If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
The last paraphrase there is Step 9, making amends, and it is this process the promises speak of when it says we will be amazed before we are half way through. But the promises begin to take root as soon as we surrender to God. That is when spiritual life begins and we are reborn. The curse of death no longer has power or dominion over us, so the first promise begins to grow. We discover a new freedom and a new happiness. For some that may begin at Step 3, surrender, for others it may come later in the process, but it will happen if we truly surrender our will and life to the care of the One who gives life, sets the captives free and turns mourning into dancing.
Regret and shame begin to fade away as we focus our attention on the Forgiver of our sins who holds us in high esteem and says we are of great value to Him. We are clean before our Lord and therefore have no reason to spend our energy wishing that we could change the past or close the door on it. We do not have to wish that we could start over, because we have indeed been given a new beginning.
Then comes the third promise, after freedom from our chains and our past is freedom from chaos and confusion. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace. Sometimes the peace within begins as soon as we quit struggling and fighting to try to control things we can't control and live up to a standard we can never live up to. Sometimes it begins when the war with our Creator is ended as we surrender our lives and will to Him. Sometimes it may not come with understanding until the chaos storms all around us and we find that we are (much to our surprise) disturbed, disquieted or effected within by the confusion without. We finally know peace, the peace that matters, the peace that surpasses understanding. It's amazing.
Peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and it will be ours to know and taste and experience as we walk in the power of the Spirit and give the Spirit a submitted and willing heart. But there is something worse than the life we lived before we gave the Spirit control, before the promises began to come true, and before we knew what inner peace felt like. During our life of selfish misery and self destruction, in bondage to sin and death, we didn't know peace. Still something within us understood we needed peace. We longed for it. We drank for it or drugged for it or embraced some other shackle in hopes of finding peace in distraction, escape, pleasure or oblivion. It didn't work, at least not long, not with true peace, and the cost was so high.
Now we understand that peace comes from walking in the Spirit and in truth. We have tasted peace and seen that it, like the others fruits of God, is good. Worse than never having it is losing it. And peace is one of the first promises to go back into hibernation when we begin to take our will and our lives back, when we begin to look to ourselves and or anything other than God to be the supplier of our need and the guardian of our heart. Relapse does not happen when we first drink or drug again. It does not occur at the point of pulling porn up on a computer, or tossing a pair of dice on a table or thawing out a frozen credit card or any other acting out in old addictive behavior. It does not happen when we return to Egypt, the land of our bondage. It happens when we turn that direction, long before we reach that point where action occurs our spiritual direction has changed and we are heading back from where we came.
To do that we have to refuse to submit to the will of God for our lives and plug our spiritual ears to His guidance and call to stop and come back home. We have to choose our own way over His. With every step we acquire a link of the chain that has been broken and begin to build our shackles anew. Happiness transforms into misery as freedom begins to die. Shame and regret begin to take hold. And with that comes chaos, confusion and conflict. Peace is gone.
Because of this, I have learned that when I begin to feel like I am losing my peace, when serenity won't come I can use that as a compass needle to show that I am no longer moving in the direction of Truth. I have gotten off course somewhere. I have begun taking some part of my life and will back from God and have begun to live for self once more. I may be a thousand miles from Egypt and relapse, no one else may even be able to tell I've changed course by one or two degrees, but the lack of peace is indication for me.
Now when things first blow up around me, I may not have peace. I have to stop, turn my eyes back on Jesus, who is our peace, instead of the situation. I have to remember that I don't have to control the madness around me. I don't even have to control myself. I simply have to rely on the grace of God to keep me where I need to be. At that point, peace should be returning, regardless of the circumstances. So a momentary falter on the peace meter doesn't mean I've messed up. But if peace won't come, there is something not right between me and God, and it's not Him.
It's much easier to get back on course if we change directions as soon as we realize we've drifted. If I've gone one or two days one or two degrees off, I am no yet far from where I should be. But if I ignore the compass and delay repentance and surrender for too long, one or two degrees becomes 180, and I am heading in the opposite direction, straight back toward the hell I have been rescued from. If I refuse to stop and turn around, there will come a time that I will willingly pick up the shackles of my slavery and bow once more to an old master. And at no time in that process will I have serenity and peace.
Maybe it's simply that you've been trying to live up to a standard on your own strength or determination that God alone can empower you to reach. Or perhaps you've slipped into aiming to meet a standard that isn't even God's, some idea of perfection or pleasing others that the world or upbringing or Hallmark Christmas movies says we should or have to attain. Maybe you've just been trying to control the chaos yourself instead of letting go and letting God. Or maybe, even less successfully, you've been trying to control other people. It may be something else, but these are some of the quickest ways to veer off course a degree or two without realizing it. It's not rebellion against God. It's just reaction to being overwhelmed or surrounded by chaos that hasn't been checked to see if we are reacting in the flesh verses reacting in the Spirit. But when these things do begin happening, we lose sight of peace as quickly and as surely as we can tell the sun went behind a cloud.
So let us, during this hectic season, remember the source of our peace, and if it begins to fade, let us quickly give control back to the One who brings peace. He has good will toward us. He loves us, and He wants us to have peace.
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