Led by the Prince of Peace

“You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.” (Isa. 26)

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my daughters about a decision that she needed to make. She expressed a concern that I am pretty sure every last one of us who wants to follow Jesus has had at one point or another. She asked, “What if I am not hearing Him correctly? What if I miss it?”

As I was reflecting on her desire to discern and follow God’s will, Holy Spirit shared something with me. He pointed out that to receive clear guidance, we need to get into a position of full trust in Him. He brought that beautiful Scripture to mind, “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in You.” 

When we are trusting in God, we connect with His peace. Trust and peace are directly connected to each other. True trust moves us into God’s peace. Peace is the primary way God guides us. Once you move into trust, you move into peace. Once you are in the place of peace, you can sense where that peace is pointing. You will have a clear sense of peace about the right direction to go. 

What happens then, when we feel like we are not hearing Him? Often, this occurs when we are being attacked by fear. If we are in a heart posture of fear, we are not in a heart position of trust. Fear can act as static-like noise in our soul, keeping us from sensing His still, small, peace-filled voice. 

What to do about this? To get past the static and into peace, we need to hand over to Him whatever fear is attacking our mind and emotions. This requires getting quiet enough to allow Holy Spirit to show us what fear is coming against us. Maybe it’s a fear of making a wrong decision and messing things up. Whatever it may be, we need to spend time in prayer to entrust the concern to Him. 

I love visualizing His big, capable hands held out to me. I then see myself surrendering my emotional burden to Him, laying it in those enormous hands. Here is a wonderful prayer to accompany this exercise: “I entrust my soul to You.” This comes from 1 Peter 4:19 where we are instructed, “Therefore let [us] entrust [our] souls to him, as to a faithful Creator” (WEB).

We can also pray the same prayer Jesus prayed to the Father on the cross, “Into Your hands I entrust my spirit.” Jesus was praying from the Psalms, which is such a powerful and precious way to draw near to God. Psalm 31:5 says, “I entrust my spirit into your hand. Rescue me, LORD, for you are a faithful God” (NLT).

To hand over to the Father the very core of us in this way is the ultimate expression of trust. It is saying to Him, “I trust Your protection and care of the deepest places of my being.” It is a childlike expression of confidence that He has our whole life, destiny, and future in those gigantic, powerful, tender hands of His.

We need to be thorough in handing every individual burden over to Him. If we still find ourselves troubled, there are probably still some burdens left that need to be relinquished to Him. Once we have given every last bit of heaviness to Him, we will find ourselves once again in that place of beautifully peaceful trust. That’s when we will be able to sense where His peace is leading us. 

You know my friend, He cares about getting us to the right destination far more than we even do. How precious it is to be led every day of our lives by the Prince of Peace!

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Scripture talks about the idea of having peace “at all times and in every way” (2 Thess. 3:16). Do you believe that this is attainable for every believer? What about brand-new babies in Christ?