Is there a way we can truly experience the peace of God? There is, and Bible explains it in several ways. For example, in James 1:21–22, we are told, “Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the Word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Most of us, when faced with a big decision, find it difficult to hear God counsel. We pray and ask God’s blessings but hear nothing. Perhaps we can’t hear God because we suffer from the spiritual equivalent of ear wax–primarily because we have ignored God’s counsel to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (James 1:19). Thankfully the passage in James tells us how we can hear God: we are to “get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:21-22).
I sometimes tell myself I am becoming spiritually deaf, but I suspect that my ears work perfectly and my trouble hearing God is due to the spiritual equivalent of ear wax. All the noise and demands of the world around me seem to produce a kind of sludge that clogs my mind and dulls my ability to hear God’s will. For that, there is only one solution: I need to get clean, and it starts with allowing Jesus to wash the dirt from my soul. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that Christ loves the church (his apprentices) and gave himself to make us holy, cleansing us with God’s Word.
James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote a letter that identified the source of humankind’s challenges and how to overcome them. “If any of you lacks wisdom,” James says, “he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (1:5-8).
