Philippians 4:4-7 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication 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 minds in Christ Jesus.” Today's episode explains how this verse is actually a formula for peace. I break down the verse and show you how you can gain gain the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, to guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Formula For Peace
Philippians 4:4-7 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication 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 minds in Christ Jesus.”
Last Monday session 2 of our class was all about peace. The title of the session was The Power of Peace. It was a really good class. I learned a lot about peace and how important it is. I learned that we can impart peace on others. Did you know that? Did you know that you can give peace to others? In Matthew 10:7-13 Jesus sent the 12 disciples out to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God and also to heal people, cast out demons and more. In Matthew 10:13 Jesus says, “ If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.” The disciples were instructed to impart their peace, or the peace Jesus gave them, on the houses that they visited.
Deacon Joe, one of our teachers, talked about how he and his wife had a priest stay with them once. He was coming into town for a conference or something and so they had him stay at their house. Deacon Joe said from the moment the priest walked into their house they could feel a peace that wasn’t there before. This peace that the priest brought with him stayed in their house long after he had left. Have you every felt this sort of peace in your house before? Have you ever had someone over to your house and when they were there you just felt more peaceful? The reverse can also be true unfortunately. Have you ever had someone over to your house, or even just been around someone and you felt less peaceful? Have you ever spent time with someone and afterwards you notice you have less peace, you are more agitated, or more restless? I have definitely had the second one happen. I have interacted with people who have been negative and then I feel negative. I am not a fan of that.
I do find it intriguing that we can impart peace to others. Peace is something that can feel elusive sometimes. Peace is something we all seem to strive for and yet not too many find. Or at least that is how it seems. I know a lot of people who are anxious. I know a lot of people who are angry. I know a lot of people who are anxious and angry. I do not know a lot of people who are peaceful. There is so much going on in the world and it is easy to see why people worry a lot. It is easy to see why people are anxious and even why they are angry. The world can often be an unkind and scary place. Because of this we might start to feel as if having peace in our lives is a fairytale. We might think it is unattainable and just something people talk about but never really achieve. Have you ever felt like that? Honestly, have you? Its ok if you have, I totally get it! There is so much going on right now in the world and it’s totally normally to not be at peace, or to not have peace.
I want to let you in on a well kept secret, you can have peace, even in the middle of chaos. It’s true, you really can. For instance, when I was struggling with my son being in rehab, things were very chaotic. I did not know what was going to happen from day to day. I had to drive into Boston a lot. I had a lot of appointments with various people. Yet, through all of this, I had peace. Not necessarily peace with the situation, but an overall peace that God was taking care of everything. I knew this was not the end, that God had so much more planned for our son. I had a peace that whatever was going to happen, it would be used for his good. That doesn’t mean every single minute I felt at peace. I definitely had days when I wanted to be through this storm. I definitely had days when I was tired of the struggle, tired of it all. It wasn’t smooth sailing the whole time and yet there was always this sense of peace, this sense of, “God’s got this.”
It is hard to explain, but it is possible, I assure you. You don’t have to take my assurance though, because God tells us it is possible in the verse above, and He even gives us a formula, which is really cool because sometimes we are given a parable and we need to work out what it means. However, in this verse the formula for peace is spelled out nice and simply for us. Let’s take a look at the verse above. It begins with, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Rejoicing in the Lord is always a good thing. It is possible to rejoice in the Lord, even when you are in a tough situation. You don’t have to rejoice for that situation, you can always rejoice for something else, like the sunrise, the nice breakfast you had, or even the fact that you woke up to a brand new day of life. Whatever you want to rejoice for is up to you, but this verse is a great reminder to us to rejoice in the Lord. It is also a good reminder to let our gentleness be known to everyone. This part of the verse is telling us to be nice to everyone.
Right after that part is when we get to the formula for peace. It says, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication 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 minds in Christ Jesus.” The first part of the formula is to know that the Lord is near so you don’t have to worry about anything. I know, this is easier said than done. However I think the rest of the formula makes it a bit easier. The next parts says, “in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let you requests be known to God.” Let’s break that down. We all know what pray means. I think we are probably pretty good with the prayer part, especially if we are struggling. Many people, even people who are not Christian, pray when they are struggling.
Next is says supplications, this is a word I had to look up. It means to plead humbly. So God wants us to not only come to Him for help, but to plead to Him humbly. If you are not sure what that means, in my eyes that means, to come to the Lord in prayer and ask Him/ plead with Him to help you through the situation knowing full well that you can do nothing without Him and all things through Him. I get stuck on how to be humble sometimes, but I think it can be as simple as realizing we need God for everything. We can’t do anything without Him.
The last part of the formula might be the hardest part. Asking God for help can be hard, but it isn’t always. However, thanking God when you are in the middle of a storm can be extremely hard. We often do not feel we have any reasons to thank God. Sometimes we are even angry at God for letting this situation happen to us. We may blame God for our circumstances. He understands this and doesn’t blame us for this. And yet, He is calling us to ask Him for help, turn the situation over to Him, and to do this all with thanksgiving. This isn’t an easy thing to do, but it is worth the cost.
What does God promise us if we can “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God?” He promises us that, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Could you be thankful in the hard times if you knew that you would receive the peace of God? I think it says, “Which surpasses all understanding, because it doesn’t make sense to have peace when there is chaos all around you. It didn’t make sense for me to have peace when my son was in rehab. Many people told me the knew I was more stressed and that I was just hiding it. They could not understand that I was at peace with it. Not because I accepted it and stopped fighting for our son. I was at peace because I knew God was in control and that He would use this for our son’s good. It surpasses all understanding because the world wants us to stay angry, worried and anxious. The world doesn’t want us to have peace in the middle of a storm. What do you want?
Do you want more peace in your life? Do you want to stop worrying about everything all the time? Do you want to be less anxious? Do you want to have the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding to guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. What I love about this is that it is not telling us we have to guard our hearts and minds. It does say that several places in the Bible, however, this verse is telling us if we bring all things to God by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, then the peace of God will protect our minds. How amazing would that be? If you want to feel more peace in your life, check out this formula, try to apply it to you life and see how much more peace you can have. God did not create us to be anxious and worried. Give peace a try, I know you won’t be disappointed.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to the episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we thank you for giving us a formula for peace. We just ask you to help us put it into action Lord. Please show each one of us how we can put this formula into action in our lives. Please have the Holy Spirit reveal to us where we could be doing this more or what step we are getting stuck on. Lord, show us where we can be thankful in our current situation. Lord, I know so many are hurting right now, I ask you to be with them and to comfort them. I ask you to show them how to implement this formula in their lives so they don't have to be so anxious and worried. You are so awesome and you are offering us the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds, we accept Lord, please come into our lives and guard our hearts and minds with your peace. Please wrap us up in your peace like a giant blanket that nothing can penetrate. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about this new audio training I created. It is about how to invite Jesus into your everyday. Often times we want to pray, we want to spend time with Jesus, and yet we just aren’t finding the time to do so. In this audio training I will teach you to invite Jesus into 3 of the most common tasks we do each day. If you want to hear this audio training all you need to do is go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or you can click on the link below. It will take you to a page where you can put in your name and email and the audio training will be delivered right to your inbox. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!