What determines if the call at the home plate of my life is “safe” or “out?”
The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, reveals the Christian’s umpire at home plate is Messiah’s peace.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…” Colossians 3:15
My heart’s umpire is the peace of Christ. Everything that passes through my soul is measured by Christ’s peace. Learning to value, understand, and foster the peace of Christ is vitally important in every way.
Interestingly, I can participate in something that is not a sin yet disrupting of God’s peace. My life’s hub can be trained and retrained. It is my aim to have no unconfessed sin AND for my soul to be at peace with Christ.
Peace with God includes an initial experience of repentance. That first jolt of joy of knowing sin is gone and relationship is restored is exhilarating. Repentance can be birthed in at least a couple of ways. Both repentance experiences are birthed by the Holy Spirit.
First, the conviction of the Holy Spirit produces repentance from a sense of guilt. My understanding is opened to know that I am in violation of the character, glory, and law of God. The Spirit shouts to me, “You are guilty!”
Longing is another way repentance is birthed. My heart’s emphasis isn’t from a legal perspective of guilt before the Holy Judge but from the longing of a son to be in harmony with his Father.
I can feel it as I write. Not guilty before the Judge and at peace with the Father.
WONDERFUL!
It is in longing for closeness with God that my soul deeply desires for everything in, about, and around me to have the peace of Christ.
Through the window of the following anonymous poetry a most inviting soulscape inspires a longing grander than words. I long for God’s presence to birth a holy harmony in me.
Thou shalt know him when he comes,
not by any din of drums, nor his manners,
nor his airs, nor by any thing he wears.
Thou shalt know him when he comes,
not by crown or by gown,
but his coming known shall be,
by the holy harmony which his coming makes in thee.