A Peace That Holds

A devotional reflection on John 14:27-31

In November of 1873, a Chicago lawyer named Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on a ship bound for Europe and stayed behind to finish business. Two years earlier, the Great Chicago Fire had wiped out nearly everything he owned. Now he was sending the rest of what he had, his whole family, across the ocean without him.

Their ship never made it. In the middle of the Atlantic, it collided with another vessel and went down in twelve minutes. His wife survived. None of his four daughters did.

Spafford boarded the next ship he could find to reach his wife. Partway across the ocean, the captain told him they were passing over the spot where the other ship went down. Staring at the water that had swallowed everything he loved, he picked up a pen.

Most of us will never stand where he stood. But we all know what it is to feel the floor drop out from under us: a diagnosis, a phone call we never wanted, a door that closes with no explanation. In a moment like that, peace feels like the one thing we have no right to ask for.

That is exactly where Jesus meets his disciples in our text. On the last night before the cross, he hands them something they never asked for and could never earn.

We can rest in a peace we did not earn, because Jesus already won a battle we never could.

A Peace Not Like the World's

"Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives" (John 14:27).

Picture Paul and Silas when they decided to start singing. Not free. Not safe. Chained to a wall in a Philippian jail cell, backs raw from a public beating. At midnight, they prayed and sang hymns to God. That peace did not wait for the doors to open. It showed up in the cell, before anything changed.

What a peace this is. The world's peace comes with a price tag: a full bank account, an easy relationship. Take either away, and that peace goes too. This peace depends on who holds us, not on what is happening around us.

What circumstance are we quietly waiting to change before we feel at peace? A hard marriage. A decision we cannot make. A job wearing us down. Let Christ's peace settle in now, not once circumstances change.

A Father Worth Trusting

"You have heard me tell you, 'I am going away and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28-29).

Jesus is not scolding his disciples here. He is naming their grief: their eyes are fixed on what they are about to lose, not on what he is about to gain. When he says the Father is greater than I, he means his position in this moment, on his way back to the full glory he had with the Father before the world began.

About a year before coming to pastor this church, I applied to join the National Guard. For medical reasons, I was turned down, and that rejection devastated me. Not long after, God opened a door I never would have walked through otherwise: the call to pastor this church. What looked like rejection was actually redirection, the hand of a Father too great to be out-planned.

Is there a closed door in our life we still cannot explain? A job we did not get, a relationship that ended before we wanted it to. We do not have to explain it before we trust the Father's plan is greater than what we can see.

A Love That Wins

"I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me. On the contrary, I am going away so that the world may know that I love the Father. Just as the Father commanded me, so I do. Get up; let's leave this place" (John 14:30-31).

Jesus names his enemy outright: the ruler of this world is Satan. The moment Satan looks most powerful is the moment John wants us watching Jesus's authority over him instead. He has no power over me does not mean Satan has no power anywhere; he is still about to work through Judas and drive a cross into the ground. But he has no claim on Jesus himself, nothing in him to exploit.

David stood in front of Goliath, certain the battle was already decided before a single stone left his hand, because he knew who stood behind him. Jesus does something far greater: he faces his enemy with nothing in his hands at all, no weapon, no army, only obedience, and obedience is exactly what wins.

Most of us will never face a giant or a cross. But each of us has some obedience in front of us this week that will cost something real: a conversation we have been avoiding, a temptation we keep giving in to. Name it, and choose it, not to feel better about ourselves, but to display love for God to the people watching us do it.

A Peace That Holds

The very next day, Jesus was nailed to that cross. In that same moment, in the temple nearby, the curtain guarding the entrance to God's presence ripped in two, top to bottom. Not torn slowly, not by human hands. Torn open, right when everything looked finished.

What looked like Satan's greatest victory was, in that same instant, God throwing open the way into his presence. The cross did not close a door. It tore one open, forever.

Here is what we have been given: a peace that never depended on our circumstances changing, a Father always greater than what we can see even when he never explains himself, and a love that already won before anyone else could tell. Already given. Already proven. Already won.

Horatio Spafford picked up his pen over the very water that had swallowed his daughters and wrote this.

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

It Is Well with My Soul

That peace never rested on what the water had taken, but on who was still holding him. The same peace is already ours, the moment we stop waiting for circumstances to change before we believe it.

Reflection Questions

1. What circumstance are we waiting to change before we let ourselves feel at peace? What would it look like to let Christ's peace settle in right now instead?

2. Is there a closed door in our life we still cannot explain? What would it look like to trust the Father's plan is greater, even without the explanation yet?

3. What's one act of obedience in front of us this week that would cost something real, and what would it look like to do it anyway, trusting the outcome already belongs to Christ?