“We don’t have peace with others because we don’t have peace with ourselves. We don’t have peace with ourselves because we don’t have peace with God.”
– Ken Boa, Author/Theologian
The Bible makes God’s design for our lives clear including God’s strong desire for us to be at peace with Him and to live eternally with Him in paradise/heaven. Through a relationship with Him, He offers to give us His peace – a deep soul-level contentment, joy, satisfaction, and rest that is unshakeable.
Here’s the broader story the Bible makes clear.
God created everything good, including you and me; we are not an accident.
He created us to live in an eternally fulfilling and enjoyable relationship with Him.
We’ve all inherited a brokenness of soul, which has thwarted God’s good purposes for us and ruptured our relationship with Him. This is at the root of our lack of peace.
We’ve both inherited and committed sin. We’ve ignored, disobeyed, violated and crossed the good commands, instructions, and design of God for life. By so doing, we have rebelled against the holy, pure and perfect nature of God. Our sin has made us opposite in character from God. Our sin has made us enemies of His nature and purposes and has rightly earned us the consequences of His judgment.
Jesus came to live a perfect life to restore our broken relationship with God, to die on the cross the death (judgment) we deserve for our sins, and to rise from the dead to give us the guarantee of eternal life.
We enter into an eternally fulfilling and enjoyable relationship with God by trusting in Jesus and His complete work of restoration and salvation for us.
We “trust” Jesus by committing our lives and eternal destinies to Him. We can make that commitment of our faith in Him through a prayer of commitment, like articulated below; but, most importantly, we live out that commitment by trusting Him to lead our lives every day and hold our futures completely in His hands.
A Prayer Of Salvation/Commitment To Christ
God, thank You for creating me to be able to know and enjoy You.
I confess, I have sinned against You and deserve Your judgment.
Thank You for sending Jesus to reclaim all I have lost. Thank You Jesus for living a perfect life for me, for dying on the cross for me, and for rising from the grave for me. Right now, I am asking You to forgive me of all my sins and give me eternal life with You in heaven.
I receive the forgiveness and life You have provided for me, thank You!
Come into my life Jesus, sit on the throne of my life, lead me to know You, follow You and walk with You from this day forward. Thank You! Amen.
When you’ve made that commitment of faith, God has fully and eternally accepted you as His child. You can begin to experience true peace because you are completely at peace with God. Through Jesus, God has declared you forgiven and right with Him in every way.
You have become a child of God, a believer in Jesus, one of His followers, a Christian. Jesus says to you “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – The Gospel of John, chapter 16, verse 33.
From your new position of being at peace with God, you will want to begin to grow in experiencing the full weight of that peace. Jesus invites His followers to live learning His ways and thereby experiencing deeper and deeper degrees of the security, rest, joy and peace He gives us. He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (peace). Take my yoke (my training tool) upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest (peace) for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28 - 30
We can help you know what to do next as you grow to know Him and His peace. We have great resources to help. Please simply let us know you’ve taken this step of faith to enter into God’s family and we’ll reach out to you to help you get growing.