Personal Prayer

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Philippians chapter four, verses four through seven.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh was looking forward all week to gathering together with you all and glad to be here.

I'm thankful that it's Sunday.

Let's pray and then we'll move into our text that which is not in Genesis, which is, I think we'll be okay.

Let's pray and um uh we'll move into our new series and and uh yeah, out of Genesis.

Holy Father, we thank you for uh your Sabbath day, which uh uh comes around each week just when it's needed.

Lord, I pray that you would give us hearts that are able to participate in your day of rest and worship with joy and love for one another, and that you would equip our hearts to be able to practice together this morning, believing together the truth of your word, and that as we practice it this morning, that it might take further root into our hearts as we go out into our weeks, that we might uh trust you more and know you more, and have grown in love for uh you and one another.

Father, we praise you for your gospel and the faithfulness with which uh you show us and the constancy of your love.

We pray that uh we would participate in that this morning.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So uh this is the first week of our new series, which we're calling Christ is Enough.

And this will be basically our summer series.

It'll take us through Labor Day, and we uh are moving through a it'll be a topical series, so it's more uh directly pastoral, more exhortation for us as a church than uh our previous series uh have been, which have been moving through books of the Bible.

After this, after Labor Day, we'll be back in Mark, and we'll move through uh our next chapters in Mark through the end of the uh through the end of the year.

And then I I think uh don't hold me to this, but we might go to Exodus.

Okay, as long as it's not Genesis.

Yeah, just wait till we get to Exodus 20, and it's like um yeah, another 10 chapters uh describing furniture.

Then we'll see you, then I'll remind you of your woos.

They will turn to woes.

All right, that's enough for today.

Uh our Christian walk is is one where we have been saved.

Uh, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We can say that uh with certainty because our righteousness was purchased for us effectually by Christ on the cross.

But here in our lives, we are in process.

The Lord is, by his spirit, making us more and more into the image of our older brother, Jesus Christ, so that we might look more like him, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And so there's this certainty where we sing together this morning, and there's nothing but the blood of Jesus, which makes us righteous.

Nothing can for sin atone except for the blood of Jesus.

It is in him that we rest and find our righteousness, and we war against sin presently in this life.

We understand, and I don't have to remind you, that we need to be changed.

Our hearts need to be transformed, even to be able to receive a true understanding of what the work on the cross means.

We need to become type of people who could know such a thing.

And so through this series, we are the formation of the series came out of the elders on a retreat, and we were talking together of some things that we wanted to see our church grow in to become a more distinct people.

And those things were prayer, which, of course, and generosity, and Sabbath keeping.

That is that we become a people who prioritize this day of rest, gathering together on the Lord's day in worship, and then using that day as a time of rest.

Now, those things make us a distinct people.

And when we were talking about that, we were like, okay, you know, there's actually something beneath each of these that I think ties them all together.

And it's it's what truly would make us distinct if we grasp this, and that is that we understand that Christ is sufficient.

You know, when we don't pray, it's because we're trusting in our own self-sufficiency.

And when we aren't generous with our time and our money, it's because we think that we are the ones who provide for ourselves and need to be in control, and that we, by our own means, can develop lives that will be lives of meaning.

And when we don't rest, it's because we we think of ourselves as the ones who can purchase our own rest, or who will finally get enough done to where one day we might rest, or one day we might be justified.

And so if we were a people who grasped the uh this this reality of scripture that Christ is enough, then we would become a really distinct people.

You you become the type of thing that you worship.

And we see this throughout scripture.

It's basically the history of Israel is they start worshiping other gods, and when they start worshiping the other gods, then they become a culture that is like those other cultures.

And as that happens, they get into these situations, and it's like, oh man, we thought, you know, worshiping Molech would be great, but look at they take our babies and they kill them.

And then God says, Yes, you should worship me instead.

When you worship me, things go well for you, and you are free in your worship of me, and you become a free people, and you aren't under the tyranny of these other false gods.

