Morning Devotion

Feb 02 2021

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

On the night that Jesus is arrested, He speaks to the disciples one last time. He says that He will give them peace and that they do not need to be afraid or troubled by His coming absence.

Try to put yourself in the disciples' shoes for a minute. Their leader, whom they had followed for three years and given up everything for, was about to leave them. Jesus was about to leave the people who had become His friends and whom He loved deeply. He knows that when He leaves, He won't give them money or anything like that as a sort of inheritance or goodbye gift. He gives them something far more valuable: peace.

Jesus knows that His gift is very different from what the world offers: "not as the world giveth, give I unto you." The world offers us things—money, a house, an inheritance, fame, or a legacy and each of them only lasts for a little while. Eventually the world, and all that it can give us, will be gone. Jesus, who is not of the world, gives His disciples peace for all of eternity. This peace will last beyond their lifetimes, spanning throughout all of time, untouched by the world.

Because of this peace, they do not need to be afraid. When Jesus says that to them, He is repeating His words from the beginning of the 14th chapter of John, which starts with the phrase, "Let not your hearts be troubled." Jesus spent the chapter explaining why His disciples should not be troubled, and He ended with the greatest reason of all: His gift to them of peace, the opposite of fear.

Do you live in peace today? There can be moments of our lives when we get caught up in things—something went wrong, something didn't work right, something is taking too long, something wasn't fair—and in those moments we can easily forget that we are compromising on the peace that Jesus has given us as followers of Him. Whenever that happens, we can practice turning our thoughts back to Him, remembering to live in His eternal promises today.

Dear Lord, I thank you for offering me peace. It isn't like anything in the world, and I'm so grateful that you have given it to me. Help me to notice when I am not living in the peace that you have given me, and help me return to it quickly when my mind wanders. I love you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.