Why Peace Is So Much More Than a Feeling
Peace is so much more than a feeling that shows up once your circumstances finally settle down. Peace is a posture. It is what happens when you know who holds authority over your life and you start walking like it. If you have been wondering how to find peace in God while fear keeps you locked up and life feels strangely flat, the answer begins in a locked room in John 20.
Why So Many People Feel Bored With Church
A lot of people are bored. Not bored in general, but bored in church. There is a nagging sense that we ought to be doing something greater for the kingdom of God, that there is some more missional, meaningful thing we should be part of, and we cannot quite get our minds around what it is. So in the meantime you sit in church, you try to pay attention, you give your tithe, you behave the best you can, and then you wonder whether you will get to heaven only to be chastised and rebuked for failing to do whatever it was God wanted you to do.
That is how J.D. Greear opens his book, and the book goes on to make the case that the future of the church belongs to churches who send people out.
There are really two groups of bored people. Maybe you are not a believer. Before anyone talks to you about living sent, you are not even sure the Jesus thing is real. You might be angry or hurt from something that happened to you or from what life has thrown at you, and you do not have much hope. Maybe you are searching and having a hard time finding answers. Either way, the question underneath is the same one: is this all there is?
Or maybe you are a believer. You have been coming to church your whole life, and you look bored. You do not share your faith anymore. You do not value the church the way you once did. There are not enough new things going on for you, so you start treating it like entertainment instead of a mission. You have become more interested in being shown something than in becoming someone.
What shows up across the American church is a flat missional affect. We simply do not live as if God is the most important thing in life. We are more interested in Monday night flag football for the kids, Friday night lights in high school, Saturday college games, and the Sunday NFL package. Those progressions are what matter most to the average American, and honestly to the average churchgoer.
A Different Kind of Progression
There is another progression available, and it is worth pursuing.
God pursues us. For some of you, the only reason you are reading this is that God has been chasing you. He has been calling out to you. Come and follow Me, and I will turn you into something. I will give you a new purpose.
God pursued me, and He redeems the story I have. He takes the lostness and the mistakes and everything that has gone on in my life, and He breathes new life and purpose into it. He changed me by the grace I so desperately needed. He gave me a new identity. And even though I keep coming to Him with questions, He keeps meeting me in the ambiguity and answering what I bring Him.
Then comes the last step in the progression. God sends me out on mission with Him.
What Jesus Meant by "Come, Follow Me"
The definition of a disciple comes from Matthew 4:19, where Jesus says, "Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." There are three parts to that invitation, and most of us only take the first one.
Come, follow Me. Jesus says, come be with Me. Abide with Me. Learn My ways.
I will make you. This means you do not simply pray a prayer of salvation and consider yourself finished. It means attending church is not the plan until the day you get to heaven. We have a habit of keeping the whole Jesus thing compartmentalized in a corner of our lives, but He says, I am going to change you constantly. I am going to keep transforming you into the image of the person I created you to be.
Fishers of men. There is a missional component built into His invitation. He says, I will send you out to fish for people. I will invite you into the very thing this whole life is meant to be about.
So you follow Jesus and get to know Him. You are changed by Jesus. And then you are sent by Jesus.
What Happened Behind the Locked Doors in John 20
Jesus says something similar in John 20, and the setting matters. This is just after the resurrection. He has risen from the dead and appeared to Mary Magdalene, revealing that He is alive. What follows is His next revelation, this time to His disciples. At this point in the story they do not know He is alive. All they know is that His body is missing from the tomb.
John 20:19-23 reads, "That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them. 'Peace be with you,' He said. As He spoke, He showed them the wounds in His hands and His side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord. Again He said, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.' Then He breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.'"
Notice the temperature in that room before Jesus walks in. They are meeting behind locked doors because they are afraid. They fear the religious leaders, and fear is running the evening.
That is how a lot of us look at being sent. We look at ourselves and think, I am not worthy of this. I am not capable of this. So, figuratively speaking, we lock ourselves up. We lock ourselves inside routines we can control. We lock ourselves inside social appearances, worried about image management. We end up living in fear of the purpose instead of living on purpose.
Why Jesus Showed Them His Wounds
Then Jesus does something. He reveals Himself, and they are filled with joy. He tells them twice, at the end of verse 19 and again in verse 21, "Peace be with you." And in between, as He speaks, He shows them the wounds in His hands and His side.
Why was that the significant thing to do? The obvious answer is that He wanted them to know He was who they had hoped He was. But there is a richer depth to it. He calls them to be at peace, and then He shows them the evidence of who holds the authority, who has the victory, whose team they are on, and who they follow. It is as if Jesus is saying, remember Me. Do not forget which team you play for. Death could not hold Me down.
That is what comes right before the sending. Before He says, "As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you," He stops and says, I know you are afraid right now. There is fear in this room. But I want you to live at peace. I want you to find peace chasing the things I have called you to chase.
Why? Because that is where purpose comes from. Peace is not going to come from controlling a situation. It is not going to come from knowing the what or the outcome. It comes from knowing and understanding who He is, who you play for, and who is ultimately in authority over this world.
Jesus Christ is King. Do you believe that? If it is true, it should ignite a sense of urgency in us as we follow Him and live on mission with Him to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What the Bible Says Peace Actually Is
Often when I am preparing a sermon, God gives me something in my own life that points to the very thing He wants me to say. That happened again while I was finishing 2 Peter. In his final words, Peter writes, "Be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish, and at peace" (2 Peter 3:14). It makes me wonder whether Peter, writing to the people who would read his letter, was remembering moments exactly like the one in that locked room.
Or the moment when Jesus said, "Peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you, not as the world gives" (John 14:27).
Or Paul in Colossians 3, when he writes, "Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful" (Colossians 3:15).
We think peace is a feeling. Peace is actually a posture. It is knowing, understanding, sensing, and walking in the authority of Jesus Christ as His followers. A feeling waits for conditions to improve. A posture is something you take up right where you are, on the strength of who Jesus is.
How to Find Peace in God
If you are not a believer, one of the reasons peace is so hard to find is that it is only found in Christ, in a relationship with Jesus. That is the only place it exists. You might have good days and bad days, but tranquility and stability of that kind are not on offer anywhere else. The only way to find peace is to live in a meaningful relationship with Christ.
And if you are a believer who has been bored, going through the motions, quietly wondering whether this is all there is, the invitation has not changed since that first Sunday evening. Jesus steps into the locked room, shows you the wounds that prove His authority, tells you to be at peace, and then sends you out. The peace comes first. The purpose follows.
You were never meant to sit still and hope you have done enough. You were meant to be sent.
