Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord. I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy and the crown I receive for my work. Now I appeal to Euodia and Syntyche. Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement. And I ask you, my true partner, to help these two women, for they worked hard with me in telling others the Good News. They worked along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the Book of Life. Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:1-9 NLT
We can't follow Jesus only with our words; we must follow Him with our actions in real life. There are some real-life problems described in these verses. Two Christian leaders were disagreeing, and they were urged to work out their problem. Paul was unjustly imprisoned, but he challenged his readers to be joyful always. In this letter, Paul wrote repeatedly about the joy that comes from Christ. Having the joy of the Spirit doesn’t mean Christians don’t have hardships; it means we have Christ to walk with us, and guide us through the trials. As we give our prayer requests to God, we can live without worry and experience God's peace. And as we fix our thoughts on good things, we can put what we believe into practice.
Real life makes it really hard to live out what we believe. It is easier to complain to others than cast our cares on the Lord. It is easier to have a bad attitude than fix our eyes on what is good, noble, admirable, and true. The Lord doesn’t offer us the easy way; He shows us the best way. It will not be easy. Christ has walked the hard road and been victorious. He lives in us and gives us strength to overcome.
How do you take your faith from only knowledge to living it out practically? What does it look like to experience God’s joy, even in the hard times?'
