The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Reliance - The God of Peace 11.16.24

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

God Bless the Menking Family

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, 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 minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw

in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. Lord, thank you for your word and for your love and for the encouragement that you provide us. Holy Spirit, thank you for being our comforter and for being an ever-present help. Thank you for leading us in the way that we should go. We pray, Lord, that you would fulfill your instruction in our lives, that you would write your word upon our hearts, that we would become ever increasingly obedient, that we would abound in fruitfulness, that we would understand and appreciate these instructions, that we would cherish them, that we would be discipled by you and by one another. Lord, redeem this time. Help it to be edifying for your body, for your people, and for the advancement of your kingdom. Lord, let your will be done in our hearts and our minds, in every aspect of our lives. We bless you, Jesus. We praise you. We worship you and declare your worthiness and

holiness in your name. Amen. I feel like if I look back through my archives here that we will have done many different sessions talking about the instructions in Philippians 4. I know for sure that we have talked extensively about rejoicing always and what that implies and being anxious for nothing and talking about the peace of God which surpasses all understanding and how that is something that the world is perpetually bankrupt of and that so many are seeking. But I want to speak in particular here about verses eight and nine, about our thought lives and what we should pay attention to. Let me read these verses again. Again, it's Philippians chapter four, verses eight and nine. Finally, brethren, whatever things are

true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. It's quite a promise. It's quite a promise for the God of peace to be with us. Surely that is something that we want, something that we need, something that we should crave and seek after, something that we should pour our lives out in search of. And yet here we have a principle. We have a call to righteous action. And we see this repetition for emphasis. So what are the things that we should meditate on, think about, keep in our minds, and maintain

them as mainstays of our thought life? Things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report. Things that are full of virtue and things that are praiseworthy. Now, in today's day and age, people will certainly differ in regard to the definitions of what is true and noble and just and pure and lovely, etc. But let's take it from the biblical standard, which is where it is intended to be applied. And what could be of greater characteristic of all of these things than Jesus, than the word of God itself? And note how we also have this instruction that Paul is writing and saying to the church in Philippi, you have learned these things and received these things and heard these things and saw them in me. Do these things and the God of peace will be with you. The repetition,

will be with you. The repetition, the listing of characteristics, they should stick in our mind. We have a variety of different things. The gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, the characteristics of love in 1 Corinthians. The New Testament is replete with these different examples, going so far as to showcase the lines of causality in terms of what leads to what. And it's not as if these things are being redundant. It's not as if these lists are not there for a useful purpose. After all, all scripture is valuable. There's a list even when we're talking about that from the New Testament. But when we see things like this, we should understand that it should motivate us to have a transformation in our lives. How easy is it for us to not turn our attention towards these things?

You can read as much as you'd like on human psychology and the theory behind all of it, or you can simply observe it in the world writ large, that the world does not focus on those things. The world does not focus on the virtuous, the pure, the lovely, the just, the true, the good, even if they would say, yes, these things are desirable. There is a profound dissonance between the way that information and stimuli are presented and fed to people. And that reveals the genuine nature of it, the motivation for corruption and distraction. And whether you end up falling into the camp that blames this on technology or information systems

or market forces or anything else, we need to acknowledge where the root of this is coming from. There are tendencies that we all have that can be exploited, and each one of us, in our own way, is capable of falling prey to hitting the guardrails and even flipping over them, so to speak, as it pertains to this instruction and discipleship. And so I would just urge you momentarily to consider how much of this last week has been spent purposefully meditating and thinking on and just spending time in our thoughts, focusing on the things that are true and noble and just and pure. How much of our effort do we put towards fulfilling this instruction? And if we're

willing to be honest, and I'll try to be with myself, not as much as I should. It's an understatement, that's for sure. But don't we want the God of peace? Isn't it appropriate for us to take these discipleship instructions at face value? Have we not seen enough of God's love and his testimony of his transforming power in our lives to say, I am willing to take the God of the universe at his word? I'm willing to humble myself before this teaching? After all, even if the promise weren't there, wouldn't it be a good thing for us to focus on these sorts of things in our thought life rather than all of the arbitrary and sometimes challenging and sometimes disastrous thoughts that befall us on a day-to-day basis?

