Search for Peace

Good Evening, AGC Family!  

This morning in my prayer time over our church family, I found myself speaking peace over situations in your life and believing God for His manifestation of His peace to flow through you, your family, your home, and your workplace. Basically, everything you do and where ever you may go: peace. 

The definition of peace in the Greek is to join or bind together that which has been separated; a state of tranquility, security, safety, prosperity; harmonious state of the soul. But the most interesting part of this definition, begins with the first words “to join”. So, for peace to be present in your soul (mind, will and emotions) you must join with something. What is the “something” you must join with? Or I should ask, what is the “someone” you must join with to bring forth tranquility, security, safety, prosperity, harmony? The answer is the Holy Spirit.

Galatians 5:22 states, “...but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (KJV) The Holy Spirit is the vessel that you must “join with” to bring forth peace in your life. He is the one who will remind you of a rhema word that will bring you peace over your situation. He is the one who will strengthen you in the middle of the trial, therefore, bringing you peace. He is the guide who will guide you in the right direction, and He will lead you into and with His peace.
But, family, we have a part to play. In 1 Peter 3:11 the Word tells us to “turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it.” (NLT) I like this interpretation because it gives us the mind-set that peace is not going to just fall on us, but that we must first choose “to join” in with peace and then search for it! Remember the days of hunting Easter eggs?  I loved doing that so much that my brother and I would continue to hide the eggs and then hunt them again for days after Easter. We always had one special egg - the prize egg - the one we intensely searched for over all others. This is the visual image I see when I think of this scripture. I am looking for the “prize egg” joining with the Holy Spirit to bring forth this peace in my situations. Just as we did as children searching for those eggs, we must also do when seeking the peace of God in our lives. All those other eggs may be lack, no joy, strife, etc. but the “prize egg” (peace) is the one we diligently go after! After we find it, the rest of this verse tells us to maintain it! The definition  of maintain is to keep in an existing state, to continue to persevere in. In other words, we must find the “prize egg”, hold on to it, and persist in keeping it close to us! 
Now, let us take the word Pastor Chip spoke last Sunday and add this with it. (If you do not know, go to our archives of Sunday, May 16th). Choose blessings! One of the many ways we can choose blessings is to choose peace. When we choose to search out and maintain peace in our lives and through every situation, we choose the blessings to flow. Lack of peace, “clogs up” the pipe that blessings flow through. So, family, let’s choose peace by searching for it and maintaining it by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may be a witness to others of God’s blessing of peace.

-Pastor Candace