.jpg)
The Father's Business Podcast
The Father's Business Podcast
He is-The Character of God: He is Peace and Shalom
We open with Gideon hiding in a winepress, terrified and hungry, and watch him build an altar called “The Lord is Peace” before any battle is won. That scene reframes everything: God doesn’t just hand out calm; He reveals Himself as Peace—shalom—wholeness, harmony, and flourishing in the middle of pressure and uncertainty. From there, we trace how Scripture invites us to receive peace, such as Colossians 3 which urges us to “let the peace of Christ rule”—to let peace act as an umpire over our competing thoughts and emotions.
Because anxiety is not just spiritual but also physical, we share practical ways to partner with God’s peace: simple breathwork (4-7-8), limiting inputs that inflame worry, grounding in Scripture, and small, steady practices that regulate body and mind. The goal isn’t numbing out; it’s living awake and anchored. If you’ve been longing for a peace that holds when headlines spike and life gets loud, this conversation offers a path to receive and embody it—so it steadies you and spills over to the people you love.
If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs steady ground today, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your voice helps this message of shalom reach more hearts.
The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God. I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell.
SPEAKER_01:And I am Kimberly Roddy. Welcome to the Father's Business Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. We're glad that you're with us today. We are continuing in our series on He Is the Characteristics of God. And today we are going to be talking about God is shalom. He is peace. And that makes me just want to breathe a little bit. So as we start off today, Elizabeth, I want you to tell us more about this story. But I'm going to read you a verse in Judges. It's Judges 6, 24. It says, So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it the Lord is peace.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. This is the first time God says his name is Peace. And I think that would actually be the first point that we want to make today, Kimberly, is that God doesn't give peace. He doesn't just give us peace. He is peace. It is who he is. It is his character. So some of us may be familiar with the story of Gideon, some of us may not. Some of us may be a little rusty. I had to kind of go back and reread my story of Gideon to go, okay, where are we when this is going on? It's a time in Israel's history where they're being oppressed by the Midianites. And they're terrified because every time they plant crops, their enemies come and destroy them. And every time they try to do anything to prosper, the enemy is there to try to take them out. Gideon was so afraid that he was threshing wheat in a wine press, which is basically he's hiding underground trying to get enough food to survive. That's the climate we're in when all of a sudden an angel of the Lord appears to him and says, The Lord is with you, mighty warrior. And I mean, first off, I don't think Gideon was feeling like a mighty warrior at the time because he's basically hiding underground, trying to thresh wheat enough to have something to eat. And so he was afraid, probably, he felt weak. Maybe thought, maybe he was questioning, is God really all these things that we've heard that he is? Is he really faithful? Is he really gonna show up for me? And so when Gideon realizes that it's the angel of the Lord that was speaking with him, he then becomes overwhelmed with fear that he's gonna die. Because I can't only imagine what it's like if an angel of the Lord were to appear in front of me, right? And so God says to him in 623, peace, do not be afraid, you're not gonna die. That is the verses right before the verses that you read. And so that is why he builds an altar and names it the Lord is peace, Yahweh Shalom. And what I want us to notice about this story is the angel just showed up and said, Peace, do not be afraid, you're not going to die. But he doesn't fix anything. So none of Gideon's circumstances have changed. None of the Israelites' circumstances have changed. The Mennonites are still out there. His nation is still oppressed, but in that moment, Gideon is experiencing the presence of God and feeling the fullness of who God is, and who God is is peace. Now, later on in the story, God does, you know, use Gideon's army. First, he pairs it down to just 300 people, which I'd be like, are you sure about that? Um, but and those 300 people do defeat the Midianites, but the altar that says God is peace was built before the victory in the middle of the fear. They didn't wait till after the victory was over to declare that God was peace. And that is such a good reminder, Kimberly, I think for all of us, that we need to cling to who God is and his unchanging character. God is peace regardless of what we see going on in our world and what we see going on in our nation, what we see going on even in our own personal lives right now, that doesn't feel very peaceful.
SPEAKER_01:So, Elizabeth, you're saying in that passage, that's where we first see the idea of God calling himself, God being called or God calling himself Yahweh Shalom.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, the Lord is peace. That is that is what that is in from the Hebrew. So this is the first time in scripture that we're seeing that one of God's names is peace.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, can you unpack a little bit what that word shalom means and what peace means?