Well, our culture has other false false gods that it is offering you.

And it's it's uh perhaps even more simple, and uh you you know this false god, this false god better than you know Molech or Baal.

That's because it's you.

We have uh a first commandment in uh our culture, and it's the same as the Christian first commandment, it just has different pronouns.

And the pronouns are rather than you shall have no other gods before me, which is a command told to you by somebody else, you shall have no other gods before me.

Ours is I shall have no other gods before me.

That there should be no one who is able to tell me how I ought to structure my life in any way.

In fact, all of the pain that I feel is simply the receiving of other people's expectations of telling me how I ought to be structuring my life.

And if I could just shake that off and get in and learn to ignore those uh uh those uh uh oppressive personal forces or or even just personal expectations that I have of myself that I receive from the outside, then I'll be truly free.

And it will just be myself, and I will be a free person.

Uh in uh I warned you about this that like once a year I read one one old book that's very long, and I just read it before going to bed, and so it takes me all year.

So you get a lot of quotes from that book.

It's not Moby Dick anymore.

Congratulations.

No woos, please.

Uh, but it's uh uh The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.

And that was there's this section where this old um elder in the Eastern Orthodox Church, who's a close friend of the main character, is dying, and it goes through sort of a biography of him, and and you get excerpts from his uh sermons that Dostoevsky writes.

The same thing happened to me when reading Moby Dick is I'm in the middle of writing a sermon, and it's like, oh my gosh, it so feels so hard to write a sermon.

And then I'll read a novel, and in the novel, the person writes a sermon and I read it, and it's like, that's a great sermon.

So this person can just like write books and just like throw a sermon in, and it's no big deal.

Anyway, what uh another time in my life where I learned that I'm not Dostoevsky.

But in this, he he writes this, and this is uh the early 1800s.

So I listen to how prescient this is, lest we think we're so original in our sinful tendencies.

It's a long quote, so settle in.

He says, For the world says you have needs, therefore satisfy them.

For you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men.

Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but increase them.

This is the current teaching of the world.

And in this they see freedom.

But what comes of this right to increase one's needs?

That is, we create our own needs and then seek to satisfy them.

That is freedom.

This is the opportunity that you have.

This is why you move to Denver.

Oh, we have all of the lightest roasted coffees and all of the most beautiful mountains that are just at your doorstep.

And you can dress as though you're going on a hike at any given moment and be received in your office still.

You can come up with your own needs and then seek to have them satisfied.

But what what what comes of this right to increase one's needs?

For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide.

For the poor, envy and murder.

For they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs.

Oh, we can increase our needs and desires, but we haven't found a way to satisfy them.

He goes on, taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs.

Okay, that's a good sentence.

What is freedom?

It's the ability to increase and promptly satisfy your needs.

That's what we call freedom.

They distort in doing so, they distort their own nature.

For they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves.

They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure seeking, and self-conceit.

What he describes as the ordinary pattern of the world is uh our hearts become practiced, they become tuned to this mode of being, which is an ever-increasing.

It's like an ever-increasing list of needs to be met.

And then we think freedom will be just on the other side of those needs being satisfied.

And because they're only our needs and we create them of ourselves, we become just like these strange idiosyncratic need pits that are never satisfied.

And so the pattern of our lives is we become the type of people who can never say enough.

We could never say that anything is enough.

And so what we're practicing in this series over these next nine weeks is being able to say, Christ is enough.

He's enough for me.

I'm satisfied in him.

Now, there's this completely counterway of being, and it's sort of the theme verse for this um series.

It's kind of drawing from a lot of places for this this series, because it's topical and you get to do that.

Uh, but the theme verse, which I'm actually getting from uh Jeremiah Burroughs' book called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.

It's an old Puritan book.

And he uses as the theme verse for for that book uh Philippians 4.11, which is Paul saying, Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.

I think that's the perfect opposite of our culture.

That's the perfect opposite of the ordinary ways that we work in the world.

We can never be satisfied.

