The Peace of the Lord

I really like what God tells us through the Apostle Paul in 2Corinthians 13:5(NLT), “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves.” The action steps behind this verse press us to look at ourselves through the lens of God’s Word. It will require courage and honesty, especially in the times in which we’re now living. We’re bombarded with information from the outside world, and most of it is corrosive to our souls. It can make us cynical and disappointed about our futures. Some of us have become critical and judgmental because we’re angry about things in the present, and we’re angry about things that have happened to us in the past. This kind of attitude and outlook can cause us to buy into self-sabotaging messages about our worth and value as God’s children. This is not what our Heavenly Father wants for us.

When anger, resentment, and disappointment are our go-to emotions for the challenges of life, we won’t have God’s peace. It means that when problems arise, we’re not choosing faith in God’s power, instead we’re choosing to doubt and to have fear. This will cause us to live beneath our privilege as His sons and daughters. When we don’t have God’s peace, life is miserable. We go to bed at night feeling dissatisfied with our day, and we wake up in the morning with a nauseating sadness that we’re going to face the same thing all over again. We must be confident that this isn’t the existence God wants us to have. This isn’t what He planned. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to make a more than abundant life available to every individual. We can have this kind of life because God says we can, and the greatest favor we can do for ourselves is to seek Him until we have it.

We’re not to give up on the wonder of God’s peace and prosperity just because we haven’t attained them yet. They are available and ours to claim, and this should inspire us with hope. God commands us to get to a point in our spiritual lives where we’re believing Him and what He says over and above what circumstances and everybody else says. There’s a marked contrast between the two. Believing what the world says and what our circumstances and conditions tell us is believing only what we can perceive through our five senses. Believing what God says regardless of everything else is faith. He tells us in 2Corinthians 5:7(NKJV) that we should “walk by faith, not by sight.” We should be living by believing the truth, and not by seeing only. If we do this, walk by sight—by only what our eyes can see, rather than walking by faith in God, we will not have His peace.

Peace comes from confidence in God’s love. 2Corinthians 13:11(NLT) tells us, “Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” God tells us to be joyful, because joy is a running partner of peace. We shouldn’t rob ourselves of God’s peace by allowing other people to steer us away from it. Let’s face it, being in a meaningful relationship adds so much to our lives, but some of us are trying to lean on them for something they cannot give. Many women today are not loved the way they want to be loved by the significant person in their lives. Instead of trusting God’s love, and allowing it to fill their cups, they are chasing something from an individual that this person isn’t equipped to provide.

Jesus Christ said in John 14:27(NLT), “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” We must be clear that nothing anyone can give us will equal God’s peace. We must learn to cease from looking here, there, and everywhere else for blessings that only God can give. He is working inside us to help us transform into the person He created us to be, and we need to partner with His indwelling Holy Spirit in this work.

We are responsible for allowing God’s peace to enter into the equation of our lives. We must empty our minds and hearts of doubt and negativity and open our hearts to Him in faith. Let’s trust that He will deliver on His promises, and let’s rest in our confidence in Him. His peace is a state of being that is beyond our understanding. We can’t compare it to anything else, because it’s perfect beyond perfection. We can be confident that our Great Redeemer will always be with us. In our most challenging times, we simply need to surrender to Jesus Christ and then rely completely on him to give us the peace we so desperately need.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

The Peace of the Lord

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