If you define peace as the absence of conflict, you will never find it. Conflict is a constant in the life of every human.

Peace comes from faith in Christ that is rooted in the understanding that God is sovereign and we are not. And God, Who is Sovereign over all, loves us – loves you – more than any human mind can conceive.

Likewise, God has a plan and each of us has a part. Don’t sweat trying to figure it out. You are where you are by the grace of our Sovereign God and Heavenly Father. And when we are unhappy, perhaps we are not seeking God as we ought. If Paul can be content in the circumstances he faced, so can we.

Peace comes from letting go of all that keeps us from Jesus, and latching on to His Word and His promises and His leading. Peace comes when we obediently follow The Lord – not out of legalistic obligation but true love and devotion borne from a faithful understanding that God I’d God and I am not.

So tonight, I pray peace for you. Let go of the past, the doubts, the cares of this world, and grasp tightly to The Lord.

1 I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me. 2 In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. 3 When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah – Psalm 77:1-3 (ESV)

Selah. The Hebrew word means pause, reflect. Think about what you just read. Let it marinate in your soul for awhile. Mull over what the writer is saying.

When we pray, it is easy to unhinge our jaws and just start yacking at God. But, when you get down to it, most of our prayer time should be spent in silent stillness. We should be seeking God, pondering His Word, listening for The Lord. Selah.

The psalmist is clearly greatly troubled. But notice how he begins this song to The Lord. The first thing he does is declares his faith. He refuses to take comfort from any external source. He just wants God. Selah.

God is greater than any situation, any fear, any doubt, any illness. God can – and will – forgive any sin, if we but ask. But, rest assured, in times of trouble, God is greater. We will at some point in our lives face tragedy, uncertainty, pain, sorrow, disappointment… But, God is greater. God can – and will – use any and every situation to His glory. These discomforts are all temporary, as all this life is. But God… He is eternal. He is great and greatly to be praised! And He loves you, His child, more than you can imagine. Just have faith, and praise Him always no matter what.

Selah.

I find it a bit odd that so many people believe the only place they can worship God is at church.  Now, whenever a group of Christians gather in His name, worship should take place.  But not all worship is corporate.  All of life provides an opportunity for grateful, heartfelt worship.

Take this morning for instance.  It would easy to slip into “blah it’s Monday morning” mode.  But the simple truth is there is much to be thankful for, and abundant opportunity to worship and praise God.  For one, the birds are singing beautifully – a wonderful reminder to praise God our Creator.  I see on the weather radar that rain is coming – a great reminder to praise God our Sustainer.  Every morsel of food can be savored with great appreciative worship to God our Provider.  Every fleeting reminder of sin and regret opens the door to gratefully praise God our Savior.  Even in hard times, we should cry out praises to God our Protector. God is good, despite our circumstances.

Today, look for every opportunity to worship God.  For He truly is great, and greatly to be praised.

Psalms 96:1-13 (KJV)

Here’s the deal… My wife has informed me that I have too many blogs. So, as I transition into a new writing ministry – titled THE BOUVILLE DIARIST – I have decided to simply change the existing blog.

Please note that we are no longer located at encouragement316.wordpress.com. We have moved to http://www.bouvillediarist.wordpress.com. Please change your bookmarks.

And please visit often, follow, subscribe, and share! Most importantly, follow Christ and seek God first in life.

God bless

Chris

There is a reason I am not a tugboat captain. I don’t like the smell of fish. I am certain that too much time upon churning seas would make me hurl meals I thought were long digested. I don’t tie knots well. I am mechanically declined. And I can’t swim.

All of these are hurdles I could most likely overcome. Except for that part about casting my last three meals upon the choppy waters. However, there is one main barrier that keeps me from being a tugboat captain.

God didn’t create me to be a tugboat captain.

Now, if I have any readers out there who are tugboat captains, you have my everlasting admiration. And, rest assured, I am not after your job. But if you are one of those people who were created to live for the smell of the sea breezes and choking diesel engine fumes, then tugboat captain is the perfect vocation for you.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, ESV). If you’re feeling like a fish out of water (to continue our maritime theme), like a tugboat captain with no ambition to sail – or tug – relax. God has a plan. For you.

