Isaiah 26:3-4 - You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
What do you think it would be like to have perfect peace? It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Just having peace at all is difficult, but perfect peace seems like wishful thinking, or even an impossibility. We can long for peace in just one area of our lives, like our relationships, but perfect peace, because it is perfect, would need to reach to every area in our lives.
How then can we have this perfect peace? First, we have to understand that perfect peace comes from God alone. We can find peace in many things, but a perfect peace can only be found in a perfect source. So, we find perfect peace in the Lord, but what we see in these verses is that God is able to keep us there. Perhaps the reason peace is so hard to come by is because we are trying to find it in the wrong places, and once we think we’ve found it, it’s up to us to stay there.
Certainly, we have a part to play in having peace, but the foundation of perfect peace and the longevity of it, is found in God. So what do we do in all of this? Our responsibility is to have our minds focused on the Lord. We think of him, we remember him, we meditate on him. When we hear that this is the way to peace, we may think of it as an oversimplification. And yet, there is sweetness and hope in the simplicity of it. The chaos in our world is complex, but the solution is not, even though we may think that it is.
At the heart of having peace is trust. We lack peace when life is not stable, and life is generally not stable when there are things in it that can’t be trusted. For instance, you won’t have much peace driving a car when you can hear the engine making noises an engine isn’t supposed to make. You aren’t going to have peace in relationships if you can’t trust the people in your life to be honest with you. You aren’t going to have peace at work if your employer talks about downsizing, and they aren’t sure who they will have to let go.
However, the Lord is totally trustworthy in all that he has said, all that he has done, and all the he will do. So if we trust in him, the sovereign God who reigns over all things, who isn’t surprised by anything that happens, then doesn’t it stand to reason that if we trust him in his sovereignty that peace will not be far off. In fact, if we trust in a perfect God, and we think on his perfections, then the idea of perfect peace becomes more of a reality.
There is no area of your life that God cannot bring peace to. Today, the chaos of this world and the confusion in your own heart may make you long for peace. Trust in the Lord today and forever. He is the everlasting rock. He is unshakable, immovable and faithful. Though the earth gives way beneath you, the Lord will remain. If you want perfect peace, cast yourself onto the everlasting rock, find your hope in him, and know that in his strength, you can find peace and rest for your soul.
