The Narrow Path To Personal Peace

Wars, riots, domestic violence, and international conflicts—it’s clear that the world is not at peace. But our internal worlds don’t have to mirror this external chaos.

In this message, Dr. Stanley speaks of Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and explains how we can find inner contentment and true rest through a personal relationship with Him. Don’t let things like anger, lust, or bitterness steal your peace. Learn how to trust God and let Him calm your soul with His soothing presence For more messages from Charles Stanley

The world can’t satisfy the longing in your heart.
My peace Jesus said. My peace I give away, not as the world tries its best to you.
4 decades ago, we started in touch ministries to lead people worldwide into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.
Throughout the years, we’ve seen god’s greatness.
His love and his blessings in such awesome ways that we just want everyone to know him.
So let’s open god’s word and seek him the yellow.
Next on in touch, the narrow path to personal peace.
Jesus said, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives give unto you, let not your heartbeat trouble neither let it be afraid.
And he spoke those words to his disciples the night before he was gonna be crucified specified.
And, of course, they didn’t quite understand what all this was about.
They had an idea that something really toughest get being rather happen.
But he said, my peace are given to you.
And if I should ask you this morning, do you have peace in your heart I mean, do you have a subtle sense of satisfaction?
Not that you everything’s right, but that you have a relationship with god, whereby, you’re convinced and persuaded.
Whatever you face in life, it’s gonna be okay, because you have him.
The assurance that he is living within you. Your name is written in the Lam’s book of life.
1 of these days, whether you die or he comes first, you know that you’re going to heaven, and all of this mess is gonna be over with, and things are gonna be right like he promised.
Do you have that sense in your own heart?
Well, we don’t live in a very peaceful age. That’s for sure.
People do not have peace about their job, about their marriage, about their children, about the circumstances in which they live or where they live or how they have to live, And so when Jesus comes along, and he says, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives.
That is the world can’t give the kind of peace that Jesus offers.
So I would ask you, do you have that kind of peace?
Can you honestly say I have this sense of peace?
Now, The Greek word is Irene, which means to to put something together. That is to to bind it together.
That is when a person has genuine peace, we sense this to govern this in their heart.
We sense this 1 mission. Without strife and without consternation and all the things that you’re on.
The peace that Jesus Christ offers is peace that comes through a relationship with him.
That’s the only true source of lasting peace. Everything else in the world is counterfeit.
You may have all the money in the world you want, go any way you choose, Do most anything you wanna do?
Have most anybody you wanna have. But if you don’t have Jesus, you do not have peace.
You don’t have to have anything else, and you don’t have to have anybody else to have peace.
Jesus said, My peace I’ve given to you. Why did he say that?
Because that’s the only source of true genuine peace is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
So when you think about the things that Jesus said, and the way he said them, he said we’re the children of god.
And, this god is a god of peace. That’s who we are.
And when you trusted Christ as your savior, you took on a whole new relationship.
The most important relationship in life.
The only relationship that’s gonna last beyond this life, and that’s the relationship with Christ.
He said, for example, we are to be followers of the prince of peace, who is the prince of peace Jesus?
He’s the avenue. He’s the prince.
And he said in the sermon on the Mount, we’re to be called peacemakers.
I wonder how many of you consider yourself a peacemaker?
Now some of you would have to say, well, not, when that situation I live in, I’m not a peacemaker.
Well, Jesus didn’t say except if and and but. We’re to be peacemakers. Watch this.
There’s to be something within us.
That so connects with someone else and helps them to be connected to the real true peacemaker.
That things begin to change when the relationship with Jesus Christ gets right. Then you have the foundation.
Of true genuine peace. And although that happens, it’s not gonna be there.
And if you ask the majority of people, do you have peace?
They’d have to say, well, sometimes maybe and ultimately not really.
And when I think about all the things that Jesus said, He said, we’ve been given the gift of peace.
It isn’t that is it isn’t something we work up to. It’s a gift that he gives us.
What is that gift? Watch this. It’s the gift of himself.
When Christ comes into your life, watch this carefully, He satisfies the long ends of your heart.
He promises to do it. He satisfies those hungers and thirst in our life that really and truly satisfied.
The world has all kinds of counterfeits.
But there’s 1 narrow path that leads to peace, and it’s not the world’s approach.
They offer many counterfeits.
