In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: The Prince of Peace was born about 2,000 years ago, and He's still alive, sitting at the Father's right hand, living inside of you if you've ever trusted Him as your personal Savior. He's not sort of adequate. He's not mostly adequate. He's not sometimes adequate. He is a God who can give you absolute lasting, sustaining, established, immovable, unshakable, unchangeable, unalterable, indescribable peace no matter what you're going through in life.

Guest (Male): Are you plagued by the "what-ifs"? What if they find out? What if they don't do what they promised? What if the world keeps getting worse? Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we'll find encouragement to look beyond fear to the source of security. Stay with us now and learn the keys to living in lasting peace.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Which of these words would describe the most predominant emotion that you have to deal with each day of your life? That is, this is the emotion that's always seemingly laying in there. This is the one you wake up with, or sometimes you can forget it, but most of the time it's the overriding, predominant emotion in your life.

Let me just mention several of them. For example: conflict, rejection, emptiness, loneliness, rushed, overwhelmed, empty, or peace. Which one of those best describes your predominating emotion, the one that overwhelms and overrides all other emotions that you have? We all have changing emotions, but probably there's one that permeates all the rest of them.

Is it possible for us to live with a steadfast peace? Is it possible for us to live in the midst of difficulty and hardship in a world full of conflict? When there is want and need, is it possible for us to face needs in our life and still have peace? Is it possible for us to walk through storms and still have peace? Is it possible to suffer loss and still have peace? Is this simply an empty promise, or is this the real thing?

What is that dominating emotion that's always laying back there in your life? Well, it's interesting that the prophet Isaiah, when he was talking about the coming Messiah, prophesied His coming, and then he described Him in a beautiful way. I want you to turn, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah is a wonderful, wonderful prophet of things to come, and one of his most beautiful prophecies, one of the most important ones, is in this ninth chapter of his prophecy.

He says, beginning in verse 6, "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on His shoulders, and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace." When he said "Prince of Peace," he sent us a message: that He would be the provider of that peace and He would make that peace a reality within our life. He is certainly God. He is certainly deity. He's certainly a wonderful counselor that's none to match Him. He is the Prince of Peace, and everywhere you turn, people want to experience peace.

We'd like to see peace in the world. We'd like to see peace in the nation of Israel with all of the people around them. We'd like to see peace everywhere. The place we want to see it most is right on the inside of us. The question is, is it truly a reality when Jesus said that He would give us peace? "My peace I leave with you." Is that reality or is that just something that's nebulous out there somewhere? Let's see that it is.

I want you to think about His life for a moment. Let's look at several passages of Scripture, beginning in Mark chapter 5. Everywhere Jesus went, He was continually speaking peace to people. On this particular occasion, He was in a crowd of people, and in the midst of that crowd, a woman who had been ill because of hemorrhaging for years and years and years. All the doctors had failed, and she decided that she was going to see if Jesus could heal her. But then she was embarrassed about the whole idea, so she slipped up somewhere beside Him while He wasn't looking and just touched the hem of His garment—like the tip end of your dress or the cuff of a pair of trousers.

Then when she did, Jesus stopped and He said, "Who touched Me?" He said, "Because I felt power move out of Me." That is, He says He sensed in her touch of faith something happened on the inside of Him. What I want you to see here is what He said to her. In this fifth chapter and verse 34, He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction."

Then in Luke the seventh chapter, another woman that came to Jesus in a little different situation. She was a woman who was a sinner, the Bible says, probably a prostitute. She came into a Pharisee's house that had invited Jesus there for lunch or for dinner. So she came up behind Him and she began to weep on Jesus' feet and wipe His feet with her hair. Then she poured expensive perfume on them and wiped them with her hair.

Jesus said to her, when the rest of the Pharisees and the other visitors did not understand who is this woman—she's a sinner, and look what You are allowing—here's what He said to her: "Your sins have been forgiven." And He said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." You'll recall that in that 20th chapter of John when Jesus was meeting with His disciples after the resurrection and they were going through some difficulty in their belief. He appears to them in a room that was shut up because they were afraid.

What did He say? He entered the room and He said, "Peace be with you." He said, "Look at My hands," then He said, "Peace with you as the Father has sent Me, I'm also sending you." Eight days later, because Thomas wasn't there, He shows up again. What does He say, Thomas being there? He stood in the midst of them and He said, "Peace be with you." He was always speaking peace. That isn't the only thing He spoke, but He was continually speaking peace because He wanted people to experience a relationship with the Heavenly Father and with Him that would bring about peace in their life.

If somebody should ask you today, "Are you a peaceful person?" how would you answer that? If you were just really honest, could you say that the most predominating emotion in your life is one of peace? Doesn't mean that you don't go through difficulty, hardship, and pain. Doesn't mean that you don't have your trials and your setbacks. Doesn't mean that you don't have critics and so forth. But can you honestly say that in spite of all that, there is an overriding sense of peace?

