“Be careful for nothing but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving make your request known to God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7)”
The peace of God inside our hearts is the same word as shalom which also means prosperity. So if you greet someone with the word shalom, what you are saying to the person indirectly is that he has inward peace which leads to outward prosperity. This means you cannot separate peace from prosperity neither can you separate prosperity from peace. Wherever you find peace after some time you will find prosperity and if you see prosperity going on a decline in the life of a person, the first thing you should ask is when such a person lost their peace, because peace and prosperity are tied together.
When God answers your prayer, He gives unto you the peace that passeth all understanding, and this peace will mount guard upon your heart and mind until the physical manifestation happens for all to see. This means that the manifestation of the blessing of God will come by the reason of His peace that He has placed in your heart.
You must think on the things that bring about peace and make sure you don’t lose your peace no matter the issue you are confronted with. The bible says, “Follow peace with all men in your heart for without it no man shall see the Lord (Heb 12vs14)”. If you don’t understand what you are to do in a particular situation, or misinterpret the scriptures by doing something else, what happens is that you find yourself in bondage or in a place of unrest. For example, if you misinterpret the above scripture to mean you must make sure you are in agreement with all men and all men must agree with you, then you will make a lot of wrong decisions based on it. This scripture does not mean you must compromise your stand in order to be at peace in your heart. Instead God wants you to hold nothing against anyone by releasing them no matter the hurt they must have caused you so that your father in heaven can forgive you in the same way.
The peace of God is also important when you want to give offering no matter what it is (e.g. praise or material substance). The scripture says “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” That is the power of making peace; i.e. your ability to forgive. You might misinterpret the scripture to mean if somebody is offended by what you did you must reconcile with the person by letting go of any grievances you may have in your heart towards the person before you can offer up any offering on the altar. By so doing you now make yourself subservient to the person’s emotional state before you can even bring any offering to God.
The real translation of that scripture in the Greek Language is that if your brother has approached you for reconciliation and has come asking for forgiveness and you refuse inside your heart to forgive and to release him after being appealed to, your offering will not be accepted. Nothing will be accepted by God from you until you forgive the person that you have put a heavy burden upon by virtue of the rejection and the guilt trip you have put him through. Therefore, for your offering to be accepted you have to release the person from that form of bondage and the weight of guilt. By doing so you also release yourself from any form of burden which your act of unforgiveness has placed on you.
The peace of God means everything to a believer. It must be seen in our everyday interaction with people and endeavours. We must seek it daily because God has given it to us freely, therefore, we must operate in it daily for us to see and experience fully the life we have in Christ which is free from all forms of worry and uncertainties.
“Poju Oyemade”