A Christ Centered Plan to Deal with Anxiety

Today's sermon text is from Philippians chapter four.

We're going to be looking at verses four through nine.

You can find this in the Sanctuary Bible on page 1787.

Or you can follow along in your device or your own Bible.

Please listen as we read God's Word.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again, rejoice.

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice, and the God of peace will be with you.

Here ends today's reading.

Good morning, Elmwood.

It is good to be with you this morning.

Uh, my name is Dave.

I get to serve as the director of Next Gen Ministries.

If you are new to Elmwood, typically the roles are reversed, and uh I get to play host and uh do everything that John does.

John did this morning, and John gets to be up here preaching.

But uh as a way to help him kind of come back in to work after his sabbatical, we're giving him a couple more weeks where he doesn't have to worry about preaching right away so that he can be ready for this fall and the sermon series that we're gonna get into.

If you are new, like I said, um yeah, there's a lot of things you could be doing this morning.

So thank you for joining us.

Uh I know this, I know Minnesota summers are just incredible times to get outside and just be up at the lake and be at the cabin or be with friends.

And so it is a joy to have you with us today.

I uh this morning we get a chance to continue our sermon series on the heart.

We have had a chance this summer to hear from a wide variety of voices on a wide variety of topics, all from the hearts of preachers that are asking the same question.

How does the good news about Jesus reach into different areas of our lives?

This morning, it is our goal.

We're going to dive straight into a topic that every single one of us is affected by.

Either you are personally experiencing this topic or you love someone who is.

A quick search of the internet will tell us uh the United States is experiencing higher levels of anxiety than in past years.

Recently, a recent mental health data shows that over 40% of adults feel more anxious this year than they did in the previous year.

That's psychiatry.org.

But I don't think that we need to look at the internet.

I just think we need to open our eyes for our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends, our family members, our classmates.

Uh, some days I just need to wake up and look in the mirror at the guy that's there to recognize that anxiety is a real problem.

Going a little further on in psychiatry.org, uh, you'll see that the major triggers of anxiety are things like the economy, politics, and division.

Because welcome to 2026, am I right?

Safety and violence.

Seven out of ten people who respond to the survey say that we interact with people who are feeling some level of intense anxiety these days.

It's not my intention by bringing up anxiety to bring out an incredible amount of stress in anyone.

I'm not trying to do that by bringing up this topic.

Instead, I'm trying to take a very real problem that we all experience and bring it to the foreground.

Don't let it sit in the darkness any longer.

Bring it into the light.

The light is a powerful disinfectant, and from it, darkness needs to flee.

This sermon, in a lot of ways, was born out of a period of my life where I needed help meditating on thoughts that made me less and less anxious.

I needed help because I was thinking thoughts like, why in the world did a pipe burst in the south wing and eight rooms flood?

Why, why did I choose that Wednesday to like go home and take a nap and leave Kevin here by himself so that he had to call and say, Dave, where's the water shut off?

Why?

How are we gonna get the water out of the carpet and the walls?

How do you even do that?

Did I call everyone that uses the South Wing?

Newsflash, the answer is no.

Someone did show up.

Um, that uh one of the people that was renting from us.

Make sure they knew what's going on.

Uh, what time are the guys coming tomorrow?

The pipe, the water mitigation guys that are coming.

What time are they coming tomorrow?

Are we gonna be able to get this clean before John shows up?

Again, the answer is no.

Hey Dave, I'm gonna stop by the church tomorrow.

Could you not?

Is that okay?

It didn't burn down, I swear.

As we look at Philippians 4 today, we're gonna see how Paul encouraged the early Christians to deal with anxiety that they were feeling and uh it kind of build a framework and a roadmap that the Holy Spirit can use in us in our own unique battles against anxiety.

Before we dive in, I want to invite you to pray with me.

Lord Jesus, uh King David declared in the 23rd Psalm that even though he were to walk in the darkest valley, you would be with him, God, providing for him and bringing him comfort.

Lord, we ask that today you would guide us as we just take a stroll through the topic of anxiety.

It's an emotion that's so potent for some of us that the very mention of it places a weight upon our chest that we can't describe or fully understand.

God, walk with us, provide for our souls, bring us comfort so that we too can declare with David that your goodness and your ever-loving kindness will follow us all the days of our lives.

We love you, Jesus.

Amen.

So, as we take a look at Philippians 4 today, it's going to be important for us to remember that Philippians 4 is not a standalone set of words dropped out of the sky from God to his people.

Instead, it comes in the context of a relationship between Paul and the church at Philippi.

