“Discover God’s Peace!”
“New Life in Christ” Letter to the Philippians Series
Pastor Mike Clark
Church of the Valley
July 19, 2015
Apple Valley, CA
When you need to find some calm and peace, where do you go and what do you do? I like to
get out into nature; in the desert biking, in the mountains hiking, or by some water taking
pictures. The calm and quiet pair with the sights and sounds of birds, animals, brush and trees
to bring a sense of calm. Where do you go and what do you do for some peace? (Share that
with someone near you for just a moment.)
The Lord gives us peace in every situation if we know how to discover it. What is the path to
peace? The Apostle Paul shares how to find peace in Philippians 4:4-9 Rejoice in the Lord
always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord
is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and
petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God,
which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is
excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or
received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace
will be with you.
Peace comes from the presence of Jesus, God with us, in our daily lives. Paul wrote 6 steps to
find the peace of God in these 6 verses.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! When we live with Jesus, we
live with joy! Happiness results from a happy situation. My grandson runs toward me to bound
into my arms with a big hug and I feel happiness. But we don’t always experience happy
situations. I see someone in pain and I feel sadness for them. Joy is not like happiness. Joy can
occur even if we are in an unhappy situation. Joy comes from the Lord in our lives as a fruit of
His Holy Spirit. We can be in a difficult situation and still have joy in the Lord. I can be facing an
intense conflict but I can still know joy as the Lord will work through that conflict with me. Paul
and Silas were thrown in prison when they visited Philippi. Did they sit around and mope? No!
They began to sing songs of praise. They remained joyful even when an earthquake demolished
the prison walls around them. Because of their joy in the Lord, the Philippian jailor and his
entire family wanted to know about their trust in Jesus. You cannot take joy away from a
follower of Jesus who keeps focused on the Lord in their lives. Joy overcomes the difficulties we
face because we have a Lord who never leaves us, never forsakes us and always overcomes for
us. That is joyful news that Paul practiced and shared with the Philippians. That changed the
Philippian Church. That is joyful news that we practice and share with you. That will change
COV! Rejoice in the Lord always – at all times and in all situations. We say it again: Rejoice!
5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. The nearness of the Lord also
helps us be gentle with all people. As the Lord is gentle with us, we become gentle with others.
Our inclination is to be harsh with those who are harsh, or mean to those who are mean. Our
gentleness depends not on how other people treat us but on how the Lord treats us. Don’t
react with cruelty to those who are cruel to you. That shows you cruel like them. The Lord
intends for you to become gentle not harsh, mean or cruel. The Lord wants us to rise above the
mean spirited and destructive ways of this world to shine as lights for Him.
We saw that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit with us, and so is gentleness. Gentleness is the 7th
fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. So again, gentleness comes from the Lord not
from the situation. As we have the Spirit of the Lord with us, we don’t have to react to the
negativity of others. We can proact (as I like to call it) in the attitudes we gain from living by
the Holy Spirit. To do this takes a reminder of who we are. Stop and think! Jesus is with you.
You are a new person in Him. You are not a person of anger, cruelty, malice or bitterness. You
are a person of the Holy Spirit with His character growing in you that produces love, joy, peace,
gentleness and the rest. Let that be evident to all around you. Show people they don’t have to
be trapped by their reactions. Show people that there is a better way to live in gentleness. The
Lord is near! His Holy Spirit is with you in every relationship. He is in your heart and mind. Call
upon Him to be gentle with others. And this will dramatically change your relationships. Give it
a try and see how true this is!
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition,
with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. The power of Christ within us by His
Holy Spirit helps us to pray with hope and thanksgiving to find peace in any situation; even
ones we don’t understand. Hope is the assurance of things unseen. Paul wrote that in Hebrews
11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we
do not see. As Christ overcame all our enemies of sin, evil and death. We can be assured, not
just wishful, that we will overcome in Christ. Our future is secure and certain in Jesus. So we
turn every worry into prayer. We turn every anxiety into trust. We place ourselves back into the
proper perspective of living with Jesus the Victor. I hope you have learned to keep a prayer
journal and see how much the Lord answers prayers. I keep a prayer journal for our staff
meetings. We list our prayers. I go back over them and realize how faithfully the Lord has
answered so many of our prayers. If you keep a prayer journal, you will realize how much the
Lord answers your prayers. So pray in thanksgiving knowing He is listening and granting us
what we need and so much more. We have hope – confidence that God is with us and working
for us. Turn every worry into a prayer in our faithful God.
So these steps leads to peace, the 3rd fruit of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. Paul
wrote about this peace in verse 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. As we rejoice in
the Lord with us, we know He is near. We pray about everything with hope and thanksgiving,
so our lives fill with the peace of God. This transcends our understanding many times; meaning
it happens even when we don’t know how it happens. Often the Lord simply amazes me. I pray
for His direction in a confusing situation and next thing I know, He leads me out. I seek His
help in a strong temptation that seems ready to overwhelm me, and He sets me free. What
seemed so insurmountable has vanished. Turn every worry into a prayer! Call on the Lord even
when you don’t understand what to do and seem lost. The Good Shepherd loves to find His lost
sheep and bring them home. When I have doubts, I turn them over to the Lord and he guards
my mind. When I have fears, I give them to Him and he guards my heart. “the peace of God,
which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.”
