Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Biblical Anxiety Relief: Finding Perfect Peace in God | Isaiah 26:3-4

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Over 1.6 billion Google results for "how to find peace" – yet anxiety continues to plague our generation. In this episode, we explore Isaiah 26:3-4 and discover why true peace isn't found through self-help books or better circumstances, but through a steadfast mind fixed on God.This episode is brought to you by our ministry partner Accountable2You. To join thousands living in Freedom with nothing to hide visit https://accountable2you.com/dialin. **Use our unique code: DIALIN to get 25% off your first year of an Accountable2You Personal or Family Plan**KEY TOPICS COVERED: The difference between happiness and biblical peaceWhy God's peace is "shalom shalom" (perfect peace)How meditation on God's character transforms anxietyThe battle for the mind in the Christian lifePractical steps to experience lasting peaceMAIN SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 26:3-4 "You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal."Whether you're facing trials, anxiety, loss, or uncertainty, this conversation reveals how peace isn't something we pursue – it's something we receive when we fix our eyes on God's unchanging character.To read more on anxiety and what the bible says, read Jonny Ardavanis’ book, Consider the Lilies: Finding Perfect Peace in the Character of God” - https://a.co/d/hYKfnw6

If you type in How Can I Find Peace, it's 1.6 billion results, all with differentiating answers. Self-help books are the number one selling category of books almost every single year. Because people are chasing peace. It kind of draws our attention to a reality that people are starving for. They're hungry for peace, and they live in this anxious, fearful, and despairing world. You know, David Saxon says in his book, The Battle for the Mind, that our spiritual life is more akin to wolfing down a burger on a highway than enjoying a gourmet meal. and oftentimes people give God their mental leftovers, so to speak,

and then they wonder why they're anxious. They maybe kind of throw up this prayer in the morning. God help me not to be anxious, but God doesn't just want to remove our anxiety. He wants to replace our anxiety with an active trust in who he is, which is the product of dwelling deeply upon his character. Hank, welcome back. It's good to be here, Johnny.

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. One thing that people listening or watching may not realize is even though it's 40 degrees outside in Franklin, Tennessee, it is raging hot in here because we have to turn the air off in order to do this podcast. To save money, we actually just made the studio a sauna. So by the end, we'll have a nice glisten going. So you guys can be praying for us. Well, hey, well, this year, we're not necessarily quite sure what you bring in to the year.

But, you know, one of the things that we were talking about beforehand, Hank, is that our lives are often filled with difficulty, temptations, trials, sometimes, you know, whatever that may be, people may be walking through seasons of sorrow, a miscarriage, infertility, a lost job, a lost loved one. You know, Jerry Bridges draws our attention to the reality in his book, Trusting God, that sometimes the pain in our life is like a flash flood that just kind of eviscerates everything all at once. And then at other times, the pain or the trouble and the tears in our life are just kind of these compounding leaks that compound and exacerbate over time.

It just feels like little thing here, little thing here. and then it just kind of coming down on us and it makes us anxious. You know, I was looking up on Google and I mentioned these things and consider the lilies, but when you Google, you know, how can I have peace or the cure for anxiety, when you type that into the Google search bar, 527 million results pop up within a half a second. If you type in, how can I find peace, it's 1.6 billion results, all with differentiating answers, but it kind of draws our attention to a reality that people are starving for.

They're hungry for peace and they live in this anxious, fearful, and despairing world. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I was just thinking as you turn the calendar to a new year, it's so often easy to have, you know, new resolutions, new goals. And oftentimes we're trying to kind of

change our emotional state, but really the problem is we can't escape from ourselves. And regardless of, you know, hours go by, days go by, weeks go by, we're left with kind of the same person in the mirror. And so many of these things are hitting home in a new way. And the same things that we may be facing. Just at the end of the year

doesn't necessarily negate or dismiss kind of those realities in our life that may make us anxious. And far from what some of the heretical prosperity preachers, you know, might say today, the Christian life is not immune from suffering. In fact, often, as we see in scripture, it's more frequent, more unexplainable, and more severe. And so the question has to be asked as we look to God's word, what is the initial basis of the Christian's hope and strength? And what can buoy our souls amidst this the turbulent seas of life. And I want to look to Isaiah 26

verses 3 and 4. Just two verses really, but that pack a lot of truth. And Isaiah 263, it says, The steadfast of mine, you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever.