We are practiced, and if we become satisfied, we immediately develop more needs.

This is a silly way, but it's Denver, so I'll use this example.

One thing that I've noticed is if I buy something new for my bike, it makes me need to buy more new things for my bike.

And I think that that's, you know, have you ever remodeled uh part of your house?

It all all of a sudden you have to keep going.

There's this strange pattern that we participate in, which is we we can never be satisfied.

There's never enough.

But Paul is the opposite.

We can't be made content.

Paul can't be made discontent.

In this same same passage, he says, I've learned how to be made high and how to be brought low.

And in every situation that he is in, he is able to be content in the Lord.

Now, could could we become that type of people?

How different would we be?

What would that look like if as a church we were the type of people who were able to say, Christ is enough, I am content?

This is a strange counterculture.

But it's not the type of thing that you can become just by learning.

Paul, of course, says he learned, but when we hear learned, we think like a classroom setting, and that you gather the right information about how to be a content person.

When Paul says learned, how did he learn uh to be brought high and not get puffed up?

Well, he was brought high.

How did he learn to be brought low and not be fearful?

He had been brought low.

This is the type of thing that you learn, like you learn riding a bike.

This is the type of thing you learn by practice.

And so we're going to get some information, and this is why I look forward to Sundays.

I was telling Megan, my wife, this uh last night.

It was like I'm not equipped to preach this sermon because I'm not this person.

But I look forward to Sundays because on Sundays we get to do this thing where we all come together and for, you know, however long I preach and we sing and worship, we we practice really, really trusting in these things together.

And we can practice it together for this Sunday morning.

And when we practice it this Sunday morning, we go into the week, we we trust it a little more.

And so we be, we start to be transformed.

That's what we're here to do.

We're trusting that God, as we seek to participate in these things, will transform our hearts so that we might become a people who looks like we worship the true God.

It doesn't look like we worship the God of our world.

So the format of our series is going to be three topics at three levels.

The three topics are prayer, generosity, and sabbath.

And the three levels that we're exploring these at are you personally as an individual, you at the family level, and then us at the church level.

Because we participate in these things at all these different levels of our lives.

And the hope is that as we begin to understand these things, and and and don't think of it like building blocks.

It's not that you get this personally, and then you get it at a family level, and then we all get to get it at a church level.

They they are all reinforcing each other.

You know, if if you if the church starts to get this together, you'll probably start to get this personally.

And you'll probably start to make this work as a family, okay?

That's that it's a more dynamical process than building blocks.

But we're going personal, family, and then church.

And at each of those levels, we're exploring prayer, generosity, and sabbath.

And the hope is that we will be able to practice these things, this in the practice of prayer and the practice of generosity and the practice of Sabbath together at all these levels of our lives, that we will be a transformed people.

And just like at the end of Genesis, when the people of God moved into Egypt and Egypt becomes transformed, our hope is that in our transformation we will see a transformation of our neighborhood as well.

So that's what we're doing.

Uh, Paul commands in our text this morning impossible things.

And we are going to seek to do those together.

Oh, as I was reading through this, I thought this is this um oh, I can't do this.

Or I and I even thought, like, Lord, I've known this verse for so long.

Maybe it doesn't work.

But I think that there's a trust that we need to enter this with that Paul offers at the very beginning of the book, which is that the good work which he has begun in you, he will see through to completion.

And so we are entering this text, entering a process of transformation that the Lord is already working in us.

So today uh we begin with prayer, and we're looking at prayer at a personal level, ways that you can pray to become a person who can say and mean Christ is enough.

All right, Philippians 4, verse 4.

Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

We're jumping right to the end of Paul's letter to the Philippians, and he shifts at the end towards just very practical pastoral instruction for the church that he's writing to in Philippi.

And this command, rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice, comes right after he talks to two women by name, Syntiche and Euodia.

And Syntiche and Euodia had been uh faithful partners with Paul in the gospel, but they had started fighting with one another.

We don't know the deal, the details of what it was, but they had become sort of adversarial to one another.

