Peace in Believing

"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:27)

"You will keep him in perfect peace — whose mind is stayed on You." (Isaiah 26:3) "Perfect Peace!" What a blessed attainment! My soul! is it yours? I am sure it is not — if you are seeking it in a perishable world, or in the perishable creature, or in your perishable self. Although you have all that the world would call enviable and happy, unless you have peace in God, and with God — all else is unworthy of the name — a spurious thing, which the first breath of adversity will shatter, and the hour of death will utterly annihilate!

Perfect Peace! What is it? It is the peace of forgiveness. It is the peace arising out of a sense of God reconciled through the blood of the everlasting covenant — resting sweetly on the bosom, and the work of Jesus — committing your eternal all to Him.

My soul! stay yourself on God, so that this blessed peace may be yours. You have tried the world. It has deceived you. Prop after prop of earthly scaffolding has yielded, and tottered, and fallen! Has your God ever done so? Ah! this false and counterfeit worldly peace may do well for the world's day of prosperity. But test it in the hour of sorrow; and what can it do for you when it is most needed? On the other hand, what though you have no other blessing on earth to call your own? You are rich indeed — if you can look upwards to Heaven, and say with an unpresumptuous smile, "I am at peace with God."

J.M.D.