“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT)
Worry seems to be the “National Anthem” of America for both saved and lost people. Worry is an equal opportunity provider, it doesn’t care who you are, where you live or work, what your income is, or whether or not you profess faith in Christ. John Piper said: “You’ll never know what prayer is for until you know that life is war.”
There is a war going on in your heart, mind, and soul. Satan is battling the Holy Spirit to defeat and hold you captive. He doesn’t care if you attend church or profess faith in Jesus, as long as it doesn’t change your lifestyle or cause you to do anything “stupid,” like give God your time and money. Satan doesn’t even care if you’re “good,” as long as you don’t get fanatical and start talking to people about Jesus.
What is Satan’s most powerful weapon? Probably discouragement, but what do we most often do when we’re discouraged? We worry! We build cases in our minds causing us to believe negative things about virtually everything. “The kids are going to grow up to be axe murderers;” “The house is going to catch fire while we’re asleep;” “My boss is an axe murderer;” “I married an axe murderer.”
None of it needs to make sense, it just needs to occupy our mind. Why? Because to the degree Satan can get us to think about things that will likely never come to pass, to that degree we’re not pondering or meditating on the goodness of God and His plans for our life.
That’s one of the reasons we need to be students of God’s Word, continually thinking about and meditating upon the words of God. When Satan attacks our mind, we have recourse to immediately turn our thoughts to the truth of Scripture. That’s why Paul wrote the words above urging us not to waste time worrying.
The more quickly we can turn from worry to prayer, telling God exactly what’s on our mind and what we need, the sooner His peace will fill our heart and mind, enabling us to bask in the peace of our Savior’s love.
When I was in elementary school, my friend who lived close by found a whole bag of all kinds of fireworks. Being the budding geniuses that we were we decided to set them off. It didn’t take long for one to go off in my hand, injuring not only my hand, but his eyes. The first thing that came to my mind was: “We’ve got to get to my dad, he will know what to do.”
That needs to be our immediate response when our mind begins to wander into worry. The peace “which exceeds anything we can understand” will fill our heart and mind, allowing us the privilege of not worrying. What might that look like? We have an accident, get a frightening diagnosis, lose our job, a loved one dies, our money runs out, we’re calm in the face of tragedy. It doesn’t really matter the news we get or the scenario in which we find ourselves, it only matters what we allow our mind to do with the news.
To immediately entrust it to the care of our Savior results in a peace that is unexplainable and often incomprehensible to those in our presence. The Greek word from which comes our English word “peace” in the verses above is the word “eirene“ (i-ray-nay) that sounds a lot like our word “irony.”
How ironic when in the face of very disturbing circumstances we’re able to be at peace, in control of our emotions, and reliant upon the Spirit of God to work in and through us to His honor and fame. Wow! What a witness to His peace-filled presence in our lives.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 