To Do Today: Fully Surrender to The Prince of Peace

Daily writing promptSomething on your “to-do list” that never gets done.View all responses

It’s there every day at the top of my to do list: Fully surrender to and obey The Prince of Peace. It’s my whole-hearted intent and my greatest desire, but try as I may, I never accomplish it. There’s always some pride, self-will, and rebellion lurking around in me. They try to drown out my conscience and distract me from ongoing awareness of the presence and voice of “Christ in me, the hope of glory.”

The sound of His voice keeps my hope strong. I don’t trust in myself and my in my ability to follow and obey Him. As I keep my hope in Jesus, His love, forgiveness, and mercy keep working in me to bring healing and recovery. My soul cries out: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Bit-by-bit and day-by-day He changes me as I gradually learn to let Him have His way in my thoughts, actions, feelings, and desires.

Discipleship is a life-long process. We can encounter the living Jesus in a single moment and begin a heart-to-heart relationship with Him. However, it takes a lifetime of voluntary surrender, obedience, and dying to self in order to grow from glory to glory and experience the depths of His love and grace for us.

The more I surrender to the Prince of Peace the more I see things differently — the more my heart hurts for both sides in disagreements, conflicts, and wars. Events in Israel and Palestine demonstrate that our crazy world needs to see Jesus-sanity, not religious vanity.

Where is the Middle in the Middle East?

My heart longs for the Middle
In the Middle East.
When will the hate
And violence cease?
We pray for the peace
Of Jerusalem
But we need to release
Our pride
That’s blinds us
To the cruelty
Of those we think
Are on God’s side.

Abraham’s children,
Muslims and Jews,
Have radically different views.
But that doesn’t excuse
The way we use
The Bible
To depart from love
And abandon the Heavenly Dove.

God sent the Prince of Peace
Who lived in the Middle East
And now many people say
That He’s no longer dead,
But they too often ignore
What He said:
“Love your enemies.”

Gaza

Although I didn’t
Want it to,
This poem developed
In my mind
During the night,
So I’m binging it
To the light.

Mass murders hid
With hostages amid
Crowded civilians.
Now avengers
Are battering
Homes and buildings
Thus shattering,
And scattering
Thousands of bodies
Of innocent children,
Mothers, and fathers,
Ignoring the fact that
Their lives amount
To so much more
Than kill count.

War’s man-made mayhem

Makes much misery.

Bombs fall bam, bam, bam

With horrid cruelty.

It’s time to fully surrender

To the Prince of Peace!

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