Christ the arbiter of our hearts

The peace of God means the absence of conflict with the will of God. It means harmony within, concord with his purpose for our lives...

To make peace with a country or a person or God requires a transaction. To have peace, as people sometimes say, unless it is merely the sense of well-being that commonly goes with getting what you want, must mean that a transaction has taken place. One's will, along with everything else, has been offered up. Peace is the divine answer to our Yes, Lord.

Colossians 3:15 suggests that the peace of Christ is the "arbiter" of our hearts, ruling out all faithless response to trouble, all distress, anxiety, fretfulness, frustration, and resentment. It establishes order. Those who accept the grace of this gift know tranquillity which can withstand all assaults, a stillness unbroken by the world's noise, and a repose in the midst of intense activity--repose which a nerve-racked world cannot possibly give. For only Christ himself, who slept in the boat in the storm and then spoke calm to the wind and waves, can stand beside us when we are in a panic and say to us Peace. It will not be explainable. It transcends human understanding. And there is nothing else like it in the whole wide world.

- Elisabeth Eliot