(John 14:27, KJV)
The first
time I really took in this scripture was when my friend Mike Hartley died in
1981. I received a phone call one evening saying that he had been killed in a
motorcycle accident. When I went to bed a few hours later, my heart was torn up
with pain. I needed God’s comfort so badly, and I needed His Word. I opened up
my King James Bible and found myself at John Chapter 14. As I slowly read
through the chapter, I came to this verse, and through it the peace of God came
to me.
The
interesting thing was that my soul—my mind and emotions—were still torn up but
my spirit was full of a deep and powerful peace; and that peace took dominion
over the grief in my soul. The grief was still there, but it could not carry me
away because now I was being carried by God’s Spirit through my own spirit. I thought
of the words then in Hebrews 4:12, where God says that His Word divides asunder
soul and spirit, meaning that it separates and discerns between the two. It was
the first time I ever saw, ever experienced, the distinct difference between my
soul and my spirit. Because those two entities in me were experiencing two
totally different emotions, I saw how they were distinct from one another.
The other
morning, reading in the Amplified Bible (Classic), I came across this verse
again. Some new things about it struck me, especially in this expanded
translation.
Read it
thoughtfully:
Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and
bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your
hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be
agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and
intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.]
Jesus begins
by telling us that He is leaving His peace with us. He explains that it is His
very own peace and that He’s not just giving it to us, He is bequeathing it to
us. A bequest speaks of what is left to us in a will when someone dies, and
Jesus spoke these words immediately before His arrest and crucifixion. His
peace is part of our inheritance, an eternal provision. He doesn’t give it to
us the way the world often gives, giving only to take away again; He leaves it
with us forever.
Whenever we
discover that we do not have peace, we need to notice and then stir ourselves
up to get it back. It belongs to us, but sometimes when we are not paying
attention, it gets stolen from us. It is the thief, John 10:10 tells us, Satan,
who comes to steal (and to kill and destroy). When we apprehend him and expose his crime, if we know our spiritual rights, we will command that he return double
what he has taken (Ex. 22:4, 7). This means that when we contend to get our
peace back, we should find that in the end we have a lot more peace than we did
before the theft occurred.
Anxiety
creeps up on us just like a thief and tries to steal away our peace. If anxiety
comes upon us when circumstances take an adverse turn, it means that normally
our peace is based on our circumstances and not on who God is and what He says.
Jesus says
not to let our heart be troubled or afraid. This means that we have the power,
the authority, to command our hearts in this matter. This command must originate
in our spirit, which is filled with and directed by God’s Spirit. We must learn
to keep the powers of our soul—mind, will, and emotions—under the direction of
our spirit, which in turn is submitted to God.
We might
even have to address our soul aloud and say, “Mind, emotions, do not be
afraid. Will, I order you to set yourself against this unrest. I command you,
soul: do not be troubled.” We must cut off and expel all fearful thoughts and
emotions. Paraphrasing 2 Cor. 10:5, we must cast down every thought and emotion
that lifts itself up above what we know to be true of God, bringing every one
of them captive into submission to Christ.
Just as it
is inappropriate for a child to be calling the shots with its parents, it is a
disruption of God’s order for the soul to exert dominion over the spirit. The
mind, will, and emotions can be like undisciplined children, bent on their own
way, refusing to submit, and being “wise in their own eyes” (Proverbs 3:7, KJV). These unruly
children might say, “I think I should be worried right now, and so I am going
to worry.” But we must stop allowing ourselves to be agitated and disturbed; we
must not permit ourselves to be unsettled.
The only way
to precipitate this momentous shift in our thoughts and emotions is to get
alone with God and transact with Him along these lines, agreeing with His Word,
and bringing every essentially blasphemous imagination into obedience to
Christ.
Sometimes
when something is stolen from us, it seems too much trouble to go to the authorities
and try to apprehend the thief. Whether or not it is worth it to us will depend
on how valuable the thing is that we have lost. I don’t know about you, but I
count the peace of God as one of my most valuable possessions.
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