Chasing Peace

The peace of God is like the Gospel of Jesus Christ: it's free, and it's for everyone.  Even though peace is free, we still have a hard time receiving it.  Most of the time we sidestep peace to go searching for peace, only to get frustrated in the process.  Imagine if you were hungry, and someone offered you a meal, but you told them, "I don't have time to eat that, I've got to go find some food."  That's how it is with peace most of the time.  The Lord shows up at our front door with a steaming, delicious plate of peace, and we leave out the back door to go hunting.

What makes peace difficult to receive is that we don't have a hand in bringing it about.  Ask anybody what the proudest moment of their life is, and I doubt that they will tell you it was a time when someone did something for them.  Our proudest moments are usually the times we did something brave, or accomplished something difficult.  This is entirely human, the satisfaction of our flesh.  And then God comes along and says, I have everything you need, and it's free.  We hear that and our flesh recoils.  We hear that and, no matter how true or wonderful it is, if we can't put our hands on it to make it happen, we hesitate.  So this is the quintessential problem we face as people when it comes to the spiritual life: we always want to put our hands on it.  We have the hardest time letting God just do things without our fingerprints on them.  We want to put our hands on it.

This is why we spend so much time chasing peace.  I myself chased peace for several years.  Discontented with my job, or my home, or my location at any given time, I was always looking to the next job, or the next house, or the next town for satisfaction.  I was constantly wondering what God was doing.  I do this a lot, and most of us do.  We try to figure out why God has us here in this particular spot, and what it's leading to.  We want God to have reasons for what He's told us to do, and if we can't put a finger on why He told us to do something, we get frustrated.  God tells us to be obedient, but He doesn't tell us we're going to understand.  He says essentially this: Do what I tell you, trust me, and you'll be great.

That is hard, because it doesn't allow us to put our hands on things.  When the Lord told me to move to Amarillo, Texas after my time in the army was up, I did it.  And we spent our first two years here searching for reasons; chasing peace.  And the reality is, I may never have a solid, singular reason for why God told me to come here.  Then again, I may find a thousand reasons why I'm here.  In the end it doesn't matter; I was obedient, and in our relationships with God, obedience is everything.  Obedience is not easy, but being obedient puts us in a position to receive what God wants to give us.

Jesus says in John 14:27, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."  Jesus gives us his peace, which is pretty special.  This is the peace that comes straight from the Father.  This is the peace that sustained Jesus as he walked the earth for 33 years knowing just what awaited him at the end of his life.  This is the peace that kept him in the Garden of Gethsemane praying while Judas led Roman soldiers up the path.  This is the peace that sustained him on the cross, knowing what was coming.  This is the promise of Jesus, that we can have his peace, and it is a gift.  We don't have to do a single thing for it, other than receive it.

I suspect that one of the most important things we have to do in our spiritual walks is learn to receive.  Certainly this is the case when it comes to peace.  We spend a lot of time chasing peace, as though it were something elusive, when the truth is Jesus gives it to us.  The Holy Spirit is his repository of peace, and the very Spirit of Jesus resides in our skin and bones, in our blood and in our lungs and nerves and sinew.  Jesus resides in those of us who have asked him to do so, and that means peace is always at hand.  All we have to do is receive it.