Peace, Peace.
The world is full of people who want peace and don’t know where to find it. In a perpetual avoidance of boredom, we all move from one distraction to another hoping to fill a void felt deep in our hearts.
This behavior is present in believers and unbelievers alike, yet absent in men such as Paul, who said, “I have learned to be content with everything or with nothing.”
Our issue is that we seek peace as an object, rather than God as a person.
God does not hold peace in His hand, distributing or withholding it. He did not search for or obtain it. To imply that He ever had to obtain anything is to imply that He is not God at all. For if He had to obtain peace, we should go to that source, rather than to Him.
No, He is not a middleman but the Creator and source of all things.
Peace is His attribute, along with love, joy, kindness, patience, gentleness, and self-control.
Throughout all of the ups and downs of history, the history of your life and that of the world, His peace has remained unchanged. Wherever God is, there is peace. If we venture to find the source of peace, we should always end up at the place of God Himself.
It is in treating peace as an object that we become frustrated, for we begin pursuing an object which does not exist.
Attempting to quantify something that is no more quantifiable than God’s love, or kindness, we come up empty handed, and tiredly turn toward those lesser things which we can grasp. We power up the TV or open a bottle, searching for something, anything, to take away the ache we feel. These things never offer a lasting solution but only serve to numb us, eventually leading to a cycle of addiction.
Some, rather than turning to substances or distraction, turn toward wealth and status. Yet, even men who obtain these things in measure, still report feeling unfulfilled. We marvel at how someone with unlimited money, power and prestige still craves something more! Yet we continue headlong down the same path, imagining those things will somehow satisfy us in a different manner.
Others, who through the grace of God have realized the futility of riches and fame, still fall into a similar dilemma. They imagine peace as a state, akin to what can be achieved with an antidepressant. Thus, they go about trying to obtain peace in the same way that others try to obtain wealth.
They examine, constantly, the up’s and down’s of their emotional state, similar to an investor watching the stock market. This misunderstanding is put on display when a Christian measures the validity of their position by the emotions produced, saying “God has given me peace about it” or “He has not given me peace.”
This isn’t to say that the peace of God is not truly felt by His followers, and that it does not produce emotion. It is, and it does.
But His peace, like His love, far exceeds anything we can think or imagine.
We are commanded “do not worry about anything, instead, pray about everything and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.”
It is His peace! it is not an object, given as a prize for taking the right job or held, as a carrot on a stick, to guide us to a different one.
No, peace is not merely an emotional state. It is an attribute of God. And you can not obtain an attribute of a person without obtaining that person in their entirety. We can not bypass God as a person, in pursuit of peace. To do so would be to gain neither His presence, nor His peace.
If peace is inseparable from God, the real question becomes: how do we experience God’s presence?
The answer is in that promised Spirit, who was sent to “lead us unto all truth”. For Jesus told us “I will ask The Father and He will give you another Helper… On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
We could have no hope of traveling, physically, to where God is now. Though God stoops down to observe our going ons, the place from which He stoops is heaven, a dwelling place far and above ours. The chasm separating us from Him and His peace, which we so desperately seek, is so wide that no man could ever hope to traverse it.
If we are to get to where God is, He has to take us there, and He has taken us there! Our problem is not a lack of ability or transportation but one of perspective as we constantly focus our attention on the things of this earth and so, completely ignore the reality of our souls being already hidden with Christ in heaven.
This is what Jesus meant by “you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”
It is the indwelling of The Holy Spirit which opens our eyes to the reality of our shared location with God! It is in Him that we can enter the throne room of Heaven, boldly, whenever we desire.
The Holy Spirit gives us eyes to see a spiritual reality which is far more real than anything our physical eyes can perceive. That reality calls the concerns of the world a lie, and the chains which bind us, an illusion.
This is what Paul discovered that allowed him to be content with nothing and with everything. It was the presence of God and His peace which is independent of external circumstance.
If at any point Paul lost that peace, it was because he found his identity in a location other than the one where God dwells.
If we are to obtain peace, we must obtain Him. If we are to obtain Him, we must go to where He is. What wonderful news this is! For If peace is found in the presence of God, and His presence is always available…Peace is always obtainable.