The Empowering, Fulfilling Peace of Jesus
Jesus's followers are called to engage deeply in addressing the world's problems. How should they do that effectively? How do they derive fulfillment in the face of potential discouragement?
As followers of Jesus, we are called to be world changers. This means meaningfully engaging in the world’s problems in pursuit of productive, durable solutions as an outward expression of the inward love God lavishes upon us. Just as God’s love for us is not passive, neither is our love for people to be passive. So how does Jesus’s peace empower us to be fulfilled world changers especially when facing overwhelming challenges?
Jesus’s peace moves us to action
Jesus is the ultimate world changer. One night, a religious leader came to Jesus to understand His teachings. This what Jesus said about His mission:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.1
Following Jesus is not about avoiding fire and brimstone. It is about accepting Jesus’s invitation to enter into an eternal relationship with God and experience His incredible love for us. We accept this invitation by faith when we believe that Jesus came to save us from our wrongs. Jesus’s peace floods our heart as we realize we are no longer estranged from God. Instead, we begin a close, personal relationship with the ultimate Author of our peace.
Out of this relational peace, our hearts are ignited with a fierce desire for everyone to experience the overflowing sense of joy and freedom we have in Jesus. This love of Jesus and people becomes the foundational pillar of our engagement with the world.
Jesus’s peace directs our energies
While as followers of Jesus we are called to engage deeply in improving the world, where do we start especially when we confront really intractable problems? Jesus shows us.
Jesus grounded His time on earth in a close personal relationship with God, consistently spending long stretches of time with Him. This resulted in Jesus focusing the bulk of His energy on carefully nurturing His 12 closest followers even as He taught the broader community and tended to the immediate needs of the people. Jesus understood He was to spend time with God and make peace with the scope of what He was called to accomplish. As a result, Jesus masterfully balanced short-term needs with investing into the future.
Similarly, we must spend time with God regularly to understand where to direct our energies. Importantly, this will be different for every follower of Jesus. God is magnificent in His creative ability, weaving in our divergent desires, talents, and life experiences to change the world. Our role is to hew close to God who will direct our energies and empower us for the work ahead. For some people, that means diving head first into an issue with laser-like focus. For others, the path will be slower, perhaps more dispersed.
As we spend time with God, as we use our talents and gifts, we will begin to experience an internal sense of peace that confirms our alignment with God. It is important to keep in mind that peace in this case does not mean satisfaction with the level of progress being made in solving an issue. We may remain highly impatient for change, as we should. But we will experience peace that we are where we need to be, which will sometimes seem paradoxical in light of the day-to-day frustrations we will encounter along the way. Jesus also faced this paradox and again, we can learn from His approach.
Jesus’s Peace fulfills us
The more we engage in the world’s problems, the more we face the potential for discouragement. This can stem from the magnitude of the problems we want to solve (like poverty), from the lack of seeing meaningful progress on an issue, or from burnout. Yet God does not want us to be discouraged. Jesus tells His followers:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”2
In calling us to be world changers, Jesus does not expect any one person will tackle and solve the world’s monumental challenges alone. He wants us to use our time and talents in ways that will ultimately be fulfilling to us even when that impact is not always obvious or immediate. How do we know this? Because this is how He went about doing His work on earth.
At high noon one day, in the middle of a journey, Jesus stopped for some rest as His followers went to buy some food. Though He was tired, He saw a Samaritan woman at the well fetching water. He asked her for a drink and perhaps sensing a deeper emotional and spiritual need, engaged her in a conversation that ended up being profoundly healing for her. His followers came back to find Jesus re-energized:
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.3
From this story, we see how Jesus balanced work beautifully. Jesus had just spent time in a 1:1 setting creating relationship and bringing restoration to a woman who desperately needed Jesus’s love. This energized Jesus tremendously. At the same time, when Jesus references the fields “white for harvest”, we see that Jesus understood the enormity of the task ahead. He could not reach everyone in His limited time on earth. This had the potential to discourage Him but it did not. Instead, He shared an important truth with His followers:
Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”4
Jesus was saying that some people will do work for which they never see impact, and some people will experience impact that is built upon a foundation of others before them.
Changing the world is complex. Problems like poverty, social injustice, or inequality are not solved easily or quickly. Their very nature can leave us feeling destitute or overwhelmed, frequently because we are very personally impacted in the areas where we are called to engage and care deeply about seeing change. Thankfully, Jesus’s peace allows us to take on just the right amount of work which helps us avoid permanent discouragement.
As we do what we have been called and equipped to do, Jesus’s peace reassures us that we are being effective world changers. In the process, we becoming capable of deriving tremendous fulfillment even when we do not see direct, immediate results because as empowered followers, we are operating within the limits of our talent, design, and life experiences.
John 3:16-17
Matthew 11:28-30
John 4:31-35
John 4:36-38