Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

When does the soul grow quiet, calm, content? Its wrestlings and wonderings, sorrows, discontent, and troubles are many. Its storms rage and find no rest of their own. Searching deeper within, it finds more of its own troubles. Awakening them would only cause that despondent soul more pain and grief. What all lies there, waiting to be stirred, that may cause this man greater sorrow than he may ever find the end of? Is there no end to his troubles? His heart longs that there be, and yet the more he searches the depths of his own heart, the more trouble he finds.

He sets out to go in search of something that will give him peace. Some comfort. Something that may quiet his mind and settle his soul. Something that may silence the disquiet. The more he searches, the more his heart longs for that thing beyond itself that may promise peace.

In all his searching, he finds beauty and things that delight his senses. He finds things that promise peace, but should he rest his soul upon them, he finds that they do not last.

Peace. Peace. Why is that soul so restless? So disquieted? What is the problem? If only he would know to search out that answer and find its promise, he may well find that which is far better than what his foolish heart longingly searches out. He has searched his heart, and it cannot offer what he needs. He now follows his heart in search of what it feels it needs. He knows not that it is a foolish guide.

Many a man goes to the grave in search for peace, and some so desperate as to rush there swiftly, and yet they find none. Peace is not in the grave either.

Oh man, where may it be? Where it has always been. Christ!

It is not merely a superficial peace to quiet one’s restless heart. No! The disquieted heart is merely one symptom of man’s condition before a holy God. He is a sinner. His nature is to sin, and he loves it. Yet loving it, he finds no peace. For in fulfilling it, he finds himself storing up greater wrath and condemnation.

Peace is not some abstract thing that may fulfill one’s inner longing. A man’s own lack of peace is itself like a nerve ending that is still sensitive and feels that which is dangerous, responding as a warning to the man that something is wrong.

Yet as this man may respond to the symptoms of his own condition by seeking superficial treatment, he is not a victim of his condition. He loves it. He seeks not that which will call him to a right diagnosis, but that which will treat his symptoms and allow him to enjoy what he loves in peace.

Many go in search of peace and never find it. They are treating symptoms and ignoring the problem.

Many are the symptoms of our sinful condition, and men search for whatever promises to treat the symptoms, but they seek not the truth that reveals the problem and would cut it out and offer them what promises life and peace with God.

Many pulpits treat symptoms and fail to say what God says about who God is, who man is, and the beauty and glory of who Christ is and what He has done. He doesn’t treat symptoms. He calls men to come and die and in Him alone to receive new life. He calls men to repentance and faith. He saves them.

No man ever finds peace in searching for peace. Only ever has a man received true peace where, by the grace of God, such a one has heard the true and saving gospel and God has saved such a one. This man finds Christ most wonderful, most beautiful, most holy, most gracious and merciful. He sought Him not, and yet God, in His grace, sought him and rescued him from something worse than he was willing or able to admit.

No man ever lived or died in peace apart from Christ. A man may live happily and with many pleasures. He may mask the symptoms, but he may never go so far as to surgically remove what his greatest trouble is. Only God may do that. He takes out the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh. He gives new life. He alone saves. His promises are exceedingly better. His peace is incomparable to that which foolish men seek.

The man-centered—therapeutic, self-help, experience-driven, purpose-driven, mystical, moralistic—pulpit that promises what men desire and treats symptoms is the pulpit of men’s gospel, not that of Christ.

Yet faithful are the pulpits and the evangelists and the common saint who proclaims Christ to every man and prays for such men, that God may be gracious and merciful and make them to find what they searched not for and receive what they knew not their need.

May they hear and, by God’s grace, hear and find Him, the great Surgeon of their soul, their Redeemer, their Hope, their Salvation. May they abide daily in His truth and find Him what they needed and knew it not. And when they wrestle with remaining sin and the symptoms of that old man, may they look unto Him and find Him, His Word ever sufficient.

Where that man once tortured in his soul cried out, “Peace, peace,” may he now find that which, even when he cannot feel it, is powerful, sufficient, and better: Christ.

Oh my soul, remember Christ. Who He is and what He has done. Faithful. Faithful is He!