1 single narrow road to peace, and most people will die never having found it.
And I would ask you if you know what that peace is.
Do you know how to walk that path?
Or are you like the rest of the world sort of trying to get all of this and all of that and go ahead and do this and do the other, trying to find something to satisfy the knowing in your heart.
1 thing for certain, you can’t counterfeit peace. Not really.
Peace is a precious, precious gift from 1 person. And that’s Jesus.
And nowhere in the Bible, does it say there’s any other source?
But I would just ask you if you have it.
Doesn’t mean that you have everything in the world you want, but you watch this.
You can have absolute awesome, complete, continuous fulfillment of the peace of god in your life and not have a lot of things.
And when I think about Jesus and the apostles, he said, my peace I’ve given to you, not as world gives give on to you?
Why did he say that because he’s saying to them, the world can’t satisfy the longing in your heart?
My peace, Jesus said. My peace I give unto you, not as the world tries its best to give.
So when I think about that and I think about, it came across this verse of scripture, that I don’t know how in the world I missed it all these years, And I was sort of ashamed of myself, and I realized I missed it.
I had to ask god to forgive me.
And so if you turn to the tenth chapter of Luke, you gonna have to you’re gonna have to ask him to forgive you also.
But let’s look at this if you will.
Luke chapter 10, when Jesus was sending his disciples out, well, he he he was instructing them what to do and how to do it.
And guess what he says in verse 5. Now think about this and apply this to yourself.
Don’t think about the being in the new testament. Think about right now.
Whatever house you enter, first say peace be to this house.
Do you do you see what it says?
Whatever house you enter first say peace be to this house, and I got to thinking lord, how many how many houses is that?
Been in in my life. And I never said that.
Jesus said, whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house.
So I had to ask the lord to forgive me.
I thought, lord, that’s not what I’ve done. You said, oh, Jesus didn’t mean you. Yes, he did.
And so Jesus meant what he said because what he was saying is pray, pray for this home.
Pre pray for the people who are living here.
What kind of troubles are they having to have?marriage troubles, trouble to the kids, financial troubles, disappointments and all the things that happen within the house.
Jesus always had a purpose for every single thing he said.
And so this is what he said to him.
Whenever you go, wherever you go, you bless that house before you enter it.
Now, there are some things that steal our peace in our life So I want us to think about it.
For example, he he’s promised to give us peace.
And we do have peace with him when our heart is right.
We’ve been saved with the grace of god.
That’s something you never sinned, but you ask him to forgive you, and your walk is a walk of peace.
But there’s some thoughts, there’s some ideas that steal our peace.
So remember, we said peace is a narrow path.
That is if you are walking in peace, there are a lot of things that are not gonna be in that pathway.
So let’s think about some peace stealers. For a moment.
1 of them is lustful thoughts. You cannot have lustful thoughts and have peace.
Because the spirit of god, in a Christian, for example, is going to cause you to feel, not just peace, but a sense of conviction.
When a person looks at something or someone with a lustful thought, the spirit of god isn’t saying bless you, that con the spirit of god is convicting you, you shouldn’t look, shouldn’t see, shouldn’t think, shouldn’t desire, shouldn’t lust after it.
The narrow road of peace eliminates a lot of things.
Lossful thoughts create, not peace, but chaos in a person’s heart, in a person’s soul.
And we live in a society that’s full of it. So that’s 1 thought.
Then, for example, feelings of guilt.
If you feel guilt over sin in your life, Galefield was something you didn’t do and should have done.
Gailfield was something you said you should not have said. You can’t have you can’t have peace. Watch this.
Peace is well, you’re listening to amen. Peace is fragile. The path of peace is very narrow.
And that is, thoughts that are guilty thoughts, destroy peace, or anger You can’t be angry and be at peace.
Can’t be. God talks about anger, doesn’t belong in our hearts.
You can’t be angry towards somebody and have peace in your heart at the same time.
You say, well, but if if if you know what they did tell you, you gotta write to be angry, no, you don’t.
How can you have peace in your heart if something inside of you is gnawing away?
And and and getting more and more bitter every day, you cannot. Peace is a narrow pathway.
I think about people, for example, who are very, very bitter about something that’s happened in their past.
They can’t get over it. The way they’ve been treated. What they feel may be true.
