PEACE WITH OURSELVES

John 14:27 NLT “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.”

Last week we looked briefly at pursuing peace but sometimes the hardest person to be at peace with is ourselves! Maybe we’ve made mistakes, even little mistakes but we’re hard on ourselves for not doing better, or for forgetting to do something we should have done.

Last week I bought a little chopping machine and paid at the self service till, but I forgot to get a receipt in case it goes wrong. I had no peace about it so I had to go all the way back to the shop and find a service lady to go back into the till to find the transaction, to print the receipt. She was lovely but I was really kicking myself for something I felt I should have done in the first place! Does anyone identify?🙂

Maybe we’ve said something that wasn’t helpful, or had a bad attitude towards others and we’ve known in our spirit that we were in the wrong, so we lose our peace. Well, the good news is that our loving Heavenly Father forgives us and we don’t have to carry any guilt around with us because we have an advocate in the Lord Jesus so we can be forgiven.

Maybe you blew it in a big way and you’re still carrying the weight of it all, but God has made it possible for us to be forgiven of all our sins, all our failures and weaknesses. It’s what the gospel is all about - forgiveness with God, forgiving others and ourselves as well. 

God wants us to be at peace, and to have His peace that passes understanding every day of our lives, to receive His peace as the gift it is and hold on tightly to it, knowing He has declared us righteous in His sight. Jesus who is our Prince of Peace, paid a high price for us to have it.😊

God never asked us to be so hard on ourselves, or to beat ourselves up. He asked us to repent of our wrong actions, but once we have done that God forgets it, so we can do the same. It’s done and dusted, paid for so we don’t need to be in turmoil any longer. 

1 Peter 3:11 NIV They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. 

The Holy Spirit says it’s time to pursue peace and hang on to it and not allow the enemy’s lies to steal it from us anymore; to be at peace with ourselves. 😊 Amen.