Bad Decisions Bring Peace too – Part 2 of Knowing God’s Will

Click this ->Part 1 to find the first post to the series.

What do Christians mean when they base decisions on the peace they have upon making that choice? The phrase has become a cliché that has little meaning anymore. And that is the problem with clichés. Making a decision based upon cliché can be used by 5 different people meaning 5 different things.

As Christians we are called to think hard, carefully, and humbly. Our walk with God is to be characterized by the renewing of our minds which means to think like God thinks (Ephesians 4:20-24; Colossians 3:10). God has revealed His thoughts in His Word, the Bible. So what does the Bible say about peace?

Peace is primarily spoken of in Scripture as a status between two parties (e.g. Ephesians 2:14). For example, apart from Christ mankind is not at peace with God but at “enmity” with Him. Christ Jesus came, lived a sinless life, suffered the wrath of God on the cross, died, was buried, rose again, ascended into heaven, and now pleads on the behalf of His bride that they may have peace with God (e.g. Romans 5:1). On several occasions peace is used to speak of the emotion that flows from the restored relationship with God and confidence that God is sovereign (e.g. Phillipians 4:7). If you look how the Apostle John uses the word peace it is regularly contrasted with fear. Unbelievers also experience something they would call peace. The Apostle Paul says:

While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3 ESV, italics added for emphasis)

In other words, these pagans were doing things and believed themselves to be at peace, and they were not. It is possible to deceive oneself into thinking we have peace when we don’t. The only true standard we have to measure true peace is God’s Word.

My fear is that, in the midst of the lack of clarity, Christians have confused the word “peace” from the Bible with a worldly meaning. And then used this understanding (the worldly meaning) to base many of their daily decisions. In the end, we may be guilty of substituting God’s Word on the throne with our emotions, all the while thinking we are making Biblical choices.

What we see continually throughout Scripture is God’s Word being likened to “light” to a darkened path, or His word giving “wisdom” to help one be wise, or His word providing “discernment” to aid His people in decisions. But nowhere do we see the Bible telling us to make decisions based upon the (emotional) peace we have. This is because emotions are subjective, irregular, and difficult to discern.

Allow me to be practical and give just one example of the failures of using peace for the basis rather than God’s Word.

Suppose you begin to study God’s Word and as you are studying you come to a passage that seems to teach you something you never had thought of before. It’s eye opening, it gives insight into things that seemed muddy before. You begin with excitement as you try to live in light of this understanding.

As time passes, you find it difficult to do it. Perhaps it is strenuous, tiresome, and cumbersome. So you begin to doubt why you are doing it in the first place. You continue doing it for some time longer but you feel yourself come to a point where you must reevaluate why you are doing this.

So you begin to pray about it. You pray things like, “LORD, please help me know whether I should continue doing this.” “LORD, I want to please you, and obey you, but I’m just not sure if you want me to do this anymore. Please show me what I am to do.” (Let’s assume in this example that the prayers are legit. You truly mean them. You truly want to know what to do. And you truly want to obey God. But how do you go about discerning what God shows you.)

In confidence that God will show you, you begin to consider your options. A: continue doing what you thought you saw in God’s Word some time ago, but now seems so foggy. B: Quit doing it. (there is a third option but let’s ignore that for now and come back to it another time)

So you think about each option and you explain your two options to God and ask Him to show you which one to do. You begin to think, well when I think about “A”, I struggle with frustration, difficulty, temper, etc. But when I think about “B” I just seem to have peace about it. God has called me to peace, so I will pray about it some more and see what happens. You continue to pray about it, and the more you think about “B” the more peace you seem to have. You end up convinced that this is totally what God has called you personally to do. He may call other people to do it, but not you.

What’s wrong with this example? Did you catch it? In the midst of praying and thinking; little if any time was put into actually listening to God, because no time was put into reading and listening to His Word.

In the example, you had merely used your emotions for the reference to voice of God and not His Word. It is likely the peace we think is from God (in the above scenario) is actually an idol. We love ourselves, and want to make life; easy, comfortable, and normal, when we actually obey God those things will almost always be threatened. Thus, we will experience the flesh raise its ugly head and make war. We mistake our flesh and idols with God because we deceive ourselves.

This is just one of the many ways that using peace as a basis for decisions is not the way God has called us to know His will for us. How can I know this, because God told me (in His Word)?