Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Think about a time in your life when you've lost all peace, when you looked around and the main theme for your life was loss—your relationships, your money, your health. Maybe you felt like you'd lost connection even with the Lord. Life has a way of robbing us of our peace.
The promise that Jesus gives us is not that we're going to have a life of ease or a storm-free life, but He promises us His presence, and He promises us His peace, even in the midst of the storms.
Peace Is a Person
Listen to our text. It says, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You." Peace is a person. Notice how it says trust in You. Our trust has to be in a person, and His name is Jesus, who's known as the Prince of Peace. Right? I can have chaos all around me and still have peace in my life. How? Because my peace is not attached to my circumstance. As a Christian, I have eternal peace and I'm at peace with God.
My peace is not attached to myself because I'm going to fail myself eventually. Nor is it attached to people, nor is it attached to the system of this world. My hope is not in a system. It's in a person, that is, the Lord. We're reminded today to trust in Him if we want to experience peace.
Fixing Our Thoughts on Him
Then he says, "all whose thoughts are fixed on You." If I'm going to experience peace, my thoughts have to be fixed on the Lord, and that takes time and it takes meditation. What is meditation? It means to mutter. It means to speak the Word of God out loud. It means to chew on the Word of God slowly. As I do that, as I fill my mind with the truth of God's Word, I'm going to experience peace.
How? Well, as I learn about the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, what that does is it brings peace into my life. I can't tell you how many times—in fact, I had this thought the other day. I was like, I wonder if God regrets saving me because I should be way farther along by now, and I feel like I keep messing up in this area. I had to preach the gospel to myself. I had to fix my mind on Romans chapter 8, verse 1: "There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus."
I'm writing that Scripture down. I'm speaking it out loud. The result? I experience the peace that only comes from the Prince of Peace. Let's remember peace is a person. It's not something that you and I chase. The writer says, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You and all whose thoughts are fixed on You."