Meta Thanksgiving with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

In if you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

We have a Thanksgiving appropriate message for you today.

As a matter of fact, the title of my sermon comes right out of the text.

I want to show you that up front.

My message today is called Meta Thanksgiving.

I thought that was appropriate.

Thanksgiving was a few days ago.

Who are the turkey fans?

Like you love turkey all year long.

You look forward to baking, frying, trying not to explode your house, eating a turkey.

Yes.

What about like forget the turkey?

Give me the tamales.

Anybody in the yeah, there's my people.

Very good.

Well, whatever you ate, ham, ham people.

Yeah, we don't care about you, ham people.

Anyway, um, whatever you had, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Um, we're gonna be in a verse that has really meant a lot to my life in the last 10 years.

It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church in Philippi in Philippians chapter 4, verse 6, it says, Don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving.

Philippians 4:6

Present your requests to God.

I love that.

With thanksgiving.

So I came to this verse, I decided on this verse, and then I started studying it.

Now, here's what I I know, and I know that you guys know that when it comes to you know getting into like the Greek and everything of scripture, you boy's a nerd, all right?

I like it a lot.

You're probably not gonna be uh as excited about this as I am, and that's okay, you don't have to feel bad.

But when when I started breaking down the verse, uh Paul built this verse around three prepositional phrases.

So let's all go back to like third or fourth grade and have some elementary PTSD.

Prepositional phrases through prayer, through petition, and with thanksgiving.

And these prepositions really kind of set the direction of this verse.

And I started studying it through prayer and through petition, and then I got to with Thanksgiving, and my mind was blown.

You guys know we are metachurch, and we use meta as a prefix.

That's why we always write metachurch as one word.

And in the Greek, the prefix meta usually means change, like metamorphosis.

That's all one word, which means to change form.

Or metanoia, which is all one word, and it means to change your mind.

We we translate that repentance.

But meta can also be used as, you guessed it, a preposition.

If we look at it in the Greek, Philippians 4, 6 says, don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, those are the Greek letters mu, epsilon, tau, alpha, that is meta thanksgiving.

It's in the verse, meta-thanksgiving.

I told you I was gonna be way more exciting than y'all about that.

It's right there.

This is the verse we have to do for meta thanksgiving.

And not only is that so cool, it was just this little like God wink, you know, like you're onto something here.

This is the right verse for this season.

I think as we dig in to some of the hardships that the holidays can present, that this verse, as we really dig into it, just piece by piece, that it could mean a lot in taking what can be a very anxious time and turning it into a time of peace, and maybe the best holiday you've had in a while.

So, with that in mind, let's pray.

Father, we love you and we thank you for loving us.

We're amazed by it, we're humbled by it.

I thank you for a movement like MetaCurch, a place for all people and all different parts of their faith journey.

And so, God, we all need to hear from you.

We're all here wrestling with life's biggest questions.

I pray that we would just humble ourselves, that you would help quiet our minds and our hearts.

God, that we would lay down any preconceived ideas or traditions, and we would really just be ready to tune in to you, Holy Spirit, as you seek to speak to us today.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready for meta Thanksgiving, say amen.

Amen.

As I dug into this text, it became so obvious how needed this passage is.

Thanksgiving officially kicks off the holiday season, which is exciting and fun and joyous sometimes.

What we also see every year during the holiday season is that depression rates rise.

It is often the loneliest time of the year for a huge percentage of people.

Anxiety peaks to like all-time high.

It is one of the biggest times for financial stress and when people make financial decisions that they often come to regret.

Philippians 4, 6 starts out, don't worry about anything.

And that same, that same group of words can be translated from the Greek that it was written into be anxious for nothing.

This is speaking right to the core of our worry and to our anxiety.

And there's a lot to worry about as we gather together with family over the holidays.

You're worried that that like overly political uncle is going to ruin your family gathering again.

You're worried about your in-laws or you're still not really sure whether or not they like you or not.

You're worried that your kids are gonna be terrible in front of everyone and ruin this picture perfect, filtered life that you've put forward on Instagram.

