Philippians 4:6-7
Many people have Bible verses that they've committed to memory, and that they allow to guide their life. Large decisions and life changing junctures are often marked by a reflection on these passages. These are most often referred to as life verses. I would venture to guess that everyone that reads Scripture with any kind of consistency has adopted a life verse, even if they are unaware of it. The mark of a life verse is that in every course-altering situation one finds themself in, before every significant choice one faces, the same verse or passage of scripture comes to mind. Sometimes we find a life verse. Sometimes we come across a verse or passage that we find great wisdom or comfort in, and we commit it to memory and adopt it as a guide for living. Other times, our life verses may find us. We might read a passage in passing and not think anything of it, but for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit brings it back to us again and again. In either case, when a life verse has been identified, it's important to spend some time meditating on it. If this verse or passage is to serve as a guide, than to understand what it says, and more than that, what it means is vitally important.
I fall into the latter camp, having had a life verse find me. There was a time in college when I was attempting to memorize large numbers of verses and passages from the Bible using a program developed by the Navigators called the Topical Memory System or TMS. What the TMS does is it pulls together scriptures from throughout the Bible about a given topic and lists them all together in order that one can easily lookup and memorize them. By the end, if the program is completed, thousands of verses or passages will be committed to memory. That's if the program is completed. I, on the other hand, was somewhat lacking in resolve and commitment, and only lasted to about 30 or 40, which, at this point, has dropped down to about 15 or so that I can pull up from memory alone. Included in those 30 some passages was a verse from the apostle Paul, as he writes to the church in Philippi. Philippians, chapter four verses six and seven reads
“Do not be anxious about anything, 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 understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:6-7
As I continued on, looking at and memorizing more passages of Scripture, I kept coming back to this one, not because I found some profound sense of solace or peace from it, but because it would just pop into my mind. Whenever I would feel stressed about anything, the Holy Spirit would bring Philippians 4:6-7 to my mind. Again and again this verse would pop into my head. This was the case all throughout college and into life post-college. It's been a year or so since I've recognized this verse as a life verse, and so now, I'm going to dive into it, meditate over it, and try and draw out both what it says, and what it means so that I and whoever else wants to come along can glean from this passage some of the wisdom it has to offer.
To begin with, I think it's important to highlight what this passage is not saying. It's easy to see a passage like this one with the words “...the peace of God … will guard your hearts and minds...” and think “Great! All I have to do is pray for the crap in my life and it all will go away!”. The reason this is easy, at least for us in the United States, is because we've built a society that is largely hedonistic. Comfort, ease, pleasure all equate to “good” and discomfort, difficulty, pain all equate to “bad”. When we hear the word “peace”, we associate it with “good”, which is a correct response. The problem comes when we think of all the things we've associated with “good” coupled with the compartmentalized separation between those things and the things we've associated with “bad”.
In the Kingdom of God, a God-centered paradigm, the things that fall under both good and bad in our worldly paradigm often migrate from one side to the other. For instance, pleasure can be good, but there are times when it may migrate over to bad. In the Kingdom paradigm, pain still sits on the side of bad, but there are times when it will migrate over to the side of good. So on and so forth (we'll explore this more fully in a moment). It is with this shifted paradigm that we can see what it is that this verse is telling us.
Read the verse quoted above (Philippians 4:6-7) again. This verse is telling us to take action in two specific ways. First, Paul tells us “Do not be anxious about anything...”. What does this mean? What does it mean to be anxious? There are two definition for this word that are consistent with the original greek, the first being a mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune, and the other being to seek to promote one's interests, whether to provide or care for others or for one's self. Whether it's worrying about circumstances or worrying about the things we or others need, Paul says don't do it. Don't worry about it.
Anyone who's ever been living and breathing knows that this is very easy to say, but very, very difficult to do. That's why Paul doesn't stop there. He goes on to give us a second action point. He says don't worry about it, “but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God”. Instead of being anxious about our life and the things we need to live it, Paul tells us to ask God for it. In Matthew 6:8, Jesus says “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” For our lives and the stuff we need to live it, we just need to come before God in prayer and supplication. Supplication is just a big word that means asking God for things. Don't worry about it, but rather, ask God for it.
The only way in which you and I can truly be free from worry about anything is if we have a calm or a peace about whatever it is that's causing the anxiety. That's what Paul tells us we will get when we do this, but there's something he says in between prayer and supplication and peace of God that's very important but easy to overlook. It's the small phrase “...with thanksgiving...”. Again we come to the issue of paradigms. This tiny phrase is easy to overlook because we think about anxiety and view it from our worldly paradigm, giving thanks for it is the last thing we think to do. Worry, difficulty, pain, these are all bad things from our point of view, why would we give thanks for them? But in the Kingdom paradigm they migrate to the other side, the good side. From this point of view, these things are a gift. To show that this is so, we'll need to look at a few other passages of Scripture. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he writes
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” -Romans 5:1-5
Later, Peter would speak to the Christians living under the rule of Emperor Nero, known for his hatred for and sadistic tendencies toward Christians, saying
“In this [your inheritance from God] you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. … Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” -1 Peter 1:6-7, 1 Peter 4:12-13
Around the same time as Peter was writing, James wrote to the twelve tribes of Israel that were now scattered around the region, speaking to the same issue. He says
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” -James 1:2-4
All three of these apostolic writers share the same conviction that trials – pain, difficulty, suffering – are not things to curse God for, but rather to thank Him for. In all three passages, the word suffering has been equated with the words “rejoice” or “joy”. Why? Both Paul and James say that through suffering, our character is shaped into the likeness of Christ's. Peter tells us that perseverance in our times of trial and suffering will act as an indicator, letting us know that our faith is genuine and not just a construct of our own minds. Both of these are to be desired, both are good. When we look at our hardships, our pain, our difficulties through this lens, we begin to view these times of suffering as a gift.
Go back up and read the passage form Philippians again, then think about what we've just discovered about suffering. When we put this verse and the reality about suffering together, we can see that Philippians 4:6-7 is more than just a way of coping with our difficulties, more than just a shelter from the pain of life in a fallen world, but it's a call to radically transform our lives by aligning our paradigm with that of the Kingdom of God. Rather than viewing undesirable circumstances as something to wait out or get through, Paul is calling us to embrace our suffering, experience our pain, live in our difficulties, not simply weather them. When we do this, our character begins to resemble that of Christ's.
It then becomes clear that the peace of God that Paul speaks of in verse seven is not simply a dulling of our anxieties or a comfort to be had amidst our pain. The peace of God that Paul talks about comes from a supernatural conversion in which our pain is transformed into rejoicing, our suffering is turned to laughter, and our difficulties become our joy. Our anxiety is not just relieved, it's radically changed and flipped upside down by the love and redemptive power of Christ. When this happens, the peace and calm both of heart and mind that we find in Christ will characterize our life as anxiety ceases to be a part of it. When we live out of a Kingdom paradigm, when we put on the character of Christ, it becomes a defensive barrier that's set up all around us, and whenever difficulties, pain or suffering come into contact with it, they're immediately transformed into rejoicing, into a joy that surpasses all understanding.
This passage has shaped, and is continuing to shape my life. But this passage, by itself, can't give the peace of which it speaks. This passage simply points the way to a larger truth, that the peace of God is free for the taking in and through the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ. If you don't know Jesus, if right now you can't say that you have a relationship with Him, it is my prayer that He would break into your life, and that you would welcome him with open arms. May you experience the unshakable peace of God that is found in Christ Jesus, and may you experience what it means to truly be free, to live in the Kingdom of God right here, right now.