Even if that promise weren't there, wouldn't it be worth it? Doesn't it just seem, from a practicality and common sense standpoint, a good idea? Now, you can find objections to this. There are also calls in scripture to stand up against evil, and we are to be wise as far as these things go. So we have to understand the tactics and the approaches that the enemy takes in order to serve appropriately and to be a part of the spiritual warfare that God has called us to be a part of inexorably, each and every one of us. And so how do we square these ideas with the necessary responsibility that we have to stand firm in this generation and to understand how that is done? If we are to advance, we must not only know

the God who we serve, but through the light of the Holy Spirit, understand the workings of the forces of spiritual darkness. We're not to be ignorant of their devices. And I would encourage you, brothers and sisters, that this call, this instruction in discipleship, it is not an excuse for naivete. It is not an encouragement to simply be passive and to shut our ears and close our eyes and to block out entirely all of the things that we need to confront in the generation that God has called us to. And yet, where is the majority error here? Where can we speak to it?

Is the problem that we are hopelessly naive because we're following this command too extensively to the point where we never engage with the outside world because we're supposed to find this proper balance? to find this proper balance? Or is the more likely error going to be that we don't do this enough and we get too sucked in, even to the battles that we face, to the exclusion of following these instructions? It's going to be different for everyone, but as is a common theme here in this broadcast, we have to understand where the narrow path actually lies. And there isn't going to be a recipe. Okay, when you wake up tomorrow, here is the exact percentage of time that you should be spending on one approach versus the other. Here is the exact time you need to be studying plans of spiritual warfare and understand the challenges that we're facing in order to position ourselves to combat them effectively. And on the other hand, here's the amount of

time and here's the percentage breakdown of things that we should focus on that are true and noble and just and pure and lovely and of good report and virtue. and pure and lovely and of good report and virtue, on one hand, you could say it is possible for there to be a both and. Now, this feels a little bit thin to me, to be honest, because if we're saying, let's take some measure of evil and we are examining, well, what would be the case? What would it look like for God to gain a breakthrough here? What would be the benefits to people? What would be the benefit to the glory of God and the name of Jesus and the advancement of the kingdom. Yes, it does seem to me that you can do both. But I think that inexorably our focus will be drawn towards one side or the other more so. If you're already capable of balancing these in a properly mature fashion, then by all means.

But I think most importantly here is the idea that we do need to study to show ourselves approved. We are instructed to not be ignorant of the devices of spiritual darkness. That is absolutely the case. That is a firm instruction in scripture. We are to honor that and to fulfill that by the power of the Holy Spirit. And therein lies the key. We can be effective. We can be placed in the right situation and affect the right outcome without knowing the full battle plan. We should be engaged, yes. But I would posit to you that if we spend our time and our waking moments trying to dissect everything, to figure out

what's going to happen or to come up with this or that outrage, and we never spend that time in the presence of God, then we're by definition going to be powerless to have the kind of effect that we want to see. We will be maybe not naive, maybe we will be aware of all these dynamics, but we could find ourselves powerless or even worse, thinking that we're powerful, acting in our own strength and finding that we were outside the will of God all along. And much effort has been dedicated towards fighting the good fight of faith. That effort should not be diminished. That effort should be redoubled and increased. Fervency on behalf of believers is absolutely called for. At every moment, there is never a time when we can simply kick back and relax. If we were fully aware of the extent of the evil that has befallen us in the past,

is befalling people right now, and is planned to unfold in the future, that is a reality. I really don't believe that we have the cognitive and spiritual fortitude to truly understand. When Daniel was given his visions, he was horrified, the Bible says. He was distraught. He was sick. It made him ill to get even a glimpse, a small glimpse of what was to come. And we need to treat things with a greater degree of seriousness. But that doesn't mean digging in our heels and peeling our eyes open so that the only approaches that we pursue and the only streams that we can say that we have God, God with us, God for us, a God who loves us, a high priest who intercedes for us,

a high priest who intercedes for us, a savior who gave himself for us. That should be the foundation and the motivation for what we are to do. Jesus during his earthly ministry left the field of operation to go into the wilderness to pray, to seek guidance, to commune with the Holy Spirit in a different way. Truly, Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit without measure. And yet he showed us that those times were necessary. Those times of refreshing, those times of solitude, those times where he was not performing the same kind of healing miracles and deliverance miracles and everything else that he was doing for the people around him. He withdrew for a time and he prayed and he sought God. And so when we think about our own lives, I'm sure that each and every one of us can reflect on a time when we just felt we are tired.