You're worried that you might have to go into significant debt just to buy your kids the presence that they want this year.

There's a lot, a lot to worry about.

And before we dive into the text today, as we talk a lot about anxiety today, I just kind of want to acknowledge there's kind of layers to anxiety.

And maybe at the highest is like clinical anxiety, which is a psychological, a neurological condition that can actually be diagnosed.

And sometimes the people of God, the way that we trust God is by trusting ourselves to professionals who can help us with that.

What's far more common and experienced by everyone at some point in their life is the kind of anxiety that is like extreme worry.

It's consistent and it's persistent, it keeps you up at night, it changes your appetite, it can drive you crazy, puts your stomach in knots, create ulcers inside of you, it can ruin and derail your life.

And we see this statistically, the data shows that the holidays are one of the most anxious times of the year.

Today's message will benefit anyone who is dealing with anxiety.

And I want us to look at this kind of prescription the apostle Paul lays out for us that he wrote to the church in Philippi.

And we're really going to take our time breaking this down and looking at other places in scripture where Paul was coming from in this tradition that he was writing.

In Philippians 4 6, he starts by saying, Don't worry about anything.

This is quite a high call.

Don't worry about anything, be anxious for nothing.

Now, the Greek that the Christian scriptures were written in this very, very rich language.

The original readers of Paul's letter, they might have read this like, don't eat up your own heart, or don't let your thoughts take away your strength.

Do not be anxious for anything.

And you know, what Paul is teaching, he received from the life and the teachings of Jesus himself.

Jesus, in his most famous sermon, what we call the Sermon on the Mount, said this in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He said, Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?

He goes on to say, so don't worry, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?

For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them.

And Gentiles, right there, in the context Jesus was speaking, can be a placeholder for people who are not connected to God.

This is how people who have no hope for their future, who have no security, who do not have a heavenly father act, do not worry in verse 33.

Instead, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things, all of these worries and stressors, concerns and anxieties, all of these things that are causing you to lose sleep and lose your appetite, all these things will be provided for you.

Don't worry about anything, be anxious for nothing.

It's interesting, Jesus brings out that when we live consumed by worry, it kind of causes problems on both sides.

The most obvious side is that we are living like people who aren't connected to the hope of God.

We have the hope of God inside of us, we have the promises of God in front of us, and yet we are living as if we are hopeless and helpless for our future.

Not only that, it also has a terrible side effect that when we are consumed with worry and riddled with anxiety, it takes away so much of our time and our energy and so much of our just capacity that we aren't able to live our life seeking and building God's kingdom.

And if you go to Medichurch, you know this that like we have this conviction that we cannot shake, that God has placed a purpose inside of every single person that He created.

And the life that you are desperate to live at the deepest core of who you are is a life of purpose, a life that follows Jesus into building the kingdom of God.

And if anxiety has consumed you, it will keep you from living the kind of life that builds God's kingdom.

The problem with worry is it has almost this magnetic quality to it.

It's almost like the more we try to stop worrying, the more we worry, the more attention we're giving it.

We're like worrying, and so we try to stop and we can't.

So then we're worried about worrying.

It's just a cycle that goes on and on and on, and it seems like when we start, we can't stop, and that's a real problem because worry grows when it is fed attention.

The more that we focus in on it, the more that we immerse ourselves in it, the more that we build these models of what just might happen in the future, the more often that we live in the worst case scenario over and over and over again.

Without attention, worry withers and it dies.

And so often in life, this is just part of our broken human condition, so often we find ourselves feeding the things that kill us and starving the things that would actually fill us.

We feed what is killing us, and we're starving what would be filling us.

And I get that that's easy to say, and it's much easier to actually do.

We feed all our time, energy, and attention into worry, and by doing that, we neglect giving our attention to seeking God and the kingdom life that He's designed us to live.

And I do actually get this, I empathize with it.

I've had a season of incredible anxiety in my own life.

