November 23, 2025 |
Sunday Morning
Philippians 4:6-7 | God's Antidote to Anxiety
John C. Majors |
Philippians 4:6-7
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Well, good morning, Valley View.
It’s great to be with you
all as we continue in our study
of the book of Philippians.
And we’re actually landing
today on the passage
that is our memory
verse for the month
Philippians four six and seven.
And it’s interesting
that that lands today.
This week
especially, we’re going to see a key
theme in this around
Thanksgiving and giving
thanks all tied in
to the week of Thanksgiving.
But the key word in this passage
that I think
is going to resonate with many,
especially in our age,
is the word anxiety.
That’s an idea
we’re going to wrestle with today,
and it’s one
that so many are wrestling
with and are overwhelmed by.
I remember when I was
very little, living at home, still,
very young one night in particular.
You know, most kids
don’t like to go down the hall
to their dark bedroom.
There’s some fear there.
But for me this night,
it was debilitating.
I was 1,000%
convinced that if I tried to go down
that hall
to my bedroom,
waiting there for me to attack me,
to want to hurt me, to dismember
me would be a full grown monkey.
Now you laugh
because you know the chances
of being attacked by a monkey
in Louisville, Kentucky,
even if you work at the zoo,
are basically below zero.
If that’s possible.
But I couldn’t be convinced otherwise
because I think we had seen a movie
with a dangerous monkey in it
at some point.
And so now I was convinced
there was one waiting for me down the hall.
And my dad very graciously,
very patiently took me by the hand
and walked me down the hall.
And he turned on the lights as we went,
and we get to the bedroom
and he shows me there’s
no monkeys in the closet.
There’s none under the bed.
You’re going to be okay.
And even then,
I was still hesitant to believe him.
Look, John, I’m just down the hall.
Monkeys don’t really sneak around.
They’re pretty loud.
I’ll be here for you
if one happens to show up.
Finally, I was okay with it.
Isn’t it interesting, though, how even.
And that’s
maybe a silly example around anxiety.
We’ll get to
some of the more pressing issues,
but even something
completely remote, unrealistic,
impossible to happen can still be
debilitating, can still leave
you unable to function or move forward.
Part of the reason
and we’ll get to this phrase.
We’ll unpack it a little more.
Part of the reason is
it’s not really the threat
that’s the problem,
but it’s your perception
how you handle it,
how you think about it.
It’s not even the threat.
And we’ll get to why that is.
But we’re looking at
Philippians chapter
four–turn in your Bibles,
and we’re going to read again
verses six and seven.
You could probably just quote it to me
as we go at this point.
And in here, we’re going to see Paul
give three approaches to anxiety.
He’s going to talk to the Philippians
about the anxiety
they’re facing in the church in Philippi.
And he’s going to give you
three responses
that I think will help guide us.
And I think today, in fact, my prayer
has been leading up to today,
that if you’re wrestling with anxiety,
my prayer is that today would be the day
that you have a major breakthrough
with anxiety.
In fact,
my prayer has been for this church
that if you’re wrestling with anxiety,
today would be the day that that
that wrestling is over,
that it’s done.
And I think he gives us the strategy
for that
in this chapter
in Philippians,
in these two short verses.
So let’s look at verse six and seven.
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.
Now Paul begins
the passage with this word anxiety.
Do not be anxious. Now.
I appreciate that he’s
starting by just acknowledging
the reality
that there is anxiety present in
their church,
and they do have a
lot to be anxious about.
We’ve seen
and they know that Paul is
likely is in Rome, is likely in Rome.
He is in prison writing from prison.
And certainly
they’re going to be worried for him.
We know that they send a pat for us
with the gift of money to him.
They’re probably worried
that the money gets there,
but then they hear that
a part for
Titus is sick
and they’re worried about him
and his condition.
We know that the church is being attacked
both from without and from within.
And we know we saw last week
that the church
may be on the verge of splitting,
because the argument that started
between two women,
they got a lot on their plate.
They got a lot
to rightly be anxious about.
And I think it’s okay.
In fact,
I think it’s important to start
by acknowledging your anxiety.
