The Way of Peace

John 14:27 NIV

 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.

Happy?

Anxiety seems to be on the rise as is depression.  One in twelve Americans struggle with depression and forty percent of Americans say they are experiencing more anxiety than they did last year.  Is there anything in particular that drives up your blood pressure?  What gives you a tension headache or causes you to lose sleep?  Has your temper caused you problems or discouragement zapped your strength?  What takes away your peace?    When you lose it, how do you get it back?  There are so many opportunities for you to become frustrated and discouraged and angry and even worried that it is no wonder so many struggle with maintaining their tranquility.  Perhaps you would like a bit more quiet in your soul…a little more peace.  Let’s talk about it!

Most of the time the way peace is reestablished is by a change in circumstances.  The bill gets paid.  A new job makes life better.  A divorce ends the fighting.  The prognosis improves.  If it is only a shift in the situation or the environment that changes your mood, then the quality of peace is haphazard and chaotic.  It comes and goes with the roll of the dice.  There is no depth to the peace, no staying power that withstands tough times.  The Bible has much to say about peace and plenty of examples of peace experienced during trying times.

Few would say that they are at peace when suffering, fewer still would be calm and undisturbed when dying while in great pain and yet it is possible.  As the early church leader Stephen, one of the first twelve deacons in the Christian community was being executed through stoning, he was not like most people.  He prayed without showing any signs of bitterness or anger.  While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."  Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:59-60 NIV)  Of course this is not normal: Stephen’s reaction and perhaps we would add that it is not natural.  Yet it happened.  A human being with a human body and brain was able to pray for God to show his attackers mercy without any indication he was angry, bitter or despondent.   Without further comment, let us just admit that under terrifying and horrific circumstances, a human being can maintain peace within.

A second example of this same response to a terrible crisis is found in one of the books of the Bible written before the time of Christ.  Daniel, the ancient man of God, was ordered like everyone else in the Persian Empire to pray to no one other than the emperor or face execution.  Because he was faithful to the Lord and unwilling to renounce his loyalty to Him, Daniel continued to openly pray to the Lord.  Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before.  (Daniel 6:10 NIV)  Again, such adamant loyalty to God at the risk of death is not normal and yet that is still how Daniel responded.   And so judgement was rendered against Daniel.  So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!"  A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel's situation might not be changed.  (Daniel 6:16-18 NIV) There is no record of Daniel pleading for mercy or demanding a lawyer or weeping in turmoil.  He simply accepted the sentence and peacefully waited to be killed.  Of course that did not happen and it was certainly a miracle that saved Daniel. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions' den.  When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?"  Daniel answered, "O king, live forever!  My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight.  Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king." (Daniel 6:19-22 NIV)

If for a moment you can just look past the supernatural aspect of Daniel’s rescue, consider carefully the peace Daniel possessed in the midst of a terrifying crisis.  Not only did he calmly keep praying to the Lord when the threat was so great but he also faced his execution without a hint of worry or complaint.  That may be even more supernatural than the angel protecting Daniel from the lions.  Such great internal strength is rarely found among people, not even God’s people and yet there it was.  Peace!  Once more in the Old Testament is an account worth examining if we are to see what sort of peace you can have.

The prophet Elisha had a group of apprentices who he was training to be missionaries in Israel.  They set about building a dormitory to house them all, cutting down trees for the construction.  However, the project had its difficulties.  As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron axhead fell into the water. "Oh, my lord," he cried out, "it was borrowed!"  The man of God asked, "Where did it fall?"   When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float.  "Lift it out," he said. Then the man reached out his hand and took it. (2 Kings 6:5-7 NIV)  Once more, this predicament was solved through the supernatural intervention of God but before the remedy came, Elisha was unperturbed by the crisis the apprentice encountered.  Rather than panic or fret, Elisha calmly assessed the situation and knew what to do.  That sort of reaction is not strange or unknown in normal human circumstances.  There are plenty of people who stay calm when crises hit because they are skilled at problem solving.  What is telling is that Elisha is identified as a “man of God” which means something here.  As a man of God Elisha lived in peace when his friend fell apart.  There is a “man of God” sort of peace that we need to consider when it comes to anxiety and depression.

Let us consider the peace Mary the mother of Jesus had when she found herself facing a financial crisis.  She was with her son at a wedding and it would seem that she was close to the groom, perhaps a relative or a close family friend.  She discovered that the groom had run out of wine for the guests and this was horrifying for the family.  It would have been a source of humiliation for years in the small town if some solution could not be found.  Mary turned to Jesus and told Him the problem.   His reaction may have made sense to Mary but it is hard to understand now.  Literally it was, “What to you and to me?”  What does that mean?  It is not clear at all but Mary’s response is quite clear.  She told the servants of the groom, "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:5 NIV)  There is in this a casual indifference on the part of Mary to the wine crisis.  It was now in Jesus’ hands and she could calmly move to other business.  There is a strange, supernatural tranquility that comes over the person who decides a matter is now God’s problem and lets it stay with Him.  It is not reasonable to many; it is almost irrational and yet that is what happens to us when we give our troubles to God and trust Him with them.  God’s peace takes over our personality and with a calmness we cannot generate ourselves, our Lord of peace gives us His own serenity and stills our agitated thoughts. 