And Paul entreats them both.

He says, I entreat Syntachi and I entreat Euodia to reconcile in the Lord and to seek peace with one another.

And he even calls in a third person.

He's like, Would you help them to do this?

And right after that, right after he calls Syntiche and Euodia to find peace with one another, he describes something that's like the demeanor that's necessary for that to happen.

Because it's not like they can just meet up and it's like, hey, Paul said to seek peace.

We're at peace now.

No, their hearts need to be transformed in order to be able to participate in that.

And so the first command that Paul gives that sort of describes this transformed demeanor is rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

Can you command someone to rejoice?

I get images of like um when was it Kim Jong-il who died in North Korea?

And there are those those images of like the whole nation like weeping and mourning, but it looked do you remember this?

And it and it looked absurd.

Like it looked like like um like uh cloud.

Clowns or something like gathered together doing an imitation of mourning.

It's like, well, that's what it seems to look like when you command mourning.

Would it look any less absurd if you commanded celebration?

Like, would we look like I don't know, like the Barbie movie or something?

Um, where where there's just like a strange a strangeness to the uh to the celebration.

And yet, lest we misheard Paul, he says, uh, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

So he means it.

He he meant to say exactly what he said.

Now I can't imagine going to a birthday party, someone my son's age, and it being time to uh sing happy birthday for the child.

And my son instead thinking, I just like the bounce house.

So I'm not gonna rejoice in this person right now.

I just want to stay in the bounce house.

Then I have to do some coaching and say, like, hey, it's time to, it's their birthday.

This is what we're really here for.

It's to celebrate your friend.

So celebrate in your friend now at birthday time.

Again, I will say, celebrate in your friend now at birthday time.

You know, that's that's is is Paul doing something like that where he's um coaching us through how to have an appropriate response because we don't really know how to have appropriate responses for each other.

But then there's that little word always.

That that is different than just coaching through a circumstance.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

But I just sinned in a way that I didn't think I I would again.

And it's fresh in my mind.

I don't have a right to rejoice in the Lord.

All right, let's test that word.

Does it fit under the category of always?

It's not me who's suffering, it's my child.

It's not me who's suffering, it's my my friend that I see.

It feels wildly inappropriate to rejoice at a time like this.

It's like uh an ignoring the reality of the situation.

Should we run the test again?

Always.

Once Euodia finally is able to show that she understands the hurt that she caused me, then I, Syntiche, will rejoice then.

Paul says, rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

So I guess you can command rejoicing.

Paul continues on.

He says, He's gonna give us a reason, but he's gonna expand it first.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I say rejoice.

It's a real command.

Then in the next verse, verse five, he says, Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

The Lord is at hand.

Reasonableness is um uh I don't know, a bit stuffy for the word that's being translated.

It's more dynamic than just than just reasonableness.

It that's a part of it, that you you're a reasonable person who can be engaged with, you know, and that you're not going to spin out of control when you have to try and reconcile with someone or when you re-engage in this conflict.

That's a part of it.

But it's it also has the sense of geniality and of uh outgoingness, charitableness, tolerance, magnanimity is in this word.

There's a buoyancy and an outgoing joyfulness that's in this word.

This is there's Paul is saying, rejoice in the Lord always, but your rejoicing in the Lord always is not something that just stays internal.

You it you are the type of person who is joyful to be around and seeks to bring others into that joy.

Paul is commanding this.

Now, when when we think of like, okay, let me cultivate the most joyful day that I can, we're making a really fragile thing.

I when um oh, you know, you can uh picture, so uh you can see someone, I want you to gather someone, a Coloradan in your mind, who's putting together the most joyful day that they possibly can.

And they went on like a you know, a trail run that was longer than yours, and a bike ride that was more scenic.

And they're uh a rich hippie.

And they they're having the perfect day.

And they're they have this joy that's within themselves.

