Finding Peace in the Middle of Your List - Your Nightly Prayer - November 23rd
Finding Peace in the Middle of Your List
Your Nightly Prayer
By Greg Grandchamp
TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE
“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.”- Isaiah 26:3
SOMETHING TO PONDER
Are you a list maker? Yeah, me too. I’m that guy who, if I do something not on my list, I’ll write it down and cross it out just for the satisfaction. And I have too often found it can be both a blessing – and at the same time, a curse. The curse comes at the end of those days when all I had wanted to accomplish is left incomplete – including, at times, important things that needed to be finished. Sometimes the incomplete seems a longer list than the completed.
If I’m honest, I get annoyed and frustrated at myself. The “why didn’t I’s…” inevitably do battle in my head. “If I had just…” done this or not done that. You too? Yeah, I get it.
It is important on those days – in those moments – to change my focus. Shift my entire perspective, if you will. While our lists can be never-ending and nerve-wracking, God’s plan for our lives outweighs by far anything that might have been left undone on the list, even if we left everything undone. And when that happens, it is important that we run to the source who controls what we cannot. It is important to run to God.
Sometimes – usually – this means much more than simply reminding ourselves that He is in control, although that should be our personal constant reminder. But our minds can play tricks on us, after all, and will all too often let us slip back to the tension and pressures and concern over what we did not get done. We give it to Him – then we grab it right back, don’t we? We need to make sure to put our minds – and our hearts – at rest.
Seek Him out to find that peace that can only be found in God – even when you can’t finish what was on your list. After all, whatever you did get done, that is precisely what God had ordained for you to accomplish.
Remember, God’s peace is certainly not about pretending that the hard things aren’t the hard things or aren’t real. It’s about trusting that even in the midst of all of the chaos, God’s promises are steady, sure, and reliable – and that God is trustworthy.
Let us remember that God promised that He would keep us in perfect peace – His perfect peace – those whose minds and hearts remain steadfast on Him because those hearts and those minds trust in Him.
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Father, you know me better than I know myself. You know that I’m feeling anxious over what I didn’t get done today. Help me to find joy in all that I was able to accomplish, even if it wasn’t on my list. Help me to find peace in you, that what was done today was your will rather than my own. Help me to find and express gratitude and joy in the gifts that allowed me to get done what I did. Help me to recognize that even if it wasn’t everything on my list, it was everything on your list that you had intended for me to accomplish. Help me to remember that, at the end of each day, it is your list that is most important.
THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON
1. Replace worry with prayer
When you’re worried about what didn’t get done, take a few minutes, sit down, and present those worries to God. Talk to Him about your struggles and frustrations. Worry accomplishes nothing except to make these moments of your life worse – and prayer makes the same moments far better. In prayer, you’ll find that peace to “guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)
2. Let your heart remember that God is in control.
Be still – and remember that He is God and you’re not. (Psalm 46:10) Let go of the need to control every outcome. Whatever it is, God is already at work. Trust in His peace as you seek it out, allowing Him to guide you in times of need.
3. Surrender to His will.
Surrender your burdens to Him. It is for certain that He can do “immeasurably more” with them than we can ever think, ask, or imagine – all “according to His power that is already at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20) In God, we can find the comfort and assurance that comes from His presence in our lives.
Reflect on tonight’s prayer and share how God met you there. Join the Your Nightly Prayer discussion on the Crosswalk Forum.
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/BrianAJackson
Greg doesn’t pretend to be a pastor, a theologian, or a Bible expert, but offers the perspective of an everyday guy on the same journey as everyone else – in pursuit of truth.
Greg can be reached by email or on Facebook @ Greg Grandchamp - Author.
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