Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
What Does Real Peace Look Like in Your Life?
What does peace really mean to you? Is it a serene lake with calm waters, or something deeper that persists even in life's storms? This episode tackles one of humanity's most universal desires – peace – while challenging our conventional understanding of it.
As we face today's inevitable challenges, remember that God offers a peace that transcends understanding – not by eliminating your problems, but by providing stillness within them. Take five minutes with this devotional to reframe your perspective and discover how to find genuine peace in whatever situations you're facing today. Ask God for this peace in your chaos, and experience the difference it makes in your daily life.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. It seems that one of the very few things that people can agree on is that we all like and would want peace, but the problem is most people can't agree on how we should go about getting peace, or even what peace really is, and so we wind up where we are right now, where the news is dominated by anger and fights and war and disease and political strife and people not getting along, and it just goes on and on and on, and it gets so very, very tiresome. So let me ask you this how would you define peace For you? What does that mean? What does it mean for your life and for your family and for your job If you could live in peace? What would that mean for you?
Speaker 1:Peace is a word that, when defined, has some strong similarities in definition, depending on who you talk to, but it also has different flavors. It's described in different ways by different people. I took some time on the net just looking up how people define peace, and here's a couple of them. Peace is having no fear of what the others will think of the way you act. How people define peace, and here's a couple of them. Peace is having no fear of what the others will think of the way you act, the way you behave. Peace is respect Respect of other people around you, respect of your own right to live free of fear and judgment, respect of the fact people can be different than you and they should be respectful of you. Here's another one Peace is when everything is harmoniously, living in harmony and freedom. It is a calm state of security and calmness. And here's one more when peace or tranquility exists, it involves quietude and an absence of motion or disturbance. Relationships between individuals of similar character are also described as peaceful when regarded as respectful, honorable and goodwill. Silence, peacefulness and serenity are all qualities of peace. Here's a definition from the Wiktionary on peace. It's a sense of contentment. There are no fights or no wars occurring. Basically, peace can exist either as a quiet and non-disturbing state, such as being in a small pond without any ripples, or as a harmonious and quiet state. I find that all those definitions are very much lacking. There's more to peace than any of those things. I came across a short story that defines peace in a bit of a different way.
Speaker 1:There was once a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all of the pictures, but there were only two that he really liked and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains too, but these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all, but when the king looked closely he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush, a mother bird had built her nest there, in the midst of the rush of angry water. Sat the mother bird on her nest in perfect peace. The king chose the second picture to win the prize. Do you know why the king chose the second picture to win the prize. Do you know why? Because, explained the king.
Speaker 1:Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all of those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace. This is what Jesus meant in John 16.33, where he said I have told you all these things that you may have peace in me here on earth. You will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart because I have overcome the world.
Speaker 1:Living in the peace that God has for us does not mean that everything will be calm, will be beautiful and fine and relaxing all around us, but it does mean that, as there is chaos around us as there always will be God can give us peace and calmness and the ability to relax in the midst of it. And that's what real peace is. It's being able to handle the stresses and situations that challenge us every day, the places and people that are flowing with negativity. To be in that place of peace with Christ means that we are resting completely in him in the midst of it all. Ask God for peace in the midst of your chaos and he will give it to you and he will bless you. Have a great day, my friends. We will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on, starting Right with Danny Mac.