But you know what can throw that day off is um uh my children screaming next to them in Whole Foods can destroy the day because they're because it's it's annoying and it's this ruckus event that they're now having to deal with, and so it's the perfect day, it's a joyful thing, but we see what's missing is it's not the type of joy that flows outward.

In fact, it's the type of joy that's very fragile and can be easily encroached upon.

You know, so we're you so yes, congratulations.

You've been able to cultivate the height of joy in your quiet time, and the only thing that can really threaten it is the presence of your spouse.

Okay, I don't think we've cultivated the type of joy that Paul is talking about, but it is one that is is it it goes out.

It's like the joy of the Lord, the joy that the Lord has within himself.

It is a joy that flows outward into others.

That's a more resilient type of joy that Paul is telling us to be cultivated.

And and then why?

Paul adds this little stinger the Lord is at hand.

Why can you rejoice always?

Why is it commanded to be a type of joy which even flows to those around you?

It's because the Lord is at hand.

I experience incredible conviction with regards to this passage.

Because I recognize that the source of my distrust and that manifests in experiencing those around me and myself as just limitations to a capacity to experience joy.

I'm not trusting that the Lord is at hand.

Paul is saying, by saying that the Lord is at hand, he's saying he's coming.

Jesus is coming back.

And we are living in this way where he's there's a there's these like double sense to the Lord is at hand.

There's the sense that he's coming back, and there's the sense that he's here, he's at hand with us.

The Lord is the one who is present with us.

Now, what does that mean?

What if that simple reality, Jesus Christ, is the Lord who will come back, and when he comes back, he will make all things new?

All of the stressors that you're facing will be undone.

All of the wickedness that you see will be covered.

There's a new goodness that will be brought into the world, and it's just around the corner, it's coming.

So, how should you be acting if the best possible news were true and you were on the drive there?

How should you be acting then?

That's what Paul is saying.

In a sense, it's the same as the coaching of my son.

It's like, look, this is a happy thing.

Go be happy with it at this event.

Go go enjoy this thing.

Paul is doing that same coaching for us, but it's the most macro scale imaginable because the best possible news is that Jesus Christ was effective and he's coming back.

And that's true.

So, how should you be acting in a situation like this?

Oh, you should be rejoicing.

There's such good things.

They're coming, they're just around the corner, and you're on your way to them, and the Lord is at hand.

You should rejoice in that.

In one of the you know, many Tim Keller videos uh uh that he made just before his death, one of them, he just said this most simple thing, and he said, if Jesus Christ really came back from the dead, it's going to be okay.

If Jesus Christ really came back from the dead, if he really did, if the tomb was actually empty, and he rose again and ate fish and bread with his disciples, if he really ascended into heaven and gave his spirit to the church, if the gates of hell will not prevail against it, if he's really coming back to make all things new, if Jesus Christ really came back from the dead, it's going to be okay.

I can sense we're believing that right now, aren't we?

Okay, so practice.

Because that's the truth.

That's the world we're actually in.

The world we're really in is the one where Jesus Christ came to earth, died, atoned for our sins, the wrath of God is satisfied, and goodness is coming for us.

So rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord.

When?

Well, if that's true.

Always.

That's a different type of people.

That's not a rich hippie.

All right, now Paul's a good pastor, so he knows that he's going to have to give you something to do with your anxieties.

Because a command to rejoice is not sufficient.

You you you need something positive to aim at, but he understands that he's going to have to give you something to do with the anxiety that is mounting, with all of the things that say, all of the yes buts that just crept in.

Jesus came back from the dead, yes, but he suffered, and I that means I'm going to suffer too.

And so I don't think I can handle that type of thing.

So what all of those yes buts that came in.

Paul gives you something to do with them.

In Philippians 4, verse 6.

Philippians 4:6

He says, Do not be anxious about anything.

Okay, that's just as helpful as rejoice.

Do not be anxious about anything.

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

Okay, so let's just walk through this.

First of all, do not be anxious about anything.

Would you want to run the same test that we did with always?

It passes.

If you can come up with it, it fits under the umbrella of that little word, anything.

