How to Protect Our Peace - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Are you feeling a sense of uneasiness? Today, you'll hear how to live in the peace of God, regardless of the chaos that rages around you. When is the last time that you could ever remember experiencing absolute peace in your heart? How long did it last?

Why did you lose it? Is that kind of peace something that just comes once in a while in your life? Or is it something that is there most of the time?

Is it only there when you get some spiritual high? Or is it that you just don't believe that's the way life is? Have you finally concluded that somehow peace is just something that comes once in a while, and certainly in this perturbed world that we live in, peace is a very rare commodity, and therefore don't expect it lest you be totally disappointed in life?

Well, I want to tell you, you don't have to look at life that way. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Philippians chapter four. And here is the answer to how to protect that peace.

Here's the answer to understanding what it is, and how to protect it, and how you can live in it daily. This is not written by somebody who's lying on the beach, who's very wealthy and very prominent. This is written by a man who's a prisoner. He's in a prison in Rome, chained to a Roman soldier 24 hours a day.

They're unjustly accused, and they're possibly at any moment could lose his life. And yet, in these four chapters he writes to the Philippian church, he keeps on talking about joy, and rejoicing in the Lord, and saying, yes, and again I say rejoice, and talking about peace. He's the man who says, I have learned that in whatever state I'm in, I've learned, he says, to be content. How could anyone have peace chained to a soldier 24 hours a day? And how could anyone have peace just being in prison itself? And how could he be talking about rejoicing?

Well, here's the answer. Let's look, if you will, beginning in this fourth chapter. And let's just start with verse four. And Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always.

And again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

And then he says, 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. What kind of peace is this? Is this real? Or is this just some idea? This is real.

It is very real. God would not put in His Word something that's not real and untrue. It is a matter of choice on our part as to whether we experience and live in peace or live with a disturbed mind and heart throughout our life. So let's look at the peace that he's speaking of here, the nature of it, because the very word peace means to bind together something that has been disjointed, to bring it together. It speaks in terms of being untroubled, unperturbed, unruffled. It speaks of serenity and tranquility and quietness and restfulness in a person's heart and emotions. It is real.

It is genuine. And it is absolutely the promise to every single believer. Now, that does not mean that there will not be those difficult trying times in your life. It does not mean the absence of trial and difficulty and hardship. But it means this sense of tranquility and peace and serenity and being unperturbed and unanxious, even in the midst of those trials.

Now, most people don't believe that. They think that somehow in order for me to have peace, my circumstances have got to be right. But you see, living in a prison chained to a Roman soldier are not circumstances that promote peace.

And so therefore, it's not a matter of circumstances. And this is why Paul says, he says, Not that I've learned to speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I'm in. He's learned to understand the real secret of true genuine peace, how to keep it once you have found it.

Now, where does it come from? You see, when you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, the Bible says, Jesus is our peace. He says, My peace I give unto you. That when we have Him, we have peace.

Here's what happens. When you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, the Bible says that then it's like He's grafted us into the vine. That is, He's placed us into Christ Jesus. That's why He says in the latter part of these verses in Christ, we're in Him and He is in us. That is, we have been made one with Him. So when you and I receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, the gift of peace becomes ours on the inside. So therefore, once the Lord Jesus Christ is in your life, you have all the peace that you will ever need.

Now, whether you enjoy it or not is up to you. But you have the gift of peace. It is a gift. It isn't something you work up.

It isn't something, for example, that you manipulate. It is a gift from God. So what we have to ask is, how is it that you and I can experience that kind of peace? And how long can we experience it?

Is this something that just sort of comes and goes? Is this something that God gives once in a while? Or does He mean for this to be sustaining peace in our life? Listen to what He says. He says, This peace is beyond comprehension. It is beyond comprehension. It is the peace, He says, that keeps us.

Listen to this. He says, surpasses all comprehension which will guard or keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Now, why did He use that word guard? Because Philippi was a Roman colony. And in all the Roman colonies, the Romans had their troops there, their guards. And they guarded that city from the enemy. And so when He said, the peace of God will garrison your heart about, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, they understood that.

Because they had a garrison of soldiers there that guarded them. And here's what He's saying, that the peace the Lord Jesus Christ gives is a peace that will protect you, garrison your heart about. That is, will guard your heart from thinking and feeling those things that you should not feel. Guard your mind from thinking those things that you should not think in order to preserve your peace. It's when our heart gets out of order. That is, when we begin to feel things we shouldn't feel.

