W6D4: The God Of Peace

"The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4:9 NASB

To have peace is to be free from disturbance. It means to be calm, quiet and a lack of interruption. It often refers to law and order, harmony, goodwill and friendship. It’s the absence of war or battles.

Life is not easy and peace is sometimes hard to find. We cannot live our life waiting for the good things to come to us because the world is wild, and it will overwhelm us with its chaos. We were created by God to work with Him to cultivate and tame the earth, to bring order to the chaos. We weren't created to just sit back and have God pour blessings into our lives. We are supposed to work with Him to create the blessings.

We have a desire to control things and people. But as image bearers of the Creator, we are designed to create, not to control. Don't confuse the two. We can’t control the weather, but we can create safety that helps us to survive it. If a tornado is coming, we can stay where we are and hope for the best, or we can get in a storm shelter. When we ignore the information we have, we will not have peace. It may be easier to stay where we are, but we will be miserable in our fear. When God is our source and we do our part, we have an inner peace knowing we will beat the storm. We may lose everything else in the storm, but we still have Him.

Peace from God is a promise based in part on our actions. Having peace in a storm means we have prepared for the storm. We prepare for physical storms in life by working to build shelters, financial safety nets (i.e., insurance, savings, etc.) so when the storm does come, we still have our lives and we can rebuild. If we are willing to learn, what we rebuild will be better than what we lost. That is how we grow.

We prepare for spiritual storms by working carefully to choose our thoughts. We turn our focus to all the things we have learned about God. When we turn toward Him, we find that He is already right there, arms spread wide and waiting. God’s presence gives us a peace that's unlike any earthly peace. It is a deep peace, an inner tranquility that remains no matter the circumstance. It's not a peace we can get from temporary earthly treasures. It is a peace that only comes by knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Paul tells us that when we do our part, when we work with God and do not oppose Him, we find our peace. That’s because in order to work with God we have to be in His presence. True Peace is being in the presence of God. It’s a peace that is beyond human comprehension, a peace words cannot describe.

We don’t find peace because we can create good out of bad. We find it because we work with God Who makes good out of ALL things, including the bad.

Have you ever experienced the peace of God’s presence? What can you do to cultivate the peace of God’s presence?

Meditate on “the God of peace" today.