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Be Anxious for Nothing
By Joyce Meyer Warner Faith
Copyright © 1998 Joyce Meyer
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-446-53212-6
Chapter One
JESUS AND PEACE Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.... JOHN 14:27
Jesus' statement above is worded as though He willed us His peace. Jesus left us His peace. This means that living in turmoil, worry, anxiety, fear, and frustration for a believer is abnormal. God doesn't want us to live that way. The Bible shows us how to receive and live in the peace Jesus left for us.
As believers, we have a tremendous amount of God's protection on and around us. (Psalm 91.) God wants to bless us abundantly and is always looking for ways to bless and reach us with His love so that we will be more open to receiving His blessings. (John 10:10, Ephesians 3:20, 2 Chronicles 16:9.)
But our salvation as Christians doesn't guarantee a trouble-free life. We will still encounter problems. Every one of us at different times in our life go through seasons when things don't work out the way we would like. But Jesus, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), has overcome the world.
I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace and confidence. In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer [take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted]! For I have overcome the world. [I have deprived it of power to harm you and have conquered it for you.] JOHN 16:33
In John 14:1 just before His return to His Father in heaven, Jesus left us with these words:
Do not let your hearts be troubled (distressed, agitated). You believe in and adhere to and trust in and rely on Cod; believe in and adhere to and trust in and rely also on Me.
The remaining part of John 14:27, partially quoted previously, says:
... Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.]
Romans 14:17 tells us that Kingdom living is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Luke 17:21 tells us the kingdom of Cod is within us. We were made righteous, or made in rightstanding with God, when we entered into a personal relationship with Jesus. (2 Corinthians 5:21.) Joy and peace are two of the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22,23) and are inside those of us who believe in Jesus. They are ready to be released. We enter into the joy and peace of God's kingdom through believing.
JUST BELIEVE
In the passage below we are told the God of hope will fill us with all joy and peace as we believe, so that we may abound and be overflowing - bubbling over - with hope.
May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing (bubbling over) with hope. ROMANS 15:13
According to the writer of Hebrews, we who truly believe may enter into the blessed Sabbath rest of the Lord.
So then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest reserved for the [true] people of God;
For he who has once entered [God's] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.
Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell]. HEBREWS 4:9-11
In the Sabbath rest of the Lord we can cease from weariness and the pain of human labor. What is required to enter this rest? A childlike attitude of faith.
We read in Mark 10:15 that Jesus told His disciples: Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive and accept and welcome the kingdom of Cod lilze a little child [does] positively shall not enter it at all.
A child's faith is simple. A child doesn't try to figure everything out and make a detailed blueprint plan of exactly how his deliverance will come. He simply believes because the parents said they would take care of the problem.
If members of the church have lost the joy of their salvation, sometimes the reason is the basis of their joy has been misplaced.
When Jesus sent out the seventy to minister to the needs of others in His name, they came back rejoicing in their power over demons. But Jesus said to them, ... do not rejoice at this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are enrolled in heaven (Luke 10:20).
Jesus tells us we should rejoice, not because we have power over the demons or circumstances of this life, but because our names are enrolled in heaven. Habakkuk 3:18 KJV says, Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The joy of our salvation comes from the joy of the initial and greatest gift of all - God's love for us as expressed in His Son Christ Jesus.
As believers, our joy and peace are not based in doing and achieving, but in believing. Joy and peace come as a result of building our relationship with the Lord. Psalm 16:11 tells us in His presence is fullness of joy. If we have received Jesus as our Savior and Lord, He, the Prince of Peace lives inside us. (1 John 4:12-15, John 14:23.) We experience peace in the Lord's presence, receiving from Him and acting in response to His direction. Joy and peace come from knowing, believing - trusting in the Lord with simple childlike faith.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Be Anxious for Nothing by Joyce Meyer Copyright © 1998 by Joyce Meyer. Excerpted by permission.
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