Shalom in Your Guts

As you, dear reader, are probably more than aware, it is 2020, and for many 2020 has meant great hardship. Bushfires on a level never before seen, protests against systemic racism that has been built into our culture, not to mention a global pandemic that no nation on Earth has not felt the effects of, and so so so much more.

I could do the whole, “God is going to use this time for something greater” speech, which is absolutely true, God is going to use this time for something greater, but that’s not what I want to focus on right now.

Something that was prayed over me the night before I moved to Harrogate just a few weeks ago, (it’s really only been a few weeks?!), was shalom in my guts. Now I know that sounds a bit odd. But let me quickly explain. Shalom is a hebrew word that is usually used as a greeting or a goodbye that means peace, (it can also mean harmony, wholeness or completeness). The prayer that was prayed over me, it wasn’t shalom in my head, so that I would know it mentally and psychologically. It wasn’t even shalom in my heart, which is an area that the Bible draws great attention to, (Jesus talks about the heart often, for example when he is challenged on what is the greatest commandment and he responds with, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”). It was shalom in my guts. Shalom in my very most inner core of my being, in my very soul. Shalom in my guts.

A resounding peace in everything I am.

Now, in my past, I have gone through seasons of dealing with and trying to manage anxiety and depression, so let’s just say that peace is not exactly my default setting. I’m sure many of you are similar to this, maybe even for similar reasons. Peace is very few people’s default it seems. In this year of chaos and uprooting of so many things all over the planet, it is even harder to find peace, to find shalom.

So I want to pray a prayer for you dear reader. I want to pray for shalom in your guts. I pray for a peace so strong that it surpasses all understanding. I pray for the peace of Daniel in the lions’ den to ring true in your gut. I pray for the innate belief and peace in their fate of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that even if you feel that you’re being thrown into a firey furnace that you believe that God will deliever you, and even if He does not, He is still good. I pray for the peace of Silas and Paul, in a prison, after being beaten and flogged, continued to pray and worship. The peace of John, who was a “Son of Thunder”, but became the disciple whom Jesus loved, who leant again the messiah’s chest.

But most of all, I pray for the peace Jesus, the peace of God the father, and the peace of the Spirit to work in and through you, to make a home in you, that you let our amazing and beautiful father in. Build our God an altar in your mind, in your heart, and in your gut. Let his shalom ooze out of you, may it fill and overflow out of you.

Let us, as brothers and sisters in Christ, as a family of God, be a culture of shalom. Let our broken world see the peace of God, and may they come running after it. Let us not reflect our world, despairing in chaos of this year. Let us be the people of peace that our God has called us to be.

May you have shalom in your guts, Global Family.