In Pursuit of Peace: 21 Ways to Conquer Anxiety Fear and Discontentment Page 2
Dave, my husband, and I were trying to make a decision on a large purchase we needed to make. We called some of our board members from the ministry and presented the need to them, asking, “What do you think?”
They all gave their opinions, but as I listened to them I knew suddenly that I didn’t have peace about going forward with the plan. We have learned by experience to wait if we don’t have peace for something. Everyone agreed to wait on God to give us all peace before we proceeded.
I was out shopping recently and went into a children’s clothing store. It was one I had not been in for perhaps a year or more. I saw some items that I thought would be perfect for two of my granddaughters. They were little pink shirts with rhinestone hearts on them. It was Valentine’s Day and I wanted to give them something, so I called my daughter to check on their clothing sizes before making my purchase.
She said, “I cannot believe this! I was in that shop last night, looking at those exact shirts, but I didn’t have peace about spending any money. I really wanted to buy them for the girls but felt I needed to honor God by not doing something I did not have peace about.” Then she said, “Mom, I believe God is blessing me because I obeyed Him.” She was very excited.
Letting her girls receive the shirts as a gift was much more fun than purchasing them. Had she disobeyed what she felt in her heart and done what she did not have peace about, she probably would have been uncomfortable in her spirit, perhaps even miserable. We both got to be part of a miracle because she chose to follow peace!
Following the Lord of peace may mean that you have to make some adjustments in your life. You may not be able to do everything your friends do. You may not be able to buy everything you want. You may not be able to have something just because a friend, or a sister or a brother, has one. You may have to wait. But I believe that peace is the most important, the most valuable thing we can have. If we follow peace, we will end up living holy lives and thoroughly enjoying them.
Many people cannot hear from God because they have too much turmoil in their lives. Their insides are like a freeway during rush-hour traffic. They literally don’t know how to be peaceful; it is as if they are addicted to turmoil. They keep things agitated and stirred up, seemingly on purpose. In fact, they get comfortable living in a state of chaos. It has become their normal state, even though in God’s economy it is not normal at all.
It sounds strange, but when I started learning to be peaceful, I was bored at first! I was so accustomed to having something major going on in my life all the time that I wondered, What am I supposed to do with myself? Romans 3:17 says, “And they have no experience of the way of peace [they know nothing about peace, for a peaceful way they do not even recognize].”
That describes how my life used to be. I had no experience at all in enjoying a peaceful life; I did not even know how to begin. I had grown up in an atmosphere of strife, and it was all I ever knew. I had to learn an entirely new way of living.
But now I’m addicted to peace. As soon as my peace disappears, I ask myself how I lost it and start looking for ways to get it back. I am believing that as you read this book you will become so hungry for peace with God, peace with yourself, and peace with others that you will be willing to make whatever adjustments you need to make in order to have it. I am also believing that you will begin to follow peace at all times, because peace will lead you into the perfect will of God.
Jesus said that if we follow Him, He will give us peace (free of charge). In fact, He said He will bequeath His own peace to us (see John 14:27).
THE GOSPEL OF JESUS BRINGS PEACE
I want to see people love God’s Word and put it first place in their lives. I believe there is an anointing on the Word; it has inherent power that makes positive changes in us. The Word of God is truth, and John 8:32 says, “And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.” Truth sets us free from turmoil and leads us into a life of peace when we follow it.
The gospel of salvation through Jesus makes peace available to us in all areas of our lives. First Corinthians 1:21 says that when people failed to find God through earthly wisdom or by means of their own philosophy, God saved people through the preaching of salvation “procured by Christ.” Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible says the Greek word translated as “save” in that verse is sozo, which means God “delivers, protects, heals, preserves, saves and makes whole” those who believe, trust in, and rely on Him.
We will experience peace in our personal lives when we stop trying to do so many things ourselves and just rely on God to deliver, protect, heal, and save us, as He wants to do.
And God will also lead us to peace in our relationships. Ephesians 2:14 is an awesome Scripture that says, “For He is [Himself] our peace (our bond of unity and harmony). He has made us both [Jew and Gentile] one [body], and has broken down (destroyed, abolished) the hostile dividing wall between us.” Where there is no unity, no harmony, God Himself will break down and abolish the walls that divide people. He has broken down walls between so-called classes of people. He makes equal those who have higher education and those without any education at all. Somebody with a lot of money is no better to Him than somebody without money. The preacher is no better than the person who cleans the toilets.
The Lord loves each of us unconditionally. The hand of God uniquely created and personally designed each of us. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need some sandpaper to smooth our rough edges or polishing to make us shine. We all need to change and grow, but we can still be at peace about who we are without comparing ourselves with somebody else. We can stop thinking we are flawed because we are not like anyone else we know. We must have peace with ourselves before we can have peace with others.
