Take Heart
When I start praying for peace, I feel stopped in my prayers.
Probably not unlike you, I’ve been up many-a-night lately with the Ukrainian people heavy on my heart. I’ve been praying for evil, lies and corruption to be exposed, for every abusive leader to be removed, and especially for the comfort and deliverance of innocent civilians.
But when I start praying for that thing every human with a beating heart desires for themselves and others — for all conflicts to end and prosperity to be restored — for peace, really, I feel stopped in my prayers.
I have to recognize that these are the wrong things to pray for.
Why?
Let me put it like this, with a history example. We who are Christians do not forget that when Jesus came to earth, the Jews didn’t recognize Him as the long-awaited Messiah because they were looking for a hero who would restore their physical peace and governmental rule, while non-Jews (without thousands of years of misinterpreted prophesies) more readily believed in Him. We shake our heads at the Jews and pat ourselves on our enlightened Christian backs.
Yet are we not doing the very same thing every time we expect worldly oppressions to cease and all creature comforts to be ours?
Of course we want peace in our circumstances. Who doesn’t long for the elusive peace of families and nations that don’t fight, of prosperity and ease? It makes our hearts ache with longing, our tongues wag in passionate protest, our bodies tangle in knots on long, sleepless nights. But this fragile peace is based on circumstances and vanishes as quickly as circumstances change, as quickly as fog on a hot morning.
We think we deserve basic peace of circumstances so deeply that we’re shocked when it doesn’t materialize -- maybe especially so here in America, where our unprecedented national history of freedom and prosperity has led us to feel entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”–aka peace?
Where did we get the idea that we deserve peace of circumstances? And when in history have we actually achieved this? C.S. Lewis famously said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” We were created for heaven, not this broken world.
The longing for peace is written on our hearts.
We need it the way infants need their mothers.
But we are never promised that.
In fact, we are promised just the opposite. Jesus had a very firm grip on reality. That’s why He said, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” Matthew 24:6-8
What if we’ve gotten it all wrong, and peace is not about circumstances at all? What if while we’re looking for something immediate, circumstantial, temporal – we’re missing what’s actually being offered—something far greater and infinitely, untouchably better?
In the mist of the reality of the darkness of the world, Jesus Himself shines as the light. “In this world you will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Take heart.
Where do we find peace? The first half of the verse says “In ME you may have peace.”
Take heart
How? Jesus came to free souls, not bodies.
This is the entire message of the gospel right here. We can only take heart when we’re willing to look beyond our circumstances to Jesus Christ Himself, the only source of peace that can sink so deep into our hearts that it actually transcends circumstances.
Asking for peace in our circumstances is attempting to bring earth up to the level of heaven. Receiving the peace of Jesus Christ in our hearts brings heaven to earth.
I’ve been teaching my daughter the Lord’s Prayer; we recite it in the car each morning on the way to school. Every time we get to “Your kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven,” my heart skips a beat. What does that mean — for God’s kingdom to come on earth?
We have to throw out our earthly constructs of prosperity and lack. “Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.” (John 18:36)
Receiving Jesus’ peace into our hearts is receiving His Kingdom into our hearts – it makes us ambassadors from the Kingdom of Heaven itself. And the interesting thing is that hearts that have received the peace that Jesus gives live lives that result in a whole lot more earthly peace than if Jesus just came and fixed the circumstances like we’d asked.
You better believe I’m still praying for the Ukrainian people. And the Russian people. And my own American people. Yes, I’m joining my prayers to the rising chorus of faithful believers crying out for the deliverance of oppressed people in every corner of this sorrow-ridden earth.
And I am taking heart.
I’m praying for hearts to change by meeting Jesus right where they’re at, in the middle of whatever circumstance they face, knowing that’s where the real salvation happens, and knowing circumstances will ultimately follow.
