Peace That Surpasses All Understanding

One Continuous Message, Not Another Religious Checklist

The chapter break between Matthew 5 and 6 can obscure how these words fit together. Jesus had spoken about anger, lust, revenge, and loving our enemies, and His first-century Jewish listeners could easily have heard a new list of commandments forming.

I can almost picture them taking notes: Don’t do this. Make sure you do that. What else must we do? But Jesus anticipated exactly where that thinking would lead when He said, ‘You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). Perfection wasn’t another requirement they could check off. It ended the idea that they could produce righteousness by keeping a list. Some might congratulate themselves on their performance; others would be left fearful and anxious about failure. Neither could meet His standard. His words left them nowhere to go but to Him.

And notice what He addresses next. In Matthew 6, Jesus exposes the motives behind giving, prayer, and fasting. Religious performance can look impressive without changing what we trust. Now the attention shifts from trying to keep the right rules to the heart behind our actions. What are we depending on? What holds us so tightly that we struggle to let go? This is the same question He continues to press when He turns to our treasures and anxiety.

Then Jesus speaks about treasures and the impossibility of serving God and money (Matthew 6:19–24). Where our treasure is, our heart will be also. Immediately afterward comes an important word: Therefore. ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life’ (Matthew 6:25). His teaching about anxiety follows His teaching about what holds the heart and which master we serve. These aren’t unrelated instructions that became neighbors by accident.

Jesus placed worry, fear, and anxiety in the same continuous teaching as anger, lust, revenge, and self-righteousness. Why do we recognize the damage caused by those sins while giving worry, fear, and anxiety a pass simply because we all experience them? Jesus didn’t separate them, so why should we? At the end of the day, worry is a choice that we make, isn’t it?

I’m thinking of Paul’s words that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23), and John’s words that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). We all experience emotions, including fear. The question is what we allow to lead us. When I let fear become the authority over my thinking, I am no longer drawing from the faith and love that the Father has given me.

But notice the trap. If we hear all this and add ‘never feel anxious’ to a new Christian rulebook, we have run straight back into the self-righteousness Jesus was exposing. The answer isn’t to watch ourselves more closely until we pass a test of perfect calm. It is to recognize where our trust has shifted and return to our Father. Jesus doesn’t end His words about anxiety by telling His listeners how capable they must become. He reminds them how well their heavenly Father knows and cares for them.

What Has a Hold on Your Heart?

Jesus says that where our treasure is, our heart will be also (Matthew 6:21), and that we cannot serve God and money. That brings to mind the rich young ruler. His question to Jesus was essentially, ‘What haven’t I done yet?’ He had kept the commandments from his youth and was still looking for the next requirement. But when Jesus told him to give up his wealth and follow Him, He went straight to what ruled that man’s heart. The commandments hadn’t corrected his heart or freed him from the righteousness he thought he could achieve by doing all the right things. The issue wasn’t simply having money. It was what held him and which master he would follow.

We can cling to fear and worry almost as if they’re our big bank account. At certain points in life, worry becomes so consuming that we convince ourselves we have a responsibility to keep doing it. If I don’t worry about this, who will? So I examine the problem from one more angle, imagine one more outcome, and keep turning it over in my mind. That kind of rumination can become a vicious cycle. Christ calls us to cast our cares on Him, not to hold on until we’ve analyzed every fear into a perfect solution.

I once described it with a dog leash. Imagine asking someone to look after your dog, giving them the leash, and then refusing to release your grip. When they finally walk away, you are still holding on to the dog’s tail. We can do something very similar when we say we are casting our anxieties on Christ while insisting that we must continue carrying them ourselves.

Casting our cares on the Lord is not another skill that proves how spiritual we are. First Peter 5:6–7 ties it to humility and to a simple reason: He cares for us. We can trust the Father’s care even before our feelings catch up with that trust.

The Peace of God When Life Makes No Sense

Paul’s words in Philippians 4 are remarkable. He tells believers to bring their requests to God rather than be governed by anxiety. He speaks of the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guarding their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7).

What makes that peace so far beyond understanding? I do not think it is simply an unusually pleasant feeling. It is peace when the circumstances around us give us every reason to feel otherwise. It is the peace of Christ when someone looking at our situation cannot imagine how peace could be possible.

Jesus told His disciples, ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,’ and then made the distinction: He does not give as the world gives (John 14:27). We tend to look for peace in a settled bank account, a resolved problem, good health, or a plan that finally makes sense. But those things can disappear. The peace Christ gives has its source in Christ Himself.

Paul knew what it meant to face more than he could handle. In 2 Corinthians 1:8–11, he says the affliction he and his companions experienced left them despairing of life itself. That is not the testimony of a man who always felt calm. He explains that it taught them to rely not on themselves but on God who raises the dead. His circumstances were terrible, but his dependence had somewhere to go.

That is why I believe the grace that meets us in suffering is the same grace available to us in ordinary life. Sometimes we read about Paul and the apostles as though that kind of dependence belonged to them alone. But they were drawing from the same Lord we have today. Peace comes from grace, not from winning a contest with our emotions. We have access to the living Christ right now.

