Overcoming Anxiety

For a text, let's turn our Bibles to Philippians chapter 4 this morning.

Just breaking in, sort of in the middle of things here, beginning to read in verse 4. Philippians 4:4, and we'll read through verse 9.

"Rejoice, and the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men: the Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing, but in everything; by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me, do, and the God of peace shall be with you." Rejoice.

It's sort of a favorite term of Paul's, isn't it? And in this verse he repeats it: "Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice."

Where does this kind of rejoicing have its basis? Now, probably most of you—now, I didn't. I didn't learn the little song in Sunday school, but probably most of you learned that little song, "Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice." And children sing that with enthusiasm and with a smile on their face, and their very expression is like there's rejoicing behind that song.

Now, when children at a young age sing that song, often it's the circumstances of their life is that of carefree.

In fact, probably the greatest decision a child at that age needs to make for the day is what kind of cereal he or she will choose. Just carefree. Just no worry. So why not rejoice? But Paul is writing this from prison, I understand. So the rejoicing that he's urging us to is not based on circumstances, else he would have nothing to rejoice about, sitting in a Roman prison, probably tied down to the stocks. But he says, "Rejoice." It's almost like a command here.

The little child can rejoice because he's carefree. But we will see in what we read here, if we jump down to verse 6, "Be careful for nothing." Now, that word, careful, there is used. The original Greek word that's used for this word comes up quite a number of times in the New Testament. I'll just mention a few.

And I can't pronounce the Greek word, but I found it was used by Jesus. I'm saying this to say this: being careful for nothing has nothing to do with just being carefree, and it doesn't matter, and just let it go, and being irresponsible. That's not what it means.

From what I understand, the Greek word is used to help us understand maybe the meaning of it. Jesus used it quite a number of times in Matthew chapter 6 when he said, "Take no thought for your life." That's the same word we say. In other words, the Greek word has the idea of anxious worry. And Jesus says, "Don't do that." He uses that quite a number of times in his teaching. He uses it in Mark 4 for the parable of the sower. Remember, the one group of people were those that heard the word and received it in, and then the cares of this world came in and choked. There's that word again. The anxious cares of this world came in and choked the word, and they became unfruitful.

Another time Jesus uses this word is in Luke 21:34, where he says, "Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with the anxious cares of this life, and that they come upon you unawares." Another time Jesus used this word is in the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10, where he rebuked Martha and said, "Thou art careful and anxiously worried and troubled over many things."

And folks, that's the subject of this morning. This anxious worry that we as adults face in this life. What are we going to do with it? How are we going to respond with it? The title of the message is, "Overcoming Anxiety."

And we live in a world that makes it very easy for us to become anxiously worried. In fact, a few statistics here from what I read: 39% of youth—and I think youth were considered in between the ages of 15 to 19—39% of those young people are battling anxiety.

And the use of anxiety meds has increased 66% since 2020. That's huge. We live in a highly medicated generation, do we not? I want to look at some of the problems that come with this over-anxious worry. Jesus, in Matthew 6, he used this at least three times as a commandment to the people listening, "Do not worry," over and over. So the first problem with if we're overtaken and we're bogged down with this anxious worry that this dark world offers, we're disobeying the commandment of Jesus.

He says over and over, "Don't do it." Matthew chapter 6. You can't go there. In fact, he turns around and rebukes them, and he says, "Oh, you of little faith." He's saying if you are overtaken with anxious worry and it's controlling your life, he's saying, "You're of little faith. You don't trust Jesus." And then he gives some of the inconsistencies or the warning or the downsides of this worry life. First of all, he says it's inconsistent. And then he uses the story of the illustration of the birds.

The birds, they can't build, they can't sow, they can't reap, they can't gather into storehouse. They can't do any of that. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. So he's saying it's very inconsistent of you if you see the birds being taken care of and they can't take care of themselves. And here you are, you could take care of yourself. You could work, you could build and plant and reap and harvest. And you're worrying. It's inconsistent.

