Experience God’s Peace
God’s peace offers a permanent solution.
The world’s peace is different from God’s peace. Worldly peace is temporary and dependent upon circumstances. God’s peace offers a permanent solution, which is salvation through Jesus and His presence in our lives.
What Is Peace?
If you ask people what peace means, they’ll give you a variety of answers:
- Peace and quiet
- Tranquility
- Freedom from disturbance
- Lack of oppressive thoughts or feelings
- Harmonious relationships
- Time without war
- Absence of hostility or harm
While those answers aren’t bad or wrong, they are usually from a viewpoint that doesn’t include God in the equation. The world’s peace is different from God’s peace.
The peace desired and offered by the world does give us peace in a variety of ways — police officers, firefighters, retirement accounts, and health insurance to name a few. In addition to those things, having no war, experiencing harmony in our relationships, and not having oppressive thoughts are all great things. These are all very helpful and we’re blessed by them. Who wouldn’t want them? But this kind of peace is temporary and dependent upon circumstances, and they don’t provide the kind of peace Jesus is offering. When things are calm, we’re at peace. When our circumstances grow dim, we’re not at peace.
In John 14:27, Jesus doesn’t want our hearts to be troubled. Because although we concern ourselves with temporal struggles, He’s offering a permanent solution, which is His peace. It doesn’t matter how intelligent we are, how decorated our resumes are, how many inventions are credited to our names, or how smart, creative, and wise we are — we don’t know how to create peace.
The Creator of peace is the One who created us. He is our Lord, our Creator, our Mighty God, and our Everlasting Father.
Peace With God
This peace that God gives may be beyond our comprehension, but it’s not beyond our grasp. It’s readily available to us. If we want to have peace with God, there are no “Three easy steps to peace with God.” There is only one way — Jesus.
When Jesus died on the cross, God put all of the sins of the world on Jesus — past, present, and future. When we accept this gift from God and put our faith in Him, we get the righteousness of Christ. This righteousness, according to Romans 4:23–24, is “credited” to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead.
We all want God’s peace. But until we come to a saving relationship with Jesus, receive His gift, and are saved, we’ll never have it. It’s best stated like this: If we want the peace of God, we must first have peace with God.
When we sin — and we will — this does not cancel out peace with God. When we are justified by God, it’s a one-time event. We’re not justified over and over. Praise God that our human condition doesn’t render our saved, spiritual condition as null and void.
So, what does peace with God do for us during uncertain times? It grants us hope. Hope that the life we live on earth is just the beginning of our forever life with God. As followers of Jesus, people who’ve accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, we’re given life abundant and life eternal. They go hand in hand.
Because we have the hope of Jesus and His Holy Spirit guiding us, an abundant life is possible here on earth. When we’ve taken our final breath in our temporary body on this earth, we are ushered into eternity. This life in our forever home is eternal and abundant. But, they are both just a continuation of what was begun on earth.
If you know Jesus, if you’ve made Him your Lord and Savior, then you can rest assured that whatever earthly scenarios or circumstances are weighing heavily on you don’t have eternal power over you. In light of what awaits us in our true home, this life is just a tiny segment in time. The peace we have with God is what guarantees our hope of what’s to come.
Peace of God
Jesus’s death on the cross and His resurrection three days later is a gift that brings us eternal life when we receive it. Once we receive this free gift, our salvation is never in question and brings us peace with God. But life can spiral out of control, either by circumstances or our poor choices, and when that occurs, the peace of God feels distant and perhaps even nonexistent.
Even when Jesus has saved us and we have peace with God, we’re still susceptible to the worries and concerns of this world. Some situations that occur can wreak havoc in our lives. Not only that, but our sinful desires get in the way of us choosing God’s best and trusting Him. We worry, complain, and fret over so many unnecessary things. We may be saved, but we’re still a work in progress. And because we allow external pressures and internal battles to have their way with us, the peace of God is not always apparent in our lives.
To experience the peace of God, let’s dive into two Bible passages to see how we can make the peace of God our constant reality.
Romans 8:6–11
A Spirit-controlled mind leads to life and peace, and letting our sinful nature reign brings death. Think about it. When we cave and entertain sinful thoughts that are far from God’s best, our minds don’t have the peace of God. Not because God isn’t near, but because our sin has put a barrier between us and God. The peace of God and our sinful nature are at war. They cannot co-exist. But when we simply submit to our good God, trust in His ways, and obey Him, we’re no longer succumbing to our sinful nature and instead experience His perfect peace.
