Sự Bình An Vượt Quá Lý Trí
2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. 3 Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel, together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. 4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. 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. 8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. 9 The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Mrs. Johnson was a 70-year-old widow living in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi when hurricane Katrina hit. Mrs. Johnson was legally blind and had no transportation. She relied on her daughter, her neighbors, the senior citizen shuttle, or people from her church for transportation. When emergency management issued the mandatory evacuation order, she called all of her normal transportation contacts, but could not reach anybody. She faced hurricane Katrina alone.
Due to her remote location, mass devastation, and no means of communication, she did not see another human being for 2 weeks after the hurricane passed through. Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers found her only because they became lost trying to find a different place. They were going out to do assessments when they took a wrong turn and saw her sitting out by an intersection ½ mile from her residence.
They stopped to ask her for directions. During the conversation, one of the volunteers asked her about her situation. She calmly explained her situation and the volunteers radioed into the disaster relief communications unit her information and location. One of the volunteers stayed with her as the others went on to their appointment.
Within hours other volunteers arrived, used chainsaws to cut all the downed trees on her street to get access to her house. They retrieved some of her clothes, medications, etc., and relocated her to a Red Cross shelter.
Our chaplains were amazed over her story and the great peace and joy she expressed. Everybody she knew had left without her. She faced the nation’s worst hurricane all alone. Nobody, including her family had come to check on her, and she had been alone for two weeks.
We met many frightened, angry, and bitter people during Katrina but Mrs. Johnson exuded peace and joy. When one of the chaplains asked her if she had been afraid, she said that there were moments she thought she would die, but that God had been with her for 70 years and she wasn’t going to doubt Him now.
Mrs. Johnson had something that many Christians still have not experienced, a peace that passes all understanding.
Paul, in Philippians 4: 7 writes “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This wasn’t just peace, but a peace that doesn’t make sense to the world. This peace defies logic and reason, it is beyond the human ability to understand. Mrs. Johnson’s peace was illogical given the situation that she had lost everything she owned, her house, all her furnishings, pictures, everything she had collected over 70 years. She could have easily lost her life. How could she have peace when everybody had deserted her, even her own family? Yet, she didn’t have any bitterness.
There were some at the Red Cross shelter that thought she might need to see a mental health provider because they thought she was in denial. She wasn’t in denial, she was well aware of all that she lost. Even some of our chaplains wondered if she might have repressed some of her true feelings. She had not repressed anything, she was a woman that walked with God in humility and obedience and she made good spiritual choices.
Isn’t this the kind of peace we want? I would assume that all Christians would want this kind of peace.
Paul writes about how to have this kind of peace, and Mrs. Johnson is an example of everything Paul writes. Thus, we see a real life example of what Paul wrote.
How do we develop this peace?
Live in harmony with each other in the Lord Verse 2
Rejoice in the Lord -- Worship Verse 4
Be anxious for nothing Verse 6
Have a disciplined mind Verse 8
First: There is no peace without harmony. Paul begins in verse 2 with, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord.”
I don’t know of anybody except the Devil that wants to see conflict in the church. Many people leave a church every year due to conflict. Many new churches spring up in a community because there was conflict in a church, people got upset, left, and started a new church. New church starts due to conflict are never healthy starts and many of those churches fold within a few years. It is impossible to plant a healthy church with bitter seeds.
It is interesting that the first thing Paul says about peace here is for these two women to live in harmony, but he never elaborates on how to reconcile this conflict. Paul deals with church conflict in almost every one of his letters. In those letters, he discusses what the problem is and gives instructions on what the church needs to do to resolve the conflict, but here he gives no instruction.
However, Paul does use a unique way of phrasing his statement that tells us a lot. Notice, he does not say, “I urge Euodia and Syntyche to live in harmony.” He uses an emphatic phrase as two separate sentences, “I urge Euodia, and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord.”
What was the conflict over? Who was at fault? Who started it? Who was the bad person, the aggressor? Which of them had done wrong?
Paul never says. It didn’t matter. None of these questions are important. The conflict was the problem, not the issue or seed of the conflict. This was not a question of doctrine or theology, or Paul would have dealt with it. It had nothing to do with holiness, righteousness, sin, morality or ethics, Paul deals with these issues all through his letters. Whatever they were fighting over wasn’t important enough for Paul to address.
There was a church in a building program and it was time to paint the inside of the new sanctuary. Some church members got together to paint it and one person wanted Cream White, another person wanted Navajo White, a third person wanted Antique White. They argued over the color of the walls.
Which one of them was right? Who was the bad person?
The real issue here was not the color of the paint. The real issue here is who had the power, the authority to get their own way. It was power and control. There are millions of people out there who do not know Christ and they are arguing over paint!
Both of these women were equally at fault. However, neither of them was emotionally or spiritually mature enough to let go of the issue. Eoudia was convinced she was right, she didn’t see herself as the aggressor or the bad person here, and the same for Syntyche.
