“And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7
Have you ever picked up a guitar that was out of tune? Or
tried to play an instrument for the first time and instead of beautiful music
you produced something sounding more like stepping on a dying duck or dropping
a bowling ball down stairs?
Only extremely patient and loving parents or a music teacher
can endure much of that. For most we want to run away of take the instrument
away and never let that person touch it again. Why? It’s disruptive, annoying
and assaulting our ears.
But when someone learns to play, and pay well, it is joyous
to hear the melody produced. One has to learn how to create harmony and rhythms
with the notes in order to create something beautiful.
When the Bible speaks of peace, to have the peace of God in
your life, it is talking about harmonizing your life. God wants to bring all
the areas of your life together to create a beautiful harmony (Ephesians 2:10).
Jesus said, “Take my
yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:29-30
Jesus is not saying that learning obedience doesn’t take
hard work. Like learning to play the guitar is difficult at times, learning to
submit areas of our life can be difficult. But when we do, when we learn the “rules
of the game” and we begin to realize the harmony that is possible, we see that
His way is easy and his burden is light.
Every discipline that I have developed started out hard and
then became easier the more I pursued it. Learning the rules of golf has
brought a new freedom and power to my golf game. Understanding the proper form
and technique, coupled with lots of practice, has brought a level of joy and
fun to my volleyball experience. Learning proper approaches to understanding
the Bible, hermeneutics, has created a whole new level of joy in reading the
Scriptures.
The problem is we are fighting against God in our lives. We
are trying to control the strings of the guitar. We keep banging away at them
expecting a beautiful melody and all we produce is noise.
“What Satan put into
the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like
gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own
masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from
God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human
history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires,
slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God
which will make him happy.
God cannot give us a
happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no
such thing.” —C.S. Lewis from Mere
Christianity
We try to be like gods, our own masters, and what we produce
is, “money, poverty, ambition, war,
prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying
to find something other than God.”
Just open up Facebook or Twitter, or turn on the News, or
read the latest from the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or the
National Review. We do not see peace and harmony in this world, we see chaos
and disruption.
Unfortunately, when Christians throw in their “two cents” to
the milieu, it brings further chaos and disruption and not peace. Not because their intentions are not good, but
because it is easy to get our focus on the wrong things.
Dear Christian, I pray that you see God’s call on your life
is to find peace in your life through an obedient walk with Him. Allow Him to
tune the guitar of your life, and with each tuning session you will see that something
beautiful is being created in you. You will see more of Christ in you and the
world will see more of Christ in you and glorify God because of it (Matthew
5:16).
Philippians 4 points us to the way to find peace with God
that will guard our hearts, it is through what we focus our eyes on.
“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. 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 4:8-9
Get your focus right and apply what you have learned and the
peace of God WILL be with you.
Here is clearly a list of what we should focus on. Filter
everything you cast your gaze on through this list and if it doesn’t match up,
then look away.
If you want to maximize your time focusing, there is One to
focus on who is “true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and
worthy of praise,” that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Looking to Jesus, the
founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the
throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2
I am convinced of this, the more you look to Jesus, the more
you love Him with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, the more you will be
like Him. Not by your own power, or by performing a checklist or out of
obligation. No. But by love!
When you love Jesus, and you spend time with Him, and you
look to Him, you will become a reflection of Him from the inside out. As this
happens, the peace of God will flow through you. You will become a harmony that
is beautiful to those who hear, that refreshes the soul, that draws people to
Christ.
By God’s grace we, the Church, can become a symphony of His
grace for His glory and bring peace to our communities.
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