When Life Makes You Anxious - Philippians 4:4-9 (Apr 21) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists.

Glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

The Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be with you this morning.

There are moments like these.

I wish that you could be the one preaching.

I'm sure you don't feel that yourself sometimes, but uh so often the Holy Spirit works through the worship in a way that if you know what's coming up, you just you just can't, you wouldn't believe it.

And I get to experience that because I know what's coming up.

And uh I just feel that, you know, I don't really have anything even to add beyond what we've already sung about.

And I think you're gonna see so many connections uh from what we spent our time this morning singing and what we're gonna see in God's word in Philippians chapter four.

Before we get into the text, I want to let you know on Thursday, Dave Locke, who is one of our uh elders and I will be boarding a plane and flying to Romania to visit one of our sister churches out there.

This church, the pastor there is Sam Cucku.

And uh we've supported them financially before, but we're going out there to see if there's any other ways that we can support them as a church.

You know, if you've been with us for any time, that we love church planting and we love supporting uh the missional work of church planting.

And so we're gonna spend a week out there.

We're gonna do some training with their leaders, Dave Locke and I, on Sunday morning, next Sunday.

I'll be preaching there, and I'll be sure to send a picture.

They're about nine hours behind, so we'll be well done unless the sermon goes a little longer.

It needs to be translated, so maybe it will be a record-breaking nine-hour sermon.

I'm just kidding.

They would be terrified of that.

Um, but we want to let you know that.

Keep us in your prayers and just keep that church in your prayers and in any ways that we can be supporting them as a church.

I have a tendency, it's a bad tendency in my life to over-hype things.

I don't know if anyone here has that same tendency, do you?

If I had spoken to you last night before the Leafs game, I would have said leafs in four.

They're gonna win it.

That's my tendency is to over-hype things, and I need to work kind of practically in my life to almost under-hype things.

I gotta resist this natural urge I have to just say like everything's gonna be the absolute best.

It's gonna be uh the most awesome it could possibly be, because I just have this habit of kind of over-promising, under-delivering on experiences.

Now, when it comes to our text this morning, though, I'm I'm happy because this text is overhype proof.

I love those things in life where it's like you could hype it up as much as you want, but you will not overhype this thing.

And this is theologically true.

I want you to see this.

Look at Philippians chapter 4, look at verse 7 first, and I want you to see how this verse, really, this promise that God has for us this morning, cannot be overhyped.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

Look at this promise for us.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ.

I love this.

The peace of God, there is a way for you to live in this dark, broken, anxiety-inducing world.

There is a way for you to live in which you can have the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.

So that means no matter how good I do a job at preaching this this morning, I haven't done a good enough job because we the more you understand it, the more you come to know you just can't understand this peace of God.

It surpasses understanding.

There is a way for you to live with that peace.

Notice this morning that this is the very peace of God.

It's what God is offering us this morning is not just some peace.

I mean, you can find peace in this world.

And many are looking for peace.

In fact, all are looking for peace, and those without the Lord certainly look for peace, and they find peace in some degrees.

Maybe it's by organizing their schedule to center around rest and relaxation and pushing themselves away from suffering as much as they can.

Maybe it's by surrounding themselves by a certain friend group.

You know, this friend caused me a lot of anxiety, and so I'll cut them off, but these friends give me peace.

Maybe it's through medication.

Certainly, peace is possible in this world, and there are some that experience it more than others, but that's not the kind of peace that you're being offered this morning.

Look again at the text with me, and notice in verse 7: this is the peace of God.

And so here is God in heaven, and he has a promise that he wants to inject into the heart of your life, and it's this promise that you can experience not just some peace, that you can experience his peace.

For a moment, let's put on our theology caps and think about what that means.

What is God's peace like?

Does God have any anxiety?

Does God wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the things that are troubling him?

Has anything happened in your life where God has seen it happen and he's kind of taken a step back and in shock and disbelief?

I cannot believe that happened.

Well, certainly we know that the answer is no.

God knows the end from the beginning, and so he's never been shocked, he's never been surprised, never for a single moment in all of eternity has he been anxious for a single moment.

For all of eternity, God has experienced this serenity, this peace, because he knows the beginning from the end.

Jesus experienced this peace.

In fact, it was one of the things that Jesus' closest followers, when Jesus was here on earth, could not wrap their minds around.

And you'll remember if you've read the gospel when Jesus was on the boat and the wind and the waves were blowing and they're rocking the boat, and everyone was losing their mind.

Certainly you and I would be too.

I've been on a boat with small waves, and I've been losing my mind, and you and I would be on this boat thinking we're gonna die.

And they look for Jesus and they cannot find Jesus.

And what is Jesus doing?

Well, he's in the bottom of the boat and he's catching a little power nap.

He's sleeping through the storm.

And they shake their heads at a time like this where we are so filled with anxiety, we like we might die in this boat.

