By Alan Dean
Retired pastor, Seventh-day Adventist Church
Psalm 119:165 reads “Great peace have they which love Thy law.” And Isaiah 26:3 states “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.”
These are two great principles that bring a Christian peace of mind. Jesus, while here on earth had perfect peace because He lived both principles. He was ever obedient to His Father’s will and He loved to dwell on the things of God. When we do the same, we will have perfect peace, even in our sinful, violent world.
The world that Jesus lived in was also sinful and violent as well. The Roman soldiers had little compassion for the Jews; Jewish leaders were constantly finding fault with Jesus and spreading lies about Him; and Satan constantly made Jesus’ life as unbearable as he could. Yet Jesus had inner peace.
One of the many examples of Satan’s harassments was when Jesus and His disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee one evening in a boat. (Mark 4:35,36) Jesus, tired from the day’s work, quickly fell asleep. All at once Satan bore down on this group with a fearful storm that was meant to destroy them all. The boat quickly began to fill up with water. The disciples did their best to bail the water out, but it was a losing battle. However, Jesus, in the back of the boat, calmly slept on.
Finally, they woke him up, yelling to Him “Don’t you care if we perish?” As Jesus awakes, He calmly rebukes the storm by saying “Peace, be still!” And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. What a surprise and great relief this was to these disciples. They said one to another “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” (Mark 4:41)
We certainly live in a stormy world today. But our private world need not be stormy or fearful. If we learn to love and follow the laws and ways of God and continually keep our minds focused on Jesus, we are promised that we will have inner peace. Jesus will send His angels to watch over us and the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us.
1 John 4:8 states “Perfect love casteth out fear.” By putting our lives totally in Jesus’ hands, we can have confidence that we are under His care. Troubles will still come, but Jesus will be with us to see us through them. We won’t be overcome by them. Our faith in Jesus will only grow stronger to meet future challenges. By reading the Bible regularly we learn to love the laws of God and we will be focusing our mind more and more on Jesus.
