A Word in Season: Peace in the Storm (Jonah 1:5)

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You might often hear Christians speak, and with good reason, about the blessings of peace in their conscience, a subjective sense that all is well between them and God.

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That's perfectly proper in many cases. We might talk about those times when our soul is overwhelmed within us, and God leads us to the rock that is higher than we are, and in resting upon Christ we find peace.

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Because of faith in Jesus Christ as the crucified Son of God, we're told in Romans 5 that we have peace with God.

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We possess it, and we can and should, at least in some measure, know it. Perhaps we've sought to act righteously before God, and yet we've come under the assaults of men, and in a time of trial and trouble, we're able still to pillow our heads with a clear conscience, and we feel that we are at peace, because we know that God, in his righteousness, will be smiling upon us.

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That's perfectly appropriate language under the right circumstances. If our consciences are well instructed, bound not to cultural norms, for example, or not to our own personality or constitution, but to the living

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Word of God, then it is perfectly proper for a spirit -indwelt, spirit -instructed man or woman of God, whose conscience is clear according to Scripture, to say,

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I have peace. But the trouble comes when we allow a subjective sense of peace to become the primary barometer of our relationship with God, or the register of whether or not something is right or wrong.

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Now, you may have heard believers who go on this sense of peace as if it were the sole register or measure of whether or not they're doing something that is right.

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I don't have peace, so I can't do it. I feel peace, so I am able to do it.

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And to isolate that subjective sense of peace in that way is not wise and right.

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After all, in Jonah and chapter 1, the prophet had been told by God to go to Nineveh and to bring a message of judgment against the city.

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He refused to do so. He believed, as we find out later in the book, that God would eventually show mercy to the city of Nineveh, and so Jonah decided to go in the opposite direction.

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He threw off the traces. He decided to go contrary to the explicit revealed will of God.

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And so he got on a ship that was going to a place called Tarshish, trying to flee from the presence of the

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Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, we read in verse 4, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up.

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Then the mariners were afraid, and every man cried out to his God and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the load.

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Everybody was in turmoil. Everybody was terrified. But the man against whom

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God in righteousness had sent that storm, Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.

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Now there are a number of possible reasons why that would be the case, but this seems at least perhaps to be the action of a man who is not really that bothered.

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He seems to have peace. His conscience is at least calm enough to allow him to pillow his head.

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He's not even realised that there is a storm. The mariners are calling on the false gods to deliver them.

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Jonah hasn't even registered that God has sent this storm against him.

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He seems to enjoy a measure of subjective peace, but it is no accurate register of the favour of God upon what he is doing.

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And so we need to be careful about our sense of peace. Too many of us can say, well,

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I feel peace when we are not actually following the will of God.

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To feel peace apart from that will is a terribly dangerous thing.

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So, if we are to say, I have peace in the storm, it must be because a biblically instructed conscience that is walking in dependence upon the

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Holy Spirit in the ways of God, seeking in all things to come into conformity to Jesus Christ, is confident that they are doing what pleases him and that his smile is upon them.

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Any peace that is not grounded in a path of principled obedience is not to be rested on and will prove no sure foundation.