Peace Today, Peace Tomorrow

Leviticus 26:6 NIV

I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid.

How Good Is Peace?

Years ago when I was a kid, I got a job delivering weekly advertisers to homes.  I had over two-hundred and fifty papers to deliver and it was very hard riding my bike with so many papers hanging from the back of my bike.  I had to roll all the papers myself and put rubber bands around them.  My route brought me far down the road from my house and it took a few hours to finish the route.  At the far end of my route I discovered that at one of the homes lived a set of brothers known for fighting and picking on younger kids. One day as was riding past their home, one of the brothers threatened to pull me off my bike if I came by his house again.  Each week my knuckles turned white and my stomach churned as I made my dreaded pass by their house, hoping I would not see ever see again the brothers as I pitched the paper as quickly as possible toward their porch and sped away down the street.  I dreaded so badly my trips by their house that I quit after a year because I could not take it anymore.

What price would you pay to have peace?  Perhaps you have it most of the time.  You have very few worries and rarely are disturbed by difficulties.  Maybe you never suffer from anxiety and don’t fret when troubles hit you.  Or it might be you are like the vast majority of people who do worry because some things are just too big to handle.  You fret over your children, ruminate about health issues, worry about relationships you have.  Maybe you do pray about these issues you face but after you pray, then what?  What do you do after praying?  Aren’t you supposed to do something, remind someone, give advice, recommend, make a change, work harder, strategize? 

When you read in the Bible that God promises you peace, it seems a bit esoteric, like something normal people don’t ever get.  What sort of peace can you have with God?  Is real peace in you even possible?  Jesus made a sweeping universal promise that must be noted first.  He said, “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.”  (John 14:27 NIV)  Several points need to be made here.  First, this is not normal peace God is pledging.   He says it is not “as the world gives.”  The term world in this verse of course does not refer to a collection of people but only the order of life in a sin broken universe and whatever peace that comes “from the world” is just what is grabbed through circumstances and personality traits.  In other words, most of the time, the peace that comes out of the world is determined by how well things are going.  If everything is working out for you, then you feel pretty good but there is no guarantee you will have real peace when things start to fall apart. The world may have peace for you when you get a pay raise or the cancer test comes back negative or your neighbor finds your dog wandering down the next block but what sort of peace can the world give you when your son suffers brain damage in a car wreck or you are really going to lose your house or your retirement fund gets demolished by the recession?

The other day I was merging onto the freeway and just as I was moving into the second lane, suddenly a huge red pickup truck came speeding down in that lane and I had to swerve back into the lane on my right to avoid getting hit.  Of course I had the normal adrenal rush such a close call elicits and with my face flushed with anger, I stared into the side mirror of the driver and he looked back at me.  All of a sudden the driver slowed way down and pulled alongside me and with his window rolled down, gestured wildly with his hands and clearly was yelling at me although my window was rolled up and I could not hear anything he was shouting at me.  I stared back at him as we went side by side down the freeway.  Finally he pulled ahead of me and looked back at me in his side mirror as I looked back at him.  We glared at each other and then he slowed down again and pulled along-side me on my right and once more with his window down gesticulated crazily with his hand at me and loudly screamed at my rolled up window.  I stared back at him and began to size up the wild man.  He looked short and very skinny and probably on meth.  If there was a fight between his giant truck and my tiny Honda, I would lose.  But if the two of us fought, I would probably have taken him.  With my cross dangling from my rear view mirror and my mind being pulled into Christ, I just looked away and slowed down even more so I could move behind the guy and prayed.  He made one more wild motion at me and off he shot.  It was funny how much peace I had as this was happening and I must say, it was not a peace that the world gives. The world’s peace is driving along without a care listening to my favorite music.  There was a different sort of peace I needed though when the driver of the truck started screaming at me…a supernatural peace.

