Peace: unaccepted

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth PEACE to men on whom His favor rests. (Luke 2:14)

These words, shouted by a whole lot of angels, were proclaiming the coming of peace. The Prince of Peace to be exact. The one that would end the fight over sin and close the gap between man and God. We can now have peace with God.

In Isaiah 9, the birth of Christ is foretold by the prophet Isaiah. The people of Israel at that time were suffering and in anguish at the hands of the Romans. Anguish. Life was really, really hard. They were in serious persecution. They were waiting on the promised Messiah whom, upon His arrival, "there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish" (Is. 9:1) and "there will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness." (Is. 9:7)

They were waiting. A LONG time. Not sure exactly how long...but you know that feeling as a child when you keep counting the days down to Christmas, and it seems to take forever??? Maybe it was similar to that. It was a long wait.

The longer you wait on God, it's easy to lose focus on the big picture. You start to focus on your expectations, on how YOU think God should deliver.

The Israelites took the above scriptures and ran with them. They lost focus on whose plan mattered more. They began to imagine a strong, mighty government leader. One that would bring peace by defeating the Romans and being a King on their own terms.

It's not bad that they had an imagination. We create all kinds of images in our heads of what we think our future may be. The issue here is that they let their imagination and their expectation of what Christ SHOULD be cloud their vision; they totally missed it when He actually came.

God finally delivered, after all that waiting, and they missed it! His own people, the ones He came for, and they refused to believe this was it because it didn't match up with what they wanted. They continued to hold on to their ideas and false hope, even today many are waiting for the Messiah to come.

We have to be willing to LET GO of our plans and our desires and yield to His. Otherwise we absolutely are going to miss out when He delivers the miracle. Have dreams. Have hopes and ideas. But at the end of the day, place them in the hands of the One who will bring real, authentic peace by the power of the Holy Spirit. Peace that goes far deeper than the imitation version you can try to create apart from Him.

We can now have peace with God, by way of the Prince of Peace. Don't lose focus.