When Jesus died on the cross, a transaction occurred which completely alters the relationship between us and mental health.  By taking our sins into His own body, our Lord becomes free to work His own perfect life into ours.  It is not reasonable nor logical either that God would do this or that He does do it.  It is as the Bible puts it, a “mystery”. …the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints.  To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:26-27 NIV)  The incredible enigma is of Christ a part of you changes all the rules for personal peace.  Christ is a part of you which means that every piece of His personality is worked into you.  This includes His joy.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11 NIV)  We also gain His hope.  Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. (Psalm 62:5 NIV)  And now, as we see, we also have the peace Christ has.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. (John 14:27 NIV)

The same peace Jesus had when the storm raged as He sat in the boat, that He had when His friend ran out of wine at the wedding, the same peace Jesus had as He was being taken off to be crucified is available to us!  How do we access it?  We pray!  Lord I need your peace.  I cannot get through this on my own.  My God, give me your peace.  I am stressed and worried.  Give me your peace!  It is there for you at any moment.  You don’t have to be fearful or worried or distressed.  The very peace of Christ has been given to you.  You just need to let it work in you.  You will notice a trigger for your anger or fear or worry.  It could be a bill, a health issue, a concern for one of your children, something your husband or wife is doing.  You have experience with these triggers.  They always get you but they don’t have to now.  You start to feel that old destructive emotion building in you:  fear, anger, despair, worry.  Give up immediately.  Admit you are not able to stop what is rising in you.  Pray.  Lord Jesus, I need your peace now.  The authority of Christ over the universe is right then in your favor.  His power demands that calm come over you.  You must trust Him though and that may take you some time.  You are so used to getting mad or worried, used to flailing about and trying to find a solution and so for a while you may have to suffer from depression or stress or anger that hurts you and others but give yourself time to get used to having Christ in you.  As soon as you cry out to God for His peace, He will give it to you.  Right then and there!  Go ahead.  Make use of the precious gift of peace Christ died to make your own.  Pray for peace in you.

Too Far Down the Road

Jonah 1:11 NIV

 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"

Have You Gone Too Far?

Recently I had to take a rental car back after a trip to Los Angeles.  I needed to return it to the San Jose airport which is about a twenty minute drive from my home.  Before that though I discovered from my son that my wife’s car needed to be taken to the mechanic so after dropping it off, I headed to the airport.  No one in my family could drive my car because it is a manual transmission and it was in the church parking lot.  So it was up to my son to bring my wife to the airport to come get me.  For an hour I waited for them to arrive.  Growing frustrated, I called my wife to find out what had happened to them, only to discover that the hood of my son’s car had flown open while they were driving on the freeway and because they could not figure out how to reattach the hood, they were driving slowly back home, praying the hood would not bounce back up onto the windshield again while they were in traffic.  So what was I to do?  It was easy, I would just call one of my friends to come get me but I only had the numbers of three people in my phone who I thought I could ask.  One by one I called each of them and every time, the person I called did not take the call.  So now what was I supposed to do?  The normal answer would be, “Just solve the problem!”

What is your typical response to a difficult problem?  Do you just figure out what to do? Do you make the best of things and not worry about the outcome?  Are you a fretter?  Do you try to find an expert and get advice?  Do you just quit when you aren’t sure what to do?  How do you respond psychologically to the problems in life?  Are you most likely to take charge of the issue at hand or pretend as if nothing is wrong?  It is true that each situation is different and sometimes we react one way and other times another way.  Yet we must admit that we probably have a default setting when it comes to challenging situations; a way of approaching them that is our usual pattern.  What is going to be suggested today is that we can go too far in how we solve matters and when we do so we can be left psychologically exhausted.

What is meant by “psychologically exhausted”?  This is the state when we find it nearly impossible because of the lack of internal resources to cope emotionally in our preferred manner.  For example, rather than feeling relaxed and peaceful, you can’t hold back your anger, depression despair, anxiety and bitterness or even lust or moral limits.  Like someone who is so tired from driving that she cannot keep from falling asleep at the wheel, certain types of situations become too big for you to handle the way you wish you could or would.  You blow up at someone you really do love.  You develop a headache because of anxiety levels you have reached.  You lie or act in ways morally incompatibly with your values or you give in to an addiction you thought you were past or don’t show the sort of integrity you think you should or believe you ought to maintain.  There is a cause of psychological exhaustion that is actually quite simple.  We try to do God’s work and it is too much for us to handle.