When we begin to think things we should not think. Something happens to our peace. Is this peace supposed to be here and there, off and on, up and down, in and out? No. It is to be a sustaining continuous peace. Does that mean that there'll never come a time when you won't have it?

No. Because there will be those difficulties, there will be those trials, there will be those heartaches. But what He's simply saying is this, that standing at the door of our mind and our heart is a peace that passes all human understanding that will keep and guard us. There will be those moments when you and I get knocked off a balance for a moment. But what I want you to see in this passage that He only, listen, He only intends that for a moment.

He intends for us to be able to respond quickly in a specific way, which we'll talk about in a moment, that will help us be able to keep a sustaining peace. And so, when you think about the peace that you've had in your life, and I look back to that same question again, when is the last time you experienced this kind of peace? Tranquility, serenity and restfulness in your soul, that you could turn three hundred and six degrees and you know what?

Nothing troubled you, no matter where you look. Were the circumstances perfect? No. Things you'd like to change?

Yes. But in spite of all that, you had a peace you couldn't understand. How long did you keep it? Why did you lose it? What happens, listen to what Paul said, because he answers this question for us back in the sixth verse. He says, now, because there is a possibility of losing it and all of us have lost it at times. Listen to what he says. Be anxious for nothing.

Now that sounds absolutely ridiculous. How could he say don't be anxious about anything? I mean, after all, look at the things we've got to be anxious about.

So let me, let me describe something. This word here means to be perturbed in your heart and your spirit. It is a caring and a worry that becomes tormenting. That is, anxiety isn't just a little brief, well, I don't feel good. Anxiety is a tormenting kind of caring worrying. So when he says here, don't be anxious about anything, we're talking about an apprehension about future things. We're talking about the fact that you are fearful of losing control of your circumstances.

We're talking about doubts and fears that arise because your circumstances that are such that they've thrown you off balance. Anxiety is not only something that will steal your peace, it'll kill you ultimately physically. Anxiety affects the whole body, mind, spirit. Anxiety affects your physical being, your emotions. Anxiety is a killer. He says do not be anxious about anything.

He doesn't say some things, he says about anything. And so what happens is we allow fear in our life and what happens is we certainly lose our peace. Now somebody says, well, but you certainly ought to be, you've got to be concerned about things. Now there's a difference in being concerned and being anxious. Concern is a caring about things in which you also recognize God has a part in that.

Anxiety is something totally different. So are we going to be caring about things? Yes, we are. There are those legitimate concerns in life which all of us have and certainly our Lord would expect us to. No, why does He tell us to act irresponsible? But we're to live in peace and we certainly will have cares and concerns in our life. When our caring and our carefulness becomes fretting, we have moved over into the anxiety category and that isn't what God wants for us in our life. And so it doesn't mean we're to be indifferent about the circumstances of life. We're to be concerned in a Godly fashion, remembering that our Heavenly Father is in control of every single thing of life and so therefore we do not have to just throw up our hands and just have a fit. So what happens is when there are concerns that come along in our life and we take our eyes off God, then what happens? Then our genuine caring becomes anxiety, becomes anxiousness. Now we can legitimize our anxiety, but we can't legitimize it scripturally.

We cannot do it. But the simple reason, if you'll think about this, whatever you and I are facing in life, no matter what it is, we know that God is absolutely sovereign. He is in control. We know that He is omniscient.

He knows all about every detail of it. We know that He is a genuinely loving, caring Father, so He is going to do the right thing in every circumstance. So with that in mind, if I understand that, why should I become anxious and perturbed and lose my peace when I know that no matter what my circumstance is, my Heavenly Father knows all about it. He has power to change in any way He wants to change it.

And He is a loving Father who desires not that we lose our peace, but that we learn, listen, to live in sustained peace in the most difficult trying times. So circumstances will never be perfect. You're not going to ever reach a stage in your life, a position in life, a place in life where everything is finally going to get just like you want it. A lot of people think that, well, when I retire, then I'm going to relax and, man, I'm going to have peace and everything's going to be fine. Most people I know who retire, they've got more to do than they did when they work. That's what they tell me.