I do realize that if you could just wish away your anxiety or just declare you no longer have it, and that worked, that everyone suffering with anxiety would do that.

We need practical steps, we need a template, somewhere to go with it.

And I love that's exactly what Paul is offering us in Philippians 4 6.

And he doubles down right away.

He starts by saying, Don't worry about anything.

Then he says, but in everything.

We've got anything and everything.

He is covering the full scope of human experience in everything by prayer and petition.

Make your requests known to God in everything.

And a lot of times, what I have experienced in my own Christian walk and what I have experienced from many followers of Jesus is it's pretty obvious to us that we need to bring the big things to God.

You know?

When like the sickness comes or the tragedy strikes, it's pretty obvious we need to go to God.

Even people who don't believe in God instinctively start praying to God just in case he might be up there when the big things happen.

But often we are hesitant to bother God with the small things or the medium-sized things.

And maybe we truly just don't want to burden him.

You know, God's got a lot on his plate, right?

You know the song, he's got the whole world in his hands, you know?

It's like he's got a lot going on for me to bring him every little insecurity I have, and I don't really get along with this person at work, and every time I go to Target, there's never any good parking spots.

I'm always in the very back.

It just makes me so mad every time.

Like, does God really want to know all of that?

And Paul says, Yes.

He says, Be anxious for nothing but in every single thing.

And some things we don't want to bring to God because we're a little bit embarrassed about it, and some things we don't want to bring to God because we're mad at someone else, but deep down we know it's not really their problem, it's our problem.

And God says, Bring it anyway.

And it's kind of interesting because it says, make your request known to God.

And it almost makes it sound like God doesn't know what your requests are.

But we know this.

God knows all, God sees all, he knows the request that you don't even know you have yet.

Bringing our request to God isn't for God, it's for us.

It's changing us, it's doing something in us.

He wants all of it, even the smallest, silliest source of worry or anxiety.

God wants everything.

I went through a season of anxiety that was shaping my life in some really negative ways.

It was sourcing something so good, and what I've learned is often in life, your greatest blessings can actually become the source of your greatest anxiety.

Maybe an example is like if you have zero dollars invested and the stock market drops 40%, you have nothing to worry about.

You're not gonna be anxious about a stock market you have no money in.

Of course, it's better to invest than not invest.

It would be better for you to have thousands of dollars in the stock market.

But if you have thousands of dollars in the stock market and it drops by 40%, all of a sudden your anxiety is in direct proportion to your blessing.

I found that same thing happening in my life with my family.

Katie and I got married 10 years ago, and we were instantly a family of four.

Lane and Paxton became my sons that day, and really my life could not have felt more fulfilled.

I went from being single and a traveling musician, often alone and by myself, to a family man.

Then I had a wife and two kids.

I was like, this could not get better.

Here's what's interesting if you don't have an appropriate view of your life and how it operates, then those blessings will become the source of your anxiety so quickly.

When I was single, I didn't have anyone to worry about, anyone to create anxiety inside of me.

The craziest thing happened though, almost immediately after we got married, anytime Katie and or the boys would go on a trip, go to visit family, I had like the small voice, the smallest worry.

And it it always was this little narrative like, what if something happened to them?

And at first it was just a thought that hadn't really crossed my mind because I had never been responsible for someone like that.

I had never loved someone like that, I'd never had kids before.

And worry grows when you feed it attention, and this thought gripped my mind.

And this worry grew and grew and grew.

As I gave it more attention, I started realizing some things because legally Lane and Paxton are my stepsons, and so if something were to happen, even just to Katie, I didn't really know what that meant for me.

When you're grasped by worry, it will convince you that the worst case scenario is the most plausible scenario.

This all kind of came to a head when I was playing back-to-back summer camps with my band, and we were leaving almost directly from one in central Texas and going up to another one in Arkansas, and I remember the last night of the first camp, laying in bed, thinking about the fact I'd already been away from them for an entire week, all of this anxiety growing and growing, feeding and more and more attention, and then realizing that I was about to have almost no time, and then head off to Arkansas, up into the Ozark Mountains, had no idea if I'd have cell phone service, no idea if I would have internet, completely out of my control, and for the first time in my life, I had a full-blown panic attack.