We are spent. We know that God will be with us and that he will give us the strength to face whatever is to come. We even have faith and hope and confidence knowing and having seen the testimonies of the Lord and his word fulfilled and incredible transformations taking place and even miracles being performed. Even miracles being performed. I was listening to Derek Prince the other day and he commented that he considers the transformation of a human heart. The genuine born-again nature of the human experience to be the greatest miracle. And I tend to agree with him. I tend to agree with him. I tend to agree with him.

There is something so wonderful, so precious about the way that God deals with us and the tenderness of his Holy Spirit and the marvelous power of his salvation. And yet, so many of us simply take it for granted and go on about our things, the tasks that we have day to day, day-to-day, the pedestrian affairs of life. But could we not tilt our approach in our minds, in our thoughts, in our prayers? Could we not re-engage with the things that are true and noble and just and pure and lovely. At the very least, could we not trim the fat, so to speak, and get rid of something or some things that are not noble, are not pure? Certainly, that is the baseline. And so, just like David, we should cry out for the Lord to search us, to bring things to the surface, to cleanse us,

to give us the power to move us forward, to transform us, working a miracle in our lives and our hearts to alter and adjust and conform our dispositions to his own, to give us his will by transforming our will so that it matches what he wants to accomplish in our lives. That is prayer for a miracle. And God can do it. He wants to do it. It's his desire to see us transformed, to see us conformed to Jesus, and to see us led by the Holy Spirit so that we can serve God and to advance his kingdom for the sake of others who God also loves and wants to call to himself. the sake of others who God also loves and wants to call to himself. Who knows exactly why in the fullness of time and causality we have been placed here at this moment, but it is not arbitrary and it's not happenstance. And again, couldn't we just say at the end of all of this,

Again, couldn't we just say at the end of all of this, wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be beneficial? Wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't it be better if the God of peace was with us? Not just intellectually, but with us. With us in communion, in fellowship, amidst everything in our lives, surely we would have to say yes. I mean, if we were given a binary choice, do you want the God of peace with you or not? We would say yes. So then what is the scripture that attaches to that promise? Well, it's right here.

Meditate on these things, the good things, the true things, the noble things, the lovely things, the just things, the virtuous things, the praiseworthy things. If we're not sure what those are, well, shouldn't we just ask God? Shouldn't we ask him to show us these things, to transform our thought life? Wouldn't that inexorably lead us to be more attentive to his word? Read Psalm 19 and see the attitude of the psalmist and the way that the word of God and the commandments of God are cherished as good and righteous and true and valuable and precious, worthy of being defended and taken seriously and acted upon, absolutely worthy of being the focus of our lives. It's difficult because we're all in different places

as it pertains to this. But could we just allow God, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, to move us in this direction, even marginally? Would we even be hypothetically open to something like that? Surely the end goal is desirable. Surely it would even be a better use of our time. It's not as if we're being presented with some Sisyphean task here, roll this boulder up a hill endlessly and you'll receive this reward.

It's do something with our thought lives that is good for its own sake and we will receive this additional reward. We know that we will be healthier if we eat better, but this is an example of those sort of situations where people say, yeah, you can go on a diet and all you eat is delicious filling food. It sounds too good to be true. Often it is. Sometimes it's a scam or a money grab or a grift. Here it's not. You can do something that will provide immense value to you in the end result but also in the process of doing it. like going to the gym every day and working out and feeling the pain and punishment in your body as your muscles are torn apart so that they can regrow stronger. This is altogether fitting and proper. It is the pathway of righteousness, the path of peace, the path of goodness. And again, it's not calling us to naivete or complacency or anything else like that. But couldn't we all just allow God to change our behavior, our will, our approach, so that whether it comes to political machinations,

So that whether it comes to political machinations, geopolitics, financial affairs, relationships that we have, any behaviors for that matter, what is more important to us than having the God of peace with us? And what do our actions say about our answer to that question. So brothers and sisters, I would encourage you wholeheartedly, as I'm encouraging myself now, to take this scripture seriously, to understand that if we submit to God in this, if we follow through on this, that there's an incomparable blessing, something of limitless value, the presence of the God of peace. Which one of us can stake our claim and say, the God of peace is with me? And to know it because we have been with the God of peace. And to know it because we have been with the God of peace. We have been in his presence.