The next problem with it, it's ineffective. And then he goes on in Matthew 6 to say that you can't change anything by worrying anyway. You can't add one cubit to your stature. If we could, some of us would be a little taller.

We can't change it, can we? He says by your worry and your anxious thought, you're not going to change anything anyway. So just don't do it. Get over it. The next thing he points out is he says if you are run and your life is controlled by this over-anxiousness, you're being irresponsible, to put it bluntly. Because he said the unbelievers of this world, the Gentiles, that's what they do. They make a rat race after the things of this life and the chasing after the food and the clothing and so on.

And then he turns and he says, "Seek you first the kingdom of heaven." You, my God, my people, seek your God. And folks, that is the whole duty of man, is it not? To the love of the Lord God with all our heart. And if that is in place, then we're going to seek his kingdom with all our heart, are we not? The whole duty of man is to seek first.

The next problem with this anxiousness, and I referred to this in Mark 4, the message, the parable of the sower. This anxious worry comes in and it chokes out the word of God of our life. And we become unfruitful.

Unfruitfulness as a result of anxious worry. Another problem, Luke 24:34, "Take heed to yourselves, lest any time your hearts be overcharged with anxious cares of this life and that day shall come upon you unawares." We're checked out of the circumstances around us. We lose our focus.

And remember what Jesus told Martha in the story of Martha and Mary and Martha's over-anxious worry, and she became troubled about many things. When we have over-anxious worry, we become troubled. That's just the reality of it. And when we are overcharged, as Jesus says, our hearts are overcharged and we become over-anxious and we're troubled minds, we're not safe always to be around. Martha, she became impatient with her sister.

When we're troubled and we're overly concerned and anxious about the concerns of life, we get impatient too. When we begin to snap at our spouse and our children and become impatient with them, we might get impatient with a coworker or our boss at work, our parents. We become short and snippy and the next thing we know we're saying unkind words. Those are results of a heart that is overcharged with the cares and the anxious worries of this life. And we don't want to be there, do we? We want a better way.

And often when we don't address this problem in our heart, what else happens? We become grouchy. We become unforgiving and bitter. And we become contrary and depressed. There's a lot of depressed people in the world today. And I believe one of the reasons is because we have not learned how to bring our anxious worries to Jesus Christ. What is the opposite of anxious worry? This week, one day, we were watching over one of our grand boys, and he took his afternoon nap, and I was there in the living room, and I just noticed, couldn't help but notice as he was stretched out on the couch, the peacefulness, just the peaceful, restful look on his face.

Beautiful. Just a picture of completely at rest. All is well. There again, at one and a half years old, what would be one of your greatest concerns if you had any? It might be when I wake up, is that little toy tractor still where I left it?

If not, grandma's going to help me find it. When I'm hungry, mom's there to feed me. When I'm dirty, my diapers get changed. Everything that makes for this peace is sort of automatic for a child like him. But Jesus gives us the next verse here says, verse 7, it talks about a peace of God which passeth all understanding.

Now, this little child, we can explain that peace, can't we? I mean, it's circumstantial. Everything's taken care of. We can explain that kind of peace. But Paul is pointing out a peace here that can't be explained. It's beyond our human imagination. It's a peace that goes way beyond being carefree like the little child.

That brings it to the adults. We don't have the luxury of just dismissing all our worries, do we? Like the child, no worries, no cares. We do have cares. And some of them are very huge. Some of you are facing health issues.

Some of us are facing family issues. Some of you are facing cancer. Brent and Lauren are facing Lebanon. Doesn't that look like a giant to pack up your family and face Lebanon and move there and actually live there with a family sort of alone? That's huge. We are facing all these kinds of giants in our life. We don't have the luxury of just being carefree.

And that is why Paul is pointing these folks, because the folks he's addressing here have issues as well. Huge giants in our life.

How shall we navigate through this? How shall we find our way of this perfect peace that he describes in verse 7?

First of all, we want to look at the source of this peace. This peace that has no explanation. In fact, when I think of the peace that goes beyond understanding, I think of Paul and Silas in that Philippian jail that night when the storm broke loose or the earthquake came and they were found singing.

