My Peace

There is a word in John 14:27 that is easy to pass over and yet carries enormous weight. Jesus did not say, I give you peace. He said, my peace I give unto you. The possessive pronoun changes everything. He was not directing the disciples toward a general spiritual resource available to those who pray enough or believe hard enough. He was giving them something that was specifically and distinctly His.
This raises an immediate question. What was the peace of Jesus? What did it feel like from the inside to be Him, moving through a world that misunderstood Him, opposed Him, and would ultimately crucify Him, and yet to walk in peace? The answer is found in part in Isaiah 26:3, written centuries before Bethlehem. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." The peace of Jesus was the fruit of a mind that never drifted from the Father. In every pressure, in every storm, His inner life remained oriented toward God. That orientation was the source of His peace.
And that is precisely what He was transferring to His disciples that night. Not a feeling to be worked up, not a temperamental calmness some people are born with and others are not, but His own settled, rooted, Father-facing peace. The same peace that would hold Him together in Gethsemane. The same peace that kept Him silent before Pilate. The same peace that allowed Him to say, from the cross, Father, forgive them.
That peace is not kept in reserve for Jesus alone. He left it. He gave it. It belongs now to everyone of His own, available not because circumstances have aligned in our favour but because the One who overcame every circumstance lives in us.

REFLECT
When you think of the peace of Jesus, what comes to mind? How does it differ from the peace you typically pursue?
What would it mean today to keep your mind “stayed” on God in the way Isaiah 26:3 describes?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I receive the peace You have given, not a feeling I must manufacture but Your own peace, transferred. Teach me what it means to walk in it today. Fix my mind on the Father as Yours always was. Amen.