If you’re always looking for what’s wrong, guess what? You’ll find something wrong. In essence, it’s choosing to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That kind of mindset has to exhaustively create and maintain systems to manage life, because the fruit of that tree drives you to control what you judge as righteous and unrighteous.
Maybe you have a stronger will than me, but I haven’t experienced frustration, stress, or anxiety I was able to stop purely with logic. Trying to figure everything out and resolve every situation (especially those beyond my control), usually makes things so much worse. Those systems of control are never enough, and are themselves uncontrollable, often decaying into self–medicating the pain you can’t force away.
You can’t avoid what’s difficult, or ignore evil, especially when they’re in your path. But there’s a better way to deal with them. Every circumstance and system needs to be displaced by God’s peace, joy, hope, grace, love, and His truth. That’s the fruit of the tree of life, the fruit of His Spirit. It’s a lifestyle of “looking for what’s true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable, thinking about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4). It’s “focusing on Jesus, the author and completer of our faith” (Heb. 12). It’s “loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10). That mindset recognizes and hosts God’s presence, and creates an “on earth as it is in heaven” atmosphere of grace, peace, wisdom, restoration, and awakening around you.
When Jesus stilled the storm, He wasn’t demonstrating how powerful He was. He was showing you how powerful you are in Him. You are able to look for what God is doing, and go after it by releasing your peace—your nothing-missing-nothing-broken state of wholeness in Christ—into any situation and completely change its atmosphere.
He hasn’t been teaching you how to barely survive your circumstances. He hasn’t been building systems in you to control your life, or empowering you to condemn the world. He’s been training you how to see, live in, and overflow His goodness, transforming it all.
“Then Jesus arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still!’ The wind ceased, and there was great calm” (Mark 4:39).
Equip Your Spirit 