A teaching post for women who are looking for a peace that doesn’t depend on circumstances
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
— John 14:27 (NIV)
Jesus said these words on the night He was arrested.
Not on a calm evening in the Galilee, looking out over a quiet sea. Not at the end of a successful teaching tour, surrounded by people whose lives had been transformed. On the night that everything was about to fall apart — when Judas had already left, when the cross was hours away, when the disciples were about to scatter and deny and grieve and lose the thread of everything they thought they understood.
In that moment, He looked at the people He loved most and said: I give you My peace.
Not their circumstances peace. Not the world’s version — the one that arrives when the problems resolve and the season settles and the calendar finally has more white space. His. My peace.
This is the kind of peace that has to exist independent of circumstances, because it was offered inside circumstances that were anything but peaceful. And if it was available to the disciples on that night — in that room, with what was coming — it is available to you, in whatever you’re carrying right now.
That is not a nice thought. It is a theological claim. And it changes everything.
Two Kinds of Peace
Let’s be honest about what the world offers, because most of us have built our peace on it at some point.
The world’s peace is circumstantial. It is available when the finances are stable, the relationships are healthy, the body is well, the ministry is bearing visible fruit, and nothing is threatening to come apart. It is a peace predicated on conditions — I will feel okay when this resolves, when that happens, when the season changes.
It is also fragile. Because conditions change. Finances shift. Relationships hit turbulence. Bodies betray us. Seasons that felt stable become seasons of uncertainty. And when any of the conditions change — when even one of the pillars that was holding the peace in place gives way — the peace goes with it.
You’ve felt this. We all have. The deep relief when something hard resolves — followed, sometimes almost immediately, by anxiety about the next thing. Because circumstances peace requires circumstances to sustain it. And circumstances are never fully under our control.
Jesus offers something structurally different.
My peace. Not a peace that depends on your surroundings being right. Not a peace that arrives when your life finally settles. A peace that is relational rather than circumstantial — tied to who He is rather than what is happening around you. A peace that is available not because your life has calmed down but because you are connected to the One who does not change.
What This Kind of Peace Actually Is
I want to be precise here, because peace-language in Christian circles can become soft and vague in a way that makes it sound nice but doesn’t help you actually live differently.
The peace Jesus offers is not the absence of trouble. He says, in the same conversation, In this world you will have trouble. He is not promising immunity. He is promising something else — something that holds through the trouble rather than around it.
The peace He offers is a settled orientation toward God in the middle of unsettled circumstances. It is the interior stability of a person whose anchor is holding even when the storm is real. It is what Paul describes in Philippians 4 as a peace that surpasses understanding — not because it makes no sense, but because it exceeds what circumstances could account for. From the outside, it shouldn’t be there. From the inside, it is the most real thing.
This peace is not stoic detachment. It does not require you to pretend things are fine when they aren’t, to perform okayness, to silence your grief or your fear or your honest lament. Mary wept at the tomb. She ran to Jesus with her grief, and He wept with her. That weeping was not the absence of peace. It was the honest expression of pain in the presence of the One who is trustworthy enough to receive it.
Real peace makes room for honest sorrow. It just doesn’t let the sorrow become the final word.
Peace Is Alignment, Not Achievement
After everything we’ve covered in this series — the sitting at His feet, the design, the gifts, the balance, the battle, the guardrails — I want to tell you what I believe peace actually is in practical terms.
Peace is alignment.
Not the alignment of a perfectly proportioned schedule. Not the alignment of having all your spiritual disciplines checked off. Alignment as in: your heart is oriented toward Him. Your starting place, day after day, is His presence. Your priorities are being shaped by His voice rather than by fear or comparison or the expectations of others. You know whose you are, and you return to that truth when you drift.
Isaiah 26:3 says: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
The kept-in-perfect-peace person has a steadfast mind. Not a mind that never worries — but a mind that returns. Again and again, in every season, in every circumstance, back to the unchanging truth of who God is and what He has promised. The peace is not achieved by getting everything right. It’s maintained by the practice of returning.
This is what you’ve been building for eight weeks.
Not a formula for balance. Not a set of spiritual achievements. A rhythm of return — to His feet, to His presence, to the posture that says: before anything else, I come here first. I sit here. I receive from here. And then I move.
That rhythm, consistently practiced, is what produces the kind of peace that holds through the seasons that don’t cooperate with your plan.
The Woman Who Carries Peace Into the Room
I want to describe someone you may know — or someone you may be becoming.
She is not the woman whose life has no problems. She is not the woman who never struggles, never doubts, never has a hard week. She is the woman whose interior life is stable in a way that the people around her can feel even if they can’t explain it.
She walks into a room, and something settles. Not because she is performing calm or suppressing her real experience. But because she carries something — something genuine, something rooted — that communicates: I know who holds this. Even when I don’t understand it, I know He is good, and I know He doesn’t let go.
That quality is contagious. It is what the people around her — her family, her community, her team, the women she leads and mentors — need to receive from her. Not her perfection. Not her put-together-ness. Her peace.
You become that woman the same way Mary became who she was: by choosing the One Thing. By protecting the posture of returning to His feet. By letting the sitting and the serving both flow from the same Source.
It doesn’t happen all at once. It is built, day by day, choice by choice, season by season. But it is built. And what gets built in you — this settled, real, not-manufactured-by-circumstances peace — no one can take away.
Jesus said it about Mary’s choice: it will not be taken from her. What she chose — and what you choose — in the posture of sitting at His feet is yours. Life will rush you past it. The many things will crowd it out if you let them. But when you protect it, when you return to it, when you let it be the starting place for everything else — it holds.
What This Journey Has Been About
I want to close this series where it began: with a room, with a dinner, with two sisters, and with Jesus right there in the middle of it.
Martha was not wrong to serve. She was wrong to let the service become anxiety, comparison, and striving. The correction wasn’t to stop — it was to stay connected to the source of everything she was doing.
Mary was not wrong to sit. She was right to recognize that what was available in that room, at those feet, was worth protecting — even when the pull to be productive was real.
And Jesus — the One in the room, the One they were both trying to honor in their different ways — saw them both with love. Called one back to what mattered most. Honored the choice the other had made.
That is still the picture. That is still the invitation.
You are both Mary and Martha. You are called to still and to serve, to sit and to stand, to receive and to pour out. The integration of both — the harmony of the inward and outward life — is what this journey has been building toward.
And the fruit of that integration, lived faithfully over time, is peace.
Not the world’s version — fragile, circumstantial, always one crisis away from collapse. But His version. The peace that is relational, that holds through the storm, that is available right now — not when your life settles down, but in the middle of exactly where you are.
He is in the room.
He is still inviting: Come. Sit. Let Me be your starting place.
This is the peace He offers. And it does not disappoint.
For Reflection
- How would you describe the difference between the world’s peace and the peace Jesus offers — not theologically, but from your own experience?
- Looking back at this journey — across all we’ve covered on stillness, design, balance, gifts, battle, and preparedness — where do you sense more peace now than when you started?
- What is the one practice, the one rhythm, the one choice — your version of the One Thing — that you want to carry forward as your starting place for everything that comes next?
A Final Word
The peace Jesus offers is yours. Not as a reward for having this figured out. As a gift — the same gift He extended in that upper room, on the night everything was about to change.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid.
Not because the road will be easy. Because He will be with you on it. And because the peace He gives is the kind that holds.
Go and live it.
This post concludes the At His Feet, In His Service ministry blog series — drawn from the book, companion study guide, and eight-week devotional of the same name. If this series has stirred something in you, we’d love to walk with you further. Learn more about the full study, the community, and upcoming events at https://awakewomensministry.com.