Peace Is A Choice

By Martha Noebel
CBN Staff Writer

CBN.com -- I wanted to write another article on peace. The first one I wrote, Got Peace, was good but I was running into a new level of this thing.

My pastor preached last week on peace. I thought it would be a wonderful, relaxing sermon that would certainly be the icing on the cake after a long day. But what I found out was that when God gives you a word, the devil tries to steal it from you as fast as he can. That is certainly what happened to me.

Before the pastor could finish sharing, I had reached over to fix my husband's bent eyeglasses. It seemed like a wonderful wifely thing to do. But what happened is that I broke them. The arm of the eyeglasses snapped right off as pretty as you please. I looked up at my husband in horror and watched every ounce of peace run away from him. He was really mad. Oh well, so much for peace.

Then the next day a situation came my way to choke the very life out of my peace. I instantly gave in without even knowing it. By the time I realized what had happened it was too late. I was hopelessly lost in a long list of negative emotions that totally embarrassed me. I wanted my peace back so bad but I didn't know what to do.

That night as I lay in my bed, I glanced over at the computer. (Yes, I have a computer in my bedroom. I am waiting on God to provide my much needed office space at home.) Anyway, the screensaver was one of a beautiful sky, full of fluffy white clouds. It looked so peaceful. Then all of a sudden, an airplane did a nosedive from the top of the screen and headed towards the bottom. It is a cute screensaver but that night I felt as if I was plummeting down with the plane. My peace was in the airplane and was dropping from the sky much like I felt in the natural.

I began to say, "I have the peace of God. The joy of the Lord is my strength. I have the mind of Christ." As I said these things I began to feel better. Then I looked at the computer again and saw the airplane begin to soar from the bottom of the screen up to the top of the clouds. I felt really good then. But as these crazy screen savers are programmed to do, it went into the diving down mode again and with it went my peace.

I know that this all sounds crazy, but I wanted to get out of this funky mood and quick. Then I remembered my pastor said that we needed to place a high value on our peace. It is true. What ever we value we will take good care of. I should have held on a little tighter to my peace and then I would not have ended up in this state of self-pity.

I played some worship music, which helped a lot, and then cried out to God for the answer to my situation. I went to sleep and woke up feeling better. The scripture of the day was:

He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along (Psalm 40:2 NLT).

That was it. No matter what I go through, God is with me and cares about me. He will lead me to solid ground and keep me on course. What peace that brings!

I want to walk in peace and joy. There isn't anything that can take those things from me unless I let them. I can choose to have peace. I am sure this is a process and I hope I don't have to relearn this lesson. But if I do, I will not lay there and feel bad. I will choose to run back to peace.

Related Devotions by Martha Noebel:

Got Peace

Peace In The Midst Of The Storm

Martha welcomes your responses at dvtd2hm1@aol.com

More Devotions on Spiritual Life