Mother's Day 2020: Philippians 4:4-6: Knowing Fierce Peace

Good morning and happy Mother's Day.

I'm so excited about this message and this sermon this morning because I get to share with the morning message and this teaching with my wife, Christy.

And we haven't done shared teaching in a very long time.

And so I'm excited to do that.

I'm excited for you guys to get to hear from her sort of some of the implications of our passage this morning, specifically for moms, but then also I think it'll be in service to all of us.

So this past Sunday night after dinner, we had our family dinner, and I cleaned up the kitchen.

And don't be too uh proud of me on that.

I can't be too proud of myself on that because Chris does all the cooking, and then I just sort of show up there at the end to do all the cleaning up, and I put on my Dave Matthews band, and my girls make fun of my music.

And so I can do that, I can do the cleanup.

So I did the cleanup.

The girls they go and they get cleaned up and they shower up and they put on their PJs.

We eventually get them in bed.

And I'm not kidding when I say 45 seconds later, maybe 50, I'm on the couch and I have The Last Dance On, Michael Jordan's documentary new, which you should watch.

It's amazing.

But the point of the story is I look over to my left where Christy should be sitting in her chair, and she's not there.

I'm there 45 seconds after the girls are in their bed.

It doesn't take me long, but she is still up.

And she's getting the house sort of reset a little bit, and she's getting the girls' schoolwork in order because she has to work the next day also.

It's not just me that has to work the next day.

She has to work the next day also, but she's the one that's still up.

So later in the week, I read this quote, which sort of described what was going on there in our house that night.

This was in Vanity Fair last month.

So only a month ago, in the middle of coronavirus.

This is by Nancy Joe Sales.

She wrote an article that is entitled Dispatches from the Gender Gap.

Weren't from Home Moms in the Time of Coronavirus.

And women just, you can, moms, you feel free to say amen there in your homes as you hear me read this quote.

In ordinary times, most working mothers who are married to men spend almost twice as much time on childcare and household chores.

In the exigencies of the current crisis, which that word, that's a big word, I'd look it up.

It means the urgency, in the urgency of the current crisis, have not seemed to have had a significant impact on the domestic gender gap.

So what that means is that we're at home and husbands still aren't quite doing as much as moms are.

Now that might not be true in your house, but that is a generically true thing based on research.

I can't argue with it based on my house.

I can't argue with it.

The only thing I can do is learn to ask that question that took me so long to learn as a husband and a dad.

Took me so long.

It shouldn't have taken this long to learn this question.

There's only one question, guys.

How can I help?

That's it.

That's the question.

How can I help?

Now we don't have to be moms to know the feeling of being overloaded.

We all know this feeling.

Because maybe when the crisis hit and husbands or dads are just you're at home working, maybe you're single, and now you've got your house to deal with, maybe you have your kids to deal with, maybe you're missing your friends, and you also have work, you're trying to figure out how to work around or work at home, or you lost work, and that feels overloaded, right?

It's the feeling like uh you have two or three things you need to get done, but you always forget one, you accomplish the other two.

Or you have three things you need to remember, and you remember two and you forget the third thing, right?

You go into Kroger for seven things, you come out with six.

It's the imagery of you're carrying a load of laundry from the laundry room to your bedroom to fold it on your bed, but you're too lazy to get the laundry basket from your bedroom, and so you decide to take those clothes out of the dryer, right?

And you're gonna bear hug those things down the hallway.

You've tried it, haven't you?

And you're making your way down the hallway, you think you're doing pretty good, and you're just leaving a trail of like socks and underwear and shorts all along the way because you're overloaded.

You just have too much going on.

And for us, maybe, maybe for you, this is practical, or maybe this is just the feeling of overload of cares or overload of concerns.

And that brings us into this morning's text.

What do we do with that?

Now we're jumping away from Joshua just for this week for Mother's Day, and we're gonna look at Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

In Philippians 4, we see Paul in verses 2 and 3.

He is supporting and caring and esteeming two women.

