Rest in Peace: Don't Wait for Death to Find Peace

Introduction

The day before this message, Samuel Mabboux, pastor of the Assemblée de Dieu de Nice Ariane, went to a burial. One phrase kept coming back, often almost automatically: "rest in peace." He decided to address it to his congregation, not because they were dead, but because he finds it "sad to wait for death to find peace." Rest and peace are in Jesus Christ, and it is now, while we are alive, that we are meant to find them. When the announcement of the message appeared on social media with his first name underneath, a friend even wrote to him: "Samuel, I was scared for 30 seconds."

The pastor also points out a reality we tend to forget: for those who are not in Jesus Christ, rest does not come after death. Saying of the deceased that "at least, wherever he is, he won't suffer anymore" is true only for someone who is in Christ. Hence the urgency: "eternal peace, eternal life is secured starting today."

To back up his point, he shows a recent survey on the words that come up most among the French: exasperation and anger (38%), weariness (29%), fear (a quarter), sadness (21%), fatigue (one person in five). Hope comes in only ninth out of fifteen, at around 10 to 11%. And 63% of the French, almost two thirds, say they are worried and think the best is behind us. "That is not the message the Bible gives us." The message unfolds in three movements, based on Philippians 4, John 14 and Romans 5.

Outline of the Message

1. Do Not Be Anxious About Anything (Philippians 4:6-9)

• Paul writes: "In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." The pastor's first question: "Is the God of peace with you?"
• You can be physically tired and yet in a deep spiritual rest. Samuel Mabboux says that some mornings he gets up wondering whether he really slept, while being "in the Lord's rest."
• "Do not be anxious about anything" is not a utopia or positive thinking. It is not a placebo effect, nor burying your head in the sand. Worries are real. But when the Lord says this, "it is because he has the solution," and even that he is the solution: many solutions are more or less effective, but he alone is "the one true solution to your worries."
• The pastor honestly admits: "It is so hard not to worry." He himself often worries. But God is not disconnected from reality: he knows we have challenges, and he says "make them known to me."
• Praying and making petitions is like coming with a big, overloaded backpack and setting it down at the foot of the cross. Every morning and every evening, you unload your bag and put it back in the Lord's hands. He has the strength needed to carry it, and you do not: "We are not strong by nature."
• Without the Lord, you are right to worry: just turn on the TV for five minutes or look at the faces of the people around you. But if you have the Lord, or if you come to him tonight, "you no longer have any reason to worry because he is your solution."

2. A Peace That Surpasses All Understanding

• This peace is humanly illogical, "with our little brains." You are in the storm, like a boat in the middle of the waves, you feel you could die within the next minute, and yet you have a deep peace inside. "Nobody is at peace in a crisis. But the Lord wants to give you his peace even in crises."
• The pastor has seen people at death's door, in a situation where "it can't get worse," and yet smiling and calm while everything blows up around them. In the explosion of your home, your job, your bank account or your body, God's peace can come at that very moment. God has "a particular peace for us in France in 2026, in this city of Nice."
• Your heart and your thoughts are not guarded by human things, by colleagues or even family: they are guarded in Jesus Christ. In pastoral counseling, Samuel Mabboux describes himself as "the Lord's parrot": he repeats what the Bible says, more or less the same thing every time. "The solution is not a man, not a woman, not a method, it is Jesus Christ."
• The verse names two areas: the heart and the thoughts. The pastor offers this reading: the heart is often the wounds of the past (grief, abandonment, betrayal, wounds going back to childhood); the thoughts are what lies ahead and the sin that is born there. God wants to guard both, including our traumas. "If we could see other people's thoughts, it would be frightening." So he prays: "Lord, come and reign in my thoughts. Come and reign in my heart." Everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and it is opened to the one who knocks.
• We must also watch what our thoughts dwell on: "What are you feeding your thoughts with?" Everything that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, virtuous and worthy of praise, or impure, dirty, violent and dark things? To the person who has nightmares after horror movies, the pastor answers: do not be surprised to be in darkness if your thoughts are fed on bad things. Paul asks that every thought be taken captive to the obedience of Christ.
• Finally, "practice it." The Bible is not a dead book but a living book that is lived out through actions. What we hear at church and what we read morning and evening, we highlight, we mark, and we pray that the Lord will help us put it into practice.

3. Not as the World Gives (John 14:27)

• "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you. Don't let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful." The pastor insists: "Don't wait for death to rest in peace. Starting tonight, rest in peace in the Lord Jesus Christ."
• With a comparison he apologizes for in advance: God's peace is "above any drug" and any pleasure of the flesh. It is like a constant altered state in which you stay lucid. He remembers laughing gas given by a nurse for a stitch: five minutes later, the effects were gone. "But God's peace stays."
• It does not depend on events, good or bad. So many people depend on what they have or do not have: the people they spend time with, outings, the size of the TV screen, the power of the car, the neighborhood, the square meters, the view. "For us, God's peace depends on God. And he does not move, he does not change." A big or small apartment, a big car or bus number 7, God's peace is there. These things are not all bad and God wants to bless in these areas too, but peace does not depend on them. You have it even when you have nothing.
• The biblical examples show it: Job who lost everything, Abraham whom God asks for his son, Paul and Peter in prison, Noah, Moses, Stephen stoned, Daniel who opens his windows to pray while under threat of death, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace: "God can act, and even if he does not act, we will not deny our God."
• God loves without self-interest. He has nothing to gain from us, he needs nothing in return, he does nothing out of self-interest or vain glory. That is why his gifts are pure, unlike the world's love, which expects something in return.
• When this peace comes, it is like an avalanche (the pastor has seen some, and even started to get caught in one): it turns everything upside down, your relationship with others, with life, with blessing, your schedule. "Don't look in the world for what you can only find in Jesus Christ."
• Personal testimony: before, Samuel went to church several times a week, knew all the songs and all the stories of the Bible, but "my heart was in the things of the world." He was afraid, he had anxiety, and he had "the nerve" to ask God why he did not have his peace. The answer: "Quite simply because you do not belong to me, Samuel." The day he surrendered his life, God's peace flooded his heart. It took months and years to change his habits, his associations and his thoughts, and it is still a battle. The pleasures of the world are not all sins, but most leave "a bitter taste in the mouth," worse than the short moment of pleasure.
• These are not a candidate's promises on a TV set: "they are not mine, they are God's promises." God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent; what his mouth says, his hand accomplishes.

