Staying Peaceful In A Chicken Little World

Romans 8:6 NLT. So, letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.

A submarine needed to undergo some testing to gage its strength. The crew was commanded to keep it submerged for many hours. After they brought it back into harbor, someone asked the captain, “How did it go for you guys during that awful storm last night?”

“Storm?” the captain asked. “What storm?”

There is a place far beneath surface waters that is known to sailors as “the cushion of the sea.” This is where the submarine spent the night. Even though the top of the ocean crashed with gigantic waves and high winds, in the “cushion” area, the sub crew experienced calm, quiet waters.

When our minds are controlled by our flesh, life’s challenges will keep our emotions rising and crashing just like the waves of a stormy sea.

If we allow Holy Spirit to take control of our thoughts every day, we can go through terrible storms and stay peaceful.

We don’t know for certain what will come at us each day, but God does. When we deliberately invite the Spirit to fill us and take control, he will prepare us for and guide us through any circumstance with our peace intact.

In the book of Leviticus, God laid out detailed laws to help his special people, the Israelites, live radically different from the pagan Canaanites around them. They were to be God’s image bearers, showing the lost around them how to choose life over death in their daily lives. They were to be examples of peace-filled, joyful living. God calls his followers to do the same today.

We choose death when we allow our flesh to be the command center for our minds

instead of the Holy Spirit.

The flesh will react to situations and people instead of responding. Many today live in a reactive state of mind. The price they pay for this is their peace. Reactive people are anything but peaceful.

What will your co-workers, family and neighbors think when they see you respond calmly to upsetting events? What is the impact when you don’t chime in with all the Chicken Little voices around you and remain hopeful and confident in God’s plans? Learning to live in the deep places of God will attract the refugees of life’s storms toward your calm waters.

Maybe we shouldn’t pressure ourselves to “witness” to people as much as we need to demonstrate how beautiful life can be, even in the hurricanes of life, for a mind controlled by the Holy Spirit. Invite him to take you down to God’s “cushion of the sea” every day.