Hi, Jesus loves you.
How do you know when you lack the peace of God? What should you beware of if God’s peace is to remain intact within you? The peace of the Lord is the checks and balances of a glorious, fruitful and successful life. There are numerous signs or products of the absence of this peace.
Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; and his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him- Daniel 2:1 (NKJV)
In the day you will make your plant to grow, And in the morning you will make your seed to flourish; But the harvest will be a heap of ruins In the day of grief and desperate sorrow. – Isaiah 17:11 (NKJV)
It is important that you are quick to identify the consequences of lack of peace of God. This is because dealing with them promptly will prevent them from growing into more destructive products. God wants you to be free of these manifestations in your life.
Some of these consequences are inward manifestations, and would have been eating up the victim before manifesting outwardly. That’s the reason why they must be identified early and dealt with without delay.
These consequences can be subdivided into spiritual, emotional, mental and physical afflictions:
SPIRITUAL AFFLICTION
Any child of God who loses his peace is open for the enemy’s attacks. His major attack will be your source of strength: your prayer life and your desire to study God’s word. When you pray and study the word less often, you lose contact with your helper and the wisdom of God. You will be more carnally minded than spiritually minded.
Lack of spirituality will take you further away from your solution. You will tend to make poor or wrong choices most of the time. It is wisdom when you lose your peace due to any challenge whatsoever to hold unto God tightly because He is the one who will help you to bounce back. Letting go of God at this time is to plunge yourself further into the deep pit, full of darkness.
Spiritual weakness opens the door for more afflictions from the enemy. But when your spirit is consistently fed with the word of God and your communication channel with God remains very effective, it wouldn’t be long before you fully recover.
EMOTIONAL AFFLICTION
An emotional breakdown may be mild or severe, however whichever is the case it is not healthy for you. If it is not checked immediately it will lead to mental and physical afflictions
Here I will mention a few symptoms of emotional affliction of lack of peace.
1. Anxiety – This is number one sign of no peace. Once you feel a bit anxious within you stop and identify the source so that it won’t penetrate any further. Evidently, being anxious expresses lack of the peace of God. It says that your challenge is not only beyond you but also beyond God. And lack of confidence in God’s ability to help you, protect or deliver you will make you insecure and that will aggravate the anxiety. You may express the anxiety in hot-temper and anger towards others.
2. Eating disorder – Some people not knowing how to handle the anxiety building up within them resort to eating anyhow and uncontrollably and yet others lose appetite. Eating disorders eventually leads to health challenges and all these because there is lack of peace of God somewhere.
3. Instability – Lack of peace of mind can lead to Instability. You may find yourself doing one thing now and the next minute the very opposite thing. One minute you are happy and another minute you are sad, one minute you are rational and another minute you are irrational. At one point you seem to know what you want and then you lose it. The dangerous part of it is that you will deteriorate to the negative part, even to the extreme of becoming suicidal if you don’t regain your peace fast.
4. Prolonged Sorrow – This saps you of energy and hinders you from actively forging ahead to live a happy and successful life. It can lead to depression which is not a good state of mind at all. Hopelessness is not of God, for where there is life there is hope. Lack of peace triggers lowliness of the spirit. Depression snatches your future and destiny from you. But when you have peace of mind, you are able to coordinate well.
The peace of the Lord enables you to quickly overcome sorrow, because what the enemy planned for evil, God can use to be a blessing to you and many others.
5. Unhealthy relationships – Some people on the other hand vent their troubled minds on others. They become unforgiving and fault-finding, nothing the other does pleases them. They become bossy, unbearable and unpleasant to be with. When you don’t have the peace of God, you wouldn’t deal wisely with any challenge that comes up in your relationship with people. You need to be at peace within you before you can make peace with another.
Cain, in Genesis 4, lost the peace of God when his own sacrifice was rejected and Abel’s own was accepted. He became stressed emotionally and instead of dealing with his attitude towards sacrifices unto God, he chose to vent his anger on his brother to the point of killing him. God detected that he was going to do something terrible if he didn’t control his anger and warned him but he didn’t listen, and he got severely punished for killing Abel.
An inner peace engenders a peaceful relationship. You are a true child of God if you are a peacemaker (Matthew 5:9) and where God is there is liberty.
MENTAL AFFLICTION
This is another point of call after your emotions have been oppressed and you are weak spiritually. Your thought life will be so disturbed and deranged that you will start experiencing the following:
1. Torments – mental suffering is an evidence that the peace of the Lord is absent in your life but God’s peace provides a soothing effect mentally. Lack of inner peace also means lack of faith in God and where there is no faith fear is bound to set in; fear of failure, sickness, poverty, rejection and fear of the unknown, and fear has torments – 1 John 4:18
King Saul was a victim of this affliction. When kingship was taken from his family, the Spirit of the Lord departed from him and an evil spirit came upon him in His place and tormented him. He could only be soothed by music from the Lord (David who played for him had the Spirit of the Lord upon him) -1 Samuel 16:14, 18
2. Absent-mindedness – When you are troubled and you dwell in the cause of the trouble, you tend to be absent-minded. Your mind will be so occupied with this challenge that there will be no room for anything meaningful. Many times you would be unaware of the happenings around you. And sometimes you may even do some strange things that under normal circumstances you wouldn’t do in public. You may laugh hysterically; give a loud disturbing shout, and throw things around, including valuable things or kick parts of your body on hard surfaces.
