And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. — Ephesians 6:15
There are seasons in life that shake the ground beneath you in ways that nothing could have prepared you for.
My wife and I walked through one of those seasons as we tried to build a family. On several occasions, just when things would begin to move in a hopeful direction, we would lose that child. Each time, the grief was real and the ground felt unsteady. Everything God had placed in our hearts seemed to be standing on shaky ground. The promise felt distant. The path forward felt unclear. And the peace that we knew should be ours felt harder to hold onto than we expected.
But each time I went back to the Word of God. Not because the pain disappeared when I opened it. But because it was the only ground that did not move.
Paul instructs believers to have their feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. The image is drawn from the Roman soldier’s sandals, thick-soled, studded, designed not for comfort but for grip. A Roman soldier needed sure footing on any terrain. Slippery ground, uneven surfaces, the chaos of an active battlefield — the right footwear kept him planted and able to move. A soldier who lost his footing in the middle of a fight was a soldier in serious danger.
Peace is what keeps the believer’s feet from slipping. But the peace Paul describes here is not the feeling of calm that comes when circumstances are favorable. It is the gospel of peace, the settled, unshakeable reality that through Christ we are at peace with God. Romans 5:1 says it plainly. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That peace was secured at the cross. It does not fluctuate with our emotions. It does not erode when the situation becomes difficult. It is solid ground that exists completely independent of what is happening around us.
That distinction matters enormously in the hard seasons.
When my wife and I were walking through loss, the circumstances gave us every reason to feel that the ground had given way entirely. And in many moments, it felt exactly like that. But the gospel of peace was not dependent on our circumstances cooperating. It was not waiting for the pain to resolve before it became available. It was there, in the Word, in the character of a God who had not moved, every time we returned to it.
The enemy works relentlessly to disturb the peace of the believer. Anxiety. Fear. The persistent feeling that something is about to go wrong or that what God promised will never actually come to pass. These are not random disturbances. They are calculated attempts to knock us off our footing. Because a believer who has lost their peace has lost their stability. And without stability, standing firm in the battle becomes nearly impossible.
The shoes of peace do not promise that the terrain will always be smooth. They promise that your footing will hold regardless of the terrain. The ground around you may shake. The path may look nothing like what you expected. The losses may be real, and the grief may be deep.
But the gospel of peace is ground that does not give way. Go back to the Word. Return to what God has said. Let the truth of who He is and what He has secured through Christ be the surface your feet are standing on.
The ground the enemy is shaking is not the ground you are standing on. Put on the shoes. Your footing is more secure than the battle would have you believe. Peace is not the absence of shaking. It is the solid ground beneath your feet while everything around you moves.
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