If it’s there,
acknowledging the things
that have you worried.
I think it’s important to name
the things that actually have you worried
because the enemy,
he wants you to keep it all vague,
but he wants it to feel like
because I don’t know exactly what it is,
then there’s no solution.
There’s no hope.
It can’t be overcome.
He wants anxiety to not become a problem.
He wants it to become an identity.
And you’ll hear
people say this sometimes.
Well, I’m just an anxious person.
Well, that’s that’s not okay.
I’m not okay with someone saying,
well, I’m just an angry person
or I’m just a I’m just a drunk or
I’m just it’s just who I am.
No, no, no,
we’re not going to be okay with that.
Scripture is clear
that we can’t stay in that
realm long term of anxiety.
And you have ups and downs
and things come and go.
But we start by acknowledging it.
Be specific.
And my guess is that
if you have 100 things
you could write down,
and I’d encourage you to do that
this week,
find a window to just sit down and go,
what are the things
that are really worrying me
that are causing fear,
that are causing anxiety?
Write them down.
Write them all down.
My guess is
if that if you have 100 things
you write down, there’s probably 1 or 2
that are at the top
that if you were able
to really deal with those,
a lot of the others
would really shrink in significance.
That’s an important exercise to do,
but the hard part of that is it
partly feels a little
unchristian to do that.
I think many of us feel like, look,
if I’m really a good Christian,
a strong Christian wouldn’t
be bothered by all this,
a strong
Christian wouldn’t
be anxious or worry or fear.
I remember sitting down
with a friend of mine.
I was in a season where I was wrestling
with a lot of challenges,
and I came to him
and I was kind of apologetically
sharing them with him.
And even saying things like, look,
I know this isn’t that big a deal for
for most people.
I know that other people have it
way worse.
I know this really shouldn’t
be bothering me.
And finally he just stopped me.
He’s like, John,
would you quit saying all that?
Look, reality is, yeah, sure.
Someone has it worse than you.
There always is. Someone worse than you.
There’s someone in Uganda right now
being whipped to death for their faith.
Yes, someone has it
worse than you for sure.
But you’re still facing real stuff
that is hard.
And it’s okay to acknowledge that.
In fact, if you want to move forward,
you got to start by acknowledging
these things are hard.
Now, how are we going to see God move
forward in your life?
Paul starts by saying
there is anxiety present.
And what he does next, though, is
to give them.
And this is the first of the three
major points
in this passage around anxiety
is that he gives them a command.
And it’s straight forward.
Do not be anxious in anything.
I think the first approach
to anxiety here,
as a result, is to reject anxiety,
reject anxiety.
This is a mindset
too many of us immediately trickle down
to when something hard happens,
we immediately become anxious.
That’s our default response.
We’ve developed that over time.
We immediately run to worry and fear.
Paul is saying, do not be anxious.
We have to start by believing
that that is true.
I don’t have to be anxious.
I can reject anxiety.
We’ve got to start
by reprograming our mind.
This is the Christian life.
Romans 12 two talks about this
renewing your mind.
We’ve allowed our mind
to end up where it is,
but we can be intentional
to direct our mind, to direct our hearts.
We don’t have to just be led
along by whatever happens to us.
In fact,
I think when Paul says this to them,
do not be anxious.
I think he’s really
hinting at referencing,
likely quoting Jesus’s words on this.
And so I want to take you there
to Matthew chapter six.
This is the sermon
on the Mount Matthew’s, the first
book in the New Testament.
By the way, if you don’t have a Bible,
our church Bibles are out in the lobby.
We’d love for you to have one.
We read from the Bible together.
I try to point you into God’s
Word and get you.
Turn in there
so you can find it
and see it on your own.
If you struggle with anxiety,
this passage is one
that should be highlighted in your Bible,
that you should have some kind of marker
to help you get there quickly.
It’s one I leaned on heavily
in a season of anxiety.
Matthew six, verse 25.
This is in this section
called The Sermon on the Mount.
It’s probably Jesus’s
most extensive section
of just continuous teaching.
And he starts this way in Matthew 625.
