We don't need our homes guarded as much as our minds and our hearts. It's my heart that gets me into my day! It's my mind that gets me into my study! It's my passion that comes from that! And His peace surrounds that and frees me from the agitation and the horror of worry.
Now, three simple exercises will help make all of this happen. And they're described for us in Philippians 4: 8, 9.
First of all: Feed your mind on positive thoughts. This isn't original with me. God wrote it first. God was the first one to come up with it, not Norman Vincent Peale. Verse 8, “Whatever is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and of good report, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, fix your mind on these things.”
Fix your mind on positive thoughts. You ask some people how they are, you don't have time to listen to them tell you. A litany of heartaches and brokenness and disappointments! And you find yourself wishing you hadn't brought it up.
You ask a few people how they are and you leave thrilled with life. They haven't lied. They just have fixed their minds on that which is uplifting. It's in God's hands. He's in charge. The sun always shines—just that the cloud cover blocks it out. But take a flight and you'll see. It's there and it's bright and it's clear. Fix your mind on positive thoughts.
Second, verse 9: Focus your attention on encouraging models. Paul has the audacity to say, “The things you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice…“He's not bragging. He's just saying, “I've learned how to live like that. You need a model? Look at me. I got a lot of things I could worry about, but I don't. I choose joy. The things you've learned from my teaching, the things you've received from my example, the things you've heard from my lips, the things you've seen occur in my exemplary lifestyle, you do it.”
Pick a few heroes in life. If you can't find any in life, pick a few from biographies that you admire. Be a good student of biographies. Study great men and women. They'll motivate you. They'll help you see you're not alone.
It works! That's why I'm so grateful for a few mentors in my life. And when I start licking my own wounds, I just remember some of the things I saw and heard and received from those models and my spirit is changed.
Finally: Find God's peace in every circumstance. Emphasis on every. Verse 9 concludes, “and the God of peace shall be with you.” Claim God's peace. Find His peace in every circumstance.
You know what happens when worry occurs? Worry forces us to focus on wrong things. That's the damnable factor in worry. We focus on nonessentials rather than essentials.
I got hope for you who are addicted to worry. But the tragedy is you've got freedom to accept it or reject it, to live it or fake it, or absolutely ignore it. Tragically, some of you will choose that. And you'll be no different a week from now than you are at this moment. And that is tragic. You're free to do that.
But I can give you the hope. His name is Jesus Christ, who came to set captives free. He doesn't focus His attention just on the drug and the alcohol addict. His heart doesn't go out just to the one who is addicted to sexual abuse or the one whose violent temper can't be brought under control. That's not the limit of God's compassion. His heart goes out to you who have allowed yourself to become victims of worry. Jesus Christ has come to seek and to save the lost, those who have lost their way, those who can't seem to find a purpose for living.
Charles R. Swindoll, adapted from “Freeing Yourself Up to Laugh Again” in the Laugh Again series. Copyright, 1991.
By Chuck Swindoll
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