SPEAKER_00:So, yeah, I think in our English language, the word peace just means calm, right? Lack of anything going on that I don't like. But the word peace in the Hebrew and also in the Greek, it means it's more about wholeness. It is about harmony, it's about flourishing, it is about the idea, not the absence of conflict, but a settledness, a reconciliation to the fact that God is with us in the midst of the thing. I can be at peace in the midst of a storm because I know who God is. So it is a much bigger word than just peace mean in our minds means a lack of war, right? Because we we're we're at peace with other nations, we're at peace in our relationships, means there's no fighting going on. But God is trying to reveal a much deeper, more beautiful picture of Himself that there is this, I think of another good word for it, is like this wholeness and healing. Like everything that is needed and required is present, is the deeper meaning of peace.
SPEAKER_01:In my world of being a mediator, yeah, there are a couple of key phrases that I run across, especially in the world of Christian mediation. Um, and two of those words are peacekeeper and peacemaker. And so you you want to will often tell people you want to be a peacemaker or a peacekeeper. And I often sometimes I laugh at the word peacekeeper because I'm like, we're telling you to keep the peace in a situation where there's not peace sometimes. Um, but I think what you're talking about just made me think about that because God is the peacemaker. He is the peacekeeper. I think he's the perfect peacekeeper because he is peace.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Because I often feel like the word peacekeeper in our human relationships fails a little bit or lacks, because I often think we we are often in conflict. And like if you're a parent and you're telling your kid, hey, your job's to keep the peace. Well, there's not often peace where you're trying to keep it. So I I often in a human sense, I prefer the word peacemaker. Like, let's go in and make peace. But I'm thinking, well, Jesus is the peacekeeper. And those are just some nuances I'm thinking about as you're talking here. At the end of the day, what that means is like the word shalom was a Hebrew greeting, and it meant what you just said. It it is our word for peace. It meant wholeness, harmony, flourishing. You just you just said that. And so when the Hebrew people would greet one another, they're saying shalom. They're saying, I bless you with wholeness. My hey people, like, hey, hi, how you doing? That does nothing.
SPEAKER_00:So Kimberly were saying I should now say shalom when I see you.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm just saying, like culturally, they they had a much like they wanted to bless people, you know. We often talk about blessing others and God blesses us. I I'm thinking about the verse in Numbers where it says, the Lord bless you, the Lord keep you, make his face shine upon you. Like that was their mantra in so many ways. Truly, truly. Like they knew how to live in a culture where it was where their attitude was to bless others because they lived with the idea that God was blessing them. Now, I I'm not saying they got it perfect. I know they were human. I get that, but it was embedded in the culture, I think. And and we're just like, hey, how are you? Like, we kind of shy away from like intimately wanting to offer someone wholeness and harmony. That is not what I feel from my world today. Right. Right. Um, and I and I know I I'm kind of jumping all over the place here, but my my mind is kind of swirling through this. I I don't even know how in my culture to be a peacemaker or a peacekeeper, I I can, and that's where I guess I was coming from, is like to be a peacemaker seems more appropriate than to be a peacekeeper, because I don't see peace being kept around us. Right. And I'm jumping ahead, but let me go back to what what we're the the key in all of this that we're talking about is he is peace. He is shalom. Yeah. And so if I can know that God is peace, and if I can sit in his peace and rest in his shalom, then I can live that out. And I was having dinner with a friend last week. I was talking to another friend the other day, another friend the week before that. And the theme throughout those conversations was how anxious they felt.