And it's probably very likely they had friends who just like continually died on the waters.

We could die, and here is Jesus sleeping on the boat.

Jesus, he had this impenetrable peace.

No matter what storms and waves blew against his life, it could not shake this peace from him.

And God this morning has this kind of solid belief in you that you can experience this kind of peace.

Now, this is something I I truly believe is hard for us to really, with a heart of faith, accept.

Do you accept this morning that there is a way that you can live in which you will have the very peace that God enjoys in heaven?

Do you believe that there is a way for you to defeat anxiety?

Do you believe that as broken as this world is, as messed up as your life may be right now or may get in the future, as dark as our society is becoming, do you believe that there is a way to live in this world with impenetrable peace?

Well, let me turn your attention then to the text again, because certainly this is what God is saying to us this morning.

He's promising us this kind of peace.

And if this kind of peace exists, what you and I want to know, no matter what our anxiety level is this morning, no matter how we struggle with this, certainly we want to know how to experience this peace.

Look at what Paul says in verses four to nine.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

The Lord is at hand.

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

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

I want to know this peace that God experiences in my own life, and I'm sure you do too.

Why don't we turn to the Lord before we turn to the text and pray?

Father, we Lord, we uh we long for this peace, and thank God, we live in a world that is so filled with reasons to be anxious.

Lord, is so filled with uncertainties, it's so filled with worries.

And it's been this way, Lord, ever since the fall.

There has been every reason for us to be filled with anxiety and live a life of anxiety, Lord, if we don't know you.

And yet, God, what you offer us this morning really astounds us, even as we begin to think about it.

God, that there is a way that that your the peace that you experience, that we can experience it.

This is your promise to us, Lord, that there is a way that we can live in which the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds.

And God, we long for that.

And so we pray for the help of your Holy Spirit, Lord.

We we recognize that what's happening right now is is a spiritual reality, Lord.

You are speaking to us in our innermost being, in the depths of our heart, and the words of man cannot penetrate to the depth of what needs to happen.

Lord, your spirit needs to move.

And so move in our midst, we pray.

God, enlighten our understanding to the truth of your words and the weight of this promise we have before us, God, that we can experience your peace.

God, would you defeat anxiety in this room?

Would you defeat worry?

Lord, the very things that we we even carry into this room, God, would you give us this impenetral peace that Jesus experienced and you experience now, Lord, and you now offer to us.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Well, before we understand how to get this peace, I think we need to understand what this peace is.

And and Paul really gets into the meat of it, of what this peace looks like.

Look in verse 4, what Paul says.

He says, Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say, rejoice.

Now, looking at the type of peace that God wants us to experience, the first thing we understand about it is that this peace is a peace that causes us to rejoice no matter what is happening in our lives.

Notice what Paul says.

He's really trying to get a point across.

It's almost like three times he's really trying to get this point across that no matter where you're at in life this morning, no matter what's going on in your circumstances this morning, your attitude, your emotion should be that of rejoicing.

He says, Rejoice in the Lord.

And you say, when, and Paul says, always.

And if that's not enough, he says, Again I say, rejoice.

This is a command.

Rejoice in the Lord, always, again.

Now we look at who this command comes from, and it carries a special weight, doesn't it?

This is the Apostle Paul.

And at this very moment, Paul is in jail.

And you'll remember reading in chapter 2 that Paul really doesn't know what's going to happen to him.

He really, he really considers that this could end in his death, like his life could be over now.

And he even says, again, further on in chapter 2, that everybody has deserted him.

Paul has planted church after church.

He has written these letters filled with his loving compassion to these churches, and he says this in Philippians, no one is standing beside me.

He's been stabbed in the back multiple times.

His circumstances are less than ideal in jail.

And yet he writes to this church, Philippi, who is who is facing difficulties of their own, and he says this, rejoice always.

Paul had every reason to be joyless.

The Philippians had every reason to be joyless.

They were experiencing some disunity in their fellowship.

They were worried about Epaphroditus who had nearly died trying to get to Paul.

Well, we have every reason too, don't we?

In fact, I'm sure that you could come up here right now and kind of give your list.

Like this, this is these are the things in my life that are robbing me of joy.

And in fact, if we were to look at your prayer life, you know what I bet we'd see is like that you you probably pray about a lot of those things and think about a lot of them, and you even probably give them to God.

God, like, this is causing me so much grief in this life.

Will you just fix this problem?

We often have this recognition of the things that are happening in our life that are robbing us of joy.

Many of us have lived for years with these sort of thorns in the flesh that just like, because this thing is present in my life, I just cannot have joy.

And the reality is that if you live in this world post-fall, after the fall of Adam and Eve, you will have every reason in life to have your joy robbed from you.

I mean, I think about this constantly.

As I get older and older, I get I notice this trend that have you noticed this, that typically, this isn't true in our church, but typically in our world, kind of the older you get, isn't it true?

