Discipleship Week 21: Don't give up...stop worrying!

Philippians 4:6-7

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

If we knew and actually applied these two verses on a regular basis, our lives would be radically transformed. Far too many of us carry worry on top of worry…so much so that the weight of these worries almost crushes us. I recently asked the college students I work with to write down every single thing that they were worried about. The result was that they actually became…more worried. It was easy for them to suppress all of the vague worries that were floating around in their heads; it was terrifying to actually write them down, because then those worries became so much more real. And then with the reality of everything that they worried about written down in front of them, they saw these verses and worried about how much they were worrying.

But thankfully this passage gives us an incredible road map to a life lived for God that is free from the crushing burden of anxiety. In just two verses, Paul gives us a prohibition against worry, a prescription for not worrying, and a promise for when we do let go of our fears. And the prohibition, the prescription, and the promise hold a powerful key to persevering in the Christian life.

The Prohibition

The prohibition is simple. Do not be anxious about anything. Do not worry. There are no qualifications to this statement. The size of the problem we worry about is not a reason to justify worrying. The amount of money at stake is not a reason to justifying worrying. And the people involved, no matter how powerful they are or how messy and problematic they make a situation, are never reasons to justifying worrying. As Christians we should not be crippled by fear.

Now in affirming Paul’s prohibition without qualifications I do realize that people do struggle with such things as clinical anxiety and depression. These are very real medical issues, and it is sad that some in the church have written off anxiety and depression as simply people having a lack of faith. There are good treatments for anxiety and depression, both in terms of therapy and medicine, and we should encourage those treatments for those who need them. As a former pastor of mine once asked, “Is there any difference between medicine from the neck down and medicine from the neck up?” The answer is no, and Christians should not be shamed for their need to undergo such treatments. The benefit of such treatments is that they bring an individual to a place where they can take and apply this passage. Treatment does not do away with anxiety, it manages anxiety. It allows an individual to come to a place where he or she can completely focus on God’s Word, and apply this verse along with everyone else.

Therefore we can say that even clinical anxiety or depression, as difficult and debilitating as they can be, are not qualifications by which we can ignore this command to stop worrying. All of us face anxieties in life. All of us need to stop worrying. And whereas some of us need prescriptions from our doctors, all of us need the prescription from God’s Word to stop worrying.

The Prescription

The prescription is almost as simple as the prohibition: “…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Instead of worrying, pray. As D. A. Carson notes, “I have yet to meet a chronic worrier who enjoys an excellent prayer life.” Now I have had people over the years tell me that they have been praying, and yet they still worry. In that situation, either something is wrong with the Scriptures, or something is wrong with an individual’s prayer life. And given our confidence in the Scriptures, let me suggest two areas where our prayer lives are often deficient:

First, pray about everything. Paul says “but in everything…” So we should be in prayer about everything that we face and encounter as we go through our day. Do we pray about everything throughout our day, or do we only pray in moments of crisis when our anxiety is skyrocketing? In seminary I received two incredible tips about having a thriving prayer life: 1) Ask God for everything. Everything. Big, small, important, seemingly trivial. Ask God for everything. And 2) turn all of your thoughts into a conversation with God. When you are talking with a friend, talk to God about your conversation. When you go into work, talk to God about that day and the work you have to do. When you’re spending time with friends and family and you’re thinking about the pile of unfinished homework you have, talk to God about that pile of homework and ask him for wisdom regarding time management. And when you get cut off on the freeway, talk to God about your frustrations. Praying about everything will orient us more towards God. Praying about everything will help us to better see difficult situations from God’s perspective (and God is not worried about the things we are worried about!). And praying about everything will help us to have God’s priorities, not our own. (and when you think about it, so much of our worry is because our priorities are not in line with God’s!). Pray about everything.

Second, pray with thanksgiving. As we are to pray about everything, Paul is equally clear that we are to pray with thanksgiving. This may seem counterintuitive, especially when there is seemingly nothing in a stressful situation to be thankful for. But there are always things we can be thankful for. We can be thankful that God is in control and that he is working in this stressful situation for our good (Romans 8:28). We can be thankful for how valuable we are to God (Psalm 139:14), which interestingly is the reason our Lord gave for not worrying (Matthew 6:25-34). We can be thankful that we have an opportunity to glorify God in the difficult situations that we face (Isaiah 26:8), and we can be thankful that even our suffering can be used by God to further the gospel (Philippians 1:12). And we can always be thankful that God loved us and sent his Son to die for us (1 John 4:10). It is possible to offer fearful prayers to God. It is much more difficult to offer ongoing, continual, thankful prayers to God and still be fearful. Praying about everything and praying with thanksgiving helps us to lay down our worry and instead obey Paul’s command in verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always.”

