Unshakable Peace: Ann & Michael Swindell

You've been a pastor for more than 30 years preaching. You're talking to so many people. Why do you think peace evades so many of us? My gut answer is we look in the wrong place. Same reason we're disappointed in our marriage, which we're looking at our spouse, which we said in vertical marriage over and over. You know, you didn't marry the wrong person. You're looking in the wrong place.

I think we do the same thing with peace. You know, I'll find it in a job. I'll find it in a relationship. I'll find it in an amount of money and some of that you can get there. But at the end of the day, you're disappointed and you're unfulfilled and you lay in bed sweating because it's never enough and we just look in the wrong place.

I think we're going to find out today. Something I've said many times in a sermon is peace is a person. Welcome to Family Life Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today.

Ann Swindell and Michael Swindell are back with Family Life Today. Welcome back, guys. It's great to be here. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and obviously we've already talked a little bit about your book, The Path to Peace, Experiencing God's Comfort When You're Overwhelmed. And you talk about, you know, a journey of being overwhelmed.

Wow. And you're like a skilled writer. You teach it.

It's true. We just write, you know, and somebody fixes everything. Someone taught Ann to write. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I spent a lot of years going to school for writing and I do love it. I used to teach at the collegiate level and I have my own business ministry called Writing with Grace where I teach writing classes for primarily women. I have an occasional man who joins a class on how to write their own stories or other stories if they want to, you know, tell somebody else's stories with excellence and winsomeness so that we can be a people who share the goodness of Christ through our stories, whether it's explicit or implicit, in a really great way. We don't want to be corny, cliche Christian writers.

We want to be those who can tell our stories beautifully and powerfully to hopefully draw others to the Lord. You guys went to Wheaton College where you met. Yeah.

That's right. You guys call yourself Wheaties. We do.

We do. That's a real thing. That's corny. I got to tell you.

Don't write that anywhere. Is it corny or is it Wheatie? I mean, which brain are you going with Dave? Well, our mascot is a thunder cloud. So what do you, you can't call us the thunders. They used to be the Crusaders, but then they had to change and then we became the thunder. But oddly enough, the actual physical, like, person that walks around is a mastodon.

So there's a lot of weird layers, guys. Because we found a mastodon on campus. What was his name?

I don't remember. Perry. Perry the Mastodon. Perry the Mastodon.

Guys, it's so funny. That sounded like Charlie the Cardinal at Ball State. But anyway, it's a little more religious.

Definitely at Wheaton. Michael, you've been in the pastorate how many years now? Over a decade. Yeah. And you live in Michigan now. We do. Yeah. Just west of Grand Rapids.

We love it there. Yeah. We got to sort of catch this up to Michigan because yesterday, we can't go through it all.

So if you missed yesterday, go listen to it because it was gripping. Sort of the agony that you guys went through in Texas and the overwhelm and the miscarriages and anger and depression. Losing a job. It was just a fascinating, you know, journey. Yeah. And you're writing a book on peace. And I said it, but you explained it. Peace is a person. It is. Well, how would you explain it to people?

You know, I'll back up a little bit. I think it's important for us to, when we talk about the peace of God, there's actually two types of peace, biblically speaking. There's peace with God, which is this biblical concept that Romans 5, 1 tells us, which is, therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is that type of peace that those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, we don't have to atone for our own sins.

Jesus has paid the price for our sins. And so we have right relationship with God. We have peace with God for all time, for eternity. But what most of us really desire on a day-to-day basis is that peace of God. And that's what Christ talks about in John 14, 27, when He says, Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I don't give as the world gives. Let not your hearts be troubled.

Don't be afraid. And that's because we can rely on Christ as our source of peace. Peace is a person.

It's Jesus. And if we have access to Him, because He never changes, He's the same as Hebrews tells us yesterday, today, forever, we can rely on His peace and we can have access to that peace no matter what's swirling around us in our lives. Well, I love your book, The Path to Peace. It's a devotional and it's filled with scripture. It's filled with stories from scripture. It's filled with your own accounts of battling with trying to find that peace with Christ. And so it's beautiful.

