined passages for that person to find. The Word says that we win people over, not by discussion, but by our godly lives (see 1 Peter 3:1). Of course, sometimes God uses our verbal witness to help others, but He uses our example even more.
Dave didn’t preach to me: His life was a sermon. He lived his confidence in God in front of me. And his stability is one of the things that I still appreciate in him.
I grew up in a home where I never knew from one minute to the next what was going to happen. Somebody could be happy one day and ready to hit me the next day, and I didn’t even know why. I lived through a lot of violence and anger, where ranting and raving was a daily event.
Perhaps you live in such a home now, but God can change it if you will abide in Him. Isaiah 32:17-18 promises this: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace [internal and external], and the result of righteousness will be quietness and confident trust forever. My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting-places.”
First Peter 3:2 gives us guidelines on how to live our lives to win over those who do not know about the grace of God. Though it is written in light of women with their husbands, the same principles apply to all relationships that we have with others. It says to conduct ourselves with reverence toward others, “to respect, defer to, revere, . . . esteem, appreciate, prize, and, in the human sense, to adore” and enjoy those whom God has given us to love. People’s attraction to us will not be based on our outer lives, our hairstyles, or our pretty clothes.
Instead, we will draw people to us by “the inward adorning and beauty of the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible and unfading charm of a gentle and peaceful spirit, which [is not anxious or wrought up, but] is very precious in the sight of God” (1 Peter 3:4). We are true sons and daughters of God if we do right and let nothing terrify us, if we “don’t give way to hysterical fears or [let] anxieties unnerve” us (v. 6).
Our circumstances won’t change until we change. Remember, we are to keep our minds stayed on God, and He will keep us in perfect peace. And whoever heeds wisdom will “dwell securely and in confident trust and shall be quiet, without fear or dread of evil” (Proverbs 1:33).
Watchman Nee said that we should keep our spirits in a position of “being light and free all the time—keeping in mind that the outer man is different than inside.” We can have raging storms taking place around us and still enjoy perfect peace on the inside.
I realize that I have already given you a lot of information on how to keep peace in your life, but in the next chapter I will share one more Peacekeeper that will keep you in God’s will for the rest of your journey.
PEACEKEEPER #21
Aggressively Pursue Peace
The main point I hope you remember from this study is to aggressively pursue peace. Through Jesus Christ, God has provided everything you need to enjoy a life of peace. The Word tells us, “Strive to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14, italics mine).
The word strive has been translated in various Bible versions as “follow,” “pursue,” and “make every effort.” It’s important to understand that God expects us to interact with people. I know believers who withdraw from everyone, who don’t think it is important to go to church or spend time with people. But that is not the heart of God. He wants us to find peace with people, not away from them. In fact, the Lord tells us to look after each other, helping each other to be built up in faith, as these next Scriptures command:
And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) to love and helpful deeds and noble activities, not forsaking or neglecting to assemble together [as believers], as is the habit of some people, but admonishing (warning, urging, and encouraging) one another, and all the more faithfully as you see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25)
God gives His blessings as a free gift, yet we receive or appropriate them through faith. If we don’t release our faith in the promises of God, they will not help us. We can encourage each other to remain faithful. We can pray for each other when our own faith weakens. Above all, we can encourage each other to aggressively pursue peace.
An aggressive peacemaker remains on watch to see that no one in the body falls away from God’s grace. Hebrews 12:15 charges us to “exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God’s grace (His unmerited favor and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it.”
People could conceivably have money in the bank and yet live as tho
se with none simply because they never went to the bank to get it. Jesus arranged for us to enjoy peace, but we must pursue it. Actually it is important to remember that God’s Word says in Psalm 34:14 that we are to “seek, inquire for, and crave peace and pursue (go after) it!” (italics mine). When I saw this Scripture and then this similar one in 1 Peter 3:10-11, it was life-changing for me:
For let him who wants to enjoy life and see good days [good—whether apparent or not] keep his tongue free from evil and his lips from guile (treachery, deceit). Let him turn away from wickedness and shun it, and let him do right. Let him search for peace (harmony; undisturbedness from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts) and seek it eagerly. [Do not merely desire peaceful relations with God, with your fellowmen, and with yourself, but pursue, go after them!]
When I first understood this Scripture, I realized that even though I prayed for peace regularly, there was something else I needed to do: I needed to pursue it, go after it in a strong way.
I began to study peace and examined what types of things caused me to lose my peace. I decided that I was absolutely unwilling to live my life frustrated and upset.
THINGS DON’T CHANGE OVERNIGHT
I would like to be able to tell you that things changed overnight; however, they didn’t. I had to study the subject of peace for quite a long time and practice principles of peace until they became habit for me.
We form addictive habits throughout our lives. We learn to respond in certain ways and do so without even thinking about it. We must break these habits and form new ones, and this takes time. I want to stress that becoming a peacemaker and developing peaceful ways will take time, otherwise you may become discouraged in the beginning and just give up. I encourage you to stick with your pursuit until you experience victory, because it is well worth it.
One of the habits I had to break was getting upset whenever I did not get my way. I examined my pattern to understand why I always reacted like this. I realized that I had watched my father respond this way for years, while I was growing up. He was a very angry and controlling man and always got furious when things did not go his way.
As I have said before, my childhood home was filled with turmoil. It was our normal atmosphere. I doubt that I ever really enjoyed peace as a child. My alcoholic father was abusing me sexually, and he was violent toward almost everyone. My life was filled with fear: fear of being hurt, of someone’s discovering what my father was doing to me, of no one’s ever discovering it and helping me, of the fact that somehow it might be my fault, of making mistakes because I always got into trouble when I did. Fear! Fear! Fear! That was what life was to me.