Therefore I tell you,
do not be anxious
right here,
and he’s going to go down and tell you
all the way
is not to be anxious from here
all the way down through 34.
In fact, he ends it in verse 34.
Therefore do not be anxious once again
about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for
the day is its own trouble.
The reason Paul could tell them,
you should not be anxious.
You need to reject anxiety,
is because Jesus said that.
He’s not just making it up
out of thin air.
This is a good idea.
Maybe you shouldn’t struggle
with anxiety.
Don’t be anxious.
Start by trusting
that this command is true.
Start by meditating on it.
You know there’s a verse referenced
in your notes.
Second Corinthians ten five.
That passage is all about taking
every thought captive
to the obedience of Christ,
instead of thoughts
just invading us
and us submitting to them,
we take those thoughts captive.
We bring them before him.
And we reject anxiety.
Start by meditating on this command.
And maybe you haven’t
been able to memorize
all of Philippians
four six and seven yet. I get it,
but I think you can memorize that short
phrase do not be anxious about anything.
How many of us feel like
we can probably master that phrase?
Not as many as I’d hoped to see.
Okay, well, we’ll work on that as well.
Do not be anxious about anything.
Start by meditating on that running
to that phrase.
When anxiety comes,
we’re reprograming our mind
and our heart.
So first he gives us a command.
But he doesn’t just leave us with a hey,
stop that!
I mean that that’s a good start.
But second, he gives us a commission,
a task, an action, a strategy.
However you want a word,
it gives us a command.
And now here’s a strategy
for how you handle it.
And it’s in the second part
of that verse.
Look back at Philippians four verse six.
Do not be anxious about anything, but
instead in everything
by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God.
First he gives a command, now
he gives a commission, a strategy.
And it’s real simple.
Instead of anxiety, pursue prayer.
Instead of allowing your life
to be led along by anxiety,
instead of that,
pursue prayer.
Now, it’s powerful here in this passage
because he actually gives
four different words for prayer.
He’s giving us an offensive strategy
for prayer,
for anxiety.
We don’t have to stay on the defense.
I like playing chess.
When I
taught my kids how to play chess,
I taught them
that if someone attacks you,
if they’re attacking a piece,
instead of just immediately
retreating and going on the run,
look to attack them somewhere else.
You don’t have to just go on the defense.
You can go on the offense.
That’s another way to solve the problem.
Over here.
And so instead of it
just immediately run into anxiety.
Now we have an offensive strategy.
Here’s how I can go on the offense.
I can go in prayer.
And I think
with these four different words,
I don’t think Paul is trying to outline
a four part strategy to prayer
by using these four different words.
I think he’s probably
just piling on words that are similar
to emphasize the importance of prayer.
But I think we can use these words
to highlight
a four part strategy of prayer
when it comes to battling anxiety.
And so look at each
of these words prayer.
That first word, just general player.
I think it points to just
an attitude of dependance.
When you approach God in prayer,
hopefully you’re coming
with an attitude of dependance that says,
I really need you in this situation.
I’m not going to depend on self for this.
I’m no longer
going to carry it on my own.
So much of anxiety
comes from feeling like I’m
the only one that can solve this.
No one else is there to help me.
I’ve got to carry it all on my own.
But when you come to Christ in prayer,
you’re coming with
an attitude of dependance.
Jesus, come help me.
I’m giving this to you.
I know you can help me.
One of the pastors I like to read,
he passed away a few years ago.
Tim Keller.
He was very well known.
It’s been very influential
and significant.
However, there were
a number of other pastors
who were becoming
well known at the same time of them,
many of whom
abused their power in various ways,
many of whom are now out of ministry.
And I heard an interview with him,
was a journalist, asked him
how come you have been able
to remain
faithful while others have fallen away?
And he said this.
He said,
I think it’s just
simply been a commitment
to personal prayer.
You know Keller, well known
writer,
influential pastor in New York City.
It would be easy to let that become
a power play.
It would be easy
if someone questions you
to turn that into,
who are you to question me?
I’m going to make sure that I do
whatever it takes. Now to silence you.
You could turn to manipulation
and to control. And he didn’t do that.
