“Living At The Pace Of Peace” by Nancy Dufresne

 On one occasion, a minister asked our spiritual father, “With all your responsibilities, how are you so settled?”

     He answered, “Because I have suffered so much.”

     What did he mean by that? Because of so much opposition, he had taken advantage of those times to develop his skill at living in peace; he chose to live untroubled, even when faced with troubling circumstances.

     We must practice being peaceful, no matter what we are facing.

     How can we be untroubled in an unfavorable setting? By holding our attention on God and His Word through meditation on the Word, praising God for His Word, and being doers of the Word.

     Faith has a sound. Included in that sound is the “sound of peace.” Faith sounds settled, peaceful, and undisturbed.

     We are Word and Spirit people. We must follow the Word and follow the Spirit, knowing that the Spirit will always lead us in line with the Word.

     In following the Spirit, every believer must learn to recognize the leading of the Spirit in their everyday life. The Spirit leads us through peace. Isaiah 55:12 tells us, “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace….” How do we know if the Spirit of God is leading us to do something? We will know by the peace in our spirit. If the Spirit is leading us to do something, we will have an inward peace about it. Even if the mind seems troubled, we are to ignore the mind, for we are always safe in following the peace in our spirit, apart from opposition that may come against the mind. If we are not to do something, we won’t have that inward sense of peace.

     At Jesus’ birth, angels appeared to shepherds and announced, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth PEACE, good will toward men.” His arrival into the earth was announced as “the arrival of peace,” and the way He conducted His life demonstrated Him as the Prince of Peace.

     In His hometown, the crowd tried to push Him off a cliff. But the Word states, “He walked through the midst of them.” He wasn’t troubled by the uprising against Him. In peace, He just passed through their midst and continued on with His mission. He didn’t allow their unrest to rob Him of His peace; His peace dominated their unrest. Peace will dominate unrest. Peace is MASTER over all unrest!

     We are never to allow circumstances or what others may try to do or say against us rob us of our peace. We are to protect our peace by continuing to do the Word, no matter what others may or may not do.

     When Jesus received the report of Lazarus’ sickness, He stayed where He was for another four days; He didn’t rush back to the city where Lazarus lived. He didn’t allow a crisis to direct Him – only the Spirit of God, who leads through peace. In the city where Lazarus lived, they had tried to kill Jesus there, so He left. No doubt, the devil’s attack on Lazarus’ life was aimed at getting Jesus to immediately return to the place where His life was threatened. But in this crisis, Jesus still followed peace – He didn’t follow the crisis.

     When the boat that Jesus and the disciples were in was filling up with water, Peter accused Jesus, “Carest thou not that we perish?” Jesus rebuked the storm, then rebuked them, “Where’s your faith?” They were fearful, not peaceful. When they left peace, they left faith – they laid down their faith in the face of the storm; they quit using their faith.

     When going to minister to Jairus’ daughter, the impending threat of death didn’t change Jesus’ pace, for while on the way, He stopped for a testimony of healing from the woman with the issue of blood. In the heightened circumstances of the needs of others, He never left the pace of peace. Faith is at rest – not panicked – even by the emergencies of life!

     The flow of this world is turmoil, so we are to purposefully choose and take our place in peace every day.

     Value peace highly! To choose to live every day in the flow of peace arrives us at living days of Heaven on the earth. But we must “practice peace” daily by casting down any thought that doesn’t arrive us at peace and joy. We must answer those wrong thoughts and refuse to turn them over in our mind. That’s how we “practice peace.”

     When staying in the flow of peace, letting peace dominate us, then we know that we are walking in faith. If our peace is interrupted, our faith is interrupted.

     When we are walking in peace, then we are walking in faith, and when we are in faith, God’s power can flow unhindered, for the power of God always meets faith.

     Peace is the RECEIVING flow. Fear, worry, and doubt are not the flow of receiving. If we leave peace to yield to worry, fear, or doubt, we have left the highest flow.

     Walking in peace doesn’t mean we’re inactive. We are to actively release our faith daily, but from a place of peace and rest, not from a place of “trying.”

     Oral Roberts told of an occasion when he was praying “real hard” for his partners. Their letters were spread out before him, and he was reading of the difficult circumstances some of them were facing. As he was praying “real hard” for them, God spoke to him, “Don’t pray hard, pray easy! I’M the One who does the work!” We are peaceful when we are resting on Him who does the work.

     To live in peace, our attention has to be on the right thing – on God and His Word. The skill of faith is seen in what our attention is on.

     Hebrews 4:11 instructs us, “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest….” We don’t labor to “fight the devil.” We labor to enter and to stay in the “flow of rest” – refusing to let any opposition trouble or unsettle us. Labor to occupy the place of peace by answering every troubling thought with the Word of God, then refuse to be swayed from that place. For every crisis and test of life, the answer is found in the place of peace – for faith is peaceful.

     In that place of peace, there is no “push” to try to make things happen. When we’re pushing, we’ve left peace, which means we’ve left faith. We are to be peaceful as we trust God to lead us and to bring His Word to pass in our life.

     Settle down on God and His Word – take your place in the “pace of peace.” To live at the “pace of peace,” settle back down on what God has already said to you and hold your attention there. That’s the position of faith, and that’s how to live at the “pace of peace.”