The Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

Matthew 6: 25-34

The Fruit of the Spirit are characteristics of Jesus that should be present in our own lives through the work of the Spirit. The third of these fruits is peace.

Peace--what a big, beautiful word! In Hebrew it is shalom, which means a quality of life that includes wholeness of body and soul. It is not just peace between people, but peace of mind as well. It is living with a central calm of heart in the midst of trouble. 

Jesus possessed this center—in fact, He was the “Prince of Peace.” He had peace of mind in the middle of jeering crowds and raging enemies. When the crowd pressed around him, He had peace. While fasting for forty days and nights, hungry and thirsty in the hot desert sun, Jesus had peace. He possessed this quality of peace even in the midst of His most trying days. His peace wasn’t tied to outer circumstances, but came from inside. That’s the quality the Spirit replicates inside of those who follow Him.

Peace of mind isn’t fake. We don’t just act non-anxious. We are actually non-anxious. It is the ability to look at tomorrow and not worry, to look at others without wanting what they have, and to look at our past failures and really be okay with them. We can have this peace not because we know the future, but because we now hold the future. We can look at the past and know it is really gone and forgotten. We turn our back on our problems, because we know that God has our backs.

The struggle for inner peace is a battle I know all too well. In my late forties I underwent a burn-out episode. At the time, I thought it was because I was working too hard. I pastored a larger church, was helping to raise teenagers, and getting my doctorate.  Now I realize that my burnout was not from working too hard—it was from worrying too hard. Worry was killing me. Even though God was in my life and I was hard at work for Him, I grew tired and frustrated, because there were too many things on my mind.  I didn’t know what would happen with my children or my work, or what would happen to me in the future, so I worried. I could not let go of these things. In truth, I didn’t want to let go.

That’s the case with many of us. We don’t give God our worries, because we want to be in control.  We want to keep our futures in our own hands. I wanted my children to be secure and I thought it was my job to make them secure. I worried about retirement. I worried about what others were saying about me. I worried if I would ever accomplish what I thought I should. All these worries I added to the real stress of my daily life. I was approaching a breakdown both physically and mentally.

 

It was about that time, that a friend gave me a book titled, The Anxiety Cure by Christian psychologist name Dr. Archibald Hart. It gave a medical explanation for what I was feeling at the time.

The problem, he said, was due to adrenalin.  Adrenalin is the substance our body releases when we are faced with an immediate threat. Adrenalin enables us for a time to think faster, run faster, keep going longer, withstand pain, and go beyond our strength. It’s like a double-shot of expresso right into our brains. Fear produces adrenalin, but so does any strong emotion or excitement. Adrenalin is produced in times when we need to go beyond our natural abilities.

This is great stuff at those moments when we need it. For example, when we need to sprint for a forty-yard touchdown, outrun an angry bear, or finish a race. But adrenalin is not free. It always exacts a price. Physically, when adrenalin wears off, we become tired and worn out. Mentally, it breaks down other brain chemicals such as serotonin which keep us calm and peaceful. Too much adrenalin, and we burn out and break down.

  Worry is fear over something we cannot control.  It causes a constant release of adrenalin into our system.  Our hearts beat faster; our palms get sweaty; and our blood pressure goes sky high.  Our mind races. We can’t sleep. We either eat too much or too little. Soon we become tired and weary all the time. We lose all peace of mind and body.

Worried people are tired pretty much all the time. Even when we accomplish little, we feel exhausted. We may not even know why we feel that way. It’s not our work that is tiring us. It is our worry.  We can’t seem to rest because we are carrying a hundred-pound load of worry wherever we go.

Jesus, addresses our worry in this passage, and explains how we can have peace. 

He begins, “Do not be anxious over tomorrow” The word for “anxious” comes from a root word that means to analyze of make plans. We should all make plans for the future, but that’s not what he means. The word means to continually make plans—to make them, question, them, and remake them. We constantly think about what we ought to be doing, questioning our actions and criticizing our own choices. Once we have made our plans, our minds won’t let go. Have we done enough for our kids?  Have we done enough for retirement?  Are we secure enough, or do we need one more layer of security. To lock the door before we go to bed is good sense. To lay awake at night wondering whether we’ve forgotten to lock them, or toss and turn about whether the locks are strong enough is worry. To wash our hand is sensible. To be a germ phobic is worry. To save for retirement is sensible.  To lay awake worrying about the future is worry.