And in my pride, when I was young, I always viewed myself, you know, as a very confident man.

And to be completely transparent, I never really had a lot of empathy or really even any understanding for people who suffered with anxiety.

I can remember in one of my worst moments in my early 20s, telling someone that I love who was riddled with worry, you should just stop.

Stop worrying.

Stop being so anxious, you know.

God used this season to create a massive amount of empathy and understanding in me.

I knew something was really, really wrong, and internally my life was being gripped by this anxiety.

It was truly crippling in almost the most literal sense of the word.

And as I cried out to God and I looked for answers, I knew this is not how my life was supposed to operate.

Philippians 4 6 is one of the verses that God sent me to, but it wasn't the first.

The first was written by Peter, another one of Jesus' disciples, and it's a verse that I have literally known my entire life.

1 Peter 5 7 says, casting all your cares on him, onto God, because he cares about you.

I memorized this verse before I knew how to read.

That is no cap, that is no lie.

My mom had a cassette tape of memory verses put to music that she would play in my room as a baby.

I knew this verse for as long as I can remember, and God brought it to mind.

And you might not be surprised to know that that word cares, casting all your cares.

It's the same Greek word that Paul is using to say, do not worry about anything.

And it's the same Greek word that can be translated anxiety, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares about you, and I knew this is what I needed.

To give all of it, the big things all the way down to the smallest things, to give all of it away off of me and onto God.

I knew that's what I needed, but I still didn't know how to do it.

And it really did strike me, you know, Paul didn't say in most things, and Peter didn't say cast some, cast all of it.

And part of the reason that I couldn't figure out exactly how to apply this to my life is because 1 Peter 5, 7 is an incomplete thought.

It's actually an incomplete sentence, casting all your cares on him because he cares about you.

And the reason it's an incomplete sentence, and you probably know this, is that the Bible wasn't written with chapters and verses.

Most of these are letters from the apostles to churches.

We put in the chapters and verses later so we could get to them easily in a congregational setting.

The reason it's an incomplete thought is because it's an incomplete sentence that starts in verse 6.

First Peter 5, 6 says, humble yourselves.

And as I read this, I immediately thought, I don't have a humility problem, I have an anxiety problem.

What's Peter talking about here?

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him because God cares about you.

And I dug in and I sought God and I asked the Holy Spirit, what does this mean?

And I study this passage.

And Peter is intentionally linking, casting your anxieties, getting rid of your worries.

He's linking it directly to humility, which means the inverse is true.

Holding on to your anxiety, holding on to your worries.

That is an act of pride.

And the reason it didn't make sense to me for a long time is because I didn't actually understand what worry is.

Worry at its core is trying to anticipate future problems: health, relational, financial, political, social, career, any and every kind of problem.

And here's what we're really good at.

We are really good at thinking through and feeding with our time, energy, and attention the worst case scenario that is six weeks away, or three months away, or ten years away, or four decades away.

And we're so good at this.

We're so good about thinking about future problems, hypotheticals, potentials that probably won't even happen.

Some of you are convinced that as soon as your kids get out of the house, they're never gonna come see you, they're never going to call you, they're immediately gonna turn to a life of crime, they're gonna marry somebody that you hate, they're gonna move to a state that you can't stand, all of this is gonna happen.

And your kid is 18 months old right now.

We do this so easily.

Some of you are like fresh married, like fresh, like.

Y'all still close the door when you go to the bathroom, married.

Like y'all are so honeymoon.

And you've got this thought in the back of your mind.

You're young now, but in in two decades, you're not gonna look the same as when they married you.

And maybe the flame will be gone, and they're so successful at work, and they get so much attention, and they're probably gonna catch somebody else's eyes, and I'm gonna become an ag and maybe they'll start to wonder.

It's like your marriage couldn't be better right now.

You are fresh, fresh in love, no problems.

