The eyes of
the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts
are fully committed to him. What a fool
you have been! From now on you will be
at war.
There
is a time when you have to stop. It is
one of those moments in life when you realize that God is calling, He is
working in you, and the outcome ahead is not what you expected.
It is
because God sought you, He chose you, He held your heart like a potter forms
clay into something more beautiful than what you can imagine. That is our God. While God was seeking us, literally wooing us
to Himself, our eyes were opened to him.
Many people chose to pursue God.
Jeremiah 29:13 NASB
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
We
find Him when we seek Him. But notice
the end of the verse above. Those who
find God are seeking Him with all of their heart. This is not a half-hearted endeavor. This is not a ‘Sunday only’ happening. No, this is when we recognize the vacancy or
emptiness in our heart without God.
Proverbs 4:23 NLT
Guard your heart above all else, for it
determines the course of your life.
That
emptiness of our heart is filled with God, yet the most difficult thing to deal
with is when we open our hearts to things that haven’t been filtered by
God. From our hearts flows direction and
passion for life. Guard your heart
because God says it is important.
The
next two verses offer us insight into how we guard our hearts. It literally is through the peace God offers
that the guarding begins. We are not
puppets. God allows us to choose His
peace or choose something else to guard our hearts.
His
peace comes through knowing Him, through pursuing God with an open heart. His peace ends up surrounding and flowing
through our hearts. Read slowly through
the next two verses:
Philippians 4:7 NLT
Then you will
experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts
and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Proverbs 14:30 NLT
A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body;
jealousy is like cancer in the
bones.
Philippians
4:6 says that when we worry less and pray more peace comes. Peace brings health. Peace brings insight. Peace brings the love of God to be real and
strong in the middle of our lives. I
need and want that peace.
I pray
that others see the peace God brought into our lives and begin to crave that
peace for themselves. Peace, being at
peace with God, is much like a light that shines strong drawing people toward
it. Peace comes from God alone!
We now have
this light shining in our hearts,
but we ourselves are like
fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is
from God, not from ourselves.
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