There are moments in life when all we want is a little peace. Perhaps you’ve had one of those days when you finally sit down in your favorite chair, hoping to enjoy a few quiet moments, only to discover that although the house is quiet, your mind is anything but. You begin thinking about a conversation that didn’t go well or someone you love who is going through a difficult time. Before long, you’re right back where you started, carrying the same concerns you hoped to escape for a little while.
I suspect we can all relate to that. Life has a way of presenting us with things we never anticipated. A medical diagnosis or the loss of someone we love can change the direction of our lives in an instant. We can be doing our best to follow God and still find ourselves troubled by circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes the hardest part is simply not knowing what comes next.
As we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we will once again hear those familiar words, “Peace on Earth.” They appear on Christmas cards, in holiday decorations, and in songs that have been sung for generations. What a wonderful thought! Imagine a world without war, hatred, or the suffering that has touched so many lives. Who wouldn’t long for such a world? Yet no matter how much we desire peace, history has shown us that mankind is incapable of establishing it. We negotiate agreements, establish laws, and make promises to do better, but the conflicts continue. The problem goes much deeper than our inability to get along with one another. We live in a fallen world where sin and the influence of the Adversary remain very real. True and lasting peace on earth will never be an achievement of mankind. It will require the intervention of God Himself.
The day will come when Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, will return and establish the righteous rule that this world has never been able to provide (Isaiah 9:6–7). Until then, suffering and conflict will remain part of the world in which we live. But here is something I find especially encouraging: God has not asked us to wait until Jesus Christ returns before we can experience His peace. He has already made peace available to His children, even while the world around us remains troubled.
To appreciate what that means, we need to understand something fundamental to our Christian lives. There is a difference between having peace with God and experiencing the peace of God. They are closely connected, but they are not the same thing. One concerns our standing before God because of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. The other concerns how we live and respond to the circumstances we face each day.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1–2)
Think about the magnitude of those words. Through Jesus Christ, God has reconciled us to Himself. We have been justified, made righteous in His sight, and given the promise of everlasting life. That relationship is not something we establish through our own accomplishments or maintain by managing to live without making mistakes. It rests upon what God accomplished through His Son. For those of us who have been born again, peace with God is an established reality that our shortcomings cannot undo.
There is something wonderfully liberating about knowing where we stand with God. We don’t have to approach Him every morning wondering whether He still loves us or whether yesterday’s failures have somehow changed His mind about us. Certainly, He wants us to grow and take responsibility for our mistakes, but we can do so with the assurance that we remain His children. If that doesn’t give us a reason to take a deep breath and say, “Whew!” I don’t know what will.
Yet knowing that we have peace with God does not mean we always experience peace in our daily lives. Our everlasting future may be secure, but that doesn’t make every difficulty we face today any easier. It doesn’t remove the pain of losing someone we love or the concern we feel when someone close to us is suffering. Being a Christian does not make us immune to the emotional challenges of being human.
As a father of three children, I know what it is like to lie awake at night, concerned about a child whose choices may bring painful consequences. I have taught my children the truth of God’s Word because I love them and want them to follow His way, not simply mine. Yet one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that as they grow into adulthood, I cannot make their decisions for them, no matter how deeply I love them or how much I want what is best for them. God has given each of us freedom of will. I can continue to love, encourage, and pray for them, but I cannot live their lives. Accepting that has not been easy. It has meant learning to trust God with those I love, even when I am concerned about the choices they are making.
This is where the peace of God becomes so important. It’s one thing to talk about peace when everything is going well. It’s quite another to experience it when someone we love is hurting. Those are the moments when what we believe about God must become more than something we know. It must become something we learn to live by.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)
I find the timing of those words remarkable. Jesus was preparing his disciples for some of the most difficult experiences of their lives. Their expectations would soon be shattered, and their courage severely tested. Yet he spoke to them about peace. He wasn’t promising that nothing painful would happen. He was preparing them to face what was coming with confidence in God and in the promises he had given them.
That is a very different understanding of peace from what the world generally offers. Most people associate peace with the absence of problems. We feel peaceful when our health is good and our families are doing well. But if our peace depends entirely upon favorable circumstances, what happens when those circumstances change? Are we destined to spend our lives moving from one period of worry to another, enjoying an occasional moment of peace whenever everything happens to be going our way? I don’t believe that is what God wants for His children.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”(Philippians 4:6–7)
I especially appreciate those two words, “in everything.” Not merely in the great emergencies of life, when we’ve exhausted every other possibility and finally decide we had better pray. God invites us to come to Him with everything that concerns us. Sometimes I think we underestimate just how much our heavenly Father cares about what is happening in our lives. We may hesitate to bring certain concerns to Him because we feel we should already know how to handle them. After all, we’ve been Christians for years. Shouldn’t we be able to deal with this by now? But spiritual maturity is not measured by how little we need God. It is reflected in how readily we recognize our need for Him.