And nowhere in the Bible is that say, you have a right to be angry and bitter if somebody does this and so.
No. I’ll tell you what settled that.
When Jesus went to the cross, if anybody had a right to be bitter and angry and resentful, he did, but he did not.
And so by example, he says it.
And by word, he teaches us not to be bitter, and angry no matter what happens.
And there are a lot of people who are miserable today because they’re bitter towards someone for something they’ve done.
Maybe they cheated you in some fashion. Maybe they made a promise they broke.
And I think about how many people make promises to each other about marriage and break those promises.
You can’t be living a double life and have peace.
No matter how fine your automobile is, how big your bank account, what position you have, you may be number 1 in whatever situation you’re in.
You don’t have peace with god. If you’re not obedient to god, you cannot.
The world doesn’t believe that.
They’re trying to deaden their conscience and deaden their feelings because What’s going on within them that’s wrong is destroying them.
Our thought life You cannot escape what you think by taking a pill or having a drink.
Think about this. How foolish when you can have the peace of a loving heavenly father, and you decide, no, this is the route I’m going.
And then, people who seemingly are pretty good. If you look at them, self centeredness.
Very substance. It’s all about me. It’s all about what I want. It’s all about what I deserve.
It’s all about what I think. It’s all about what I wanna do.
Listen, you can have no peace if you’re all wrapped up in yourself.
That self centeredness, it’s selfish, it’s pride. Can’t have any peace like that.
Then I think about people who doubt, people who live in doubt.
They doubt the word of god. They doubt that god will answer their prayer.
They doubt that going to church and making the difference in the world, They doubt their friendships, their relationships, they live the the skeptics at heart.
There’s no peace in that. In fact, if you’ll think about it, it’s a very, very, very narrow path to genuine peace.
Because we have a lot of things around us that steal our peace, if we allow it.
Can you live peacefully and have peace and enjoy peace in the world that confused and mixed up.
And as wrong as ours is, yes, you can. Watch this.
It isn’t relationship plus its relationship period.
You ought to write that down. It’s not relationship plus its relationship period.
It’s Jesus in you. He is the source of peace. He is the provider of peace.
He and he alone. And all you have to do is look around, talk to your friends or your enemies or the people you work with, Find out how many find out how many people you talk to that you can tell by that conversation, whether they have peace or not.
Because watch this, a person who does not have peace cannot hide it.
And people think if they get enough money, they’ll have peace. How much money is enough? It’s never enough.
There’s only 1 source of true genuine peace. That is having a sense of oneness with god.
A sense of unity. That’s the source of all genuine peace no matter what happens.
This is why we meet people once in a while who are going through situations and circumstances when we think how do they handle that?
And every once in a while I’ll admit someone, whom And I’d I’d walk away and think, oh, god.
I hope I could have the kind of peace they have going through what they’re going through.
Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
Jesus is the source of true genuine lasting peace. Anything else and everything else is a substitute.
I think also people who are living in doubt about the things of god I’ll think about people, for example, who just are not believers.
And I can tell you this. And I’ve lived long enough to know this.
I’ve never met a person who was not a Christian, who gave me any true genuine evidence that they were really happy.
Little fluff on the outside. A lot of that sounded good.
But the more I listened and the more I watched, and the more what I didn’t see, and didn’t hear, that’s not peace.
Let me tell you something. When you have Jesus in your heart, you can’t keep it to yourself.
And it’s not that you have to act out. You don’t have to act anything.
You just allow him to express who he is through your conversation.
Watch this, your conversation, your conduct, and your character.
And I think, for example, people who are living in unbelief. They are miserable.
No matter what they say to you, they’re miserable.
If you don’t if you don’t have Jesus in your life, and let me ask you a question, what do you have that you can really and truly depend upon?
Jesus is the source.
The narrow road to peace is the relationship with Jesus.
And I think about people, for example, who get jealous.
They think they’ve got everything just right.
Somebody else comes along and they get jealous about this and jealous about that and jealous about somebody in.
That’s not peace. Peace is the gift of god that comes through the presence.
Of Christ in our life. That’s the source of peace.
And this is why some people can go through the most terrible, horrible, circumstances and situations that are lost and suffering, heartache, and pain in their life, and have this awesome sense of unshakable peace, because they have 1 relationship that’s right.
Now, How do we experience this peace? I want you to write them down.