The problems are coming, you just don't have them yet.

And already you have created a future scenario that you have lived in so many hours, lost so much sleep, that it is as real to you as reality.

And we wonder how we carry so much anxiety.

We look out into a future that we, by definition, cannot control because we're not there yet.

And we seek to control it.

And that's what worry is.

Worry is overestimating your control of the future.

Worry is overestimating, massively overestimating your control of the future.

And this might be at a conscious level, more than likely, it's at a subconscious level.

You're not even aware that's what you're doing.

You're just living and living and living.

And let me help you understand whether or not you're overestimating your control of the future.

If you think you have 1% control of the future, you're overestimating your control over it.

The future is beyond us.

And yet, for many of us, we're not living out our purpose today.

We're not seeking God's kingdom today.

We're not loving our kids, our spouses very well today.

We're not engaging fullheartedly in our careers today, we're not building friendships today.

Our today has been stolen by our worries about a tomorrow that we have no ability to control.

And so, what does this have to do with humility?

Because Peter says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

And you do that by casting all of your anxiety on him.

Humility can be difficult to define.

It's one of those things that's like, ah, I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it.

Let me help you.

The root of humility is an accurate assessment of yourself.

The root of humility is an accurate assessment of yourself.

There's all kinds of pride.

There's a kind of pride that is cloaked in humility, like when you're really good at something, like really good at it, and you do it, but no one can ever compliment you without you making them feel bad about complimenting you.

Oh no, really.

I mean, I'm not actually that good at it.

And you give, like, oh, you know, all glory to God.

But really, because you just can't take a compliment, that's a different form of pride.

It's an inaccurate assessment of yourself.

I tell Noel and I tell Celeste, when people say, great job, they're great at this.

Just say thank you.

It's accurate.

You did well.

Just say thank you.

Now you can give glory to God.

You don't have any breath in your lungs to sing with without God, but that's different than acting like he hasn't given you a gift that he has.

Humility is an accurate assessment of self, which means pride is an inaccurate assessment of yourself.

And one of the most inaccurate assessments that many of us have about ourselves is that we can actually control the uncontrollable future.

And more than that, the only one who can control the future is the one who's already there.

God, who is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

Scripture says he sees the ends from the beginning and the beginning from the ends.

He's at all times in all places, all times, everywhere.

God alone can hold your future.

God alone has control of the future.

And when you try to take that control of your future, you are putting on your life a weight that was meant for God.

And Peter says to cast all of your anxiety, your worries about the future on God because God cares about you.

He loves you and knows you can't hold the burden of that worry, and he is happy to take it from you.

What Peter is saying and what God is saying today is when it comes to the things you're worried about in your future, you don't have a role in them.

Give them to God.

And this is where we circle back to where we started.

Paul gives us a template for exactly how to do this, how to cast our cares, what it looks like, and how we can begin living in this way where we deal with our worries and anxieties in real time and find the peace that God actually offers us.

Remember, I said up front that Paul built Philippians 4 6 around three prepositional phrases through prayer, through petition, and with thanksgiving.

That is what you do, what you do, how you do it.

As we break that down, we are gonna find a template that will help us move forward.

First, he says, don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer.

That's our first step, through prayer.

Prayer is simply connecting to God.

Prayer is communion with the divine.

You cannot cast your cares on a God that you are not connected to.

This is the first step of seeking his kingdom and understanding your purpose.

We must be in connection and communion with God, aware of the Holy Spirit of God inside of us, in constant communication.

We have to change our mind about what prayer is.

For too many of us, it's something we schedule out on our daily calendar, it's something at a set time.

Prayer is all the time, it is connecting with God, our Heavenly Father.

It doesn't mean you talk all day long.

In fact, a huge part of prayer connecting with God is listening.

You know, when you get married, you go on road trips and you drive for hours and hours and you talk the whole time.

You fill every second with conversation as you're getting to know each other.

And an amazing thing happens two, three, five years into marriage.

You'll go on a three-hour trip, and for two and a half of the hours, neither of you say a word.

