Peace that Passes All Understanding

God can give us a peace which, based on our life situation, can make no sense.  In other words, we can have a sense of peace when the world around us seems to be falling into a million broken pieces.

How is it that we can get/have that peace?  It is ours for the taking, a free gift from our Heavenly Father, but we have to reach out and grab it.  How do we do that?  Develop faith.

It all comes back to the fundamental faith that God asks us to have.  He has been asking his people to have faith (believing in what they cannot see) since Adam and Eve.  Adam, and Eve failed the faith test in a big way. Result, they had no peace. Further result, we have no peace.

Faith is most notable first in Abraham’s life.  Imagine picking up your whole family and moving them away from their home and everyone they know to a distant land (would end up being over 400 miles), but not knowing where you were going at the start.  Maybe you’ve had an experience like that, where for reasons beyond your control you have to pack up and go to a place you’ve never been.  Only in Abraham’s case, he had no idea what or where the place would be, and he was following the command of an unseen God.

Can you imagine when Abraham told Sarah they were going to pack up their tents, take all their animals and leave.  “Where are we going honey?” Sarah asks.  “Well, I have no idea Sarah, but God said to pack up and move out.  So that is what we are going to do.”

Seriously!  That took faith and trust.  The Bible says that faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness, and I can see why.  There are many more examples of faith and trust in his life, but he still had his moments.  Take for example the two times he lied about his wife, Sarah, saying she was his sister.  She was so beautiful Abraham feared he would be killed by the king, so that he could take Sarah.

Oops, forgot to trust God there!  So, he is a good example of a faithful man who was just that, a man, not some super hero.

The Bible is full of these examples and they teach us the importance of faith, and how God can work his best miracles in us when we have faith and trust in him.  They also teach us a lot about God’s character, how much he longs to bless us with peaceful and fulfilling lives, but still allows us the freedom of choice.

So, today I needed to have some of that peace.  I didn’t even know it when I first started praying, but when the prayers for so many people began to flood from my mind to God, I began to feel overwhelmed.  There is so much need, grief, stress, pain in the world of people close to me right now, and in my cries for them to the Lord, I began to feel weighed down by the overwhelming hurt of their lives.

It was then, in a whisper to my spirit, I heard these words, “Peace be with you, my child.  My peace I give you.”   Because I knew God, I knew he wants to keep us in peace, and I knew, without a doubt, that he loves me.   So, I knew I could breath deeply and allow God’s gentle reminder to slip ever so smoothly into my heart, mind, and spirit.

I wanted to find the place in the Bible where God promised us this special peace.  Here it is.

John 14:27
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.

God knew I needed those words right then, and he brought them gently to my mind, heart and spirit.

Let God do the same for you today.

Pray out your fears, your frustrations, your pain, your anguish, and let him take it and carry it.  Release it to him and trust him with it.  Then let his peace fill the places where all the pain was before.