Thursday, February 05, 2009

Peace

Christian Working Woman Transcript

Thursday, February 05, 2009 - Wisdom For the Workplace


Do you need a word of wisdom for the workplace today? My words of wisdom for today: Don’t let anxiety or fear rob you of God’s peace.

Are you feeling anxious about something today? Are you very disturbed over a situation in your life? Does it seem impossible to find any rest and peace right now? A passage in Isaiah 48 is very helpful when you are not at peace. Let’s look at verses 17 and 18 of that chapter:

This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.

Anxiety and unrest are often a result of our failure to pay attention to what we know about God. Rarely do we need some new truth or principle to help us out; we just need to practice what we know already.

I find that I rarely make a deliberate decision to wander from God's principles. It's simply a failure to pay attention to what I know already. My focus gets fractured. I move slightly off-center, simply because I haven't paid attention like I should.

And when that happens, the results are loss of peace, loss of rest, anxiety, frustration. When you start to dig underneath those outward effects, you often discover that the cause is failure to pay attention to God's commands. It may be something that seems very small, but if we walk away from doing it God's way, we can expect to lose the peace and rest we so need.

The Lord told his people, "If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river." If you're missing peace in your life today, see if there's some area where you're not paying attention to God. Once you get that straightened out, that wonderful, marvelous, indescribable peace will return, like a river, flooding your heart and calming your nerves.

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