21 Ways to Finding Peace and Happiness (12 page)

T
he longer we know the Lord, the more relaxed we should become when we face situations that try to steal our peace. Previous experience with God is valuable because we learn that somehow He always comes through. Each time we face a new crisis, we can remember that even though He may not have done exactly what we wanted Him to do, He always did something that worked out. Relaxing in the face of trials helps us to maintain our peace with God.

New believers who do not have personal examples on which to build their confidence in God must be more dependent on examples in the Bible of God’s faithfulness. The testimonies of other believers can also greatly encourage them.

Remember, Jesus said that we are to come to Him when we have problems, and He will give us rest. The
Amplified Bible
translates His words as: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]” (Matthew 11:28).

That sounds to me like Jesus wants us to live in a relaxed state, not tense, uptight, worried, or anxious about yesterday, today, or tomorrow. We can stop reasoning and trying to figure out what we need to do. And the Lord doesn’t want us to be upset with other people who aren’t doing what we want them to, either.

Jesus wants us to trust Him and relax. I call this being
supernaturally relaxed,
because in the natural we may have difficulty learning how or finding time to relax. But when God adds His
super
to our
natural,
we end up with
supernatural.
We can have supernatural relaxation!

Jesus was saying, “Come to Me about anything, because I always want to help you with everything.” There’s nothing too little and nothing too big to take to Him. You can’t take too much. You can’t have too many requests.

J
ESUS
I
NTERCEDES FOR
U
S

I believe that in order to stay relaxed, you must understand the present-day ministry of Jesus. Jesus keeps working on your behalf as long as you keep your trust in Him. Even as you are reading this book, you can pray: “Lord, I leave all my situations and circumstances in Your hands. I leave the past behind. I know I can trust You to work all my situations together for my good. Things are going to be different from now on, because I am going to relax and simply enjoy You.”

Release your confidence in God through faith-filled words, and through short little prayers throughout your day. Every prayer doesn’t have to be long and eloquent. Pray your way through the day.

One of the most blessed present-day ministries of Jesus is that He is interceding for us. The Word says of Jesus: “Therefore He is able also to save to the uttermost (completely, perfectly, finally, and for all time and eternity) those who come to God through Him, since He is always living to make petition to God and intercede with Him and intervene for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

All that Jesus asks of the Father, God answers. So whatever He is praying for me, whatever He is praying for you, we’re going to get it! Jesus never stops praying for us. This means that we can relax, because the Word promises that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us (see Romans 8:34).

In order to stay supernaturally relaxed, it is important to understand the relationship between the Vine (Jesus) and the branches

(us, the believers). John 15:4–5 teaches that Jesus is the Vine, and the Father is the Vinedresser. He cuts away any branch that doesn’t bear fruit, but He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit to make it even more productive.

I realized a long time ago that pruning is just a fact of life. We are pruned if we do bear fruit and pruned if we don’t! According to
Webster’s New College Dictionary,
the word
prune
means to cut off or remove living or dead parts, to shape or stimulate growth, to remove or cut out as unnecessary, to reduce, to remove the super-fluous or undesirable. In other words, God is going to deal with us because we are as branches that should be bearing fruit, ultimately so the world can pick that fruit and be fed. God wants us to meet people’s needs, be a blessing to them, and live for His glory.

The more strength of Jesus’ life that we receive through Him, the Vine, the more fruit will grow on us, the branches. But branches don’t have to struggle to bear fruit, just as we don’t have to labor or be heavily burdened to produce good results in our lives. We don’t reach our goals by trying, but by believing. We’re supposed to abide in Jesus, and as we just “hang on” the Vine, Jesus will pour His life into us so that we bear fruit.

A
BIDE IN
C
HRIST

All we need is more of Jesus! The more we relax and trust Him, the more we are abiding in Him. I have never seen a peach tree frustrated, upset, and all stressed-out trying to produce peaches. The tree rests in the ground, and the life from the vine flows into the branches and produces fruit. This is God’s will for each of us: resting in Jesus and producing good fruit.

Whenever I return home from ministering in conferences, I renew and revitalize myself by abiding in Jesus. I pray, meditate on His Word, and spend time with Him. I say, “Thank You, Lord, for strengthening me. Thank You for refueling me. I need You, Jesus. I can’t do anything without You.”

I know I must abide in Him if I want to bear good fruit. Abiding replenishes the energy I use in my conferences. For many years I ministered in my conferences, returned home, and went right back to the office or out on another trip without spending the time I needed with the Lord. I always ended up worn-out, depressed, crying, and wanting to get out of ministry because of the pressure.

If we drive our automobiles without filling up the tanks, we ultimately run out of gasoline and break down somewhere on the road and have to be towed in. We can do the same thing as individuals. We will break down mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually if we don’t stay full of Jesus by abiding in Him.

Most mornings, Dave and I spend from two to three hours with the Lord, praying, reading, meditating, pondering, writing, resting, trusting, and abiding in the Lord. By the time I face my family or work responsibilities, I’m full of good fruit in case anybody has a need. Sometimes people “pick on us,” and when they do, we want them to be able to pick good fruit.

If I abide in Jesus, the Vine, I’ll always have what I need to give to others. If I don’t spend time with the Lord, I will become like the fig tree that was full of leaves but without fruit. The Bible said Jesus was hungry when He saw a fig tree in the distance, and He went to get something to eat from it, but there was no fruit on it. So He cursed it and He said, “Fruit will never grow on you again” (see Matthew 21:19). I remember thinking that it wasn’t the fig tree’s fault. Then I read that when the fig tree has leaves, it is also supposed to have fruit. I believe He cursed it because it was a phony—it had leaves but no fruit.