And yet you're still connected.

The line of communication is still open.

And for so many of us, we act like connection with God is making a long-distance call.

And so maybe we call in the morning if we get up in time, and we call before lunch for some reason, you know, thanks for the food.

And then, you know, we call at night before we go down to bed.

And we've got to change that.

It's a connection where we don't disconnect, we don't hang up, we don't press in, we don't cut the line, we stay on.

That's prayer.

That is a lifestyle of prayer instead of a life that includes some prayer.

It's a huge, huge change that if you want to win the battle over anxiety and worry in your life, that is one of the first starting places is living this lifestyle of prayer.

To build out our template, prayer is how we connect.

Not set prayer times, prayer all the time.

In Philippians 4, he says, Don't worry about anything, but in everything through prayer and through petition.

Petition is different than prayer, although you can use it interchangeably.

Petition is where we lay it all out before God.

And it is kind of a weird thought to present what we need, to present our desires, to present our worries to him.

But remember, that's not for God.

He already knows that's for us.

And something amazing happens with all of this anxiety that we are holding in our minds and all of this worry that we're holding on our hearts, feeding into it, just living in the worst case scenario when we actually pray it out and petition it out.

These monsters in our mind are shown to be quite manageable.

And so we we give, we cast, we connect with God through prayer and we cast our cares, cast our anxiety through petition.

And this is so critical that he wants it all.

He wants the smallest things, he wants the little embarrassing details, anything that's keeping you up at night, anything that's fueling anger inside of you, anything that makes you worry about the future.

God wants you to give it all to him.

Peter says, cast all your cares.

Peter was a fisherman.

And so to cast is to throw.

In a real sense, it's to transfer ownership.

And so you got to know what this is not.

This is not taking your laundry list of problems to God, reading out those lists to make him aware of them, and then putting it back in your pocket and continuing to try and carry it.

Casting is a transfer of ownership.

It is a recognition that the worries and anxiety that are built on future problems are not yours to carry.

God, I can't carry this.

I am not you.

I do not see the future.

I am incapable, I'm limited and finite.

I'm giving it to you.

And remember, prayer isn't something that happens once at the end of the day where you're storing up all of your problems and then dumping them all on God.

It's like when the worry comes, you're already connected.

You are choosing connection all day, every day.

And when the worry comes, you give it to God immediately.

Immediately when it comes, you transfer that ownership.

God, I can't carry this, you take it.

God, I can't handle it, you can.

You're giving it away.

And so, look, we've dug a little bit deep, right?

And we've looked at some Greek words.

We're gonna look at another one here in a moment.

And and look, I know like this kind of level 101 stuff, right?

We're gonna go to 201 real quick because there's one more theological term.

And if you can't really grasp this theological concept, then you are not going to be able to get the anxiety out of your life.

And so when you cast your anxiety onto God, I need you to learn this.

I know it's a lot of big words, it's confusing, but here's what you need to learn: it's a theological concept, and it is called no take backsies, okay?

Y'all remember Tad?

You and Tad?

No take back sees.

You can't give me now, bro.

I tagged you, can't tag me.

Now there's some controversy.

Some people think it's no takesy backsies, right?

Some people are wrong, right?

Some people eat ham at Thanksgiving.

It's fine.

People are wrong about things sometimes.

No take back sees.

You learned this at four years old.

And you're good at this in a lot of areas, but for some reason, when it comes to the source of our worry and anxiety, we want to cast maybe 50% on to God.

You're God, I'm not.

You see the future, I don't.

So you handle it, but also I'm gonna handle it a little bit.

Like you take it, but I wanna feel like I'm doing something here too.

And honestly, some of us have grown so used to the worry that we're not sure how our life will function without it.

And there's a part of us, because remember, holding on to worry is rooted in pride, and pride is an inaccurate assessment of yourself.

And some of us have held on to anxiety and worry so long that we've begun to believe it's our job, which is another way of saying we've kind of begun to believe that we're God.

