PEACE IN JESUS
At every point in life, believers need peace. There are so many things in the world that can make us nervous and anxious. When we consider how the world turns and the problems that are around us on every side, it becomes very difficult to maintain the right kind of emotions. This is why the Lord promises strength in the “inner man” (Ephesians 3:16). All of us need strength inside us. We need peace.
Everyone on earth hurts in some way. Suffering is a part of life. What Jesus Christ promises is not a removal of suffering, but a peace that is with us in the worst of times (John 14:27). Our greatest joy in life should be to trust God. Each day is a new beginning and can be a new adventure with the one who knows the end from the beginning and who is all-powerful. Which means that He can take us anywhere He wants us to go. Every day with Christ is a fresh start, a chance to do today what we failed to do yesterday.
If you have trusted Christ for your salvation, then learn to trust Him for everything else. If He can handle the most important thing—the salvation of your soul—then He can surely handle the lesser things, like the daily trials of your life. Faith should be to us the most practical of all things. It should come in when all assurances of help and safety from a human standpoint go out.
We must come to the place where we trust God, not just for a few spiritual things, but for everything. You can lean entirely upon the Lord, because He can bear the load! Cast all your cares upon Him, because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). The things that weigh us down so heavily in this life are not difficult at all to Him. He is higher and stronger than the dangers and snares of a world given to sin. There are so many things that are mysteries to us, but they are all known to Him (1 John 3:20; Job 37:16; Isaiah 40:28). There is nothing He does not know, nothing He cannot do, and nothing in our lives about which He does not care. He is God.
Your future He knows and controls (Isaiah 46:10; Psalm 139:16). You can safely leave it with Him (Psalm 55:22). Your past is now with Him. No matter how bad it may seem to you now, it belongs to Christ, and He has pardoned you, casting all your sin into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). You are safe in Him (Psalm 18:2). That means that the present is the place for your thoughts and attention. Today is the only place for the believer to live (Matthew 6:34).
And when it comes to the inevitable pain and suffering that every person goes through, Christ has proven His love by living in this world as a human being for us, and by dying on the cross for us. No further proof should be needed. He willingly chose to come into this world of suffering. He suffered for you and for me. That does not answer all the questions concerning everything He does and allows, but it should cause us to realize that we can trust Him entirely, even when we don’t understand. You can trust the love and goodness of someone who went through what Jesus went through for you.
Dewayne Dunaway