This is a difficult area for Christians. Sometimes we fight over that which is insignificant. Sometimes we go to the opposite extreme and not challenge that which is clearly wrong. Every church is going to have conflict, just as every family will have conflict at some time. We need wisdom, courage, and love to address conflict. Jesus commends the work of godly conflict resolution in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth.”
St Francis of Assissi wrote a wonderful prayer that I have found to be of great value.
Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, and grant me the wisdom to know the difference.
Although this prayer does not address human relationships specifically, it does apply. Lord, grant me the courage to take a stand and fight on issues that are right. Lord, grant me the serenity and the humility to accept and not argue over things that are not really important. Finally, Lord, grant me the wisdom to know what is important and what is not important for Your Kingdom.
Second: True peace is grown through genuine worship. In verse 4 Paul says,” Rejoice in the Lord always”
The term, rejoice comes from the Greek word for joy. To understand this passage we need to understand the term joy. Many people talk about happiness. Everybody wants to be happy. Let me challenge you to a little Bible study. Find all the occurrences of the word happiness in the New Testament. I looked through four different English versions of the Bible and could not find a single use of the word happy in the New Testament. The Old Testament has very few occurrences of happiness.
There is a huge difference between happiness and joyous. The English word happy comes from an old word happenstance, which means good or favorable events or happenings. Happiness then is the emotional response of people to good and pleasing events in their lives. As long as only good things happen to people, they are happy. A person wins a million dollar lottery oh they will be happy, as long as the money is there. When the money is gone, they will be unhappy. Happiness is dependent on external situations being favorable.
Joy is different. Joy in an internal state that exists apart from what is happening outside. It is a sense of hope, confidence, and trust in God that nothing can shake. Like Mrs. Johnson, Katrina hit and took her home but she had joy, because nothing could take away the presence of Christ in her heart. Let the world throw storms and destruction at her. Her confidence was in the Lord.
True worship exists in the context of life’s ups and downs. If we worship the Lord only when things are good and we can be happy, then that is not really worship at all. Genuine worship is a person praising God even in the midst of the most difficult times. This fact was not lost on the church at Philippi. When Paul went to Philippi to preach the Gospel, the authorities arrested him, tied him to a post, whipped him, and then threw him into prison. There is nothing to be happy about there. At midnight, according to the book of Acts, Paul was singing praises to God. Here is a man, in severe pain. He has been wrongfully accused, wrongfully beaten, and wrongfully jailed, but his faith in God has not waivered and he is singing and worshiping the Lord. More than that, as Paul is penning this letter he is in a Roman jail.
This isn’t just some man preaching on a subject he has no personal experience with. Paul knew more about suffering than most of us. In his ministry he had been stoned and left for dead, beaten, snake bit, shipwrecked, thrown to wild beasts, imprisoned numerous times, and deserted by friends. He is in prison as he write this and he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.”
Third: There cannot be True Peace Where There is Anxiety. In verse 6 Paul writes, “Be anxious for nothing…”
Anxiety is a very interesting. Of all the human emotions anxiety is the only emotion that serves no worthwhile purpose. Anger is appropriate in some situations requiring action. Jesus Himself displayed anger. Fear is essential for survival or we might do foolish things like stick our hands in dark holes where spiders live. Of all the human emotions, I have yet to discover a single value of anxiety or worry.
Anxiety is never about reality but our unchecked or our unexamined perception of reality.
Anxiety is never about the here and now, but of that which may be at some time in the future.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus deals a lot with this subject. He says in Matthew 6:25
“Do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on.”
Notice that Jesus speaks about a possible future. Do not worry about what you will eat- will eat is a future concern not a present reality. Anxiety is a twisted or perverted form of fear – It is the fear of something that is not real yet and may never be real. It is the fear of an unknown future.
Anxiety is a lack of faith. It leaves God out of the picture. Jesus said, “Your Father knows you need these things. Jesus teaches something that is essential to understand about worry.
What we see here is that anxiety or worry is a response we choose. We can choose faith and trust or we can choose fear and anxiety.
Fourth: Peace is had by People with Disciplined Minds. In verse 8 Paul writes “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Paul is saying direct your mind to whatever things are honorable, wright, pure, and of excellence. Isaiah records a prayer, “Thou will keep him in perfect peace who’s mind is stayed on Thee.”
One of the best examples of this is the Apostle Peter. In Matthew 14:28-31 Jesus is walking across the sea toward the boat. Peter calls out, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water." 29 And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"
Peter was fine until he took his mind off of Christ. When he looked at the wind and waves and rationalized in his mind what could happen to him, his faith waivered and he began to sink.
The human mind is much like a computer, every experience in our lives, everything we have ever seen, heard, said, and done, every word that others spoke to us, everything that others did to us, it is all stored up here. I’m not a computer programmer but there is a common saying about computers, “Garbage in, Garbage out.”
We are surrounded by the world and we are constantly bombarded by the messages of the world. The world feeds on the negative and ugly terrible things in life. As long as we are of the world, we will never escape all the ugly filth the world wants to throw at us.
If we want the peace of God then we must fill our minds with the words and ways of God. God is the ultimate good, lovely, pure, perfect thought any of us can have.