I love listening to the thunder. I love seeing the lightening. I am watching it now out my back door and it is like a strobe light reflecting on the concrete when it lights the sky. I love to hear the sound of the slow rolling thunder in the distance and I also love it when it is so close and powerful that it shakes the entire house when it sounds. The power in the thunder and lightening amaze me. I witness this and it blows my mind that my Creator controls all this with ease and His voice will thunder one day in such a way that the whole earth shakes as my house does now… Amazing.
Our God is an awesome, all-powerful, sovereign God. I know that I use the word sovereign alot here lately, but it’s only because my God is just now beginning to open my eyes to the truth of what this word means.
I am learning that peace comes when I begin to even just attempt to grasp this word, this defining word of my God. Sovereign. My God is sovereign.
In Isaiah 46:1 the Word of God declares, “The things that you carry are burdensome, a load for the weary beast.” The Lord is finally beginning to break through my “obstinate self and my iron sinew of a neck and bronze forehead” (Isaiah 48:4).
When God speaks of us as His children, He calls us sheep in need of a Shepherd. He does not call us mules in need of a burden. God doesn’t pile stuff on us. He came to take the pile off of us. He came to lead us in the way that we should go, not stand behind us with a whip, placing blinders on the side of our head so that we can’t see any other option or hope. He didn’t come to place a yoke on us, but to take the yoke from us.
We carry burdens that we were never meant to carry when we forget His sovereignty.
When I forget His sovereignty. I forget His promises. When I forget His promises I despise His Word. When I despise His Word I begin to think that I am god and I must save the day. When I begin to think that I am god and I must save the day I see nothing but my failure. When I see nothing but my failure I succumb to fear. When I succumb to fear I am now under control of the one who rules through fear. I enter darkness.
Now is when God begins to whisper… Remember.
Then I remember that I am not in the kingdom of darkness, but I am a child of Light. When I remember that I am light I remember that I am loved. When I remember that I am loved I remember that perfect love casts out fear. When I remember that perfect loves cast out fear I remember that in Christ I have the victory. When I remember that Christ is my victory I remember that He is God. When I remember that He is God I run to His Word. When I run to His Word I remember His promises. When I remember His promises I remember that He is sovereign.
When I remember that He is sovereign then I have peace. Peace is a strange thing. It is not the cross-legged yoga pose with my arms extended and finger tips touching repeated “ummmmmmm” It is not a state of nothingness. It is not a world of oblivion.
Peace is found in a person. “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace…” (John 16:33)
As I was typing this out my husband called to tell me that a man that he worked with has just left to rush to the hospital to be with his family as his 3 yr old nephew has drown. The doctors are, as I type, trying to get the fluid off of this young child’s lungs. I have lifted this little one up to my sovereign God and am praying that if it be God’s will that He give this young child life. I know that this little one cannot leave this earth without God’s permission, for God is sovereign even over life and death.
It is in these times that peace is put into practice. I have been here not long ago. The day I was called to rush to the hospital to identify the broken body of my sister less than a year ago. She lay there in a completely unrecognizable state. With every bone in her body broken. Her face burned and bleeding. Having just been t-boned in a collision with an 18 wheeler traveling at interstate speed. The first prayer I prayed when I saw her was “God don’t let me pray selfishly” I had to pray for permission to pray for her life to be spared.
This was the hardest lesson in the sovereignty of God that I have received in my life to this point. It was also a lesson in what true peace was. Peace is not a feeling it is a place and that place is found only in the person of Jesus Christ. I learned that I can experience peace and tears at the same time. I learned that I can be still in the sovereignty of God and hurt all the same. God never asks us to stop feeling. He just asks us to trust Him not our feelings.
Peace comes when we are willing to override our feelings and believe instead in the promises of God. Peace comes when we choose faith instead of fear. The peace that is found in Christ is a place of true peace. It is not the false peace that the world offers through perception deception. The peace that we have in Christ is a rest that we have even when we are fully aware of our pain.
Like I said it is a strange thing. It is, I believe, one of the mysteries of God that I could swim in for all eternity and never understand the depth of it or reach the bottom of it. Yes it is a strange thing to me, this peace of God that is mine only when I am willing to surrender to the sovereignty of God.
Sweet surrender unto a sovereign Savior…