A Pathway to Peace

This beautiful psalm is a call to worship our Lord and dwell in His peace. Adoration and peace have been on my mind more because of a 21 Day Dwell Challenge some of our community has been doing. It’s focused on spending time in the Lord's presence each day dwelling on who He is. It came up as an idea during our Facebook community live teaching based on our Attributes of God verse mapping plan (the group is available to join here if you’re interested!).

This challenge has reminded and re-taught me of some wonderful truths I needed reinforced in my life! First, spent time with the Lord is a wise and critical investment of our time. We were created to worship, and what we spend our time and thoughts on become what we worship. In light of this, when we spend our time on the Lord, we learn about how to love him more because we know him better!

Second, focusing on and dwelling with the Lord give us strength and peace. If you’re like me, more strength and peace sounds incredible. The best way to receive that is to spend more time focusing on the Lord in our minds and hearts. Of course we can do this at any point in time, but sometimes it's good to find a quiet place to focus. One quiet place near me are the lakes where I live. Loons (the bird in today's illustration) are often found paddling peacefully around. I found out they are often associated with peace and tranquility.

As Christians, when anything in our lives looks bigger than something God can handle, it steals our peace and zaps our strength. This can be a good indicator we need to spend more time with our Creator. He knows everything, including us, inside and out. He's also the only One with the ability to effect lasting, powerful and positive impact. Friends, he wants to do this work through us and in the world around us! It is an incredible gift to know that the Holy Spirit desires to work powerfully through us. However, if we let events rile us up and steal our peace, it's hard for us to remain quiet enough to hear God's promptings! Beyond that, lack of peace often steals our peace, leaving us believing a lie we're not capable for whatever task God places before us.

Through this time of adoring and dwelling with the Lord, I learned more about how much bigger, more wonderful and magnificent the Lord is. This knowledge is truth that equips us and grounds us. Paul went so far as to say truth is the buckle of our spiritual armor, aka, that it keeps the whole outfit together. For many of us the idea of dwelling with the Lord might sound like a long, confusing process. But we can start small and not be overwhelmed!

Here is just one, simple and effective way to do this.

Once we open our eyes in the morning, before any other thoughts take us captive, we bring ourselves along with our thoughts, to the Lord. Even for just a few moments, we think about Him first. Pick a characteristic that you love about the Lord. For me, his immanence, or his nearness, is one of my favorites. Then spend time with him. Allow your mind to really think and ponder on about how he is close: to us and to everyone we care about. Equipped with the truth that an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving and good God is near at all times can really change the tone of our days, and thus our lives, friends.

For me, the result has been a lightening of the my mental load I was carrying. So this week as memorize this verse, I pray that we remember just Who God is. I pray that through time spent thinking about Him, it fills us with strength and peace.