For in God the Lord, we have an everlasting rock. I think it needs to be understood fundamentally that before we can talk about the peace of God, that is that inner tranquility, that serenity, we have to be at peace with God. God through the finished work of Jesus Christ.

No one can possess the peace that Paul says surpasses all understanding, where regardless of the circumstances and situations of their world, they have that inner peace if they are not reconciled to God. So I think we have to present that as a prerequisite initially. But this piece that the scripture is speaking of when it says, the steadfast of mind you will keep in perfect peace, that is an inner harmony. I want you to jump in in a moment.

But I've told you before about when I was growing up, we used to go houseboating every summer at Lake Powell, best week of the year, best memories of my life. There was about 30 of us on a houseboat. We would sleep shoulder to shoulder. But in the morning, early morning, the older kids, that's what we call them. You know, you have younger cousins and the older cousins. I was one of the younger cousins.

The big kids, you know, at 17, 18, we were still calling herself. Hey, the big kids are going to go, and we would go on an early morning wakeboard run. Later on in the afternoon, it would get choppy and ways from the tubers, you know, the tubers. but in the morning we would come back and my grandma would ask us how was the water? And we would say like glass. Like glass. It was as if a blue sheet had been

spread over the surface of Lake Powell and that stillness, that serenity is what describes the Christian, the believer's heart who trusts in God and we're going to kind of look fundamentally at these two verses but this is so important because I can ask someone

I may not know the individual but I can just go up and ask them, what are you anxious about? You know, what's robbing you of peace? And very rarely would they respond and say nothing. And I think we glazed over it quickly and we have a tendency to move through these topics kind of in a quick fashion in these podcasts by design. But I would just to maybe reemphasize,

we alluded to it earlier. But it feels like in modern day, oftentimes like our contemporary culture is chasing emotional states. And you're bringing out this really important point of that if you don't have a state, change before the Lord in justification. That state change, kind of putting your soul on the concrete of God's spoken word and his love for you and what he did for you as opposed to what you did to earn it, that state change must be there first for us to experience any of the peace, any of the

tranquility we're going to talk about for the rest of these verses. Is that right? Yeah, even when you say justification, it's an important word. It just means that we've been declared righteous by God through faith and what Jesus has done, not in light of what we've done, but in spite of what we've done and the finished work of Jesus Christ. So you're absolutely correct. I mean, self-help books are the number one selling category of books almost every single year because people are chasing peace and yet peace can only be found initially through placing our faith in Christ and being reconciled to God.

That's why Paul says routinely, he himself is our peace because we are naturally speaking enemies of God and we're alienated from God. So that is definitely where peace begins. And that should be said clearly at the outset for those who haven't placed their faith in Jesus. They need to know that on the front end. And then secondly, for those who have placed their faith in Jesus, us Christians are not necessarily immune to, we need to be reminded of that reality and kind of continue to teach that to ourselves so that we're not chasing these emotional state changes from time to time. Yeah, and that's why, and we'll get to this, but we have to

preach the gospel to ourselves. But four questions as we look to these two verses, the what, the who, the how, and the why of the peace that God promises. I want to look at what first. What is the quality the peace that the Bible and God promises. Well, Isaiah says, you will keep him in perfect peace. The peace that God gives is not partial. It's not imperfect. It's perfect. And it says here perfect peace, but in the Hebrew, it's just one word repeated twice.

You may be familiar with the word. It's shalom, that peace of God. And it says here, you will keep him in shalom, shalom, to double and intensify the peace that God offers. It is referring here to a completeness of peace, a soundness, a wholeness. We live in a world crippled by anxiety and paralyzed by fear and despair. But the Bible, God promises here, and Grants and gives a shalom, shalom. It's a perfect peace.

This is not something where you want your money back. Now I want to look just secondly, that was the what is the piece, it's perfect, but who? Who provides this piece? And I think it's just there at the beginning. It says the steadfast of mine, and I've circled in my own understanding the word you, you you will keep in perfect peace. I think the question has to be asked, are you going through something right now?

