Thinking like Jesus: Peace.
Jesus offers salvation. Of course, that is at the end of our lives. In between birth and ‘right now’ there is life and problems to solve. Sometimes those problems are overwhelming to the point of extraordinary worry. Worry is the intellectual thought that something in our future will go badly. Anxiety, the feeling of fear, is the emotion that follows a worrisome thought.
In Matthew 6:25 Jesus addresses the issue head-on. He commands us directly not to worry. If we are having worrisome thoughts we are, in effect, in a sinful state. Jesus tells us not to look around and see what could be going wrong in the future because He is there in our future. He says in Jeremiah 29 that He has plans for us to prosper. But instead of thinking about that, we are like Peter looking down at an angry sea instead of keeping our eyes on Jesus.
In Philippians 4:7 Paul tells us that Jesus offers us a peace that transcends understanding that will guard our heart (that are now pounding from anxiety) and mind (what we are worrying about) with His peace which transcends all human understanding.
We don’t always understand the feeling of peace that Jesus offers us. It is not just a physical resting, though His peace will give us that. It is a peace we feel because our thoughts are on Him and not on the problems in our lives. When we focus on the problems and not Him, we are not receiving that transcending peace. So ask the Holy Spirit to change your thoughts and focus on Jesus helping us instead of the problems that are trying to sink us.