Like the grumpier you get.

And I kind of have like this goal in my life.

Again, this is not true in our church.

I have this goal in my life, though, I want to get old and I want to be happy.

Like I want to protect myself, I want to guard my heart from the things that like harden so many people's hearts to life.

There's so many opportunities day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, for us to have our joy robbed from us.

And Paul says, no, stop it.

Rejoice always.

There is a way for you to experience peace that leads to a constant rejoicing.

Well, notice next that this peace, it is a it's a peace that allows us to rejoice in all the circumstances of life, no matter how dark life gets.

But notice it's also a peace that leads to reasonableness.

So it so Paul says in verse 5, let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

This peace is a reasonableness.

This is the opposite of anxiety, isn't it?

All of us have experienced anxiety from some degree, I'm sure.

You you you no matter what, you know, I sleep like a rock, but there are times in my life, especially since I've become a senior pastor, where I just wake up in the middle of the night and I just like there's something on my mind I can't get it off.

And isn't it so often the case that when you wake up in the morning and you're thinking about that thing that you were anxious about in the middle of the night, you're like, oh wait, I was just like, I must have just been really tired because that doesn't even make any sense.

And isn't it true that when you talk to other people, you know, you you might have a brother or a sister in Christ who's who's got reason for worry and they're sharing these things with you, and you just want to shake them, like, listen, just trust the Lord.

It's it's made what you're saying makes no sense at all.

You're taking the worst possible scenario and you're like acting as though that's true.

And it's very likely, isn't this also the case, that what you're anxious about just isn't going to come to fruition.

The reality is that really the opposite of anxiety is reasonableness.

In so many scenarios, our our anxieties are they're just so unreasonable.

And Paul is offering us this way of life that we can live that is that is reasonable.

What God's saying to us this morning is that He's this peace that He offers us, it's able to put everything in perspective so that no situation in your life is blown out of proportion, and no wave that rocks figuratively to speaking figuratively, rocks your boat, will put you out of disjoint.

Like Jesus, you can sleep in the midst of the storm.

It's a reasonable way of thinking that's offered to us this morning.

Causes us to put everything in perspective, it causes us to react accordingly.

That's why Paul goes on to say here, the Lord is at hand.

This peace that's offered to us this morning, it it reminds us that this the end is already written.

The reason why God experiences this peace is because he knows the end from the beginning from the end.

And Paul here says the reason why you can respond to life situations with peace is because you can come to believe that the Lord is at hand.

This piece knows that the end is already written and it reacts accordingly.

Let me ask you this have you ever watched a movie two times in a row?

I was reminded this week I heard the Jurassic Theme Park, and you you ever have those songs, the Jurassic Theme song?

You ever have those songs that kind of like transport you back into a time of your life?

Well, I remember when I was like five, I would watch my I would uh maybe I was four, because my brothers would go to school every day, and I would watch Jurassic Park every morning.

I don't know what my parents were thinking, because that's a pretty terrifying movie, and I'd watch it behind the couch, you know, just peering out a little bit.

I still do if I watch that movie today.

And I came to understand that movie, you know, like the back of my hand.

I knew every line.

And the more you watch that movie, the more the terrifying scenes, they kind of lose their grip on you because you know exactly what's gonna happen.

You know the ending, you know that everything's gonna turn out okay.

I'm sure you've watched a movie at times, it's the second time you've seen the movie, maybe you're watching it with someone, they're watching it for the first time, and you don't squirm like they do, right?

They're so caught in the plot because they don't know what's gonna happen, but you already know, so you can kind of sit back and enjoy it.

Like, I know everything's gonna work out okay.

And what God is offering us this morning is this understanding that the end is already written of your life.

You know what happens at the end of your life?

God wins.

God wins, the end is already over.

And so you don't need to know all the little details in between.

You don't need to know the ups and the downs if you just know like the Lord is at hand.

You know, I was reading this this week in Acts, my own personal Bible reading, and and I got to the point where Stephen is preaching a, he's like this rock solid message.

And at the end, everyone picks up stones and they start stoning him.

And it's like in the midst of being stoned, Stephen looks up and he and he has this vision, and it's this vision of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is standing at the right hand of God, and you just see in that moment Stephen's face is filled with this joy because it doesn't matter as the rocks are coming, pelting down on him, and he is about to die, he knows that the end is written.

He knows that he's going to glory.

He faces the deepest, darkest moment, darker than any of us will ever face.

And because he sees that the Lord is at hand, he's given this peace in the midst of his deepest trial.

Peace tells me everything is gonna be okay.

Peace tells me that despite my understanding of my circumstances, these this is all gonna turn out for the good of God's glory and for the good of his people.

Now, before we understand how to have this peace, again, we're looking at what this peace is, and there's one last thing I want you to see about this piece.