This church that was started by Paul when whole households heard the incredible news that Jesus had come to be their savior and their king, and their lives had been changed.

These early apprentices of Jesus got Philippians the whole book as a letter of encouragement.

You guys are killing it.

Keep after it.

Take joy, all will be well.

I think that the letter as a whole centers around one of the most beautiful early creeds that we have from the early church in Philippians 2.

It's a creed that we regularly say here at Elmwood to remind us of the good news of the gospel.

By the time Paul got to Philippians 4, I think Paul was safe in assuming that his readers were fully versed in and grounded in the good news or the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so today, as we try to read these words like Paul meant them to be read, it's important for us to make sure that we too are grounded in the gospel.

The reality that God made a good world.

The reality that we are broken and mess it up.

The reality that God loves us.

The reality that God said, I'm in 100%.

I love you, dude.

Let's do this.

I'll take care of your sin.

The reality that God calls us to come to Him, turn away from the sin and say, Take my sin from me, be my sin bearer, please, Jesus.

And the reality that he calls us to live a different life.

If you're on the fence still about that whole story, if you don't know about the King Jesus in your life, you're still asking that question, Am I, am I actually, have I repented of my sin?

Am I do I still have that problem?

Am I still not quite there?

If you're still in this place where the Holy Spirit is not guiding you and remaking you and healing you and protecting you through this problem of anxiety, if you're still there, I give you full permission right now, do some business with God.

Talk to him.

Philippians 4 doesn't make sense without all of us grounding ourselves in a strong relationship with Jesus first.

If God really did create all things, if God really does sustain all things, if God really is working out the redemption of all things in this broken world we live in, you want him to be in your corner and you want to be in his.

Take that time.

If that's where you're at.

So as we try to read this letter, the same way the first recipients did, we ground ourselves in Jesus, we open our eyes to the world around us, and we see anxiety is everywhere.

And then we read the text and we try to apply it to our lives.

As we do and we read this text, it's important that we don't allow the scriptures to become a club.

We don't allow it to be this thing that we beat somebody else over the head with or we beat ourselves over the head with.

It can happen that some people who have the best of intentions will take Philippians 4, specifically verses 6 and 7, and apply it in incredibly unhelpful ways.

Verses 6 and 7 are those ones that say, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Think about a situation, you're interacting with a coworker at work.

I'm experiencing some level of anxiety, Dave.

My response.

Well, the Bible says, don't be anxious, so stop it.

There are some situations where that works.

I haven't experienced one yet.

I have never experienced with someone, I have a problem.

Well, S-T-O-P-I-T.

Stop it.

It doesn't work.

In my experience.

I know there's gotta be some experiences where that's good, but um instead, I want to encourage us to stop for a moment and to look at the playbook that Paul puts before the believers in Philippi.

In a verses, I think we're gonna see a two-part playbook that Paul puts forward in gift that he gifts to the people in Philippi that we can use in our own lives today.

Step one is found in the second half of verse six.

It's this pray.

I know I said you should never say stop it to people.

Pray.

Talk to God in every situation.

On the one hand, bring him thanks.

I love ancient Greek.

It has kind of a one-hand and the other hand kind of a deal that it does over and over a hand.

On the one hand, give God thanks for what he's already done.

And on the other hand, present your requests into the future.

Trusting that he's gonna take care of your needs better than you ever can.

Trust him with your past, trust him with your future.

And I recognize I'm on this side of the table, I've got these things in front of me, I got a mic on my ear, and I recognize someone up here saying that doesn't make it easy.

It's simple but hard.

Trusting in a God that we can't see, it's simple, but it's hard.

But Paul asks those in Philippi to pray in trust.

In order to help people like us trust in a God that we can't always see, King Jesus in his kingdom manifesto that we call the Sermon on the Mount, ask people to look to nature, consider nature, you can see that.

Humans, Dave, you can see nature.

Look at the birds in the sky, God feeds them, Jesus said.

Look at the flowers of the earth.

God clothes them.

Consider nature.

God takes care of nature, and guess what?

God cares about you way more than he cares about flowers.

Flowers, they're here today, and tomorrow they're like burned up by the sun.

But the God who's in control of the processes to take care of nature is the God that's in control of the processes that take care of you.

Trust God, Jesus said.

In every situation, Paul encourages the followers in Philippi by prayer and position with thanksgiving for the past, present your requests to God for the future.

And then the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus.

Praying in a posture of trust.

In a posture of trust, a trust in God who's in control of all things, is a great start to dealing with anxiety.

It's step one of the playbook.