Instead of that, as
some turned their approach.
Instead of that,
he turned to prayer.
God, I can’t figure this out.
And in my flesh, I want to lash back.
I want to exercise control and power.
Instead, I’m coming to you
and I’m turning it over to you.
Prayer shows
that we have an attitude of dependance,
and it helps us
build an attitude of dependance
and helps
you learn
that I’m turning this over to Christ.
I don’t have to carry it anymore.
That’s the first one.
Notice the second word
he has here by prayer and supplication
and the notes I wrote the word petition.
That’s another way to translate
that word.
The key idea here is to, when we come in
prayer, to approach,
approach him with humility.
Have a mindset of humility.
Have a posture of humility.
So when I approach God,
I approach him
like a servant does a king.
I approach him with reverence.
I approach him with respect.
I don’t come in
a demanding way in my prayers.
I come in humility.
In fact, first Peter
five six talks about this
humble yourselves
under the mighty hand of God,
so that he may exalt
you at the proper time.
Come in humility.
That’s the way to approach him.
And when we do that, by the way,
that more rightly orients our life.
I’m coming to him in humility,
knowing that he is great.
He is powerful, he is strong,
and I can trust him.
The next word, though, is the big one.
I think for today in particular,
and this week
by prayer, supplication
with thanksgiving.
I think the strategy for us with
this is to choose gratitude.
You got to choose gratitude.
Gratitude doesn’t
not come naturally for many of us.
I so appreciate Isaac
starting our service today with us
just each taking time
to just be intentional, to give
thanks for something.
It’s so easy to do the opposite,
to grumble.
Complain about everything.
But we’ve got to learn to instead
choose gratitude.
And here’s why this is so important.
In fact, seeing this,
it was hard to read.
This is something that should shock us
a little bit to read this.
We’re going to see a connection
in Scripture today
between idolatry and ingratitude.
In fact, in gratitude, we could say,
is a gateway to idolatry.
Ingratitude is the doorway to idolatry.
We’re going to
I’m going to show you this.
I’m going to show you a passage.
Turn to Romans one,
and then I’m gonna tell you a story,
a Bible story
related to it, that illustrates it.
Romans chapter one.
And of course, that section is famous.
It’s well known
for condemning those who have turned
from God’s plan
for physical intimacy
and pursued their own plan.
But notice why that is.
They didn’t just start there.
We’re going to see how it began.
Romans chapter one.
We’re going to look at verse 21
and following.
It says, for although they knew God,
or knew of him or knew about him,
they knew who he was,
but they did not honor him as God.
We know who you are,
but you’re not our God.
And they did not give
thanks to him.
Notice the connection.
We are rejecting God
and we are ungrateful for you.
But they became futile in their thinking.
Their foolish hearts were darkened,
claiming to be wise, they became fools.
And here’s
the connection between ingratitude
and idolatry.
Instead of giving thanks,
they exchanged the glory of the immortal
God for images resembling mortal man
and birds and animals and creeping things
in gratitude
and rejection of God
led them to idolatry.
This is exactly what we saw happen
with the very first sin
with Adam and Eve.
God said, look,
I’ve got this whole gigantic garden
for you.
Who knows how many millions
and millions of trees you
can eat from any of them
except one.
There’s just one.
Leave this one alone.
And instead of God,
thank you for the millions
and millions of trees.
Instead of that, it became.
How dare you keep this one tree from me?
I’m paraphrasing.
We don’t have those words written,
but the attitude was, why do you hate me?
Why do you want to persecute me
and keep this one thing from me?
If you loved me,
you would let me eat from that one tree.
They questioned his goodness.
It led to ingratitude
and ultimately it led to idolatry.
We’re going to serve some other God,
the God of self, who knows?
This is why gratitude is so important.
It protects us from idolatry.
It protects us from serving
some other God,
some made up God that we often have.
In fact, Tim Keller says
this about idolatry.
When you serve an idol, you’re saying
Jesus is nice,
but I have to have this thing too.
If I’m going to be happy.
I don’t like reading all this
either, by the way.
I can feel it in here.
It feels uncomfortable.
