True and False

Peace - Genuine or Counterfeit

The past few days have given me some 'food for thought' on the contrast between God's kind of peace and any other kind of experience that has been labeled 'peace'.

Sometimes might we consider peace to be the absence of guilt? Or the other way around?

I was discussing the meaning of guilt with someone and the definition came up that guilt is when the different parts of our 'inner self' are not in agreement.

When I was young I came to believe "peace at all cost" and I also believed it to be a 'Bible truth'. In recent years I was led to intellectually realize that 'peace at all cost' is not Bible truth as it is in Jesus. But when a situation would come up that involved my emotions in relation to this type of a situation, guilt would attempt to insert itself because, from past experience, my 'heart' was not yet in agreement with my mind on this matter. I had intellectually chosen to accept as truth a new to me concept, but since it didn't agree with past experience as 'appropriate', 'true', right, or otherwise 'correct', then my resulting emotions at first registered 'guilt', even though in reality I had no need to 'feel' guilty.

I began thinking and asking some questions. If my previous experiences are based on 'lies' I believed to be truth, can I depend on what I think as 'guilt' to guide me aright, or change me?

What happens when my perceptions of truth are not yet all according to God's will?

Is guilt always accurate, always from God? Can guilt come from inappropriate sources?

Can I feel guilty when God does not intend for me to be or feel guilty?

Are there times I should feel guilty but I don't register 'guilt' - because of lies inside of me?

I am concluding that just as there is a genuine and counterfeit peace there is also genuine and counterfeit guilt. When my mind is not in agreement with the mind of God then there is place for genuine guilt. Therefore my greatest goal is to learn who God really is and what He is really like which is how I can be enabled to choose to agree with Him.

Once I am in agreement with God I am also in the position to receive His Peace.

God's kind of peace is a gift from Him: "Peace I leave with you."

Genuine Peace comes from agreement with God and acceptance of His gift of peace.

Counterfeit peace can happen when I agree with myself or others but not in God's will.

Lack of conflict based on any of Satan's lies may lead me to believe I have peace, but that is not God's kind of Peace.

God's peace comes when I choose to come into harmony with God and His will for me.

That is the kind of peace God wants everyone to experience in Him.

Bringer of Peace