We know that we are his and that he is ours. And even if we had times and seasons when we could say that with an honest heart, in a rejoicing way, as earlier in this chapter in verse 4, we are supposed to rejoice in the Lord always, to continually do so. Even if we've had a season like that, wouldn't it be wise to pray for another season? Wouldn't it be wise to make that move again? Especially in situations where there are so many different things to focus on that are contentious and negative and challenging. I would argue that we will only be properly equipped for these challenges if the God of peace is with us. Just as Jesus went to the wilderness to pray, Jesus went to the wilderness to pray, to receive, and to be indwelt, and to commune with God. That is the pattern that he put forth.

And we should not be so bold as to say that we don't need the same. So for anyone who is worn down and who the Holy Spirit is showing that part of that state of fatigue is because we have not prioritized the discipleship instructions in this scripture. Start now. Start now. We'll pray out, but don't go anywhere else when this is done. Try to find quiet, to find peace, and to ask the Lord to help us think on and meditate on and keep in our mind and our focus the things that are true, the things that are noble, the things that are just, the things that are pure, the things that are lovely, the things that are of good report, the things that have virtue, the things that are pure, the things that are lovely, the things that are of good report, the things that have virtue, the things that are praiseworthy. God will honor his

promise. If we will do this, the God of peace will be with us. And what does it say in verse seven of this same chapter? The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. We are guarded by peace. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. May the God of peace be with you at all times. Lord, help us. We are unable to reorient our thoughts and our will towards what we need to focus on. We do not have the ability to do that, but you do, Lord. You are sovereign over our

thoughts and over our minds and over everything. We pray, Holy Spirit, that you would come quickly, Holy Spirit, that you would come quickly, that you would fill us to overflowing with a confirmation of your peace. Knowing, Lord, that your peace is one of these things that are true and noble and just and pure and lovely and are of good report. Your peace and your presence and your word fulfill all of these categories. So bring us, bring to our mind what we need to focus on, what our attention should be drawn to. Don't let us grow naive of the challenges that we face in this pursuit, but use this as a means of equipping us, Lord, to accomplish your will in every arena. To fulfill your word wherever we are planted.

To bear fruit for your kingdom in every season. God, you are good and your mercy endures forever. You are holy and righteous and true. Help us to understand these things. Help us to redeem the time. Lord, forgive us for not honoring this instruction. Forgive us for falling short and for sinning as we don't prioritize the right things in our thought life. Lord, help us to be your people. A people who you deserve.

A transformed people. A miraculous people. A supernatural people. And a people full of peace. Peace stands out in a world of conflict. Peace stands out in a world of war. Peace stands out in this conflict. And yes, help us, Lord, to fight the good fight of faith, but to do so motivated by justice and by peace and help us to be full of peace in every time and every season. Lord, only you can accomplish this. We're not going to be able to follow a checklist or some prescription, but Lord, lead us in the way that we should go. Guard our hearts and minds

through the peace that you provide, through the sanctuary established by Jesus. Jesus, you are our high priest. Minister to us through your word. Holy Spirit, you are our comforter. Minister to us through your word. Holy Spirit, you are our comforter. Minister to us through your presence. We worship you, Lord, and pray that each and every person listening would receive the blessing of peace, would receive the blessing of greater discipline in our thought lives, would receive all the blessings that come from

the marvelous promises that you give us in scripture and would see more and experience more of your presence. Give us right doctrine in these things. Help us to understand the balance. Show us, Lord, where we have strayed and where our errors are and what corrections need to be made. We want you, Lord. We want you. You are the God of peace, and it will forever be so. Let your word stand. Let it not return void. Let your promises be fulfilled, and let us serve as a testimony of your goodness in this generation. We love you, Jesus. We praise you and bless you, our Prince of Peace.