Peace, Perfect Peace

Lately, God has been teaching me about His peace. Although I always knew that having God’s peace meant trusting Him. I often wondered: “What is a practical action that I can take to experience God’s peace - especially in a situation that I feel I cannot handle?” Well, God recently answered this question and allowed me to write a hymn about it as a bonus!

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend on the phone and telling her about some things that were troubling me. She felt led to pray for me over the phone, so I gladly let her (Side note: this friend’s prayers are like poetry! I felt better just listening to her pray!). As she was praying, she started talking about God’s peace and the Lord caused the phrase ‘perfect peace’ to stick out at me. At the same instant, I had a feeling in my heart that I could write a hymn from that phrase. I didn’t have any ideas at that point, just the feeling. I decided to try - just to see if it was the Lord speaking to me or if I was just excited. Now I know that it was the Lord speaking to me because I ended up with a chorus that I liked based on Philippians 4:6-7. Later however, I tried to write a verse but didn’t like what I came up with. After that, I decided that maybe God hadn’t been speaking to me and I set the hymn aside.

Last week, I was having a Bible study with a couple of friends and we were sharing prayer requests. That evening, I had some big things that I needed prayer for. After I shared, one of my friends said: “I think God is trying to bring you to a place of peace.” I distinctly felt the Lord was speaking to me. As I pondered it, I realized just how much God had been teaching me about His peace and I began to have that feeling like I wanted to write a hymn. Over the next couple of days, the Lord gave me the perfect verse to go with the chorus that I had given up on. Here are the words of the hymn in its entirety (although I may add more verses in the future):

Peace, Perfect Peace

Verse:

A place of peace within the storm

sweet rest amidst the blows,

is found when human efforts yield

to the peace that God bestows.

Chorus:

Peace, perfect, peace,

sweet peace of God,

surpasses all understanding.

This peace will guard your heart and mind -

this peace that comes from Christ Jesus.

©Sabrina Brem 2021

Through all this, the Lord answered the question that I posed at the beginning of this post: What is a practical action that I can take to experience God’s peace - especially in a situation that I feel I cannot handle? God told that, when I come to a place where my human efforts are useless, I need to let Him do the heavy lifting in HIS power rather than trying to make a dent in the situation on my own. Now, this is not actively trying to keep myself out of God’s way by badgering myself with commands to not worry and not think about what I’m struggling with. No. It is a passive realization that there is nothing I can do to completely fix the situation or make myself less anxious. There is only one being who can do that and He is the Lord. The pressure is off! I don’t have to ‘perform’ under my own strength! I had some scary situations recently that pushed me to the point where I felt like I couldn’t handle them, but God said: You’re right - you can’t handle it. But I can.