God’s perfect peace is beyond understanding. His peace is the calm that carries a grieving spouse or parent through the funeral. His peace covers the fears that are real but don’t need to control or cloud our faith. God’s peace doesn’t deny realities; it's the greater reality our faith provides. 

His peace isn’t found because of our efforts to achieve it. God’s perfect peace is the result of being “kept,” or held, by his sufficiency rather than our own. Sometimes the most difficult part of achieving his peace is learning to submit our best efforts to his perfection. 

We do all that we can hoping we will achieve all we want. God’s perfect peace is the result of trusting in the One who fully knows what we need. The person whose mind is “stayed” on God understands that every other resource is imperfect. When we “stay,” or fix, our minds on God, we don’t escape our challenges; we simply allow God’s peace to transcend our challenges. 

Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). When tough times come, it's common to feel like God has let us down or our faith isn’t strong enough. But the promise of Scripture is that we “will have tribulation.” We can take heart, not because God promised to spare us from trials, but because he promised that we would overcome those trials. Our peace is trusting his promises for life eternal rather than expecting that those promises are alway provided for in our lives on earth.  

How can we have God’s peace? We can allow the word of Christ to dwell in us richly. Jesus said we would have tribulation, then he said we would overcome—because he did. In the tough times, we fix our eyes on Christ, fill our minds with his truth, and then we can receive the peace that passes all understanding because we trust his love.