And the first 1 says this.
We must believe that he is in control of our life and our circumstances.
If I don’t believe that, I’m not gonna have any peace.
Otherwise, we’ll attempt to be in control, and there’s no peace in that struggle.
But do I believe that he is in absolute control? He is.
Just because I get out of control doesn’t mean he’s out of control, doesn’t mean that he can’t does not control everything.
So ask yourself the question. Do I believe that he is in control of my life?
I didn’t say feel like it, that you believe that he’s in control.
The second statement is this. We must believe that his offer of peace is real and be willing to accept his offer of peace in spite of our feelings.
Can’t go by feelings. It’s of my peace I give unto you.
Not as the world gives, give on to you, let not your heart be troubled.
What I’m giving you, he says, not like what the world’s got to offer. Because it doesn’t satisfy anything.
And then, in order to have peace, We must fully surrender our total life.
Mind, will, and emotion. The Jesus is lord.
We must fully surrender our total life, mind will in the motion to Jesus as lord.
That is my character, my conversation, and my conduct. I must surrender to him.
Peace is this awesome eternal relationship. This 1 that’s with Jesus.
Does that mean that you’ll never have any trouble? No.
Does it mean that you’ll never get sick? No. Does it mean that you’ll ever have fear? No.
But here’s what happens. Whenever and whatever comes your way, you can respond with this absolute certainty.
The lord Jesus, who is in me, will see me through this.
He will be adequate no matter what’s going on in my life.
So I’m gonna ask you a simple question.
Do you have peace in your life?
Were you sitting here this morning when you first came in and you were worried about something, concerned about something?
Maybe you are feeling jealousy, maybe you are feeling lustful, maybe you are feeling, just distraught about the way that you’ve been treated, maybe you’re concerned about what’s gonna happen tomorrow on your job?
Or that person that you just don’t like being around?
You see, you can go to church and be a terrible shape by the time you get out, unless you’re willing to surrender your life to Jesus and say, lord, here, here I am.
Here’s my life. I’m gonna trust you not for how people are gonna treat me.
What I’m gonna receive and not receive, I’m gonna trust you to be in me with only you can be.
And I’m gonna trust that you have absolute control and that you’re gonna make it all come out in such a fashion.
It’s gonna be a blessing to you, Lord, and a blessing to me.
Sometimes the most trying, painful circumstances in life turned out to be a seedbed.
Just the seed bed of awesome peace that God sends to your life. Now, listen.
You’ve heard all of this.
And every single 1 of us knows in our heart right now, if we have peace on it.
You don’t have to ask anybody else, you know whether you have peace or not. Watch this carefully.
You can’t have it. No matter what you’re going through, you can’t have it.
The invitation to peace is always there from Jesus. So what does it require of me?
Surrender my life to him. Okay, Jesus. I’ve messed it up.
I’m just surrendering myself to you. Whatever you choose, I’m going with it.
I’m gonna believe that you, the source of my peace, is my peace, and you will see me through whatever I’m facing.
And you’ll see me through it knowing in my heart, you are the source of my peace.
I ask you 1 last question.
If Jesus is not the source of your peace, To be honest, if Jesus is not the source of your peace, what is?
I love that verse.
My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, let not your heart. Be troubled, neither be afraid.
And maybe you have been listening or watching, and you’re thinking Okay.
You just don’t know my circumstances. He does. He knows all about your circumstances.
And you know what he’s willing to do?
Forgive you of your sin, cleanse you, but it’s a matter of surrender.
And a matter of faith.
Am I willing to believe that he can clean up this horrible mess I’ve made?
If I surrender my life to him. Let me ask you a question. Is any mess too big for god?
Then he’s got your number, hadn’t he? He’s waiting for you to deal with him.
He’s waiting for you to bring it to him to say, Lord, I messed these things up in my life.
I’ve heard other people. I’ve cheated, or whatever done, whatever you’ve done in your life, I’m giving it all to you.
I’m surrendering my life to you. What will he do? Forget you. Watch this.
And forget it. And give you a new start. And that’s my prayer for you.
And father, thank you. That you didn’t list 20 things for us to do to change in order to have your peace.
You said, trust me. Trust me. Trust me.
Thank you for loving us enough to make it so simple and plain.
Thank you for loving us enough.
To forgive and forget, and give us a new start.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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