Jesus. You’re okay.
You’re great. You’re good.
But if I don’t have this,
I won’t be happy.
If there’s anything in your life
like that,
that’s a good sign that
that thing has become an idol.
That thing has surpassed
Jesus in importance.
I can’t follow a God
that won’t let me have this.
And there are plenty of good things
in that category, by the way.
But if they’re surpassing Jesus
in your hope
and in goodness, it’s become an idol.
And the way to battle that,
the way to start battling
that is to start with gratitude,
to choose gratitude.
And I’m guessing
some of our anxieties in the room
have their roots in a lack of gratitude.
And we’re going to battle that this week.
Not only do
I’m giving you homework today,
not only do you take time
to write down all your anxieties,
but each day write down your things.
You’re grateful for. This week,
let me challenge you
to at least everyone in the room
every day.
Start your morning
by writing down
at least one thing you’re grateful for.
Best case would be three overachievers.
Go for five.
Take whatever time you need
and just write down each day.
This is something I’m grateful for.
I’m going to start my day with gratitude.
I’m going to choose gratitude.
And even better is
if you can focus on gratitude in an area
that combats an area of anxiety.
If you’re worried about money,
focus on giving them gratitude
for what he has given you.
Find the counterbalance,
but choose gratitude.
This is a powerful
strategy to fight anxiety.
And then lastly, in this
group of four words, we have prayer,
supplication, thanksgiving.
Let your requests be made known to God.
Some translations say
present your request to God.
The final step here
in these four part
strategy for battling
anxiety is to just ask,
to simply ask.
Make sure you’re bringing
your request to Jesus and asking him.
There’s a powerful illustration
of this in Mark chapter ten.
A blind man sees Jesus
coming down the road and or or
I guess he doesn’t see him.
Sorry about that.
Here’s the Jesus is coming down the road
and he says, Jesus, have mercy on me.
Jesus says, bring him over.
He clearly knows this guy wants healing,
but he asks him,
what do you want me to do for you?
What do you want?
Would you give me sight?
The powerful part of that is that he asks
specifically, this is what I need.
Jesus wants us to come to him
with specific requests.
Come to him. It’s okay.
Sometimes.
Again, it feels unchristian to ask
Jesus for things to bring.
My prayers for him shouldn’t pray for me.
I should only pray for others.
No, no no, it’s
okay to pray for yourself.
It is okay.
This is where James
four becomes so helpful
because it says you have not
because you ask not.
But you also don’t have
because you ask with impure motives.
And so I’ve just committed
I’m going to ask I’m going to pray.
I’m going to ask for it in Jesus.
If my motives are impure,
would you correct them?
Would you redirect them?
And I’m going to pray for that as well.
But ask come to him.
Ask specifically. See what he does.
A guy this week shared a story with me.
He said I knew our family was in a place
where we needed another car,
and I thought, I’m just going to pray.
And instead I thought
probably a $5,000 car
would do the trick,
which tells you
he was giving it to a new driver, right?
That tells you right away
that’s who it’s going to.
I thought that would do the trick.
So I began to pray,
Jesus, would you just provide us
a $5,000 car?
I mean, he had the money to pay for it,
provide the right car for us.
And he said,
when I started to pray that I knew
right away
God had that answered,
that it was in his hands,
I knew he would answer it.
And he said,
I became so excited
to know what’s going to happen.
What’s he going to provide?
What’s it going to be? A
few weeks later, a lady,
one of his family members,
calls and says, hey,
I’ve got this car
I need to get rid of
and I’d like to sell it.
Do you have a need?
Yes, I do.
How much is it?
And he said,
I knew what she was going to say.
I knew exactly what she was going to say
before she said it.
I knew she was going to say $5,000,
and she said $2,000 would be enough.
And he said, Lord,
I love you even more today.
Thank you for answering that prayer.
Pray specific.
Come to him with your specific requests.
Some of them might get answered
better than you thought.
Some of them exactly like you thought.
Some of them not at all like
you thought, but come to him,
put that on him instead
of just carrying it yourself.
Prayer is a powerful strategy
to battle anxiety.