When We Cannot Feel His Presence

Jack shared an experience that brings all of this into focus. During a life-threatening illness, when people around him were preparing for the possibility that he would not survive, he did not experience a comforting feeling of God’s presence. He said there was no emotional or spiritual sensation to lean on. What he had was his confession: God would never leave him or forsake him.

Jack held to what he knew about Christ when his feelings gave him nothing. His song One Thing I Know About Jesus grew out of that experience. God Is Always Below the Bottom explores more of that season of suffering and the grace that sustained him.

I can relate to the emptiness he described. There are times when we have cried, prayed, and struggled until we cannot find another word. Sometimes all we can say to the Father is that we do not even know how to pray. We can tell Him that too. Our feelings do not change the fact that He is with us.

Hebrews 11:1 speaks of faith in terms of what is hoped for and what is not seen. We are not being asked to invent a spiritual sensation. We can rely on what Christ has made true even when our senses have nothing reassuring to report. This is why renewing our minds in Christ matters before the storms arrive. We are learning whose word we will trust when the storm comes.

I have learned that we can come back to grace as quickly as we wandered from it. Our perspective can change in a moment, even if anxious feelings have built up over years and are still there tomorrow. I’m not saying they magically disappear. But when we stop treating ourselves as the exception and believe that the same grace the apostles lived by is available to us, our way of seeing the situation can begin to change. That new perspective can begin before our feelings catch up.

Talking to the Christ Who Is Here

Jack described sitting in his beach room with two empty chairs beside him. He joked that the chair he occupied was not empty, but he was making a serious point: he believed Jesus was right there in the room with him, every bit as real as he was. He could look across the room and talk to his Savior. Christ was not merely someone Jack knew about. He was present with him right then.

That brought me back to something I’ve experienced myself. We can think of Jesus as a historical figure who lived two thousand years ago and secured our salvation for heaven. Then we pray as though He’s somewhere far away. But Jesus is not off in the distance. He indwells us, His kingdom is all around us, and He is working in and through us. We can speak to Him right where we are.

Jack illustrated that presence another way. He once asked a room of believers to pray together without bowing their heads or closing their eyes. The room went silent. He wasn’t saying those habits are wrong. To make his point, Jack compared it to walking over to me at a dinner party, bowing his head, closing his eyes, and saying, ‘How are you today?’ We wouldn’t need to do that with someone standing right in front of us. His point was that Christ is already here.

There is such peace in knowing that Christ is with us, even when our feelings give us nothing to go by. Prayer can grow from that secure relationship rather than become another performance we are trying to get right.

Melissa told a tender story about praying on her deck during a hard season. She had been comforted before by seeing the birds outside, and then a squirrel she had noticed many times came right up to her while she was speaking to the Father. She received that unexpected little encounter as a moment of God’s comfort. She also made an important point: we do not have to receive a sign to know that Christ is present.

I remember a very different moment from my younger years. I was struggling to leave a destructive lifestyle behind and felt awful after giving in again. While I was silently crying out to the Lord, a tool slipped out of my hand and landed on a staircase spindle, spinning there in front of three of us in a way I had never seen. I experienced that moment as an encouragement from the Lord when I felt completely overwhelmed. These experiences can be memorable gifts, but our faith does not depend on having one. Christ is near whether we feel encouraged or empty.

What Does Letting Go Actually Look Like?

Sometimes our minds have become their own project managers. We keep trying to solve our fear by examining it from yet another angle. When that happens, letting go may begin with something as ordinary as noticing that we are doing it again and turning our thoughts back toward what is true about Christ.

Paul tells us to be transformed through the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). He also says he forgets what lies behind and presses toward what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13–14). That did not mean Paul had no painful memories or no hard days. It meant his life was no longer directed by looking backward. Christ had given him somewhere to look.

I love Paul’s statement that he can do all things through the One who strengthens him (Philippians 4:13), but consider its context. Paul is speaking about learning contentment in abundance and in need. He is not promising that believers can make every difficult circumstance disappear. He is telling us where his strength comes from while he is living through them.

Jack described a powerful starting point: when our feelings accuse us, remember what our Father says is true. Christ has made us His, and we are loved by Him. That truth changes more than the way we speak to ourselves. It can change the way we see the person next to us. When I remember that someone’s failures don’t determine their value any more than mine determine my standing with the Father, I no longer need to make myself righteous by finding fault with somebody else. This is the fruit of a renewed mind, not another rule to add to our list.

Resting in Peace We Did Not Manufacture

Return to where Jesus was taking His listeners all along. After exposing self-righteousness, misplaced treasure, and the worry that can consume us, He reminds them that their heavenly Father knows what they need (Matthew 6:32–34). He doesn’t pretend that today has no trouble. He says it has trouble enough. And He doesn’t hand them one more religious assignment to prove their worth. He directs their hearts toward the Father who cares for them.

The peace that surpasses all understanding does not come from finally feeling strong enough, planning well enough, or learning to put on a convincing smile. It comes from Christ. He has finished His work, and He has not withdrawn His presence from us.

If worry has taken hold of your thoughts, you can return to grace now. If you feel empty, you can still speak to your Father. If a difficult season lasts longer than you hoped, you can keep drawing from the same Lord who sustained Paul and who is present with us today.

It is safe to trust Him. We do not have to make our feelings the measure of His faithfulness. The peace of God guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus because the One who gives that peace is already with us.