Experienceing the "Peace of God"

Experiencing the

“Peace of God”

There should be no fear of God in the heart of a believer. There should be only a deep and powerful realization of being loved and accepted by God the Father, the Creator of the Universe.

When fear is in a person’s heart toward God, it is clear that the person in question does not really believe that God loves him with a perfect love. If there is fear, it is because that person is afraid of what God will do to him. He is afraid he will be hurt or rejected by God.

John 4:18 (The Living Bible) I need have no fear of someone who loves me perfectly; His perfect love for me eliminates all dread of what He might do to me. If I am afraid, it is for fear of what He might do to me, and shows that I am not fully convinced that He really loves me.

Notice here that I read the Bible in first person. Make a habit of this and you will see scripture from a different perspective.

The earmark of the Christian who believes what Jesus did through His death, burial, and resurrection should be a life of confident acceptance that is permeated with peace. There should be no torment. There should be no nagging sense of guilt and rejection. There should be only peace.

Every religion in the world offers peace to man. Christianity is the only one, however, that delivers. For we are not a people that is attempting to achieve a state or status that will give us peace; we are a people that has been made right  with God through the finished work or one Man, Christ Jesus. And because of His finished work, we have been granted peace with God.

Because not every Christian knows or believes this wonderful reality; not every Christian lives in a continual state of peace. Far too many Christians live in torment and turmoil, always fearful that things are not right between them and God.

Religion is man’s attempt to find peace with God. Christianity, on the other hand, is man’s accepting peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many people are awaiting judgment from an angry God. Many times they have no idea what they could have done; they just have a sense of fear and impending judgment. This is what the Bible calls condemnation, or the expectation of damnation and judgment. In Christ, though, we are free from condemnation!

What is so sad is that this portrait of fearful people also describes many of the fearful who sit in church every Sunday. Fear seems to be the motivating factor in the lives of many Christians. Who represented God so negatively that an entire world is turned off? It has not been some force outside the church that has so destroyed the reputation of God. It has not been some evil, demonic group. Unfortunately, it has been the voices of well-meaning people within the church.

Fear has been passed down from generation to generation in the church. From the earliest of times, the church has struggled with believing the truth about the finished work of Jesus. This failure to believe the truth has been the root of the fear, anxiety, and sometimes outright meanness of the church down through the ages.

Isa 53:1 “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

When Isaiah prophesied about the great work of the cross, he also prophesied, “Who has believed our report?” There is a report about God that is so good, so freeing, so loving, so kind, so merciful, and so generous that man refuses to believe it.

Thos who reject this wonderful report either spend a lifetime trying to please God or ultimately walk away from God. Most people are angry at God because of the unbelieving report they heard in church than for any other reason.

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling other, either putting or keeping them in their place. This control seems to have become the goal of the church. Rather than setting people free with the good news about Jesus, they use it as a way to bring people under their control.

What you believe about righteousness is what you believe about how you relate to God. If keeping the law is our basis for righteousness, then it is also the basis for receiving the promises of God. It is the basis of getting our prayers answered. It is the basis of God’s protection. If keeping the law is the basis of righteousness, then our ability to have peace is determined by our ability to keep the law. Ultimately, keeping the law becomes our basis for salvation.

While proclaiming belief in Jesus as the way of salvation in one breath, we have totally excluded Jesus in the next breath. Of course, none of us denies Jesus as Lord. In experience, however, we look to our performance to provide everything that Jesus died to provide. Intellectually and theologically, Jesus is still the center of our faith, but emotionally and functionally, we have become the center of our faith.

Romans 8:5-8 (The Message Bible) Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them fine that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what He is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

This self-obsession is not the product of a person who desires to reject God. Rather, this is the person who is trying to please God by his own efforts. This is the person who has ignorantly rejected the finished work of Jesus and has become obsessed with earning righteousness by his performance; thus he has an obsession with self.

In the book of Galatians, Paul pointed out the motivation of those who pervert the Gospel (Good News): control! Leaders who don’t trust Jesus don’t believe the Gospel (Good News) will work by its own power. Because they themselves do not believe in the power of the Gospel, they feel it is their job to control you, to “put you in your place.”

What makes this so undetectable is the motive. Many of the most destructive forces in the church are people with good motives. The most dangerous person is the one who has a deep passion to help people but who does not believe in the power of the Gospel (Good News) to produce change. Instead of proclaiming the finished work of the Lord Jesus and entrusting the people to the work of the Holy Spirit, that person will resort to carnal methods of control. When people are controlled, it appears that they have changed. So the deep motive to help people justifies the desire to control.

The main tool for control is fear. If you are not confident in your relationship with God, you will have fear. Fear will rob you of confidence. It will restrict you. It will make you angry. It will make you emotionally unstable. Fear will strip you of the new identity you have in Jesus. It will leave you stripped of the God-ordained dignity and worth that belong to you as a priest and a king. It will make you feel the need for an intercessor.

The intercessor who will come between you and God will not be the Lord Jesus, however. After all, you have rejected the peace He gives for the peace that someone else is offering. Instead, this intercessor will be someone who offers to show you the way—the formula. It will be someone who will know all the rules and requirements for staying right with God.

God desires for you to know and experience His great love, acceptance, and peace. But you must believe the report God gives about the finished work of Jesus. It is a good report. It is a report of peace!