Tune My Heart, Week 7
- Stacy Bishop
- Sep 3, 2024
- 3 min read
Happy Sunday, friend. As you prepare for worship this morning, let’s take a moment of quiet to invite God’s presence into your awareness today.
4 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.
-Philippians 4:4-5
This scripture sounds cyclical to me. When I rejoice always. When I give my anxieties to God, then I have peace. And when I have peace I can’t help but rejoice. Right? It makes perfect sense, theoretically.
Peace seems like the thing everyone is truly searching for. Whether it’s financial peace, relational peace, spiritual peace, or world peace, it’s something that we know that we need. Paul says the peace of God transcends all understanding. It's something we can have but we can’t even explain the how or the why, because it doesn’t make earthly sense. It’s something that the world can see in a Christian and recognize that clearly there is something different in them.
I knew a woman when I was a kid who seemed happy all the time. The pessimism in me came out at an early age, so understanding this kind of happy was so hard. She was quick to give God praise in circumstances when it didn’t make sense and she really seemed to be at peace, trusting that God was in control. As a kid who had yet to experience that peace, she seemed fake to me. How could anyone really be that happy and trusting?
In a world where things seem to be constantly spinning further and further out of control, peace often feels like an unattainable goal. Except for when you’ve had that peace of God, it really does transcend all understanding. You can’t explain it. You didn’t do anything to make it happen. It’s just an overwhelming sense of reassurance that can only be explained as being from God. HE is, after all, called the God of Peace.
If you’re not feeling that peace this morning, start with rejoicing. Even in the midst of chaos, He is still good and worthy of all praise. Then pray and truly tell God what you’re feeling, the anxieties you’re dealing with. And then keep praising until the peace comes.
Let's pray.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we need you. We need you for our breath, our life, our daily bread. We need your peace. If we’re not feeling peace this morning, would You give it to us in a way that only You can. Let Your peace overflow in the way we lead today, that people would see You in us and want what we have. Help us to praise You, whether we have peace or we do not, because we know that You are the giver of all good things that we already have and that are yet to come. God, we thank You that you are Jehovah Shalom, God our peace. God we give to You today our worries, our fears, and our doubts. May we rejoice in You always. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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