That kind of joy, that kind of rejoicing goes beyond our understanding. It's unexplainable. We can explain the child's peace, but we can't explain this kind of peace. When I read the martyr's mirror and I see those martyrs going to their stake, burning alive and singing, that's a peace that I can't describe and you can't describe. It goes beyond our and that's what Paul is saying. There's a peace that has its roots deep. You can't explain it. I can't explain it. So the very source of this kind of peace doesn't come from our circumstances, but it comes from a great God. And he said there's a Jesus that's standing the word keep. You notice where's the word keep found?

He will keep verse 7. He will keep your hearts and your minds through Christ Jesus. That word keep I found interesting. Again, I went to the Greek. I don't understand Greek well. But as often as the word keep is used in the New Testament, this is the only time it's used this way, in a very strong way.

It's a military term. It has the idea of soldier standing at the door of our minds and our hearts and guarding and protecting the peace. How many of you long for that kind of peace that is protected by a military group standing at the door and guarding? And he says Jesus Christ is doing that for us. So it's a supernatural peace that doesn't come from circumstances.

Notice he says the God of peace shall be with you in verse 9. And in verse 7, it says the peace of God. It comes from both ends. This great God is the God of peace as much as he is the God of creation.

It's where this kind of peace comes from. And it's the only source of this kind of peace. My grand boy gets his peace from his circumstances. But you and I as adults get our peace from the God of peace.

You notice in this language in verse 7, it talks about keeping your hearts and minds. There's no better place than that to have our minds and our hearts kept. That language is very telling. It is telling that the hearts, our hearts and our minds are the battlegrounds.

There's a warfare going on. There's tug of war over the hearts and our minds. The devil knows that and God knows it. It's the seedbed of our life. If there's one important part about me and you, it is your heart and your mind. Because out of it are the issues of life. And the devil knows that when he makes his way into your heart and your mind, then he can control the rest of your life. It is his.

And that is why we need to be so diligently looking at the commandment this morning to turn to Jesus with all our troubles.

The great invitation to come to Jesus is found in verse 6.

We're working toward this. He said we can't get this peace, this kind of supernatural peace, unless we go through the doors of prayer. Notice that verse 6. But in everything, you need to underline that verse if you haven't in your Bible. Everything.

That means it doesn't matter how big your problem is or how small your problem is. It doesn't matter if it's embarrassing or not or if it's shameful or not. It doesn't matter whether the problem is now or will be or has been. Everything that is a giant to you, big or small, you need to learn to bring it to Jesus in prayer. When he says this prayer, we can split up in three ways. By prayer, prayer simply means communicating with God, talking to God about it. And I like a verse in Jeremiah 26, a familiar verse, 26:3. It says, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee." When I read that and when I think of a mind that is stayed, it speaks of an environment.

It speaks of a first response. Whenever we face something in life, in the middle of the night, we wait and we wake and this thing is on my mind. If we have a mind that is stayed on him, it's a way of life. It's normal for us. It becomes an exercise. That is the person that is going to experience this supernatural peace, the perfect peace. Let's learn to talk to God just as a friend and tell him where it hurts.

Let's tell him what our cares are. Let's learn to communicate well with God. And then the next part is in supplication, and that has the idea of requesting and bringing our petitions and asking of God and explaining our circumstance to God. Just even though he knows he wants to hear us, make a request. David did that in the Psalms over and over. I'll just take a couple.

Psalm 4:1. David cries out and says, "Lord, hear me." That's a request. In the same psalm, he says, "When I call to you, have mercy on me." That's a request that God hears me. And when I bring my request, yes, have mercy on me. "Oh Lord," in Psalm 6:2, he says, "Oh Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed."

Do we ever talk to God that way? "God, heal me. My bones hurt. They're getting old and stiff," and you hear the joints. They're vexed. Well, I think God loves when we do that. He can hear just like a child coming to us as parents. "God, this hurts. Father, Daddy, this hurts.

Can you blow it for me?" That's what we used to do. I guess my mom taught us that. We come with a little scratch and we say it hurts and mom would just and it went away. Your moms do that to you. It just went away.