Philippians 4:6–7
The peace of God covers us like a blanket when we stop worrying but pray about everything instead. That’s right — everything. We turn every burden or hardship that we’re carrying over to God and when we do, His peace that “passes understanding” floods our hearts and minds. It’s so beyond our understanding. It’s not something we can create but something we obtain when we choose to trust, obey, and walk in faith.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, find comfort and hope that you’re at peace with God. And then, seek God in all your ways so that nothing will be in between you and the peace of God.
Peace With Others
We often look for peace in our relationships. The easiest way to have peace is to first have peace with God followed by the peace of God. This allows us to see things from a heavenly perspective, which will infiltrate our earthly relationships.
But we don’t always have that viewpoint, do we? Sometimes our lack of peace with others is because we’re stubborn and don’t want to meet in the middle when we don’t agree. We think arrogantly that our way is the best way. Another reason we don’t have peace with others is because we don’t want things to go well for them, either because they’ve hurt us or we’re jealous of them. We don’t want them to flourish, but instead want them to fail.
But we can learn how to live in peace with others from a variety of verses in God’s Word. Here are a few:
- When someone persecutes us, we bless them in return (Romans 12:14).
- Never pay back evil with more evil but instead be honorable (Romans 12:17).
- Don’t retaliate with insults but pay back with a blessing (1 Peter 3:9).
Even when we’ve blessed those who persecuted us, have chosen not to pay back evil, and been honorable in our actions, there still may not be peace. Why? Because people are people, and as good as we try to be and as much good as we try to do, we still fall short of perfection. Not every relationship can be salvaged, but let’s do everything we can to ensure that we’ve done our part.
- Let’s love and be tenderhearted toward each other.
- Let’s believe and hope for the best for others.
- Let’s consider things from their point of view.
- Let’s apologize when we need to make wrongs right.
- Let’s pray for God to do a work in us and also a work in them.
And let’s ultimately remember that people are not our enemies. We have a real spiritual enemy who loves it when we battle and accuse each other. If we blame people, circumstances, or struggles for our stress and lack of peace, then we are inevitably giving them control over whether or not we live in peace. Let’s not give anything or anyone in our lives this kind of power. There is only One peace-bringer, and His name is Jesus. He is the Prince of all Peace.
Peace Doesn’t Equal Perfection
As a follower of Jesus, be comforted in the fact that your salvation brings you peace with God. And then, with each day that you follow Jesus and allow Him to lead your life, you’ll experience the peace of God. But even when we have God’s peace in our lives, it doesn’t equate with perfection in the world. Until we reside in our heavenly, eternal home with God, we won’t know or experience perfection.
So, what causes us to think God’s peace equals perfection on earth? Our expectations. Pastor Steven Furtick said, “If I’m going to live at peace, I’ve got to surrender my expectation of perfection. Peace isn’t found in a place or in a set of circumstances that are problem free.”
While earth is our home, we will have hardship and difficulties. We’ll go through seasons where the pain is intense because pain accompanies struggling relationships, struggling economies, and struggling health crises. These outside pressures don’t have the power to take away God’s perfect peace through Jesus Christ. Furtick goes on to say, “It’s not that He delivers me from it; it’s that He meets me in it.”
He meets us in our deepest time of need with an unexplainable, unfathomable, and inexplicable peace. This peace of God is unrivaled, and it’s beyond compare. No one or no thing is even in the same class as this perfect, mysterious peace. Even though it’s beyond our comprehension, we know when we have God’s peace and we know when we don’t.
We experience it in the midst of unspeakable pain and yet somehow, we have this calmness over us. We experience it when we’re in financial struggles and are unsure of how to pay the next bill, yet we’re amazed we can rest in God’s provision. We experience it when our health is in jeopardy and we don’t know when healing will come, yet we can’t explain the serenity we are living in. That’s the peace of God in imperfect situations. Life is not perfect, but our God is.
God doesn’t always take us out of our valleys, but He will always bring us through them. It’s often in the unknown that God shows us the most powerful revelations about who He is and who we are. We can still trust and rest in our good God during life’s challenges and exhibit faith during our own torrential, situational downpours. It’s this kind of faith that pleases our God.
Did you enjoy this Plan? See more YouVersion original content here!
