(John 14:27 AMP) 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. 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.]
We have been dealing with this passage for a few days now and I have a release to move on to something else, but before I do I want to emphasis the title of this mini-series within this series: God will allow whatever you allow. I run into far too many believers who either blame satan, God, or others for everything that happens to them; conveniently omitting themselves from the blame line, as if their decisions had nothing to do with their condition. I taught a message once entitled, "Making Wise Decisions." In the message I focused on Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam had it all and he lost it all because of a foolish decision on his part. God had given him:
1. Purpose: Adam was to work and take care of the garden. Adam had a purpose, he had something to do.
2. Provision: God made sure that all of Adam's needs were met. Adam's only need to this point was food and God gave him an entire garden (more like a forest) of fruit bearing trees to eat from.
3. Parameters: Provision is dangerous without parameters. God told Adam that he could eat from every tree except one. This gave Adam the power of choice. Right or wrong, good or bad, the choice was going to be his to make.
4. Power: With everything in place, the Lord brought Adam all the beasts of the field and birds of the air and God let Adam "choose" whatever he was going to name them. Whatever he named them that would be their name. In other words, God gave Adam the power to define.
5. Partnership: After Adam started naming the animals he developed another need; a need for a partner. He was all alone. God made Eve from out of Adam and brought her to Adam. This was a wonderful relationship. Adam now had a relationship with God and a thriving relationship with another human.
Was it God's will for Adam to get kicked out of the Garden? Absolutely not! But did Adam get kicked out? Why? Because Adam chose to disobey God. Now, when Adam had the fruit in his hand did God knock it out? No! Did God intervene and stop him from messing his life up? No! Why? Because God will allow whatever we allow. God did not make Adam do it, but He did not stop him either. In the passage we have been dealing with Jesus did not make the disciples accept the grief, but He did not stop it either. Jesus simply highlighted to them that they had the power to stop the grief, just like they had the power to allow it in, in the first place.
So what does this mean to you? It means that you must take responsibility for your own decisions and stop blaming God, satan, or others for everything that happens to you. Ask yourself: "What role have I played in my life what it is today?" If you would be honest you would recognize the fact that you had a significant role in getting you where you are today. God is there to help you, and He loves you, but He will not forcefully stop you from making a mistake. And when you do, don't blame Him, because if you had listened to Him you would have never made the mistake in the first place.
So how does this deal with stress? Some of the stress we experience is simply due to our decision to stress-out about things. Don't carry the care, 'cast it' over to God and watch Him remove the weight you have been carrying far too long!
Father, I thank You for helping me to realize the importance of my own decisions. I know You love me, I know You want nothing but Your best for my life, and I know You will do all You can to keep me from making poor decisions, but when I do, when I ignore Your Spirit, Your counsel, and Your Word, and I make poor decisions on my own volition, I know I will have to deal with the consequences of those decisions. So what I declare today, by faith, is that my ears are carefully tuned-in to Your voice, my decision making matrix in firmly rooted in Your Word, and the decisions that I make will be decisions that are pleasing in Your sight and that will bring glory to Your name! And one of the best decisions I will ever make is to refuse to stress out over things I should simply 'cast over' to You! In Jesus' name. Amen!
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