Do you feel at peace? 

If I can just be vulnerable for just a moment, I’m a very anxious person by nature. Inside my head I am constantly worrying and stressing and projecting the what ifs into my every day. If I decided to just live how I wanted to every day I’d be a nervous wreck and probably wouldn’t get much done. 

Maybe you don’t even know where to start with such a big question like, “do you feel at peace?” And that’s fair! It’s a big one to wrestle with. For me, especially in high school when I struggled more with feelings of anxiety, I always told myself “it will get better once ____.” What I mean by this is I just filled in the blank with whatever future version of my life that I could imagine, and more or less told myself to suck it up until then. 

It will get better once I graduate high school. 

It will get better once I have a degree. 

It will get better once I am working full time. 

It will get better once I get married. 

It will get better once I blah blah blah. 

Spoiler alert: none of these things made it better.

As all of these big moments came and went, I found myself just as anxious, confused, and sacred. The problem with my mindset was that I was always waiting for something in my life to go away in order to find peace, but if you’ve ever lived on earth for a day, you know that’s not how it works! Whenever we convince ourselves that peace comes on the other side of something being taken off of our plates, something else just shows up to replace it!   

So what in the world do we do to find peace? 

Well, thankfully the Bible has a lot to say about peace. Like… a lot. And by understanding a few of its principles about how to find peace, we can begin to change our mindset and fight against anxiety in our lives. Let’s see what Jesus has to say about it in order to get us thinking in the right direction… 

27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. 

And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. 

So don’t be troubled or afraid.

John 14:27 

Did you notice it? I sure did. When Jesus is talking about peace, He isn’t saying that in order to find it, something must be taken away, but rather, peace is given. 

If we want to take this a step further, the original language the Bible was written in, Hebrew, uses the word shalom when talking about peace. The definition of shalom is: complete or whole. 

How cool is that? The reason why so many of us don’t feel peace in our lives is because we are trying to get things out of our lives because we think that’s the solution. But Jesus (and the Bible as a whole) paint a very different picture. They claim that true peace comes when we find wholeness. 

Peace isn’t the absence of something, but it’s the presence of something better. 

Or in our case, someone better.  

For those who believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior and have received the gift of the Holy Spirit who guides and corrects their lives, have been given a peace that surppasses understanding because peace is not just a feeling (which comes and goes) but it’s a person named Jesus (who is the same yesterday, today, and forever). 

Peace isn’t just a feeling, it’s a person. 

I felt like that needed to be repeated. 

The closer you get to the person of Jesus, the more of His peace will rub off on you. The more time you spend with Him, the more you will look like Him. Peace isn’t just about willpower. “I’m gonna try really hard to be peaceful!” But rather it’s an act of faith “God please show me and help me be more peaceful! I need you! I trust you!” 

Can I get an amen??