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I, as you're talking about this, I know that Gideon felt fear. It says that. Yeah. Like you, you, you said that in the story. It it the scriptures say he he was he was fearful, he was hiding. And so I know that he felt anxious to use our modern word, right? Yeah. And yet what God said to him in his spirit of fear was, I am peace. As believers, if we can truly know that God is peace in the midst of all the fear, in the midst of all the anxiousness in our world, then one, I can take a deep breath and I can rest in his peace and choose to look at him, choose to see him. And two, I can offer peace to this world. And if I truly know that God is peace, but I am not offering peace to this world, then I am not being Christ-like. I mean, that's I think that's a huge reality for where we're living today. Because we we live in an anxious world, and yet Philippians 4, 6 through 7 is this. I mean, many of us have heard this verse. It says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. But Elizabeth, if the peace of God will transcend all my understanding and guard my heart in Christ. Like I love the second part of that verse, Elizabeth. How do I live out those first six words? Do not be anxious about anything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, that we're people are like, wow, why do I keep listening to your podcast? Because you keep saying the same thing. This is going back to what we talked about last week, which is the steadfastness of God and our partnership in that. Because how do we not be anxious about anything is the second half of that verse. That that phrasing will guard your hearts and minds is actually a military term. It means it will mount a garrison around your heart and mind. I love that analogy that's used there because that also means the struggle to not be anxious and to guard our hearts and guard our minds is so intense that it's not just a simple little, I'll put a little chain link fence around you to protect you. He is mounting a military garrison around your heart and mind in Christ Jesus to protect you from anxious thoughts. I think of another verse, Isaiah 26, 23, that says, You will be kept in perfect peace. And I I struggle with that one. I'm like, really? Perfect peace? You'll be kept in perfect peace. Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. And here's this partnership. Here's here's where the friendship with Jesus that we talked about last week comes in. I have to do my part to be steadfast, to be faithful, to be allowing my mind to be surrounded and a garrison mounted up around my mind. Because peace is his presence. And if I am not being faithful to enjoy him, spend time with him, saturate myself with him, read the word, pray, spend time with him, and allow who he is and who I am in him to go deep down into me, there is no way I can be anything but anxious. Because peace is not a lack of conflict. It is not a lack of worry or fear or other things in our environment. It is his presence. And I think of words that Jesus said, Jesus said that we had to take heart because in this world we will have trouble. So there's never a promise that we're not going to have to deal with things that can make us fearful and anxious. And I think that's why Paul has to say so clearly, do not be anxious. Like you have, you have a part to play. Just like as we talk about in spiritual warfare, yes, God fights our battles for us, but we have to stand. There is a place where we have to be so grounded in him that as these things come against us, the truth of who he is is that military garrison that protects our hearts and minds in him. So it's it's not for the faint of heart to live in this world, but Jesus even says in another place in the gospels, my peace, that is the peace that Jesus knew. Imagine how much peace Jesus had. He is fully God and fully man. My peace I give to you. And there are several examples I can think of in scripture where everyone else is flipping out but Jesus. You know, Kimberly, do you remember them on the boat and they're in a storm? And what is Jesus doing? He's taking a nap and he's just like, okay, whatever. So he was there, he was peace, he had peace, and he offered peace to those around him. And then there's the other example of him on the water where he comes walking across the water in the storm. He didn't, he never stopped the storm. He invited Peter to come join him and be with me, be in my presence because I am peace. And I think so many times what I want peace to be is God's going to take away the thing that's making me anxious, scared, or worried, or hard, or whatever word you want to put in there. And that's not the model that he's showing us throughout scripture. We get to partner with him and have his peace despite what's going on around us.