I think part of our pains and aches go away, just part of them, when we bring them to God. A lot of it is up here. It was for us children. And some of our aches and pains are up here too. And when we just take our request to him, he might blow it for us. It might not go away completely.

Remember Romans. Sometimes I confess, sometimes I'm a little fearful of making too big of requests to God. What if he doesn't answer them? What if I ask God to just completely heal somebody and he doesn't heal them?

I never quite know what to do with that. I'm a little bit spooked in asking too big of things of God. What if he doesn't do it? Then what? It does something to my faith. I'm fearful of that. But when I read Paul recently in Romans 15:32 and going, Paul is talking to the church at Romans, at Rome there, and he has a prayer request. He said, "Now want you to pray for me." He mentions three things. "I want you to pray about the first thing it was for deliverance from the unbelievers at Judea."

Well, what happened to that request? Was that prayer answered? So he had the whole church praying for him, apparently. Well, he was captured by those folks. The next request was that my service, which I have for Jerusalem, may be accepted of the saints. Was that prayer answered? Not really.

And then the third request is that I can come to you to Rome to be with you in a good way. How does he say that? That I may come unto you with joy and be refreshed. How did he come to Jerusalem, I mean, to Rome as a prisoner?

None of those prayers got answered the way he requested them. None of them. So did Paul stop rejoicing and praising God? No. And I think that's helpful for me to understand. We are allowed. In fact, we are invited to ask big things of God. Whether or not he's going to answer them according to our request is okay.

Either here or there. At least we're invited to bring them. He can do with them what he wants to. And that didn't change the Apostle Paul. Not at all. He went to the Roman prison. Praising God, writing letters of encouragement to the church.

Our prayers are not based on this supply-demand idea. That if you answer my prayer like the lepers, the one that came back and said, "Thank you, God." Not based on that. It's based on God is good. The next part is when we bring all our things, he says in this prayer is threefold. It's talking to him, just praying and talking and communicating. And then supplication. And then he says with thanksgiving.

Now there again, supply and demand, no. Because this thanksgiving comes before the prayer is answered. The request is made knowing. It hasn't happened yet. And we are commanded here to pray with a thankful, grateful attitude. And I think we're creatures of habit. And I think we can shape our prayer life, the habits of our prayer. In every prayer, I think there should be at least one part or more where it's just, "Thank you, God.

Thank you, God." Even in the middle of our giants, even in the middle of heavy things, let's learn to say, "Thank you." In Psalm 68:19, David says, "Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation." So when David was facing his enemies, he kept that in mind. Hey, after all, yes, this thing is huge. It hurts.

But he would jump back to verses like this. "Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us." I love that. Are you loaded this morning?

Are you loaded? What are some of the benefits we experience every day? Name a few. Oh, I had this giant that hurt.

What are some of the benefits? One of the greatest benefits, I think, of Corey Byler's body was here on Thursday. And we preached a message of hope beyond the grave. That is one of the greatest benefits we're loaded with is hope beyond the grave.

When everything else looks heavy and we're anxious, we remember we have a God, as Dale read this morning to us, "I am the bread of life."

We could make a whole list of benefits that we're loaded with. Some of them we take for granted. This morning I was hustling around and getting ready for church and I took off to my closet and I found this nice shirt that was cleaned and it was ironed and hanging in my closet ready for me to grab. I didn't do that. Must have been my wife. The next thing I knew, I'm there. As I'm putting my shirt on, I said, "Thank you, God, for a wonderful wife."

So many benefits that we just take for granted many times. And you ladies, when you look into your refrigerator and your cupboards and you see all the food, all the food you want to eat, you can thank God. That's a daily benefit.

Maybe your man is working hard and sweating to provide for that. Let's not take those things for granted. In our prayers, yes, this peace that goes beyond understanding, this hope beyond the grave, and then all these benefits that we have daily that are just the practical things we don't want to take for granted.

