No God, No Peace/Know God, Know Peace

 

 

Psalm 119:35 - Make me to go in the path of thy commandments; for therein do I delight. (KJV)

Psalm 119:35 - Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found. (NLT)

 

We are a people drawn to drama.  We are interested in chaos.  We favor discord.  We take pleasure in sin.  We find sin to be fun and exciting.  This is what has kept the news and now daytime talk shows, thriving.  We anxiously sit by with the wonder of, with the excitement of, with the thrill of, “What happens/happened next?!”  This is why soap operas have survived the time, while other shows have been long shelved.  How long have General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, All My Children, One Life To Live, and The Young and the Restless been on the air, forever?  I was a child when they aired.  I’m a grandfather now, with grandchildren who may be parents themselves in less then a decade, (no rush kiddies) and they’re still airing.  But when a story of good or beneficial news is reported, after a few minutes into the story, we take on the attitude of, “Yeah, yeah; very good.  That was good of him/her/them.  What’s on the next page?  What’s on the other channel?” 

           

This is true even when we read the Bible.  Let’s consider two kings:  Ahaz and Hezekiah, both kings of Judah.  Ahaz was Hezekiah’s father.  When Ahaz reigned over Judah, he was a terror.  It was almost as if Ahaz went to bed and dreamed of havoc he could cause next.  We know some folks like that, don’t we?  The question is, are we one of them?  But Ahaz makes for interesting reading.  People that enjoy dramas, mysteries, and even love stories will love the Bible; but it will take the Holy Spirit to open your understanding to the love story.  The good news of salvation via Jesus is a love story. 

 

Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, after taking over the kingship, came and restored everything that his father had destroyed and desecrated.  But somehow, hearing about putting the priests and the Levites in their places, killing bulls, rams, lambs, and goats, and then sprinkling their blood would lose the reader randomly picking up a Bible and reading wherever the Bible opened and/or a reader without an understanding and an appreciation for Hezekiah’s works. 

 

And if I can make a small pit stop, people have been unsure as to where they should begin reading in the Bible.  It’s always best to start everything at the beginning.  When you jump in somewhere in the middle, you risk losing a lot of vital information, which can rapidly cause confusion and a lack of understanding.  How many times have we invited ourselves into a conversation without fully knowing the complete subject matter of the conversation, just to be told that it was an A, B conversation, so C our way out of it; or simply, “Mind your business!” The Bible is broken down into an old and a new testament.  Start at both places.  Start reading at Genesis in the old, and Matthew in the new.  Reading through the old will help you to understand the new. 

 

Okay, let’s get back on the track.  If you stick with the story of Hezekiah, one discovers that, until he got beyond himself, he was the man.  Hezekiah was so cool that when he was about to die, God rescheduled his appointment and gave him 15 more years.  But again, this would take an appreciation of Hebrew custom/Mosaic Law to appreciate.  For Ahaz, his dad, all one would need is an appreciation for a good story. 

 

David said, “Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.”  Think about it!  Go back to your childhood.  Wasn’t living much more peaceful in your household when you did what you were instructed to do compared to when you didn’t?  On our jobs, doesn’t the day go by better when we do what’s required of us than it does when we haven’t and we have to hear the boss’ mouth?  There’s peace in following instruction.  But following instructions would kill the drama, and we wouldn’t have a good story.  Peace would let us rest; it would let us sleep at night.  But for whatever reason, we’d rather have the stress.  We choose the nonsense. Why???  No doubt, problems will arise.  Job said, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.”  But Jesus picked this up and said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  He tells us not to worry.  Yes, troubles are going to come, but seek God’s kingdom first and His righteousness, and what we need will be provided for us.  (Jesus is His righteousness.  We have no righteousness of our own.  We are as filthy rags.  There are none righteousness; no, not one.  We are righteous only through and because of Jesus’ righteousness.)  But to do this would require us to have faith, which is what God has been asking for since the days of Adam and Eve.  We have to learn to put our faith in God.  We have to learn to follow instructions, a.k.a. being obedient.  OMG!  There’s that word, OBEDIENCE.  “You mean I can’t do what I want to do?”  “I can’t always have things my way?”  “I have to do what I’m told?”  The world is in the mess it is today because a surge of, I did it, or I’m going to do it, my way” hit the minds of people.  I remember seeing on CNN where an actor, I forget his name, promoting same sex marriage, made the comment, “People should be able to do whatever they want to do.”  This might be a little rough around the edges, so I ask you to forgive me in advance, but I wondered, if someone, (not necessarily gays) molested one of his children and/or sliced off his manhood ‘because they wanted to’, would he still think that people should be able to do whatever they want to do?

 

No one praises God for grace more than me.  When you read the accounts of the Old Testament, you discover that during the dispensation of Law, God did not play.  He would wipe out families at a time.  So glory to His name for grace, but think of the devastation if everyone could do whatever they wanted to.  Rapes, murders, burglaries, car-jackings, plane bombings, terrorisms, etc., would be okay to do because we can just do whatever we want to do.  It would be a free-for-all.    Paul said, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”  If your works are not proving what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God, then all you’re doing is having a good time sinning.  You know what’s crazy?  Sometimes, in the midst of our sinning, we actually are not having a good time.  We can be so tired, so frustrated, so sick of what we’re doing, but for whatever reason, we allow that thing to have a hold on us, and until we’re freed of that stronghold, we’ll sit right there in that thing, knowing that we are so sick of it.   But as we stated earlier, we like the drama; we like the chaos; we like good stories.  Even when we’re tired of it, we’ll tell ourselves, “I can handle this.”  NO YOU CAN’T!!!  Come on people!  Let’s think about what we’re doing!  Everything has to have structure.  Everything has to have guidelines.  Everything has to have boundaries.  We ought to stop over-stepping our bounds.  Do you know that there are times when sleep is actually fun?  Have you ever said, “That bed will feel good tonight?”  No God, no peace – know God, know peace.  Jesus said that if we cast our cares upon Him, he’d give us rest.  So let’s kill the drama. 

 

 

Doing things right, following instructions, would give us peace; it will give us rest, so much rest that we could get bored and fall asleep.  We don’t want to fall asleep because we’re nosey creatures; and if we fall asleep, we may miss something.  No one likes being bored, but with more time to rest, we would have more time to spend with God, instead of devoting countless hours fretting over the cares of the day.  And besides, it wouldn’t be as good of a story; or at least we choose to believe that.  It’s awesome spending time with God, especially early in the morning before you’ve had time to fill your mind with cares and concerns. 

 

Luv ya – Eddie