I think a lot of people are like fruitless fig trees. They have all the Christian paraphernalia (the leaves), but they don’t have the fruit of real faith in their lives. They look like they have the lives of Christians: They have the bumper stickers, the fish on their cars, the big Bibles they carry to work, and they say, “Praise the Lord” on a regular basis. But when a coworker goes to them, hungering for kindness, patience, mercy, or love, they don’t have what is needed—there’s no fruit (good works or pleasant attitude) because they have not been hanging (abiding) on the Vine. They also live with the curse of not having the fruit of peace in their own lives.

I am afraid not to spend time with God because as a minister of God’s Word, I don’t do anything fancy when I teach. I know that if I don’t have the anointing from abiding in Christ, I’m finished before I ever open my mouth.

Jesus said that if we dwell in Him, He will dwell in us. If we live in Him, He will live in us. He said that we cannot bear fruit without abiding in Him. But if we
live,
which implies daily abiding, in Him we will bear
abundant fruit
(again see John 15:4–5). Whether it is teaching or anything else I do in life, I have learned by experience that I need Him and cannot do anything of real value without Him. Unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain that build it (see Psalm 127:1).

To have peace, it is very important that we abide in Christ, and this means to spend time with Him on a consistent basis. In the world we live in today, a little bit of time with God is not enough. God has to be first in our thoughts, in our conversations, in our finances, and in our schedules. Don’t try to work God into your schedule; work your schedule around Him. Put Him first, and everything will work properly.

If you put God first in everything, then you will find yourself getting things done supernaturally. He may even send someone to help you whom you were not expecting. I have had two people tell me recently that God moved on the hearts of people they knew to help them with housework or other duties; the helpers said they felt that God placed it on their hearts and wanted to do it without charging any fee.

This same thing happened to me many years ago, when I started my ministry. I had four young children, no money, and not much time to prepare for ministry. God sent a friend who offered to help me two days a week without pay.

I want to say again, if you put God first in everything, then you will find yourself getting things done supernaturally. Putting God first is not about having all the Christian paraphernalia I mentioned that we might refer to as “fig leaves.” Don’t forget that when Adam and Eve found themselves in trouble, they covered themselves up with fig leaves too. Fig leaves weren’t adequate to meet their need to cover themselves, so God provided the sufficient covering for them (see Genesis 3:21).

We are not capable of making ourselves fruit-bearing Christians. Bearing fruit is the work of the Holy Spirit, and God gets the glory. God promises to graft us into Himself so that His life pours through us (see Romans 11:17).

The picture of being grafted in to the vine is an interesting concept because it requires taking a branch that is almost dead and wrapping it tightly to a living vine. This process brings life back into the almost-dead branch. This branch cannot do anything but receive life from the Vine. Like grafted branches, we are simply to relax in God’s presence and let His abundant life flow through us.

T
RUST
Y
OURSELF TO
G
OD

There is nothing that we can give to God, except ourselves. We can show appreciation for all He has done for us and praise Him for His goodness.

Trust yourself to God; He wants you! He wants to take care of you and be your everything. Total surrender of your life will bring an awesome peace with God—the peace that passes understanding.

We will keep our peace if we surrender our guilt for past sins to God. God wants us to ask for and receive His free gift of forgiveness, which has always been available to us. I encourage you to form a habit: When you ask God to forgive your sins, follow up by saying, “I receive that forgiveness right now, and I let go of the guilt.”

Learn how to receive; see yourself as a branch hanging onto the Vine. All you can do is receive life from that Vine. Confess, “I receive, Lord. I give myself to You, and I receive You as my everything in life: my Savior, Lord, Strength, Peace, Righteousness, Joy, Justification, Sanctification, and all other things.”

All the branch does is receive what the Vine offers. To
receive
means to act like a receptacle and simply take in what is being offered. To stay supernaturally relaxed, become a receiver and live by grace, and not by works or fleshly effort.

Living by grace is trusting in God’s energy, instead of our own work and effort, to do what needs to be done. And look what Christ can do: Hebrews 1:3 says that He upholds and maintains and guides and propels the universe by “His mighty word of power”!

God makes this earth and all of the planets and stars spin perfectly through space. We don’t even know how big the universe is. If He can do that, shouldn’t we relax, knowing He can take care of us too? If He can run the entire universe, surely He can manage each of us.

Hebrews 1:3 goes on to say that Jesus “accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt” by offering Himself, then He
sat down
at the right hand of God. Sitting down is a picture of being relaxed because the work was done.

So, Jesus is relaxed. He’s taking care of the universe, but it’s not even an effort for Him. Why isn’t He running around heaven, worried about our situations? Why isn’t He wringing His hands, trying to figure out what to do? Surely there must be a lot of work involved in keeping this whole universe running. Yet He does it and remains perfectly calm. As we learn to live in Him, we, too, can enjoy this supernatural ease and relaxation.

R
ELAX IN THE
K
EEPING
P
OWER OF
G
OD

A lady who works for me says that she doesn’t have a “big” testimony. She just grew up in the church, loving God. She got married, was filled with the Holy Spirit, then came to work for us. Through our ministry, she was moved by the testimonies of drug addicts and people who have suffered abuse. One day she asked God, “Lord, why don’t I have a testimony?”

He said, “You do have a testimony. Your testimony is that I kept you from all of it.” God had kept her from the pain that results from being separated from Him. The keeping power of God is a great testimony!

Psalm 91 teaches that He will give His angels charge over us, and they will protect and defend us. This same woman was sitting in a boat one day, reading that very chapter. Her husband was fishing when the boat hit a wave and the lawn chair she was in fell over. She banged her head on the side of the boat at the same time she was reading about God’s protection. She said, “Lord, I don’t understand this! The Bible says that You’ll protect me, and here I’ve hit my head.”