I think our listeners are going to love it. Thank you, Anne. I'm just thinking of the person that right now knows Jesus is their peace and can't access it. Because I've had sleepless nights and I know Jesus is my peace.

And yet there I am, sweating and feeling anxiety. And I know you've experienced that. So, you know, and I have peace with God. You know, I'm justified by faith. I'm no longer an enemy.

I mean, it's like that is crazy good. I'm in the process of being sanctified, set apart. And yet sometimes it's hard to feel, like you wrote in your subtitle, God's comfort. So how would you help somebody understand? How do I access the peace that I know is available to me in Jesus?

Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. It is a process. So when I lost my job in Texas, we didn't experience that peace of God that surpasses understanding, contentment. No, we experienced God have mercy on our souls.

Like we need you right now. And there was a sense of peace of we knew cognitively God's word is true. But it took months to get to a place of a settled rest in God, of continuing to seek Him. There is a sense in which God allows us to struggle into a type of breakthrough.

And I remember specifically, there was a time when people asked us how we were doing, and I remember my answer changed. And my answer went from, you know, we're struggling, we're praying, it still hurts, to it's only a matter of time before God breaks through into the next season. That's a faith-filled answer. Well, God had given that faith through that long process of asking, seeking, knocking, crying out to Him. There was a moment, and I can't remember exactly when it was, but I remember I told Ann first, I said, Ann, it's only a matter of time. And then I was like, God has given me the faith that the next season is going to be good. You know, this isn't going to last forever.

It's just a matter of time. And that was a real turning point in our season after that loss. It was encouraging for me, too, as Michael was wrestling through depression and, you know, we're trying to figure out our lives in this season, to turn to the Psalms and to realize that King David, who knew he was anointed by God long before he became king, knew that there were plans for his life. He still went through crazy seasons of ups and downs, and his longing is so bare. I mean, in the scriptures, we can just see his, yeah, it's so honest, his desire for God's presence and protection and peace and all these things. And so just as an encouragement to anyone who's listening to say, you're not condemned if you don't feel super peaceful today.

God is not condemning you because you experience anxiety or you experience fear. Those are normal human emotions that all of the saints that we read in the Word of God experienced. It's part of what I actually loved getting to study all these men and women that I wrote about in the Path to Peace. They're so human.

Their responses are so honest. When I studied and wrote about Hannah, her response when she's longing for children, she's basically getting goaded by her husband's second wife, which that's a whole nother conversation. But her response is that she's so anxious and overwhelmed, she can't even eat. How many of us know what that feels like? There's no condemnation for her in that, but she makes a choice in the middle of that anxiety to run to the temple and to pray. And so my encouragement to those of us that might be in the middle of that anxiety, fear, overwhelm, is even in those feelings, we still have choices to make. And one of the choices that we can make is to run to the presence of God and to pray. It's to go to Him. And to be honest. Yes, and to pour out our hearts.

Hannah did. She just poured out her heart so honestly to God. And if you're like, I don't even think I have the strength to go to God on my own, get some friends at your local church in your small group who will pray for you. I've had times when I can't even pray. I've needed Michael to pray for me.

I've needed my small group women to pray for me, to read scripture to me when I couldn't even do it myself. There's grace for us in the midst of our anxiety and overwhelm. But we also have this beautiful gift of a choice to say, I am going to choose to turn toward God in the season and to ask Him for that peace. We keep saying that word, season.

And I think when we're in the midst of it, it feels like it's gone on forever and it will never end. And I think the enemy, he starts to whisper lies about our good, faithful, loving God. Like, He doesn't see you.

He doesn't care. Is He really even there? And so, I think it's good to remember it's a season. To be in the Word to remind you of the truth is good. So, let's do go back. You're in Texas.

You're thinking like, okay, now I have some faith that God's going to do something. What happened? Yeah, we had some wonderful friends in Michigan. Of course. They're all in Michigan. The good ones are in Michigan. Who we had actually set up on their first date and they'd ended up getting married.

They moved back to the Grand Rapids area where he was from. And it was a text, I think, and they said, hey, can we send your resume to our pastor at our church? And we said, we're not moving to Michigan. But sure, go ahead if you want to.

