by Ms. Sasha
Have you ever thought about God as someone who writes contracts? The Bible is full of contracts. They are known as covenants. God says if we do X, then we will get Y. This is good news, right.…that we can be business partners with God in addition to being his children?
Well, God has written a deal for us that is hard to refuse. He has formulated a peace treaty to help us end the war in our minds when we are stuck between fear and faith.
Ready to embrace more peace in your life? Continue reading for our Bible study on Peace.
In this article we will discuss…
Who Peace is For and
How to Get Peace of Mind
Peace for God's Children
“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26 NIV)
When we bless our food, we declare wellness for it, asking God to make it fit and delightful for us to eat. In this passage, Aaron is declaring God’s blessing of peace to the people of Israel; God’s people.
When God turns his face towards his people, he is looking at us with compassion, determining our need, seeing our future, and formulating the right dose of peace we’ll need to get back to a thriving state.
“The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.” (Psalm 29:11 NIV)
This verse also confirms that the blessing of peace is for God’s people. If we read the scripture again, we see that the psalmist says “His people” twice. Peace is the privilege of God’s children.
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt helpless or maybe even hopeless? You didn’t have a clue how to solve the problem and knew you needed a miracle. Without realizing that God has promised peace to help us, we are very vulnerable. Left shaken, without a stabilizer, to our own remedies.
God never meant for us to be in this state. God’s peace treaty says that his children are privileged to utilize the peace he gives for every hardship and for every bad day we experience.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1 NIV)
Are you a believer? If so, God reminds us once again with this verse that peace is ours! Peace is our God-given benefit used to ease the blows of life.
Accepting this gift can be groundbreaking in our lives because it means we can leave self-relieving, yet detrimental habits behind like alcohol consumption, sexual sin, overeating, and overspending.
It means we can believe in Jesus and access his peace in the most desperate moments without it costing our physical or financial health.
Prayer is an excellent way to give your burdens to God in exchange for peace, and when we pray, God may reveal other ways to enjoy life that bring you peace personally.
Depending on your personality, God may tell you to start walking on nature trails, try a new recipe, or call a friend and share a good laugh. In exchange for faith, God equips his children with so many benefits. Peace is a major one of them.
How We Can Get This Peace
“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” (Isaiah 26:3 NIV)
Now, God doesn’t tell us that peace is a possibility. He promises it. However, we have to go get it.
Imagine a boss that has an employee of the month program, complete with a bonus. They have promised a reward, but only for the employee that is worthy of such a title. The employees must do their best to be steadfast or consistent in good work to qualify for the bonus.
How can we stay steadfast in God’s love, promises, and direction when we are feeling down? When a crisis arises, will we try our best to think about God’s bigger plan?
When we commit to this higher level of thinking, we are promised peace, even while we’re grieving a loss or processing the emotions of a genuine setback.
“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:10 NIV)
Again, we see that God freely provides peace in the middle of the worst situations. God tells us through one of his prophets, Isaiah, that even with the most overwhelmingly surprising circumstances, (such as a mountain shaking or a hill being removed), his love and peace will remain.
Today, things may look very shaky with your employment status, with your marriage, or in the country where you live. However, remember that God always has a plan for your peace, a plan to end war, and a stable future for you, because he loves you.
“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 NIV)
Earlier we saw in Numbers 6:26 that God looks at us with compassion and gives us peace. In the New Testament, the promise is even better. Jesus knowing that he was leaving this earth told his disciples that he was leaving peace here with them. With us.
Receiving it won’t be like getting a package on your doorstep though. It’ll be something we have to obtain by the way we respond.
If we allow situations to trouble us, keep us up at night, talk about them with despair, and spend time imagining a dark forecast; our peace can’t be activated.
We’ll have to learn how to handle stress differently to engage peace. This means we can’t allow visions of a dark future to take up space, but visions of peace and stability. We must imagine the storm dying down and the sun rising again. Then, we must rest in it.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13 NIV)
God’s peace is necessary if we are to start hoping again. Have you ever tried to imagine a better life while you were still worried? The two seem oxymoronic. We need to have our minds in a more tranquil state before we can imagine a better future. We need to be settled and sober-minded to be able to grasp the concept of something good happening to us. The peace of God can do just that. It is a breeding ground for happiness.
Next Moves: Strategic Steps for Peace Right Now
You may have heard the saying “Time heals all wounds,” but why settle when we can take a more active role in our peace?
Let’s take a final look at what God wants us to know about peace with a scripture written to encourage the church in Phillipi.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, 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 NIV)
Here, the apostle Paul echoes Jesus’ earlier statement about how to receive peace. Instead of worrying and hoping that peace will eventually come, he wants us to take an active stance.
I challenge you to employ this action plan the next time you experience stress:
1. Say no to worry.
Literally. When a declaration of doom comes to your mind, say, “I do not receive that, because the Bible says…”. Then, state a promise from God.
2. Talk to God openly and honestly about your situation in prayer.
He wants to hear it. His Holy Spirit serves the role of the great comforter in our lives. He is faithful to guide us toward peace and towards good decisions we have to make related to our problems.
3. Remember the things God has done for you in the past, and thank him for it.
Just because a bad situation has occurred doesn’t change God’s love for you. Say ‘no thanks’ to the devil’s magnifying glass, and begin to thank God who will rescue you just as he has done in times past.
The moment you get bad news, a war has begun. Not a physical war. A war for your mind. Depending on what’s in your conscience, you may digest the news and imagine the absolute worst, or you may imagine the absolute best ending.
No matter where we land on this spectrum, it is vital to embrace truth from God’s Word in these moments if we want to win the war.
There is a future for you. As we saw in the scriptures, God has given us a plan to obtain his peace, moving us into a place of lasting hope.
It’d be nice to believe that time heals all wounds, but that isn’t true. We know that time will keep ticking without us making any progress if we let it.
The Bible says that because God’s love is in our hearts, we don’t need to be ashamed for hoping (Romans 5:5). We can have peace and we can hope again. Let’s take the time we have and spend it trusting our most powerful source of healing: Christ.