Peace needs to be protected. You can seek it out all day, but you should take daily steps in order to ensure that you maintain your peace and grow in it.
In 1941, the United States was attacked when Pearl Harbor was bombed, ushering the U.S. to enter the Second World War against the Axis powers, mostly made up of Imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany. While the U.S. was already providing significant weapons and supplies to the Allies before then, they had still taken the approach of neutrality and peace at home.
However, the U.S. learned, through the attack on Pearl Harbor and the rising aggression of the Nazis, that peace needed to be protected. While I love the German and Japanese people of today, and I would not hold anyone from those countries accountable for any of the terrible events of WWII, we can still acknowledge that there was evil being carried out by the Axis powers that the Allied countries needed to fight to protect their peace.
It was horrific how many noble men and women died in these battles, who courageously fought for their countries, their loved ones, and for what was right, but we needed them desperately, and they sacrificed tremendously to answer the call and respond to our need. For that, we will forever be in debt to them.
And to get to the point here, we too are witnesses of evil rising up. We too, like every human who has walked this planet, are under attack from temptation and the forces of evil, and we too need to answer the call to fight and protect our peace.
Before we look at HOW to protect our peace, let’s talk about what I MEAN by peace and how to have it in the first place. It is more than simply being free from conflict or burden. You can actually have peace in the midst of your burdens and your conflicts.
When I say peace, I mean an inner rest that is maintained despite the circumstances of your life. It is a knowing, with certainty, that everything will be ok despite what is happening around you.
This certainty can be compared with looking at a clock to tell the time. Just like we know that despite whatever is taking place around us, time will continue to move forward, and every working clock will continue to change, when we have peace, we know that, despite what is taking place around us, whatever our circumstances, God is bringing good to us. Romans 8:28 tells us this, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.”
You can be certain that good things are happening. This is true peace. Knowing that, despite failure, mistakes, pain, stress, heartache, and other things you as a human need to put up with, you always have a God who loves you and who has the power to bring good to you, and your biggest responsibility is really to love Him and glorify Him through it all.
True peace is a deep knowledge that God is king, and you are His beloved child whom He takes care of.
To help you cultivate this peace, I am releasing a new online course entitled “Unlocked” on August 15. It is designed to give enriching insight and direction to help you essentially ‘unlock’ the locked doors in your life, whether these are attitudes, behaviors, or misunderstandings about the faith that you hadn’t been aware of. This course will replace these with ‘10 Keys’ so that there is nothing in your way blocking you from living with the peace and joy that you are meant for.
We recognize that while we cannot earn peace or get it through anything that you buy at the store, we can position ourselves correctly before God to best receive this peace.
When planting a garden, we want to make sure the flowers are in a good physical location to receive the sunlight. When a wide receiver is running a route in football, he wants to make sure he is looking at the quarterback and has his body in the right position to receive the football. A bride and groom must be in the right attitude, one of being open to one another for rich or for poor, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, in order to have a beautiful lasting marriage.
All these examples show us how we too must position ourselves in order to grow in peace. The first two examples are more physical, and so they are analogies to what I mean. Spiritually, the position of our hearts must be with God, looking to Him, open to Him to receive whatever He wants to give us, through whatever means He wants to give it.
The wedding example gets us closer to what really occurs in our spirit when receiving peace, but we need more than just an attitude of being open to God to receive it. We need to share our life with Him. Most importantly, we need Him to share His life with us.
To help you with this so that you are able to better receive the gift of God’s peace, you can enroll in our online course, Unlocked, to go through the 20-week program in which you will be given the Keys of the program through video lessons, guided questions to help you reflect and receive the most out of the course, and prayers that help draw you closer to God to better live out the lessons you receive.
We need to put into practice all of the Keys of this program, especially the 5th Key of protecting our peace that we have been talking about here. With this program, I will give you practical steps to take to protect your peace and better identify what you need to protect it from.
Finally, I have 9 other profound Keys to share with you that can help you not just feel good about your faith, but truly make every day the best day of your life. Sign up for Zenith Unlocked today, learn to protect your peace, and discover the life that you were meant for.