That's what we all say. He actually got rebuffed the first time he sent it to our lead pastor. Lead pastor said, no, we're not interested. He came back a second time and said, hey, well, if you ever need somebody with these sorts of experiences and skills, just keep him in mind. And it was at that point that our lead pastor said, actually, maybe for those experiences and skills. And one thing led to the next and within a couple of months, we were being voted in as the discipleship and connections pastor of a church in Grand Rapids area. I will say, too, what was really cool for us in that season was as God, and that process even of interviewing took like three months, you know, it was not fast. But once that congregational vote went through for Michael to get that new job, we put our house on the market in Texas.

We sold that house and bought a new house in Michigan within a week. Like everything fell into place. It was like we had waited and waited and nothing was happening and nothing was changing. And it just felt like the season was going to go on forever until God said, now it's time. And just all is like a, you know, house of cards just falling in the right direction that everything lined up and we were able to move up there very quickly and kind of settle into life.

And it's been such a blessing, not without its ups and downs, but we have felt God's presence with us. Which was very providential because had we not sold the house that quickly, we wouldn't have got in before COVID. I mean, we slid in safe to home base February of 2020. And by March of 2020, the world was upside down. Yeah, and churches were not hiring.

Nobody was doing anything. Yeah, so it was amazing. It was amazing. Yeah, you take 30, 40 days later. Right. Oh, that's a whole different world.

You're not even sitting in the studio right now. Yeah, that's right. That's absolutely right.

I don't know, it might have written like 10 books. Yeah, probably would have. But I mean, you know, when you, Michael, sort of felt like then it's going to turn, the next season is going to be better. Was it immediate after that thought or did you just have to just hang on? It was not immediate. And that's what was so great about it is I experienced this peace before anything tangibly happened. I mean, we were walking in peace, but I was still jobless.

There was still no income coming in. So you look at that, it's such a great testimony looking back to go, God gave me that faith and that peace. The peace that surpasses understanding, I have a testimony of it.

And then a couple of months later, breakthrough happens and we see it actually play out. And I think the encouragement too is that, you know, when you have that sense of like, God is on the move, God is going to do something. Although we can't see anything changing, we have faith that God is moving. Our faith wasn't in a particular job.

Our hope wasn't in a particular change because we didn't even know what we were hoping for. We were just praying and saying, God, we trust you with our lives. We trust your character. We know that you're good. We've seen that you've taken care of us up until now. We trust that you will until we go home to glory. And our hope was in Christ.

It wasn't in the circumstances. And just as an encouragement to anyone listening, because I've done it the wrong way so many times. If we start to put our hope in the new job that's going to finally make things easier or the new relationship, you know, or once my spouse gets that raise, we're finally not going to feel stressed all the time. Those things might help, but those things aren't our ultimate source of peace. And if we keep putting our hope in those things, we're just going to be constantly disappointed. So, if we put our hope and our faith and our peace and our trust in the person of Jesus, no matter what comes, we're going to be satisfied.

We're going to have what we need because we're going to have Him. You guys have always been connected with people and friends that are walking with Jesus. Like, your friend in Michigan that went to that head pastor twice, like, that's gutsy. It is. You know, but I love that you've stayed connected and that fellowship is super important to you.

Do you think that's a part of peace, too, is having people surround you in that? Absolutely. I will just say, Anne's a much better friend than I am. She's a blast to hang out with. She's really fun.

But no, that's not right. And you're not? You're not a blast to hang out with? You're not fun? Anne thinks I'm more fun than I am, I think. Love is blind. No, I mean, in all seriousness, though, developing those relationships in a prior season, seeing the fruit of that pay off in a later season. I mean, of that couple where the guy vouched for me, his wife actually was roommates with Anne in college.

We maintained close relationship with her for many years in the Chicagoland area. Part of what has been spoken for, I just want to say clearly, is if you sow spiritually, you will reap spiritually. If you sow according to the Spirit. And a lot of what paid off for us in the hard season is we had already sowed good seed in the good season. You know, we talked about the loss of a community. It wasn't the whole community. Actually, a couple of staff members who were under me at the church, they went to bat for us. I mean, one of them, you could say just as much as it was our friend in Michigan, it was her letter of recommendation having served with me that turned the tide in the interview process for the elders to really trust.