It's a complete word.

I'll try and jog your memory.

Your finances?

Your budget just told you, oh yeah, not enough.

Let me crunch the numbers.

Bottom right, not enough.

Your health.

You still feel sick, you still feel in pain.

Your career still feels like a dead end.

Housing's still too expensive in Denver.

Your children's education is too difficult to decide upon.

It's too costly.

The love life of your adult children is never what you would have hoped for them.

Your pregnancy is too complicated and ended too soon.

Your relationship with your parents doesn't seem to resolve, and your siblings are complicated as well.

This anything, it's quite a large umbrella, isn't it?

So that was a list of what that was, just in case you were confused, that was a list of things to not be anxious about.

You might have been confused by that.

It might have seemed just the opposite.

But that is a list of things that Paul says, do not be anxious about those things.

So what do we do?

Well, Paul gives us something to do.

By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving.

Prayer.

This is the heart of our thing.

This is the thing we can practice together.

You must pray.

You must pray to the Lord.

You need to stop trying to think your way out of these things.

You need to stop trying to think your way out of these anxieties.

You must pray.

There's kind of two, you can kind of see two pathways, right?

There's a you would think your way out of the anxieties, and that's like a hyper-engagement with the reality of your anxieties.

And then you can cope your way out of your anxieties, and that's like a disengagement with them.

And you're you're somewhere on that spectrum, and it's probably different for the different things that they are in your life.

Some of those things you are you are obsessively hyper-engaged with.

Some, if someone were to bring them up as an anxiety, you'd be like, I don't know that I'm really worried about that.

And then you'd act weird for like a week.

Prayer is different.

Prayer is acknowledging the reality of your anxieties before the Lord.

You know how the preposition switched in the first commandment from you shall have no other gods before me to I shall have no other gods before me?

Prayer is the same sort of switching in the prepositions where in prayer we're thinking, I wonder what I think about this.

How do I, how am I going to resolve this?

Where is this gonna to you, Lord, help me?

It's an acknowledgement right away, just from the act of praying, from the first our Father, from the first holy father, or whatever you prayed as a child that you say now, dear Heavenly Father, like you're writing a letter.

The first, the first thing that you say, now you're praying, and the dynamic has shifted.

You are in a place here where you are engaging with someone who is there.

You're not alone anymore, you're not self-sufficient anymore.

And just entering into the act of prayer is an acknowledgement of that.

I am not just a pit of needs that needs to work to have them satisfied.

When you're praying, you are the creature.

And the creature is needy.

But that's not a bug, it's a feature.

You were made to be dependent on God.

You weren't made to be self-sufficient.

And so, right when you start praying, you are practicing the reality of your situation, which is that you are dependent upon God for everything.

In Him, you live and move and have your being.

You need Him to make the rain fall upon you.

You need Him to make your heart beat and the air still be there to pump in and out of your lungs.

You are radically dependent on God.

And in prayer, you enter into the reality of that.

So you have to pray.

You have to catch yourself.

When we we went on a Fourth of July trip, and I don't know if you've ever been on a trip, but oftentimes they end with driving home.

And Megan and I were driving home on uh Thursday, and I was looking at the next day and a half after this vacation, which we had planned, and I was seeing there's a week's worth of work in that day and a half.

And so I started like going down my list of things to not be anxious about, but I was using it as a things to be anxious about list.

And Megan said, I think you're just latching on to things to be anxious about.

And I said, No, I'm not, and then I was weird for a week.

And that becomes this recognition, it feels so real.

You know, the things that you're worried about feel like the real thing itself.

And they are.

You know, we live in a real world, these are real things.

But I wasn't, uh I recognized that I was entering into uh like if I hyperthink about these things, they'll be resolved.

I I'm not that type of creature.

I'm the type of creature who needs to be helped by God.

And I need God to come through for me.

And so what do what are in that recognition?

It's like, ugh, I think I need to pray about these things.

I'm out here problem solving in a space where I haven't even prayed yet.