SPEAKER_01:In Romans 5 1, we see that therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have that peace. We he has given us that peace because he's given us himself, he's given us his spirit. And I was just thinking about the connection between um his spirit and peace. In John 14, Jesus says, My spirit I leave with you. And and I think that the spirit does so much in us and carries us through so much. And one of the things that we know as we talk, as we've talked about what is the spirit, who is the spirit, it the word spirit means breath. It is the the pneuma, it is the the the breath of God. And so I'm thinking about, you know, when someone's anxious or when someone's upset in conflict, we often say, just breathe. Sometimes we say it like kind of critically, but other times we're like, no, just take a breath. You're okay. Even in the psychological world, they recognize there there's breathing patterns out there. Like we were we were teaching kids recently, like to create a volcano, like go way up with your arms and take a big breath and then come in like you're making a little volcano in front of you, you know, like a little circular thing in front of you. Like we're teaching kids how to breathe because they're so anxious. But we also counselors tell clients all the time, do the I think it's four, seven, eight breathing pattern. Breathe in for four seconds, hold it for seven, and blow out for eight, because what that biologically does is resets your brain and your heart and your breathing capacities physiologically. I I'm connecting what our world knows about breathing patterns and how it regulates us to the reality of God saying he is our breath. Yeah. He he is the spirit within us who is peace. And so he is within us, he has given us his spirit as believers that is peace. As listeners, I wish you could like get inside my head for just a minute and make all those connections to how powerful that is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can't believe I think some people listening will be like, hey, that sounds great, but my life feels like a mess right now, and I don't feel peace at all. And what I hear you saying and what I hear the word of God saying is peace is not something that we create, it's a gift. It is who God is, it is his spirit within us, it is Jesus saying, My peace I give to you. And so what we need to do is open up our hands and receive it. And one of my favorite verses about peace is found in Colossians 3:15. And it says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful. And there's two parts to that. First off, the first word, let. Let the peace of Christ rule. We have to make a decision. Jesus is offering us his peace, his spirit is within us. It is, it is that. Just take a breath, like pause, take a moment, take a breath moment. I've got to choose to let the peace of Christ rule in me. And what I really love about that verse, if you get deeper down into the meaning of it, I love reading it in the Amplified. It says, and let the peace, our soul's harmony, which comes from Christ rule, act as an umpire continually in your hearts, deciding and settling with finality all the questions that arise in your mind. And I love that imagery that is I choose to let the peace of God rule in my life, not my own doubts, my own worries, my own fears, what I'm reading in the headlines, what's happening with the stock market, what's going on in politics, none of that. I'm not gonna let that rule in my heart. But I have to choose to let it rule in my heart. Jesus is coming in as the empire and settling it all. And when I always think about that, I think about back to my childhood when me and my brother would be in a fight about something. And here comes mom and dad, and they get to referee the fight and they get to decide and settle it and declare what is going to happen in this situation, right? So Jesus comes in to all of those anxious thoughts. We've all got them. What about this and what about that? And what does this mean? And what there's so much information coming at us. We've talked about this before because of technology, because of our cell phones, there we know far more information than our human minds and hearts can really hold all at one time. When something happens, we see it live. That's not how it's always been. And so we are bombarded with things to make us feel anxious. No wonder everyone's talking about anxiety all the time. And yet we get to say, I'm going to choose to let the peace of God rule and let Jesus come in here in the midst of all this and let him be the umpire. Let him settle it, let him bring my spirit, soul, and body back into alignment with him who is our peace.
SPEAKER_01:I think peace can sometimes be like forgiveness also. I'm thinking about how a couple of weeks ago we talked about forgiveness is not sweeping something under the rug.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And earlier you said peace is not the absence of conflict. Right. And I think often that's what with forgiveness we'll feel like. Well, I've let it go because it meaning you've just swept it under the rug, you hadn't really dealt with it. To correlate that with peace, we think, well, I'm not having any conflict right now, so I feel peaceful. I'm not surrounded by conflict, so I feel at peace. Yeah. Well, like we've said, that's not really what peace is. I think oftentimes we have to be careful as humans when we say, I want peace in my life, or I'm a even people that say I'm a peacemaker, I'm making peace all around me. Sometimes what they're really saying is, I don't want to be affected by the things around me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Right. So there is a difference. And I would encourage you to be aware of that in your life, look at your life and say, Am I really truly experiencing peace? Or is it this false sense of peace where I'm just not allowing myself to be affected by these things? I'm I'm I'm choosing to numb out, I'm choosing to ignore, I'm choosing to deny, you know, whatever it is. But but that's not peace. Right. And I've talked with several people over the years who who have who have admitted, like, yeah, that's that's what I'm doing. I'm stuck in that pattern of just denying all the conflict around me, all the chaos around me, and I'm ignoring it and I'm feeling peaceful and I'm fine and I'm living in La La Land. Right. And as our friend Julie used to say, that's the great ribbon of denial. Yes. Um and yet that's not what Jesus, that's not what scripture is saying. What scripture is saying, God is saying, I am peace. Jesus is saying, I leave you my peace. It's a reality that we get to embody because we're his children. You referred to a minute ago, Elizabeth, like it's not this just fleeting moment thing. It it is a settledness, a true sense of being. Like when Gideon was fearful and underground, and God says the angel comes and says, God is peace. That's powerful, and yet we are so quick to substitute peace with temporary things. Oh yeah. Like, I mean, that goes to broken cisterns. It goes to anything that makes us feel better. But I mean, truly, like, don't fool yourself if you're not really experiencing God's peace. I think that's that's what I want to encourage us with.