When Rachel saw that she bore no children for Jacob, she became envious of her sister Leah, who was able to bear sons for Jacob. She was so consumed with envy that she lashed at Jacob, “give me children or else I die”. Her outburst was not normal since Jacob was not in the place of God, who gives children, to give her a child – Genesis 30:1-2. She was afflicted mentally by the thoughts of barrenness.
3. Mental illness – Lack of peace of mind can lead to mental illness. It influences the way you think, feel, behave and /or relate to people and your environment. You find yourself unable to cope with life’s daily routine and demands.
Mental illness may have a medical description and treatment but it originates from absence of the Prince of peace and ignorance of His words and is caused by the enemy. When you are full of the Holy Spirit and God’s word, your thoughts, words and actions will be patterned accordingly. And since God cannot be associated with mental illness, you will not be associated with it either.
In Luke 8:27-36, we have an account of a man that was mentally ill (the scripture says he was demon possessed). When he encountered Christ, the Prince of peace, he was healed and restored to his right mind. Luke 8:36 (AMP) says he was restored to health, that means the presence of the peace of God cures mental illnesses and its absence can trigger it.
PHYSICAL AFFLICTION
This is the outward manifestation of lack of peace and the area that is quickly recognized by others. It is the aftermath of spiritual, emotional and mental affliction. And the signs you will notice are as follows:
1. Sleepless nights – Sleep is always far from a troubled mind. You will be tossing on your bed because of an issue that has so engrossed your mind. Many people would need to use drugs to knock themselves off to sleep. This is not the best solution; the best would be to deal with the cause of the sleeplessness. When King Nebuchadnezzar had the dream that troubled him he suffered from sleeplessness (Daniel 2:1). He didn’t waste time in finding an answer because he needed to have his peace back.
2. Irritation – A troubled heart is easily irritated. Any little thing, words or actions of people will be a disturbance to him. And if you ask him why he is so irritated he may not be able to tell unless he links it to his troubled spirit.
3. Eating disorder – This is also a physical sign that the peace of God is absent. People seeing you eating without control will sense that something is troubling you. Eating disorders do cause other problems and so should be checked.
4. Suicide – A peaceful mind will never think of suicide as an option or escape route from challenges. But a troubled mind is the devil’s workshop and so is vulnerable to evil plans of the enemy. If you entertain his ideas you may fall into his suicidal mission
5. Immorality – Some people resort to immorality as a means of shielding themselves from their problems or a means of looking for answers. Unfortunately, it never solves any problem and it gives no answers either; rather it compounds it and takes you further away from having any peace.
6. Drunkenness – There are some people who try to drown their troubled mind with alcohol. However, not only is it a temporary remedy, the alcohol ends up adding to their troubles. A drunk is void of any wisdom or ability to take any sensible step.
7. Strife – When there is no peace between two or more persons and is not checked, you will find strife. And it gives room for more evil practices and occurrences.
8. Weakness – Strength fails when the mind is troubled. The energy and enthusiasm to achieve your goals are drained, self motivation goes and hours drag to days and nothing tangible is achieved. This is a state that should be avoided.
9. Failure – Ultimately, if something is not done, lack of God’s peace will lead to unproductive life or failure. This is because you will not be coordinated enough to achieve any meaningful thing.
In conclusion, lack of peace of God has great negative effects and should be consciously avoided. Therefore keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). Let nothing steal your joy and peace of mind because the after effect is not something you would want to experience.
Ngozi Nwoke
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Good
Hallelujah!
This blessed me!
Praise God!
The Lord will continue to use you to be a blessing. Thanks
Amen.
Glory to God!
God bless you Mary
Great Insight.
Blessings
Glory to God!
It has really helped me, I’m down on my knees to ask God restore my peace. Thanks
Praise God!
Thanks Eddah for your comment.
God bless you.
This is well written, and Biblical sound.ln the last sentence did you intentionally use the Still or did you mean Steal? As l reflect on both words either would be appropriate.
Glory to God!
Thanks Jacqueline for pointing it out.
I actually meant steal, but as you reflected, still is appropriate too.
God bless you.
Good job. Proud of you
Glory to God!
God bless you Dan.
Thank u so much. This is so wonderful.
Glory to God!
Thanks Themba for your comment.
God bless you.
Powerful teachings indeed…I can only ask you that let there be short prayers after every teaching… Guide to a prayer related to the topic…thank u..
Glory to God!
Thanks Gaamangwe for your suggestion.
I will implement it.
God bless you.
Hi
God bless you Owusu
God bless you “Woman of God!” I have truly enjoyed reading this article on peace. You have so thoroughly and accurately laid out the foundational difference between having peace and not having peace. The contrasting differences are so clear and it gives us a picture practically and from the word of God how when our piece is disturbed we cannot fully serve the Lord.
I believe what I have read is from 2017. I had never come across this page before however, what you have written is relevant for years to come.
May the Holy Spirit continue to bless you and use you in this way and I certainly pray for an anointing to be able to expound on the word of God to impart to others as you have! Keep up the good work that God has begun in you!
Thank you so much!
Glory to God!
Thanks, Ora for your comment and prayers.
God bless you
This has blessed me tremendously! Thank you!!
Glory to God!
Thanks, Sharron for your comment.
I appreciate it.
God bless you.