The Key to Peace, Joy and Love

In this type of love, “enemies” are converted to friends, strife is dissolved into harmony, war is stopped and peace reigns.

Meditation Thought: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them… Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you – live in harmony with one another.” (Romans 12:6,12,14,16)

There is an attitude which is the proper one for all who seek to be the loving, obedient, willing children of God; it is a reflection of our Father’s attitude: TOTAL LOVE. Love which allows the beloved to choose, love which does not condemn, but teaches a better way – mostly by example. Love which recognizes the desirability and the reality of each member being unique – and not only accepting the uniqueness, but enhancing the qualities of it which will bring glory to the Father.

In this type of love, “enemies” are converted to friends, strife is dissolved into harmony, war is stopped and peace reigns. The kingdom is superimposed upon the earth: the tawdry places are made shining clean, selfish motives give way to commitment to the common good, the wealthy eagerly aid the poor – and the poor accept the aid as a “talent” – to be used to increase the wealth for all, not accepting it as a gift for self only; as Paul states it, all of these behavioral patterns shall result in: “loving one another with brotherly affection.”

Is this not the purpose for which Jesus came? Is it not the purpose for which life takes on meaning for us, and richness, and joy?

It is in the knowing that this is the key to our heart’s desire that we are able to use our gifts gladly: giving joyfully and generously. For in loving one another in brotherly affection, we fulfill God’s will for us – we cannot love our fellow creatures without loving Him who created all. To love and to be loved is the central theme of Christianity. It is also the will of the Father, the joy of the Father and the sons, and the one way which leads to peace and fulfillment.

I wanted peace,
I wanted joy,
I wanted love.
I said “Give”,
Give me peace,
Give me joy,
Give me love.”

The answer came:
“When you change
‘You give me peace,
You give me joy,
You give me love,’

To

‘I give you peace,
I give you joy,
I give you love,’

You shall possess
please and joy, and love.”

In the Midst

God uses any possible means to reach you and you should use any means to reach God.

Meditation Thought: “…the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:21)

The kingdom is not a place; it is not something you wait for, to be brought to you: it is your perception of life. When your perception of all that enters your life is the perception that God has of these things, then the kingdom has come for you. It is easy to have the perception of God when all is going right. It becomes difficult when your own desires are thwarted rather than fulfilled.

The way the kingdom comes is by aligning your desires with God’s desires for you. This can be done only be listening to your deeply hidden voice within you – you must encourage it to emerge by prayer and meditation. God uses any possible means to reach your spirit, your mind, your emotions, your body. And you should use any means to reach God. To pray, to meditate, to seek Christian companionship and counsel, to do good works – all help you come closer to God. He will reveal Himself, not necessarily as you expect – but you will be aware that He has revealed Himself, and that knowing He is real, you base every thought, word and deed upon that knowledge. This is the kingdom come: knowing that God is in you, surrounding you, moving before you – an impossibility with man but possible for God. The kingdom is the Presence of God living in you by your desire that this be so and your proof of that desire by your righteous and loving behavior.

Understand the Cause: Mitigate the Effect

To know not only an effect, but its cause, is to be able to think and act far more appropriately.

Meditation Thought: “For man believes with his heart and is so justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.'” (Romans 10:10-11)

We must deal with our inner thoughts and feelings in order to be saved – but we must also express ourselves using our physical body, revealing to others our decision. This is necessary for two purposes: It cements our compact with God as we are positive enough to confess to another, and it is also the opportunity for those who hear us to become saved also.

All of life is really a process involving two areas: the invisible facets and the visible, physical facets. We shall be better off knowing as much as we can about both – and God needs only our willingness to learn to teach us about both realms. The invisible precedes the visible – and the wise person will understand the connection, for to know not only an effect, but its cause, is to be able to think and act far more appropriately.

It is in our searching for God and attempting to understand who He is and who we are, and what He is doing that we become wiser in the knowledge of causes, as well as becoming more expert in either initiating causes, or in minimizing bad effects by understanding causes and thus taking appropriate action concerning them.

If we simply deal with the physical world after a cause has produced an effect, we are going to be victimized a great deal – unnecessarily. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, but in order to prevent the undesired effect we must understand how to prevent the cause – and that understanding will come only when we are willing to use our invisible faculties – our mind and our spirit – to determine the truth of the situation.

Patterns Changed

To be treated kindly when one has not been kind is to prick the conscience, rethink the situation, and change the pattern of behavior.