Here's somebody who's worked with Michael and totally vouched for him. So yeah, I mean, sowing those good seeds, walking by faith in the good season, God used that time and again to bear good fruit in the difficult season. And I can guess that there are some people listening who are like, that's great for you that you have community, that you have Christian community, like how nice for you.

And I get it. I mean, we had a season where we literally moved four times in four and a half years. So like, I know what it's like to uproot, feel like I know no one. To feel alone.

Yes. And to really have to start over again and again. And it's exhausting. Or maybe you've lived in the same town your whole life, but you still don't feel connected to anyone at your church. My first encouragement is if you're not in a local church, get in a healthy local church. And then if you're not in a small group or you're not in a Bible study or someplace where you can get deeper relationships, you're probably going to have to make the first step.

That is so true. Most of us really want to be reached out to, but very few people actually do the reaching. If you will reach out and take the risk to ask a couple of women, hey, do you want to start a Bible study? Do you want to grab some coffee? I know this great devotional we can talk about.

Yeah. Tap to peace. Tap to peace. It's a great one.

Or men like, hey, let's go golfing or something. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's peace. The Lord's peace. Not.

Not. We often, if we want that Christian community, are going to have to be the instigators of it. But the long-term fruit of having people who are for you, who know about the goods and the bads in your life, who are praying for you, who are studying the word with you, those kind of relationships really can uphold you and sustain you when you're in a season of deep darkness. And that's what the body of Christ is for. You can't be a nose or an eye or a pinky out on your own and surviving. We only survive when we are connected to the head, which is Christ, and then when we are all connected to each other.

And so community is integral to faith and to having a robust faith life that can put up with the ups and downs of life. And as you studied all these characters in the Bible who experienced peace through God, but in really hard circumstances, which were your favorites? I'm sure you've read this too. Oh, he was my theological editor.

He better have read it. He was my editor, yeah. Are there any that you related to? I take all accountability for any theological mistakes.

Any that you just like, oh, this was my favorite? Man, I will say, I think Sarah, the wife of Abraham, Sarah, as we first come to know her, and she's the first section, maybe I have some affinity towards her. But one of the things I love about her story is that she basically gets tossed into a circumstance that she had no control over. Abram comes down from this experience with a new god. You remember, they lived in a pagan land with lots of gods. Abraham comes down from this experience and says, I've talked to Yahweh, and we're up and moving and leaving everything. And Abram was a rich man.

I mean, they had a settled good life. So can you just imagine poor Sarah? And we have to remember, Old Testament women in the ancient world, they had no legal rights. Like, she has no say in what's going to happen to her. But she, again, has a choice.

How is she going to respond emotionally? Now, the Scriptures don't give us all the nitty-gritty of that, but she didn't try to stay behind. She didn't, you know, plant her own little tent and say, see you later, Abram. She went with him. And in doing so, through her very intense, amazing story, she experienced the blessings of God.

I felt like that when we moved to Detroit. Yeah. But she did, you're right, out of her love and trust for Abram at the time. And what has been so encouraging to me about her story is she had no say in how her life was changing, and yet God still protected her and provided for her. And so for those of us when we feel like my life is out of control, people have made choices that have hurt me or have changed the direction of my life in a way that I didn't want or have impacted me negatively. God can still work through those things. God still sees you.

God still is with you, and He will guard you. It might not look anything like what you expected. Sarah certainly did not expect, you know, in her 60s to up and move across the known world.

And to have a baby when she's 90. Exactly. But God had a plan. And so we can take heart and we can have peace knowing that the God who sees us, knows us, and loves us, that's the same God who cared for Sarah in the middle of her life upheaval. You know, in some ways, as I hear you guys talk, it feels like, tell me if I'm right, the peace of God is something you got to go after. I think we often think I just sit and wait on it. And again, that can happen. God does that sometimes. But it feels like it's a process where I sort of got to wrestle for it.

I got to chase it down. I mean, it's there. It's in us. The Holy Spirit is the peace of God.

He lives in us as His temple. But yet I still have to fight for it. Am I right?

