Let the Peace of Christ Be the Umpire of Your Life

Colossians 3:12-17 One of the chief difficulties in our walk with Christ is that we try to patch it into our old life style rather than letting it completely replace the old. It is also not valid to just patch into our new lives, some of the old habits, because, after all they’re not hurting anyone. Our whole character needs to change, our way of thinking about things needs to change. But there is something in the human mind that will allow us to switch back and forth between mind sets, often without realizing what’s happening. Even the guilt that pops up we “learn" how to get over and call by other names. In the first part of chapter three Paul lists a number of things that just don’t belong to the new life in Christ. If any of these are still present in our lives, we need to place them into the closed account that we talked about a couple weeks ago and stop going there. It is not enough to just go through the motions when doing the right thing. The character that shows through our lives as we live out the Word of Christ makes all the difference in the world. As we begin to look at thing through God’s eyes, and submit to the Holy Spirit’s direction, the character of Christ will begin to develop in us. We will actually begin to find pleasure and satisfaction of a lasting nature when we do Christ pleasing things. Verse 15 in our Scripture tells us, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” In other words, let the peace of Christ be the umpire in your heart. When considering an action or a comment that we might want to make — consider what impact that it will have on the abiding peace that Christ has placed in our hearts. Our interaction with others needs to flow from being full of the Word of Christ. Our teaching needs to be a product our new character and any correction or advice that we give needs to have the same source. Not only is Jesus Umpire, He is LORD!