I believe God wants you to have peace about where you are in your spiritual growth and to realize that you won’t always stay the way you are. Anyone seeking God regularly is always changing, but we can enjoy where we are on the way to where we are going.
In the next chapter, I will share more about how we can surrender our will to God’s leading. He doesn’t want us to wait to have peace until we have all the things that we may want and desire or think are necessary to our lives. He doesn’t want us to be jealous or envious of those who have the things we want and don’t have, or those who can do what we can’t do. He wants to prove to us that He is our peace.
God has an individualized, customized plan for your life. As you trust Him, He will bring it to pass in His timing, not yours. Waiting on God’s plan and timing is wise because His ways are always best. He is the Lord of peace, and as you surrender your heart and life to Him, you will experience the peace that passes understanding.
PEACEKEEPER #2
Make Peace Through a Surrendered Will
The apostle Peter challenged believers to find “every kind of peace and blessing, especially peace with God, and freedom from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts” (1 Peter 5:14). Surrendering our wills in order to maintain agreement with God is the foundation for all peace in our lives. God has a good plan for each of us, but when we go against His will by pursuing our own wills, we experience turmoil rather than peace. God is the source of all peace, and it stands to reason that He will not release peace to us unless we are following His ways and not our own. God desires for us to live free from fears and agitating passions, and He does not want us to be in bondage to immorality of any kind.
The Bible teaches that God will lead us by the presence of peace. Again, peace is the umpire in our lives that lets us know if we are in God’s will or out of it. Ask yourself the following question, and be honest with your answer: Are you walking in God’s known will to the best of your ability, or are there areas in your life in which you know you are not obeying God?
You will not experience peace if God is pulling in one direction and you are pulling in another; you will feel as if you are being torn apart. God will not force us to do what is right. He shows us what to do but leaves the choice to us. I
f we make right choices, we will reap good results that we can be happy with; if we make wrong choices, all we have is regret. Many individuals want their lives to change, but they don’t want to do what God is showing them to do. If we are really serious about having change, we must follow God, no matter how difficult it is.
Carnality and God do not mix well together. We are called to walk in the Spirit, to be guided and willingly controlled by the Holy Spirit, who will lead us to make choices that make and maintain perfect peace.
We read in the book of Jonah how God told him to go to Nineveh and preach repentance to the people there. But Jonah did not want to, so he went to Tarshish, which, according to geography, is the exact opposite direction from Nineveh. Running from God does not help us to be at peace with Him.
What happens when we go in the opposite direction from where God has directed us? What happened to Jonah? When he boarded a ship and headed in his own direction, a storm arose. Many of the storms we face in life are the results of our own stubbornness, and nothing else. We may try to blame them on other things and people, but the truth is that in many instances, we have been disobedient to the voice and leadership of God.
The violent storm that came upon Jonah frightened the men on the ship, and they knew if something did not change, they would all die. They cast lots to see who was causing the trouble, and the lot fell on Jonah. They asked Jonah what he had done that made God so angry. He knew he had disobeyed God, so he told the men to throw him overboard in order to deliver them from danger. They did as he requested; the storm stopped, and a great fish swallowed Jonah. From the fish’s belly (not a pleasant place), he cried out to God for deliverance and repented of his stubborn ways.
The fish vomited Jonah upon the dry land and in chapter 3, verse 1, we see that the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, and it was no different from the first time: God told him to go to Nineveh and preach to the people there.
No matter how long we avoid God’s instruction, it is still there for us to deal with when we stop running. God’s will makes us uncomfortable only as long as we are not pursuing it. In other words, we always know when something is just not right in our lives. Eventually we see that being in God’s will, not out of His will, is what brings peace and joy to us. We have to surrender our own wills, because walking in our self-centered ways is what keeps us unhappy.
Running from difficult things never works long term. I know a woman who ran from everything in life that was difficult. She ignored things she needed to deal with, including abuse in her home. She lived in fear and actually had a very miserable life. She ultimately carried so much turmoil she had a complete mental and emotional breakdown, and she has never totally recovered. Pretending that her problems did not exist did not make them go away. They were there, pressuring her, all the time. God was trying to lead her to deal with her conflicts, but she would not trust Him enough to do so.
God never leads us anywhere that He cannot keep us. If God is leading you to deal with some unpleasant situation in your life, don’t run from it. He promises to be with you at all times and never to leave you, or forsake you.