So we prayed.

It was helpful.

Supplication, that is asking for things.

What do you need?

You need this job to come through, you need this house to close, you need this child to be healthy, you need this relationship to reconcile, you need this person to get out of your life.

You know, those those things that you're running through that you just think you need.

You share those with the Lord.

Supplication is asking.

It's a humble asking.

It's it even it has this connotation of begging.

That's what supplication is to the Lord.

So Paul is saying, pray to the Lord and beg for what you need.

He even offers like this little definition in the verse, because after supplication with Thanksgiving, he says, Let your requests be made known to God, which is a bit redundant.

It's not as redundant as saying, again I say rejoice, but it's it's redundant in the sense of supplication already has in that word, let your requests be made known to God.

So what God wants us to do in prayer, what he teaches us in his word, and this is my number one tip for prayer, is ask for what you want.

Because of that word requests.

I don't want you to hear ask for what you need.

Because what do you know?

You haven't even been here that long.

Ask for what you want.

Ask for what seems good.

Seems like it would be good if, you know, uh these folks and I were to get together and then we could kind of move through this thing.

Okay, great.

Ask for that.

And you know what you're acting like when you because what you're acting like when you do that is a creature who is finite and flawed and needs God to be.

A holy father.

Who sees you, considers your hurt, considers your need, understands it better than you do, and then it will move in accord with what you've asked him.

That's what supplication will look like.

And this is with thanksgiving.

So this praying and supplication, this making your request known to God, is all with thanksgiving.

So it's saying things that you're thankful for.

But there's the senses, it's not just like, uh, Lord, thanks that the sky is blue today, and thanks for such a lovely day, and I'm really thankful for you know all these things that you've given me.

That's good.

You know, do that.

I'm sorry for mocking it.

But there's but there, this is thanksgiving for the answers to the prayers that you haven't received yet.

Now, why can you do that?

Well, because the Lord is at hand.

The Lord is at hand.

And what is the truth of Jesus Christ coming back?

What is the reality of the story that we are in?

Jesus died.

He really did.

It was really effective to atone for our sins.

He's the second Adam, and we're grafted into the family of God.

And God treats his family really well.

He's a good God.

What's he like?

Well, what's his name?

He's gracious and merciful.

He's slow to anger.

He's abounding in steadfast love.

That's what he's like.

So that's the world that I'm actually in.

And so we seed all of this with thanksgiving that God will treat us according to what he is like.

What other options does he have?

And to think that there's some other option is just to be worshiping a false God, a God who is different from the one that he's revealed himself to be in you.

What do you think he's overcommitted?

He sent his son to die for you.

Do you think he was hedging when he did that?

And that these little, you know, you not knowing how to craft this email well enough is going to be the prayer request that sends him over the edge.

What we're doing when we're rejoicing always, when we're praying and asking God for what we want, is we're participating in the truth of the situation.

This does not come easily.

It is hard won.

It takes discipline in your heart to be able to participate in the midst of your anxieties, to participate in the truth of the situation, of who God has revealed Himself to be to you.

You will get it wrong often, and you will find that these verses are more condemning than helpful.

But that condemnation that you may feel from them is instruction and it is a calling towards who Jesus is.

To live in the reality of who Jesus is.

So you don't be either.

So it's with Thanksgiving.

I want to make a distinction real quick.

So the Stoic says you need to disengage from all those things that you can't control.

It's not bad advice.

But the Stoic mindset is a there's a huge reality out there.

It can't be known.

And so you need to retreat and condense your world into just the things that can be known.

And then maybe the world will be small enough that you could handle it.

Now the Christian picture is precisely the opposite.

It is this radical expansion, which says there is a story happening that is more grand than you could possibly imagine.

Here's the center of it Christ is sufficient for your salvation, and he has accomplished a goodness which will spread to the world.

And trust in him is enough to participate in that reality.

Because he came back from the dead, it will all be okay.

The Christian vision is not a retreat because reality can't be known.