It's that it can infiltrate every part of your life.

Look at verse six here.

Look at this command.

This is such a relevant and I think hope-giving command for those of us who struggle with anxiety.

In verse six, Paul says this do not be anxious about anything.

God does not command the things that are impossible for you to follow.

And what he is commanding you this morning is that you allow this peace to infiltrate every part of your life.

Listen, it's easy to have peace in some scenarios, isn't it?

You know, when everything's going well, when we're on the mountains of life, like peace is simple.

But here is this command, do not be anxious about anything.

And it shows us this reality that God believes this is possible for your life.

God believes that there is a way for you to live in which you can be free from anxiety.

And you can ride through the deepest lows of your life with this impenetrable peace.

Why does God believe it?

Because he offers it.

I don't know about you, I want to know this peace in my life.

Paul wanted to know the Philippian, wanted the Philippian church to know this peace as well.

And God this morning wants us to know it.

It's very interesting what we have here in Paul.

You see, Paul is not like this guy who's just like, you know, he's never anxious.

You probably know some people like that, don't you?

Don't you know some people, it's like no matter what happens in life, like their personality is kind of like this strong personality that they just cannot be phased by life.

No matter what happens, it's like the harder life gets, it's like the stronger they get.

That's just kind of their personality.

That was not Paul.

Well, the reason we know that is because Paul actually tells us in verse 9, he says that we are to practice these things.

Paul, Paul, what happened in Paul's life is the way that he got the peace of God is he came to recognize that there were certain practices that were necessary if he was going to experience the peace that God offers.

And what he does for us this morning through the inspiration of the word is he offers us these practices.

See, if you want to know peace, you need to practice, Paul says, what I practice.

In fact, in verse 11, we're gonna get here next week.

He even says this he says, Not that I'm speaking of being in need.

For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

For Paul, this was a learning process.

He wasn't just someone who was naturally like immune to anxiety.

He had to learn how the practices that were required in his life in order to attain the peace of God.

And these practices he gives to us this morning.

I wanted you to see three of them, three practices required for a life of peace.

And the first is this a resilient thankfulness.

A resilient thankfulness.

Look at the first practice with me in verse 6.

Now that we've understood what this peace is, notice how we attain this.

Look what Paul says.

But in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

This is a command for you and I this morning.

It's a command to pray about all the events and situations in your life.

It's a command to bring everything to the Lord.

And this is very relevant, I think, for each of us because you know what often happens is we often feel like there are things we should bring to the Lord, maybe the big things in life, maybe the real hard sufferings we can bring to the Lord.

But then there's some things that are just like, I don't know if God really cares about that.

But the reality is that the things that often bring us anxiety in life are those little things.

And what God says to us this morning is this I want you to bring everything to me.

I am your heavenly father, and nothing is off the table here.

I want you to bring everything.

There's a way that we need to bring everything, and we're gonna get into that in a moment.

Paul says that we are to in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving.

Let these requests be made known to God.

But I want you to recognize this the goodness of God here to invite us to put everything on the table.

You know, good parents do this with their children, don't they?

I'm I'm really working on this.

It's difficult, especially when you got young toddlers.

It is difficult to condescend into their world and believe that their problems are really problems.

My second-year-old fell off the toilet this week.

And I don't know how to relate with that problem.

I have not ever fallen off the toilet and cried my eyes out.

And yet, good parenting says this that you condescend down to your kids' level into their world, and you understand that these things that they're crying about are real concerns to them.

Even though you know so much to know that, like, you're gonna be okay.

All right, this is not gonna be a problem, you're gonna make it through.

But to them in their world, like they do have such limited knowledge, and so they think it's a big deal, and so they're crying their eyeballs, and they can't understand why you don't pay attention to their needs.

And good parents have the patience and the compassion.

I know this in my wife, not in my own life, to condescend into their kids' world and allow any request to be put on the table and to meet them where they need to be met with hope and peace and love, and to carry them to a better place.

This is what God is offering us.

God has perfect peace, and we in life have anxiety, and God is asking us to bring our anxieties to him, to let our requests be made known, so that he can meet us with his impenetrable peace.

He is willing and he is able to condescend into our world, even though what's worrying us is not worrying him, and out of his compassion for you, he's willing to hear you.

Didn't Jesus model this kind of mercy that he had for sinners when people came to Lazarus broke and Lazarus is dead.

What did Jesus do?

He wept.

Well, Jesus knew that he would resurrect Lazarus.

Why did he weep?

Because Jesus was condescending to their level to understand their emotions, and this is why your great high priest was tempted in every way that you have been, so that in their time of need, he is a able to help you.

Jesus condescends to you, to the things that you're facing.

He wants to hear all that you have to put onto the table.

But I want you to recognize here that we are to come a certain way, he says.

But in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving.

This is the hard part.

This is the hard part, that as we bring all these things to the table, the command here is to do it with thanksgiving.