And the last thing we’ll see here is
he gives us the command.
Don’t be anxious.
He gives us a task, a commission.
Battle it with prayer.
But then God says, here’s
my commitment to you.
Here’s my promise to you.
What he’ll do is he will bring peace.
He will provide peace.
And everyone who’s anxious,
that’s exactly what you want.
You want peace.
That’s what we all want,
is to walk in peace.
So much of life
is all about trying to find peace.
Look back at verse seven
and what he says, and the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts
and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I think there’s four things about peace
we can see here.
Two in this passage, two
just in Scripture broadly.
But he says, the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding
or transcends all understanding,
we have to
have Ephesians 320 here
in the notes,
because there
it talks about the wisdom of God to him
who goes far above and exceeds
all our expectations, surpasses
anything we could imagine or grasp.
What we need, when we need
peace is we need supernatural wisdom.
We need supernatural understanding.
That’s what surpasses
here is pointing at.
We need heavenly insight
into how the world should work.
We need supernatural
understanding into the situation.
If I’m trying to only lean on my own
understanding, I’m
never going to rightly see a situation.
I’m never going to rightly understand
how to approach that area of anxiety.
So we come to him
trusting that he will guide us.
Second, priests,
peace brings power.
Another aspect of princes
peace is how powerful it is.
Romans 1620 says 19 be excellent.
What is good?
Be innocent and evil,
and the God of peace.
That’s who he is.
Will soon
crush Satan underneath his feet.
The God of peace
is also the God of power.
He can handle
whatever situation you’re facing.
I shared last week.
You know, we
we looked at the whole passage
about the audience in Turkey
who were in a quarrel,
and I shared about situation.
I faced a ministry with two women
who were at odds with one another.
But you know where the breakthrough
occurred with them.
It’s when the woman,
who was the more senior of the two,
more experienced in ministry,
more well known.
It’s when she came to the meeting
and said.
All week I’ve been praying
and I’ve been praying.
God, would you give me wisdom on
how to move this thing forward?
And I realized
the Holy Spirit broke into my life
and said,
you’ve got to start
by asking
forgiveness for the
things you’ve done wrong.
She said, I’ve
been so focused on
all the things you’re doing wrong
and all the problems
you caused for me to the other woman,
all I can do is start by saying,
I’m sorry.
This I’m sorry for what I’ve done.
Will you forgive me?
And the power of the Holy Spirit.
Man broke through in that relationship.
And that was the beginning
of healing and reconciliation.
And look,
they didn’t become best buddies
forever after that,
but they got through the conflict.
It was no longer dividing the ministry.
Peace is powerful.
Note here also,
peace is wholeness.
When you’re at peace, you feel whole
instead of divided.
James one talks about that
double minded man, unstable
in all his ways.
We don’t want to be unstable,
double minded. We wanted to be.
We want to be whole.
We want to be a person
who’s the same person in public
that they are in private,
that you know what you’re getting,
that they’re not duplicitous
and never able to know
what you’re going to get.
Peace brings wholeness.
And then lastly, peace
is a guardian.
That’s what it says here in the passage.
The peace of God will guard your hearts
and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Pieces of guardian.
And the language here.
The word picture is of a walled city
with a citadel guarded
by soldiers who so well protected
that the people in the city
have no concerns at all,
even if they’re being sieged by
an incredible army.
No worries, we are at peace.
I said this at the beginning.
It’s not the actual issue
that causes
anxiety, it’s
your perception of the issue.
Think of Paul.
Paul’s in prison in Rome.
Likely, many
believe, chained between his soldiers
and every chapter
in Philippians he uses the word joy.
Rejoice!
I’m joyful for you.
Walk in joy.
Rejoice again I say, rejoice, Paul.
Paul’s in prison.
By the way,
when Paul came to Philippi,
they beat him and threw him in prison,
and they sang hymns of joy and praise.
It’s not your actual situation.
It’s not the actual circumstance
that causes anxiety.
Paul was an anxious.
It’s our perception of it,
how we handle it,
how we respond to it, how we react to it.
And I just want to plead with you today
because this passage gives us a strategy
for battling it.
