Peace

Since finding out I have cancer, I’ve been really blessed. I haven’t had a whole bunch of problems—very little pain, few chemo side effects chemo. I am so thankful! Yet because I usually feel really good, I  actually forget that this is a life-and-death battle I’m in. So I had a bit of a reminder of that last night—I was in a lot of pain. It depressed me. It scared Rick. As we sat down to our morning study, the Lord blessed us with just the right text: a message of peace, spoken by Jesus: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” (John 14:27).

You know, one of the things that’s remarkable to me about these words is where Jesus when He spoke them (we would not look at this as a time to be talking about peace!). Jesus is with His disciples on the Thursday night before His death. Now, listen to this: Jesus knows exactly what’s about to happen. So He prepares His disciples. He tells them He’s going away. In a few hours, He’ll be arrested…people will tell lies about Him to get Him wrongly convicted…Roman soldiers will beat Him mercilessly…there will be a phony trial…the people will scream for His death. And they’ll get what they want…He will die. He will carry His own cross to the place where He’ll be nailed to it and hang there until He’s dead. He KNOWS all of this, in advance, before it happens. Even more, Jesus knows that these 11 guys He’s with—His disciples, His closest friends!—will abandon Him. Looking around at the men He’s been with for the last 3 years, you’d think that Jesus, knowing that death is literally less than 24 hours away, AND that these guys are going to desert Him—you’d think Jesus would get up and run for His life. At the very least, you’d expect Him to be sick with worry, anxiety, anger, even rage. But no. That’s not what we see in the perfect Son of God at all. We see perfect calm, perfect peace.

Jesus stays right there with the disciples. He comforts them. He promises them that even though He’s going away for now, He’ll return. He promises them heaven. He promises them the Holy Spirit who will be with them and in them forever. And He promises them peace. His peace. His kind of peace. Not peace like the world talks about peace…we think of peace as no fighting, no conflict, no stress, no worry. Jesus is not talking about that. He’s talking about peace that is grounded in trusting Him. Trusting God. Trusting the Holy Spirit. It’s faith in Jesus and His promises. It’s a “perfect security, perfect peace” kind of peace.

I trust Jesus’s promises. Jesus has done and will do all that He said He would. He did die on the cross and pay the penalty for my sin. He did rise from the dead! He’s a living Savior! He is preparing a place for me. I’m not an orphan! Heaven is a promise to be believed! Trusting Jesus’s promises is what faith is all about. And that is the source of true peace: Jesus. His peace is a supernatural calm that’s deep and abiding and comes only from Him. His peace comforts me in the middle of hardship. You can’t manufacture that kind of calm and comfort. It’s grounded in trusting Jesus, believing in Him with no reservations. No unbelief. Total, complete trust. I’d like to say Rick and i never experience fear on this cancer journey. But we seek the Lord’s forgiveness when we waver and fear…and we cling to the truth of God’s Word to guide us in His ways. Jesus’s words of peace to His disciples strengthened us this morning, praise Him. If you need this kind of peace, let me know. I would love to talk with you and pray with you.