From the Community-Week 4

Grace shares: “The scriptures were so good this week! The Message (by Eugene H. Peterson) was so helpful to me. ‘Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.’ (Philippians 4:6-7 MSG). So good! Worry is a sin. I want that “Wonderful” thing to happen to me while I work toward Christ displacing the worry (fear, fighting for control) at the center of my life.”

Pat shares: “As I was reading Phil 4:7, I was intrigued to find out more of the meaning of peace here; so, I looked it up in the keyword study Bible. Two words that describe it are quietness and rest, which brought me back to “He will rest in His love,” because He knows the power of His love. (Zeph 3:17) Also, recently I had looked up quiet spirit in the original language, and it denoted properly sitting. This reminded me of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, and the ‘good thing’ that would not be taken from her. As I was thinking of letting my request be made known to my Father, my prayer changed from the relationship of something to me to my relationship to my Father in that something’ The realization of His peace was settled on me — being properly seated at the feet of Jesus, I realized He had positioned me to quietly rest in the power of His love, which came about by ‘reconciliation with God’ and which resulted in a ‘sense of a divine favor’ (extended definitions of this peace). All this He did for me as I sought imperfectly to obey Him as I read his Word.”