Knowing God’s Peace
Obviously, the basic condition for a person to know this peace is to have a personal relationship with Jesus through the gospel. It is impossible to have the peace of God without first having peace with God. When a sinner embraces Jesus by faith, he or she comes into personal union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. The consequence is that the forgiven sinner can know the blessings promised by Christ, and one of them is his peace.
The challenges to peace
When someone believes in Jesus he or she may experience a period in which nothing troubles their minds and hearts. Eventually, something will happen which will disturb their sense of peace. The cause will be different between people, yet there are several common ways by which their peace is disturbed and perhaps seems to disappear. What are those ways?
A common one is the realisation that they are still sinners. Usually, the realisation is connected to inward discoveries of sin, although sometimes it may be outward. An example of outward discovery may be the ongoing possession of a bad temper. It may not have shown itself for weeks, then suddenly it reappears, and may be roused over a trivial matter. The individual is shocked, and wonders if he has been changed by God. Something similar happens inwardly as well. The Christian discovers sins in his heart that he may not have realised before. And when that happens he can lose his sense of peace.
A second cause of the loss of peace is the activity of the devil. He remains the enemy of God’s people and one of his common weapons is that of temptations. In addition, he has the ability to make the believer think that he is the source of those temptations. It is hard to have peace in the middle of a battle, and the devil can create a storm around a believer.
A third cause of the loss of peace is the world. Often, this cause rises when devotion to Jesus reduces. Often, this is connected to backsliding, although the believer may not realise initially that is what is happening. He has to focus on something, and if he does not focus on Jesus he will look at what the world has to offer. Things that he might not have wanted a fortnight previously now become very attractive, and as he looks at forbidden things his peace goes away.
Those three causes of the loss of peace are obvious. Yet there are two additional issues that can make the loss worse, and they are the issues of ignorance and individualism. Many problems can be enhanced by ignorance in everyday life as well as in the spiritual life. If I don’t know how something works, then when it goes wrong I can imagine that the problem is serious whereas it may be quite minor. If I am ignorant of the fact that a Christian remains a sinner capable of anything, then when I feel its power I can assume that I have been abandoned by God when in reality my discovery of my sin is normal for a Christian.
The other issue of individualism is one that is common in our society; when something goes wrong, we are encouraged to pull our socks up by ourselves or have a stiff upper lip and grind our way through the problem. Individualism is not a good Christian practice. We should meet often together and that strengthens our faith.
The conditions for peace
The Bible also indicates that enjoying the peace of God is not automatic. There are passages that clearly highlight our responsibility to live in such a manner that makes a route for peace to flow along it. Take Paul’s words in Philippians 4:6-7 about our prayer life: ‘do 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.’
Those verses make very clear that it is only a praying person who can enjoy the peace of God. The type of praying is comprehensive: it involves thanksgiving for benefits already received from God, intercession for others and requesting personal divine help. It is good to know that peace is the outcome of acknowledging God and his grace in our lives. And prayer is the main way of doing so, as Paul makes clear in those verses.
An example of prayer followed by peace is Psalm 4. It opens with David’s prayer: ‘Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!’ It closes with David’s expression of confidence: ‘In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Whatever his distress was, after he had prayed about the situation he was given peace by the Lord.
Another condition for peace is perusing the Word of God. The author of Psalm 119 says: ‘Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble’ (v. 165). We should observe that by ‘law’ he does not mean only the Ten Commandment. Rather by law, he means God’s Word, now found in the Old and New Testaments, which means that we now have much more divine provision than the author of the psalm had.
That is quite an extraordinary verse in two ways. First, the amount of peace that comes from this use of the Word of God is great. How much of God’s Word should we read until that outcome occurs? As much as it takes to give it. George Muller, when he went to pray, would read the Bible until he found himself in the appropriate spirit for praying.
Second, the outcome is that the believer who meditates on God’s Word will not stumble. The psalmist means that nothing will trip up such a person. We could think about it in this way. When a person is walking in the dark, he is liable to stumble unless he has a light that shows him stones or holes in the ground or pieces of wood that would cause him to trip. Believers have a light - the Word of God - which will show to them issues over which they will stumble. But it is essential that they use it.
The stumbling here, of course, is not physical stumbling but spiritual stumbling. At times, we can stumble in ways that include our body, but even then the stumbling is caused by a heart problem. The Bible has ways of giving our heart insight and understanding and shows us the safe way to walk, and when we do so, we experience the peace of God.
A third condition for the possession of peace is mentioned by Isaiah the prophet when he says, ‘You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you’ (Isa. 26:3). Sometimes, we need to move beyond praying and reading specific parts of the Bible to focus directly on God. This does not mean that prayer and God’s Word are ignored or bypassed. Yet often we can be so taken up with the matters we are praying about, or the details we are discovering about the Christian life in the Bible, that we fail to consider God himself.
Obviously, what we can think about God is found in the Bible. We could decide to think about one or more of his attributes and apply them to our circumstances. Since he is powerful, he can help me; since he is faithful, he will help me; since he is wise, he knows how to help me; and since he is love, he will be glad to help me.
A similar aspect of this condition involves us gazing upon Jesus whether on his deity, or on his coming into the world, or when he was on the cross or now that he is on the throne. Imagine the benefits of setting aside ten minutes every morning to think about Jesus. Take a verse or two that describes him, and ask those verses suitable questions. Take ‘I am the good shepherd.’ Who is the ‘I’? Why does he use the present tense? Why did he say he was good? Why does he call himself a shepherd? Thinking about Jesus brings peace to our hearts.
Another condition for peace is humility. Pride is another word for self-confidence and it is incapable of producing or maintaining spiritual peace in a person’s heart. Humility is the recognition that I constantly need the help of God, that I am unworthy of his help, and that I know he will help me. The Lord dwells with the humble and the contrite.
The comforts of peace
For example, we can think about the first words recorded of the risen Christ when he spoke to the disciples gathered in fear in a locked room: ‘On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you”’ (John 20:19). That was an extraordinarily wonderful way for the Saviour to greet those who had denied him. As we think about Jesus in that situation, we can ask ourselves, ‘What would he say to us?’ We might have been unfaithful, but if we are true disciples, he would say, ‘Peace.’
Peace is an essential part of biblical assurance. It brings warmth into our spiritual activities. It turns prayer into a spiritual experience of pleasure, of enjoying the presence of the gracious God, of having a foretaste of the world of glory, of meeting with the Heavenly Father through the merits of his dear Son through the promptings and enabling of the Holy Spirit.
The consequences of peace
We have already mentioned the verses about prayer and peace in Philippians 4. In those verses, Paul reveals a consequence when he says that ‘the peace of God … will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ Perhaps Paul was looking at the soldier who was guarding him and reasoned that a sense of divine peace did the same for our hearts — peace is like a sentry that keeps out enemies that wish to attack us. What can the devil do against a person in whose heart God maintains his peace?
What are those with the peace of God in their hearts like? They are sober-minded because they do not wish to lose their peace. They are struck with amazement at the grace of God that they cannot play with sin; they realise what their salvation cost the Saviour, and therefore they cannot engage in dubious practices. They are marked by constant gratitude to the God of grace for giving them his peace. They love the means of grace because they have discovered that they are channels of peace. They are heavenly-minded because they are looking forward to living in the place where peace will be the eternal reality of their experience.
Comments
Post a Comment