You know what you and I do really well.

I can promise you, you are a master at this, because I'm a master at this, and I think every Christian is a master at this.

We are really good at bringing things to God for Thanksgiving instead of with Thanksgiving.

Let me explain the difference there.

We bring things to God for Thanksgiving.

We are, we we we pray in a way that says, God, I'll be thankful once you act this way.

Do you understand the difference there?

We have a list of prayer requests, and we say, God, this is how I want you to act.

And once you deliver on what I'm asking you to do, then I'm gonna be filled with so much thankfulness.

I'm gonna give you so much glory.

Now, maybe we'd never phrase it like that, but if you're honest with yourself in this moment, isn't that true that so many of our prayer lives kind of function like that?

God, I want you to do this.

I know this is the best course of action for my life, and so do it.

And once you do it, I'm gonna be really thankful.

I'm gonna give you all the glory, God.

In this scenario, we we really come to God as our own savior, don't we?

We say, God, listen, I know what you need to do, okay?

I know this problem in my life.

I know exactly what you need to do.

I have the blueprint.

Here it is, God.

Here's the blueprint, here's what you need to do.

I just don't have the power to do it.

And so maybe we could team up in this thing, you know.

I have the knowledge, God.

I know what you need to do, you have the power, you know, we could be an awesome team.

I just need you to act.

See, the problem is that we've given to ourselves something that we don't actually have.

We've given to ourselves this omniscient knowledge, like we know what is best.

And can't you kind of look back in your life and recognize that at times in the past you actually didn't know what was best?

Is there anything in your life?

I certainly have these things in my life where it's like, you were praying, you were praying so hard for a certain thing to happen a certain way, and now you look back and you're like, man, if that had happened that way, I would have been a wreck.

Here's the real scenario Theology time for us.

Between you and God, who knows?

Who knows all things?

Well, this is an easy one, right?

Well, God knows all things.

And between you and God, who has the power to do all things?

Well, again, God has the power to do all things, not you.

Your power is so limited.

God has the power to do all things.

God knows.

I don't.

Here's the solution.

Pray with thanksgiving.

We come to God instead of prayers for things to happen in which we will be thankful then for, we come to God with thanksgiving for the way that things are going, because we know that God knows all things, and that God, Romans 8.28, works all things together for good, and he has the power to do all things.

And so, this anxiety that's in our life, even though we cannot comprehend why it would be for any good, we believe that God is God and He's working it out for good.

Therefore, we come to God and with anxiety welling up in our life, with worry surrounding us, we thank God for these things that are in our life, knowing that God knows something that we don't.

And God is acting according to a knowledge that we just don't have.

I love, I love what Tim Keller says.

I'm gonna say this like, maybe I'll just say this like 27 more times.

We'll just end the sermon with this because this is so good.

Look what Tim Keller says.

He says, God will either give us what we ask, or give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows.

Can I say that again?

This is this is there's so much hope to be infused into your life in these words as you trust that God truly is like this.

God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows.

God knows better than you.

And the reason why we're so filled with anxiety and worry is because we believe that there is a better life for us somewhere else.

And we believe that God is withholding that life.

And God is coming to us this morning to say that it is just not true that the deepest anxieties you have in your life, you can bring to God with thanksgiving.

God, thank you for putting this thorn in my life because God knows more than you.

He knows something that you do not, and so you come to him with this recognition that this belief in Romans 8.28 that God is working out all things, even the things you don't understand, all things for good.

It's better for you to have this thing in your life that is causing you anxiety and causing you worry than for you to not have it, because God knows something you don't know.

And so we come to Him with this resilient thankfulness, which is necessary for us to have if we will experience His peace.

But the second thing I want you to see here, if we're gonna experience this peace in life, is we need a renewed thinking.

We need a renewed thinking.

Well, interestingly, the peace of God that we're studying in verse 7 here, we're told is a peace of God that will guard our hearts and our minds.

This is truly what we need is for our hearts and our minds to be guarded from the many things in this world, dark and evil and worrisome things that constantly attack us.

And so it's interesting then that the command has to do with your thinking.

Look at verse 8.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, listen to these words.

Think.

Think about these things.

The biblical remedy to anxiety in your life is thinking.

Now, this is interesting because the average secular person in our world understands this.

If you were to go to modern day literature on addressing anxiety, one of the first things you would read is that it has to do with the way that you think.

But there are many differences.

Well, it does the well, the biblical remedy has to do with thinking.

What happens in our secular world is we really go wrong on the way that we are to think.

There are multiple ways of thinking that are offered as a solution to your anxiety.

Let me just give you three.

One of the ways that our secular world deals with anxiety is by thinking about something else.

And so I've read this.

You know, when you're anxious, what you need to do is close your eyes and just picture your last vacation, you're on the beach, and you can hear the waves, you know, rolling in.

