Your Mind and His Peace

SCRIPTURE
Philippians 4:6-9

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.


PRAYER

O Lord, peace of heart is one of your great inventions, one of your most wonderful gifts. Were it not for your peace, we would be left to the agitation of mind and fear of heart that comes from not knowing the future. What an ache of anxiety _______ feels at times, Lord. He sees through the fog of his mind futures that will never be, and feels in his heart today the pain of tomorrow that will never come. And deep down he knows the waste of emotion. Lord, I ask that you would take ______’s thoughts captive, and fix his mind on those things that will lift him out of the dungeon of fear and into the light of hope. Train his mind Lord, to dwell on the beauty of this life you have given. Saturate him with your focus. And somewhere in this renewed perspective I ask that you would bring a peace that is so calming that he wonders at it. Deep within I pray that he would feel the calm of a mountain lake on a still morning. And when he looks fixedly on this calm, may he see the towering mountains of your love reflected there. May ______ know today, in a fresh way, the power of a renewed mind to bring your peace. And when he looks at tomorrow, may he see the beauty of the good gifts you are yet to give.


ENCOURAGEMENT

Think hard on everything that God is. Allow those dark elements of this world to be a blurred backdrop, only adding to the beauty of God’s gifts. Fix your thoughts on that beauty, and not only will you have the peace of God, but the presence of the God of peace as well.