Skip to main content

Understanding Peace

  

Matthew 5:9 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” 

There are two things that stick out to me when I read this scripture. For one, in order to be called “children of God”, we are to have peace: it’s a collective trait we must all share. The second thing is that the scripture didn’t say peace, it says “peacemakers”, implying some level of work to be done to receive it. Peace is inherited from God, but that doesn’t mean work is not required to receive it. Peace requires trust, and trust requires a full surrendering: completely submitting our problems to him, having solace in the fact that God’s security is bigger than our circumstances. 

As I've gotten older, I’ve always questioned what true peace is. Questions like “When will I ever reach peace?” or “Am I even deserving of peace?”. I don’t think I’m alone in asking these questions. Whether you have said it verbally or not, we’ve all wanted our situations to be better. We’ve all had a desire to live a better life, and I’m sure if we all had the option to live life with no problems: 8 billion people will line up, eager to sign that contract.

Maybe you are going through a particular situation: Grief? Sickness? Divorced parents? And maybe you’ve gone to God and asked, “When will this end?” or “Why me?”, and sometimes we may feel like God doesn’t care, or he’s not listening, but he is. I don’t want to be the person to say to you “Just trust God’s plan”, because that can come across as insensitive, and if we’re both being honest at times impractical. I want to show you that whatever situation you are going through, you don’t have to do it alone. You don’t have to experience life alone; you don’t have to worry about things alone, there is more to life than your problems.

Peace isn’t about never feeling sad or anxious about things, nor is it always being happy: it’s recognising that when you are in those states of emotions, whether positive or negative, you have a God to go to regardless. Peace is a step we all must take daily, and I think if we can all reach that point, then we’ve reached a level of peace that surpasses all understanding. I also don’t think peace simply ends in being an emotion: emotions are fleeting and at times are dependent on situations, certain circumstances, and people. Peace is a state: something that is constant, it isn’t affected by problems. It also doesn’t look the same on every person because we are all different. But through our individuality there is common denominator: our maker God. So, if there is one thing you take from this is that true peace can only ever be reached through God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being intentional with Joy

James 1: 2   “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds”   Have you ever not been in a good mood? Have you ever felt like things are just not going your way? If you answered yes to any of those questions, it shows that you are human. Problems occur and things happen that can make us upset, and that is an unfortunate reality we have to face in this world .   For me, one of my resolutions this year is to be more joyful. If I had to make a book about the year of 2024, the title of it would be “ A sequence of difficulties” . In my life, it seemed I was experiencing problem after problem and issue after issue. I couldn’t escape them. The bitter truth is that problems and issues are inevitable, but our attitude towards them isn’t .   At th at time, I was angry at God for allowing all those things to happen to me, but in retrospect I can be grateful to see the work God was doing inside of me, the resilience he was building, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Equipping ourselves

Ephesians 6:13   “ Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand”   Recently I had a conversation with one of my friends. Before our interaction, I didn’t set any expectation other than simply just seeing how they were doing. To my surprise, my friend asked me a question: and what was just a simple question, felt like an opportunity for me to express my faith. If I had not already had a foundation of God’s word, it would have been a missed opportunity. We are all presented with opportunities, some we may not be aware of, others we may not feel comftable in expressing, but all of them we need to be equipped for.    Our faith and belief are counter-cultural: it doesn’t agree with the views of today and goes against the perspectives and viewpoints of the society we live in.  As long as you claim to be a Christian, there will be people that dis...
Post a Comment
Read more

The significance of words

Words are the very core of our existence. We use them to communicate with people and we implement them to have a rationale of all the things around us. Without words, there would be no such thing as life, ironically, we wouldn’t even be able to name i t. It’s clear words are significant, but today I want to summarise into 3 main points as to why:   1. Words show God’s kindness     Words in it’s essence reveals things. Through words, we give definitions to objects, through w ords we name people and through words we get to find out about people’s lives. Our biggest revelation is the character of God. The Bible contains 66 books full of words that show us the nature of God. Why words? God created the heavens and the earth through H is voice ( Genisis 1:3 ) Any other means could have been implemented but He used the very thing we us e most in our lives, so that we may have certainty and confidence in His own word. So, whatever God has said about you, trust that ...
Post a Comment
Read more