What a great way for us to begin our passage here this morning.

And then he jumps into gospel implications for us.

And this is coming out of the context of the entire letter.

We've been doing some midweek Bible chat devotions on Philippians, and we've been learning there in those early chapters how Paul's just pouring out how we are beloved and we are saints and we are secure in that because of Jesus.

And because of that, he can write in chapter four some implications of that of what it means for our lives.

You gotta remember, Paul's in prison, he's writing this letter.

He's stuck.

We know the feeling of being stuck.

Do you remember the first time you went to Kroger during shelter in place, right?

Because you could only go to a couple different places legally during that time, and you decided to go to Kroger, and it just felt like incredible freedom.

You were driving, this unbelievable feeling because we all knew the feeling of being stuck.

And yet, Paul, in that stuckness, he's delighting in God's welcome and love and affection and acceptance of him.

And that has implications.

Verse 4, Philippians 4, 4.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

I'm gonna make three points.

I'm gonna try to be pretty quick on them, and then allow Christy to come up and give sort of some implications of what this means for moms, and I think we'll also the rest of us will get something out of it.

So, point number one, coming out of verse four, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say rejoice.

Point number one is this we are called into joy as we are already deemed God's beloved children.

Knowing you are already God's redeemed child by his work and not your work automatically begins to create some joy in your heart because you've been relieved of so much.

You've been relieved of having to dig your way out of a hole of guilt or shame or build up and produce enough righteousness to merit something in this world or before God.

You've been relieved of that.

Well, that's freeing.

That starts to create some joy.

That's why joy is the fruit of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit in us begins to create that.

The word joy means to be glad and to thrive.

That's not like prosperity gospel, I mean you're gonna be monetarily rich the rest of your life.

This is about a wholeness of heart that we're growing in.

Allowing the love of God to come into all of our guilt and our sin and our shame and our brokenness and move forward toward greater joy.

Verse 5.

Let your reasonableness, now that could all that can be defined as that word could be gentleness.

Let your gentleness, it's a it's it means a reasonable attitude, a moderate amount of attitude.

So be gentle.

Be gentle.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

The Lord is at hand.

So point number two is this we are loved perfectly as to be freed to love with a gentle spirit.

We are loved perfectly as to be freed to love with a gentle spirit.

I think I talked about this, I don't remember if it's in a sermon or one of those midweek devotional chats, but I can remember that first week of the coronavirus.

Right?

I mean, it was life, world, church, business, everything just going crazy, stuff shutting down.

You're trying to figure out how you're gonna redo your life.

And in the meantime, a lot of us are watching our 401ks just plummet.

Absolutely plummet.

Now, everybody's not addicted to that like I am, but man, I was pulling my phone out a couple times a day.

I've just swipe to the right.

You can read the headlines there on your iPhone, and then below that it has all the market, right?

Like it says SP, it says, you know, all sorts of stuff.

I don't know.

I know SP and Dow, all the other ones, I have no idea what's going on.

But I know that Dow number, and it was like at 29 in February, like 29,000.

And I that just means a lot, is what that means.

And it was looking good when those monthly statements were coming in, and everybody's getting excited, and you get excited every month, and look at this, and look how much we got, and we're gonna retire, blah, blah, blah.

You know, and then it's at 19.

I mean, it just plummets.

And along that way down, I could feel myself sort of like every day, you're like, ah, man, lost more money, ah, lost more money, ah, lost more money.

And you know, it's starting to bother you a little bit, it starts to bother me a little bit because I can use that to feel kind of secure.

And something happened one day.

I was walking from the church back home, and when it went under 20, and something in me just broke, like there was a death, and it was wonderful.

Like it was a good death.

Because what it was, it was me coming to a point of like, oh yeah, like that doesn't work.

This will always, this will always fluctuate.

This will always go up and come down.

Like, I can't rely on that to define me, to define my value or my importance.

Even my little moderate amount of savings, I can't use it.

It won't work.

