You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
you, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26.3
Imagine, perfect
peace. Not an adequate peace or a mostly there peace. Perfect peace. And that
in the face of life on this sin-cursed earth. How does that happen?
Well, it starts with
the mind, a mind that is stayed on, that is depending on, the Father. That has
to do with the things that you say to yourself as you encounter some
difficulty. What do you tell yourself when that happens? The Scriptures are
filled with things you can tell yourself, things that describe quite well what
is going on. We would do well to pick one of those. In doing this, we can
understand better what is going on. Doing this doesn't mean that we respond
without emotion. Just read the Psalms. Lots of emotion going on in them. And
it's not all praise! But the Psalms sometimes describe what is going on as
something to cry out to God about. There are Psalms of lament and Psalms of
complaint that just might fit the situation.
This leads us to the
other ingredient to this perfect peace: trust. If we label the situation
wisely, using words that the Bible provides, using words that include our
Father in the situation, then we can take the next step to trust Him in the
situation. We can actually believe that He will deal with the situation well.
And when we do that He responds to our trust by giving us His peace, His
perfect peace.
Now there are a
couple of steps in this process. And let's be honest and admit that working
through those steps doesn't come naturally to us. But that's what prayer is
for. If we ask for the grace to be able to respond in the way that I've
described, will our Father ignore us?