When Anxiety Takes Over: Choose Joy, Prayer, and Peace | Lakeside Light Podcast

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This audio podcast is a weekly sermon lesson of intellectual, spiritual, and sometimes humorous nourishment for the road.

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Let us pray.

Holy God, your blessings are abundant, and your wisdom exceeds our grasp.

Fill us with your spirit as we hear your word this day, that we may become justice seekers and peacemakers and speakers of truth.

Amen.

Our first reading is from the book of Psalms, Psalm 106, verses 1 through 5 and 19 through 23.

Psalms 106:1–5

Praise the Lord.

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord or declare all his praise?

Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.

Remember us, O Lord, when you show favor to your people.

Help us when you deliver them, that we may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that we may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that we may glory in your heritage.

They made a calf at Horeb and worshipped a caste image.

They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.

They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.

Therefore he said he would destroy them, had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

I urge you, Odia, and I urge Syntichy to be of the same mind in the Lord.

Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again I will say, rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

The Lord is near.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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

As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.

For the word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, and for the Word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit of God, shine your light upon this word this day, and shine your light into our hearts that we may be enlightened with fresh understanding from what we hear today.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

It is so good to be back with you.

To be worshiping with you, but standing up here and ready to deliver a word is just not something that I could possibly take for granted.

It is with incredible thanksgiving that I thank this congregation for the way that you have supported me and have loved me and been a vital part of my healing.

From, I mean, you people really know how to send cards.

And I praise God for the help that that was to me.

But I learned some lessons, as you can only imagine.

Anyone here who's been through some tough times, I see some nods, we know that it leaves us a wiser person.

So my recovery taught me one thing, and that is how little control that I have or that we have in our lives, and how hard it can be on a daily basis when we have no answers.

We have lots of questions, we have lots of comments, but the answers are few.

When will my strength come back?

When will my life ever feel familiar again?

Well, I also learned that a person can trust God and their faith can be strengthened, and they can still be afraid of what is coming next.

Perhaps you know that kind of waiting.

I see many faces that I know your stories, and I know you have lots to tell about the times in your lives that you have been waiting.

Though your circumstances might be different than mine, I think we can share some of the same feelings.

You may be waiting, even at this time, for test results.

You may be worried about someone that you love or unsure of how to reach your teenager or your toddler.

Or you're looking for work or facing a decision that really has no right or wrong or clear answer.

Or you may simply be trying to find your way in a world that feels so unsettled.

Well, faith does not mean that we ever stop being afraid.

Sometimes it means going back again and again and again to those things that we know is true when our circumstances give us no answers.

This is what drew me to the two readings that we had today.

In Psalm 106, it tells us of a people who forgot what God had done for them.

And in Paul's reading, Paul is writing to a struggling church in Philippi, and he's telling them where and how to stand firm in their faith amidst turmoil, uncertainty, and conflict.

But both of these scriptures point us again to knowing what is true.

So here is our question for today.

When life gets hard, which it will, how do we remember God's faithfulness?

And how does that remembering keep us moving forward?

Well, Psalm 106 opens with the praise, Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Happy are those who observe justice.

But then there is this twist.

It just kind of changes in in mid-salm, and it goes on to tell the brutal truth of the people's history.

Israel at this time has told and retold how God has brought them out of Egypt.

He's told them the stories of the sea party and what new life was going to be like underneath not being underneath Pharaoh anymore.

Those were the memories that helped them know who they really were.

Those were the memories that helped them be firm in their identity.

Yet the psalmist tells us that they forgot who they were.

And they forgot whose they were.

They actually forgot God.

Now Moses had gone up the mountain to meet God, but while he was gone, the people are growing restless.

Where is he?

Shouldn't he be back by now?

They asked God, or they asked Aaron for a sign that they could see.

They wanted something they could put their hands on, something that they were would be visual, that they could know to be true.

Well, before long, the same people who witnessed God separate the sea were bowing to a golden calf.

I think it's easy to judge situations like these, especially these scriptures where we have a uh we're much further in the future, and so we have a better understanding of what was happening in the past.

So I think it's probably more useful for us to ask what it was driving them.

And then I have to say, well, what do we know about the times in our lives when we are waiting?

When we cannot see what God is doing.

We tend to grab for whatever gives us a quick reassurance and certainly what brings us comfort.

Our golden calves in these days might look different.

For some, it is our competence or our bank balance or a detailed life plan.

For some it is the approval of other people.

For others, it's that phone in our hand, and we're scrolling for news that might either settle us or lift us up.

You could say that they are not bad things, they're not evil things, they are in many ways responsible actions, but alone we can see that they cannot carry the weight, they do not hold the answers, and they cannot help us keep our lives together.

