There may be personal issues you need to settle with God before you can enjoy peace. There may be things that God has been dealing with you about for a long, long time that you have been ignoring. Remember, ignoring God’s will does not change it. You can go around the same mountains again and again, pass through storms, or find yourself in uncomfortable places the way Jonah did, but when all is said and done, God’s will is still the same.
Do you sense a tug-of-war inside yourself about some issues in your life? If so, I encourage you not to spend one more day in turmoil. Face the issue, and give God the right of way. In other words, lay your ways down and adopt His ways. Make a decision to stop running and deal with any issues God may be placing before you. Are you doing something that is bothering your conscience? If so, that is God letting you know He is not pleased with that action or decision. Your conscience is actually intended to be your friend; it is a great blessing in life. It will keep you out of trouble if you learn to respect and listen to it.
When God has His will for our lives and we have other wills, life gets hard and uncomfortable. But we can have and enjoy peace by surrendering our wills to God’s. God will not surrender to us; He is waiting for our surrender.
TRUTH LEADS US TO PEACE
We gain peace with God through facing the truth about the changes He is asking us to make. God never asks us to do something without giving us the ability to do it. Truth is not easy to face, but it is the avenue to peace. When we hide from, avoid, and evade God, we are usually running from His will for us.
A man once told me he had run from God’s truth for so long he had finally run past himself. He meant that he had totally lost himself and any understanding of what God wanted for him. He was confused and miserable. He felt like a total failure, as if he had completely wasted his life. He was depressed, discouraged, and without vision for his future.
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone who was more unhappy and pitiful than he was. Why? Because he had spent his life doing what he wanted to do, what he felt like doing, rather than walking in God’s plan for him. He was reaping what he had sown, just as we all ultimately do.
I thank God for the ability to turn around and go in the right direction. That is actually what true repentance is. It is not just a feeling of being sorry, but also a decision to go in the right direction from now on. We get into trouble through making a series of wrong decisions, and we will get our lives straightened out by a series of right decisions. It took more than a day to get into trouble, and it will take more than a day to get out. Anyone who is ready and willing to make a real investment of time and right choices can see his or her life turn around for the better. God’s mercy is new every day. He is waiting to give you mercy, grace, favor, and help; all you have to do is say yes to whatever God is requiring.
The miserable man I referred to did what was right for about two years, and his life really began to change. He had every opportunity to have a great life, but he did not “keep on keeping on.” He eventually went back to his old ways.
Recently I talked with a Christian sister who was very depressed and felt as if she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. As we talked, I discovered she had spent years not making right decisions and then found herself overwhelmed with the outcome of her own poor choices. She had not raised her children in church, and she said they were out of control and impossible for her to manage. She had been very difficult to get along with, and the result had been the loss of several friendships and family relationships. She certainly had serious problems, and I did not have an easy answer for her.
She wanted me to tell her what to do, so I seriously pondered before the Lord what I should suggest. All I could tell her was that she needed to start making right decisions, and eventually they would overtake the crop she was now reaping from her previous bad decisions. People usually want to overcome a lifetime of bad choices in a short period of time without much effort on their parts, or they want other people to deliver them from the messes into which they have gotten themselves.
I sincerely felt compassion for her, yet I also realized she had been a Christian for over twenty-five years and had spent much time (at least in the early years of her walk with God) studying God’s Word and ways. I felt she knew better than to behave the way she had. When we lack knowledge, we often experience a “special grace” in our lives from God. However, once we have knowledge of God’s Word, we become responsible to apply it to our lives, and I personally believe we reap what we sow much quicker as knowledgeable persons than as ignorant ones.
God wanted to work with this sister and help her. He would give her mercy and grace and another chance, but there really was no easy answer like the one she appeared to be seeking. We cannot do right a few times—we must continue on. Jesus said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (see John 8:31-32 KJV).
Both the brother and the sister I have mentioned gained help in their lives through applying God’s principles, but they did not maintain. They did not continue in the truth they had learned. Galatians 5:1 teaches us to stand fast in the liberties we have; that means to gain and maintain. It has helped me to realize that I will need to stand fast for the rest of my life.
We cannot get lazy and start letting things slip. Each time God convicts us of wrong behavior, we need to listen to Him. Anytime we lose our peace even slightly, we need to stop and find out what is wrong. That loss of peace is God letting us know something is not going the way He wants it to go.
