God guides us through our relationship with Him, and fulfills that responsibility by giving us incredible freedom within a few boundaries. One of those boundaries is peace.
“And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts,” says Colossians 3:15 (The Amplified Bible).
Peace is our umpire in the game of life.
It lets us know when we’re in danger of striking out, or when we’ve hit a homerun.
Using peace as an umpire in our life makes perfect sense when we consider that the foundation of our relationship with God is peace and rest. Christians should be the most peaceful people on the planet because we’re intimately connected to the Prince of Peace.
Peace, therefore, should be a byproduct of our lives. It empowers our sensitivity, and it enables us to wait patiently and listen.
We can mature to a place in God where it is impossible to worry.
When we rest in Him completely, we frustrate the enemy. The kingdom of darkness cannot find us when we are in our secret place of rest in God. In the Psalms, David referred to God as his hiding place, his fortress, and his strong tower. We can access that same place of protection. When we are wrapped up in Christ, the enemy’s ability to influence us is seriously diminished.
The secret place is where we overcome — firstly ourselves, secondly our circumstances, and finally, any opponent that is against us.
We need to learn how to allow peace to be our umpire.
A great umpire only stops a game when things get out of hand or when a rule is broken, and then they let the rest of the game proceed naturally.
When we discover that living in peace is God’s absolute design for our life, we can trust Him to shake us up when we move out of His will. As long as we are fulfilling the conditions for a right relationship with Him, we can be at peace. If we begin to move away from God’s purposes, He will blow the whistle on us by lifting our peace.
God gave us peace as an umpire for one simple reason:
He doesn’t want us to spend our lives searching out His will; He wants us to spend that time seeking His face.
Our goal is to get as deep into the presence of God as we possibly can. “Further up and further in,” as C. S. Lewis put it in The Last Battle.
God is responsible for guiding us, and we are responsible for our relationship with Him. There is no rigid, God-ordained blueprint for our lives. The will of God is not a tightrope; it’s a broad, green pasture. The pasture has some fences to climb over, such as sin and ethics, but the space beyond is immense and unimaginable.
May we seek His face and find peace in quiet pastures.
PS) If interested, I explain far more about this boundary of peace in Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit. In the end, the Fruit Of The Spirit is the nature and character of God personified in us and what empowers us to experience a lifestyle of fullness and favor. In this resource you’ll learn how to practice the Fruit of the Spirit we learn to abide in the unchanging self of God. Our confidence grows by this upgraded consistency and we learn how to sow into God’s character and reap from His favor!
PPS) As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts below. And yes, I do read them!
