I like to think about peace as an inner paradise. In Scripture, our English word “peace” is usually used to translate the Hebrew word and concept “shalom” within the Old Testament and its corresponding Greek word (eirēnē) within the New Testament. Peace is a superb word, but it surely needs some explication to capture the infinite possibilities embedded within the concept of shalom. Shalom is life as God designed it. Life because it was meant to be at first. Everything is working harmoniously together to advertise purpose, flourishing, and outrageous joy in every dimension of our lives.
The paradise in our genesis is a good looking picture of this. As I wrote in my book The Lord Give You Peace: A 28 Day Journey To Thrive In God’s Shalom, “Holistic well-being describes the health Adam and Eve enjoyed in every dimension of their lives. Spiritually, they were in an intimate communion with God and were well of their souls. Relationally, they were in a loving covenant, totally transparent, and at one with one another. Psychologically, they lived without shame, and shame, as you surely know, is at the foundation of much mental unhealth. They weren’t anxious, depressed, offended, or afraid. Physically, they were in perfect health and lived in harmony with their environment. Vocationally, they did the work they were called to do. Apparently, they didn’t even sweat while doing it. Materially, they enjoyed bountiful resources.” [1] Furthermore, all the pieces of their circle of influence was thriving and productive. And they were glad and fulfilled. This is a glimpse of paradise.
Paradise is a superb description of what we receive after we receive the peace that God gives. When we consider in Jesus, we have now peace with God and a latest God-breathed capability to live life the way in which God designed it to be lived. We enter the dominion of God, and the dominion of God enters us. Or we’d say that we enter paradise and paradise enters us. We won’t fully realize this in all its fullness until the age to come back, but…we do taste the wonder of paradise now.
I write this to make a straightforward point: the paradise inside us should be cultivated. Even though God planted the Garden of Eden, Adam was tasked with the responsibility to “work it and take care of it.” [2]Adam was to nurture paradisiacal possibilities. He was to take what God alone created and make all of it it had the God given potential to be. In much the identical way, so must we cultivate the peace that God has placed inside us, to be able to bring to fruition all of the shalomic possibilities that God’s peace brings. God has re-created us and brought us into an entire latest reality, but we must go to work by His grace to assist make this latest arrangement all that it has the potential to be.
There are some ways we will do that. The practice of spiritual disciplines is one. When we spend time in prayer, reading Scripture, and worship, for example, we grow in our relationship with God and nourish His peace inside us, together with the blessings that peace makes possible. I need to focus, nevertheless, on two practices which have been fundamental to cultivating peace in my life. They are so obvious, I hesitate to say them. Yet, I even have discovered that a lot of us have to nurture these understandings as foundational to our relationship to God and to foster the conditions for a lot of other good and godly things to grow.
1. Nurture an Awareness of How Much God Loves You.
I really like how the Apostle Paul prayed that we’d grow in our ability to fathom the fathomless love of God. “May your roots go down deep into the soil of God‘s marvelous love. And may you may have the ability to grasp, as all God‘s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and the way deep his love, really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it’s so great you won’t ever fully understand it. Then you shall be crammed with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” [3]This is gorgeous and revealing. As our roots go deep into the soil of God’s love…as we nourish our awareness of how much He loves us despite the fact that His love is ultimately ungraspable…we’re “crammed with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”[4]
I encourage you to concentrate on how much God loves you. The God of the universe, Creator of the world, Maker of all things, for whatever reason looks at you and loves you with a love so profound that it can’t be comprehended. But you’re still presupposed to try. When you grow in your understanding of His love, His peace grows inside you, and so do all of the shalom possibilities that flow from His peace. Your life will be an increasing number of as He meant for it to be. Your life can look increasingly Edenic. As your awareness of His love grows in you, paradise will flourish inside you. You cultivate peace when “your roots go down deep into the soil of his love.”[5]
I’ve all the time been fascinated with the way in which John described Jesus and himself in relation to Jesus. From the very opening words of his Gospel, he described Jesus when it comes to His divinity. Jesus was the Word who created the world and who was made flesh. John said, excitedly in my reading, that he had beheld God’s very glory within the person of Jesus. And then, when he described himself, he says that he was the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” [6] He does this several times. Who nicknamed him “John the beloved?” John did. It’s like He is saying that an important thing he could say about himself in light of who Jesus is – the God of the universe who got here to earth as a person! – is to say “He loves me.”
