Warrior Peace

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 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 4:4-7

What is the mark of a seasoned ‘warrior’? To be calm, determined, and smart while all hell is breaking loose around them. What is that enables a person to be able to do that in a terrible time of crisis and danger? Peace. More specifically the ‘peace of God’ as our opening scripture talks about. It actually supersedes our natural faculties and abilities. For what purpose? The scripture goes on to say it ‘will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’. What exactly does that mean? If our minds are IN Christ Jesus they are being directed BY His Holy Spirit. We are able to hear Him and obey in a moments notice.

Our ‘rest’ can only come when we ‘rest in Him / (God)’. 

MacLaren’s Expositions says it this way…

“So, then, this Divine peace takes upon itself warlike functions, and garrisons the heart and mind. What does he mean by ‘the heart and mind’? Not, as the English reader might suppose, two different faculties, the emotional and the intellectual–which is what we usually roughly mean by our distinction between heart and mind–but, as is always the case in the Bible, the ‘heart’ means the whole inner man, whether considered as thinking, willing, purposing, or doing any other inward act; and the word rendered ‘mind’ does not mean another part of human nature, but the whole products of the operations of the heart. The Revised Version renders it by ‘thoughts,’ and that is correct if it be given a wide enough application, so as to include emotions, affections, purposes, as well as ‘thoughts’ in the narrower sense. The whole inner man, in all the extent of its manifold operations, that indwelling peace of God will garrison and guard.”

Beloved — the time is coming when we will definitely need that ‘peace’. Wouldn’t we be wise to begin to grow that particular fruit of the Holy Spirit within us? To inquire of the Holy Spirit about the specific fruit and for Him to ‘plant’ it within our lives? We all will need a ‘mature’ fruit of peace in our lives as we step out in faith with Him. We will need His Peace when we face trials and tribulation. We will need His Peace as we encounter spiritual warfare within our lives. We will need His Peace when we encounter all sorts of challenges we’ve never faced before.

We will need that armor of peace as we traverse that battlefield we are currently on. We will need His Voice in our minds to tell us which way to go, and what we are to do. We will need that peace as we face greater and greater challenges and opposition.

That indwelling peace is what makes a person look like a ‘warrior of God’ to those entities that are in the spiritual realms. Has the measure of your peace been tested? How did you do? Do you need more, or a better foundation of that fruit? We all need more of Him.

Lord .. place your peace within us. Ground it deep within our hearts and souls.