Is there something robbing you of joy, depriving you of peace? Well, the scripture says that only God himself can give you peace. Happiness comes from things that happen, happenstance. Peace comes from the God of peace. Hey, folks, I want to take a moment and tell you about one of our ministry partners accountable to you. Accountable to you is an accountability software

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and, you know, you've seen it maybe on movies. It's just, it's been there for hundreds of years. And as you're going through the bazaar, you have people going, my friend, my friend, and they'll try to sell you something. And there's one guy that kind of, he waves you over. And you know you're getting scams, but you still want to know. Oh, 100%. Yeah, like, what is this guy going to offer me?

And he says, he pulls out a Ziploc bag, which should have been a tell-all, you know. That's an indicative sign. And he says, I got a bag of real gold here, you know, typically hundreds of dollars, but for you, my friend, $5. You know, five dollars. You have a lady in your life? Yeah, do you have a lady in your life? And I was like, you know, okay, I don't know. Did you have a lady in your life?

I can't remember. But, uh, it's actually the bracelet you're wearing right now. No, this is from Katie's grandparents. But I was like, no, I'm good. No, you know, but we got back to our hostel later on that evening. and there's this guy from Germany, and he's like, hey, listen, you guys won't believe it. There's a guy in the bazaar, and he's selling gold for money and he's like, I spent all my money, and he pulls out of this Ziplog bag.

He had $5. Yeah, yeah. We understand that there is something called Fool's Gold, right? And there's also something, you know, that we can talk about called Fool's Peace. It's fraudulent. It's not authentic. It doesn't last. It's based on the situations and circumstances of our world.

We feel good for a day. and then our life changes, and so we're, there's a volatility because our life oscillates, like the fan in our room that we, you know, we turn on before we record, so we're not so hot, just kind of like it oscillates back and forth. But the piece that the Bible gives and that God gives here is not a fool's peace. It's durable, it's authentic, it's genuine, it's real, and furthermore, God's peace is not God's gift to us and then our responsibility to maintain. It says here that you will keep, that's speaking of God, you will keep, you will keep in

perfect peace, meaning that God is both the giver and the keeper of peace. Well, and the two other points, just sticking with the gold analogy then, is it's not only that it looks the same from the outside, but to your point, the fact that God is the one keeping it makes it durable, long-lasting, infinite by nature, it's unchanging. Yeah, it's unchanging. And in order that we would understand this, in the following verse here, there are three names for God that are given to solidify the immensity, the fullness, and soundness of the peace that God offers. It says, first of all, that we are to trust in Yahweh forever. That's the first

name of God here. That's God's covenant name used 6,800 times in the Old Testament. God's name Yahweh. That's the one he gives to Moses at the burning bush when the bush was burning, but not consumed. That is referring to the reality. Again, that God's name is not God. That's his title. God's name is Yahweh. And Yahweh refers to the reality that God is self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. All of our needs in life are met by a God who has no needs within himself. God is not scrambling to meet his needs as he meets ours. No, he has no needs because he's self-existent and self-sufficient. Secondly, it says, for in God the Lord in 26-4, that is one of the times in Scripture where that compounded name of God is used, and it is used to magnify the

authority of the one that makes this promise. And then it says, for in God the Lord, We have an everlasting rock. You know, that is David's special name for God throughout the Psalms. David writes the majority of the Psalms, and that is his nickname for God. Because in life, we find ourselves kind of tossed to and fro amidst this chaotic sea of sorrow and struggle. And God is the rock to whom we cling. And he's not the rock simply of back then. He's not the rock of just today.

We sing it that he is the rock of what? He's the rock of ages. And so these names are given to help us understand who offers this piece. Maybe just one quick add to, my dad, and we'll keep rocking here. But everything you've pulled out so far is just in these two verses and directly in front of us. And so as we continue the conversation, we'll see that this truth is paralleled throughout the broader story of scripture. But it's also just worthwhile that these questions that are at the forefront of so many of our minds can be answered and can be answered fully in great detail, in great depth, in such comparison. Hacked verses, and it's, it behooves us to then study it regularly and slowly.

Yeah, and you would hope just as we're walking through scripture, that we're just modeling what Bible study looks like. And I say this often when I'm preaching, the goal when I preach would be that people would be able to walk away and say, oh, man, not that, that guy's a genius at all. It was all right there. It's all right there in the text. And when I'm asking these questions of what, who, how, why, that's just the way that I'm studying personally, right?

