Perfect Peace

Last week I was driving. I had a ways to go, probably 45 minutes, and the girls were busy in the back seat with papers and purses. I could have spent my time listening to worship music, or one of the podcasts I downloaded to my phone, but I didn't. Instead I was mulling.

Here's the backstory, as they say in Hollywood (or at least how I picture them saying in Hollywood). There is a relationship in my life that I've been bringing to the Lord for some time. Not only was it often hurtful, but it started to become unhealthy to me and to my family. Or maybe it had been that way all along and I just didn't see it.

Some months ago, my husband and I determined to seek God on how we should approach the situation. We knew we had to get together in love and try to get some resolution. But our offers for conversation were rejected. Many times. After many months, we both felt a release from pursuing it any further.

After that, my life was filled with much more peace than I had known in a long time. I think by trying to always "fix" the relationship, instead of asking God what He would require of me, I kept myself unnecessarily in midst of much drama and hurt.

So, back to my car ride. A couple days prior, I ran into said person at an event. In the course of a very few minutes, they were able to offend and disrespect me, lie to me and again refuse an offer to get together to make things right. As you might suspect, this sort of played itself out over and over again in my mind. And on that particular day, I had quite a bit of uninterrupted time to stew on it.

What was making me the most upset, was that I felt like I didn't have the power to shut off the automatic playback feature that kept going off in my mind. I mean, who can just make themselves feel something different or not think about a thought that appears uninvited in their head? And I was mad that this person still seemed to have the power to hurt me.

All of the sudden, God spoke to my heart. Or maybe to my mind. Either way, I heard it loud and clear. He said to me, "Rebecca, I have released you from that relationship to bring you Peace. You can either choose to accept my gift, or you can continue to dwell on this situation. Either way, it's your choice."

And that was it. It pierced me straight to my heart. I was the one choosing to allow those thoughts to run rampant in my mind. And at the same time, choosing to reject the precious gift of Peace that God was trying to extend to my life.

I repented and spent some time thinking about how I could replace those instant replays with God's gift of peace. I decided to find a Scripture about God giving us peace, and I would memorize it. And whenever those thoughts set themselves loose in my brain, I would replace them by reciting my verse of promise over and over until they left.

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Isaiah 26:3

As a bonus, I read this over at Sunny's yesterday, about reacting versus responding. I felt encouraged to not only pray my Scripture, but to add a little prayer for the offending person. At least as much I can muster up honestly. She had some great Scriptures to inspire me.

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