Rising Above Life’s Trail Through Christ

02/18/24 – 03/08/24

Receiving Divine Peace

By Michael Youssef, Ph D.  02/19/24

In 1970, I worked for the telephone company in Sydney, Australia. I had only been in the country for a few months, and I had arrived with only one hundred dollars of borrowed money in my pocket. My boss at the phone company knew my impoverished state. One day, he came to me and said, “Michael, may I ask you a personal question? Tell me—why do you seem so peaceful and contented? You have almost nothing. You’re just scraping by. Yet, you never complain; you never seem worried; you seem to be at peace.”

“I am at peace,” I said. “I know that God is in charge of all the circumstances of my life. When I received Jesus as Lord of my life, I surrendered everything to Him—my plans and goals, my finances, my circumstances, even my worries and anxiety. I surrendered it all to Him, and in exchange for that, He has given me peace.”

My boss thought for a moment, then he said something that saddens me to this day: “I couldn’t do that, Michael. I could never surrender my will to anyone.” I had a number of talks with this man while I worked at the phone company. I found out that he knew the Christian Gospel and occasionally went to church—but he had never surrendered his life to the Lord. He was unwilling to put God in charge of his life.

He saw with his own eyes that surrendering to Christ had brought peace to my life—a peace that passes understanding, a peace that he himself could not understand. Though he wanted that peace, he refused to pay the price of surrendering himself to God.

Only Jesus can give you that peace, and it’s free—you can’t earn it or buy it. But to obtain this free gift, you have to surrender. You have to give up and let Jesus take over control of your life. You have to surrender your weapons.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, I know the only way to divine peace is to surrender to You, the God of peace. Help me to never resist Your call to give everything to You. Thank You for the free gift of Your peace. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3).