You can fill your mind with many different things. If you want peace, though, you must fill your mind with God. 

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8

Men and women of the 21st century are worn out, fatigued, and overcommitted. The man with a full resume always pays a price to get it. Something has to suffer when we are an elder, a businessman, a civic leader, and a sportsman. When we run in the fast lane, precious little time remains for God and our family. Wouldn’t you like to get out of the fast lane?

Prayerfully ask God to help you make the right choices. If you were speeding down the inside lane of a busy interstate highway at 80 miles an hour and decided to get off the road, you wouldn’t swerve sharply without warning. You would turn on your blinker and start to work your way over. Even then you would have to wait for an exit ramp.

God is not so much interested in your position as He is in your attitude, in where you are as in where you are going. When we make the decision to get out of the fast lane, God will help us, will bless the direction in which we are moving. He will empower us to make the adjustment, to find an exit.[1]

Winston Churchill said “an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”  I’m reminded of what happened just prior to World War II.  Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, had a policy of appeasement in regards to Nazi Germany.  Whatever Hitler wanted he gave in return for a guarantee of peace.  As he got off the airplane he waved in the air the peace treaty signed by Hitler.  He spoke bravely of “peace with honour” and “peace in our time.”  Just two weeks later Hitler’s armies invaded Czechoslovakia.

We have our peace movements, and all we want is peace abroad and at home.  But if by peace we mean appeasing tyranny, compromising with gangsters and being silent because we haven’t the moral fortitude to speak out against injustice, then this is not real peace.  It is a false peace.  It is a farce and it is a hoax.[2]

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. Herbert Hoover said, “Peace is not made at the council tables, or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.”

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[1] Patrick M. Morley, The Man in the Mirror (Zondervan, 1989), quoted in Men of Integrity, Vol. 2, no. 4.

[2] Billy Graham in, The Quotable Billy Graham. Compiled and Edited by Cort R. Flint and the Staff of Quote, (Anderson, S.C.: Droke House, 1966).