Live Like a Champion – Week 42
The Promise of Peace!” (Part 2)
Philippians 4:6-9 (NAS95)
Last week I started a three-week sermon to teach you how to live victoriously in God’s promise of peace. It is my desire that you will experience the power of the promise of peace in your everyday life, to the glory of God!
This promise is one of the most relevant promises we can manifest in our composure and speech to our culture that would be attractive and impactful in today’s world situation and our current national panic attack (or is it a temper tantrum?). We, the people of God, have the solution; so, let’s bring the peace of God that transcends all human understanding to the world, by first experiencing it for ourselves and allowing it to make us both holy and whole.
- Last week, I taught you about the promise of peace with God (vertical) from John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”
- Today, I am focusing on the promise of peace within yourself (internal) from Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, 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 comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
- Next week, I will conclude with the promise of peace with how we are called to pass the peace to others Ephesians 2:14: “For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.”
These three aspects of the promise of peace are a cord of three strands (Ecclesiastes 4:12) for us to experience the joy of the Lord and to fulfill His Greatest Commandments for our lives. Listen to Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
There are three directions in the greatest commandment that perfectly align with the three-stranded cord that is the promise of peace:
- Peace with God is your salvation with God—it manifests as your holiness as you learn to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind!
- Peace with yourself is your mental health or peace of mind—it manifests as your wholeness as you learn to love yourself as God first loved you … through the grace which saved you and from which you draw all life and godliness (2 Peter 1:2-4).
- Peace with others is a peaceful heart—it manifests as your ministry of loving your neighbor as you have learned to love yourself remembering God’s love as taught by Paul in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” As we will learn next week, the “us” in this passage is critical to our ability to pass the peace. It’s not a “me” thing!
Paul practically teaches us about how to walk in this peace. Mental health comes from this internal peace of God, by which we learn to live in God’s grace—not an earning, but a receiving of acceptance by Jehovah Shalom, who sent His Son Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, to give us new life so that we may experience His holiness as our wholeness. This is our transformation through the renewal of our minds that Paul promises in Romans 12:1-2. This promise comes with practices that invite us to participate in God’s work of sanctification in us: “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Philippians 4:6-9 teaches how to participate in God’s work of transforming us through the renewing of our minds:
Be anxious for nothing, 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 comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
The spiritual practices of peace are very similar to your dental hygiene habits: they require the discipline of habit making so that you no longer think about doing them, you just do it!
In the same way that you brush your teeth twice a day, morning and night, so I encourage you to practice 1 Peter 5:7 morning and night: “casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” Did you hear that? This is not a harsh command, but a loving invitation—BECAUSE HE CARES FOR YOU! God is saying, “I love you and you can trust me … Come to Me …”!
This is the work of the Spirit through our times of Bible intake, prayer, silence and solitude, worship to Christian music … during our times of devotion. This is the example of Jesus throughout the Gospels as we see in Mark 1:35: “In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.”
When we intentionally attend our hearts and minds to the presence of God through daily and weekly rhythms of grace, then we are putting ourselves directly in the authorized way of experiencing the promise found in Philippians 4:6-8 because we are responding to the real anxiety of our day with practices of intentionally attending ourselves to God’s presence:
In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Let’s straight talk for a minute—mental illness is real! For some, their fight is like that with cancer (clinical depression or a personality disorder), for others like that of seasonal allergies (seasonal depression), and for others it is an acute trauma that requires immediate care and follow up therapy. Mental health comes with real illnesses and life issues that shouldn’t be minimized. Please go see your primary care physician if you think that you need the assistance of medical science to help you in this conversation. I am advocating for you to remain faithful in the habits of grace that will wash over your heart and mind so that you are not taken hostage by your medical situation. In many ways, these are the same principles I tell people going through any medical crisis. Each crisis comes with its own challenges, but all are opportunities for you to grow in God’s grace and mercy—to be closer to Him; hence, experiencing rest for your soul and peace in your heart and mind, even when these temporary dwelling places (our bodies which includes our brains) are experiencing the brokenness of the fall.
With that understanding, Paul commands in 2 Corinthians 10:5b, “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” In the same way that we must remain positive and hopeful in our treatment plans for other medical issues, we cannot surrender ourselves to the anchor of anxiety or the grip of fear or the paralysis of paranoia. We are invited to be vigilant to capture our thoughts, shatter the old broken tapes, stop the stinking thinking, and cease the catastrophic thinking to give ourselves the best chance possible of experiencing God’s freedom in this fight!
We are invited by God to walk in the ancient paths of Joshua 1:8-9:
This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
This ancient practice of biblical meditation is the foundation of Psalm 119’s promises:
- “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word” (9).
- “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You” (11).
- “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (105).
Brothers and sisters, this is biblical maturity, it is the discipline of good mental hygiene, just like good dental hygiene. You brush, you floss, you gurgle because you don’t want stinky breath, nor do you want tooth rot or gum infection. We are invited to care for our souls and our bodies, our hearts and our minds! All of this belongs to God, and we are but stewards of it!
In the same way, you take in God’s Word, you meditate upon it and memorize it, pray God’s Word, and apply it to your life so that at the right time you can seize the moment. No one wants to be face-to-face with you if you have either stinky breath or a stinky attitude. A mature Christian is characterized by their wholeness, which flows from their holiness.
Setting apart times with God that bookend your day helps you experience being the person of peace. These inform and influence the discipline of walking in the ways of Jesus by learning to take on His yoke and learn from Him how to be gentle and humble in heart (Matthew 11:28-30).
Learning how to walk in the promise of peace as daily mental health practices is a key spiritual discipline to our living out the Greatest Commandments. We represent Jesus the best—passing the peace—when we are both holy (peace with God!) and whole (sound mind!).
We need to realize that the Bible teaches us good mental hygiene practices that are fundamental to our well-being just as the many good dental hygiene habits are ingrained in most of our daily lives. As this becomes more normalized and less stigmatized in the church, then mental health practices and check-ups will be as common as dental health practices and check-ups. When there is an illness or acute crisis that occurs, we support the person and help them through it.
This promise of peace not only restores us back into right relationship with God, but because of the love of God working in us we can now have peace with ourselves, then with others. It is through this peace that we can ultimately put on display our holiness through our wholeness. The way this happens is by passing the peace through living out the Greatest Commandments.
We are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves—by the grace of God and the peace that He has bestowed upon us by the work of the Cross and empowered us to live in through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit!