This is the second in a series of three looking at love, peace, and joy.
Today is peace.

Before I get into it, I want to say something briefly about silence. Silence isn’t the same as peace, but it can be an indictor for you of how much you’re at peace.
Are you comfortable with silence, with stillness, or does it make you feel uneasy ?
Be still and know that I am God.
Don’t feel threatened by silence, use it to seek God, to listen to Him, it’s often when He speaks to us.

Okay, what about peace ?
Peace is commonly understood to mean the absence of hostilities. Other definitions include freedom from disputes, silence, harmonious relations, or inner contentment and serenity, as the meaning of the word changes with context.
Peace (used as an interjection) can also be a greeting or farewell, or a request for silence.
Peace may refer specifically to an agreement concluded to end a war, or to a lack of external warfare. It can also refer more generally to quietude, such as that common at night or in remote areas, allowing for sleep or meditation. Peace can be an emotion or internal state. And finally, peace can be any combination of these definitions.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to notable persons, generally peacemakers and visionaries who have overcome notorious cycles in violence, conflict or oppression through their moral leadership, but also controversially former warmongers and former terrorists who it was believed had helped bring the world closer to ending such situations through exceptional concessions in the attempt to achieve peace.
Here is a partial list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1906 laureate);
• Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964 laureate);
• Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (joint 1973 laureates);
• Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin (1978 laureates);
• Mother Teresa (1979 laureate);
• Nelson Mandela and Former President Frederik Willem de Klerk (joint 1993 laureates);
• Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (1994 laureates);
• John Hume and David Trimble (joint 1998 laureates);
Sweden (1814–present). Sweden is the present-day nation state with the longest history of continuous peace. Since its 1814 invasion of Norway, the Swedish kingdom has not engaged in war.
Some people refer to the global loose affiliation of activists and political interests as having a shared purpose and this constituting a single movement, “the peace movement”, encompassing “the anti-war movement”.

The peace process describes efforts by interested parties to effect a lasting solution to long-running conflicts, such as the Northern Ireland peace process, and Peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Peace symbols : CND (semaphore for ND), dove, olive branch, rainbow.
Green-peace exists because this fragile earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.

It is clear that most people in the world desire peace - an outward absence of conflict, and an inner peace and contentment, but that it seems very illusive to most people.

Before I gave my life into Jesus hands, I had no peace whatsoever, it was something I just didn’t experience. Worry, fear, turmoil, guilt, paranoia, hatred – these were the things that typified my inner life – my feelings and thoughts. When I first experienced the peace, love, and joy that Jesus brings, it was revolutionary, transforming, overwhelming.

Read John 14:27.

It’s not a peace this world or anyone in it can give.
Can the world forgive sin and take away guilt ?
Can the world take our fears, anxieties, and worries, and assure us that everything will be alright ?
Can the world guarantee our future and give us a sure hope for when we die ?

Outwardly peaceful surroundings are sometimes helpful, but in themselves cannot bring peace to your heart, only God can do that as you submit to Him.

God’s peace transends all understanding – you can know God’s peace in a football crowd, in a crowded tube train, when your relatives are pressurising you, when everything is going wrong, ….because it is not dependant on external circumstances or on other people.
The Lord’s peace doesn’t make sense.
It’s dependent on simply letting go to Jesus of whatever is causing the dis-ease, and welcoming His peace, which is freely given. And to maintain that peace, doing what we considered last week – fix your focus on Jesus and the things of His Kingdom – wholly and completely.
This is how Paul puts it :

Read Philippians 4:4-8.

Words very pertinent to the Church of this generation in the Western world, where stress, depression, and their related illnesses are so prevelant. (Prozac and water).

Don’t worry, trust God. If you’re worried or anxious about something (define), either :

i) You’re not trusting God (and anything that does not come from faith is sin – Romans 14:23). Because you doubt that He loves you or you doubt He can deal with the thing. So you either doubt God’s love or power. You,ve believed a lie – that God doesn’t love you, or that He’s less than He really is. Get a bigger view of God, a Biblical view. Feed on the truth in the Scriptures, and believe it.

ii) You’re trusting yourself. You think you can deal with the situation better than God. No need to get Him involved you can handle it. Pride and arrogance. If you recognise yourself, repent. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

iii) You’re punishing yourself. You feel you deserve to feel like this. Out of guilt for some sin, that you havn’t forgiven yourself for. You might say Jesus is your Saviour, but you havn’t fully accepted it. You still want to punish yourself. Let it go. God forgives you, everything. Accept it.

iv) Your focus is wrong. The weeds of life are choking the fruit out of you. You worry about things that don’t really matter in God’s Kingdom. Things are out of proportion and God gets pushed out. Repent and fix your eyes on Jesus. Focus on what is important to God.

We tend to see stress, worry, anxiety, as something which inflicts us, like a germ. It’s not.
To see ourselves as a victim of anxiety and worry is a lie of satan.
It’s a choice. We either trust God and submit ourselves to Him, or we don’t.
We either trust in God who is faithful, or in the flesh, ours or others, which will fail us.
Faith or doubt.
Peace or Anxiety.
You chose !

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice ! – whatever is going on around you.
The guy who said these things had great credability.
Through all his trials – shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonment, stoning, etc - Paul had learnt something very important.

Read Philippians 4:10-13.

To be content.
Think of the traditional marriage vows – for better and for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
There are some things which are meant to transend circumstances – love, peace, and joy, are such things, given by God to those who will receive Him.

If you’re ill, if you’re homeless, if you’re unemployed, if you’re poor, if you’re well off, if you’re taken for granted, if your relatives are a pain in the neck. If you’re single, if you’re married - rejoice and be content.

It may help you to get things into perspective to think of others in the world and pray for them :
The prostitutes of Ipswich. The people living in the hell of Baghdad – daily random bombs. The poor of Africa and India, the homeless of Pakistan, living in tents after last year’s earthquake, facing another winter outside, the oppressed, raped, enslaved peoples of Dafur in Sudan. The Christians of China, beaten, tortured, imprisoned for preaching the Gospel.

Get things into some perspective. Don’t make a big deal out of things which really don’t metter that much – you’ll save yourself and others a lot of stress.
God has given so much, and I don’t mean materially.
Let’s not spurn His gift of peace and trample on it. And don’t feel guilty about being at peace, about being content – God wants you to be at peace inside, and to be a peacemaker outwardly.
To be an ambassador of reconciliation.

Read 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.

Just make sure first that you yourself are reconciled to God.
Do you believe that all your sin is forgiven and gone, it’s power in your life destroyed ?

Those who receive God’s peace are then to share the good news with others, to call them to be reconciled to God so that they too can know His peace :
the peace of having our sin forgiven and being cleansed inside ;
the peace of having the all powerful creator of the universe on our side ;
the peace of knowing He loves us completely and knows what’s best for us.

Without being reconciled to God and submitting ourselves to Him, that is a peace which is impossible to attain.
True peace can only come through Jesus, the one who came and gave Himself up for us, who suffered violence and horror, that we might have peace and know the love of God.