Let me ask you: who are you? I don’t mean name, rank and serial number. Who are you? What do you do well and find deep satisfaction in doing? What puts the wind in your sails? (See there… more nautical references…) Seek God and ask Him how you can use these gifts – and, yes, God has gifted you in some way, whether you realize it or not – to further His Kingdom. Discover how you can use your abilities to bring Him glory and bless the community you are part of.

And watch God work wonders through you as you faithfully serve Him with all He has given you!

Here’s the deal… My wife has informed me that I have too many blogs. So, as I transition into a new writing ministry – titled THE BOUVILLE DIARIST – I have decided to simply change the existing blog.

Please note that we are no longer located at encouragement316.wordpress.com. We have moved to http://www.bouvillediarist.wordpress.com. Please change your bookmarks.

And please visit often, follow, subscribe, and share! Most importantly, follow Christ and seek God first in life.

God bless

Chris

There is a reason I am not a tugboat captain. I don’t like the smell of fish. I am certain that too much time upon churning seas would make me hurl meals I thought were long digested. I don’t tie knots well. I am mechanically declined. And I can’t swim.

All of these are hurdles I could most likely overcome. Except for that part about casting my last three meals upon the choppy waters. However, there is one main barrier that keeps me from being a tugboat captain.

God didn’t create me to be a tugboat captain.

Now, if I have any readers out there who are tugboat captains, you have my everlasting admiration. And, rest assured, I am not after your job. But if you are one of those people who were created to live for the smell of the sea breezes and choking diesel engine fumes, then tugboat captain is the perfect vocation for you.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, ESV). If you’re feeling like a fish out of water (to continue our maritime theme), like a tugboat captain with no ambition to sail – or tug – relax. God has a plan. For you.

Let me ask you: who are you? I don’t mean name, rank and serial number. Who are you? What do you do well and find deep satisfaction in doing? What puts the wind in your sails? (See there… more nautical references…) Seek God and ask Him how you can use these gifts – and, yes, God has gifted you in some way, whether you realize it or not – to further His Kingdom. Discover how you can use your abilities to bring Him glory and bless the community you are part of.

And watch God work wonders through you as you faithfully serve Him with all He has given you!

I live a life surrounded by boxes – literally and metaphorically.  Here in my home office I have a closet stacked with boxes.  Each contains different items. Some have old bills and paperwork (my bank’s apparent aversion to paper has saved me the box of cancelled checks).  Some have artifacts and trinkets and snippets from my past.  Some have CDs, others old stereo wire and cables.  Each box is segmented and the contents segregated.

Life is like that as well.  In my mind, I have it all boxed up.  One box contains my work life.  Here in the front is my theological life – itself a huge box filled with many smaller boxes.  Over there is a big box of memories.  Way back in the dustiest corner sits another box… don’t open that one.  I won’t even go near it.  I can’t remember what’s in that box… it’s a bunch of stuff I either can’t understand or don’t want to.

The truth is, we westerners have that Greek-inspired tendency to think in boxes.  To live in boxes.  (I’m being deeply philosophical here, so bear with me.)  We want to understand everything in life.  We need to know every step.  If we cannot logically deduce the outcome, we tend to shy away.  We break life up into its proper segments and box it up.  When we need to, we open the correct box and dig away at it’s contents, tending to ignore the other boxes stacked up in our lives.  After all, unless you are a pastor, who would open their theology box at work?  Or their dusty undealt-with box at church?

The problem is, we westerners are missing something very important.  Life was never meant to be so segmented.  Life should be life.  Not my church life.  Not my family life.  Not my work life.

Just life.

The more segregated and boxed up our lives are, the more rigid we become.  The more isolated we become.  The more box-centered we become.  It gets tough trying to maintain all those boxes. 

Theology is (in)famously boxed up.  There is a Protestant box.  There is a Catholic box.  Inside these boxes are boxes inside boxes inside boxes… Look inside the Protestant box and you’ll see boxes labeled Baptist, Methodist, AOG, Charismatic, Fundamentalist, Independent… Each box is carefully controlled and maintained and protected, lest the contents of another get mixed in.

However… the older I get, the more uselessness and harm I see in these boxes.  Maybe we should have a more eastern mindset.  Now… hold on.  I see many of you out there getting outraged at such an idea and scrounging through your theological boxes for a refutation.  Just hear me out…

To the eastern mindset, community trumps personal triumph.  The Bible is not about me.  It speaks to me, yes. But, most importantly, it speaks to us.  It is about God, it is not about us.  The more I unpack my old boxes the more I see that I have been trying to contain is not a theology or a belief system or some sort of “ism”. 

