Peace that passes understanding

Peace is the absence of stress, not letting things that happen around you or what people say or do affect you. Peace is finding yourself and being yourself, not comparing yourself to others, and not pressuring yourself to be different or to confine to someone else’s expectation or standards, accepting yourself as you are and finding contentment in that. Peace comes from emptying your mind of the things that don’t build you up, and focussing on the good and in loving yourself for who you are.

Sound familiar? It almost verges on sounding right, doesn’t it? These are some of the ways the world defines peace today.

Here’s something radical though. John 14:27 says “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” It says here that the peace that Christ offers is not as the world gives. The truth is that we cannot find or gain peace in ourselves. The only source of lasting peace is God Himself.

Peace doesn’t come from ignoring what happens around you or not letting them affect you. Peace comes from the assurance that no matter what happens around us, that the sovereign Lord who created all things and spins the planets and sets galaxies in motion is in control of our day to day lives. And that what He does and allows into our lives will ultimately come together for our good. The individual pieces and incidents may feel heartbreaking or senseless or painful, but through it all, God will fulfill His purpose for us, when we surrender to His will and trust in Him to work things out and we are available and willing to obey and do what He asks of us.

Peace doesn’t come from emptying ourselves, but immersing and filling ourselves up with His Word and His Spirit, so that when we can keep our eyes fixed on Him, rather than the stormy winds and crashing waves of the circumstances around us.

Peace doesn’t come from loving yourself and accepting yourself as who you are, and not having any expectations of yourself. Peace comes from knowing that God loves you despite the mess and the sin and the shortcomings and that He made up for the difference in how far short we fall of His perfect standards, by giving His Son for us, knowing that in our own might, we will never be able to meet His standards of perfection. And because He gave us His Son and through His Spirit, we are free from our bondage to sin and the human nature that is so fragile and faulty, and He has clothed us with His power and His Spirit from on high, so that we can be like Him, and pursue Christ-like perfection. And we will eventually be made perfect in His coming again, when all of us who know Him and have followed Him will be glorified along with Him and the saints before us, and we will experience that perfect peace in the world to come, and that we can put our hope in that certainty.

Can we ask God to help us seek His peace, peace that passes understanding, that only He is capable of granting, rather than the fleeting, fictional version of it that the world promises? And can we pray for it not just upon ourselves but that others will find it too, in the Prince of Peace? And that we who have experienced this peace will reflect it to this world that’s desperately longing for it?