It's an expansive participation in the truth of the world.

The truth of the world is Jesus is Lord.

That's the truth.

Your heart often forgets it.

And when we forget it, we think that the reality is I'm off on my own and I need to be shrewd and figure this out for myself.

The truth is Christ is Lord.

So we train our hearts to participate in the truth.

Now there's a promise, verse 7.

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

The peace of God.

That's on offer to you.

As we relate to him.

What is the peace like?

It surpasses all understanding.

So it is not like the peace that you're looking for.

The peace that you're looking for is premise, premise, conclusion, peace.

It's this goes well, then this goes well, then I'll have peace.

Let's make it a more pure syllogism.

If this goes well, then I will have peace.

This went well, I have peace.

That's a piece that is right within understanding.

This is a piece that surpasses understanding.

Where you might see this is still not going well.

It's in his hands.

What do I know?

I just got here.

He is the God of creation.

I know that he's.

I know that he didn't overcommit and just ran out of grace here because he gave his son.

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

You need to be guarded.

And the peace of God is that guard.

Because you will get out of here and you'll check your budget again and you'll go grab a cup of coffee that costs more than gas.

And you'll say, I can't live in this place.

I hope I have enough stars in the Cash App.

And all those anxieties will be waiting for you.

But the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The way that you feel and your thoughts will be guarded in Christ Jesus.

In Christ Jesus.

Why is it a peace that surpasses understanding?

Because Christ Jesus is not a syllogism.

Christ Jesus is not a premise-premise conclusion.

Christ Jesus is a person.

That's the type of peace it is.

When you experience peace systematically, it's easily threatened.

When your peace is, he's with me now.

And that's what gives me peace.

Why would it give you peace that he's with you as opposed to someone else?

Well, I don't know if you've checked his resume, but all authority in heaven and on earth is his.

So when he's with me, yes, I feel more peaceful.

We don't think he's with us.

We think it's just up to us.

We think that it's right and shrewd and wise to practice self-sufficiency.

It is foolish.

We become a pit of needs that will never be satisfied.

When we pray, when we ask him for what we want, when we thank him for the way that he responds and trust him for what he's shown to us in the gospel, we start to become a type of people who can say and mean Christ is enough.

So are you ready to practice this week?

All right, are there any questions?

One question.

Okay.

How do we be joyful when real when real sorrow happens around us that breaks God's heart too?

What does rejoicing look like in those moments?

John Piper made a whole career out of this question.

You know, rejoicing.

So if Paul said it, Jesus did it, right?

And and Jesus was rejoicing always.

The man of sorrows.

In Christianity, it's best to not try and resolve.

A lot of ink is wasted on trying to resolve tensions like this.

It's better to look at the two absolute most polar extremes and say, yeah, both.

And so I a rejoicing people will not be fearful of their tears.

Because they will not be afraid that if they go down into that pit of mourning, they won't come out again.

But they will be able to, in the midst of those tears, be crying and mourning in such a way that is not without hope.

But is crying and mourning in such a way that says, Rejoicing is coming.

And there's a sense in which even now the safety that I feel to be able to mourn over this is a participation in the present joy that I have in it.

You can do that when he's with you, when Jesus is with you.

It surpasses understanding.

Okay, but it surpasses understanding in the same way that a person being with you is different than just being given a set of principles.

We need to practice that Jesus is with us.

One of the ways that we practice this is communion segue.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That 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 also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

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

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

The Lord Jesus, on the night before he was betrayed, gave thanks for the bread that represented his broken body and his poured out blood.

We can join him in giving thanks in the midst of our suffering, knowing that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him, to those who are called according to his purposes.

And we come and we eat this meal now, knowing that there will be a meal in which Jesus is present with us, but he still serves us today, that we might practice rejoicing now in the way that we will rejoice with him for eternity in the new heavens and the new earth.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, Lord, that we would practice in our hearts the trust that you show us in your word, the presence that you have for us, and the participation with your body that you give us in the communion.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.