21 Ways to Finding Peace and Happiness (37 page)

We will have peace when we learn to maintain an inner quiet. That’s not a job we can give to God; we have the job of leaning on the power of the Holy Spirit by faith to maintain a quiet spirit. Then we can hear from God and obey the leading of His Spirit. I share more about how to do this in my book titled
How to Hear from God.

When we get disturbed in the flesh, we release idle words that cause damage. But being still isn’t just refraining from speech; it is about living every day in a calm state of confidence in God that encourages the Holy Spirit to thrive in our house.

The serenity of God’s presence makes us attractive to others and is a powerful testimony of God’s work in our lives. I just love peace. I’m addicted to peace. Paul knew the value of peace, as we see when he was training Timothy, a young preacher. When he was giving Timothy instructions on how to handle his ministry, Paul told him, “Be calm and cool and steady, accept and suffer unflinchingly every hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fully perform all the duties of your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5).

That is good advice for all of us. If we are calm and steady, people know they can depend on us. God can depend on us. No one has to wonder what we might be like one day from the next. When our unsaved friends see the calm and steady faith we have, they will be open to our testimony of the gospel. Stability is the fruit of living a peaceful life.

S
TABILITY
R
ELEASES
A
BILITY

I believe that stability releases ability. I think a lot of people have ability because God has given them gifts, but they’re not stable Christians, and so God cannot use their gifts publicly in ministry. They would end up hurting the cause of Christ because of their unpredictable behavior.

We can’t be stable just when we’re getting our way. We have to be stable when we’re having trouble and trials, when people are coming against us, and when people are talking about us. Paul knew a lack of stability would hurt Timothy’s witness and anointing; it would prevent him from hearing from God. We don’t enjoy life unless we develop an ability to remain stable in the storm.

When we’re upset, we are usually not listening. People don’t hear because they don’t get quiet enough to hear what God is saying. God isn’t going to yell at you. He usually speaks in a still, small voice, and to hear Him, we must maintain an inner calmness. Actually, peace itself is a guideline for what God is approving and disapproving of in your life. We must all learn to follow peace if we intend to follow God.

You have to choose purposely to stay calm, to put your confidence and trust in God, and to be a ready listener for His voice. Then you have to be willing to make whatever adjustments are necessary to have peace in your life.

Some people might say, “Well, it’s not fair for me to always be the one who’s changing and adjusting to keep harmony with everyone else.” It might not be fair, but God will bring justice in your life if you do what He’s asking you to do. It might not be fair, but it will be worth it.

Just because somebody else is hard to get along with, we don’t need to be hard to get along with too. We have to stop letting somebody else’s bad behavior steal our joy.

I’ve mentioned that in the early years of our marriage, when I threw temper tantrums and didn’t talk, Dave just stayed calm and happy. He went around the house singing and whistling; he went to play golf and watch football and play with the kids; he continued to enjoy life. When I was about to blow my cork in another room, he was steady and stable, and even though it made me so mad that I couldn’t get him upset, he eventually won me over by the peace that he always maintained.

Unhappy people want to make other people unhappy; it irritates them to be around someone happy. But people who are full of peace can positively affect unhappy people. I saw Dave’s example and became hungry for what he had. I know, without a doubt, if Dave had not had that stability in his life, I wouldn’t be in ministry today.

I needed an example of peace because I grew up in a house of strife. I actually did not even know how to remain peaceful when I did not like my circumstances. Even someone preaching it to me would not have been enough;
I needed to see it.
His example was very important for what God had planned for me.

So, if you are in a relationship with somebody who is like I was— angry, upset, out of control, throwing temper tantrums, making bad choices—you can influence him or her to receive the grace of God to change if you will be stable in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It won’t do any good to leave gospel tracts around the house or play my teaching tapes real loud. It won’t help to leave books opened with underlined passages for that person to find. The Word says that we win people over, not by discussion, but by our godly lives (see 1 Peter 3:1). Of course, sometimes God uses our verbal witness to help others, but He uses our example even more.

Dave didn’t preach to me: His life was a sermon. He lived his confidence in God in front of me. And his stability is one of the things that I still appreciate in him.

I grew up in a home where I never knew from one minute to the next what was going to happen. Somebody could be happy one day and ready to hit me the next day, and I didn’t even know why. I lived through a lot of violence and anger, where ranting and raving was a daily event.

Perhaps you live in such a home now, but God can change it if you will abide in Him. Isaiah 32:17–18 promises this: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace [internal and external], and the result of righteousness will be quietness and confident trust forever. My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, in safe dwellings, and in quiet resting-places.”

First Peter 3:2 gives us guidelines on how to live our lives to win over those who do not know about the grace of God. Though it is written in light of women with their husbands, the same principles apply to all relationships that we have with others. It says to conduct ourselves with reverence toward others, “to respect, defer to, revere, . . . esteem, appreciate, prize, and, in the human sense, to adore” and enjoy those whom God has given us to love. People’s attraction to us will not be based on our outer lives, our hairstyles, or our pretty clothes.

Instead, we will draw people to us by “the inward adorning and beauty of the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible and unfading charm of a gentle and peaceful spirit, which [is not anxious or wrought up, but] is very precious in the sight of God” (1 Peter 3:4). We are true sons and daughters of God if we do right and let nothing terrify us, if we “don’t give way to hysterical fears or [let] anxieties unnerve” us (v. 6).