But Paul doesn't stop there.

Uh, there's more to chapter four than just verses six and seven.

Some of us who grew up in the church might know uh Bible memorization songs that do Philippians 4, 6 and 7.

Do not be anxious.

Okay, my kids are totally like jamming right now because they know the song.

Uh about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, thanksgiving, present your request to God.

Beat, beat.

Yeah, and then you do that part.

But the problem is that we we separate verses six and seven from verse eight.

Some of us might know a different song of verses eight and nine.

And we separated those apart, but they're one playbook.

If we look at this list that we've got, pray in trust, right?

Petitions for all your needs, give thanks, present your requests to God, and then verse eight.

There's more.

There's another set.

If we look at the first word of verse eight, you're gonna see finally.

We might be able to translate that continuing on, the final step in this process, guys.

Here we go.

You've got some more work to do.

Paul first encourages those in Philippi to trust in the God who's in control of all things.

And then he offers a way for them to filter the thoughts that already live rent-free in their heads.

I was talking to somebody this week about uh a guy that I'm really glad most of you never met.

Um uh my family likes to call him Freshman Dave.

Freshman Dave was just a doofus.

But while Dave was alive as freshman Dave, there were a lot of thoughts that made their way into my head that rattled around in my noggin.

I need a filter to filter those thoughts out.

I need a way to take those anxious thoughts and say, wait, hold on.

Is this what I actually should be meditating on right now or not?

I need help.

I need something that allows me the opportunity to filter the thoughts that are living rent-free in my head.

And I think if we're honest, we kind of all do.

Is this something that I should be dwelling on?

Is this thought gonna make me less anxious or more anxious about what I have to do today, tomorrow, in the future?

As we're reading, watching the news, scrolling on the social medias, as I'm talking to my coworkers at UPS, I need a filter in place that the Holy Spirit can use to help me decide what thoughts get to stay here and what thoughts just need to be jettisoned.

Verse 8 outlines the second part of our playbook in dealing with anxiety, and from it we're going to create a way for us to filter the thoughts that we will spend our time considering.

So, verse 8, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

I love, I love, I love when the Bible says something simple like, think about these things, Dave, because it's helpful.

So this morning we're gonna think about these things.

We're gonna spend time thinking about these words.

It's easy to just gloss past them.

Oh, look at that, it's a list.

It's nice to have a list.

Lists are good, they're helpful.

Okay, done.

Next.

What's the next verse?

We're gonna spend some time considering what they mean, allow them to kind of sink into our psyches and our minds so that they can be buried in our hearts, and which will allow the Holy Spirit to use them as we are presented with new thoughts that either are gonna lead us down a path towards anxiety or down a path governed by the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

As we go on this journey, we have to remember that Paul, the guy who wrote these words, had his mind kind of steeped in Hebrew.

The Hebrew written by Moses and by David and by the prophets.

He he wrote to people, not in Hebrew, he wrote to people in Koine Greek.

The simple Greek of the time.

Thank you for using simple Greek.

Paul, I'm not good enough to do Attic, so we'll use Koine, it'll be fine.

And we read them today, not in Hebrew, not in Greek.

I read them in American English.

I'm a big fan of the NIV because they use it at eighth grade reading level.

Ah, I don't read books like John Reed's books.

I need eighth grade reading level.

Hunger games, I can get behind hunger games.

Good stuff right there.

Goosebumps.

Day level books.

That's what I'm talking about.

This is not gonna be a precise science today.

We're gonna get kind of in a lexical ballpark for these words.

It's gonna give us a generally close definition for all eight of these ideas that the Holy Spirit can use as He and you filter thoughts in your own brain.

The first part of our filter that we're gonna think about is whatever is true.

Think about whatever is true.

The Paul, the word Paul chooses here that we translate true as aletes.

When I was typing out my sermon over and over, Thea, my sermon kept on changing my word to Alathea.

She's not paying attention.

Uh, it's fine.

Over and over, Alathea, Alethea over and over again.

Aletes.

It's uh it's a great word.

Scholars think that aletes is a kind of a combination of the idea, not, that's the eh, and uh uh able to be concealed.

Not able to be concealed, it's true.

So Paul is asking those in Philibbi to think about what can't be hidden or concealed at all.

It's true because it's obvious to everybody.

Things that are true, I've heard it said, are attested because they are tested.

Well, that's a good one.

As we build the filter for our thoughts that we're gonna spend time in our brains, uh think about that which you know to be true.

That can't be hidden from everybody.

If someone on the socials is saying something like, this one truth that I found that no one else has ever seen before, it's gonna change your life.