It's sort of been your experience as well? I think so. We forget that life is more than a war, but it's not less than. We're always fighting. And you use the verb wrestle, and that's right. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood. We wrestle against these principalities. We wrestle against these forces of darkness coming at us, and we wrestle against our own flesh. So we have an enemy within, we have an enemy without, and that is a fight. And if you're not fighting, you're being impacted by it.

You might want to go to sleep to it, but you can't. It's impacting your life all the time. And so, yeah, you got to go after it, and you got to fight for it.

Yeah. I will say too, we have to remember that we live in a world that is constantly pulling us away from God. And the world lies to us and says, you can find your peace in all sorts of things. If you will just go on a really nice vacation and put your feet up on that white sandy beach.

That does sound good. But the inherent promise is that's where you're going to find peace. Just escape from your current life.

Whether you escape through vacation or escape through video games or escape through scrolling social media or escape through alcohol. If you can just escape from your life, then you'll feel peaceful. The good news of the gospel is you can have peace in the middle of your actual life, in the middle of the hard and the good. Christ is present there.

You don't have to eject from your life. You get to stay present and grow in godliness and experience His peace. So it's a battle in some ways just because the world that we live in, Satan wants us to think that peace is found outside of our lives and outside of Christ.

So we have to constantly work to go to Jesus and find our peace in Him. I'm thinking too, as we're talking about this, the importance of teaching our kids where true peace comes from. We're living in such a culture and time of anxiety and depression. There's so much upheaval in the world and our kids feel it. They experience it, and they're watching us as parents. Where are they finding their peace?

Where are they finding their contentment? Because I think about that, for me, even with grandkids, as I'm watching them grow up in a culture that just feels crazy at times, and I'm seeing so much anxiety with young, young kids, that can keep me up at night worrying about our kids or our grandkids. And I think then, as a woman, I can go on to, like, if they're anxious, the opposite of peace could be anxiety, but then it can also lead to this hopelessness. And I think in our culture, that's our fear is like, is there any hope? Will I ever get out of this stage?

Will I ever get out of this season? And as parents, we get a chance to show them where our true peace comes from. The Prince of Peace.

Yes. If I can use a real world example, it might be a little shocking to think about it, but if God really is who He says He is, and Jesus really is our peace, then He's peace no matter where you're at in the world right now. And that means He's peace for you.

You talked about going after it. Some of the fight is just this perspective change. And it's not a perspective that says, if we just think good thoughts, good things will happen. It's the real deal. God really is sovereign.

He really is good. You really are His child. And that means that you're going to make it. He's going to give you everything you need, regardless of what culture does, regardless of what your job does, regardless of what your kids are doing or your spouse is doing. If God is who He says He is, then you can have peace right now, wherever you are. And that's so encouraging, but we forget that.

Yeah, and I think we're talking about seasons, we're talking about all this fear and worry. The best promise that we have to really let our hearts settle into peace is, there is a day coming when we are no longer going to face the trials and tribulations of this life. So even if your season of struggle on this earth literally lasts your entire life, you will get to lay that burden down. When you meet Christ face to face, it is going to be nothing but peace and bliss and beauty and love and life and laughter. And so we can take heart because the saints of old remind us that they weren't, especially Old Testament, they didn't even know when Christ was coming.

We live on the other side of the cross. We have this promise of salvation, abundant life in Jesus, and ultimately of the hope of heaven. And so maybe you live in a body that is broken and is going to be broken until you meet Jesus.

There's still coming a day when you're not going to feel broken anymore. And there's coming a day where you're going to be renewed, and that peace that you long for will finally be yours because you will be with Christ. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Anne and Michael Swindell on Family Life Today. Anne Swindell has written a book called The Path to Peace, and we've been talking about that today. And if you want to go deeper into the topic of peace and experience more peace, we'd love to send you a copy of Anne's book as our thanks when you partner financially this week at familylifetoday.com. You could go online and give your donation or you could give us a call at 800-358-6329.

And that could be a one-time gift or a recurring monthly gift. Again, the number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Are you co-parenting right now?

So how do you keep your kids on track spiritually when you have dual influences? Tomorrow, Dave and Anne talk with licensed marriage and family therapist Ron Deal, where he gives some insight into the best way to navigate in a blended family environment. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.