Finding actual peace, love & joy!

Far too often, however, we find such a separation to be something “religion” has accomplished. And that explains why “religion” as commonly practiced does not eliminate pride and fear, but routinely makes it worse. Pride and fear are the two roots of “the deeds of the flesh” described by Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 and elsewhere, governed by sensuality and malice and trailing clouds of other poisonous feelings resulting from them. So long as the will or spirit (heart) is governed by such feelings, life is simply hopeless.

By contrast, it is the positive movement into love, joy, and peace, based on faith and hope in God, that eliminates the destructive feelings or at least eliminates them as governing factors in our life. We do not go at the change the other way around, trying first to root out the destructive feelings. That is the common mistake of worldly wisdom and of much “religion” on such matters. But we know that in being with Jesus the destructive feelings, with their actions, will drop off us as we increasingly see that “with Thee is the fountain of life,” and come to realize that “in Thy light we see light” (Psalm 36:9).

Love, joy, and peace fostered in divine fellowship simply crowd out fear, anger, unsatisfied desire, woundedness, rejection. There is no longer room for them—well, perhaps there is for a while, but increasingly less so. Belonging to Christ does not immediately eliminate bad feelings, and we must not be drawn into pretense that it does. But it does crucify them. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus,” we read, “have crucified [past tense] the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).

AND SO, PRACTICALLY SPEAKING, the renovation of the heart in the dimension of feeling is a matter of opening ourselves to and carefully cultivating love, joy, and peace: first by receiving them from God and from those already living in him, and then as we grow, extending love, joy, and peace to others and everything around us in attitude, prayer, and action. 
p. 136, AWESOME SOURCE


 

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