(new article tomorrow)
Philippians 4: [6] Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
[7] And the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Preacher Norman B. Harrison said many years ago in a famous
sermon outline, “Be careful for nothing, be prayerful for everything, be
thankful for anything.”
That’s the attitude to have. I’m careful for nothing,
meaning I’m not worried and full of care about anything. Things aren’t the
issue in my life, says Richard Jordan.
I’m prayerful about everything; I’m living my life under
the constant scrutiny of examining what’s going on in light of what God says.
And then in everything give thanks. When you do that, the
peace OF God. I think about that. What do words mean: “The peace OF God.” The
peace that belongs to God. God’s own calm, still, restful heart. Understand,
God is at peace today. He’s not worried about anything. He’s not upset. He’s
not, “Oh whew, whew, wonder what they’re going to do down there.”
I love the word “rest.” Faith rests, because faith is
simply resting. The first time rest appears in the Bible it’s after six days of
working, making creation, and on the seventh day He rested. He said, “It’s
done. The work’s finished. The purpose for which I’ve labored these six days to
accomplish, this creation, now I’m going to enter into it; I’m going to enjoy
it.”
In that rest that God has--that confidence that God has,
that calm, restful heart--can be your personal profession. God filling your
heart with His own divine stillness—the peace of God.
It’s interesting when you look at verse 9: [9] Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
You see, it’s the God of peace who
gives you the peace of God.
*****
By the way, the word “anxiety” and the word “anger” come
from the same root, and they’re all connected with fear.
How do you get away from that? How do you stop that? You
know, Christian people worry about strange things. We worry about different
things than the world does, but we worry about them nonetheless.
Again, Paul says, “In EVERY thing by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
Instead of being careful about things, we’re to be
prayerful, meaning we’re going to talk to God about them. Instead of being
filled with unrest inside, I’m to talk to God about these things.
The “everything” answers to the “nothing.” No thing over
here is to be something that I be anxious, worried and full of care about,
troubled about in my spirit, because EVERYTHING over here, I’m talking to God
about. Do you get that? That’s great.
But you know one of the strangest things to me is that
Christian people read that verse and one of the things they worry about the
most is their prayer life. That’s a truth; you know it is.
“What should we pray for? How should we pray?” Everything goes
haywire when you’re worried about prayer. Listen, if you’re worrying about how
to pray in your prayer life, forget about not worrying about everything else.
Because you’ve just jettisoned the thing that keeps you from worrying about
everything else.
The way you war on worry is being prayerful for everything
and thankful in anything. But if you’re going to worry about whether you’re
praying right, you just lost it. And I tell you, folks, people do that.
Let me say this: Relax. There is no wrong way to pray in
the dispensation of grace. There are some uninformed ways to pray, but you’re
not going to make God mad at you if you say the wrong thing when you’re
praying. Because you know what? You’re going to say the wrong thing. Relax.
*****
Norman Baldwin Harrison (1874-1960) was a well-known
pastor, evangelist and New Testament expositor with many writings.
Here are some outtakes from a website that’s made his
messages from Philippians were made available.
This duality is the key to victorious living.
“In Me . . . peace. In the world . . . tribulation; but . . . I have overcome
the world” (John 16:33). To live in the world is to be subject to its
vicissitudes, which are many. To live in Christ, merely resident in the world,
is to live in His complete, perpetual victory.
****
Christian's dual sphere of life, “in Christ Jesus at . . .” involves a paradox of experience. He may have Joy in the Lord while utterly lacking in Happiness at (the place of his residence). The paradox rests upon the separateness of the two spheres. Happiness is external. Etymologically, it is derived from “happenings.” So is it practically.
If the external happenings of life suit us, we say we are “happy.” If they shift or become uncertain, we are unhappy. It is a miserable chameleon existence. Yet it is the lot of all who merely live “at” their physical abode.
Joy is inward. It
is “in the Lord”—in the inner sphere of the heart where He indwells. Its source
is spiritual. Its resources are independent of circumstance. The degree of joy
is often heightened and accentuated by the adversity of circumstance.
*****
A PROMISED PEACE (7). “The peace of God which passeth knowledge (surpasseth our natural powers of understanding, so unaccounted for by our circumstances, so contrary to them), SHALL keep (guard over) your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
It is military language. As a
garrison of soldiers God will have His peace take possession of our hearts and
minds. He will throw the cordon of His peace about us to ward off every
worrying, vexatious thought that would infest us.
*****
We need more than peace; we need the Person—the God of peace. OUR IDEAL IN CHRIST. Paul is addressing himself to the Greek mind, with whom the pursuit of “virtue” was a habitual occupation.
He would
have them know that the Christian faith has not only the loftiest ideal of all
that is virtuous and praiseworthy, but the provision for realizing that ideal.
This exemplary life, all the qualities he has enumerated, has already found
expression in the Man Christ Jesus. And if the Pattern of life seem too remote, Paul
is emboldened to direct them to a measurable realization of that model
character, even in himself.
*****
“Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be IN HIM a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). That is, from “within him.”
As this tact unfolds in experience, how wondrously PERSONAL He becomes. Christ is in Heaven; yes. Christ is common to all Christians; yes. But—He is mine. He is all mine, personal to me.
As I kneel in prayer, though a thousand others be similarly engaged, I do not share my Christ with them, claiming but a thousandth of His thought, His time, attention and love. I have it all, undivided. He is mine, all mine. Yet this is just as true in the experience of the other thousand, if they are truly His. How wonderful.”