Of course, prayer does not mean that every problem will immediately disappear. Some situations may take a long time to change, and others may never turn out as we hope. We still have a responsibility to do what is right, and we can look to God for the wisdom and strength to do it.
Sometimes our thoughts can become our own worst enemy. We remember past disappointments and allow fear to convince us that things are going to turn out badly before we even know what will happen. Have you ever found yourself having an imaginary argument with someone about something that hasn’t even occurred? You anticipate what they might say, prepare your response, and before long you’re upset with someone who hasn’t actually said a word! We can do the same thing with our circumstances, allowing our imagination to create problems that may never become reality.
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)
Paul was confronting arguments that opposed the knowledge of God, but the principle also applies to our own thinking. We cannot always prevent troubling thoughts from entering our minds, but we can learn not to let them govern our lives. When worry begins to take hold, we need to bring our thinking back to the truth of God’s Word.
As Thanksgiving approaches, there is another aspect of peace worth considering: thankfulness. The two are more closely connected than we might realize.
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:15–17)
There is something about thankfulness that helps bring our lives back into proper perspective. When we become consumed with what is wrong, we can grow almost blind to what is still right. We may have people who love us and countless blessings we barely notice because our attention is fixed upon something that isn’t going the way we want. Thankfulness doesn’t erase our problems, but it reminds us that our problems are not the sum total of our lives.
I also recognize that Thanksgiving can be a difficult season for some people. Not everyone will gather around a table surrounded by family and friends. Some will be spending their first holiday without someone they dearly loved. Others may be facing circumstances that make it difficult to feel particularly thankful. Perhaps someone reading this has experienced so much disappointment during the past year that being told to give thanks almost feels like another burden being placed upon them.
If that describes you, I want you to know that thankfulness does not require pretending that your heart isn’t hurting. You can miss someone terribly and still thank God for the years you shared. You can be concerned about your future and still appreciate the ways He has cared for you in the past. You can acknowledge that life is difficult without losing sight of the goodness of your heavenly Father. Sometimes our thanksgiving may come through tears, but those tears are never hidden from God. He is close to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). He knows the sorrow behind every tear, understands the burdens we carry, and loves us just as deeply when our hearts are breaking.
In fact, some of the things for which we should be most thankful are not things at all. They are the people God has placed in our lives and the love we’ve been privileged to experience. As the years pass, many of us begin to realize that some of life’s greatest blessings were found in moments we barely noticed while they were happening. A conversation with a friend or an unexpected act of kindness may seem ordinary at the time, but such moments are often what we remember and treasure most.
The peace of Christ is not merely something we experience within ourselves. It should also be reflected in the way we treat others. Our attitudes and words influence our families and friends, sometimes more than we realize. When we allow worry or frustration to dominate our thinking, those feelings can spill over into our relationships. We may become impatient with someone who has done nothing wrong simply because we are struggling with something they know little about.
I think most of us have been on both sides of that experience. We’ve said things we later regretted, and we’ve been hurt by words spoken by someone who was having a difficult day. But if we want peace in our homes and relationships, we cannot simply wait for everyone around us to become more peaceful. We have to consider what we are contributing to the atmosphere in which we live. Are we bringing patience or irritation? Are we helping to resolve conflict, or are we adding to it?
“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:3)
Notice that we are to make an effort. Peace in our relationships does not always happen automatically, even among people who genuinely love God. Sometimes maintaining peace requires us to apologize first, listen more carefully, or choose kindness when frustration would be easier. It doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations or pretending that serious wrongs don’t matter. It means approaching others with the humility and love that God’s Word calls us to demonstrate.
This Thanksgiving, I hope we’ll consider what may be keeping us from experiencing the peace God wants us to enjoy. Are we still carrying burdens we need to place in His hands? Have we allowed yesterday’s disappointments to overshadow today’s blessings? Whatever this past year has brought, God’s love for us has not changed. Through Jesus Christ, we have peace with our heavenly Father and an everlasting future that no earthly circumstance can take away.
We cannot establish peace on earth. That day awaits the return of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. But until then, we can experience the peace God has made available through His Son and allow it to influence the lives of those around us. We cannot control everything that happens in our lives, but we can choose to trust the One who holds our everlasting future. Perhaps that is when we begin to experience His peace—not when everything around us finally goes our way, but when we learn to trust God even when it doesn’t.
In His Love,
