Day 28

What Rises — A Peace That Stands

Today's Scripture: John 14:27 (NLT)

Among all the things that rise in the soul that is being crucified, perhaps none is more universally craved by the modern human heart than the peace that Jesus promised His disciples on the night before His own death. The world has built an entire wellness industry around the search for peace. Books, retreats, apps, programs, supplements, therapies — countless attempts to manufacture, by external means, the very thing Jesus said could only finally be given as a gift from inside. "My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." There is a peace the world gives. It is the peace of distraction, the peace of medication, the peace of escape. And then there is the peace that Christ gives. It is the peace of a soul anchored in Someone the storms cannot reach. The first kind of peace evaporates the moment the conditions that produced it change. The second kind stands when everything else has fallen.

This standing peace is one of the truest fruits of the crucified life. And the reason it is so deeply connected to the work of dying is not difficult to see when we look honestly at the soul. The self that lives in us is the great manufacturer of inner turmoil. It is the source of most of our anxieties. It is the engine of most of our fears. It is the part that runs the constant inner commentary about our reputation, our future, our comparison, our control. As long as that self is on the throne, peace is impossible — because peace cannot coexist with the constant noise of a ruling ego. The peace Jesus gives can only fully come into a soul that has, in some measure, been quieted. And the quieting happens through the dying.

Watch what Jesus says about peace in John 14. He gives it. He leaves it. He says it is His peace — His own. And then He gives the practical command that follows from receiving it: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." The command would be impossible if it were left as an external standard we had to live up to. We cannot, by command, simply stop our hearts from being troubled. But the command makes sense if the peace is a gift being offered, and our part is to receive it and to refuse to let our hearts go back to their old ways. The peace is given. Our work is to take it and to refuse the troubling that the flesh would prefer to indulge.

This is profoundly different from the world's pursuit of peace. The world tries to remove the causes of turmoil — change the circumstances, escape the relationship, leave the job, take the trip, find the new place — in the hope that with the right outer conditions, the inner state will follow. But the inner state never follows for long, because the source of most of our turmoil is not finally our circumstances; it is our flesh. We carry the source of the trouble with us into every new circumstance, and so the new place produces, in time, the same old turmoil. Until the flesh has been dealt with, no change of circumstance will produce lasting peace. The peace Christ gives is given to a soul in which the source of the trouble has been crucified, and so the peace does not depend on outer conditions at all.

This explains why some of the most peaceful believers in history have been those in the harshest external circumstances. Paul, in prison, wrote some of the most peace-saturated letters in the New Testament. Stephen, in the moment of his stoning, saw heaven open and committed his spirit to the Lord. Bonhoeffer, walking to his execution, told his fellow prisoner, "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life." These were not people in tranquil conditions. These were people in whom the flesh had been so put to death that the peace of Christ could rest in them undisturbed by the storms that surrounded them. They show us what the rising peace of the crucified life actually looks like in its mature form.

And this peace is rising in you, in measure, as you walk the road of this month. You may not always feel it. Some days will still feel turbulent. The work is not finished. But beneath the surface, slowly, a stability is being formed. A place in you that does not move when the wind blows. An inner room that the storms outside cannot enter, because the door is bolted from the inside by Someone greater than the storms. This is what Jesus has been doing all along. The dying has been creating the space. The peace has been moving into that space. And what is rising in you, day by day, is a peace that the world cannot give and the world cannot take away.

Receive it today. Refuse to let your heart be troubled in the things that used to trouble it. Practice the holding of this peace in the small disturbances of the day, so that when the larger disturbances come, you have already learned the practice.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I receive Your peace today. The peace that does not come from the world and does not depend on the conditions of my life. The peace that rests in a soul where the flesh has been crucified. Quiet in me the inner manufacturer of turmoil. Let my heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Stand me in the peace that You give to those You have brought through the cross. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Throughout this day, when something would normally trouble you, pause and pray: "Lord, I receive Your peace in this moment. I refuse to let my heart be troubled. This belongs to You." Practice the holding of the peace, one moment at a time.

"The peace the world gives evaporates the moment the wind changes; the peace Christ gives stands in storms that level everything else."