Jesus says not to worry about what you will eat, where you will sleep, or what you will put on. Of course these are legitimate concerns, but they are not our concerns!  They are God’s concerns, not yours. Once you have done what you can, don’t keep thinking about it. 

We can’t squelch our emotions, but we can focus our thoughts elsewhere. Our emotions will eventually follow our attention. When we worry about past mistakes, future situations, or people outside of our control, we produce unnecessary adrenalin which, if we continue to produce it, will destroy us. 

Now the Bible never tells us not to worry without giving us reason. Jesus gives us three reasons for having peace of mind.

First, we can have peace of mind because God is our provider, not ourselves. Consider the lilies, (Jesus says) consider the birds. These creatures seem happy even though they have no conscious knowledge of tomorrow at all.  If they can be happy simply relying on God, why can’t we? God takes care of them. In spite of possessing brains capable of planning for the future, we are really no better off than grass and bugs. We can only plan for things that we know and can control. God must keep all the rest.

For example, imagine a woman who sees a counselor because she is worried about her grown daughter who is living an immoral life. She worries that her daughter will get in trouble. She prays for her and warns her, but so far it hasn’t worked. She thinks that she needs to offer more to help. Maybe she isn’t praying hard enough, or that she needs to warn her one more time. But there is nothing she can do. Her daughter is not in her hands any more.  But this woman is being robbed of peace—not by her daughter’s behavior, but by the mistaken notion that there is something more she can or should do.

We often say, “Put your worries in God’s hands.” But this is wrong, because we don’t need to put our worries in God’s hands. They are already there. We can only take them out and put them in our own. As soon as something is not in our control it is in God’s. Our job is not to put someone in God’s hands, but to go out and mind the things that God has put in ours today, and quit trying to take on what He keeps in His.

Second, Jesus tells us to “Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  What exactly is the “kingdom of God?” God’s kingdom is wherever God is in control. It means to pay attention to the things God expects of you at this moment. Ask yourself what God wants from you right now?  Pay attention to your relationship to God right now, and leave the rest for Him. 

Christianity isn’t a guilt-driven faith—He isn’t standing over us with a clipboard, giving us marks for whether or not we’ve tried hard enough. He’s not interested in our performance. Any inadequacy in your service to God is more than made up for in God’s adequacy. He wants you to pay more attention to Him than the job at hand.

My dad taught me at an early age to work with wood--to hammer, saw, and sand. I always thought I was helping him when he was building furniture.  I probably did a lot to slow down his projects with my mistakes! When I got older, I realized that Dad didn’t need me there—he invited me to work with him, because he wanted me beside him. It was something we shared together.

God does the same.  He’s not with us to judge us. He’s there because He wants our presence.   Seeking the Kingdom is seeking His presence. Peace comes as the result of spending time with the Prince of Peace.

Third, Jesus tells us to focus on the here and now, “Do not worry about tomorrow.  Today has enough problems.” If we pay attention to today, then we won’t be worrying over tomorrow.

Our anxiety for tomorrow can keeps us from accomplishing anything today. Suppose you want to get in shape, so you take up walking, but can only walk to the corner.  If you look at how little you’re able to do, then you can become frustrated and say, I’ll never walk a mile!” Instead of celebrating what you’ve done today, you complain about what you can’t do. But you are still better off than yesterday, when you could not walk at all. Celebrate what God has done through you today, and rejoice in your accomplishments. That’s all you need for now. But our anxious sense of inadequacy wants to rob us of peace by making us look at what others can do, instead of what we can do. We lose our peace when we look at what we had in the past, or the unfulfilled goals of the future. We look backwards to the past, forward to the future, or sideways at others, instead of looking up in thankfulness and trust to He who gave us today.

To find the Kingdom, we must not look in the past or in the future. We must look to the now. Peace of mind today is the greatest gift you can give yourself, and the surest path to Him.