4. Standing Firm in Grace (Romans 5:1-3)

• "Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand." Peace comes through justification, and justification is the forgiveness of sins.
• Turned around, the verse says this: "you cannot be at peace as long as your sins are not forgiven." Because peace has a name, Jesus. And Jesus, thrice holy and perfect, cannot come into a heart where there is sin: "it is not that he does not want to, it is that he cannot." So you must choose: your sin, or God's peace. Have you ever asked the Lord Jesus to forgive your sins?
• Everywhere people talk about inner peace and chakras to rebalance. "There is nothing unbalanced in you, except your sin." No need for yoga or breathing facing the moon: what rebalances us with the Creator is the forgiveness of our sins and justification through the cross.
• Paul adds in verse 3: "we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance." He knew chains, prison, beatings, humiliation; he was even left for dead. His situation before his conversion was humanly more comfortable, and yet peace came afterward. "With the Lord, there is no human logic."
• The apostles sing praises to God in the middle of the night, in the innermost prison, with chains on their feet, not knowing whether they will be executed the next day. It is not logical, but God's peace surpasses everything. And the pastor thinks of the person who may be watching the replay from a prison: he can be set free spiritually, because "the greatest prison in 2026 is not the bars, it is sin."
• As Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: "If you knew the gift of God..." Samuel Mabboux paraphrases: if you knew God's peace. He cannot go back to what he was before, he remembers too well.

5. Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary

• The message ends on Matthew 11:28-29: "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls." The pastor points out: "He is not talking to the dead there."
• Maybe you recognize yourself in four, five or six of the words from the survey. Maybe you are among the two thirds who think the worst is yet to come. The Bible says something else: even if a war broke out in France tomorrow, the best is yet to come, and if it is not here below, it will be up there with the Lord. "You cannot believe that the worst is to come if you are in Jesus Christ."
• Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you," says Yahweh, "thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope and a future." Some were born in darkness; anguish and fear were their daily life since childhood, to the point of locking themselves in the bathroom to get a moment of respite. Others wait for only one thing: to sleep in order to forget their condition. The Lord says to them with love: "These are not the plans I have for you."
• Rest on the Rock of Ages, the one who took your anguish on the cross 2,000 years ago: the mockery, the humiliations, the betrayal, the nakedness, the spitting. At Gethsemane, he sweated clots of blood, a level of ultimate anguish. On the cross, bearing the sin of the world, he was even forsaken by the Father for a time, "so that you would no longer live with abandonment, so that you would be reconciled."

Key Takeaways

• Don't wait for death to find peace: rest and peace are in Jesus Christ and can be received starting today. For those who are not in Christ, they do not come after death either.
• "Do not be anxious about anything" is not positive thinking: God has the solution, he is the solution, and he asks us to make our needs known to him so we can unload them into his hands.
• God's peace surpasses all understanding: it is illogical in the storm, it depends neither on events nor on what we own, it depends on God alone, who does not change.
• Your heart (the wounds of the past) and your thoughts (what lies ahead and the sin born there) are guarded in Jesus Christ. So watch what you feed your thoughts with.
• Peace has a name, Jesus. It comes through justification, that is, the forgiveness of sins: you have to choose between your sin and God's peace.

Personal Application

1. Which of the words from the survey do you recognize yourself in today: exasperation, weariness, fear, sadness, fatigue? Have you already made them known to God in prayer?
2. What "backpack" are you carrying alone right now? What would it concretely mean to set it down at the foot of the cross every morning and every evening?
3. What are you feeding your thoughts with this week: what is true, pure and worthy of praise, or dark and impure things?
4. Does your peace depend on what you have (relationships, possessions, circumstances) or on God alone? What would trouble you most if you lost it?
5. Is there a sin you are holding on to that keeps Jesus' peace from settling in your heart? Have you already asked the Lord for forgiveness?

Verses Cited

• Philippians 4:6-9
• Matthew 7:7-8
• 2 Corinthians 10:5
• John 14:27
• Daniel 6:10
• Daniel 3:16-18
• Numbers 23:19
• Romans 5:1-3
• Acts 16:25
• John 4:10
• Matthew 11:28-29
• Jeremiah 29:11
• Luke 22:44
• Matthew 27:46

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "rest in peace" mean in this message?

Samuel Mabboux heard this phrase at a burial and turns it toward the living: it is sad to wait for death to find peace. Rest and peace are in Jesus Christ, and every man and woman can receive them starting today. For those who are not in Jesus Christ, rest does not come after death either.

Is "do not be anxious about anything" just positive thinking?

No. It is not burying your head in the sand or a placebo effect. When the Lord says "do not be anxious about anything," it is because he has the solution and he is the solution. He asks us to make our needs known to him through prayer, petition and thanksgiving, so that we can unload them into his hands. Without the Lord, there is reason to worry.

Why does God's peace depend on the forgiveness of sins?

Romans 5:1 says we have peace with God because we are justified by faith. Justification is the forgiveness of sins. Peace has a name, Jesus, and Jesus, who is holy and perfect, cannot come into a heart where there is sin. So you have to choose between your sin and God's peace.