Meditation Thought: “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,” (Proverbs 25:21)

To be treated kindly when one has not been kind is to prick the conscience, rethink the situation, and change the pattern of behavior. Thus it is wiser and more productive to be kind to enemies – and since this behavior is also pleasing to God, it reaps additional reward from heaven. Thus to not give in to ill feelings is to receive far more satisfaction than venting anger. But the character must be built to have strength to do this – the mind must rule the emotions, and the Spirit of God must rule the mind if this type of behavior is to be exhibited, for it is human nature to cause harm to our enemies and to attempt to defeat them. Jesus was a master at living out the examples of feeding and giving drinks to enemies – and His consistency in doing so won over many – even some of those who had caused his death were won over after his resurrection, as the became converted through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

We may not be as successful as Jesus in consistently feeding and giving drinks to our enemies – but if we really try to do this, we will have some success – and that is enough to change at least some peoples and some situations for the better. If we can each have even moderate success in this God-character being revealed instead of human-character, the world will be far more pleasing – to God and to us.

Rich in God

This will bring Him more pleasure than anything else: my grateful heart, and responding love, are all that He is seeking.

Meditation Thought; “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:19-21)

You are to be rich in God. The Bible refers constantly to King and Kingdom. God is wealthy, is in authority, is all that an earthly king is, and infinitely more, has all the earthly king has, and infinitely more. I am His child, and thus am an heiress to the kingdom. It is fine for me to recognize this and to rejoice in this. What I must not do is to believe that I am worthy to be in this position because of my own doing. I am in this position because of God’s doing. I need to be grateful – and to live out this life that has been given to me in the way most responsible and pleasing to my Father – and to be glad to do so, to enjoy doing so. This will bring Him more pleasure than anything else: my grateful heart, and responding love, are all that He is seeking. He isn’t trying to beat and badger and coerce me into being a child that resembles Himself – He’s trying to love and encourage and empower me into that child! When I realize this fact, then I am released from the prison of my own making. If God – who is so great – is satisfied with me as I am in Christ – even though I’m not perfect as the Father is perfect – why should I be so critical of myself?

Yes, Christ in the flesh did understand the Father completely and did obey perfectly. And I have not. But that does not mean that I cannot – for my will yielded to Christ who lives in me through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit does understand the will of the Father, and my personality yielded to Christ in the form of the Holy Spirit does obey perfectly.

The key to having my heart be with the treasure of the kingdom is unwavering faith that prompts me to search in every possible way for the knowledge that the Father seeks to give me.

Hope!

If my heart attitude is right, my Father makes sure that I am rescued.

Meditation Thought: “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:25-27)

The Spirit intercedes for me since I try as I might, at times misunderstand the will of God. What comfort that gives me! If my heart attitude is right, my Father makes sure that I am rescued, corrected, and thus I can wait in patience for that which is my hope. I may not take the most direct route to fulfill my hope – but God’s Spirit will lead me to it despite my incompetence.

A Chain of Events

Our hope lies in Christ, who makes possible our claiming of our rightful inheritance.

Meditation Thought: “[when] we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15-17)

Christ suffered, not because He obeyed God – but because other men would not obey God. To obey God may, for a short time, bring suffering because not all do obey God. But none can defy God and defeat Him – therefore, our position as being obedient will lead to a place of glory from the the place of suffering. And the disobedient shall see the errors of their thinking and actions, and shall be encouraged to repent, thus paving the way for renewal. Any one of us can be at any of these places, at any time – depending upon our understanding of God’s will and our degree of obedience to God’s will.

Our hope lies in Christ, who makes possible our claiming of our rightful inheritance, when we had thrown it away by our sin. He made arrangements with the Father – more accurately, He obeyed the Father’s request – to make our action of refusing our inheritance disappear – it simply was no longer a valid transaction. In accepting Christ’s contract made for us with the Father, we arrange to receive our inheritance. He has done for us what we were unable to do for ourselves. It has the effect of erasing our dishonorable actions as completely as if they were a dream and not reality.

We have been saved from what we feared would be our fate as we realized the magnitude of our rebellion and disobedience. Coming to know how powerful our Father is, we finally realize that it is best to obey Him – not out of fear for His wrath but out of the recognition that His requests to us have been in our own best interests. It has only been our inferior intellects, our lack of faith in His love, and our insistence on being the sole dictator of our life that has kept us from understanding the Father desires us to receive His inheritance. But He cannot will it to us unless we are going to be responsible in administering it. He must know that we will use it as He Himself would use it before He dares let us have it. And the way He knows we will administer it according to His principles is to know that we have His character reflected in our character. The only way we are able to do this is to be obedient to His teachings: the only way we can be obedient is to have Christ living in us through our faith – through our yielding the scepter of our ego to Christ that He may be the guiding force within us. When we do this, we share His fate – His leading us in obedience do the Father’s will does result in our suffering from those who are not under His leadership. But His leadership also results in miracles of healing, of renewing, of creating, of beauty, of love, of power – all bringing such glory to the Father, that He shares His glory with the Son, and the Son shares it with us.