Guess what?

Not one of the things that can be concealed.

Wait, is one of the things that can be concealed.

Not one of the things you need to be thinking about.

You don't need to pay attention to that reel of that guy or that gal that's just spewing a new special knowledge.

Think about whatever is true.

Continuing to build our filter, think about whatever is noble.

There was this time in the 80s, early 90s, where there just was a hot minute where things that were important were called heavy.

Whoa, man, that's heavy.

Anyone that watched Back to the Future can remember, right, that the world was just heavy.

Oh, that's heavy, heavy.

Is there a problem with the gravitational field in the future?

I'm so glad that slang didn't hang around.

We've got other stuff.

Be salty, stay lit, right?

We got other things that we say.

But if you think about stuff, matter, mass, something with a bunch of weight.

It ends up drawing things to it because of gravity.

Like a black hole or a star or a planet.

That idea, the encompassing idea of heavy is weighty.

It's gonna draw your gaze like a star drawing a comet.

The Grand Canyon, the northern lights, the way a hummingbird flies.

These draw our gaze.

We just can't look away.

They are worthy of our attention and awe.

Noble things are not people that are born into a position with a title like a prince or a duchess.

A noble thing that Paul wants to think on are those things that draw our attention and are worthy of our awe.

Our filter.

Think about things that are true that are worthy of our awe.

Right after true and noble, we're gonna add to the filter whatever is right.

The word that Paul uses here for right is he kind of borrows from the justice system of the time.

Someone who was right in this idea has a character that's worthy of being listened to.

I think we can think about right and wrong.

We can think about correct and incorrect.

I want us to move from that paradigm.

It's a good paradigm, but I want us to move from that more to a good character versus shady character.

Anybody that's spent time around kids uh will know that season when uh a young guy, let's call him Dave, Dave has uh the right words, he knows all the right things to say, but his character is just shady and you can't trust it at all.

He says the right things.

You can be accurate, but have a wrong character.

A right person not only says the accurate things, but has the character to be completely trustworthy and believable.

Think about things that are true, that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable.

Think about what is true, noble, right, and also pure.

I love this one because uh pure has that related word, impurities.

Ah, nice.

That helps.

Right?

When we think about the impurities, those things that are mixed into something that makes it inconsistent.

To be pure is to be clean in an innocent way, unadulterated, pure inside and out, not mixed with anything condemnable, free from impurities.

Someone with pure motives is not going to be duplicitous, not gonna be uh, hey, have you heard how great timeshares are?

You want to buy one?

Right?

That's a trying to tell you something good just to be able to get under your skin and sell you a timeshare.

Think about true things that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable, and that are consistent throughout.

When we talked about true or out of taste, we talked about it being born of those two ideas, not inconceivable.

The word that Paul uses for lovely is also a compound word.

It a movement towards and friendly love.

Kind of those ideas glued together.

It describes those things that are dearly prized, worthy of personal affection.

It draws you in.

It's that movement towards brotherly love.

It's like the beauty.

Did anybody watch the World Cup this year?

Our family was kind of glued to the TV screen.

The beauty of the game between France and England, I know it was the third place game, but it was so amazing.

If you watch the game, talking about the passing, the defense, it was so good.

It was just lovely.

For those of us that maybe don't like soccer, but maybe like architecture more, uh, that idea, if you go to the Washington National Cathedral, your eyes are just drawn heavenward.

There's no way to be in that building without just being in awe.

It's a lovely nature in this building.

Think about true things that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable, that are consistent throughout, that also draw your affections.

Noble, talked about noble a little bit, it draws your mind in awe.

Lovely draws the affections of your heart.

Admirable, the next one on the list, admirable, things draw out words from people's mouths.

The Greek word Paul uses here, another compound word for good report.

Slam those together.

Admirable.

Something that has a good report.

When something has like a five-star review on Yelp or on Google, this has a good report.

This section of the sermon could really be brought to you by uh the Baltimore Steakhouse.

Oh man.

Like you don't need to get a meal.

Just get the bread and the bourbon bacon appetizers.

That's all you need.

It's just oh, so good.

It's so guys.

Good report.

Five-star reviews.

Admirable.

Good report.

Think about things that are true.

Things that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable, that are consistent throughout, that draw your affections, that are worthy about raving about to your friends, like Baldemar.

Now, so far, if we look at our list.

List, okay, we count.

How many do we see?

Six.

Six.

For anyone whose mind has been steeped in Hebrew, like Paul's mind, how many should we be expecting in this list?

Seven.

Six or seven.

