Philippians 6-7 (The Message)Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
The King James Version puts is like this: 6Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 7And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Sometimes that peace seems unattainable. I remember a time in my life where I was desperate for peace in my mind. I was a very young pastor’s wife and mother and I was plagued with thoughts of worry, about anything and everything…real or imagined. Doubt, foul language and blasphemies, things I despised and had never practiced bombarded my mind. I struggled with all this for a couple of years, I just “knew” that God had left me because I was such a terrible person. I felt like a line in the verse of an old hymn, “…a sinner far from Jesus perishing with cold…” And just as the hymn doesn’t end that way, neither did my life. “But the Blessed Savior heard me when I cried. He put His arms around me as He brought me to the fold now I’m living on the Hallelujah side!”
After years of struggle I reached past the fear, pain and shame that had brought me to this point. As I was in church singing a song of longing, “Oh, I want to see Him, look upon His face. There to sing forever of His saving grace. On the streets of glory let me lift my voice. Cares all past, Home at last, ever to rejoice.” My longing for Jesus, my God, overcame my fears and doubt. I cried out to the only One who could help. He was waiting for this moment and was there to catch me just in time. My heart chose to believe that I was truly forgiven and I finally forgave myself. I realized that God is greater than my weakness. That put me back that on the life long road to wholeness and abundant life.
Later I found out that the more you try to get rid of a thought the more it ’sticks’ in the brain, especially a thought that is shocking to the mind. The Spirit of God lead me to understand and use ‘Scripture Replacement Therapy’. Instead of trying (in vain) to get rid of bad thoughts, I learned to immediately replace them with scripture.
It was a lesson to be remembered and used throughout a lifetime.
Real peace, lasting peace, came. I asked for it and Jesus gave it to me. It took time, but it came. His light shines brighter and brighter in us until that day we step from this troubled world and He brings us Home.
Until then I’ll continue “Living on the Hallelujah Side!”
(I have purposed in my heart that I will not hide my past struggles and how God came to my rescue. I felt I had no one to turn to and was isolated in my experience. God allowed me to hear another minister’s wife speak about several godly people who were going through the same things I was…and she had no idea what I was going through when she said it. That was a healing God moment in my life. Maybe as people see my struggles and God’s power in my life it will give them hope. You are not alone, there is help and hope in Jesus! Don’t give up. Yield to His Spirit and Word, He will help you!)
