June 19, 2023

Perfect Peace—Part 2

By Maria Fontaine

Audio length: 14:22
Download Audio (13.1MB)

The Bible teaches us that God wants to give us His perfect peace in place of our anxiety, stress, and fear. Biblical principles are timeless. The Lord drew my attention to an article which is almost like a mini-course on how to access and grow that peace that God offers us. The author of the article, J. R. Miller, looks at each step in the process of applying and developing this wonderful gift in our lives as Jesus intends for us to do.

In part one of “Perfect Peace” you read the first half of Miller’s article in which he covered an introduction and two topics—the picture of peace and the secret of peace. This post includes the rest of his article.

* * *

(Adapted from “In Perfect Peace,” by J. R. Miller, 1902¹, continued)

The mind of peace

But there is another part of the secret of peace which is also important for us to learn. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” (Isaiah 26:3). There is something for us to do. There is no doubt that God has power to keep us in perfect peace. He is omnipotent, and His strength is a defense and a shelter to all who hide in Him. But even God will never compel us into submission—we must yield ourselves to Him. Even omnipotence will not gather us into its invincible shelter by force—we must be willing in the day of God’s power (Psalm 110:3). All we need to do is to stay our minds upon God. That means to trust Him, to rest in Him, to nestle in His love. We remember where John was found the night of the Lord’s last supper with His disciples—John was leaning on Jesus’ breast. He crept into that holy shelter and reposed upon the infinite love which beat in that bosom. John simply trusted, and was kept in holy peace.

A beautiful story is told of Rudyard Kipling during a serious illness. The nurse was sitting at his bedside on one of the anxious nights when the sick man’s condition was most critical. She was watching him intently and noticed that his lips began to move. She bent over him, thinking he wished to say something to her. She heard him whisper very softly the words of the old familiar prayer of childhood, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” The nurse, realizing that her patient was not needing her services, and that he was praying, said in apology for having intruded upon him, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Kipling; I thought you wanted something.” “I do,” faintly replied the sick man. “I want my heavenly Father. He only can care for me now.”

In his great weakness there was nothing that human help could do, and he turned to God, seeking the blessing and the care which none but God can give. That is what we need to do in every time of danger, of trial, of sorrow—when the gentlest human love can do nothing—creep into our heavenly Father’s bosom, saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” That is the way to peace. Earth has no shelter in which it can be found, but in God the feeblest may find it.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” said the Master; “believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1).

This is the one great lesson of Christian faith—“Believe.” “Into thine hands I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5, Luke 23:46). “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.” Stayed on Thee! These words tell the whole story. They picture a child nestling in the mother’s arms, letting its whole little weight down upon her. It has no fear, and nothing disturbs it, for the mother’s love is all around it. “Stayed” means reposing. It suggests also the thought of continuousness of trust and abiding. Too much of our trust is broken, intermittent—this hour singing, the next hour in tears, dismayed. If we would have unbroken peace, we must have unbroken trust, our minds stayed upon God all the while.

The God of peace

God is strong, omnipotent. We need not fear that His power to keep us will ever fail. There never is a moment when He is not able to sustain us. When the question is asked, “From whence shall my help come?” The answer is, “My help cometh from Jehovah, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1–2). He who made all the world and can surely care for one little human life and protect it from harm.

God is wise. We are not wise enough to direct the affairs of our own lives, even if we had the power to shape things to our minds. Our outlook is limited—cut off by life’s close horizons. We do not know what the final outcome of this or that choice would be. Oftentimes the things we think we need, and think would bring us happiness and good, would only work us harm in the end. Things we dread and shrink from, supposing they would bring us hurt and evil, are oftentimes the bearers to us of rich blessings. We are not wise enough to choose our own circumstances or to guide our own affairs. Only God can do this for us.

He not only has strength, He has also knowledge of us and of our need and of our danger. He knows all about us—our condition, our sufferings, our trials, our griefs, the little things that vex us, as well as the great things that would crush us. The following lines give the lesson of faith:

The little, sharp vexations,
And the briars that catch and fret—
Why not take all to the Helper
Who never has failed you yet?

Tell Him about the heartache,
And tell Him the longing, too;
Tell Him the baffled purpose
When you scarce know what to do.

Then, leaving all your weakness
With the One divinely strong,
Forget that you bore the burden,
And carry away the song.

God is love. Strength alone would not be enough. Strength is not always gentle. A tyrant may be strong, but we would not care to entrust our life to him. We crave affection, tenderness. God is love. His gentleness is infinite. The hands into which we are asked to commit our spirit are wounded hands—wounded in saving us. The heart over which we are asked to nestle is the heart that was broken on the cross in love for us. We need not fear to entrust our cares and our lives to such a being.

God is eternal. Human love is very sweet. A mother’s sheltering arms are a wondrously gentle place for a child to nestle in. A loving marriage is a haven of joy to the couple within its encircling embrace.