I'm busier than I've ever been in my life. Or you know what happens? They decide they're going to retire and not sit around and do nothing. And before long, they get sick. They've told their body to shut down, not going to do anything.

Or they become restless. Well, I don't have the goals I used to have. I don't have this to do.

I don't have anything to do. God never intended any circumstance to steal our joy and our peace. Knock us off base for a moment. Can't help that when something hits us by surprise. But when it does, there is a right response in order not to lose our peace. Now, somebody says, well, you talk about concern and you talk about anxiety. How am I going to know that my caring has really become anxiety? Well, I want to give you three little ideas you might want to just jot down because you can test them on yourself because we all hit those moments in life and we think, okay, Lord, how are we going to deal with this?

There are three things I'd say about this. Number one, and that is, you'll know that your genuine legitimate concern and caring has slipped over into anxiety when, first of all, you're more concerned about what you desire than the will of God. When you're more concerned about what you want than the will of God, then what happens is you're going to become anxious.

Because if you're not concerned, first of all, about the will of God, you're concerned about your desires, what you're going to do is you're going to start thinking about how to manipulate your circumstance. What can you change? What can you do? What you cannot do? What are people going to think?

Has this going to work? Suppose that happens. Suppose this doesn't happen. And before long, you have become very anxious about the circumstance. So number one, when your concern becomes more about what you want, what you desire, than the will of God.

The second thing is this. When you find yourself being hurried into making unwise or ill decisions, that is, when you find yourself being shoved, pushed, hurried into making a decision, you have lost your sense of concern and caring, you've moved over into the anxiety field. And that is, God does not want us making unwise decisions. He does not want us making decisions rushed into and shoved and pushed.

And somebody says, you must do this, you ought to do that, you should do the other. What does God want you to do? What's the will of God?

What is the purpose and plan of God at this moment in your life? What about this circumstance from God's viewpoint? Listen, you see, the reason Jesus had such perfect peace all the time, it certainly had nothing to do with His circumstances. They were on His case all the time.

The reason was this. Jesus was always seeing things from His Father's perspective. He saw them, He looked at them the way His Father saw them.

When you and I learn to live in peace, here's what will happen. We will find ourselves seeing, observing, evaluating our circumstances on the basis of how does the Father see it? Now, if I know that He's omnipotent and has all power, I'm going to see this as, listen, very much in His control. If I know that He's omniscient, I'm going to see this, that He knows every single detail of it. So I may have forgotten some things, I don't know all the truth, and I don't know all the details, but certainly He does. And if I see Him as a loving Father, I know that in this circumstance, He's only going to do what is best for me.

He's only going to do what's right and good and best, what pleases Him, honors Him, and what'll bless me. And so, once you begin to understand that, you begin to understand when it moves from concern over to anxiety. And then I think there's a third reason, and that is, when we find ourselves being constantly agitated and constantly perturbed about something, you have moved from a genuine concern into anxiety.

What does He say? Don't be anxious about anything. So if I'm more concerned about what I want than the will of God, I'm headed for trouble.

When I find myself being pushed into making a decision I'm not certain about, not sure about, or disturbed about, I'm into the anxiety realm. And I know what people say, you say, well, now listen, you mean to tell, no, remember what we said? We're not talking about escaping reality, we're not talking about escaping the struggles, we're not talking about denying the fact that there are difficulties, we're talking about being able to view them from the view of the Lord Jesus Christ and protecting our peace. You don't have to lose it because the circumstances have gotten so bad. You don't have to lose it. Listen, we lose it because we lay it down. We choose to lay it down. We choose to feel a certain way. We choose to think a certain way. We choose to think a certain way, lose our peace. Choose to let certain emotions envelop us, overwhelm us, overshadow us, penetrate us, pervade our heart, we lose our peace.

It is the decision that we make. It isn't a circumstance that forces itself upon us. It cannot force itself upon a child of God who said, and what Paul said in Corinthians, he said, no temptation of trial has taken you, but such is as common to man.

But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tested, tempted, and tried more than you're able to bear as you trust in Him, but will be able to make a way of escape that you and I may be able to bear it. And so therefore, He's in control. He says, you want to protect your peace? When you get hit with something, the first thing you do, He says, don't be anxious about it. He says, bring it to God.

Bring it to the Father immediately, and you will not lose your peace. Thank you for listening to How to Protect Our Peace. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.