Yeah, no, there should be seven here.

Seven is this great word in Hebrew that has the exact same letters as complete.

Those two words rhyme and those ideas rhyme together.

And so you'll see lists that are just lists of complete things.

Don't do this, do this.

There's seven things here.

It means everything.

And so we're expecting seven things in this list.

And Paul does complete the list with a seventh point, uh, but he does so with uh two ideas.

It's like, yeah, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy.

Think about those things.

If anything, so he's just like, I got I gotta complete this list somehow.

Here we go.

All the other stuff, everything else that's good.

The idea of excellence, anything that shines the virtue of moral excellence displayed to enrich the life of anyone.

Anything that's praiseworthy, if it's fitting to land praise on that thing, think about those things.

It's the if I forgot anything in this list, uh, let me just complete it with these two ideas part of the list.

Think about things that are true, that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable, that are consistent throughout, that draw your affections, that are worth raving about to your friends, and then all the other good things.

Think about those things, Paul says, But if we take time to actually use this filter in our mind and on the things coming into our brains, if we allow the Holy Spirit to say, Dave, stop, you do not need to be scrolling on the Facebooks anymore.

If we take time to consider the thoughts that live rent-free in our head, there's gonna be a couple things that come to pass in all of our lives if we decide to actually do this.

First, I promise you, your life is gonna change drastically.

If we only think about true things that are worthy of awe, that are trustworthy and believable, that are consistent throughout, that draw our affections, that are worth raving about to our friends and all those other good things, it's gonna produce in us this freedom and peace.

It'll free us to trust that God who cares for us.

If we stop worrying about everything, especially the things we can't control, we're free to trust the God who already has it under control.

It gives us freedom to care when other people are experiencing a life that is not the life-giving way of Jesus.

That he offers to his followers, and we can care about those things without being consumed by them.

We don't have to be consumed by the injustice we see, by the pain that we see around us.

It's a freedom to trust God, a freedom to care without being consumed, and we can experience that peace that Paul wrote about to the church at Philippi, a peace that surpasses all understanding.

I said two things.

Second, if we filter out the garbage, there'sn't gonna be much less left for us to meditate on.

If we filter out the garbage, there's not gonna be a lot of TV shows that we get to watch.

If we filter all the garbage, most of the socials are gonna go away.

I'll probably have to delete YouTube from my phone.

There won't be much for us to meditate on.

If we try to filter out everything that doesn't pass the test, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's right, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent or praiseworthy.

If it doesn't pass that test, there isn't much to think about other than God Himself and what He's done for us.

He is the most true, He is the most noble, He is the most right thing ever, He is the most pure one, He is the most lovely thing we could ever consider, He is the most admirable, He is excellent and praiseworthy The way that He proved His love for us on the cross of Jesus Christ, that idea is worthy of us meditating on and considering, oh my goodness, I am worthy of God's love.

Oh my goodness.

That guy that I always argue with at UPS, he's worthy of God's love too.

Oh my goodness.

That family member that I really don't like it when I see their phone number pop up on my phone.

They're worthy of God's love too.

Meditating on that which God has done for us is worthy of our time.

Taking the punishment that was due to us for our sins, overcoming death by being consumed by it for us.

Something worth thinking about, something worth pondering, something worth meditating on.

I leave you now.

Yeah, go to your small groups, go out to lunch with other Elmwoodians, have somebody over, talk about it.

How are you gonna implement this two-part playbook in your life?

Trusting God and uh filtering out the thoughts that live rent-free in your head that just don't need to be there.

But now I want to call us to a different way to meditate.

Often people think about meditation as sitting cross-legged with one both legs on top, quietly being aware of what the room is, but I want us to meditate for a little bit.

I want to call us to meditation and a meditation that includes walking.

And a meditation that includes uh standing up and coming out of your seat and walking forward.

A meditation that includes bread and juice.

Meditation that gives us the chance to consider the death of Christ, the death of God on our behalf.

It's something that we do every week because our sinful natures, our brokenness means that we shouldn't be in relationship with God.

On our own merit, we fail.

But Jesus invites us to this table to stand up, to walk forward, to take some bread and some juice.

Because of God's love and grace that has overcome our sin and the power of death in our own lives.

Just as he invites us to live a life not controlled by anxious thoughts, he invites us to come to a family meal where he is both our gracious host, our and our honored guest.

And still yet the comforting counselor who can overcome all of our anxiety.

As I invite you to the communion table today, let's take a few moments of silent confession and reflection, both on who we are and maybe more importantly, on who God is and what he's done for us.