How to Have a Peaceful Heart

1 John 3:19-23

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;

Recently I saw a reality television show called Hack my Brain. On the show, an ordinary man set a goal of walking a tightrope between two buildings, even though he knew nothing about tightrope walking. To prepare he visited a bevy of brain scientists who worked with him on overcoming his fear and anxiety. 

One such expert was a Zen master. He asked him to get on his knees and bow low in meditation. While he was meditating, the master took a board and whacked him across the back. He howled in pain. Then he told him to set his mind in stillness. To accept the pain, and not to run from it. He hit him again. It still hurt, but he did not move. The stillness of his mind did not take the pain away, but it took his mind away from the pain. This time the man did not flinch. He knew the pain was only temporary, and he was able to accept the pain as temporary.

We Christians do not practice that kind of meditation, but we should recognize the temporary nature of our pain. God is in control. If we have peace with God, then we need not panic. Anxiety and panic magnifies every blow that life brings upon us. But our assurance must be in the truth. It isn’t our ability to cope, but God’s ability to deliver that gives Christians the freedom from fear. Peace with God is having the peace to accept what life offers, whether it is good or bad, as being part of God’s will for us. It is an acceptance of the reality of God’s provision.  

We all have problems, but some people cope better than others. If we lose a limb or a loved one we grieve, but in time we can go on to survive, grow, and even thrive. But without hope for something better the pain of our lives will be magnified many times over. We may lose our job, yet we know that we are in God’s hands, and we know that we can find another job. But if we don’t believe it we can fall apart. 

Our well being requires that we have a sense of purpose and direction. With a sense of purpose, we can learn to live with just about anything, but without it our lives fall into depression, anxiety and despair. Only when we have a spiritual foundation to our lives can we have emotional and physical rest.

If we are of the truth as John was, then we will have an assured heart. Peace with God is the assurance in our heart that God is with us, and is working in all things for our benefit. Inner peace with God is not the absence of grief and trouble, but the recognition of inner stillness that comes from knowing we are being kept in God’s hands. We cannot keep bad things from happening to us, but it is the acceptance of what life dishes out. This acceptance means we are not deterred. We can survive our pain and go forward in time.  

What if we don’t have peace with God? Then we react to difficulty in our lives in one of three ways. The first way is to panic, the second is to blame others, and the third is to justify our false behavior.

But do we have peace with God? That’s the question! Are we really on God’s side, or do we just think He’s there. 

We are all guilty of doing things that God does not approve. We’ve been unfaithful to him and to others. We’ve been idolaters, seeking the wrong things. There is no exceptions to this. 

In Carl Menninger’s book Whatever Became of Sin, Menninger writes of a street preacher who walked down the street shouting out to everyone who passed, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” As two men passed, they turned to each other and said, “How did he know?”  He knows because God knows the truth. We are all sinners. Every one of us. In the words of the Book of Common Worship,  “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”  We know we are sinners, if we aren’t we are lying to ourselves.

Sin causes separation from God. Because we are sinners we cannot have that peace and assurance we need when trouble comes upon us. We think God is helping, but we wonder if we deserve His help, or we wonder if He is there at all. 

How do you know that God is on your side, and that you can have peace with God? John addresses this issue next in his letter.

“For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”

This is John’s way of saying, “If you think you’re bad, then you don’t know the half of it!”

Has your heart ever condemned you? Of course it has. We all know it when we have sinned, but often we cannot accept it if we did, and we know we don’t have peace with God. Without peace with God we cannot be assured when trouble comes that things will be all right. For this reason, we try to avoid our own self-condemnation. We run from it, deny it, try to force ourselves into believing that we are really good people. When our heart condemns us we have a whole list of excuses.

We say, “I’m not so bad. I’ve done good things, too.”  Is doing good sufficient payment for doing bad? How do we know? The BTK killer, a notorious serial killer, was the lay leader in a Lutheran church. Did that excuse his actions?  Al Qaeda does charity work in Muslim countries, does that make Al Qaeda good? How good do you have to be to atone for sins? No, sin is sin, regardless of how much good we do.

We say, “There are plenty of people who are worse.” Somewhere in the world there must be a man who is so bad that he can’t find anyone anywhere worse than him. This person has a great advantage over the average person in getting peace with God, since he can’t find anyone else to point at who is worse. He has no choice but to repent. The rest of us seem to take perverse pride in finding someone worse than ourselves, because it makes us feel so much better. This excuse doesn’t work with God.

I once took a course on juvenile delinquency.  The book told of a man who was called down to the police station, because his son was caught stealing cars. He said, “My son is a good boy. Sure he’s stolen cars, but he’s never stripped one in his life!”  We can always find something worse than what we’ve done, but that doesn’t minimize the damage that our sins have done.

Or we say, “I couldn’t help myself.” Of course you can! AA is fond of saying that alcoholism is a disease of the mind, not the elbow. Nothing forces us to bend the elbow to put a drink to our mouths. We do it with our own free will. We can stop any time we want, we just don’t want to.

If we left it here, then we might just think that having peace with God was a question of owning up to our responsibilities, and showing will power. But John doesn’t leave it there. Instead he goes one step farther in the condemnation that we are willing to go. God knows you better than you know yourself. He sees not only what our heart sees and denies, but he sees the greater sins that are still hidden within too. Growing in faith and knowledge doesn’t make you feel better about yourself. Quite the contrary, the more we grow in faith, the more we become aware of how bad you are. 

When my parents were young, they didn’t know smoking was bad for you. Later, they found that this seemingly innocent habit was deadly. My ancestors never knew that racism and slavery were wrong. They may have tried to follow Jesus, and avoid the sins they knew, but they fell victim to the sins they did not know. But God was greater than their hearts and knew it all along. 

You are not a good person—you are only slightly less sinful than others. Arguing about who is the most righteous is like a herd of pigs rolling in a sty arguing about which is less dirty. We are all sinners, but even so, we can still have peace with God. Listen to what John says next.

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.”

God knows all your sins, but He loves you anyway. We can’t know everything, but we can follow the light we have. You will never be perfect, but you don’t have to be. Just deal with sin in the light you have. Leave the rest to God. Christ died for all our sins—past, present and future--so we can walk in peace with God. When you find something wrong in your life deal with it right away and be forgiven.  Trying to hold on to sin, or denying its existence just makes it worse. 

Have you ever found a roach on your kitchen counter? What did you do? You had a choice. You could call an exterminator, roach bomb your kitchen, or you could pretend you didn’t see it, and say to yourself, “I’m a good housekeeper. I don’t have roaches,” or “It’s just one little roach. What harm could it do?” If you don’t act, that one roach will probably invite hundreds of his friends to join him.

We have to deal with sin in our lives if we want peace with God. The proud, the lazy, the self-deniers, and the blamers condemn themselves to a life of lies, while protecting their false self-image. But the person who accepts their own vulnerability and culpability may grow in faith and peace with God.

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

Peace with God comes through faith in God’s forgiveness. God’s Spirit will help us discern right from wrong. When we know what is right, we do right. When we know we’ve done wrong, we seek forgiveness. God’s love covers all our mistakes, all our weakness, and all our sins. His grace is sufficient to give us the peace we need.

One of my friends lost two of his children in a car accident. Few things produce more sadness than the loss of a child. Yet he testifies to how God’s peace came on him, and comforted him in that loss.

Does he cry? Of course--he cried buckets. Did he get instant relief? Of course not. He had many dark nights of sorrow. But in the end, he came through and survived. Christ can give you peace in your darkest times. He doesn’t take you away from pain and suffering, but He gives us the grace to go forward.