Perfect Peace
Jay Stovall | Young Adults Pastor
One of my favorite verses comes from Isaiah 26:3, “YOU keep in perfect peace those who remain steadfast, because they trust in YOU.”
Perfect Peace. That’s what Jesus has to offer us. In reflecting, it made me wonder what non-perfect peace is? Maybe it is a peace that comes from circumstances that are going well or according to plan but have a dent in its armor when things get hectic and don’t go the way we had hoped. For something to be perfect, it needs to be absolute, complete in all aspects, not lacking anything. The perfect peace Jesus gives us doesn’t make sense. It transcends the most troubling circumstances that life throws at us. It’s a peace that allows you to sleep in the middle of a storm (Matt 8:23-27) because you know the Creator of the Universe watches over you, knows what is best for you, and provides you something the world cannot.
But how do we get this perfect peace? The second-to-last part of the verse gives us the answer — remaining steadfast. Let’s look at those two words: remain and steadfast.
To remain means to stay in the place that one was occupying, to continue to exist, especially after other similar or related things cease to exist. In the Greek, to remain means to live, abide, stay, keep, and stop. To be steadfast means you are firmly fixed in place, firm in belief, and essentially immovable. In the Greek, to be steadfast means to be constant, stable, fixed, and stationary.
There is a constant theme with these two words: don’t move, stand firm, stay connected, and live in. About the verse, we have a better understanding that to be kept in the Lord’s perfect peace, we need to stay firmly fixed to Him. While the world offers us things that will cease to exist, God offers us a relationship with Himself, which will exist for eternity.
Here’s the problem, though: To some degree, we all have trust issues. Maybe they stem from a past relationship or lack of one with a parent, maybe a spouse or significant other lost your trust, or maybe a friendship went south and now you have issues with trusting people. Whatever it may be, you have lost trust in someone or something. On the other side, maybe you are too trusting in things of this world to satisfy you, so you remain with the everyday temporal pleasures of the world and refuse to sit with Jesus because you don’t know if He can be trusted. You’ve tried to trust God with some of the hardest aspects of your life, but you forgot that faith is needed because you can’t see the next step. You’ve forgotten that you can truly trust the one who says He will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6). Even if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, our actions can display a lack of trust if we refuse to remain with Him and allow ourselves to get pulled by the forbidden apples, worries, and anxieties of the world.
My prayer today is that we know how trustworthy God is. My prayer is that as we grow in trust, we would:
- Continue to exist with Jesus
- Remain in His presence
- Live in Him
- Abide in Him and His word
- Stay connected to Him
- Keep His words close to our heart
- Stop looking for the world to give us perfect peace
- Stay fixed in place to His promises
- Be constant to run to Him in times of unknown
Because when we do all these things we have a peace that will remain with Jesus through the greatest pandemics of life, a peace that will transcend all understanding…a peace that is perfect.
Love you church,
Jay