Surrender can be frightening when we first begin to practice it because we don’t know what the outcome will be if we yield ourselves to God’s will. However, once we have surrendered, and we begin to experience the peace that passes understanding, we learn quickly that God’s way is better than any plan we could ever devise.
Not knowing exactly what will happen in the future, but trusting God to take care of us and enjoying peace, is far, far better than erroneously thinking we have life all figured out while continuing to live in fear and anxiety. To enjoy peace with God, we must become comfortable with not knowing what the future holds. There is no such thing as trust without unanswered questions. If God is leading you to do something difficult, just begin to take baby steps of faith, and after each one He will show you what to do next. We don’t have to have an entire blueprint for the future; we don’t need to have all the answers. All we need is to know the One who knows, and that is Jesus Himself.
We must realize that we are not nearly as smart as we think we are. God’s Word advises us not to be conceited in our own wisdom and not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. God has the answers; we don’t. We need to seek Him, and He will lead us.
Proverbs 3:5-7 are some of my favorite Scriptures, and ones I have to return to frequently. They say, “Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.” Notice we are told to “be not wise in [our] own eyes.” To me that simply means we should not even think that we are smart enough to run our own lives. We need an attitude of humility that helps us lean on God for everything. An independent, I’ll-do-it-myself attitude and dependence on God can’t coexist.
Reasoning, struggling, and trying to figure out everything in life will steal our peace. God says to trust Him with all of our hearts and minds. I used to say I trusted God, yet I worried; therefore I did not truly trust Him. As I learned to keep my “ways” before God for alteration according to His will, He started guiding the events of my life, and the quality of it improved greatly.
GOD LEADS US BY PEACE
One of the major ways we hear from God is through peace. As I mentioned before, peace is our umpire in life. “And let the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state] to which as [members of Christ’s] one body you were also called [to live]” (Colossians 3:15).
We are to follow peace. If our decisions and actions produce peace, we know God approves and we are safe in going ahead. If we don’t have peace, we need to stop or at least wait. What we are doing or considering may be wrong, or the timing may be wrong.
People do so many things they don’t have peace about, and then they wonder why they have big messes in their lives. If we follow His Word, God has promised us that we will enjoy blessed and peaceful lives. He also warns us that we will be miserable and live in turmoil if we follow our own will and walk in our own ways (see Deuteronomy 28:15-33).
I hear people say things like this all the time:
• “I know I shouldn’t do this, but—”
• “I know I shouldn’t buy this, but—”
• “I probably shouldn’t say this, but—”
What they are saying is, “I know this is wrong, but I am going to do it anyway.” They have a check in their spirits, a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling deep inside, a “knowing” that the action they are taking is not right or good for them, but they won’t surrender their wills to God’s leading.
We have to learn to release our plans when we don’t have peace and wait to find God’s good plan for our lives. When we sense we are losing our peace, we should know that it means danger to press on the way we are going. We really need to have a healthy fear of not following peace. We should respect what God says in His Word about peace being the umpire in our lives, and let peace make final decisions for us.
Over the years, I have learned many things, but one of the most significant is the importance of walking in peace and staying in the rest of God. It is God’s will for us to live free of upset and frustration. He wants us to enjoy our lives, and we cannot do that if we don’t have peace.
Do you enjoy a peaceful atmosphere most of the time? Do you keep your peace during the storms of life? Are you at peace with God? These are important questions. We need to take a “peace inventory,” checking every area of our lives to see if we need to make adjustments anywhere. Jesus said, “My peace I’ve given unto you.” If He gave us His peace, He wants us to walk in it and enjoy it.
We must resist the devil at his onset. The minute we sense that we are losing our peace, we need to make a de
cision to calm down. Even allowing ourselves to become upset places us out of God’s will. To establish it in our hearts, let’s look again at what Jesus said:
Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.] (John 14:27, italics mine)
We can see plainly from this Scripture that Jesus has provided the peace, but we must appropriate it, not letting our hearts be troubled or afraid. We cannot just passively wait to feel peaceful. We are to pursue peace and refuse to live without it. As Jesus said, “Stop allowing yourselves to be upset.”
In 1 Peter 3:10-11, the Bible teaches us that if we want to enjoy life and see good days, we should keep our tongues free from evil, we should do right and search for peace and harmony with God, with ourselves, and with our fellow man. These Scriptures have had a major impact on my own life, and I pray they will impact yours. They are core principles to enjoying peace in our lives.
What is life worth if we are at war in our relationship with God, people, and ourselves? Not much of anything, as far as I am concerned. As I mentioned, peace with God is the foundation for all peace in our lives. How can we be at peace with ourselves if we are not at peace with God, and how can we enjoy peace with other people if we don’t have peace with ourselves?