We cannot know where Christ will lead us. But we can trust that every path leads to glory: to peace, to joy, to fulfillment, on faith through the ministrations of the Spirit, and in the kingdom through the reality of our spirit being at one with His Spirit.

Incredulous Contrast

Each child of God can have a life changed, whether it is known by others or not.

Meditation Thought: “No distrust made him [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” (Romans 4:20-21)

Abraham believed God despite the incredulous aspect of the promise, and he gave glory to God – gave credit and trust before the promise was fulfilled. In doing so, he became more and more convinced that the promise would be fulfilled. And his conviction was a bond between himself and God: it cemented their relationship even more firmly.

This is the desired pattern for all – it is the formula for God’s desires being manifested as miracles on earth.

First we must come to seek God, then to know Him, then to believe Him, then to trust Him, then to obey Him, all the time glorifying Him. Some, such as Abraham, display such enormous works done by God through them that they awe the world. But each child of God can have a life changed, as was Abraham’s, whether it is known by others or not.

And the covenant relationship, the close communion, the changing of focus from self to God all transform each believer from what we are in sin to what we are in Christ. The difference is as contrasting as is darkness from light, ignorance from knowledge or despair from hope.

Seeking Power

All of us are intrigued by power, desire power, and are awed b power. Why? Because it is through power that control is manifested.

Meditation Thought: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes… For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'” (Romans 1:16-17)

“The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” The Power of God. All of us are intrigued by power, desire power, and are awed b power. Why? Because it is through power that control is manifested.

Mankind constantly seeks power in one form or another – often through physical means, sometimes through mental acuity, coercion, use of money or influence or appeal to another’s interest or sensitivity.

But there is one power above all other powers: God’s Power. For those who believe that Jesus came to reveal the means of releasing God’s power in fullness is one’s life, it is possible to be in contact with this Power above all powers. We may not understand it very well, nor be receivers and conveyors of the power as fully as God or we would like – but even a tiny bit of power from such a “high voltage” source is enough to:
– change lives completely
– heal
– work good in all circumstances
– enable one to forgive
– give strength and courage
– impart wisdom and knowledge
– enable one to be righteous
– and to know and express love in all its varied forms.
The self is diminished and God is expressed whenever “the righteousness of God is revealed through faith.”

Faith is developed through:
– experimentation,
– investigation
– observation
– trial and error.

Many miss out on the power of God because they cannot really believe such implausible vehicles as the gospel, or the Word, or such nebulous things a trying to understand God through thought transference can really release the power of God. Thus they never seek – and then cannot find.

Only through enough faith, or even curiosity, to, however tentatively, begin experimenting, investigating, observing, and trying is it possible to find the power of God for salvation.

Unfathomable Power

For a mind to be the mind of Christ, it must cease being the mind of the person.

Meditation Thought: “And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” (Luke 8:48)

” ‘Your faith has made you well.’ There is unfathomable power in faith – but, as all else in life, for the power to be released, certain action must take place. In faith – released power, the action takes place mostly in the mind at the prompting of the longings of the heart. Often the body will be involved also, but it is the mind which is essential. The mind determines the emotions and the physical actions. This is why ‘have this mind [the mind of Christ] in you’ is the key to undreamed of power. This mind of Christ is the mind of God: it is the understanding of My will, it is the comprehension of My methods, and it is the conforming of the mind to My thought processes.

For a mind to be the mind of Christ, it must cease being the mind of the person. The mind of the person is limited by ideas implemented by humans (and thus much error occurs). It is limited by perceptions based on the physical senses. Although creative, the ability is limited in comparison to the creativity of the kind that formed the universe and sustained it. And that is the kind of creativity that takes place in one who has the mind of Christ. That is the kind of power that causes a terrible death to bring forth a glorious resurrection. It is the kind of power that brings instant healing.

The woman who touched Christ’s garment and was healed had perceived that Christ had the power to heal her – and she had the courage to touch that power to release it through her faith.

It is one thing to believe that there is power, and quite another to actually release the power. Jesus became an expert power-releaser. The record of how He did it is available; He spent His life in trying to teach others how to do it. He desires all who believe in Him as Savior to learn it. I sent Him for that purpose – to teach My beloved how to release the power of the Spirit, for it is the Spirit that is the most important inheritance that My children receive from Me. It is the Spirit that shapes character to reflect My character; it is the Spirit that enables the children to act as their Father; it is the Spirit that responds when faith is present.

Your faith shall make you well, and you shall go in peace, if you believe, and act upon that belief!

The power is real only for those who believe it exists – and seek to release it.”