Stubborn Peace

The LORD gives his people strength. The LORD blesses them with peace.

Psalm 29:11

The Hebrew word translated as our English word “peace” is shalom. Shalom is a state of tranquility and fulfillment and contentment. In the beginning, before the man and woman sinned, the Garden was a setting without fear or shame or unmet need or unfulfilled desire. A place of shalom.

All the peace busters that sin ushered into our experience work against what God has designed. He wants to give us that supernatural peace that exists in spite of and in the midst of life’s storms and upheavals. The peace that the Lord gives us has nothing to do with outward situations. It is a stubborn peace that settles in and won’t let go.

The apostle Paul wrote, “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13). Paul had learned a secret that let him live every moment of every day in a state of peace. He had learned that the unchanging presence of God satisfied him. It was the same when God allowed adversity in his life as when God supernaturally intervened to circumvent difficulties. Whatever happened, he was the same.

We are all busy trying to arrange outward events in such a way that they will produce inner contentment—a sense of safety, of being loved, of satisfaction. If this would happen, or if that would go away, or if this would change, or if that would stay the same, we think, then we would have inner contentment. But Paul had learned that it’s not what God does but who God is that produces contentment. What happened on the outside of him did not add to or subtract from his inner peace.

Father, plant peace in my life. Give it deep roots, and let it flourish there.

So long as we are occupied with any other object than God Himself, there will be neither rest for the heart nor peace for the mind.

A. W. Pink(1886–1952), English evangelist and Bible scholar