As I grow in my walk with the Lord, I find that more and more God wants us to live a life of joy and peace. No matter how you were raised to view God, you need to realize that God loves you so much that He wants the best for you.

The Holy Spirit does not intend to improve us or make us better and better! He intends to bring us to fullness of death and make us new.

We are healed by being taught to put no confidence whatsoever in our own flesh, simply to rest in Him. The permanence of our change is in His steadfastness, not something supposedly solidly built or changed in us except a fresh ability to trust in Him.

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:13)

“Discover a place where your cares dissolve like water into the sand.” All it will cost you is starting at $400,000. This was an ad for a new beach community. This is what everyone wants. A place to find peace and to get away from the cares of the world. My friends, the world cannot give you peace at any price. What you need is the peace and healing that Jesus Christ can provide.

The world would mend our self-image so that we could have confidence in ourselves. Jesus would slay all our fleshly self-confidence so that our only self-image becomes, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). A self-image is something we build, in which we falsely trust. A self-image necessarily sets us into self-centered striving, to live up to it, to make sure others see and reward it; we must defend it, build and rebuild. But a Christian’s identity is a gift, something God builds in us, not having to be seen, rewarded or defended.

Jesus came to turn the world upside down. If you die you live. If you live you die. All we have to do is give it all to Jesus and let Him take care of our lives. This is what Jesus came to do to give us life here on earth and also to give us eternal life in heaven.

Jesus wants us to accept ourselves as we are, rotten and unchanged, and then let Him express His goodness and righteousness in us through His Holy Spirit. 

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. (Romans 8:5,6)

To live in the dimension of the Spirit is life and peace. To live in our own kingdom is death.

Do you believe that somewhere in this life, there are people who walk through this world living the life that God meant for us. A life of peace and trust in God. They are surrounded by the problems of old age, poverty, sickness, grief, pain, hatred, and loneliness. Yet their spirit is a spirit of life and peace. No matter what comes at them, no matter what kind of catastrophe falls on their lives, inside they are filled with life and peace.

God wants to bring us to that place. Yet we are too much a part of the world. We are people of reason and logic. We judge success by outward standards. We make our decisions on the basis of verifiable data.  Is this course of action going to cost us money? Is it going to cost us our reputation? Is it going to cost us popularity? As a result of our logical answers  to these questions, we turn either right or left at the fork of our roads.

We say if knowledge does not come through our senses or our reason, it is invalid.

God does want us to use our reason to make decisions, but sometimes we have to listen to that still small voice of God.

“Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ When ever you turn to the right hand or when ever you turn to the left.” (Isaiah 30:21)

Reason causes us to say we should not act until we have full understanding. Until all the facts are in. But the Bible says that if we dwell in the secret place of the Most High, if we live in the kingdom of God, we shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. The closer we get to God, the more we walk by faith and not by sight.

The more you walk by faith and not by sight, the less you need to understand what God is doing. Something else begins to happen. He takes over and directs your life.

In Matthew 14 Jesus walked on the water and He bid Peter to come and Peter forgot about reason. He started walking toward Jesus but reason got in the way and Peter started to sink.

Some of us have been there before. You start out in faith, but the closer you got to God, Satan started to fight you and you backed off and reached for the safety of the boat. “ Boy did I do a foolish thing,” you think, as you head back to “safety”. But had you gone on, you would have come into the actual presence of the Lord Himself.

When we are under the shadow of the Almighty, we are not walking by sight, but by faith. It is here that He covers us with His wings and gives His angels charge over us, to keep us in all our ways. It is here we find provision, protection, joy and healing. It cannot be reasoned out. It can only be accepted. By faith.

Then he called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And He said to them, ‘Take nothing for the journey, neither staffs nor bag nor bread nor money; and do not have two tunics apiece.” (Luke 9:1-3)

In these verses Jesus says a lot to us about what we are to do in this world. He is speaking to His first twelve disciples, but if we are His disciples it applies to us. If we are  to have the power and authority, we must be His disciple.

“When Christ calls a man,” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “He bids him come and die.” There are different kinds of dying, it is true; but the essence of discipleship is contained in those words.

We have the authority over Satan and all his demons. The only problem is we don’t know this or we just don’t want to use this power. Because we live defeated lives. We let Satan control our thoughts and our actions. We let him tell us that we’re nothing; that we can do nothing for God. We listen to all his lies. When we have the power to overcome him. We have the choice to let him defeat us or we can have the victory over him.

As I write this, I am out of work; I am sitting at home with a cold or a touch of the flu. I have felt bad for the last week. I could let this get to me, but I am a child of God and I know Satan has no control over my life. I know that God is in control. I choose to be upbeat and have faith in God not looking at what is going on around me. Jesus has given us the power to choose.

He sent us out to let others know that Jesus can and will heal us if we only allow Him to touch us. We have the power to heal others with our words and our testimony. In this dark dying world, we must let the world see this light of Jesus in us.

In verse 3, Jesus tells us to take nothing for the journey. God has given me this verse many times over the last months. Sometimes I am very hard headed. I cannot see the forest for the trees.

As I prayed about this I felt like - does God want me to take a trip? No, this verse tells us all what we must do if we are to have the power of God in our lives. We must totally trust God.

Totally trust God in all areas of our life. Even when we don’t understand what is happening.

Isaiah 55:8 says “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways’ says the Lord.”

God can see the whole picture and we can only see part of the picture. Just like the blind men and the elephant, one said the elephant is like a tree and the other said he is like a snake.

God sees the eternal and we see the world. So we must trust God and have faith that He knows what we need.

Totally trusting God is not easy. We need to work on our faith and let God control our lives. We have the power through Jesus Christ.