Perfect Peace
Life can be confusing! Sometimes we can make zero sense out of our circumstances and wonder how anything good can come from them. Our lack of control as difficulties hit can overwhelm us with fear and anxiety. How can we experience peace with so much pain and uncertainty?
This week I was encouraged as I read Isaiah 26:3. “You keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts in You.”
Perfect peace. God doesn’t promise us partial peace. He doesn’t give us peace that has holes in it where worry and unease sneak in the back door. God’s peace is perfect. It is free from all defects. It is unparalleled by any peace the world has to offer us, and it is tailor-made for us, perfectly fitting our needs.
Not only can we have His perfect peace, but He promises to keep us there. Unfortunately, sometimes we flow in and out of His peace depending on our current set of circumstances. But we can experience God’s perfect peace even when we don’t understand everything because our peace is built on our trust in Him; that He is who He says He is, and that He will do all that He says He will do!
But we should take note that there is a condition to this promise. When desperate circumstances punch us in the gut, we must keep our minds stayed on Him. As we commit to this, He remains our clear focus in the midst of perplexing circumstances. As we keep our eyes on Him, our circumstances lose their sense of hugeness and seem less overpowering. This doesn’t mean that we ignore what is causing us pain or confusion, but that they are viewed through the lens of God’s sovereignty and grace in our lives.
Our minds are stayed on whatever we are trusting. When we trust the Lord, our minds are focused on Him. We cannot have His perfect peace if our minds are on anything else but God. He upholds us when we cannot stand any longer. He settles us when we need rest. He enables us to cling to hope even while we are experiencing grief.
True peace isn’t affected by our circumstances. It isn’t based upon our abilities to overcome or fix things. We experience true peace as we lean on Him. We cannot have His lasting peace if we just occasionally come to Him in desperate situations. No, His true, lasting, perfect peace is a result of keeping our minds stayed on Him, at all times, in all circumstances.
“You keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for the LORD God is an everlasting rock.” (Isaiah 46: 3 – 4).
