Christianity Oasis Forum

[Netchaplain]

This article (some of which I’ve shared in my Sunday Bible study) is a good reminder how that all things godly are not to be sought from ourselves but from God within us (through His Spirit, in the life of Christ via the new nature). Discouragement can often result when we forget to wait on Him for it, which teaches us one of, or maybe the most important virtue—patience. I say this because I can see how our trust (faith) is tested the most (which strengthens faith) in the hardness of our trials.

I’ve learned that the more you believe God concerning Romans Eight Twenty Eight, the greater will be the strength of your faith before, during and after a trial. Similar to gold enduring the fire, it can only get stronger and purer each time!

When the trials come (big or not so big), you can know ahead of time, or at least before it passes (they always pass) that He has already caused it to benefit your good, esp. concerning the strengthening of your faith, and this is the only life in which it will be used! You may have heard it said that patience is merely a two-step method: Don’t sweat the little things, and everything is little things—with God!
BobH (NC)





Peace Personified

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee” (Isa 26:3). The last time I was in Glasgow, a lady said to me after preaching, “I do not understand it. I have been seeking peace with God for many months, indeed for some years, and I cannot find it.” My answer was simply, “Peace with God is a thing that you will never find in yourself. God never produces it in any human heart.” “I do not know quite what you mean,” she said. “Well, suppose you had a garden,” I said, “and in that garden an old dead apple tree, and you tried to produce apples on that dead tree. You could not. But suppose a friend brings a basket of apples from a living tree, and gives them to you, it is a very different thing, is it not? In fact, peace is a thing you cannot grow in your garden, it is not produced in our hearts (our old heart – old nature—NC), but given by the Father to you” (via the new nature—NC).

The poor women said, “Why, then, I must go home and pray for it!” “No,” I said, “peace is preached to you, not prayed for*; God gives it to faith as distinctly as a person gives you a basket of apples.” He came and preached peace to you who were afar off” (Eph 2:17). Peace (this type—NC) is not something grown in the heart, but made by the Blood of the Lord Jesus’ Cross, and given to the believer. Are you without spot in the presence of your Father? Are you quite sure there never can be a cloud or spot upon you there? Unless you have got the Lord Jesus thus, you have not solid peace. “For He is our peace” (Eph 2:14).

The Lord of glory has finished the work given Him to do, and the Father has raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His own right hand. Was it not “for us”? Do you think He has peace with His Father? Look not at yourselves, but at Him. There is One seated in the unclouded presence of the Father, where cloud or shadow can never come; that One, the Beginning and Head of a new creation, crowned once with thorns, now with glory. Can sin and death have any more to say to Him? Do you not think He has peace? Assuredly, and “He is our peace.” If He is our peace, the peace that He has in the presence of the Father is ours, not as a thing apart from Himself, but His very Person in glory is the believer’s peace. The very One who is our peace is our life, and we are hid with Him in the Father (Col 3:3, 4). Heavenly peace for the earthly path.

I ask not if you feel at peace, but if He who suffered for your sins, the Just for the unjust, made peace and is peace? Joyfully you will answer that since the Cross no cloud can come between the Father and the Son of man, who glorified Him. I believe, and am sure; I know and enjoy it. The peace of the Lord Jesus has with His Father is my peace, and there is no other; for the peace He has with the Father is the peace He made and is for us. As to the past, we have perfect peace; as to the present, we have absolute favor; and as to the future, nothing short of the glory of God to hope for, and even now to rest in.

Instead of it being, as before, my sins between myself and the Lord Jesus, it is Himself who is now between me and my sins, and the One who has thus interposed has given me to know that in the doing of it He has brought me to Himself, and tuned my heart to His own peace. In the Person of my Lord I am clear, and carried beyond the judgement for ever; the power of death is annulled, of Satan finally broken. I raise, with joyful heart, a song of victory; for sin, and death, and judgement, that gnashed their teeth upon me, are behind me now.

- C Stanley




Poster’s Note:
*peace is preached to you, not prayed for: concerning the passage, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psa 122:6), it is my understanding that this is referring to seeking for the peace of Jerusalem in an earthly sense and not necessarily in a godly sense, i.e. “Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good” (vs 7-9).

I believe the article is referring to a godly peace that is from God which all believers have in their faith, which is a peace that is beyond comprehension (Phil 4:7), and which cannot be derived from our nature and therefore is given for us to “let (allow) the peace of God rule in your hearts” (Col 3:15).



Excerpt from MJS devotional for Aug. 25:
“Christians have a poor self-image simply because they are thinking and looking upon the condemned and crucified first-Adam life within, instead of being occupied with their glorified Last-Adam life above. “Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).” - MJS
http://www.abideabove.com/hungry-heart/