Is. 26-27
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Is 26:3). Wow. I don’t know about you, but I’m not really felling a whole lot of “perfect peace” lately! But this verse reminds me that perfect peace does not come from my surroundings. It does not come from my dwelling on all the ‘stuff’ that is going on around me, but from dwelling on God. When I keep my mind on who God is, what He has done, and what He has promised to do, then I am able to trust that He can and will handle whatever is going on at the moment. There is no need to worry and fret over something that you know is as good as taken care of by the One who is more than able to manage it.
This goes along with Philippians 4:6-7, which tells us to pray with thanksgiving instead of worrying so that God’s peace – that perfect peace – will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. And with His peace guarding our hearts and minds, it becomes easier to keep our minds stayed on Him so that we don’t worry in the first place. Kinda cool. Another cool thing, that I happened to notice when looking at this Philippians passage this morning, is that we tend to miss the last statement in verse 5, which seems to be a lead-in, or the reason behind verses 6 and 7. Attaching that statement to the beginning of this passage reads something like this, “The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious….”.
Eph. 6
The instructions Paul gives at the start of this chapter are a continuation of the thought he started in chapter 5. He is still speaking about submitting to one another. Notice that Paul gives each set of instructions – husbands and wives, children and parents, bondservants and masters – as a two way street. This is because each party, whether the one in position of authority or the seemingly subservient one, is to be submissive to the other in some way. None of us are to rebel against those in authority over us and none of us is to lord it over those in our charge. This is the example that Christ set for us.