How do I get peace in my thoughts?
Verse
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
— John 14:1-4 NIV
Good News
There is already a place of eternal rest and peace prepared for us — and when we turn to Jesus and believe in Him as Saviour and Lord, that promise and its peace becomes ours.
Reflection
Biblical joy is more about the first sentence than the exuberance of fans at a big event. It’s knowing we are loved and accepted — knowing that we belong. Knowing that our destiny is settled and we don’t have to earn it!
There’s an interaction here between the three Persons of the one God we call the Trinity. We believe in Jesus, who He is, His unique role and giving His life to give us new life. That opens up the Father’s house to us and we receive His welcome and His acceptance. The third person is not mentioned, but His special interaction is there: it’s in “Do not let”, “believe” and “you know”. The Holy Spirit works in connection with our faith.
We have to choose to shift our perspective from ‘seeing is believing’ to ‘believing is seeing’. It is unnatural to the natural human mind to believe what we don’t understand. But the spiritual part of us works in the opposite way. And the Holy Spirit helps us with this, as we ask Him. We make a choice to take what we don’t fully understand and believe it anyway — and then we are enabled to see it differently and understanding comes.
This verse is about belonging — belonging to the fellowship of heaven. Belonging to Almighty, majestic, holy God Himself such that we can know Him as Father.
And it is about knowing that we belong. How do we know that? By faith, with the Holy Spirit doing the knowing inside us by lighting up our belief. And as we do, faith and the Holy Spirit together enables us to see into heaven, to know God and to understand how it is that we belong because of Jesus.
It takes quite a lot of words to attempt to describe what one glimpse reveals. But once we see that, once we know that we belong, the troubles of this world are cut down to size. They have not gone. We are still facing the same difficulties and they are real. But we are part of something that we know to be so much greater. And we know we belong the One who has all the answers. Who is committed to taking us through with Him.
Take away
- How will you look at the day’s statistics and challenges differently, from belonging to another place with a different kind of security?
LINK
For a suggested prayer based on the verse, head over to this page on www.glowweobley.com
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