And you hang on to your anxiety long enough, and you're gonna realize that you make a terrible God.

Peter says in humility, we cast it all, we give it all.

And it's tough, right?

I've lived it, I've walked through this.

It took me a little while to find freedom from anxiety that was weighing my life down.

And it took constant connection and constant casting.

And every time I was tempted to take back that worry, to take back that anxiety, to stay up another sleepless night, it took constant connection and giving it away.

God, that's up to you.

God, your plans are good.

God, you have my life.

God, you put this family together, you hold my future, you want good things for me.

You take it, God.

It's yours, not mine, over and over and over again.

And God, who is good, will overcome that temptation and he will take it from your life.

He's promised so in his word.

There's three prepositional phrases through prayer and through petition.

That's what you do, and then with thanksgiving, that's how you do it.

Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Prayer and petition, connection and casting must be done with and through the filter of thanksgiving.

Literally giving thanks and acknowledging your appreciation for what God has done.

We connect, not from time to time, all the time.

We cast, not at the end of the day or the end of a hard week, we cast in real time when the anxiety comes, and we credit.

We give credit where credit is due.

We give our thanks to God.

And let me keep it real.

It is pretty easy for me these days to be connected and to come to God with my petitions.

All the ways that I think God could be doing things a little bit better in my life, and all the things I'm mad about, and all the things I'm worried about, and all the things making me anxious, and all the little insecurities, and all the problems I'm having.

Like it's pretty easy for me to come with my laundry list and try to just give it all.

But if you get the first two and you don't do it with Thanksgiving, then ultimately you will not find the resolve of your anxiety and the overflowing of peace that your life so desperately needs.

It's all done with giving him credit.

And as I studied this, y'all know I thought it was so cool that with Thanksgiving, in the Greek is meta Thanksgiving.

But then I studied Thanksgiving and it blew my mind.

You see, when Jesus was getting ready to die, the night before his crucifixion, he got his closest followers and they went into an upper room and they they shared the last supper.

And the last supper was the first Lord's supper.

Jesus was very honest about what was about to happen, and to help give comfort and a way forward, he took a an old Hebrew tradition and he turned it on its head.

And you might know the story, he took the bread and he broke it with thanks.

The same word.

And he took the wine and he poured it with thanks, the same word.

And he said, This bread is my body broken for you.

This this cup is my blood poured out for you.

And as he gave them the bread and gave them the wine, you remember what he said?

Eat this, and when you eat it, remember me.

Give me the credit.

Give me the thanks.

You see, what Paul wrote in Philippians 4, 6 is, don't worry about anything.

But in everything through prayer and petition, meta Eucharistia.

Meta Eucharistia.

Eucharistia is what we translate thanksgiving.

It is also the root of our word Eucharist.

And if you didn't grow up in church, the Eucharist is the Lord's Supper.

The same observance we do to this day from what Jesus did breaking the bread and pouring the wine in the upper room.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that giving credit, giving thanks, it's more than just this tacit acknowledgement, like, God, you are good.

You know, you're good, thank you, you're good.

Now here's my problems.

It's more than just the small things, like, thank you, I got that warning when I could have got that ticket, that front row parking spot, thank you.

Now it includes the small things.

You should thank God for everything, the beating of your heart and the breath in your lungs, but it goes deeper.

Eucharistia points back to the cross.

And sometimes we are hesitant to thank God at the deepest level.

And we all have our reasons.

For some of us, we pray to our heavenly father, but we didn't have a good father while we were here on earth.

And so it's very difficult for us to give big props to a heavenly father when we never knew a good father.

And it's time to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and trust that He is a good, good Father.

And especially for men sometimes, we've got some machismo, and it keeps us from really humbling ourselves.

It's not that we just don't give props to God, we don't give props to anybody.

And it's time to humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

Maybe for the first time as we're connecting and casting, also begin to credit God for exactly who He is: your creator, your sustainer, your everything, your purpose, the God who loved you enough to step out of heaven into this earth, the God who loved you enough to take the nails that you deserve, the God who loved you enough that before you knew him, while you were still sinners, going astray from him, rebelling from God, he died for you.

