"Tangible Peace"

"Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights." (Psalms 119:143)

  If there seems to be something familiar here, it is because of the small and despised feelings David was speaking of in verse 141; with one very important variation, that now in has become physical. Yes, our battle is not with flesh and blood, as some think of people being the enemy; but the body we inhabit, this tent we live and move within, is seriously vulnerable to feelings of discomfort, heartache, worries, and even the threat of dying a physical death. As I shared previously, several years ago I was doing a teaching on Genesis chapter 15, and the Lord showed me something very important about how He made Abraham's heart break for the children that were to be his seed; by showing Abraham how that they would be a stranger in a land not theirs, and that they would be held captive for four hundred years. This, I believe was the moment that Abraham believed God was going to truly do what He promised; not that he did not believe Him before, but now his belief was given life and became tangible. His heart now was broken for those that were to be his offspring, and now he was not only convinced that is was going to happen, but he experienced the reality of what it felt like to be their ancestor and father. Here is the way I see this playing out, much like that old saying, "Plan for the worst, but hope for the best." If you can't experience a piece of discomfort and pain, you really don't know what real peace feels like. That might not click in right away, but the main point of what it means is that of knowing what real peace is; that real peace needs to be compared to something else, or else how do you know that you have real peace? It's like that saying, "I was sad that I had no shoes, until I saw a man that had no feet." I hope that we have moved on from that, because the word we really need to be talking about is, "delights," as in real pleasure. Something that is actually very tangible...

"Jesus saith unto them, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."" (John 4:34)