Peter in 1 Peter 5:7 says, "Cast all your care." That's that Greek word again. "Cast all your anxious worry." If you don't have the word all underlined in your Bible, you should do so. Because all means all. It doesn't mean just some of them. It doesn't mean just the scary ones or the not so scary or the ones that are not embarrassing. It means all of them.

How's he said? He says, "Cast them upon him, for he careth for you." That word cast has the idea of

I remember when at home we were teenagers or young. I was younger than a teenager. My sister Lizzie was, I'm going to say, in her upper teens.

We had this problem in our attic every now and then in the summer. A bat would find its way into the upstairs attic room, into the attic, and find its way downstairs into a bedroom.

I could tell stories about bats. But when I think of this casting off, we were sitting at the breakfast table one morning, and as mornings were sort of gloomy and just tired, everybody's still tired, especially the teenagers. And all of a sudden, my sister Lizzie jumps up out of the table and she takes her apron and she just whips that thing off. I've never seen an apron come off that quickly.

Here there was a bat between her apron and her dress, right here in her chest. And when I read this, it's like, "Cast it off." It's like, "Get rid of it." In other words, he says, "Don't just throw it away." But cast it that way. Cast it to God because he cares about it. Do we learn to take our anxieties and our worries and just rip them away from us and cast them out that way?

King Hezekiah, very familiar man in the Old Testament, a godly man. He did many wonderful things in the kingdom. But when he was faced with that great, unbeatable Assyrian army that was marching toward Jerusalem, do you remember what he did? He took an alternative route. He went to the king of Assyria and tried to bribe him with the temple's gold. Started stripping down all that gold from the temple and the posts and so on, and took it over here to the king and said, "Hey, see what we have? We'll give this to you if you back off."

Well, that backfired on him. Remember that greedy old king said, "Oh, you have gold in Jerusalem. Oh, so much more. We're going to plunder Jerusalem." That didn't work. And the next route, alternative route he took was he cozied up with Egypt.

I think I have that right.

And tried to make an alliance. Said, "You have the horses, the soldiers, the military might," and so on. And about that time, here comes Prophet Isaiah. Says, "Now, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's going on, you people? You're seeking counsel, but you're not getting it from me."

And he rebuked Hezekiah.

And in the prophecy, he warned Hezekiah, said, "You need to return to God. You need to seek God." And you know he did. A wonderful story came out of that. When Hezekiah took that threatening letter that was sent out from the king with all his threats. And he's in that letter, there's a list of cities that they took. They took their lands, they took their men, they took their kings, and they burned their gods.

That is how unbeatable this letter. Very intimidating. What did Hezekiah do? He read the letter, the Bible says, and then he took the letter up into the house of God. And he spread that letter out before the Lord. And then he prayed over the letter. And he did what Peter says, "Cast your care." He took the letter and he said, "God, here it is. After all, you know that these Assyrians, remember what they did to all these others? Are they going to do it to us?" He was still scared in his prayer to God.

The Bible says God heard him. And the outcome of that was, that night, the angel of the Lord came as the Assyrians surrounded the city of Jerusalem. Without shooting an arrow, God sent an angel and he laid them flat. I think 185,000 people were found dead.

And the king was taken by his own sons. It was all taken care of. Why? You know that angel that night, I believe that's a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. That great protection. Now, the city of and God says that, "I heard your prayer, but there was something else going on." God said, "I'm going to defend the city of Jerusalem for my sake. And for the sake of David."

And you know if we as a people, if we have a Jerusalem in us, it's going to be our heart and our mind. So much as God wanted to protect the city of Jerusalem, that was where things happened. That's where worship was. It's where the people of God flowed in and out.

Consider our minds and our hearts as the place of worship, the place that God so much wants to protect. Because when he protects our Jerusalem, he protects everything else about us.

How often do we go to other sources? Like Hezekiah tried and it didn't work for him. Remember a number of years ago I was in the hospital with tremendous physical pain around my liver. To this day, I don't know why, what was going on. Never had so much pain in life. Well, I got in there, the one nurse set me up on IVs and so on, and she said she's going to put something in that IV for my pain.

