The Peace That Passes All Understanding

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Philippians 4:6-7
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Increasingly, I encounter Christians who are caught in various kinds of fear, from simple worry, to chronic anxiety, to out-and-out paranoia. These unhappy believers labor under obsessive-compulsive thinking and behavior, they struggle with depression, insomnia, panic attacks, a radical need to control everything, and with deep mental and emotional exhaustion. Fear is a terrible, unrelenting taskmaster under whose cruel hand they are bound every day.

Which is why Paul begins in the passage above, not with a suggestion but with a command. "Be anxious for nothing" is written in the imperative form, in the form of an order. A fearful person recognizing this is immediately faced with a serious problem: They have not - and cannot - obey Paul's command. Forget being anxious for nothing; they are anxious about everything! And very profoundly so.

Clearly, these people might think, Paul didn't understand the life of the fearful person. Obviously, he didn't wrestle with the constant prospect of personal harm, as the anxious person does. Well, hang on, there. This isn't true at all. In fact, Paul wrote from a life filled with danger, persecution and heart-burdens:

2 Corinthians 11:22-28
23 Are they servants of Christ?—I speak as if insane—I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.
24 Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes.
25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep.
26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren;
27 I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.

Whoa! Paul's life was a nightmare of hardship! Danger everywhere, abuse and pain crowding his existence, and the people to whom he was sent by God seemed to despise him, resisting and even outright defying his service to them as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 12:20-21
20 For I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish—that perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.
21 I fear that when I come again my God may humble me before you, and I may have to mourn over many of those who sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality that they have practiced.

1 Corinthians 4:18-21
18 Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.
19 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.
20 For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
21 What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

2 Corinthians 10:10
10 For they say, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible."

It was in the midst of all of the danger and difficulty of being an apostle that Paul wrote his command to the Philippian church. Surely, he must have known what an impossible command it was to obey? Why did he write such a thing, then? Well, clearly, he didn't think it was so impossible to be anxious for nothing. He was, actually, writing from practical experience, not mere spiritual theory, from a life consistent with Philippians 4:6-7, not merely hoping one day to aspire to it.

Paul didn't just issue the command to be "anxious for nothing" without some direction as to how to do so. Immediately after his command, he offers guidance: "...in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."

Countless, though, are the Christians who've prayed to God about the things causing them worry who have been as anxious as ever, afterward. "It doesn't work," they tell themselves. "Just praying to God didn't stop my anxiety." What went wrong? Why would Paul point to prayer as a remedy for anxiety if prayer doesn't really do anything to alleviate it?

The answer is in the emphasis the believer gives to Paul's words, and the purpose in following them. The anxious Christian reading Paul's words to the Philippian church is, usually, most interested in being free of the awful grip of fear. This is their primary goal; they want the burden of anxiety to lift. And so, their attitude toward Paul's words in Philippians 4:6-7 is almost entirely instrumental. That is, they treat prayer like a tool to achieve the end they want and God like a divine vending machine from whom they can extract, with the instrument of prayer, their desired spiritual product: inner peace. When this approach to interacting with God fails, as it always will, the disappointed believer feels confirmed in a deep skepticism toward Paul's advice (encouraged by the devil, of course) and turns from God to other more "practical" remedies: drugs, therapy, support groups, etc.

It isn't the act of prayer that is the crucial thing, however, but the Object of one's prayer. Paul doesn't urge prayer as a tool for levering out of God what one wants, but as the way to turn from one's fears to fix upon the One who has promised to be the believer's "Refuge and Strength," their "strong tower," their "Good Shepherd" who protects and guides them, their Comforter, their Source of Strength, the Keeper of their minds and hearts, and so on. (Psalms 46:1; Psalms 63:1; John 10; 2 Corinthians 1:3-5; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 2:13; Philippians 4:13)

We are conformed to that upon which we focus ourselves. This is one of the basic features God has built into human psychology. Some businesses spend millions every year on advertising in recognition of this fundamental aspect of humanity. Political and ideological propaganda, too, "milks" this principle of human thinking and behavior, shouting slogans, and platforms, and theories at the public as often as possible. And God also deals with us within the context of this foundational human "Conformity to Focus" characteristic.

Hebrews 12:2-4
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

2 Corinthians 3:18
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:2
2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

Philippians 3:7-8
7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

Paul points the anxious person to God through prayer, knowing that as they fix their mind on Him, "the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace." But it isn't merely a shift of focus that is at play in Paul's instructions to the fearful believer. The Christian can find all sorts of things with which to distract themselves from their anxieties and cares: Hobbies, books, t.v., relationships, work, etc. God, though, is in another category altogether from these things. He isn't merely a distraction but the Ground of All Reality; He doesn't just occupy our attention for a time, here and there, but is the Ultimate Purpose of our existence, the Alpha and Omega of our lives - or He should be.

The believer who is bound in fear reveals that God is not at the heart of his (or her) life. When He is, fear has no ground out of which to grow, withering in the stunning light of God's love, promises and power.

1 John 4:16-19
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.

Hebrews 13:5-6
5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
6 So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

Romans 8:35-39
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED."
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Of what is there to be afraid when one is anchored and covered in the love and power of God Almighty? Nothing. Nothing at all. This is small comfort, however, to those who have set God on the margins of their life, only seeking Him out in the midst of crisis, not to come under His authority and control, not to enter into fellowship with Him, but to find relief from their problems.

Paul addressed this point when he wrote, "...the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

The "peace of God" is not a feeling but a Person: Jesus Christ. It is in being rooted in him, the "Prince of Peace," daily governed and transformed by the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9-14), that the "peaceable fruit of righteousness," the fruit of the Spirit which, in part, is peace, is the possession of the Christian believer (Galatians 5:22-23; Romans 14:17; Romans 15:13). It is in being ruled by him, by the peace that he is (Colossians 3:15), that the believer obtains a settled inward calm in the midst of a life that, like Paul's, is filled with hardship, pain and heartache.

So, fellow child of God, are you seeking mere relief of anxiety, or a life lived in submission to, and in fellowship with, God? Paul's words in Philippians 4:6-7 are predicated on the latter desire, not the former. Are you seeking just a feeling of inner calm, or the Prince of Peace? When you pray, is it to the God you know and love, or to a distant, shadowy figure far out on the edge of your life, that you only acknowledge when things are going badly? Your answers to these questions will have an enormous bearing on the result of obeying the divine command to "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."