Our reading closes with Moses standing in the breach.

He's protecting God's children.

He is going to make sure, he's going to intervene on their behalf.

But he could have just left them to choose or to take the path that they had, that their actions had chosen.

But they may have forgotten God, but God's mercy certainly did not forget them.

That brings us to Paul.

And Paul is not writing from a comfortable place.

He is in prison, he cannot control what is happening to him, and he has no idea how it will end.

He writes to Philippi, which was a Roman colony that prized order and status and security.

But Paul describes a totally different type of security.

He describes the security that is authentic, that is real, and that chooses the life rooted in Christ.

Paul begins with a quarrel.

Two women are at odds.

We don't know why, but we do know that Paul counts both as faithful co-workers who have worked beside him to share the gospel.

Paul does not tell the church to pretend that all is well.

He asks the trusted companion to help the two women find their way back to each other.

He models that reconciliation among others with ourselves is a shared project.

Then comes rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice.

When we are really worried about something, that phrase to many people can sound like an order to smile, to uplift, to just focus on the positive things.

But I don't think that's what Paul was saying.

Paul, as the person writing from a prison cell, he already knows so much about suffering that I don't think he would hand out just Pat advice.

What we know is that joy in the Lord is not a constant good mood.

It is a deeper, deeper type of hope that we carry within us that says that no matter what our circumstances are, that God does not abandon us.

Rejoicing in the Lord is our ability to stand in the discomfort and uncertainty and find our comfort in knowing that we are held in God's embrace.

One of my favorite quotes that I said quite often this summer is grief and trust can sit in the same chair.

Grief and trust can sit in the same chair.

Well, Paul ties the two together.

He pulls together grief and trust and he says, Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

The Lord is near.

When we are scared, we have a tendency to get rigid and sharp.

And we need to be right.

Gentleness, though, can only become a reality when fear is not in charge of how we treat one another.

Then comes the passage many of us know by heart.

Do not worry about anything, but in everything.

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

Again, this is another one I think we need to handle delicately, carefully, because a person expressing their fear or an anxiety does not mean they have a weak faith.

A person who's waiting on a biopsy result has a real reason to be concerned.

Someone facing rising housing costs for their family cannot just ignore an overdrawn bank balance.

A family member who is in crisis, they need practical help.

They need professional help as well as spiritual help and wise boundaries.

Paul does not pretend or tell us not to pay attention to that.

He's telling us that all of these things we do not carry alone, that Christ is with us, and in the passage he tells us that Christ is guarding over us.

Paul then tells the church what to focus on, how you're going to pull this off.

And he says, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable.

Think about these things.

And then he sends them back to the people to live these things.

Keep on doing the things that you have learned, he says, and that's our message for today as well.

Keep doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.

And the God of peace will be with you.

And I think we can all agree that life gives us ample opportunities to practice standing firmly.

I once visited with a church member.

She was a woman.

She was a very, very good and generous member of the church.

She had lived a very faithful life.

And in her last days, she still wondered whether she was good enough to get to heaven.

That was a surprise to me.

I thought she was one of the best people that I had ever met.

Well, we were reading this passage this one day, and she said that she recognized her own life in it.

That she told me that she had always tried to be an uplifting, positive person.

She always had tried not to lose sight of her blessings.

But she found that recently with her diagnosis that she was having a hard time with that, with her doubt.

But that the passage had given her a sense of peace because it reminded her of what she was doing well in her life.

That reminded me of a saying that says, a life turned toward what is good has been keeping company with God all along.

Standing firm and turning toward whatever is good is what we are called to do.

And we're always going to be starting from where we are on any given day, with who we are and what we have with God on any given day.

But Paul's message is just not to think differently about life.

It's a charge to us to live our lives differently, to be bold, to be brave in our faith.

Perhaps it will ask you to go against the grain.

Perhaps it will ask that you go against what is our common culture.

But we will practice it until, as they say, we see it in the dark.

And Paul's promises that the God of peace is always at our side while we go through it.

Spiritual resilience is often built in small repeated acts of trying.

And resilience is not the ability for us to remain untouched by our hardships.

It is the willingness, it is our opening our hearts and returning to God when the hardship has unsettled us.

So when life becomes difficult, we are going to try to remember what is true.

God is faithful, God walks with us, Christ is always at our side, the Holy Spirit guides us, and we are invited every single day, after every single hardship, to live each new day with trust, with a renewed trust that we have received from Christ.

And we are to take the next faithful step.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for each of us forever.

Amen.

I offer this to the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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Have a great week.