Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
When God\u2019s peace comes into our lives, it can sometimes be difficult for us to accept. For those whose Christian experience has known more times of strife, doubt and fear than of calm, assurance and encouragement, it may be challenging to rest in the blessing and favor of God when it finally becomes real to us. The peace of Christ may actually feel alien to believers who have been perpetually striving to keep their spiritual heads above water.<\/p>\n
Only the most Pollyanna among us insist on maintaining the erroneous belief that the lifelong walk of faith does not include, for all of God\u2019s children, times of great personal struggle. Who can deny that even the greatest \u201cheroes\u201d of our faith knew periods of darkness that stretched them to the seeming limits of their endurance? If the Christian life were inherently serene why would the Bible memorialize the details of the deep trials of the saints in both the Old and New Testaments?<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most afflicted believers are those who have known severe abuse during their pre-conversion experience and who possess a constitutional tendency towards the melancholy. They are also often among those who take their faith walk with the greatest seriousness. For these individuals it may be that only a lifelong pilgrimage of healing will slowly open them to the deepest blessings of the authentic Christian walk.<\/p>\n
One of these deep blessings is the experience of \u201cthe peace that passes understanding\u201d (Philippians 4.7) which Jesus promises to those who come to know Him \u201cin spirit and in truth\u201d (John 4:23, 24).This is the peace that comes despite<\/em> circumstances, not because<\/em> of<\/em> them. It is a profound rest from all the anxieties that plague us even though the circumstantial sources of those anxieties may still remain present in our lives. It is not the absence of negative things in our lives, but rather a transcendence of them through the presence of the Spirit of Christ.<\/p>\n Such a transcendent manifestation of God\u2019s peace may not come until many years into our Christian experience. Again, this is especially true if we have deep \u201cgrooves\u201d of negativity in our hearts and minds from earlier traumatic experiences, combined with an inherently \u201cheavy nature.\u201d For us, periods of knowing the peace that passes understanding may be few and far between, especially in the early days of our faith.<\/p>\n When, after years of perseverance in belief, we finally begin to more consistently know the serenity of a heart progressively surrendered to Christ, it may initially feel unnatural to us. After all, most of our Christian lives have been marked by long stretches of tumult and pain. It may seem that real, enduring peace is too good to be true! We might even find ourselves resisting it and retreating back into the \u201cunease\u201d to which we are accustomed.<\/p>\n Although we assert that we want to know this new blessing, we also dread that if we give ourselves over to it, it may disappear and leave us more bereft of comfort than ever before. Some of us may go so far as to unconsciously sabotage this increase in our well-being, proactively striking against it before it has a chance to damage us further through its departure.<\/p>\n This fear of accepting God\u2019s renewal of our hearts and minds is spiritually irrational; the Bible clearly states that God longs<\/em> to give us His peace as part of our inheritance as His children (John 14:27). Of course we are often irrational beings and, beyond that, many of us have been damaged by others from whom we once derived a certain sense of peace. For us, learning to accept the true peace of Christ is a process, and one that may have been impeded up until this day by unhealed wounds deep in our souls.<\/p>\n The best advice for those who can relate to this spiritual state of affairs is to continue steadfastly in holding on to God\u2019s promise of ultimate peace while simultaneously learning to relax when it begins to manifest itself. In time the sovereign grace of God will begin to fill in those grooves of negativity with His healing presence, and enduring peace will start to gain a blessed upper hand in our hearts. In the meantime we need to persevere in the belief that His love always finds a way<\/em>. Eventually, progressively, the divine peace we desperately crave will dawn in the deepest part of our being\u2026.and there it can remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved When God\u2019s peace comes into our lives, it can sometimes be difficult for us to accept. For those whose Christian experience has known more times of strife, doubt and fear than of calm, assurance and encouragement, it may be challenging to rest in the blessing and favor of… <\/p>\n