Perfect Peace

Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

As the soft pillow cradled around my head, I heard myself utter one last desperate plea, “God help me; I just need You Lord…I just need You!!!”

I had taken some medication to help me sleep, but nevertheless, I woke up only a few hours into the night. As expected, the war that had been raging in my mind for several days returned to its former fury once more. But then, there came a momentary hush (as though God Himself had uttered a stern, “Shhhhhish! Be still!”…) and I heard these words in my spirit, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.”

Is that You Lord,” I remember asking.

No reply came, but I knew in my heart that it was a word in due season from a voice I had learned to recognize. Only the Holy Spirit can whisper a message so loud and clear without the assistance of audible words.

I began to recite this verse over and over again.

At some point, still mumbling the verse, I drifted off to sleep. That morning I woke up – to complete quiet! All the things that had troubled me now seemed so far away. It sounds strange, but I even had a hard time remembering what I was so upset about. I believe that simply reveals the awesome and amazing power of God’s perfect peace.

What had happened? I wondered. This is what I felt the Lord revealing to me: His Word is so powerful that repeating His promise to keep me in perfect peace had actually created the peace it promised.

Isaiah 55:11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

His Word performs the specific thing that it promises. If it promises peace, it creates peace. If it promises joy, it creates joy, etc. As the above verse (Isaiah 55:11) says, it prospers or produces the thing that it was sent (or promises) to do. Isaiah 26:3 promises peace, so repeating that verse created the peace (the thing God sent it to accomplish) that I needed.

This verse says, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth”. The Bible, God’s Word, came from His mouth (through His Spirit) to the prophets and apostles who wrote it down. So, it all came from His mouth. And when we say what God has said, it’s still the Word that came from His mouth.

Even though at that point, it’s in our mouth, it’s still the same word that came from His mouth and “it shall prosper and accomplish what He intended”. His spoken word will not return to Him void or without accomplishing its purpose. The Word accomplishes itself! It has creative power in it because it came from God’s own mouth; when God speaks, things happen. And when we speak His Words, things happen (because they are still HIS creative, never-to-return-void words).

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

That night, I heard God speaking Isaiah 26:3 to me in my spirit and I began to ponder and meditate on it… and as I spoke those words over and over, a miraculous thing happened, the power (the Spirit, the life) in them manifested and became a reality in me. The peace that they promised was accomplished.

So, can we just say something enough and bring it to pass?

No, it is only faith in the right thing that will produce results, and the only thing that we can truly base our faith on is God’s promises. So, did my just saying this verse over and over create the manifestation of peace? Well sort of, but at some point, faith had to be mixed with the Word.

Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

This verse tells us that faith comes by hearing (the Word of God). So, simply hearing (the act of hearing) the Word of God will produce the faith needed to believe that specific word or promise. When we hear the Word, as I did that night, it (the Word Itself) produced faith in my heart to believe. And then when I began to mutter and repeat it, the God-breathed life contained within that promise produced genuine peace within.

The Word of God has everything within itself that is required to produce the needed results. It’s a self-contained, self-activating miracle just waiting on a voice to speak it out.

Find the Word from the Bible (the promise) that you need for your particular situation. Then speak that promise – as you do, two things are happening:

  1. Those Words are producing faith in your heart to believe what they promise.
  2. They are (by His Spirit contained within them) creating the peace, the joy, the deliverance, the freedom, the healing, the restoration, etc. that you are speaking forth.

Why do we need to speak them?

  1. Because we need to hear them in order to produce faith (faith cometh by hearing the Word).
  2. Because this is how God Himself created the world. In Genesis 1 as God was in the process of creation, the Bible says, “Then God said” nine times. He spoke words to create the world. It should not seem strange or unusual for us to follow His pattern. Even when accepting Christ as our Savior, we were told to confess (our belief in Him) with our mouth.

Romans 10:10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

(With our mouth, by speaking, we sealed our salvation.)

So, with our heart, we believe and with our mouth, we say what we believe.

Actually, many people believe that receiving God’s promises as a reality in their lives is such a difficult thing to accomplish, but the Word essentially does it all. I once heard a pastor say, “The Word works; all you have to do is work the Word!” Find it, speak it, hear it, believe it, and receive it! It really is that simple.

If what you are experiencing in your life right now does not resemble the precious promises God has given us in His Word, then what you are experiencing is subject to change. The Bible is a blueprint for the life He has in store for you. He’s given us the tools to create our world anew.

Too often, we work hard to complicate what He has made so simple. He couldn’t have made it any easier. Each faith-producing, power-filled promise contains within it everything required to bring itself to pass.

Copyright © 2017 Sandra J. Briggs