Saturday, July 31, 2021

Obtaining Peace: Ask Him

 Peace 6


          The world is not at peace. War, crime, strife, anxiety, worry, and confusion abound. To this problem/s, the world offers several bad solutions. It tells you to blame someone else (psychiatry). It offers to let you drown the unease of your soul in chemicals (alcohol/drugs). The smart ones do this via medication rather than illegal drugs but the aim/effect is eerily similar. Timothy Leary, the 60s counterculture apostle of LSD infamously said, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.”  In other words, peace comes when you purposely allow your mind to drift into an altered state of consciousness. Still others practically practice hoarding, convinced that their survival skills and supplies will see them through whatever zombie apocalypse arrives. Some prefer to buy guns, the larger and more powerful the better. The world’s “solutions” for peace are as many and as varied as the devil can possibly provide.

          None of this should surprise any of us. After all, the lost world is going to act like unsaved people act and think like they think, by definition. What concerns me more is Christians who do not have peace. As God’s people we are called to it. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body (Colossians 3.15).  Everything I know about God tells me He is a just God. If He commands He explains how to obey and makes available to us whatever we need in order to fulfil that command. If we are called to let His peace rule in our hearts then how can we? What provision has He made? I do not mean the counterfeits offered by the world; I mean the actual provision of the genuine article by our Father. How can we obtain the peace of God?

          Over the next eight weeks on this blog I intend to answer that question. Today, let me offer you one simple idea: the peace of God comes when God gives it to us. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14.27). The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace (Numbers 6.26).

          Too often, we underestimate the simple method of asking God for peace. Thinking there must be some deeper or wider answer, like the alchemists of former ages, we pursue some magic formula, we search for some holy grail, we seek for some distant city of gold. In the next two months we will find many keys to obtaining the peace of God in Scripture, but surely the simplest and most basic one is to simply pray for it. Ye have not, because ye ask not (James 4.2).

          To be sure, you cannot violate biblical principle and obtain the peace of God. Understanding that, if we lack peace, beseeching the Lord for it ought to be our first and constant resort. John R. Rice, the twentieth century’s mightiest pen, said, “All of our failures are prayer failures.” I will take John Rice over Timothy Leary every day of the week.

          Are you harboring iniquity? Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me (Psalm 139.23-24). No? Then may I ask, how much time have you spent lately asking the Lord to give you His peace? Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning (James 1.17). Peace of mind and heart, the peace of God, is certainly a good thing, is it not?

          …so ask Him for it.

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