Like, you're just asking questions of the text at the Bible answers. Those should be familiar questions. Familiar questions, for sure. So third question here is, how can I have this peace? What can actually bring the experience of God's peace into my life, knowing that there are so many things that stress me out, sap me of joy, try to strip me of kind of this inner harmony? Well, the scripture tells us how we can have this peace in our life.

It says, the steadfast in mind, you will keep in perfect peace. Well, I like what the ESV translation says here. It says, you will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you. That's a big idea here. Isaiah speaks here to a steadfastness of mind. Now, we go back to our roots often. But growing up, my dad and I and my brother,

he would take us to Edison Middle School in Wheaton, Illinois. You know it? Absolutely. There's that tennis court in the back in Wheaton, and that wall would function as our home run derby wall. Oh, yeah. The green monster. The green monster.

When I was growing up, it was Sammy Sosa, you know, Mark McGuire, the big battle, and you know, when anybody's teaching, you don't have to know anything about baseball, I think, to understand that when you're teaching your son to hit the ball, you do not tell him to keep his eyes on the bat. You tell him to keep his eye on the what? On the ball. On the ball. Why? Because you're focusing there, and when you focus on the ball, you make contact with the bat. And in similar fashion, the Christian does not receive peace by focusing and pursuing peace. they receive peace when they keep their eye

and steady their gaze on God and when they steady their eye and their gaze on God then they receive peace so to be clear peace is not something we pursue peace is something that we receive when we stay our minds on the character of God I think even going to just take a little field trip regarding the mind for a moment

and we've talked about this in greater detail before the Christian life is a battle for the mind If you want to grow in any area of your life, your trust in God, your purity before God, your love for the people of God, it's all going to be a derivative of where you focus your thinking. You cannot grow as a Christian without engaging your mind. Now, even going back to what you said at the beginning,

and then hop in here. Positionally, when God changes us, he changes our heart. That's a once in a moment, you know, once and for all, moment in time, he transforms our heart from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That's a positional reality. And yet there is this progress. aggressive reality where every single day, if you're a Christian, your mind is being transformed

and your mind is transformed as you stay it, fix it, you know, solidify your gaze on God. Yeah, no, that was going to be the question I was going to jump in and ask. For clarification, this is not legalism. The point here is you are saved one time. You are justified. You're given the heart of stone. That's Ezekiel. No, you're given a heart of flesh.

So taking the heart of stone. Heretic. To a heart of flesh. Get them out. Get them out. 33, 36. 36? Bang. Close enough. But again, then Jesus actually keeps us that does not remove the need for obedience or to engage actively the mind in our sanctification journey. No, that's the will of God for our life. That's Ephesians 423. We are to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Romans 12, 2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Jesus says we are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. 1. Peter 1113 says, to prepare your.

your minds for action. Proverbs 237 says, as a man thinks within himself, so he is. Just meaning if you wanna understand how to live the Christian life at the most basic ground level, it is you are the sum and substance of your thought life. And so if you have things that are robbing you of peace,

the scripture says here, you are to stay your mind, to fix your minds on God. Now, how is my mind actually transformed? That's the big question. And the answer is more basic than you may think. You know, there's not necessarily 10 steps written for us in the scripture, but there is a big idea, and obviously we could kind of break that down.

Our minds are transformed by faith, and going back to what you said, so often when we talk about faith, we think about faith as something we placed in Jesus once upon a time. A one-time thing. Yeah, but the scripture is very clear that we walk by faith. We live by faith. Faith is not a thing. Faith is a constant exercise. It is living in light of who God is.

That's why we walk by faith. We set our eyes on Jesus Christ. And so just practically speaking then, to have our mind transformed, we have to think about the truth of God, which means we're intaking the truth of God and digesting it. We're meditating. This idea of meditation, you know, is a term that has been hijacked by Eastern religion. I'm picturing. I'm sitting on the...

