Plowing Through to Peace—Part I
I’m not a farmer, but I’ve done a lot of plowing in my lifetime. The kind of plowing I’m talking about here is plowing through to peace of mind and heart. It’s very hard work. It takes a lot of courage…courage to face emotional pain, courage to take a stand in faith, and courage to stand firm in the decision to plow through, and not give in. Click to Tweet #amwriting #plowtopeace
We’ve all had emotional pain, discouragement, and depression—times when we feel we’re at war within ourselves. It is a war, but we can win it with God’s help.
For many years, I’ve battled these things for various reasons…family death, job loss, and rejection. I won’t go into detail. Fighting these battles is like plowing hard ground. When we face difficulty of any kind, we have a choice to make: bitter or better. Sometimes it’s hard to make the choice to be ‘better’ because it means facing things deep within ourselves to we don’t really want to see. We want to forget the pain and hopefully, move on.
I recently went through a short season (thank goodness) of intense emotional pain. When I go through these seasons, be they long or short, I have a tendency to withdraw from people so that no one knows I’m going through anything, except my longsuffering husband who hears it all, even if I try to hide it. Because a lot of times, the trigger is something I need to ‘get over’—especially envy. God has really put his finger on that issue in my life this year.
It didn’t help that I also had a really bad cold at the time, where I lost a lot of hearing in my ‘good’ ear, and I coughed so much my rib muscles hurt. I kid you not, I had closed caption on when I watched TV in the evening, so that I didn’t break my husband’s eardrums.
One particular night, very late, I felt so awful, knowing that much of the emotional pain was being caused by a spiritual adversary; I wept before God and said, “I can’t even rebuke it…” I felt that miserable and discouraged.
As soon as those words were out, I felt in my spirit, “Yes you can. Whisper it if you have to.”
Through my tears, I whispered “I rebuke…” Immediately, the worst pain left, and peace began to come into my soul. In John 14:27, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
But getting to that point, where we allow, because it is a choice, God’s peace to enter into our hearts, that’s where the plowing is. Because Jeremiah 4:3 says, “Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your hearts.” The prophet is speaking for the LORD here, and he’s speaking metaphorically.
We are to break up the hardness in our hearts, commit ourselves to cooperate with him, and work with God to take away those things that steal our peace. Click to Tweet
#restorepeace #peaceofmind #peaceofheart
And if our peace is stolen—submit our hearts to the Lord and allow him to restore our peace. It is a decision, and sometimes it’s hard to make. I’ll talk about that more next time.
What about you? What steals your peace? How do you get it back? Leave a comment and let me know.
Donna L.H. Smith 