Let me share some thoughts about how curing worry and experiencing
peace are two sides of the same coin. Curing worry is the negative side since
worry is the thing we want to stop happening in our lives; experiencing peace
is the positive side, the thing we want to have in our lives every day, all the
time, no matter what we are facing. This passage from God’s book shows how to
flip from one side of the coin to the other.
Focus: how to respond to any situation that would promote
worry so we are able to experience victory in peace.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your
reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious
about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses
all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 4)
4 Rejoice in the
Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
When our rejoicing
is in the Lord Jesus Christ, we always have reason to rejoice, hence the
exhortation to do so at all times. Remember, this was Paul writing a church to
assure them that it was well with his soul even though he was in prison for the
sake of the gospel.[1]
Paul still had the Lord, so he still had constant reason to rejoice.
5 Let your
reasonableness be known to everyone.
William Hendriksen
translates “reasonableness” as “big-heartedness”. He writes: “For big-heartedness one may substitute any
of the following: forbearance, yieldedness, geniality, kindliness, gentleness,
sweet reasonableness, considerateness, charitableness, mildness, magnanimity,
generosity. All of these qualities are combined in the adjective-noun that is
used in the original. Taken together they show the real meaning. When each of
these would-be-English-equivalents is taken by itself alone, it becomes clear
that there is not a single word in the English language that fully expresses
the meaning of the original.”[2]
The point is that,
when we are focused on the Lord, and rejoicing in him, we are able to put aside
the slights and mistreatments of others because we are more interested in their
eternal well-being than our temporal comforts. Paul, of course, writing from prison,
showed this in a very picturesque and exemplary way. No matter what people did
to him, he sought their salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord is at
hand;
The Christian is to
look at Jesus’ return as so close that, whether we complete our life on earth
before he returns, it still was such a brief blip in history that it will seem
like he was at hand in the most immediate of ways, or whether Jesus returns
during our lifetime, even should it be near death’s door for some of us, the
time-frame in relation to eternity was so miniscule that we could only think of
him as being at hand the whole time we lived here, and even the whole time
between his first and second comings. When we live like the greatest thing that
matters is the return of our Savior, it does condition us to quit focusing on
worry, and to seek both our own peace with God,[3]
and to be peacemakers in all the world around us.[4]
6 do not be anxious
about anything,
This is simple: no
matter what we are facing, there is zero place for anxiety. This does not mean
we won’t face scary situations; it means that, when we are focused on rejoicing
in the Lord, our attentiveness to him removes any grounds for anxiety about
what we are facing or going through.
but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to
God.
While worry would
consume all our thoughts about what could possibly go wrong with our lives, and
keep us in bondage to anxiety, with all its corresponding fears and pains,
rejoicing in the Lord gives us the positive opportunity to lay absolutely
everything before our God in prayer. Our minds will be active either way; but rejecting
anxiety completely, and immersing ourselves completely in prayers and requests
to God, will have a far different effect than dwelling on fear. This is why the
Psalm-writer would pray, “When I am
afraid, I put my trust in you”,[5]
and Peter declare, “Humble yourselves,
therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt
you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”[6]
7 And the peace
of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your
minds in Christ Jesus.
This works because
it is “the peace of God”, not our own
peace. The reason our sarks cannot figure this out is because God’s peace “surpasses all understanding”. It is
real, but hugely beyond the limits of our fleshly comprehension, therefore, we
are not to limit our thoughts to our own understanding.[7]
It is not that we try to guard our own hearts and minds, but that we entrust
all our cares and concerns to our Father. The result is that God’s peace comes
and guards our hearts and minds in our Savior.
The scary thing here
is that so many church-going people would rather guard their hearts and minds
with their own sarky self-protection than have the peace of God guard our
hearts and minds because we have set our hearts and minds on him. God clearly
would like to help us with this by giving us what is far better, his own peace.
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and
seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
(Philippians 4)
8 Finally,
brothers,
There is a point to
what the apostles write in their letters. As we process what they teach us, it
shows up in our lives in specific applications. Here Paul is going to make it
very easy for us to understand how to apply what he has taught in his letter.
whatever is true,
Anxiety dwells on
things that are not true, sometimes by misrepresenting how specific scenarios
look in contrast to what God says about them. This applies to what so many of
us think about ourselves based on sarky things from the past, old beliefs that were
taught to us by the world, the flesh, and the devil. These old beliefs keep
many Christians in bondage to fear and self-protection. We must set our minds
on what is true about ourselves in Christ in order to experience things in our
relationship with God we can never experience in relationship to our
flesh/sarks.
whatever is
honorable,
Even though
surrounded by kazillions of dishonorable things in the world in our own flesh
and the works of the evil one, we have mega-kazillions of honorable things in
our God and Father, and far more reason to dwell on those things than the works
and ways of our evil enemies.
whatever is just,
The world, the
flesh, and the devil, surround us with things that are unfair, and unrighteous.
