God's Peace

Good Morning,

Philippians 4:4-7) NIV
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

What crossed my desk this morning was a part of verse 7, "The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Now, in and of itself, this is exactly what all of us want in our lives, isn't it? The true peace of God? I know that I've heard many sermons preached about it and read not just a few messages concerning it...and even written a few myself, I believe. So, I'll venture to say that, yes, the peace of God is something that we all desire greatly in our lives.

But, you see, too often...much too often...we take just that part of verse 7 out of context and simply pray for that peace. Of course, there's nothing wrong in praying for God's peace in our lives. However, don't you think that first we ought to read the entire verse, then see what the context is?

The verse reads, "AND (note this "and" here!) the peace of God...." When we read that "and" that's where we have to see what precedes these words, this thought, to understand that there IS something which comes before the "and." What precedes is what we really need to read and fully comprehend. That's because what comes before tells us HOW we can obtain this "peace of God" that we all so desperately want.

Simply put, if we will "Rejoice in the Lord always...Let your (our) gentleness be evident to all...Not be anxious about anything...In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present our requests to God," then, my friends, we might approach and obtain this "peace of God" that we want; that we really need in our lives.

Do we do these things? Probably not on a regular basis and probably not with all our efforts. And if we don't, well then, I guess we can understand why we don't have this peace that Paul writes of.

Something to think about. Something to work on. Something to strive for.

Love, peace, and blessings,

David