“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”.
(Luke 2:14 )
“I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught”. ( John 14 – 25 -27 ( The Message )
If there is anything our world has always needed and desperately craves today, it is peace – peace in marriages, peace in the classrooms, peace on the playgrounds, peace in the workplace, peace in the movie theaters, peace at the restaurants and even inside the church! Terrorists have struck fears into the hearts of the world’s inhabitants and it appears no one is beyond their reach. People go out and never return. Families travel and never return. Children go to school and never return. It is not confined to one specific country or a specific race or religion. Everyone is a fair game.
The world established the League of Nations to help bring about peace among the nations but it was a colossal failure. Many wars were fought still. The name changed to United Nations. But it is clear that the United Nations is a united nothing. A fiasco. An international joke. Wars not only continued, terrorism and impoverishment of nations were added to it bringing about monumental refugee problems. Why? Why are all the efforts to usher in peace failing ? Because there can be no true peace until the Prince of Peace comes. But you can enjoy peace even in the midst of all these turbulence and tempests of terror. All you need is the Prince of Peace Himself to come into your life.
A patron asked a painter to paint a picture of peace. First, he painted a quiet-looking deserted street bereft of any hint of disquiet. The patron rejected it. Then he painted a field of gently swaying beautiful daffodils in a sunset by the seaside. The patron turned it down. Finally he painted a tempest roaring through a farmland and trees being uprooted and branches breaking and being hurled off by the wind. In the “eye of the storm” is a tiny bird perched and sleeping away in the midst of the tempest on a half broken branch of a tree! “Yes ! Yes!! Yes!!!” Screamed the patron. “This is peace! This is peace!! This is peace!!! Indeed, seeing a tiny bird sleeping in the midst of a tempest on a half broken tree branch passes all understanding. I present to you this Christmas Jesus Christ, the Gift of peace that can offer you “the peace of God that passes all understanding” Philippians 4:7.
The Gift of Peace with God
Romans 5:1 says we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This means that we are reconciled back to God because the barriers of hostility and enmity that separated us from God have been removed by the person and work of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, Ephesians 2:14 . On that glorious night when Jesus was born, the angels sang, “glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace.
The Gift of Peace with Man
Do you know that the Prince of Peace can actually make your enemies to be at peace with you? Believe it or not, that cantankerous and obnoxious spouse, neighbor or child can be made to be at peace with you.
Proverbs 16: 7 says “when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
You do not need to be in hostility with those who are hostile towards you. Once you have the Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, peace with all men is your heritage. In the Old Testament, Jacob had run away from home because he stole his brother’s blessing by deceiving their father Isaac with the help of his mother Rebecca. Esau, his brother therefore swore to kill him so he fled for his life to live with his mother’s brother. He was there for at least fourteen years and God prospered him. His prosperity triggered envy from his Uncle and his children to the extent that the Uncle pursued him to force him back after Jacob had left him. God appeared to Laban, the Uncle, in a dream and warned him to steer clear of Jacob and leave him in peace. In fact he must not as much as offend Jacob in speech! ( Genesis 31:24). God was Jacob’s Peace. When Jacob heard that his brother Esau was coming with 400 men to meet him, he was scared to death knowing what he did to him years ago and how vengeful his brother was. He divided his family into different segments and kept those that he loved most at the rear thinking that evil was determined by Esau towards him. But the Prince of Peace had gone ahead of him. When Esau both brothers finally met, Esau “ran to meet him and embraced him, ad fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” ( Genesis 33:4). God was His Peace.
When you make Jesus your Peace, He will be your peace even in “little” things. He cares so much about you that even “the very hairs of your head are numbered” Luke 12:17. For example, an elderly woman wrote a letter to God a week before Christmas but she had no money for stamp or envelope. She made an envelope herself that looked ragged and messy. The postal worker found it while sorting out letters. Out of curiosity he opened it and read that the writer was in great distress and lost all sense of peace because she had lost all her savings of about $150 to online theft. She had no money for food or anything else for Christmas. Fellow postal workers heard about it and took contributions of $100 for the woman. The money was mailed to her that same day in a plain envelope, with no note or anything. A week later, the same postal worker noticed another unstamped letter that had been addressed to God in the same handwriting. In it, he found a brief note:
“Dear God, Thank you for the $100 that you sent me for Christmas, which would have been so bleak otherwise. P.S. It was $50 short, but that was probably those thieving workers at the post office. “
I present the Prince of Peace to you today. He is the Christmas Gift from God to you this season. Have you received Him?
Oladipo Kalejaiye holds a Ph.D degree in law and was a litigation attorney in Nigeria, Europe and the United States for over 17 years. He entered into full time ministry in year 2000, and currently serves as the pastor of International Christian Center, Los Angeles ( You can contact him by Email: Pastor@iccla.com, Web: www.iccla.com, Facebook: iccla/facebook, Twitter: @DipoKalejaiye)