In a matter of minutes, I felt like a brand I think I told the nurse, "I never felt so good in my life. What did you do to me?" And not only did my physical pain go away, we were going through a valley in our congregation at that time as well, and that pain went away as well.

I just felt so good.

And the nurse made a comment. She said, "I can tell your body is brand new to these drugs. You respond well." But then she told me this.

It's always stuck with me. There's two problems. And here we're getting into depressant meds and I don't know, all these meds that we the nurse told me, "One thing about these meds, you will find every time we give them to you, they're going to be a little less effective."

And it was so true. The next day when she gave them, "Oh, yes, it was still there, the effectiveness, but not like that first time."

And another problem with it is, it short-lived. My pain came back pretty quick again.

Remember Jesus told that woman at the well, "If you keep drinking of the water that this well produces, Jacob's well, if that's all you keep drinking, you're going to find yourself coming back again and again and again. But if you go deeper than that," folks, this is the point I'm making.

If we're reliant or dependent or using meds as a crutch, let's not become dependent on them. They're short-lived. Sooner or later, they're going to lose their effectiveness. Jesus said, "We're going to have to go deeper. We're going to have to go higher. We're going to have to go broader if we want to gain a peace that is indescribable, a peace that goes past our understanding, a peace that is guarded by the military camps.

We're going to have to go much deeper."

Finally, my brethren, he says, he gives our responsibility whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. He says, "Think on these things." Now we have a responsibility, don't we?

Somehow God, as the keeper, as he has his military guards keeping our minds, he does also put a responsibility on us. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, he says, "Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

If we learn to do that, there's a promise that goes with that. He says, "The God of peace will be with us." And the peace of God, it comes from every direction. God is the beginning and the end of this great peace.

One thing about imagining, imagination, they say it's the greatest nation there is. Did you ever hear that? What do we do when we imagine things? Let's say we wake up at 3:00 a.m. and there's some giant that's just hanging over us. And we begin to think and we roll this thing around in our mind. It tends to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Imagination, he says, is a high thing. And often when we imagine, we imagine the worst. Is it that way with you? When I imagine, I don't imagine this thing coming out really well. It's often I imagine it being terrible, much bigger than it is.

And often the things that we imagine never come true anyway. So if we cast down our imaginations, as Paul says, then something else takes place. And we learn then to trust God. And we believe the best. Here, this list that I read is believing the best.

We can imagine the worst or we can believe the best. It's our choice.

We're creatures of habit and our thought patterns run deep. And sometimes we have to go way back. I know of people that had things in their life for 20 years that was unaddressed and it just became bigger and bigger and bigger.

In Hezekiah's life, when he was cleaning the place up, he was cleaning up the temple. He was cleaning up the surroundings. He was taking down the high places. I'm always intrigued when I come to this part. Here he came across that brazen serpent.

And the Bible says he broke it into pieces. That serpent that was set up by Moses all the way back in numbers, I think 700 to 800 years ago, was still there. He must have used a really good bronze, brass material.

Do you know of anything that can last the weather for 700 or 800 years? And Hezekiah comes along and he's like, "What is this thing?" And he learns that the people are burning incense to this thing. They're worshiping this thing.

And he breaks it to pieces. Some of our imaginations go way back too, way back. And we need to be honest. I think we might have to learn new habits. I know I do. Is whenever these things come, these giants and these imaginations, is to just break them into pieces. No matter how old they are, no matter how well-rooted they are, take them away.

And then we want to close here with verse 9. "Those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen in me do, and the God of peace shall be with you." Do them. Paul says, "What you saw me do, what you heard me teach," he's a role model. He's the person that show and tell. He showed us how to do it and then he taught us how to do it and then he showed us how to do it. He's in prison, right? And I think if we go back 10 years from the time he wrote this one, if I have things correct, I think is when he and Silas were in the Philippian jail.

So he had all these experiences in his life and he came out well. He came out rejoicing. He said, "Follow my pattern and I can guarantee you." There's a promise that goes with that. He says, "The God of peace will be with you." God bless you. Any thoughts before we pray?