So many people from our church just got back from Florida, and so they're like really, you know, condemning me right now, but it's okay.

You can hear it coming in and just focus on that.

Happy thoughts.

Or, you know, look around the room and try to find as many blue things as you can.

When anxiety's weighing up in your soul, it's like just distract think about something else.

And yet the problem is that we can do that, and maybe it'll work for a minute, maybe we can distract ourselves, but then as soon as you stop thinking, and usually it's in at night when you lay down, you close your eyes, and there's nothing to do, these thoughts they start penetrating back into your mind.

And you can only distract yourself for so long.

And really what we've done in our culture is that this constant, it's like a life of distraction.

Maybe if I just get more toys, maybe if I just get another whatever, this and that materialism, if I experience this entertainment or do that, it's this constant distraction.

Maybe I can finally deal with my anxiety, but eventually, the more you do that, any moment of silence, if you just have a second of silence, it's like you've built up this water dam, and all the anxieties in your life, they come rushing into your life and you're overwhelmed.

It doesn't work.

Can't just think about something else.

Well, another suggestion then is that you empty your mind through meditation.

Maybe the problem is that you don't need to distract yourself, but what you do need to do is you need to meditate, and and meditation, according to this worldview, is this emptying of the mind.

You empty your mind so that there are no thoughts, no good thoughts, no bad thoughts.

It's just a blank slate.

Now you learned last week that I am in sort of a master's course of uh gardening right now.

I'm learning a lot of gardening through osmosis through my wife.

Here's one thing I know about gardening that you can empty a plot of ground and you can make the soil as fertile as you want with nothing there.

But if you don't plant other plants, what will then grow up?

New weeds.

Something worse will come up.

And one of the things I know about a green lawn, I mean, I'm giving away all my tips here, but if you want to like really defeat weeds, you know what you need to do is grow grass so thick that the weeds have no space to come up.

And any bear patch you have on your lawn, like that's just gonna be filled with weeds.

And so it is with our mind.

See, see, maybe you can empty it.

I don't know if that's actually possible, but maybe you can empty your mind of all thoughts.

But then what happens is these other thoughts that are equally as, if not more destructive, they then just rush into your mind, and your problem is not solved by emptying your mind through meditation either.

Well, here's a third option.

Maybe you fill your mind with positivity.

I mean, that'd be good, right?

Like if if what you need then is positive plants, well then then maybe what you need is these mantras.

And so you tell you tell yourself, you know, what when you are feeling like the condemnation of other people, like you feel like you're just not enough for other people, you know what you need to tell yourself?

You tell yourself you are enough.

You've been on Instagram lately?

This is the way that a lot of people are uh you know providing comfort for other people.

Hey, sister, you're enough.

And you just need to know it.

And you you can even like like kind of like hype yourself up into this state of believing, yeah, I am enough, but then you know what happens?

You kind of hit this wall where you realize, like, I don't think I'm enough.

I've got to go back for some more kind of like, someone tell me I'm enough, okay, I'm enough, and you come back out in the real world and you realize I'm not enough.

I can't face these things on my I just can't handle life.

And you just keep kind of trying to like persuade yourself, no, I know I'm enough, I know I'm enough, but like every external sign shows you you are not enough.

Maybe we tell ourselves we're enough, maybe we tell ourselves we're strong, we can do this.

The problem is this that in life, isn't it true, there are a lot of problems that are bigger than you, isn't there?

Like there are problems, you just get like there's nothing I can do, and that's why.

So, like some of your relationships with the Lord are just like driven by like you need to be in the situation where you're just that wit's end, you have nothing left to do.

Once you have nothing left, then I'll go to the Lord.

But there are problems that are so much bigger than your ability to deal with, to control.

You can't just fill your mind with positivity.

You need to fill your mind with what Paul here says is true.

You need to think about what is true.

You know, it's interesting.

The um secular worldview, when it deals with anxiety, it never deals with it like this.

Here's something that you will never heard said to an anxious person.

Hey, if you're anxious about something, why don't you just think about, you know, how we got here, why we're here in the world, and where we're going.

Why don't you think about the big questions of life?

And the reality is that because if you were to think about those things, wouldn't they just kind of induce more and more anxiety?

I don't want to think about what's true.

I don't want to think about the big questions of life.

And here, what God calls us to do is think in a way in which we wade into what is actually true.

Many people have misunderstood what this verse is saying.

Many people have have sort of understood Paul to be saying here, listen, in a world that's full of things that are false and true, just ignore the false, turn a blind eye to it, and focus on what is true.

In a world that is filled with so many things that are just so negative, ignore the negative, focus on the positive.

That's not what's happening here.

What Paul is suggesting here is something completely different than that.

That instead we reinterpret all of our life to understand that even in the darkest moments, even in the moments of life that we just can't understand, we can look at these and understand that in them there is truth, there is that which is honorable, there is that which is just, which is pure, which is lovely, which is commendable, which is excellent, which is worthy of praise.