And I undergo you that that is one of the best thing you and I can say about ourselves as well. He loves me! He loves me! He loves me! Nourish your soul with this, and your peace will grow.
2. Nurture an Awareness of How Much God Likes You.
God not only loves us, but He also likes us. Love will be rooted in obligation. Like feels more like a alternative. We are commanded to like each other, but liking each other will be one other thing altogether. Liking someone is less about duty and more about pleasure and delight. Of course, God selected to like us, but He likes us, too.
The psalmist wrote that God had fond thoughts about him, despite the fact that God knew all the pieces there was to learn about him – the nice, bad, beautiful, and ugly. “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!” [7] He also said that he was “fearfully and splendidly made.” [8] Don’t think for a moment that God looks at you – made in His image, you! – and feels anything aside from a fundamental affection. He made you, you, and He embedded in you the potential to be all the pieces He created you to be. Furthermore, He redeemed you to completely develop into the person He made you to be. He wants you to be one of the best version of you, nothing or anyone else. He likes you.
Do parents like their children? Even in all of their fallen humanity? Yes. Yes. And after all. Well, please do not forget that though Jesus was God’s only begotten Son, He wasn’t an only child. We are all God’s children, and we had higher consider that when He looks at us, He sees people whom He not only loves but likes very much.
Yes…“He likes you! You with the terrible morning breath. You who’re carrying 15 extra kilos. You who didn’t send that email you told your boss you’d send yesterday. You who binged Netflix last night and are struggling, bleary-eyed, to do your devotional reading. You who needed to put money within the curse jar at work this week. You who’re battling lust. You who sinned again. That doesn’t mean that He approves of, or likes, the silly or silly or sinful things about you. But no matter those things, He still likes you.” [9]
Part of what I feel we want to be able to cultivate peace in our lives is a way that God is fully invested in that process. Even in all its two steps forward, three steps back, human reality. We have to know that He is long-suffering and patient, and, greater than that, even finds delight and has “fun” with us as we’re learning, growing, and becoming more fully the people He created us to be. Yes, we must cultivate the paradise He has put in us, but He has not left us alone to do that. He is present with us, loving us with unfathomable love and finding pleasure in His relationship with us.
Let’s nourish peace, starting with nurturing our awareness of how much God loves and likes us. This is a superb place to start out.
[1] The Lord Give You Peace: A 28-Day Journey to Thrive in God’s Shalom, Terry A. Smith, pg. 29
[2] Genesis 2:15 NIV
[3] Ephesians 3:17-19 NLT, 1996
[4] Ephesians 3:17-19 NLT, 1996
[5] Ephesians 3:17 NLT, 1996
[6] John 13:23 NIV
[7] Psalm 139:17 NLT, 1996
[8] Psalm 139:14 NLT, 1996
[9] The Lord Give You Peace: A 28-Day Journey to Thrive in God’s Shalom, Terry A. Smith, pg. 74-75
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Alex Gagareen
A gifted communicator and cofounder of The New York City Leadership Center (now Movement.org), Terry speaks in quite a lot of national and international venues, inspiring others to find and pursue the life God dreams for them. (www.terryasmith.com)
He is the best-selling writer of The Lord Give You Peace: A 28-Day Journey to Thrive in God’s Shalom; The Lord Bless You: A 28-Day Journey to Experience God’s Extravagant Blessings; The Hospitable Leader: Create Environments Where People and Dreams Flourish; and Live Ten: Jumpstart the Best Version of Your Life. He can be the host of The Life God Dreams For You with Terry A. Smith & The Life Christian Church on WMCA 570AM & 102.3 FM, on Sunday mornings at 9am EST (www.tlcc.org/dreams)
