Jesus spoke these encouraging words to the disciples on the night of the Passover meal just before he was betrayed, tried, flogged and crucified. He knew what lay ahead so it was important for the disciples to know before these awful events that Jesus had left them his peace. Jesus’ peace is not the world’s peace which is a hopeful expression of freedom from war or disturbance. Jesus’ peace can calm all fears and give us that inner certainty that God is for us and will never leave or forsake us.
Peace goes when difficult circumstances come against us. Times of uncertainty bring to the surface our deepest levels of fear, doubt and insecurity. Anxiety and fear of what may happen grip us. The awful sense of things being out of control causes panic to rise and our trust in God to loosen. We feel we must do something but don’t know what to do and apart from shouting at God, the options are not always very promising. R T Kendall teaches to pray till the peace comes and he uses Paul's advice to the Philippians found in Philippians 4: 6. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present you requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. He teaches that present means to reveal as in a mystery. We need to look at our deepest levels of fear, doubt and insecurity and present or reveal them to God. God knows what they are but till we are honest with ourselves about what we REALLY fear and speak them out to God they will hinder the peace coming. It may be fear of someone dying, of not having enough money to pay the bills, of a teenager getting in trouble with the police or getting involved with the wrong crowd. Present your fears with your prayers and petitions to God.
As we do this, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will flood our very being. It will come and guard your heart and mind – so often the whirlpool of insecurity. The circumstances may not change but you will. You will know that God is holding all things in his hands. Having exposed your deepest fears to God, sometimes the most important words are, ‘I trust you God.’ Time and again I have found that the peace of God has entered me even if nothing else appears to have changed. God is faithful; he has never let me down.God has left us his peace and he desires we walk in it whether things are going well or not very well. So often in the bad times we discover that all God has said about himself is true as we present to him our fears and as we let his peace come.
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