And that death, that wonderful death, it was just me saying, you know, like this is out of my control.

What freedom that is, and in that death, we discover something.

Every time we have a death like that, we discover something, we're still loved.

God's love is still there, we're still loved, we are still a person, and in his eyes, we are still beloved.

Whether that death is out of our own failure or that death is out of the failure of the world, we still discover God is still stable and secure, and he's still loving us in that moment.

So there's a death.

But in that death, we're always regenerated in new life.

And there's joy there, and out of that comes this gentleness.

Right?

This is how it all connects.

As we know our belovedness, we don't have to use people anymore.

See, when you come in touch with that, however you get to that death of self, however you come to that, gentleness is a fruit of the spirit that comes out of that death of the self, that old Adam.

And that new self.

That new self that is born again in Jesus, that is where the Holy Spirit begins to birth in us this fruit of the Spirit.

Joy and now gentleness in this passage.

We don't have to use people anymore.

We don't have to use money anymore.

But when it comes to loving people with gentleness, we don't ultimately need them to approve of us.

They don't have to agree with us, they can hold a different opinion, and it's okay.

We can still be vulnerable before them and love them.

Last point, and then Christi will come up.

Verse six Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.

Point number three is this we are called to cultivate a slow, surrendering heart as to no fierce peace.

When I was little, I'd get the service merchandise catalog.

I don't know if you remember the store, I don't even know if they're still around.

I'd get the catalog, I'd circle everything I wanted.

I'd make a list, and then at Christmas time, go to Gwynette Place Mall, and I would give my list to Santa Claus, right?

Well, prayer is like the handing over that list, but it's nothing like actually getting everything off that list.

What prayer is, is the surrendering of the request to God.

We need to surrender everybody we want to fix.

We need to surrender the wounds that still define us.

We need to surrender the circumstances we try to control.

This is what we're doing in prayer.

And prayer is not transaction, it is relationship.

And this passage leads us toward a slow, surrendered, grateful heart.

If the gospel is not the great rescue and definition of our hearts, we'll always look for something else.

That builds pressure, builds a fast heart, not a slow heart, builds a busy heart, not a slow heart.

So it's always first about a slow heart.

A heart that is at peace.

Now, some of us have experienced great peace, right, in the last few weeks, last six weeks, because your life has become so slow, but that has been forced.

That has been forced upon you.

The greater lesson in this is not like, oh, I'm gonna come out of this, I'm gonna work so hard to make a slow life.

The greater lesson in this is what you've experienced in that slowness.

It's about a slow heart.

So as our lives speed back up, it's about a slow heart.

That our hearts can be slowed down as we're surrendering to him these concerns, and we can have a peace that guards our hearts, and then practices of slowness will aid us, and practices of slowness will also be a fruit of a heart that is at peace in Jesus because he is our peace.

Christy's gonna come up and share some implications for us.

I'm gonna jump back into that first point.

And just as we think about being called into joy, I can't help but in motherhood think about the witching hour, which may be the time that all of us know there is no joy possible to be found in the witching hour, which for those of you that don't know is five o'clock every day.

Our little children turn into things we've never seen before.

Um, amazingly, everyone is hungry at the same time.

There's endless places you're supposed to go.

You yourself are worn out and tired.

And during this witching hour is where I've found I need joy, and I cannot find it within myself.

And so I've gotten in a routine of I keep a little card in front of the sink and also in my windshield, just as a reminder of the fact that this joy that I know that I'm craving and needing is something outside of myself.

And going back to Russ's point, we're called into joy as we are already deemed God's beloved children.

And joy is something that we do receive from God.

It is not something we conjure up ourselves, but as God anchors us in his love, we then receive that great joy.

And that's no matter what we've done that day, what we've the bad attitudes we've had towards ourselves, towards our children, towards our spouse, um, or what we've left undone, the dishes or the task or whatever, God freely gives us joy in those moments, in our worst selves, as we rest with our security in Him.

One of my favorite things about God is that in that witching hour, he is always available.

