In this season, may you know that God does see you. He sees your suffering, your oppression, your fears. God responds to you by giving you His peace, and eventually by bringing justice to what was broken, like we see in the following chapters of Judges. Though Gideon questioned where God was, God revealed that Jehovah Shalom was very near and had not changed. In fact, it is we, His people, who separate ourselves from Him and change. We forget that God is continually drawing near and calling us into purposes that are far bigger than we can dream. Because we don’t see Him rightly in the middle of our battles, we strive to find comfort and forget obedience. We spend more time hoping that we have enough than trusting that God is more than sufficient in every season. Wherever you find yourself getting mixed up and forgetting God’s character, know that He always has been the Lord is Peace and He always will be. Find refuge in Philippians 4, which encourages us to exchange our anxiety for prayer. It’s then that the Peace of God will guard your heart and mind. When you are alone, when you are afraid that your needs will not be met, know that your cries to Him are not in vain. So the answer then, to the question at the beginning of today’s devotional, is found in Judges 6 and Philippians 4. Peace is not the absence of suffering. It is not the absence of hardship or oppression.
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