All that human love can do, all that money can do, all that skill can do, avails little. Human arms may clasp us very firmly, yet their clasp cannot keep us from the power of disease or from the cold hand of death. But the love and strength of God are everlasting. Nothing can ever separate us from Him (Romans 8:38–39). An Old Testament promise reads: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” If we are stayed upon the eternal God, nothing ever can disturb us, for nothing can disturb Him on whom we are reposing. If we are held in the clasp of the everlasting arms, we need not fear that we shall ever be separated from the enfolding.

These arms are always underneath us. No matter how low we sink, in weakness, in faintness, in pain, in sorrow, we never can sink below these everlasting arms. We never can drop out of their clasp. The everlasting arms will be underneath the feeblest, most imperiled child of God. Sorrow is very deep, but still and forever, in the greatest grief, these arms of love are underneath the sufferer. Then when death comes, and every earthly support is gone from beneath us, when every human arm unclasps and every face of love fades from before our eyes, and we sink away into what seems darkness and the shadow of death, we shall only sink into the everlasting arms underneath us.

The word “are” must not be overlooked—”Underneath are the everlasting arms.” This is one of the wonderful present tenses of the Bible. To every trusting believer, to each one, in all the ages, to you who today are reading these words and trying to learn this lesson, as well as to those to whom the words were first spoken, God says, “Underneath you are now, this moment, every moment, the everlasting arms.”

The rest of peace

“Whose mind is stayed on thee.” That is the final secret of peace. The reason so many of us do not find the blessing and are disturbed so often by such trifles of care or sorrow or loss is because our minds are not stayed on God. We are distressed by every little disappointment, by every failure in the plan or expectation of ours, by every hardness in our circumstances or our condition, by every most trivial loss of money, as if money were life’s sole dependence, as if man lived by bread only. A trifling illness frightens us.

The most trivial things in our common life disturb us and send us off into pitiable fits of anxiety, spoiling our days for us, blotting the blue of the sky and putting out the stars. The trouble is, we are not trusting God, our minds are not stayed on Him. That is what we need to learn—to rest in the Lord, to be silent in Him, to commit our way to Him.

Paul puts it very clearly in a remarkable passage in which he tells us how to find peace. “In nothing be anxious” (Philippians 4:6). That is the first part of the lesson. “Nothing” really means nothing. There are to be no exceptions. No matter what comes, in nothing be anxious. Do not try to make out that your case is peculiar and that you may rightly be anxious, even if others have no reason for worry. “In nothing be anxious.”

What then shall we do with the things that would naturally make us anxious? For there are such things in every life. Here is the answer: “In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). Instead of carrying your trials and troubles yourself, and worrying about them, take the frets and vexations to God, not forgetting to mingle praise and thanksgiving with your requests. Get them completely out of your hands into God’s hands, and leave them there.

Yes, leave it with Him.
The lilies all do
And they grow—
They grow in the rain,
And they grow in the dew—
Yes, they grow;
They grow in the darkness, all hid in the night;
They grow in the sunshine, revealed by the light;
Still they grow.

Yes, leave it with Him.
’Tis more dear to His heart,
You well know,
Than the lilies that bloom
Or the flowers that start
’Neath the snow.
What you need, if you ask it in prayer
You can leave it with Him, for you are His care—
You, you know.

The path of peace

The staying of the mind upon God suggests that we are to let ourselves down upon His strength, into the arms of His love, and to rest there without fear, without question. But this does not mean that we shall drop our tasks and duties out of our hands.

Always, in every exhortation to trust God, obedience is implied and presupposed. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,” said the Master. When we do this, He continued, we need never be anxious, for then all our needs shall be supplied.

If our peace is disturbed by some sudden trial or sorrow, or by overwhelming trouble, God very gently helps back into the nest those who have been thrown out of it by any such experience. One day President Lincoln was walking beside a hedgerow, and came upon a young bird fluttering in the grass. It had fallen out of its nest in the bushes and could not get back again. The great, gentle-hearted man stopped in his walk, picked up the little thing, sought along the hedge until he found the nest, and put the bird back again into its place. That is what Christ is seeking to do every day with lives that have been jostled out of the nest of peace. With hands infinitely gentle He would ever help us back to the peace we have lost.

Love is the law of spiritual life. We do not begin to live in any worthy sense until we have learned to love and to serve others. Selfishness is always a hinderer of peace. Peace is the music which the life makes when it is in perfect tune, and this can only be when all its chords are attuned to the keynote of love.

Peace gives such blessedness to the heart, and is such an adornment to the life, that no one ever should be willing to miss it. Whatever other graces God has bestowed upon us, we should not be content without peace, the most beautiful of them all. However beautiful a character may be, if it has not peace it lacks the highest charm of spiritual adornment. And the Master is willing to bestow upon the lowliest of us the divinest of all graces—peace, His own blessed peace.

Originally published April 2020. Adapted and republished June 2023. Read by Lenore Welsh.

¹ https://www.gracegems.org/Miller/in_perfect_peace.htm.

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