We gain a right relationship with God through complete surrender to Him, and through repentance of all of our sins. We maintain it through continued right living: making right choices, honoring our consciences, and following peace. Being a successful Christian is a full-time job; we must be on guard all the time against the deceptions of Satan.
Just going to church for one hour on Sunday morning is not enough to maintain peace. We need megadoses of God’s Word, prayer, and regular fellowship with God and other godly people in order to stand fast in God’s will.
Peace with God is available to every person, but we cannot have it on our own terms. Surrender seems so frightening because we are not sure what God may require. Will we suffer? Will God ask us to do things we don’t want to do or don’t even know how to do? Will we ever get to have any of the things we want? We all have these questions.
We may not get things our way, but we can trust that God’s way is better. God is a good God, and He said that He has good things planned for His children: “For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome” (Jeremiah 29:11).
We should not be afraid of harm, because God is not an ogre, He is not mean. He is good. Everything good in life comes from God. He wants us to trust Him, and when we take a step of faith to do so, we will see the goodness of God manifested in our lives. The more we surrender, the better life becomes.
THE HOLY SPIRIT FILLS US WITH PEACE
In Acts 2:4, we see that believers were all “filled with the Holy Spirit,” and later in Ephesians 5:18, we find the instruction to “be filled with the Spirit.” One Scripture tells us what happened on the day of Pentecost, and the other is a command.
What does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? It does not imply a state of high excitement, or being perfect in all of our ways, nor is it a state in which we have no need for growth. It is having our entire personalities yielded to the Holy Spirit and being filled through and through with His awesome power daily. It is daily surrender; it is yielding to God’s ways and plans for our everyday lives.
The following Scriptures are absolutely wonderful; I encourage you to meditate on them often.
May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personal
ity] . . . [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]! (Ephesians 3:16, 19, italics mine)
Just imagine having your personality filled with the Holy Spirit of the living God and being a body wholly filled with God Himself! The apostle Paul was a man filled with the Holy Spirit; he was also a man who had forsaken all to follow Jesus. Any area of our lives that we hold back from God is an area where we cannot be filled with His Spirit. I encourage you to open and surrender every room in your heart to God. Your time is His, your money is His, as are your gifts and talents, your family, your career, attitudes, and desires. He wants to be involved in every area of your life: how you dress, whom you choose for friends, what you do for entertainment, what you eat, and so on.
After conversion, Jesus is our Savior, but is He our Lord? Any area we claim as our own is one we have not surrendered to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
I lived a defeated life for many years simply because I was not fully surrendered. I had accepted Jesus as Savior; I had enough of Jesus to stay out of hell, but I had not accepted Him as my Lord, I had not accepted enough of Him to walk in victory. There is a difference. I lacked peace because I was still trying to manage my own life.
The blessedness of being filled with the Spirit is clearly visible in the change in the people’s lives after Pentecost. Peter, for example, who had displayed great fear in not being willing to even admit that he knew Jesus, became a bold apostle who stood in the streets of Jerusalem and preached the gospel so fervently that three thousand souls were added to the church in one day. Complete surrender brings good change into our lives. Surrender to God actually opens the door to the things we desire, and yet we waste our own energy trying to obtain access to them our own way.
Realize that every act of obedience brings with it a corresponding blessing. Consecration, commitment, yielding, surrendering, obeying: all these words may sound frightening, but remember that fear is not from God. Fear is from Satan; he uses it to prevent us from entering God’s plan for our lives. He uses fear to prevent progress. Each time we feel fear, we should recognize it as opposition from the enemy of our souls.
I share more about living a Spirit-filled life in my book Knowing God Intimately. I encourage you to read that book if you feel you need to surrender to the Lord in a deeper way. Being filled with the Spirit is like finding the “pearl of great price” that the following verses speak of:
The kingdom of heaven is like something precious buried in a field, which a man found and hid again; then in his joy he goes and sells all he has and buys that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is a dealer in search of fine and precious pearls, who, on finding a single pearl of great price, went and sold all he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)
The kingdom of heaven, as God intended us to enjoy it, includes being wholly filled with the Holy Spirit. These Scriptures teach us that we must “sell all” to buy the pearl of great price. That simply means we surrender everything we now have in order to gain the one thing we truly need to enjoy kingdom living. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (see Romans 14:17).
Perhaps as you read this book today, you realize you have something against someone. Perhaps God has dealt with you to give up some bitter attitude, but you have stubbornly held on to it, feeling justified in your anger. I tell you that if you will surrender that attitude, God will give you peace in the place of it.