Can you honestly say that it's one of peace, or do you feel rushed, hurried, and pressured and all the responsibilities? So you'd have to say, well, no, I don't feel very peaceful about things. Is it that you may feel some of that at times, but deep down inside, there's an overriding sense of absolute peace? Many people could say yes, but most people could say absolutely not. Then they would begin to tell us what they do feel, and it certainly would not be a sense of peace in their life.

You recall when Jesus sent His disciples out, He said, "When you go into a home, peace be to this house." I got to thinking about that. What do we say when we meet people? We say, "How are you doing?" "How are you?" "Good to meet you." We say, "Happy to meet you," sometimes when we don't even know the people. We don't know whether we're happy about it or not. We have this little phrase we say.

I wonder what would happen to people if we began to say to them when we meet them, "Peace be to you, my brother," "Peace be to you, my sister"? First of all, they'd say, "What's—you trying to be religious or something?" But I'll tell you one thing: they wouldn't forget it. If you meet somebody and you say, "Peace be to you," or if you go visit somebody in their homes—you've already visited people in their homes, or you're going back to your home or somebody else's home today or tomorrow—you're going to be visiting.

I wonder what would happen if when you walk in that home, either silently or audibly, you say, "Father, peace be upon this home"? You say, "Well, that's what Jesus told the disciples." But think about this: is it not true that the same Holy Spirit that lived in those disciples lives within you? He certainly is. Is it not also true that the same power that flowed from them is the same power that we have the potential to flow through us? He didn't limit that power just to those 12 men.

The power of the Holy Spirit is available to every single believer so that when you and I walk into a home and we say, "Father, peace be upon this household," does God answer that prayer? Yes, He does. And we say to someone we meet, especially, for example, people who are going through difficulty and we say, "Well, I just want you to know I'm praying for you." I wonder if we would say what Jesus said: "Peace be to you."

All the words I could think of, trying to find enough of them to say the same thing that one simple word says: peace. Everybody knows what peace is to some degree. It is a Greek word in the New Testament. The little word is eirene. What it really means is to be bound together. That is, to bind together that which was separated, that which was divorced, that which was broken, that which was torn apart. That's what God does in your life and mine when He reconciles us.

That is, when He brings us into a right relationship with Him, He takes us from our position out here torn away from Him, separated from Him, and what does He do? He brings us in His loving, tender care, brings us unto Himself, and He binds us together with Himself. So that a person who has trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior is a person who has been bound by God to God through their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose death at Calvary atoned for their sin and made it possible for sinners to be bound to a holy God and made righteous in the process.

When you think about what is this that God is up to in our life, He's up to doing something awesome in our life. He's up to this whole idea of bringing peace into our life. When you look at how Jesus spoke and how He would oftentimes convey to people peace, He was saying something to them. I want you to think about this verse if you'll turn to John chapter 14 for a moment. Jesus says something very significant here, the night before He's crucified.

The disciples are all upset and they don't know what's going on. They've heard Him say a lot of things that didn't seem to match up with Him if He's truly God and if He's the Son of God and He has all power. This doesn't seem to match up. In the process of all this, listen to what He says in the 27th verse. He said to them, "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you." He said, "I'm giving you a different kind."

Let's think about for just a moment, what kind of peace is it that the world has to offer? What is the world according to the Scripture? According to Scripture, the world is the world system; that is, society and life minus God. How does society have to offer peace? How can a person find peace in this society? I want you to think about something—this is a key. The reason the world can never have peace is because the most essential element in genuine true peace is missing.

So what do they do? They have to have things and position and prosperity and popularity and power or whatever it might be—a little bit of wealth or a whole lot of wealth, or just enough to get by. Their idea of peace is related to some thing, some experience that they can have apart from God. They don't think about it in that way, but that's what's going on. If they can get enough pleasure and pack enough pleasure into their life and fill up enough time with good things, then certainly they would say, "Well, surely I do have peace."

Their kind of peace is sort of skin-deep. It's not adequate. It's not sufficient to deal with the basic issues of life we have to deal with. This is why they fill the bars, they buy drugs, affairs, everything and anything to get their mind off what is stealing their peace from them, or they think is stealing their peace. What the world has to offer is inadequate.

The basic element that's missing—remember what we said the very idea of peace is in the New Testament? The word means to bind together. A person without Jesus Christ is not bound together with the only person who can give them peace. Because they haven't been bound together with Him, the key element in peace is the presence of God in their life. Jesus said, "My peace I give to you." And Paul said in Ephesians chapter 2, he says Jesus Christ is our peace.

Listen carefully. Jesus does not give us peace as a result of our prayer. Peace isn't something He gives us apart from Himself. His presence within us is the presence of peace within us, and then we learn how to apply the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ living within us in our life. So when we say, "What is the chief element in peace?" the chief element in peace is this relationship we have with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. Apart from Him, there is no peace, cannot be any peace, because He is the very source of peace.

A person says, "Well, I think I do have peace." Well, what's the source of it? I guarantee you they will begin to name experiences or things or relationships or whatever minus God. If they do not know Christ as their Savior, they're not going to mention Him. For example, somebody says, "Well, how would you describe this peace?" It is an inner sense of contentment, an inner sense of contentment and quietness in the midst of perplexities and difficulties and hardships.

