Peace on earth is a welcome relief in the midst of life's messiness. Yet many of us feel far from the promise of peace. On any given day, we may feel a mess of stress, anxiety, fear, depression, uncertainty, anger, even despair. Life is often a struggle, a constant battleground of challenges and inescapable negative emotions. Peace would be a welcome relief.

But peace is not a faint hope or distant goal. Peace is a promise. Jesus Himself said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). So where is this peace that our God promised? Often it gets hidden behind a lie.

One of the prayer ministries at New Hope Church deals directly with these kinds of lies. Transformation Prayer Ministry seizes upon the negative emotions we feel and chases them down to their root. Nearly always, a lie lurks down in the dark, disrupting our knowledge of God and corrupting our image of Him. Peace can be hard to find when we believe lies about the One who provides it.

These lies can grip us even when we know how false they are. Everyone who has heard John 3:16 knows that God loves the world, that God loves us. Yet a staggering number of Christians do not experience this truth. Instead, they believe a lie. They may believe God will love them when they finally get everything right. They may believe God loves them on their good days, but on their bad days His love feels desperately distant. They may like the thought of God’s love, but they look at the mess of their life and conclude that no loving God would ever want them.

When you seek lies out, they cannot hide. They produce negative emotions like a fire produces smoke. Transformation Prayer chases those lies down through prayer and many questions until we find the lie giving rise to the pain. Then we destroy it.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). When we ask Him to speak His truth into the lies we believe, He does. The lie vanishes like a fire doused with a flood. When truth comes, we receive life and peace.

Lie by lie, Jesus replaces our negative emotions with peace. Bit by bit, His truth renews our minds. The peace that He promised becomes our experience in every memory, every dream, every day. As He fills us with peace, we can finally live out that peace. It flows out of us like rivers of living water, flooding and refreshing everything around us.

Peace on earth begins with peace in our hearts.

Kyle Davison Bair is Prayer Ministries Pastor at New Hope Church. He has a passion for people to call on the name of Jesus for direction and seek an authentic culture of prayer in this church.