“You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.”
Question: What does it mean to have our mind stayed on God?

He trusts in You

Isaiah speaks of the person who trusts in the Lord, who lives by unshakeable faith.
It’s not about theological knowledge of who God is, or understanding of the bible, although these may be helpful. It’s about a lived experience of relationship with God, of completely relying on Him for everything each day.

This contrasts to the previous chapter 25, where verse 7, talks of “the surface of the covering cast over all people” and “the veil that is spread over all nations”, which leads in verse 8 to the presence of death and suffering due to sin. This veil or covering is a blindness to God due to mankind’s choice of sin, initially in the Garden of Eden, and then growing worse with each successive generation’s choice to turn away from God. It’s a blindness we see today, that makes people believe good and evil are subjective products of our imagination, that our world and all life is purely a random accident without any meaning, and believe that we can dream up our own gods and our own realities.

In contrast, we have every reason to trust in God and remove that veil of unbelief, such as:

• The goodness and beauty of Creation;
• The history of God speaking to his people and guiding them through the leaders and prophets of Israel. And our own history of God guiding us;
• God speaking to us through his word in the bible;
• The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who freed us from bondage to sin and death;
• The Holy Spirit who brings God’s presence and guidance into our lives.

Whose mind is stayed on You

This phrase has faith as its cause, but it has an additional element.

For when we are open to receiving God’s revelation of himself, we come to know Him as our almighty creator — infinite in power and wisdom, beyond space and time, and beyond our limited human understanding. And that awareness moves our focus away from ourselves and our needs. Instead, we focus on his wonderful nature, and his transforming presence in this world and in our lives, and our mind is preoccupied with Him.

That changes who we are and our wants; we no longer focus on just our physical needs, we find we need to enjoy an awareness of His presence, to know the joy of praising Him, to spend time in his word and in prayer, to know His guidance and purpose for our lives each day, and to feel Him lift us when we fall.

As Jesus said in Luke 4:4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”

Perfect Peace

This does not refer to our external circumstances, such as the absence of military hostility and social unrest, or personal circumstances concerning wealth and good health. This refers to the deep calm which God gives to carry us through all of life’s difficult circumstances.

Even while believers may suffer with a decaying body in the end times of this earthly life, their inner calm can be one of life’s great testimonies to God’s presence. As a well-meaning visitor, I have experienced the blessing of this calm in elderly believers whose faith was unshakeable. And sadly, I have also seen the turmoil and distress of non-believers who have been devastated by life’s challenges.

May we all be blessed by God’s perfect peace.