You may spend many days feeling sorry for yourself or being jealous of what someone else has. God has asked you to lay aside those bad attitudes and be content. If you will do so, His peace and joy will fill your life.
People may have more possessions than you do, but they can never have more peace and joy than you do if you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is not what we own that makes us happy and peaceful; He is our joy and our peace.
A CONSECRATED, DEDICATED LIFE RESULTS IN PEACE
God’s Word instructs us to be vessels fit (consecrated) for the Master’s use. To be consecrated is to be set apart for a special use, as these verses explain:
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also [utensils] of wood and earthenware, and some for honorable and noble [use] and some for menial and ignoble [use]. So whoever cleanses himself [from what is ignoble and unclean, who separates himself from contact with contaminating and corrupting influences] will [then himself] be a vessel set apart and useful for honorable and noble purposes, consecrated and profitable to the Master, fit and ready for any good work. (2 Timothy 2:20-21)
To God, we are precious treasures. According to His great plan, we are vessels He has set aside for a special purpose. God wants to show His glory through us. He wants to use us to bring others to Himself. We are His representatives, His ambassadors here on earth. God is making His appeal to the world through His children (see 2 Corinthians 5:20).
To dedicate is to give, to offer to another, or to set aside for a purpose. If I were to say a room in my house is dedicated to prayer, that would mean I wanted that particular room used primarily for that purpose and not for other things.
I own some dresses that I use only for fancy parties. I have set them aside in a certain place in my closet and keep them inside garment bags for protection. This makes them special; they are not used for ordinary purposes but are set apart for special purposes. That is the way God views us; we are not to be used for the world’s purposes, but for God’s. We are in the world, yet Jesus tells us we are not “of” the world. Don’t be worldly, adopting its ways and methods. Even after we have dedicated ourselves to God, we should rededicate ourselves to our real purpose, as the following verse encourages: “I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
It is not too much for God to ask us to dedicate every facet of our being. It is actually our worship and spiritual service. Under old covenant law, God required animal sacrifices to atone for sin. He no longer wants dead sacrifices; He wants us offering ourselves as “living sacrifices” unto Him for His purpose and use.
There is nothing we can offer to God that He has not first given us, so we are only offering what already belongs to Him anyway. In reality, we are stewards, not owners. Andrew Murray taught in his book Consecrated to God that if God gives us everything and we receive everything, then what comes next is very clear: We must give everything back to God again. God gives us a free will so we can freely and willingly give ourselves back to Him. He does not want robots, who have no choice, serving Him. He wants us to choose Him! What a privilege, what an honor to give ourselves willingly to Him.
Offer Him your mouth to speak through, your hands to touch through, your feet to walk through, your mind to think through. Dedicate every area of your life to Him, remembering that anything we give to the Lord He gives us back many times over, and we get it back in much better condition than when we gave it.
When I gave my life to the Lord, it was an absolute wreck. He has now given me a life that is wonderful and beyond imagination. Ephesians 3:20 states that He is able to do much more than we could ever imagine if we will give Him the opportunity.
God wants you to enjoy a life of peace, the peace that passes understanding, and it begins by being at peace with Him. This requires regular surrender, consecration, dedication, and a willingness to let God be in the driver’s seat of your life at all times. But beware; you have an enemy who plans to make it difficult to surrender your life to God. Next, we will look at what God’s Wo
rd says about that enemy.
PEACEKEEPER #3
Know Your Enemy
If finding peace is a struggle for you, it is a sign that your enemy is working hard to keep you from receiving what is rightfully yours. Are you confused about who your real enemy is? According to God’s Word, your enemy is not a person, or even circumstances—it is Satan himself. Knowing your enemy, and the weapons that God has given you to defeat him, is the third way to keep in perfect peace with God.
“For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the despotisms, against the powers, against [the master spirits who are] the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere” (Ephesians 6:12). We can never win our battles if we are fighting against the wrong source in a wrong way. The source of our troubles is Satan and his demons. We cannot fight him with carnal (natural) weapons, but only with supernatural ones that God gives us for the destruction of Satan’s strongholds (see 2 Corinthians 10:4).
What exactly are these weapons? I believe the weapons God gives include His Word used in preaching, teaching, singing, confession, or meditation. Our weapons are righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and we can and should use these against Satan, our enemy. Yes, peace is a weapon! The Bible talks about putting on the shoes of peace. Righteousness is a weapon! “By [speaking] the word of truth, in the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand [to attack] and for the left hand [to defend]” (2 Corinthians 6:7).