Peace for the troubled heart

      This coming April I shall be celebrating my fifty-second spiritual birthday. On that day in 1960 a six year old boy sitting on the back of my dad’s car gave my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. I would like to say that everything in my life has been wonderful since that day but as with everyone else I have had my share of challenges.


The hardest challenge that life can throw at us is to be put in the position of facing our greatest fear. I found myself having to deal with that fear when my Doctor told me three years ago that I needed open heart surgery. Eleven years before I found out I had heart trouble and knew that someday this day would come. Based on all the sleepless nights of mind-numbing fear I had suffered through I expected to be overwhelmed with fear.

Instead the night before my surgery the Spirit of God filled my heart with the peace of God. The next day as they prepped me for surgery, and later as they wheeled me into the operating room, I never experienced the slightest hint of fear. I knew that Father had placed a peace in my heart greater than my fear.

The apostle Paul had come to the end of his time and he knew it. He wrote his spiritual son timothy a final letter where he poured his heart out about many things. Yet when he turned to his own ordeal he told timothy he had fought a good fight and in so many words that he was ready to die for the Lord (II Timothy 4:7). Paul I do not believe was just demonstrating great courage, but rather I am convinced the peace of God had been infused in his heart. God gave him what he needed when he needed it.

In this world we have a menagerie of human emotions and stresses that life brings to us. We have suffered under the jarring emotions of rage, rejection, and the many other sorrows that life has so often deposited on our doorsteps. Yet believer in Christ I believe that Jesus longs to give us a higher revelation of the nature and God given ability that the peace he offers us actually is. Peace is not an emotional state.

Peace is a state of being. We have I now realize a very superficial understanding of what peace actually is. It is the bedrock and ally of faith. It is almost impossible to walk in faith while we are being buffeted by the winds and storms of this life. Satan and his minions know the power and authority that the peace of God affords the human heart.

We can know a peace so profound that no matter what life may be throwing at us at any given moment we cannot be moved. Peace is the very atmosphere of heaven and the kingdom of God. It is also a fruit of the Spirit and as such has a divine origin. Peace is a divine personality trait or attribute of Father God. It is not a human emotion.

Emotions require circumstances to be right to work. The peace of God that Father has made available is a free gift all we have to do is ask him for it. No matter what we may deal with in this life, including death itself is no match for the peace of God. Father God is making available to every wounded heart or heart filled with fear a peace that allows us to see the situation and the world as he sees it. We can stand victorious in Christ no matter what we may face because our hearts have been transformed by the kingdom power and authority of peace.