Practical Side of Peace

Phil. 4:6-8

Welcome to Mountain View Baptist Church. Just as we are nearing the end of the summer, it is a tremendous blessing to be with God’s people. The Bible speaks to the gathering of God’s people to worship and honor Him as a blessing to God. If this is your first time, thank you for attending today. You are our honored guest. Please stop by our welcome center to meet our greeters.

How many of you like it when things are calm and quiet? Like when you go on vacation to a lakeside cabin out in the woods or a quiet camping sight away from everything except you and your family are spending time with nature? Peaceful settings give us an emotional calmness and relief from the pressures of life. God is teaching us that a quiet retreat with Him in prayer away from the pressures of life brings a calmness to our lives.

These very well-know verses remind us of the practical side of peace. Strangely enough Paul is writing these words from a Roman jail which for most of us would certainly not be a place of peace. Paul is writing from experience on how to have peace when you are living in troubled times. Perhaps you are now in a difficult circumstance or an uncomfortable setting. These things can be interruptions to the peace God speaks of here. These very familiar verses speak to the struggles that come in our lives and how we can still have peace. The Bible word for peace carries not just the absence of conflict, but also a general well-being. This encompasses 360 degrees in our life. Mentally, spiritually, and emotionally and even physically in some ways. Yes, even worry can have a physical effect on our life.

There are three cures to the lack of peace.

Cure 1. . .

Proper prayer

Those four first words in v. 6, the Bible is saying: Don’t worry. He is saying don’t worry about anything and pray about everything. We have a tendency to only pray for the big things but when you pray about everything that concerns you, this will be the first step to victory over worry.

Prayer is more than a quick fix to an uncomfortable circumstance. Prayer is seeking and knowing God. Prayer is focusing on God who can take care of all things in our life. Jesus says: Matthew 6:30 “Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” Jesus reminds us He has everything under His control.

Paul is saying when you are tempted to worry, pray to God. Proper praying involves three words here: prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving. Praying needs all three involved in the prayers of God’s people.

Prayer is a general word for making requests to God. This means we adore Him, devote ourselves to Him and worship Him. We get alone with God to recognize His greatness and His power. This reminds us God is big enough to solve our problems. This special time with God will begin to calm our spirit as we adore Christ.

Supplication is a sharing of our needs and problems. We are to be earnest in asking God to take care of our need.

Jesus prayed in the Garden Hebrews 5:7 “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;” He was sweating as great drops of blood. This is a time of humbling ourselves before God asking for God to meet the need. This is coming to God to take care of a great need in our life or our family.

Ephesians 6:18 “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;”

Thanksgiving means giving thanks to God which is a very important part of prayer. We are to express our appreciation to God for who He is and what He has done for us. Give gratitude for listening to us. Gratitude comes out of a mature relationship with God.

God is saying to us two very important truths:

1) we will have things in our lives that tempt us to worry and 2)God wants us to pray, to come to Him during these times in our lives.

Either worrying drives out prayer, or prayer drives out worrying.

D. A. Carson

Cure 2. . .

Proper protection

Paul is writing about what they would have seen. The Apostle Paul was chained to a guard day and night. This picture is used to illustrate the peace of God. It stands guard over the heart and the mind in which worry will lodge. Some people seem to have an inclination to worry, yet, God has the cure. One person said:

If I don’t have something to worry about, I worry!

Anonymous

Worry will rob you of peace in your heart. The place where you can receive protection from worry is the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than dwelling on worry, dwell on Him.

True peace can only be found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you accept Jesus Christ in salvation, you will experience peace with God Romans 5:1 “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:” Good works, religious rituals, baptism won’t do it, church membership won’t bring salvation. It is only through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The reason He came is because man is in an enemy relationship with God. Sin has broken the relationship with God. God comes to restore that broken relationship by paying the penalty for our sin on the cross by His blood. He was buried and rose again. When we receive Him as our Savior, the Bible says we have peace with God.

This does not mean the absence of trials on the outside, but it means a quiet confidence within our heart. The peace of God will guard or protect us from worry. This peace will keep our hearts in tune with God and protected from the worries of this life. This broken world will not give us peace. There are more efforts in an attempt to have peace in the world where people think if we have a peaceful community or nation or society that we will experience a calmness. Pass more laws or enforce greater security; however, there is no peace without the Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 57:19–21 “I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; And I will heal him. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

The peace of God will guard your heart and minds, means when you get up in the morning, you have the peace of God in your life. This is the one benefit of knowing Christ that is often overlooked. When we go through the trials of life which maybe raging on the outside, we are calm and confident on the inside because we have God’s peace which will sustain us.

They who love God with all their hearts, find that his ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace.

Charles Spurgeon

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace, Over all victorious in its bright increase; Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day, Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way. Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest; Finding, as he promised, perfect peace and rest.

Frances Ridley Havergal (Hymn Writer)

Cure 3 . . .

Proper thinking v.8

Our mind can run all kinds of ways.

Worry has an active imagination.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Welsh Preacher and Writer)

When we losen our minds to flow freely, it will naturally go away from God. Our hearts and our minds are corrupted by our sin nature. Our minds are deeply stained by our sin nature. This natural carnal mind of ours can create and invent sin beyond human description. Genesis 6:5 “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

When I grew up in WV, many of the side roads were dirt or gravel roads. The worst part of those roads was during the rain, wheels would make deep grooves in the road. The roads were supposed to be plowed regularly so they could smooth out the grooves; however, they were slow in plowing those roads. The longer they went without plowing out the grooves, the deeper entrenched the grooves became. The grooves would most often have to be filled in with new dirt or gravel to smooth out the grooves. It would be very difficult to drive on those roads because your wheels would get stuck naturally in the deep grooves which caused problems and prevent you from going forward. The groove of worry will cause you to keep from moving forward in your Christian life. The deeper the groove the more difficult it will be to think properly.

In verse 8, Paul is writing to us to fill in the grooves of our worries and negativities and fears of things. We are to intentionally and on purpose, choose the right kind of thoughts by filling our mind with things true, honest, just, pure, and lovely. We need to reprogram the way we think. Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

Our minds can get stuck into a groove or grooves that take away our peace. When we fill our minds with impurity, with negative thoughts, with dishonesty and things that have no virtue or of a good report, we will have God’s peace snatched away. This does not mean God has not given us peace, but we have filled our minds with things that drown out God’s peace.

The reason why we lack peace is because we are not filling our minds with proper thinking v.8. Don’t live your Christian live as a miserable life filled with worry and trouble. When we dwell on those things, they are building grooves into our mind so that we naturally get stuck into the grooves. The more impure thoughts we have the more our minds gravitate to impurity. Impure thinking robs us of God’s peace in our lives. This is also true in our family. The old adage: Garbage in, garbage out. When we dwell in the wrong things, the peace of the family is disrupted. Don’t allow your home to be a haven of negativity and worry.

Do you have peace in your home? In your life? Peace is not found outwardly but only inwardly through the Lord Jesus Christ. If you have not accepted Jesus as your Savior, will you turn to Him today? Will you let someone show you how you can know for sure, you are a Christian?

Perhaps you are here today and you lack peace in your heart and mind. This would be a good time to to pray here in the front for God to give you peace again. This will be a time for God to smooth out the grooves of your mind and put your attention on Christ today.

Let’s pray.