298th Post Jesus Said Promises Made to His Followers - New Section on Peace and Rest - Comment.

This is a new Topic and we start with an introduction to this topic entitled Peace and Rest. God's definition of peace and rest is different than the world's. When the world talks about peace, it means a time of calm with no tribulation. When God talks about peace, it means calm while going through tribulations. This is where a lot of believer's have trouble, because they want to apply the world's definition to God's. They believe God is offering peace without tribulation. For God to offer that we would have to be living in a perfect world. This is a promise to come, but this is not what we have now. We live in a fallen world, and because of that, we have to live with the consequences of that situation. That means we will have sickness and death, famine and drought. To live at peace through this situation is the real gift. To receive this gift of peace, requires belief and trust on our parts. This is easier said than done. James 1:2 tells us to count all of our tribulations joy and to thank God for them. I don't know about you, but when I have been given tribulations, the first thing that comes to my mind is not "Thank you God!, you can give me more, I love it!" This takes walking with God for a time, before you are able to accept everything that happens as a gift from God. In Chapter 15 of John, we learned that as believer's we are branches connected to the true vine, and the vine dresser has to prune us from time to time in order to produce more fruit. When you are living according to God's will, you accept these prunings without complaint, when you have achieved this you are living in God's peace.