We are to think about these things from God's perspective.

God knows that what he is doing in your life is true and honorable and lovely and commendable and excellent and worthy of praise.

And what he is asking for you is to look in the circumstances of your life and from your limited perspective, understand what he understands as much as you can.

So that you come to this place where you understand that the things that are making you anxious are actually good.

They are lovely, they are commendable.

So that if you were to have God's perspective and rewrite your life, you would not change a single thing.

Because you would come to see, knowing all that God knows now, that everything in your life has been orchestrated in a way that is true and honorable and lovely and commendable and excellent and worthy of praise.

It's this peace that you have because God is in control.

We know this about our lives, don't we?

Isn't it true that so much of your suffering you look back on in life and you think, man, that was such a hard moment?

But all that God did through it, I would go through it again.

I would do it just the exact same way.

Like, so much was produced from that that I couldn't even have imagined would have been produced in the moment.

But as I look back and I see like just a portion of all that God has done, I would go through it in a second.

And God's offering this confidence that that will be every scenario of your life.

You'll see that at the at the end of the race.

But God wants you to trust him with a faith that believes that today.

That no matter what's making you anxious today, there's a reason to praise him.

It's this renewed thinking we need if we're to experience peace.

But lastly, I want you to see this that the thing we need is a redeemed love.

Notice the promise here.

The promise here is that the peace of God will guard your heart.

Will guard your heart.

Isn't that what we all long for?

Don't we long for our heart to be guarded from the pain of the world?

Is that not what anxiety is?

It's sort of this inner turmoil that happens in our life, or our heart is sort of like it's it's like it's hard to describe.

It feels like it's being wrenched in two because something is happening that we don't want to happen.

And God here, he's offering to guard your heart.

He says in verse 9 that he does this by being with you.

He says the God of peace will be with you.

Can I ask you a question?

Apart from knowing that God is with you, how else could you guard your heart?

I mean, this is what we all want.

We want a life that's free from pain, don't we?

We want a life that's free from suffering.

We don't want to experience the hardships and the anxieties and the worries of life.

We don't want to experience that sort of inner wrenching in two that anxiety causes us to experience.

And so, how do you guard your heart?

There's many ways.

In fact, many religions deal with this, especially the Eastern religions.

In fact, you know what Buddhism says about it, and this is really alive and relevant in our Western culture too.

Buddhism says that you know what the problem is?

You know why you experience so much pain in life?

It's because you you just have too much desire.

If you desire things too much, you're just gonna get hurt.

Like love anything, and you'll get hurt.

So you know what the solution is?

Don't desire anything.

And you know, the Buddhists didn't actually create this.

The ancient Greeks thought this way as well.

They thought the enemy was desire.

And so they said, you know, you can prefer things.

But never desire things.

So don't look at your kids and tell them that you love them.

You know, more than any other kids on the block.

You look at your kids, you say, I prefer you.

Husbands, try that with your wives.

Try I, you know, you are my preference when it comes to wives.

I really prefer you over other wives.

It just doesn't work.

And this is one way that you can legitimately guard your heart, is you can work as hard as you can, and some people do this, and kind of successfully they do it.

Work as hard as you can so that you just don't really love anything too much and you won't be hurt.

That's the way that a lot of us deal with church.

We've been hurting in the life of the church, and so we say, I'm just not gonna get too close then.

Because I don't want to be hurt again.

I don't want to get too involved with these people because I just do not want to be hurt.

C.S.

Lewis has an interesting quote.

He says this to love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal.

Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or cost coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.

It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

And to love is to be vulnerable.

And here is what God is doing.

God is saying this.

If you give your love to me, I, as the God who is infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, and all-knowing, will guard your heart with my peace.

You give your love to anything in this world, and it will hurt you.

I feel like this is one of the first things I say to new people in our church.

I say this, listen, it's gonna be like a few weeks, I'm gonna offend you, I'm gonna hurt you somehow.

And they don't hear that at other churches, so they look at me kind of weird, and that's probably why they don't return again, like this pastor's out for vengeance.

But I just know it's the reality that as a sinner, like I know my own flesh.

I know that it to be in relationship with people is to hurt people.

And I pray I do it less and less, but I just recognize the volatility of my own life.

That there are ups and downs in my own life, that like if your hope is in me, I am gonna sorely let you down.

To love anything is to make yourself vulnerable to it and to possibly be hurt by it, and that is what's so great about love.

You love your kids, and you're saying this, I'm investing myself in you.

This is sacrificial.

Like, I am for you.

And your ups and your highs and your lows, I'm there with you.

And God has committed himself to you, and he's asking you this: will you love him in return?

This is an inner disposition that's required.

You notice that the things that the things that we are to practice here in verse 9, Paul says, practice these things.

