“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
John 14:27
How can we find true and lasting peace?
In this world we have plenty of trouble, always something else to worry about. How can we experience this peace that Jesus offers? The answer, according to Jesus, has everything to do with the Holy Spirit.
“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
John 14:25-26
The Holy Spirit comforts and encourages us by reminding us of the teachings of Jesus. For example, the promise of Jesus after the great commission, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Or the fact that Jesus is our good shepherd who came to give us abundant life (John 10:10). Or, when we struggle with the reality of death that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life,” and asks us, as he asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:26).
The Holy Spirit also grows in us the character of Christ as we learn to walk with Him.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5
There is fruit in terms of ministry and impact, but primarily the fruit we bear is our personal, internal growth.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
Galatians 5:22-23
The Holy Spirit makes us more peace-filled people; more patient, more faithful, more self-controlled. He helps us live in obedience to the commands of Christ.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
John 14:15-17
This is why it was better that Jesus return to the Father, so the Holy Spirit could indwell all believers. This is why followers of Jesus can do greater things than even Jesus himself, because Jesus intercedes for us before the Father, hearing our prayers and doing what we ask.
Above all, the Holy Spirit fills us with the life of God as we experience the overflowing love of Jesus for us.
“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:17-19
This is how we can obey the command in Ephesians 5:18 to “be filled with the Spirit.” We have to pray for ourselves and one another for supernatural power to understand and experience the love of Jesus “that surpasses knowledge.” In other words, by meditating on the gospel — the finished work of Christ — and His infinite love in all of its expressions, the Holy Spirit fills us with all of God’s goodness; supremely with His love.
And that is how to find peace.