I never learned peaceful ways as a child, but thank God we become new creatures when we enter a personal relationship with God through putting our faith in Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). I share more about the story of God’s redemptive work in my life and my father’s in my newly revised book Beauty for Ashes. It bears our testimonies that we clearly receive a new beginning through faith in Jesus Christ; we can have our minds renewed and learn how to think and respond correctly to every situation in life.
God has blessed me with a strong personality. It helps me in many ways, but it can also be a great hindrance because I don’t give up easily. In other words, if I have my mind set that something should be a certain way, it is not easy for me to let it go and trust God. Now, when I need to press through to the finish of something and refuse to give up, my personality is a benefit. But when I really cannot change a thing and need to let go and let God work, I have often found it difficult, to say the least. This is why I often say that it is so important to change what we can change, let go of what we cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
You might say, “Well, Joyce, I was not raised in a home filled with turmoil, and I don’t even have the kind of personality you do. But I still don’t have peace! So, what is my problem?” Satan works hard all of our lives to make sure we don’t have righteousness, peace, and joy. He finds ways to steal from everyone.
We have examined many of the ways he will steal our peace in great detail, but the important thing is to be determined to have peace no matter how long it takes, or what it requires.
Crave peace, pursue and go after it! I love that statement. Each time I hear or read it, I feel a surge of determination within me to enjoy the life of peace that Jesus died to give me.
SATAN STEALS PEACE
Satan relentlessly attempts to steal everything God has provided for His children through Jesus Christ. Peace is one of the biggies; it is one of the things he works extra hard to prevent us from enjoying. Remember, we have peace—Jesus provided it—but we must appropriate it. Satan does everything he can to keep us from doing so, beginning with deception; he wants us to think that peace is not possible, that it is not even an option.
How can we remain peaceful while life seems to be falling apart around us? He screams into our ears when we have a challenging situation, “What are you going to do? What are you going to do?”
We frequently don’t know what to do, nevertheless, Satan pressures us for answers that we don’t have. He tries to make us believe it is our responsibility to solve our problems when the Word of God clearly states that our job as believers is to believe. We believe, and God works on our behalf to bring answers to meet our needs.
A good example appears in Exodus 14. The Egyptians were pursuing the Israelites; all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, his horsemen and army were in pursuit of God’s people. When the Israelites found themselves stuck between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army, it seemed hopeless. They could see no way out, so naturally, they became fearful and upset. They began to complain and make accusations against their leader, Moses. “Moses told the people, Fear not; stand still (firm, confident, undismayed) and see the salvation of the Lord which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians you have seen today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace and remain at rest” (Exodus 14:13-14).
It may have sounded foolish to the Israelites to stand still, hold their peace, and remain at rest, but that was God’s instruction to them—it was their way of deliverance. When we remain peaceful in tumultuous circumstances, it clearly shows that we are trusting God. We often say, “God, I trust You,” yet our actions show that we do not.
The lies of Satan steal our peace; however, the truth sets us free. Satan’s lie is that we have to take care of ourselves: The truth is, God will take care of us as we place our trust in Him. When I began to practice this “peace principle” of simply trusting God, I actually felt guilty, as if I were not doing my part. I felt obligated to worry and try to figure out how to solve the current problem. This, of course, is exactly what Satan wants. He desires more than anything to bestir us to action that is useless. Then we end up exhausted and discouraged.
To enjoy a life of peace, you will need to examine your own life to learn what your “Peace Stealers” are. Satan uses some of the same things on everyone, but we also have things that are particular to each one of us. For example, one person may be very disturbed by having to do two things at one time, while another person may actually be challenged and energized by multitasking and doing several projects at once. We are all different, and we must learn to know ourselves.
My husband is not the least bit concerned about hearing that someone is talking unkindly about him, but he is easily disturbed when a driver does not stay in his lane of traffic or cuts in front of us. I am just the opposite. Although I would not appreciate unsafe driving, it does not disturb me as much as hearing I am being accused unjustly.
When our children are going through hard things, Dave says it is good for them and will help build their character; on the other hand, I want to rescue them. Since we are all different, Satan uses different things on each of us, and he usually has studied us long enough to know exactly what buttons to push at what time.
I can endure things better when I am not t
ired, and the devil knows this, so he waits to attack until I am worn-out. I learned by pursuing peace what Satan already knew about me, and now I try not to get overly tired because I know I am opening a door for Satan when I do.
It will be virtually impossible to enjoy a life of peace if you don’t study to know what your Peace Stealers are. Keep a list of each time you get upset. Ask yourself what caused the problem, and write it down. Be honest with yourself, or you will never break free.
You may have things on your list like this:
• I didn’t get my way.
• I had to hurry.
• I became impatient and got angry.
• Financial pressure upset me.
• I was too tired to deal with anything.
• I had to deal with a certain person who always frustrates me.
• A friend embarrassed me.
• I was in a traffic jam.
• A very slow clerk waited on me.
• A friend disappointed me.
• I got a stain on my dress.
You will have a lot of different things on your list, but it will help you to realize what bothers you. Remember, we cannot do anything about things we don’t recognize. That the truth sets us free is a wonderful fact from God’s Word that has truly been life-changing for me. Of course, truth must be faced in order for it to help anyone. This is often the painful part. Why does truth hurt? Simply because we don’t like to see ourselves as we really are, and we have spent a lifetime developing systems of escape through making excuses and blaming others for our problems.