They're all internal.

The things that we are to practice is sort of this inward disposition in our mind and really in our heart that we view things as honorable and pure and lovely.

Where do you understand that things are lovely?

It is in your heart.

It's in your heart.

This is it's this internal disposition God is after, this disposition of love for him.

Well, here is the question then.

How do you grow in love?

How do you grow in love for God?

Like, can you just leave this place and just kind of like grit your teeth?

All right, I'm gonna love God more then, then he can protect my heart and I'll be good.

It doesn't happen like that.

Love for God must be a genuine outworking in your heart.

And it can only happen when you see what he has done for you.

This is the promise here in verse 9.

It says, the God of peace will be with you.

The only time that the presence, someone's presence gives us peace is if we really trust and love that person.

So many times throughout the uh course of raising my kids, they have called out in fear.

They need their dad, they need their mom.

Why do they call out for dad and mom?

Because they know them and they love them, and their presence invokes this sense of safety.

I'm going to be okay.

And the only way that God being with you will bring comfort to your anxious and worry-filled life is if in your heart there is this love and trust of God.

How do you cultivate that?

Well, you need to see what he has done for your peace.

In Isaiah 48, verse 22, there's a famous verse, the prophet says this, there is no peace for the wicked.

Isaiah 48:22

This is true of all of life, that if you're not in Christ, you can experience sort of like a superficial peace, a distracted peace in this world, but you cannot experience lasting peace.

Distraction and discomfort and anxiety will always rush back into your life.

But this is especially true of our eternity if we are outside of Christ.

There is a coming day where for eternity, if you do not place your faith in Christ, you will face eternal destruction.

And that will be eternal anxiousness, eternal worry apart from the peace of God.

But Jesus has done something.

You see, Isaiah 48, verse 22 says, There is no peace for the wicked, and we find something in Jesus' life that he experienced the peace of God for his life, but a moment switched.

Isaiah 48:22

Once he got to Jerusalem, something switched.

All of a sudden, in the account of the gospel writers, Jesus is in the garden, and all peace has left him.

And he cries out in that garden, God, if you will just take this cup from me, and yet your will be done.

And in that garden, we're told that he's so much anxiety is brought into his life that he's even sweating blood.

Then he's beaten and flogged, and he's put on the cross.

And at this point, all peace has left him.

He is facing the very wrath of God.

And there's this promise that there's no peace for the wicked.

And what Jesus did is he became sin so that you might know his righteousness.

And he became the wicked so that he might experience this life with no peace.

He would cry out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

There was no peace for him in that moment, so that the God of peace might be with you.

So that he can make a trade.

God gives you his peace.

He takes your anxiety, he takes your worry, and he accomplishes something on the cross by which he says, You can now have peace.

As we come to the communion table, this is especially relevant for us.

God has worked in a way in which he has brought us peace and he has done that through the cross.

And for us to celebrate communion together, in fact, I'm gonna ask one of the ushers to bring me up a cup because I'm missing one here.

For us, and if you need a, if you missed one on your way in, you can put your hand in the air and they would love to get one into your hands.

For us to take this cup and this bread is for us to be reminded of the symbol of what Jesus has done for us.

He took our anxiety, he took our worry, and he faced the wrath of God on the cross so that we could have this peace with God.

So that we could know that the God of peace is now with us.

And there's two reasons why you might not take this.

One, if you're not a believer, if you haven't placed your faith in Christ, this is symbolic of something that's already happened.

And so we would ask that you place your faith in Jesus Christ and the spiritual reality of what this symbolizes become true for you, so that you can embrace the physical symbol that this is of Christ's blood and body spilled and pierced for you.

Second, is if you are living in unrepentant sin.

If there's sin in your life you've been convicted of, you know that it's sin, but you're unwilling to let go of it.

Not that you have sin, but you're unwilling to let go of it.

And we would ask that you let this pass.

You'll notice there's two layers.

The top is for the bread.

Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians, for I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you.

The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant of my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you.

God, we thank you for the peace that you have offered us, the very peace of God.

And God, it is a peace that you have accomplished for us.

It's a peace that we now rest in because it's an accomplished peace.

God, we give you all the praise that at the cross our enmity was wiped away, we were made clean, and we became your friends.

Once living as your enemies, once living our life as an all-out assault, as cosmic treason in our sin.

God, you have worked in such a miraculous way to change and transform us so that we can be called children of God, where there is no enity, there is only peace.

And God, your desire, you've made it so clear for us this morning, your desire is that we would experience the peace of God that guards our hearts and guards our minds.

And Lord, what you ask of us is that we would love you, that we would give our heart to no one and nothing else apart from you and you alone.

And so, God, we turn to you now and we say this, Lord, you our heart is yours.

Our heart is yours.

Lord, guard us and keep us.

We pray.

We pray that's the name of your son.

Amen.