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We are learning a new lifestyle in this Letter to the Philippians from Paul. He teaches us
practically how to find the Lord’s peace. Rejoice in His nearness. Be gentle in His gentleness.
Turn every worry into a prayer with thanksgiving. Find His peace which surpasses our
understanding. Now step 4 is found in verse 8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is
true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such
things. Garbage in leads to garbage out. That is true with computers and with human minds.
However, the more we fill our hearts, minds and lives with the good things of Christ, the more
we experience excellence in our lives. You don’t put terrible tasting ingredients into your
cooking and expect the food to taste good. You have to use the right ingredients for a good
meal. So it is with our thoughts. We can fill our minds with the violence, lust and desires of our
modern culture and they lead us to despair and destruction. Our dreams show us this is true.
We dream a lot about what we have experienced the day before, especially the 30 minutes
right before we sleep. What we have just seen on TV right before we sleep affects our dreams.
We dream our stress, fears and worries. We dream our desires. I describe my dreams as
nighttime TV that can be quite disgusting at times. At other times my dreams can be quite
funny or enjoyable.
Be careful of what you fill your minds with! Junk fills our minds with junk. There is proven
correlation between video game violence and real life violence. There is proven degradation of
relationships when pornography is often used. Or we can fill our minds with the excellence of
Christ to lead to excellence in our lives. The songs we listen to so easily fill our minds. I could
not get a catchy song by one of my favorite bands out of my mind as I took a walk the other
day. It played over and over in my mind for almost an hour until I could get another song in my
head by playing my car radio. It gets really bad when it is a dumb song that gets stuck in our
thoughts. Much better to fill our minds with praiseworthy songs that lifts us into the Lord’s
presence. They also often help us memorize Bible verses. Bible verses should fill our minds by
reading them in the morning, keeping them in front of us during the day, and reading them at
night. Worship is not just a Sunday thing. Worship can happen any time of the week as we
focus on our gracious Lord. Prayer again helps us focus on Christ. What are you reading?
Trashy novels waste your time and fill your heads with garbage. Read good books that help you
find excellence in life. Christian books are great. There are many good ones on any subject you
need help with or want to mature and grow in. Ask me for some good titles. But you don’t have
to read just Christian books. Read history books and biographies of great people. Let the lives
of those who have gone before and lived well inspire us to seek out the better life.
There are good movies you can go see instead of so many bad ones out there. I saw a snippet
of one hit movie this week and turned it off after a few minutes. The dialogue was one foul
swear word after another. Things they thought were funny were just foolish. Don’t see a movie
that tries to make you feel like a young school boy or girl playing stupid pranks again. I cannot
understand why anyone would pay money to see such trash. That is what we call a stupid tax.
See the good movies. Many more are coming out that elevate us not degrade us. See a movie
that helps you see how the Lord created you to make a difference in your relationships. I have
a movie to share with you and 400 of our closest friends and neighbors coming out at the end
of August. We have a movie theater for just our own group, not just one time this time, but 2
times. The movie is called “The War Room” from the same people who made “Courageous” and
“Fireproof.” It is just as good, maybe better. “The War Room” is the prayer room for a follower
of Jesus where the real battles are won, relationships are healed, and evil is overcome. People
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are set free for greater life in Christ. That is a movie you want to see. I will be selling tickets in
a few weeks. I will have the only tickets to see the movie before anyone else in Apple Valley
can see it. I will also have the only tickets to the premier showing on opening night at the prime
time. So you can choose which night you want to see the War Room and take your friends,
family and neighbors. You do have a choice. Fill your minds with excellent and praiseworthy
things!
9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it
into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. We think excellence and then we do
that excellence. Doing excellent things helps even more to fill my life with the peace and
greatness of God. The more I eat healthy foods, the better I feel. The more I keep myself
physically fit with the right amount of exercise, the better I sleep and the more energy I have.
The more I spend time in prayer, Bible study, and worship, the better each day goes. When I
am about to meet with someone, I pray about the meeting first and it usually helps that
meeting go very well. Even the difficult meetings are not as bad when I pray about them first.
The more I spend time with brothers and sisters in the Lord, the more joy I find in my life. Put
the excellence of God into practice for excellent lives.
We never live alone in the Lord. We can call on each other to find the excellence of God. Put
this into practice when things get tough. I was grateful to help out a fellow pastor and his
church this week. He called and asked for my help. 2 of his elders also called me. I was glad to
help and I think we have him on the right track now. I so appreciate the brothers and sisters I
call on who constantly help me keep out of trouble and find the better ways of our Lord. Put
into practice the behaviors of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Put into practice what I share with
you. Put into practice the encouragement and wisdom that wise counselors in Christ give you.
We all want you to succeed. We are not setting you up for failure but for greater life in the
Lord.
We could avoid a lot of stress and worry if we just did what these verses tell us. We can
discover peace in this world. How? Live with the Prince of peace with us. The promise of these
verses is that if we fill our lives with the good things of Jesus, the God of peace will share His
peace with us now and forever. Rejoice always! Be gentle in Christ! Pray with thanksgiving to
God! Seek excellence with your heart, mind, body and soul! Practice that excellence every day!
And the God of peace, whom we know in Jesus Christ, will be with us today and forever. I pray
that you will hear this truth today and put it into practice all this week for the greater life our
Lord Jesus wants you to live.
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