I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
How do you define peace? If it’s an absence of conflict, you may never find it.
No matter where you live in the world, life has never felt more complex, confounding or unstable than it does now. Jesus said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled”—but it’s hard to imagine our hearts being anything but troubled much of the time. Jesus wasn’t an unrealistic optimist. He said to his followers, “‘I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world,'” (John 16:33). What Jesus had told his disciples was that He wasn’t going to leave them alone when He left earth to rejoin His Father in heaven. His presence, His Spirit, that the Bible calls the Holy Spirit, comes to live in all who choose to follow Him.
When Jesus calls us to follow Him, it’s not a calling to just do the best we can while He sits up in heaven. He gives the gift of His personal presence in the person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s name means “one called alongside to help.” If you follow Jesus, it is His presence, His help, that is your peace in the midst of the “trials and sorrows” that is life (John 14:16-17).
There won’t be a time where all conflict will end until Jesus returns to redeem all of creation once and for all. The Bible says that day is coming (Hebrews 9:27-28) but until then, Jesus enters into our problems with us and His Holy Spirit helps us. “The peace I give to you is a gift the world cannot give,” Jesus says (John 14:27).
His presence can be your peace.