Here is a way of illustrating this that you may have experienced personally or at least have known of happening.  A person who is not a skilled swimmer wades out into the ocean and suddenly a wave unexpectedly swells and sweeps that person off his feet and he is caught in the undertow.  Flailing wildly, the person tries desperately to get his head above the water so he can get his breath.  His heart is pounding, his mind is racing in desperation and his eyes are frantically searching for the surface.  If he does survive, he is left exhausted and even traumatized.  Spiritually it is like that for you when you are not careful.  If you take away from God the work He alone is supposed to be doing, you respond psychologically in similar ways to the panting and traumatized swimmer.  We see examples of this mistake often in scripture.

There is a strange detail in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion that although curious, rings true to human nature.  Christ was hung on a cross and on either side of him two criminals were also nailed to crosses.  Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left…One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" (Luke 23:32-33, 39 NIV)  Isn’t this odd?  One of the two men suffering the same fate as Jesus, convulsing in terrible agony used that time to curse and mock Jesus.  His psychological pain was also great and the way he managed it was by insulting Jesus.  What had Jesus done to hurt this man?  How had he earned the fellow’s wrath?  Of course our Lord hadn’t done anything to warrant the insults and rage.  This was the case of someone dealing with a circumstance much too big for him to handle.  The terrors of impending death, the grief of a life wasted, the regrets of pain he caused others to suffer was crashing down upon him and he was trying to cope with all this on his own.  Unwilling to turn to God to carry him through his pain, he was left, like a drowning man unable to swim, without the psychological capacity to handle what he was facing and so the psychological reaction was to become angry with someone who actually loved him.

We see something similar in the Old Testament.  Unable to have children but determined to figure out some way to provide a child for her husband, Sarah, without turning to God for help and counsel, convinced her husband to take her servant girl and try to father a child through her.  We know how well this went.  Abraham was successful and the slave Hagar eventually gave birth to his son.  It was not quite as easy as Sarah imagined seeing her servant pregnant with a child her husband fathered.  When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me."  "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16:4-6 NIV)  Clearly Sarah’s jealousy was egged on by Hagar but Sarah’s plan worked perfectly except that she was not equipped psychologically to live with the consequences of her actions.  Rather than turn to God for help regarding her seeming infertility, she figured out things on her own and the result was she became psychologically exhausted trying to do God’s work.

Jeremiah 2 gives us rich insight into the difficulties we face solving all our problems without God.  "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)  The two sins are clearly to God evil and deadly.  The people quit turning to God for help and then developed their own strategies for solving their problems.  We have come to think as they did that getting along on your own is somehow noble and courageous.  But it is just the opposite.  It is foolish and ruinous.  On your own, all you have are the psychological skills you have acquired in life.  Some have quite a few and can manage well for a while without God.  Some have been so damaged by the hardships they have faced that they have almost nothing in them to keep their anger and depression and bitterness and jealousy at bay. Why do we see suicide and drug abuse and violence and crippling depression?  Without God carrying you through the troubles of life, you may or may not have the psychological strength to protect you and keep you at peace so you turn to your own brokenness to see you through.  There is however another option to independent living.

Consider the fascinating case study of Daniel who as a believer in God, prayed three times a day.  When a law was instituted that demanded no one would be allowed to pray to anyone other than the king for the next thirty days, Daniel coolly opened up the shutters covering his windows and quite publically continued praying to the Lord.  When he was caught and brought before the king, even though the king, who was desperate to try and save him from his own law, fretted in despair, Daniel seemingly did not have a care in the world and without comment bravely faced his sentence of being thrown into a pit with ravenous lions.  When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him.  Then the men went as a group to the king and said to him, "Remember, O king, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed."  So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" (Daniel 6:14-16 NIV)  Where did Daniel get his courage and peace to see him through his trials?  He went directly to God.

Jesus’ famous promise to give his people peace is almost universally misunderstood in one important detail.  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)  Jesus is not offering to give you a reason to have peace.  He is pledging that the peace He possesses Himself will be inserted into you when you accept it from Him. Regardless of what you have learned or not learned in life, of however many self-help books you have read or not read and however much confidence or despair is in you, God’s peace will take over and put calmness in your heart.  Christ did not die on the cross in order to give you strategies for having peace in your life.   That would leave you with the same failure rates of all other men or women who have tried to work out their problems on their own.  He died so that you might have his own personality working inside you regardless of what you face each and every day.  Stop trying to figure everything out on your own.  Let God work out things in you so that whatever challenges you face can be worked out through you.