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think there's a difference between not feeling anxious and really experiencing God's peace. Yeah. Like you said, Kimberly, you can do a thousand things to numb the fears or the anxiety or whatever emotions you may be feeling. You can stick your head in the sand to pretend like nothing's going on, or you can numb yourself out or find ways to comfort yourself. That's different than truly embracing who God is. He is peace. And so as we we kind of wrap up our thoughts here, I think what we've been talking about is with all of God's characteristics, there's his part and our part. His part is for him to be who he is and he does not change. And he continually shows up to offer us peace. But we have to go back to some of the verses we've talked about in Isaiah 26, where it says, keep your mind stayed on him. In Philippians 4, where it says, do not allow yourself, don't entertain anxiousness, do not be anxious, I think is talking a lot about where do your where do you spend your thoughts? Where do you spend your focus? And so allowing him to mount that garrison around our minds. And then in that verse in Colossians 3, let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. There is definitely a part where we have to partner with him to allow all of who he is to fill us up and be that North Star that we follow, to be that inner place and allow God's peace to umpire over everything that we're dealing with. And that can be a moment-by-moment thing. And there can be times where you feel like you're just hanging on by the, you know, the whites of your knuckles and you're like, I don't have it. And that's when you just come back to him again and go, God, I need you to fill me with your peace again. And he has abundant peace, he has lavish peace because it is who he is and he will never run out of it. So for every situation we find ourselves in, whether we're worried about our kids, we're worried about our family, we're worried about our world, there is enough peace for us to so saturate ourselves with him that it pushes out any troubles, anxiety, worry, or fear. And we can live in a place of knowing that we can smile in the midst of very hard places because we know the end of the story is gonna be amazing. And I think that's what I want people to hold on to as we're closing out. It's not about perfect circumstances, it's about knowing that God is your peace. And whether you find yourself underground, threshing wheat because you fear for your life, or you're finding yourself in an okay place. Life is life is okay. It doesn't matter. We all need the peace of God to be in us and flowing it through us so that we can show that peace to a world around us. Because if we're as anxious as the rest of the world is, how does that reflect that there's anything different about being a believer versus being a non-believer? So my my hope and my prayer for you is that we would all be so saturated with the peace of God that it would overflow to the people around us.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And Elizabeth, as you were just saying, we we get to partner with God in aligning ourselves with him and letting his peace rule in our hearts. I'm thinking maybe there's some things that you need to do to help yourself be less anxious and to experience his peace, right? Like I said earlier, there are there are legitimate breath patterns that you can do. You can do the four, seven, eight breath pattern. I actually did that the other day driving because I was like, I don't know what's going on with me. I'm just feeling anxious today and I just need to breathe. I need to regulate my body. I have a body, a physical body that that God created that needs regulating and and tending to. I we also need to tend to our spirits and and our souls and and put them in the places they need to be with Father, Son, and Spirit. So it could be that that um I know a lot of people these days are taking a break from allowing the world to infiltrate us. So it may be that you that you need to take a break from social media or from times of being on social media, pull back a little bit, whatever it is from from watching the news, from just ignoring the news. It may whatever it is, there's different ways that you might need to engage with that differently. It may be that you need to go outside and breathe in the air a little bit more and move your body a little bit more. It may be that you need to stop doing something or start doing something. I don't know what that is for you. I really want to encourage you to ask the Lord how you can live in his peace this week. Because I think that is that is everything we're talking about, to remember all the truths that we have just shared and to live in those realities because peace is a gift to receive. We said this a second ago, and it's a reality that we are called to embody. And so, how can we live in that gift and embody that calling and that reality of peace? So share with us how you're doing that so we can encourage one another. And I just speak blessings of peace on you today. May you know that God is your peace and may you let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
SPEAKER_00:And may his shalom steady you and fill you and flow through you in every circumstance that you face this week. I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast. This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you. To donate, go to www.thefathersbusiness.com. Be sure to follow us at the Father's Biz on Instagram and Facebook.
