The way I used to approach learning about God produced pressure instead of peace. I was focused on achieving instead of abiding.
But I’ve discovered something wonderful — you’ll love the learning when you trust your teacher.
Key scriptures in this episode:
Transcript
Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by trusting our teacher and loving our learning.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace.
In John 14:26, Jesus said, “But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” So just a quick recap, last week’s episode, episode 178, we talked about how to live in peace in troubled times. Really what we talked about was how to live in peace all the time. The key was making all of our life situations first about God, instead of making it about yourself. You know, when you come into a hard circumstance, instead of asking why, first ask who. Place your focus, your attention on who is God, who does he say he is? What is his nature, what is his character? What is He really, really like? And then ask, who am I becoming in him?
Genesis 1:26, “We are being made in His image and likeness.” So who he is is who we are becoming. Isn’t that so exciting? We are constantly learning and becoming from glory to glory, and there is grace upon grace as we learn and become. So the real treasure is found in the journeying with God, through all of life’s situations and seasons. It’s not a treasure that we only discover or only enjoy at a destination somewhere, when we finally arrive, when we finally learn the lesson. No, the process, the learning, the practicing, the becoming, that is where we experience the presence of God so rich and powerfully. And it’s where we discover more and more of what He is really, really like. Colossians 3 tells us that we have been brought to fullness in Christ. We have been brought to fullness, it is done. John 1:16 says, “For from His fullness, we all have received grace upon grace.” So Christ’s fullness is our starting point. It’s where you’re standing right now, today, in every situation, in every season of life. And all of life is really about discovering just how full that fullness really is. And that truth alone should just have you loving your learning. It should have us all delighting in the process that we’re in right now.
But often the way that we approach learning produces pressure instead of peace. I mean, think about even the language we use in the world around learning, like, “I hope you learned your lesson,” or “You better learn your lesson,” or we give tests, you know, and it’s like you get one chance to pass or fail, or we teach just to the test. You know, this used to be a huge issue for me. I would learn a new revelation. I would gain more understanding of scripture. I would get a sense of just how full fullness really is. And I would get so frustrated with myself because I would think there is so much to learn and there is so much I don’t know. And this would really challenge me, especially in hard circumstances because I would think, “I must’ve done something wrong or I must’ve missed something, or I must have not fully understood. If I did understand, if I did know, then things would not have gotten this hard.” Or an old struggle would emerge or I would be triggered by something and I would think, “Well, I guess I’m not as far along as I thought I was, or I must have missed it, I must’ve lost it.” I would lean on my own understanding. I would make it about me before making it about him. Instead of resting in His nature, I was leaning on my lack. I’ve had several conversations with friends in the past couple weeks and they’ve included phrases like, “I just don’t wanna miss out on God’s will for me,” or “I don’t wanna get it wrong. I don’t want to miss out on what God is trying to teach me right now in this season or through the circumstance.”
Have you found yourself in that place as well, maybe saying some of those things? I mean, we just all wanna get it right. We just wanna get it right. And while that desire, you know, wanting to get it right, it seems so right but it actually places our focus on the wrong things. It has us paying attention to what’s not there instead of who is there with us, always. It has this leaning into the scarcity around us instead of leaning into the abundance of God’s presence in us. You know, that wanting to just get it right and get it right the first time, I don’t want to fail at this, you know. It has us living these lives powered by pressure, powered by stress instead of powered by peace and His presence. It places our focus on achieving instead of abiding. Abiding in the Lord is where we practice the presence of God in all of our life situations. So that we become fully focused, fully engaged with God. It’s not that we just have a relationship with Him, it’s that we have fellowship with him.
We are, we’re learning, we’re practicing speaking His language over our situation. We’re learning to see our circumstances through his perspective. We’re practicing thinking about our lives and ourselves and the world around us with the mind of Christ. This is the process of becoming and it’s really about being and becoming based on our hearts experience, not on doing and demonstrating a skill or behavior based on head knowledge. Your heart represents that inner place where Christ and you abide together in relationship, in fellowship. Let me read Ephesians 3, it really illustrates what I’m trying to say here. It says it much better than what than how I could say it. Ephesians 3 I’m gonna start in verse 16. It says, “that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. And to know the love of Christ, that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
You have everything you need to live emboldened, empowered and equipped in every situation. And every situation is an opportunity to practice living emboldened, empowered, and equipped. And the good news is we get a lot of practice and the good news is we are not alone in the practice. You have a helper, you have a teacher, the Holy Spirit. Okay, true confessions. Even recently, like within the last few weeks recent, I became so frustrated with the process that I am in right now, because I was believing that my lack of knowledge was keeping me stuck. And I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Lindsay, do you not trust me to get through to you? Don’t you think that I know what it is that you need in this circumstance, in this process? And don’t you think I love you enough to make sure you get what you need when you need it? Do you think I’m gonna let you stay stuck?” I just began to feel all the pressure release in that moment and peace began to rise up within me because I trusted my teacher and I started to love my learning again.
You will love your learning. You will savor the process you are in when you trust your teacher. So today, remember you don’t have to know everything. You just have to know God in everything. You already have the Father’s love, Christ’s fullness and the Holy Spirit’s help. You’re not gonna stay stuck. The presence of God is in you today, right now in this circumstance that you’re facing and you are becoming. You are being made into the image and likeness of God. So I wanna encourage you, trust your teacher and love your learning.