Redemption

"Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins.  Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.

'Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?'

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.
Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist.
Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.
   Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?
   "Is not this the fast that I choose:
      to loose the bonds of wickedness,
      to undo the straps of the yoke,
      to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
   Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily;
   your righteousness shall go before you;
   the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say,

'Here I am.'

If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,  if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.  And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
   "If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah 58 (ESV)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   God knows your heart: don't try to fake it. Accept your weakness and accept His strength. Forsake the right look for the right heart. Forsake the struggling and squirming for the sake of being held in the Father's Hands; Forsake the bootstraps and let them dangle; Give up the Show of Effort, the Big Display. Admit that you Just Plain Can't. Do good because He is good, and not because you have to; because you love to; because He Loves. Make much of Him and He will make much of you; Forsake what you think for what He thinks.  He thinks much of you. In His Hands is the Highest Point.  There is no Higher Point.  Forsake the place to which you've climbed. Receive the Promise, the Gift: Redemption.

The words and Word of God

   The Bible is probably the most widely idolized thing in the Christian world.  It has been set up as a thing to be worshipped by far too many Believers.  There are some who treat the Bible, the word of God, as they would treat God himself.  I would argue that many Christians don't have a relationship with God, they have a relationship with the Bible.
   Knowledge of the word of God and knowing God are not the same thing.  The Bible, the word of God, is also not the same thing as the Word of God.  I would describe the Bible as the words of God.  There is only one Word of God, as John tells us in John 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14 ESV)

   Here is the thing about the Word of God and the words of God: Jesus (the Word) is the embodiment and realization and manifestation of the intentions, thoughts, and admonitions (the words) of God.  Jesus is the mind of God made physical.  Jesus is the Bible in sandals.
   Obviously the Bible is the words of God.  If you don't believe this, the argument I'm making here won't much matter to you anyway, so I'm operating on the assumption that you agree with me on this point.  So the Bible is a great place to find out what God says about everything.  But there are two points I'd like to make.  The first is that, if the Bible is your only source for the words of God, you're going to have a tough time getting to know Him.  In fact, you will only get so far in knowing Him, which is a sad thing.  The second point is that the Word of God - Jesus - resides inside of us Believers.  This is an important accompaniment to my first point.
   You see, not only is the word of God written for us to read, but it is also, in the personhood and Spirit of Jesus, within each Believer.  The very God who wrote (or rather, inspired the writing of) all of that mysterious, dense, poetic, exciting, dull, confusing, difficult, and shocking stuff in the Bible is the same God who resides inside of us ready to make sense of it all.  The words of God only make sense by way of the Word of God.  The words of God are just words unless we walk in the truth that they are more than words.  They are the very essence of God, and they are within each of us who believes.
   Once you understand that the Word of God resides in your heart, you realize that you have access to the words of God that you didn't think you had.  And also this: you are never without the Word of God.  You can leave the Bible behind, or lose it, or it can be destroyed, but you can't lose the Word of God.  You can preach the words of God to the Lost, but they are powerless to save without the Word of God.  You can read about who God is and what He has done (and still does) in the words of God, or you can receive it and live it out by walking in the Word of God.
   I am not discounting or dismissing the Bible, but neither will I make much of the written words of God at the expense of the living Word of God.  You see, the words of God are alive, but only because the Word of God is alive.  That is what we mean when we talk about how the words of God are living.  If we don't tap into the Holy Spirit for instruction and inspiration and interpretation, we only read words on a page.  We only receive knowledge, not wisdom; information and not inspiration.  A Bible on a table is just another Book.  But in the hands of a Believer and in the tutelage of the Spirit, it is a conversation with the Father.
   For many Christians the Bible has become the reason they know nothing much of the Father.  They have read all about him, but have avoided talking to Him (or listening to Him) about what's written.  Reading the Bible without walking intimately with God is not entirely fruitless, and not entirely dangerous.  It's a little of both.
  

The Peace of God

   The first thing you need to know about the peace of God is that you do not earn or struggle for it.  It's not hard won.  The peace of God is given, and even then, when you've received it, you won't understand why it does what it does.  Here's what Paul says:

[D]o not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.    (Philippians 4:6-7, ESV)

   Part of the reason you won't understand it is because it is spiritual: it comes from the Spirit of God.  Just like we don't understand with our minds just what is being said when we pray in the Spirit, we don't understand with our minds what is happening to our Souls when the peace of God is at work.  And because the peace of God is spiritual, you can't do something physical to obtain it.  That's why you pray for it; again, a spiritual thing.
   Now as to why the peace of God is important, Paul tells us that as well, and it's because His peace guards our hearts and minds.  And from what are our hearts and minds guarded?  From anxiety for starters.  That's what Paul is directly answering here in his letter, what to do if we feel anxious.  Wrapped up in anxiety is also everything else that keeps unpeaceful: worry, fear, and the attempts to sculpt our future.  Anxiety I think encompasses all of this.  The word "anxious" is defined three ways by Merriam-Webster:

1) characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency (worried);
2) characterized by, resulting from, or causing anxiety; and
3) ardently or earnestly wishing.

   What is interesting is that the word anxious is not defined in entirely negative terms.  The third definition isn't inherently negative, but from the perspective of wanting peace it is.  The effort we put into wishing for something to happen detracts from the attention we give to life as it is.  The less we appreciate life as it is, the less peace we usually have, because we're anxious to have an "improved" or simply "different" life.  The peace of God can guard us from this state of mind, this state of heart.  The peace of God is here in the words of Jesus: "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." (Matthew 6:34, ESV)