Our circumstances won’t change until we change. Remember, we are to keep our minds stayed on God, and He will keep us in perfect peace. And whoever heeds wisdom will “dwell securely and in confident trust and shall be quiet, without fear or dread of evil” (Proverbs 1:33).

Watchman Nee said that we should keep our spirits in a position of “being light and free all the time—keeping in mind that the outer man is different than inside.” We can have raging storms taking place around us and still enjoy perfect peace on the inside.

I realize that I have already given you a lot of information on how to keep peace in your life, but in the next chapter I will share one more Peacekeeper that will keep you in God’s will for the rest of your journey.

Peacekeeper #21
AGGRESSIVELY PURSUE PEACE

T
he main point I hope you remember from this study is to aggressively pursue peace. Through Jesus Christ, God has provided everything you need to enjoy a life of peace. The Word tells us, “S
trive
to live in peace with everybody and pursue that consecration and holiness without which no one will [ever] see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14, italics mine).

The word
strive
has been translated in various Bible versions as “follow,” “pursue,” and “make every effort.” It’s important to understand that God expects us to interact with people. I know believers who withdraw from everyone, who don’t think it is important to go to church or spend time with people. But that is not the heart of God. He wants us to find peace
with
people, not away from them. In fact, the Lord tells us to look after each other, helping each other to be built up in faith, as these next Scriptures command:

And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) to love and helpful deeds and noble activities, not forsaking or neglecting to assemble together [as believers], as is the habit of some people, but admonishing (warning, urging, and encouraging) one another, and all the more faithfully as you see the day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

God gives His blessings as a free gift, yet we receive or appropriate them through faith. If we don’t release our faith in the promises of

God, they will not help us. We can encourage each other to remain faithful. We can pray for each other when our own faith weakens. Above all, we can encourage each other to aggressively pursue peace.

An aggressive peacemaker remains on watch to see that no one in the body falls away from God’s grace. Hebrews 12:15 charges us to “exercise foresight and be on the watch to look [after one another], to see that no one falls back from and fails to secure God’s grace (His unmerited favor and spiritual blessing), in order that no root of resentment (rancor, bitterness, or hatred) shoots forth and causes trouble and bitter torment, and the many become contaminated and defiled by it.”

People could conceivably have money in the bank and yet live as those with none simply because they never went to the bank to get it. Jesus arranged for us to enjoy peace, but we must pursue it. Actually it is important to remember that God’s Word says in Psalm 34:14 that we are to “
seek, inquire for, and crave peace and pursue (go after) it!”
(italics mine). When I saw this Scripture and then this similar one in 1 Peter 3:10–11, it was life-changing for me:

For let him who wants to enjoy life and see good days [good—whether apparent or not] keep his tongue free from evil and his lips from guile (treachery, deceit). Let him turn away from wickedness and shun it, and let him do right. Let him search for peace (harmony; undisturbedness from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts) and seek it eagerly. [Do not merely desire peaceful relations with God, with your fellowmen, and with yourself, but pursue, go after them!]

When I first understood this Scripture, I realized that even though I prayed for peace regularly, there was something else I needed to
do
: I needed to pursue it, go after it in a strong way.

I began to study peace and examined what types of things caused me to lose my peace. I decided that I was absolutely unwilling to live my life frustrated and upset.

T
HINGS
D
ON’T
C
HANGE
O
VERNIGHT

I would like to be able to tell you that things changed overnight; however, they didn’t. I had to study the subject of peace for quite a long time and practice principles of peace until they became habit for me.

We form addictive habits throughout our lives. We learn to respond in certain ways and do so without even thinking about it. We must break these habits and form new ones, and this takes time. I want to
stress
that becoming a peacemaker and developing peaceful ways will take time, otherwise you may become discouraged in the beginning and just give up. I encourage you to stick with your pursuit until you experience victory, because it is well worth it.

One of the habits I had to break was getting upset whenever I did not get my way. I examined my pattern to understand why I always reacted like this. I realized that I had watched my father respond this way for years, while I was growing up. He was a very angry and controlling man and always got furious when things did not go his way.

As I have said before, my childhood home was filled with turmoil. It was our normal atmosphere. I doubt that I ever really enjoyed peace as a child. My alcoholic father was abusing me sexually, and he was violent toward almost everyone. My life was filled with fear: fear of being hurt, of someone’s discovering what my father was doing to me, of no one’s ever discovering it and helping me, of the fact that somehow it might be my fault, of making mistakes because I always got into trouble when I did. Fear! Fear! Fear! That was what life was to me.

I never learned peaceful ways as a child, but thank God we become new creatures when we enter a personal relationship with God through putting our faith in Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). I share more about the story of God’s redemptive work in my life and my father’s in my newly revised book
Beauty for Ashes.
It bears our testimonies that we clearly receive a new beginning through faith in Jesus Christ; we can have our minds renewed and learn how to think and respond correctly to every situation in life.

God has blessed me with a strong personality. It helps me in many ways, but it can also be a great hindrance because I don’t give up easily. In other words, if I have my mind set that something should be a certain way, it is not easy for me to let it go and trust God. Now, when I need to press through to the finish of something and refuse to give up, my personality is a benefit. But when I really cannot change a thing and need to let go and let God work, I have often found it difficult, to say the least. This is why I often say that it is so important to change what we can change, let go of what we cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

You might say, “Well, Joyce, I was not raised in a home filled with turmoil, and I don’t even have the kind of personality you do. But I still don’t have peace! So, what is my problem?” Satan works hard all of our lives to make sure we don’t have righteousness, peace, and joy. He finds ways to steal from everyone.