We have already seen laws put into place that give sinners advantage over the
church. Christians are put out of business because the world favors its own,
and will encourage and support every imaginable injustice against God’s
children as long as Worldlings feel so good about getting their own way that
they are blinded to the glory of God that is in the face of Jesus Christ.[8]
While these injustices can threaten to become all-consuming, Paul wants our
focus on what is just, the things God is doing, the righteousness, and peace,
and joy of the kingdom of God.[9]
whatever is pure,
When we are tempted
to worry, it brings to our minds a certain impurity where we are mixing fears
and anxieties with faith and trust. We are double-minded because we are trying
to trust God while letting our minds worry about everything going on around us.[10]
The world will hand us no end of impurities to consider all life long, but God
presents us what is pure, what is holy, what is righteous, and we are to set
our minds on these things. A mind settled on God in all things, purely, will
find rest in him. “You keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you”.[11]
A pure mind stays on God because it has nowhere else to go.[12]
whatever is
lovely,
Lovely means that
which is beautiful in God’s sight. Again, the world, the flesh, and the devil,
entice us with things that are outrightly ugly, and things that are masquerading
as light when they are putrid with darkness. We will know that we are setting
our minds on what is lovely and beautiful when we focus on what is lovely and
beautiful to our heavenly Father.
whatever is
commendable,
Jesus makes it easy
for his church to know what is commendable. In both the letters to the churches
written down by the apostles, and the seven letters to the church in the book
of Revelation,[13] Jesus
speaks of what he commends and what he condemns. He only wants our attention on
what he condemns in order to bring us to repentance for any involvement in
those things. His real focus is what he commends, to encourage us to fix our
hearts there.
if there is any
excellence,
This takes away any
of our sarky ideas of mediocrity in any of this. Our aim is excellence, not as
though we achieve this through good behavior, but that our Father is constantly
drawing our hearts to his excellence, and so we should gladly and willingly set
our minds on such things.
The “any” in relation to the excellence
means there will always be something excellent for us to focus on. We don’t
need to know or remember everything in God’s mind that would qualify as
excellent. There is something we can think of now, so even having only one
excellent thing to consider is enough for us to set our minds there instead of
elsewhere.
if there is
anything worthy of praise,
In other words,
although the world is full of things that are worthy of condemnation, the child
of God knows there are so many things worthy of praise. While our sarks appeal
to us to please sit down and worry for a while because it gives such a pseudo-sense
of figuring out what to do, God calls his children to dwell on the things that
are worthy of praise.
think about these
things.
In the same way as
we deny our sarky anxieties and present everything to God in faith, so we deny
all the things the world, the flesh, and the devil want us to think about, and
think about those things that please our heavenly Father.
A clarification I
would make is that, this isn’t saying that if we are struggling with memories
of childhood trauma we shouldn’t think about those things because they get us
down, and they are filled with fear, and guilt, and shame. Rather, it is
telling us that whatever is going on in our lives, whether losses, or heartaches,
or shocking situations, or painful memories, instead of handling those things
in our sarks by ruminating over them in those all-consuming thoughts of
hopelessness, we can bring all the same things to God in prayer. We can look at
these things through the obvious ways our sarks have taught us about them for
ages, or we can take these things to God and tell him we want to know how to
rejoice instead of grieve; we want his garments of praise instead of our spirit
of despair.[14]
We can be as honest as we know how about what we are feeling, what we have
experienced, and what we see staring us in the face, but we take it to God with
every kind of prayer, and supplication, and thanksgiving, and request we can
imagine, and then take every truth of Scripture that tells us who we are in Jesus
Christ, and dwell on those things instead of what people and our sarks have
told us.
9 What you have
learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things,
To make this super
practical, and helpful, and to take away all our excuses, Paul says he has
already taught us, and shared with us, and spoken of these things in his own
life, so we can “practice these things”
by following his example.
In other words, don’t
just go around imagining that if we pray enough, and think enough about the
right things, we’re free to act however we please. No, the call is to pray in
faith, and think in faith, and act in faith. There are things to put into
practice from both the teachings and the examples of the apostles, the men who
laid the foundation for the church, and we are to build our lives on their
teachings and examples, not as individuals alone, but as members of the one new
man that is the church, the body of Christ, the holy temple in our Lord.[15]
and the God of
peace will be with you.
We are always
surrounded by the work of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and we can give
our minds to them to consume us, to steal, kill, and destroy whatever God is
working into our lives,[16]
or we can fix our minds on the things that build and maintain attachment with God.
If we give our minds to our enemies, we must expect that they will play around
with our fears and phobias like a merciless cat tormenting the poor little
mouse (think wolf with sheep for the parallel). If we give our minds to our God
and Father,[17]
and set our minds on things above,[18]
and fix our eyes on Jesus, and consider him,[19]
and set our minds on the Spirit,[20]
God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds because the God of peace is with
us, fellowshipping with us, leading us by his Spirit.
God’s word says
that, “the kingdom of God is… of
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”[21]
God calls us to set our minds on the Spirit in order to fully experience that
righteousness, peace, and joy, no matter what the world, the flesh, and the
devil, are doing in their efforts to destroy us. We are more than conquerors through
our Lord Jesus Christ,[22]
so let us direct our minds to our Savior for the victory that overcomes the
world, our faith![23]
© 2016 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
[1]
Philippians 1 includes a focus on how Paul wanted the church to think of his
imprisonment for the gospel.
[2]
Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. (1953–2001). Exposition of Philippians
(Vol. 5, p. 193). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
[3]
Romans 5:1
[4]
Matthew 5:9
[5]
Psalm 56:3
[6]
I Peter 5:6-7
[7]
The familiar passage of Proverbs 3:5-6 says something quite similar.
[8]
II Corinthians 4:4 (II Corinthians 4:1-6 as context).
[9]
Romans 14:17
[10]
James 1:5-8 speaks of the double-minded man.
[11]
Isaiah 26:3
[12]
John 6:68
[13]
Revelation 2-3
[14]
Isaiah 61:1-4; cf Luke 4:16-21
[15]
Ephesians 2:14-22
[16]
John 10:10 speaks of the thief whose purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy.
[17]
Matthew 16:23; Romans 12:2
[18]
Colossians 3:2
[19]
Hebrews 12:1-3
[20]
Romans 8:5-6
[21]
Romans 14:17
[22]
Romans 8:37
[23]
I John 5:4
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