"Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:6-7, NLT). This is generally more difficult than it sounds. The Christian life seems so simple when you're 15. And I'm not saying it's complicated, but rather that it isn't easy. It isn't formulaic. It isn't some mechanical magic that, with a bat wing and two eyes of newt, produces the peace of God. Or, similarly, our prayer does not work like an assembly line―put in a bolt here, make a weld there, and at the end of the line you have a fully assembled peace. Stillness requires detachment, which is a way of life, of being. (Let me remind you here that detachment is not coldness toward others and creation, but understanding that it is God who is life and love, that he is the source and summit of all things.
Our hope lies in God. We do not place the heavy burdens of our need on the shoulders of our parents or our spouses and children. We do not place it on stuff. Instead, we stop depending primarily on these precious people and all these ephemeralities. They cannot bear the weight of our need. We place ourselves in the arms of our Father, who can provide for us.) Detachment is being deaf to the passions that scream so loudly. We must depend on God above all things in order to reflect in our faces, hearts and minds the still pool of God's grace.
Perfect peace is found only in Christ. We must remain, abide, live in him (John 15). Jesus Christ calls us into communion with him. We do not perfectly possess communion with him; if we did then there would be no need to be called to it. So you will never grow holy sitting around and waiting for God to mystically change you. The Christian life is not a passive activity. The Kingdom of Heaven is laid hold of by those who have disciplined their bodies (1 Corinthians 9:27), trained hard to win (1 Timothy 4:7), and transformed their minds (Romans 12:2). The Christian life is not a passive activity. It's actively becoming nothing. It's planning and participating in one's own demise. As that old Petra song runs, "Killing my old man. / You may not understand / He's a terrible man. / Got to make a stand / And kill the old man" (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). And why? That Christ might be everything, all in all, and that you might become new creation, take hold of resurrection, and become a new person (2 Corinthians 5:17; 2 Peter 1:4). When we completely participate in Christ's life, then all is peace, stillness, and joy. Then we react as the horse Hwin in C.S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy: "Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion. 'Please,' she said, 'you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.' " This is what it means to want to be in communion with Christ―to see him clearly and to know that we must be consumed. And to know that this is joy.