A person who has genuine godly peace is a person who can live in the midst of a storm and feel the howling winds and feel the tornadoes and the earthquakes and everything around them beating against them. And all of that avalanche of difficulty, hardship, and trouble on the outside—on the inside, there's a sense of indescribable quietness and contentment. How could that be? Because it is not based on anything about our circumstances, anything about our surroundings, anything about events, anything about what somebody else does.

Someone says, "Well, I could have peace in my heart if it wasn't for him, or if it wasn't for her, or it wasn't for that." No, that's a fallacy in our thinking. That didn't give you peace. He didn't give you peace, nor did she give you peace. The source of your peace is the person of Jesus Christ. "My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." You don't have to give in to the trouble that you may feel in the moment.

For example, all of us can get hit on the blind side by something that at that moment causes either fear or uncertainty. But the moment we know how and when we learn how to respond, the moment we respond correctly, you know what happens? All of a sudden that turmoil that faced us briefly, it is only in a brief moment, and then we know exactly what to say and how to respond. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're going through in life.

The Prince of Peace was born about 2,000 years ago, and He's still alive, sitting at the Father's right hand, living inside of you if you've ever trusted Him as your personal Savior. He's not sort of adequate. He's not mostly adequate. He's not sometimes adequate. He is a God who can give you absolute lasting, sustaining, established, immovable, unshakable, unchangeable, unalterable, indescribable peace no matter what you're going through in life. That's who He is.

When you think about the kind of peace that He gives, somebody says, "Well, I can understand that, but where does it say that in the Bible?" I want you to turn, if you will, to John chapter 16 for a moment. Look at this. There's nothing that you and I need to know that's not in this wonderful book. John chapter 16, and I want you to listen to what He said. Listen to this, if you will, in verse 33: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me"—look at that, the two most important words in this sentence are two little two-letter words: "in Me"—"you may have peace."

Not apart from Me, but in Me. What is He saying? He says "in Me," that is in that relationship. In the 15th chapter, for example, He talked about our abiding relationship, that we're abiding in Him. That is, we're resting in Him, living in Him, trusting in Him, that our life has its source the person of Jesus Christ. So when He says in this passage, "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

Does that mean, for example, that if I'm a child of God that I won't have any more tribulation? No, it doesn't. Here's what it means: He says in the world, you're going to have tribulation. What I'm going to give you is a peace that'll make it possible for you to be able to ride on the top of the storms of the tribulations in life no matter what they are, with a sense of abiding, indescribable contentment and quietness of the soul when everything around you is blowing apart.

That's exactly what the world needs. That's what every single individual needs because we're all going to go through storms in life. We're either going to be blown away by the storm, knocked off track, be tempted to take detours, or we're going to stay steady to face the winds and the turmoil of life because we have a relationship with someone who has proven to be adequate and sufficient to meet every single storm of life. He is our peace. Paul said, "Jesus Christ is our peace."

So no matter what you're facing today, how difficult, how trying it may be, no matter how long it's been going on in your life and you think, "Lord, if You really and truly loved me, You wouldn't let this happen"—yes, because here's what happens. How would you and I ever know what He's like if He didn't toss us in the fire every once in a while and say, "Now watch what I'm going to do for you"? He allows the storms not just to prune us and discipline us; He allows the storms to reveal Himself. "Watch what I do for you. Watch how I provide for you. Watch how I give you an overwhelming sense of indescribable peace. Watch what I do in the midst of all this."

God is a loving God who loves us unconditionally. He desires that you and I have peace. How would we ever know how powerful it is unless He increased the storm? So when the intensity of the storm increases and my contentment doesn't decrease and the quietness of my soul doesn't become ruffled, what do I learn? That no matter how difficult the storm, His peace is steady, strong, adequate, and sufficient to see you through it no matter what.

Dr. Charles Stanley: No believer needs to feel trapped by loneliness. I can remember growing up and I came home to an empty house every day. I came home from school—I remember in the first grade. I still remember the school teacher saying, "I like Charles." Why do you think that registered on my little six-year-old mind? Because somewhere deep down inside this little boy's heart, I think I was so lonely in those early years that for somebody to say, "I like Charles," it's like God put that on my tape, and I've loved that tape ever since.

I wonder how many people you and I live around and work around who would just love for us to say, "I like you," "I just love you"? I don't know where you are in your relationships with people, your relationship with God, but this much I do know: God can and will bring you through that loneliness and absolutely fill your life with a joy and a sense of contentment that this world will never be able to explain or understand.

Guest (Male): God is willing to replace your every heartache with His peace. Visit us at intouch.org to learn more about the Christian life. Did you have a breakthrough moment as you listened to this program? Tell us what you learned. Tomorrow on In Touch, sudden loss or disastrous circumstances can chase peace away. Be encouraged when you join us for part two of "Living in Lasting Peace" Tuesday on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.