I write this as a person who has wanted peace of mind most of my life. When I read about peace in the Bible I thought, “Once I have it I will feel nothing but peace always.” I couldn’t understand why the peace I would have in my mind would fade away. But I think I get it now. Each day, when we give our lives to God anew we can ask for peace. And when a problem or heartache comes, we can turn to God and ask for peace of mind in the situation and he will give it. We may have to ask him time and time again, when fearful thoughts come into our minds as we go through our days.
Our minds
are full of thousands of thoughts each day. Some are from God, some from Satan
and some from ourselves. If the thoughts we have are disturbing our peace we
must fight against them by prayer. We can ask God to fight against these thoughts by his power and he will. Here
is what I found on Bible Hub about peace:
"Do not let your hearts
be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." John 14:27
Ellicots Commentary for English Readers:
"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."—The immediate context speaks of His (Jesus) departure from them (his disciples). (John 14:25; John 14:28
He will leave them as a legacy the gift of
“peace.” And this peace is more than a meaningless sound or even than a true
wish. He repeats it with the emphatic “My,” and speaks of it as an actual
possession which He imparts to them. “Peace on earth” was the angels’ message
when they announced His birth; “peace to you” was His own greeting when He
returned victorious from the grave. “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), and
this peace is the farewell gift to the disciples from whom He is now departing.
Christ's gift of peace does not dispense with
the necessity for our own effort after tranquillity. There is very much in the
outer world and within ourselves that will surge up and seek to shake our
repose; and we have to coerce and keep down the temptations to anxiety, to
undue agitation of desire, to tumults of sorrow, to cowardly fears of the unknown
future. All these will continue, even though we have Christ's peace in our
hearts. And it is for us to see to it that we treasure the peace.
It is useless to tell a man, "Do not be troubled and do not be afraid," unless he first has Christ's peace as his. Is that peace yours because Jesus Christ is yours? If so, then there is no reason for your being troubled or dreading any future. If it is not, you are mad not to be troubled, and you are insane if you are not afraid.
Your imperfect possession of this peace is all your own fault. Conclusion: I went once to the side of a little Highland loch, on a calm autumn day, when all the winds were still, and every birch tree stood unmoved, and every twig reflected on the steadfast mirror, into the depths of which Heaven's own blue seemed to have found its way. That is what our hearts may be, if we let Christ put His guarding hand round them to keep the storms off, and have Him within us for our rest. But the man that does not trust Jesus is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.
A. Maclaren, D. D. writes:
Peace with the outer world. It is not external calamities, but the resistance of the will to these, that makes the disturbances of life. Submission is peace, and when a man with Christ in his heart can say what Christ did, "Not My will, but Thine, be done," then some faint beginnings, at least, of tranquillity come to the most agitated and buffeted.