Jesus showed us this in what's called the model prayer.

Before we petition, before we cast, we credit and credit and credit.

The model prayer teaches us how to pray, and it starts with credit.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What's it saying?

You are hallowed, you are holy, you are in heaven, and we are down here on earth, you are infinite, and we are finite, you are immortal, and we're in mortal bodies.

You are everything, you're the beginning and the end.

Your kingdom is the only true kingdom.

Your will is the only way to live this life.

It starts with credit, it ends with credit, and yours is the kingdom, and yours is the power, and yours is the glory.

When forever and ever and ever.

Amen.

It's incredible because it's the same act.

We are speaking out and praying out our worries and anxiety, throwing them on to a God who wants them.

And we are speaking out and throwing out our love and our gratitude.

The same action with opposite effect, and the more that you are willing to transfer those anxieties, the more your anxiety decreases.

And the more you're willing to transfer that thanks, that credit, the more your gratitude increases.

And it's not enough to just get rid of the anxiety, your anxiety will leave a void that must be replaced, and scripture seems to suggest it will be replaced with gratitude.

It's so powerful, and we get it backwards a lot.

We think that once I have gratitude, then I will give thanks.

And I want to suggest you try something else.

That you start by giving thanks again and again and again, in good seasons and bad seasons on mountains and in valleys.

You give thanks for who God is and what he has done, and by giving thanks, your gratitude will increase.

It will fill the spot once hell by an anxiety that had taken over your life.

I love this verse, Philippians 4 6.

But I love the next verse even more.

It's a promise.

Philippians 4 6 says, Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And here's the promise: if we do this, if we live out this template day by day, and the peace of God, not the peace of man, which is cemented in things of this earth that change and shift, the peace of God, which is rooted in something that is eternal and transcendent and unchanging, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts, will guard your minds, your worried hearts, your anxious minds, guard them in Christ Jesus.

And so, what I want us to do is I want Us to practice.

Here's the template.

We connect, we cast, and we give credit where credit is due.

But please know if this is just an exercise that you do once at the end of a Sunday service, it will not be enough to rid your life of anxiety now and forever, to fill your life with gratitude now and forever.

This is practicing understanding the presence of God day by day, moment by moment.

And so, right where you are, if you bow your head and close your eyes, just create some space for yourself and the people around you.

A lot of times we get to the end here, and I pray.

Today we're gonna switch that up.

I'm gonna give you some space to connect, to just recognize the awareness of God in your life.

If you are a follower, a believer in Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God is inside of you.

Pay attention.

Acknowledge that God is here.

Acknowledge that God is in your life.

I want to ask you to cast all the things you're worried about, and you probably know they're already on your mind, the things keeping you up at night, the things that you're so wrapped up, worried, concerned, the situations that are out of your control, that you desperately are seeking to try and control.

Give it all away.

Tell God, this is not mine to carry.

I'm not built for this.

I can't hold the future.

God, I give it to you now.

I give it to you always.

When the temptation comes, I'll give it to you again.

We're not connecting for a moment, we are connecting for life.

And if you're always connected, you're always ready to cast every doubt that comes, every fear that comes, every worry that comes, you give it to him.

And in all of it, give him credit.

Acknowledge who he is at the deepest level to you.

Humble yourself under the mighty hand of a God who loves you enough that even right now he's desperate to take your anxiety from you, to take your worries, your cares from you.

Imagine yourself setting them at the feet of Jesus and leaving them there.

You pray now, connect the cast, the credit.

We're amazed by your love for us.

We recognize that you are the God of it all, the author of creation, the sustainer of the universe, and yet you love us, you love me, you see us, every bit of us, and you choose us over and over and over again.

You are the seat of our purpose, you are the anchor of our now, and the promiser of our future.

So we give it all to you every day, every worry.

I pray that this would be more than an exercise, this would be our life.

Staying in connection, continuing to cast our cares on you, giving you credit all the way through.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.