245. Peace of God Keeps
Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
The peace of God will keep your hearts and minds. This is actually a conditional promise: if you pray and let your requests be made known unto God, then the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. God has promised peace to the heart in other places unconditionally, being justified by faith in Christ. But here the promise is that the peace of God in the heart will keep, or guard, the heart and the mind. Peace becomes an active force that really does something. It keeps the heart safe from enemy attacks, insidious worries, inner strife, and deceitful lies.
We have peace with God already, by faith, but we need the peace of God to be actively engaged in the keeping and guarding process. We need the promise of peace that actually works. Peace is stronger than war and strife, peace is stronger than anxiety and worry, and peace is stronger than unrest and turmoil. The peace of God is the calm in the storm. We need peace and we have it; we also need that peace to be useful in keeping the heart and mind safe so that we may rest and be at ease.
The condition is in the previous verse (v. 6): “Be careful for nothing (don’t be full of worry about anything); but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Then the promise comes: “Peace will guard.” We will always have worries and anxieties; that’s a part of life in this world. The advice given here is to turn the worry into a prayer and a request. God knows about it already, but if we pray about it then we know God knows. The result of that request is that the peace of God will guard your heart and mind. You have left the matter with God and thus there is nothing left for you to do. This is how the peace of God keeps your heart. And we note that this is the peace ofGod. He is at peace; He is not worried about the problem because He knows what He is going to do about it. If God is at peace, then I can be at peace.
The peace of God is beyond our understanding. We don’t know what God will do and we don’t know why God is not anxious: we don’t understand. Since we don’t see we must believe; that is why He gives us this promise. If you prayed about the matter, let it go and be at peace; it’s God’s problem now.