ground saying om inner peace emptying my mind yeah inner peace master ugui um kynfu panda get with it um we're gonna do a separate episode on kai fu but it's not an emptying of our mind biblically speaking meditation is a filling up of our mind with scripture with the truth of god it means that we're focusing on god's word that we're meditating on it god's love his character that he's holy he's sovereign that he holds our life together by you know he holds all things together by the word of his power and that he cares about us. He knows us, his omniscience, his power, his authority means that we meditate on God's son, that what he's done for us, going back to the gospel. You know, David Saxon says in his book, The Battle for the Mind,

that our spiritual life is more akin to wolfing down a burger on a highway than enjoying the gourmet meal. And oftentimes, people give God their mental leftovers, so to speak, and then they wonder why they're anxious. They maybe kind of throw up this prayer in the morning. and God helped me not to be anxious, but God doesn't just want to remove our anxiety. He wants to replace our anxiety with an act of trust in who he is, which is the product of dwelling deeply upon his character. You know, even I mentioned this maybe a couple months ago in an episode, when Moses shows up to Joshua and the people are anxious and he's going to pass the baton,

they don't discuss military strategies even though Israel is hated by every neighboring nation. He just says, Joshua, Nate, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, and you shall meditate on it day and night. That's the key to growth. That's the key to our peace here is that our minds are stayed on God. I don't honestly have anything to add. I feel like that's going back real quickly,

just to your metaphor, I feel like we blew by it. We often treat the spiritual intake of our lives as a fast food burger as opposed to sitting down and enjoying the nourishment of God's word and almost the difference between fast dining and feasting. to the degree that it transforms our thinking just this final question and then we'll be done how like how does this work we looked at what what kind of piece it's a perfect peace who provides

it well it's god that provides this peace um how or we already looked at that is through the mind transformed and then why why do we have this piece why well i think it's just in um verse three it says the steadfast of mind you will keep in perfect peace and then here's the answer why does someone one have peace. It says because he trusts in you. As long as Peter stayed his mind on Jesus when he was walking on the sea, he had confidence. He had stability. But as soon as he took his eyes off Christ, he began to sink. And the point of the scripture here is that when your mind is stayed upon Jehovah, you will be able to walk above the storms that wage against you. Jeremiah 177 says, Blessed is the one whose trust is in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. I would just want to

encourage you if you're listening or watching the burdens in your life may feel heavy, the valley may be dark, the future may be unknown, the anxieties may be real, but scripture says here to trust in the Lord with all of your heart and trust is mutually exclusive with self-reliance. You cannot cast your burdens on the Lord in 1st Peter 5-7 and bear them on your back simultaneously. You cannot cast your sorrows on the Lord and then also dwell on them. The heart either relies on God or it'll rely on self, and we're called the trust. And then verse four kind of tells us the longevity of that trust. It doesn't say for a moment, for a day, it says in verse four, trust in the Lord forever. And I would hope a central theme is emerging from the

broader part of this conversation. But that is, God does not save us and remove us from our lived experience from our anxieties. You opened with saying, far from it. Yeah, Christians are often plagued by ongoing tribulation and suffering. And I was thinking about, as you were talking, John 1633, Jesus says, these things I've spoken to you so that in me, you may have peace. In the world, you have tribulation, but take courage, I've overcome the world. This is a central theme in Psalms and John in 1st Peter over and over again. We are not being removed. God is giving us by fixing our eyes on him the compass to navigate through the world. And so back into your point, as we think about, well, how often do we need to do that? We need to be doing that

constantly because we're living in Christ every day step by step. Yeah. And I think even what you're mentioning in John 16, you know, Jesus begins that passage by talking about the trouble of this world. Do not let your hearts be troubled because they're troubled. And he draws their attention to the hope of heaven, right? That's something that grounds you with peace. Jesus says, I give you peace not as the world gifts at the end of John 14. And so all of these things are so important that you are what you feed your mind. And man, you are not who I think you to be on the outside. You are what you think about.

And what you think about is what you feed it. And so it's so important. Just again, I'll read the verse. It says, the steadfast of mind you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in you. I love the lyrics of this hymn, peace like a river glorious. It says, is God's perfect peace? overall victorious in its bright increase. Perfect yet still flowing fuller every day.

That meaning God's peace is already perfect, yet it flows fuller every day. It becomes more and more real to us. I love that. Perfect yet still growing deeper all the way. State upon Jehovah hearts are fully blessed, finding as he promised, perfect peace and rest. Hidden in the hollow of his mighty hand,

where no harm can follow, in his strength we stand. We may trust him fully all for, for us to do, those who trust him wholly, find him wholly true. So thankful for the perfect peace we have in our father. Absolutely. Well, thanks for the conversation, Johnny. Yeah, thanks, Hank.