When Jesus says that He leaves us peace, He uses the same Greek word that is often translated “forgive”.  The idea behind forgive is that the sin is cast away, sent off so you don’t carry it with you anymore.  Jesus promises to continually cast off to you peace.  To be certain you get the gist of what He is saying, Jesus reiterates by adding, “I continually give my peace.”  If you are at the store, I give you my peace.  If you are in the dentist’s chair, I give you my peace.  If you have someone breaking into your house, even then, I give you my peace.  Wherever you go, in Iceland or South Africa or in your car driving to work, I give you my peace.  It is important that Jesus identifies for you what sort of peace He promises to continually give you.  It is His peace, the peace Jesus possesses Himself that He puts into you all the time.  The same peace Jesus had when He responded to Pontius Pilate as He in His beaten state faced crucifixion is the very peace Christ gives you today, tonight, tomorrow and tomorrow evening.  This is not a peace you have to develop but the mature peace Christ has even now.  But there is something we must make clear.  To experience God’s peace, you must give it room to operate in you.

So how do you do that?  You must decide at each turn of your life and in every circumstance you face that God is in charge of what is happening and He will make it be good for you.  Of course that is a monumental determination to make but that is the foundation of the peace Christ has.  He always kept His mind on the Father and whether Jesus was in a storm or the Garden of Gethsemane waiting to be arrested, Jesus was certain that the Father was good and in charge of what was happening to Him.  You can easily lose sight of this when something really difficult or even painful is occurring.  The moment you do, the peace of Christ stops operating in you.  The peace of Christ is still there, still available to you;, it is strong and it can carry you but you shut it down when you lose your grip on God being with you and being good to you.

To give you an idea how easy it is to forget that God is in charge of everything happening and He is good to you, consider the account of Saul as a young king of the united nation of Israel.  Almost immediately after being given by God the kingdom, Saul faced a crisis.  The warring nation of Philistia came out to attack Israel.  God told Saul to not do anything until the prophet Samuel came to offer a sacrifice.  He was to wait seven days and then the prophet would come to the front lines to make the sacrifice and call out in prayer for God’s help.  The seventh day came and Saul had no peace.  The Philistine army was ready to attack and as he saw it, Saul had no guarantee the Lord was with him at that point.  His soldiers were scared and he was too.  His rule would be awfully short if he didn’t do something.  On his own, without the prophet Samuel there, Saul offered the sacrifice himself.  As he was finishing, Samuel arrived.  Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.  "What have you done?" asked Samuel.  Saul replied, "When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."  "You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord's command." (1 Samuel 13:10-14 NIV)

Even after this Saul could have had God’s peace if he would have realized that God was in charge and that with this change God was being good to him.  The peace of God is available day and night in any circumstance we face but when we panic and do not trust God to carry us through, we don’t enjoy His peace, it slips from us.  Yet as soon as we turn back to God and ask for His peace, our Lord is as generous as always and gives us His peace freely.  When Peter told Jesus that it could never be that He would die at the hands of the Jews and Romans, he could not have Christ’s peace and he did not have it.  He fell into a panic when he saw Jesus being arrested and then beaten.  His worry was so great and His peace so shallow that when Peter was confronted three different times by servants and others who said he was one of Jesus’ followers, Peter could not admit to it.  He did not believe this could be God’s plan and so he lost his peace.  It was only later when Jesus rose again and met with His Apostles in the upper room that Peter regained it.  We must be very careful that we do nothing to interrupt the peace Christ has for us.

The universe that Christ has created is built upon the foundation of trusting Him.  Without our trust in Christ we lose one of the most precious gifts that being in Him provides.  Do not trust Christ and His peace slips away from you.  Turn back to Him and His peace is there waiting for you.  The reason the world cannot have Christ’s peace is because the world does not believe Christ is in charge and no longer believes that Christ will make life good for them.  But you can and you do.  You do believe Christ is in charge of everything that happens to you and that He will make everything turn out well for you.  The perfect love of Christ controls and protects you each and every day.  To have His peace poured into you, you must let Him do it.  You are in charge of the peace you gain.  At the end of John 14: 27, as Jesus is promising you His peace, he finishes by commanding you not to let your heart be troubled.  The word translated “troubled” is the same Greek word that describes the stirring up of water in a pot as it is boiling or the raging of the sea during a typhoon.  You are in charge of not letting your heart become a storm.  God won’t do that for you.  You must do it yourself.  If you want your heart to be a boiling pot of turmoil, then you can and God won’t stop you.  But if you want the peace that Jesus has, you must decide Christ is in charge of what is happening and He is being good to you.  Then you will have the determination to ask and receive the peace that Christ has in Himself and you will become calm and serene, as peaceful as Jesus sitting in a boat during a storm.