Who doesn’t want peace in the midst of the turmoil we live in? Every glance at the news headlines promises more conflict, economic stress, and future volatility. Meanwhile, the fast pace of our digital society makes our lives more complex than ever and assaults our inner peace.
So in the midst of that, it is good to be reminded of Isaiah 26:3-4:
You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
That’s right. The key to peace – perfect peace – is a mind stayed on God. So let’s think about that for a minute. It is the most fundamental thing a Christian must do, yet it is the most neglected and the most attacked discipline as we are barraged by all kinds of things vying for our minds’ attention.
I see at least five keys to a mind stayed on God.
- Trust. We tend to veer toward and pay attention to what or who we trust. Anything untrustworthy or suspicious we run away from. For that reason, the text says “whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.” Faith in God is the first ingredient of a mind stayed on God. Faith sees the Invisible God and agrees that He is more trustworthy than everything around us in the visible world. Trust in the dependability, faithfulness, and love of God moves us to keep our minds focused on Him.
- Eternal perspective. Verse 4 calls on us to trust in Him because He is an everlasting rock. A solid and enduring awareness that everything visible and tangible around us is temporary and that only God is everlasting helps us keep our minds stayed on Him as well. And I’m not just talking about duration, i.e., length of time. I’m talking about durability. Eternal life is of a quality greater than any form of life our material world can offer, so it pays to keep our minds set on that rather than the stuff around us that is doomed to fall apart.
A couple of keys are found a few verses down, in Isaiah 26:8-9:
In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul. My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. - Waiting. A mind stayed on God waits for the impartation of His revelation and grace. It seeks insight from the Holy Spirit in His Word to know Him better. It turns away from self-reliance to dependence on His daily grace toward us in all its forms. It knows that apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5).
- Desiring. We tend to think all the time about what we crave. Craving pizza for dinner? I guarantee you’ll think about pizza all day long. Craving the company of your spouse or significant other? You won’t stop thinking about him or her. Desire for a person keeps your mind set on them. So it is with God. Yearning for His presence, the touches of His grace, the reassurances from His Word, and the knowledge of His love will keep our minds stayed on Him.
- Remembrance. Because we are so easily distracted and forgetful about God’s workings in our lives, we have to remind ourselves often of His goodness. Intentional recall of His attributes and all the things He has done for us through praise and thanksgiving keep Him uppermost in our thoughts.
And that is where He needs to be. Constant communion, constant craving, and constant remembrance will keep our minds stayed on Him and cause His perfect peace to have an enduring presence in our souls – our thoughts, our emotions, our hopes, and our perspectives.
The beauty of the perfect peace that comes from God, that we cannot produce ourselves and that the world cannot give us, is that He keeps us in it. It is constant and permeates everything. It forms a bedrock underneath the business of our thoughts and the ups and downs of our emotions.
Perfect peace sees the turmoil of the world, and the confusion within us, but pulls us back to a place of rest in Him. It does not call us to withdraw from the world and live in a state of denial, nor does it tell us to stick our heads in the sand. It calls us to view everything that happens around us as under God’s complete control and working together to accomplish His perfect plans. Plans beyond our understanding. And it calls us to view our wounds, anxieties, our up and down feelings, and troubled thoughts as fertile ground for His Spirit to change us as we turn everything over to Him.
The story of Peter walking on the waves comes to mind. As long as His mind stayed on Jesus, he could rise above the wind and the waves and keep walking in perfect peace. As soon as he looked around him and grew afraid, he sank like a brick.
I don’t want to sink like a brick. Neither do you. I want to be kept in God’s perfect peace. he will keep that promise if we hold up our end of the deal – keeping our minds stayed on Him, trusting, waiting, desiring, remembering, and embracing the superior quality of eternal life God gave us in Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
So, don’t neglect the basics and order your life around making time for Him. The life and health of your soul depend on it.