And my prayer has been,
is that we come to believe
that this works.
You don’t have to submit your life
to anxiety anymore.
Today could be the day right now.
Today can be the day where you say,
I’m no longer going to live.
Crippled by anxiety.
And here’s the
question are you going to believe
that God’s Word is true
and you got to wrestle with that?
Do you believe His Word is true?
Do you believe that you can trust
that this works,
that prayer works to battle anxiety
or not?
And I get it.
I hear it all the time.
Look, John, I,
I don’t have time to pray.
Life’s too crazy.
Okay, well,
you have plenty of time to be anxious.
Which do you want?
How do you want to spend your time, John?
A little prayer is hard.
I know it’s incredibly hard,
but so is living life
riddled with anxiety.
Who wants that?
Which hard do you want? The hard.
That’s forced on you or
the hard you choose what?
The key
phrase in this whole
passage is the very last tag
will guard your hearts and your minds
in Christ Jesus.
So this isn’t about me
being so good at prayer
that somehow I tackle this myself.
No, it’s all about Christ.
You know, when I came to my dad,
I came to
someone who was stronger than me
to help me deal with my anxiety.
You’re not going to be able
to deal with this anxiety on your own.
You come to Christ
who’s stronger than you.
He went to his father
in his moment of worry.
He’s the one we come to.
Jesus, would you guide me?
I’m coming to you.
Guard my heart,
guide me in prayer
and help me to come to you.
In the midst of this anxiety.
This week I met with Jim Newton,
who had
surgery for pancreatic cancer
this week, and I came to his home
to pray with him
before he went into surgery.
And Jim said,
I just really want to get past this
so I can get back to contributing
in the church, serving in the church,
he and a number of men
help around the facility,
working on the facility,
and he loves to do that,
but he just hasn’t
been able to physically.
And I said, Jim, how are you doing?
How are you feeling? How’s it going?
How are you feeling about tomorrow?
And I was expecting to see tears
and anxiety and worry.
And instead he smiled.
John,
earlier today
one of my mentors
from years ago called me
and he said,
I want to pray a verse over
you before you go into surgery.
And he said, here it is.
Do not be anxious
about anything,
but in everything by prayer,
supplication, with thanksgiving, present
your requests to God
and the peace of God.
Which transcends
and surpasses
all understanding, will guard your hearts
and your minds in Christ Jesus.
He said, I’m at peace.
I’m at peace.
You can know peace.
You really can walk in peace.
Come to Jesus with your anxieties.
Trust him.
He will guard your hearts and your minds.
Let’s pray.
God, thank you for this passage
and thank you for your word.
So much of life we live.
Wondering
how are we going to get through it?
How are we going to survive another day?
But your word is power.
Your word is healing.
Your name is life.
And I know there are
many here today
who are riddled with anxiety.
Would you give them victory today?
Would you right now
give them complete release from anxiety?
Would they sense hope?
Would they trust your word and know
peace can be found.
Walk away today
full of peace.
Thank you Jesus.
We also just continue
to pray for healing for Jim.
He did have surgery,
came through it, continue
to bring healing to his body.
Thank you for his example
of walking in peace rooted in your word.
We love you
and it’s in your name we pray.
Amen.
I’m going to mention
just two quick things.
First, we’re going to have
a couple of baptisms next Sunday.
And we almost always do
those at the very beginning
of the service.
So you want to be in here
right at the start
so we can celebrate
those baptisms together.
And then secondly, we have a women’s
Christmas breakfast
happening in a couple of weeks
this Sunday and next
tickets
will be for sale out in the lobby.
So you want to check those out,
but let’s all stand.
We’ll have a closing prayer.
A closing prayer of blessing
as we go into our week.
Reminder there’s no Wednesday night
activities this week
with it being Thanksgiving
week, we’re taking a week off.
Enjoy time with your family.
Let’s pray.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you.
May you feel the fullness
of his presence, of his countenance.
And may that bring.
Peace.
May you feel his peace
which surpasses all understanding.
May you walk in gratitude this week.
We love you, Jesus,
and it’s in your powerful name we pray.
Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week!