It is God Himself I have been trying to define.

To grasp.

To contain.

To box up.

Let’s get down to it: life is logical.  But the logic is one defined by God, not humans.  We try to compartmentalize things so we can gain some level of control over our lives, but, really, what control do we ultimately have?  Living out of these boxes impedes faith, because we believe in the contents of our boxes.  We lean on the theological conventions we have learned. 

If we want to see Truth, we have to step away from our boxes and see the Bible with fresh eyes.  Peel back the preconceived notions and see what Jesus is really saying.  It’s not about what sect of Christianity we cling to.  It isn’t a matter of predestination pitted against freewill (indeed, when one sees the matter for what it is, we quickly see that both co-exist harmoniously, which is why I am a firm and staunch Calminian).  It isn’t about KJV vs. NIV vs. ESV.  It isn’t about isolation vs. community (both have their important roles in our spiritual lives).

It is about this: seek first the kingdom of God (His will and ways) and His righteousness, and all these things (the stuff we need on this earth) will be added to you [Matthew 6:33].  Seek His word with open eyes, not a clouded view.  Consider how the mindset of the Jews wrote and read Scripture. 

By unpacking our boxes and seeing how all of life is interconnected, we gain great insight into the richness and Truth of our lives.  By studying God’s Word without bias (as much as possible), we see how gloriously radical – and radically freeing – following God really is!  Nobody finds freedom trapped inside a box.

Following Jesus is an amazing trip, and radical to any human philosophy or way of life.  If you don’t believe me, ask one of His apostles.  Better yet, ask a Pharisee – if you can get one to lift his head out of the box long enough to see the Truth.

For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him.  For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? – Ecclesiastes 8:6-7 (ESV)

 

Solomon… If ever there was a man who had it all, it was Solomon.  He sought God’s wisdom, and received it in great abundance.  He was blessed by God to be chosen to build the temple – an honor his father, David, had been denied. 

 

The Lord set Solomon in a high place indeed, as king of Israel.  And it is good to be king!  God not only blessed Solomon with great wisdom, but great earthly wealth as well.  His annual income in gold has been estimated at over $1,000,000,000 (yes, that’s billion with a “b”).  He received gold by the boatload (literally).  Do you remember the TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”?  Chump change compared to Solomon.

 

And women… One thousand of them.  700 wives and 300 concubines. And the Bible tells us Solomon loved all his wives.  (Men, go ask your wives what they think of that.  Better yet, don’t.)

 

Solomon had it all.  Right?

 

In the end, it all had him.  All this wealth, all these women, all this earthly pleasure seems to have lulled and dulled the wisest man who ever lived into a somnambulist.

 

A sleepwalker.

 

And the results were dire.  Among Solomon’s wives were women from other nations who worshipped other gods.  This included the daughter of Pharoah – a fact that, considering their understanding of the Exodus, should have rung loud alarm bells to Solomon that something was amiss in his life.  “And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father” (1 Kings 11:3b-4, ESV).

 

Now, here is the part that should put a cold chill down your spine:

⁹ And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice ¹⁰ and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. ¹¹ Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. ¹² Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. ¹³ However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”

¹⁴ And the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon…

 

I’m no genius.  But even I know that, when you’ve stirred up God’s wrath to the point that He rises up an enemy against you, this isn’t going to be pretty. 

 

Or comfortable.

 

Indeed, Solomon’s folly led to Israel’s downfall.  He led his people to destruction.

 

Here is my point:  Today is a great day to stop a moment and take stock of your life. 

 

Today.

 

Now.

 

None of us knows how many days we have on this earth.  Don’t spend them in a fog, sleepwalking through life, so engrossed in the details and minutae of work and home and school and kids and soccer schedules and bills to pay and football and trivial stuff that God gets shuffled to the background.  We are called to seek God and His will and His path for our lives first and foremost.  Nothing is more important.

 

Nothing is more important.

 

Nothing.

 

One day all this world will be gone.

 

Don’t let the junk of this life weigh you down.  Let nothing come between you and the Lord.  “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9, ESV).

 

As Solomon wrote, after the wages of his sin had begun rolling in, “The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good” (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18, ESV).