“DON’T WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING but in EVERYTHING by prayer and supplication (asking earnestly and humbly), with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; THEN YOU WILL EXPERIENCE GOD’S PEACE, which EXCEEDS (outdoes) anything we can understand. HIS PEACE WILL GUARD (protect) YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS as you LIVE IN CHRIST JESUS.” Philippians 4:6-7 About 600 years before Christ, most false prophets were predicting peace. God’s prophet wasn’t, Jeremiah reminded the people that God had said, “OBEY ME, and I will be your God and you will be my people” Jeremiah 7:23. Yet they repeatedly ignored the Lord and His commands. Their false prophets said, “Peace, peace” Jeremiah 8:11, but Jeremiah predicted disaster. Jerusalem fell in 586 BC. “Long ago the LORD said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with AN EVERLASTING LOVE. With UNFAILING LOVE I have drawn you to myself.” Jeremiah 31:3
God is a God of love and peace. Conflict comes because of our REBELLION against Him. OUR WILLINGNESS TO LIVE SINFUL LIVES destroys the world’s peace and robs each of us of inner peace. Jesus came to reconcile us to God and give us the opportunity to have REAL INNER PEACE. “Therefore, having been JUSTIFIED (made righteous in the sight of God) by faith, WE HAVE PEACE WITH GOD through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom ALSO WE HAVE ACCESS by faith into THIS GRACE IN WHICH WE STAND…” Romans 5:1-2 We are saved, “…BY GRACE you have been saved THROUGH FAITH, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God…” Ephesians 2:8. We are saved by God’s gift of grace through our faith but that’s no all. We also have access to the SECOND WORK OF GRACE, by which we stand, SANCTIFICATION. Sanctification comes from the verb sanctify. The Greek word translated “sanctification” (hagiasmos) means “holiness.” To sanctify, therefore, means “to make holy.” “…just as He who called you is holy, so BE HOLY IN ALL YOU DO; for it is written: “BE HOLY, BECAUSE I AM HOLY.” 1 Peter 1:15-16 Paul explains it this way, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be done away with, that WE SHOULD NO LONGER BE SLAVES OF SIN. For he who has died has been freed from sin…Likewise you also, reckon (conclude) yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore DO NOT LET SIN REIGN (have control) IN YOUR MORTAL BODY, that you should obey it in its lusts…God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been SET FREE FROM SIN, you became slaves of righteousness.” Romans 6:6-7, 11-12, 17-18
THE KEY TO HAVING THE PEACE OF GOD IS OUR OBEDIENCE TO GOD, OUR ABILITY TO OBEY GOD IS OUR SANCTIFICATION…
-Bill Stockham