Peace. We must each, individually, choose to embrace the description of that much desired and sought after word, it is a free-will choice only we can, individually, make. It is something we have grown to know as a necessity to have, but only as our relationship with Jesus has deepened, have we realized that it is a gift and fruit of our relationship with Him, the Prince of Peace. Through this deepening, cleansing process only He can take us on, we privately discover that our inner peace should never be reliant on what we know, or what we physically hear, see or experience. Instead, it is fully dependent on Abba and His Truth. While we spiritually dwell under Jesus’ reign, we find ourselves no longer searching in the flesh for those things, experiences, environments, and people which will satisfy and help us maintain a peaceful, inner environment within us. Instead, we recognize that our bodies are Abba’s living temples, and it is how He sustains us, His intricate attention to detail, Jesus’ nurturing guidance, and the Holy Spirit’s diligent safeguarding instructions that secures the peaceful, inner environment in which we dwell in, together with them. We are maturing in Him, and are growing and learning that what we have once perceived as “peace leaving us” is actually peace being robbed from us because we have been, or are under attack, and we have wrongly shifted our focus from Jesus and back onto the issues, problems, and uncertainties. Or we have wrongly chosen, on our own, to allow our minds to “eat” and “drink” from those sorrows and horrifying uncertainties, which wrongly nourishes an awareness of everything but Jesus. Yes, we will feel the pains, grumblings, nauseating circumstances, and horrifying doubts within, but that doesn’t mean our peace is gone, or is leaving us. Instead, we are to do as He teaches us to do by uniquely locking out the outside world and drawing near to Him so we will intimately experience how He draws near to us. Only He can truly sift through our thoughts, heal our minds, and feed us the Hope that is Him. It is not the absence of peace we experience during these times, but it is the consequences of living in a free-will world. Self-discipline and self-control gives us the ability to place our minds under His reign, and it stops ourselves from wrongly following our minds, and wrongly turning away and letting go of the One and Only One we must embrace while the Holy Spirit reveals to us the truth of the problem and teaches us, in each moment, how to properly handle them as we should under Jesus’ reign. Nothing in the flesh can undo, nor disturb the Sacrificial, Coated in His Blood, lifestyle in which we have chosen to live. This is the only way we can successfully stand, walk, and rest in a wrongly focusing world where chaos is something the majority speaks out against but at the same time, privately builds, nurtures, and embraces because they have grown to want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it; while at the same time, do not want to be held accountable for their own choices and actions. The amazing thing is that God wants more for us than we could ever possibly want or imagine. He wants us to have a more whole and fuller life. He wants us well.