So when I am at my worst or when I feel completely depleted, he is fully available to us, even in the witching hour.

And as we think about being loved perfectly, reading that point, I couldn't help but I feel like as a woman, I hear the word perfect and I immediately cringe.

I don't want to have anything to do with that, largely because I feel like it has been um placed on me.

It feels like a demand.

But when we think about God's perfect love for us, it changes things up.

But so oftentimes when women hear the word perfection, we can't help but think of all the demands that puts on us for our body, our career, our family, our home.

But there does feel like such rest to think of this radical, perfect love that's been poured out on us.

And it's something obviously that's not of us.

And oftentimes when I get caught up in this striving for perfection, it does feel like my shadow self or um just left to my flesh.

But even when my shadow self is hanging out all over the place, there is a loving freedom still in my worst self.

There is a loving freedom that is able to rest in being fully known in that shadow self and still fully loved.

And that alone frees me.

And I've heard it said before that motherhood is a series of small deaths, and it's a death emotionally, it's a death for to yourself, it's a death to your plan, to your will.

But I found that so true.

Uh, when I had my first daughter, we Russ and I were double income, no kids, dinks, as you would say, and we were so excited to have this child in our fifth year of marriage, and here she comes, and she's beautiful and healthy, and I did not realize all that I was gonna have to give up for this new thing to enter in.

And it was the beginning of me learning how to die more quickly to myself, and in that um, I began to just learn how there is this mysterious love that God has for us.

That I saw this anger rise up in me that I never even knew existed.

And amidst that I was able to escape to a love not of any human being, but of God's great love and mysterious love for me in the middle of feeling like I was my worst self.

But his perfect mysterious love, this love that um just began to almost woo me in as I saw kind of the worst parts of myself.

This mysterious love became more than enough, and it became more than enough for my miscommunications and my selfishness.

And at the same time, this mysterious love, this radical love that we've been talking about is also what woos us into this third point about how we are called to cultivate a slow, surrendering heart as to no fierce peace.

And for me, that mysterious love of God is what woos me into this great peace that He has promised us.

And apart from Him, I can't have that peace or create that peace.

It's completely a receiving.

But I think for me, um, in all of this pandemic, the slowness has revealed my busy heart and my restlessness that I was carrying and maintaining and almost couldn't even hear due to the busyness around me.

And so it's it's hard to process something that's convicting amidst the busyness.

But as everything shut down and my house began to get quiet, well, there's a few moments of quiet, um, there was time to reflect and confess and repent about the busyness that I and the restlessness that I had been feeling in my heart, and I was able to become aware of that.

And I have loved finding those quiet moments where um all the things that I use to compensate for my restlessness, instead of those spilling out on everybody within my home, the slowness has created a place where I can process those things that I use to compensate.

It has created a place where I can process those amidst the love of the Father and not just immediately having to pour them out on all of the people in my home.

And so I have really enjoyed being able to do that.

Part of the mystery of this great love that he's given us is these three pieces that these three points have had, which I really love.

And a lot of times when I'm praying for the girls at night, I talk about a short term would be a short phrase would be LPJ, but love, peace, and joy.

And these three points are that.

And a lot of times at night I'll pray, you know, that they would find their love in Jesus, that they would find their joy in Jesus, and they would find their peace in him.

And those three things are our three points, and it's also where we find those things are in Jesus.

And it's not something we can conjure up or create or make a craft for it to happen.

It's something that truly we are dependent on his great lavish love for us in order to have.

And so, my prayer for you today, moms, is that you may find your love in Jesus and that you could find your joy in him and your peace in him, for he is the source of radical love for you.

So I'm gonna pray.

Dear God, we thank you for this time.

I thank you for mothers, we thank you for how our moms love us.

And nobody loves you like your mom.

And there is a great love that you have gifted moms to be able to love their people, whether they're two or whether they're 62.

And would you and your kindness continue to open up our hearts in greater ways to trust in you and to rest in this great radical love that you have given us.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.