The Promise

What this leads us to is the promise of this passage, and that is when we pray about everything with thanksgiving, the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Note that the promise is not the wiping away of the circumstances that caused us worry in the first place. The promise is peace. A deep, lasting, supernatural peace. The peace we so often look for (and indeed the only peace the world really knows) is a kind of peace that comes when a tension has been resolved, or a difficult situation that caused us to worry went away. And we should certainly be thankful for those times where that happens. But God’s peace that guards our hearts and minds allows us to not worry even when (and especially when) the tension is not resolved. The situation that caused us to worry before could remain the exact same, and yet we don’t have to worry because of God’s peace guarding us. It is always helpful to remember that Paul did not write these words from a beach in a care free tropical paradise, he wrote them from prison in Rome. Just like Paul, we don’t have to wait for our circumstances to improve to stop worrying, we can experience God’s supernatural peace now.

This all seems simple. It seems too good to be true. But God’s Word is either true or it isn’t. So what are you worrying about? How long is your list of worries that you have been suppressing? What is keeping you from having the deep, thriving prayer life that allows you to give all of you worries to God? And are you looking for circumstantial peace, or God’s peace? In order to persevere in the Christian life, stop worrying. Start praying. And receive God’s peace. 

Discipleship Week 20: Don't give up, be known for gentleness

Philippians 4:5

“Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.”

As we consider Paul’s exhortations for how to persevere in the Christian life and not give up, this verse is tricky. One, it is difficult to see what gentleness has to do with perseverance. And two, it is hard to tell what is meant by this word translated in the NIV as gentleness. Some translations use forbearance, others use reasonableness, and on and on. So what does gentleness mean, and what does it have to do with persevering in the Christian faith?

What is meant here in this verse is intentional, self-effacing kindness. This word is used (among others) in James 3:17 to describe the kind of wisdom that comes from God, which is directly contrasted with earthly wisdom of this world that is rooted in bitter rivalry and selfish ambition. So the kind of gentleness that is in mind here is a selfless, others-focused kindness or service. It is not self-centered in any way. Rather, it follows the selfless, self-giving example of Christ laid out earlier in 2:5-8. So Paul is exhorting the Philippians to be selfless, to be known for not drawing attention to yourself. Be known for not being known.

Why is this importance for perseverance in the Christian life? Well if the focus is on ourselves, it is not on God, and it is not on the work of Christ that has saved us and brought us into relationship with God. It is very difficult to stay strong in the Christian life when our decisions, our actions, and yes, even our good works are focused inwards and away from God. And it is very difficult to proclaim the gospel and Christ’s sacrificial work on our behalf when the attention is on ourselves. We can’t point people to God when we are pointing at ourselves!

This focus on the self is a major problem in our churches today. How often do we help people out of purely selfless motives? Very rarely. We help someone because it helps us as well. We help because it makes us feel good. We help someone because of what they have promised to do for us in return. We help someone while keeping a mental note of the action so we can use it to get a favor done for us in the future. We help because it helps us. It is even easy to appeal to this selfishness when trying to get others to join you in an act of service... “If you come to the church work day this weekend I’ll take you out for dinner afterwards.” And the sin of self is an easy trap for pastors, who can easily be motivated more by praise instead of being motivated by faithfulness to the one who deserves all of the praise.

Part of this self-centered service is driven by our culture, which tells us more often than not that the ends justify the means. In other words, if good is the final result, it doesn’t matter what you have to do to get there. But the Scriptures repeatedly tell us that the ends don’t justify the means, and that God is just as concerned if not more concerned with how we do something as opposed to the result of what we do. The how matters. The heart matters. And we should be motivated to cultivate this selfless heart in ourselves, because this verse succinctly reminds us: The Lord is near. Whether this means his return is near or he is near to us in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we should be motivated by his presence to become like him, to serve him, and to repent of our self-centeredness.

How do we persevere in the Christian life? By not being known. We persevere by following the self-giving, self-sacrificial example of our Lord Jesus Christ, by having the same heart. So when people look at us and look at our service, they shouldn’t actually see us, they should see Christ. This is described so beautifully in the well known hymn:

May his beauty rest upon me

As I seek the lost to win,

And may they forget the channel,

Seeing only him.

-Kate Barclay Wilkinson,

May the Mind of Christ, My Savior

What are you known for? Selfishness or selfless kindness? When people look at the work and service that you do, do they see you and your accomplishments? Or do they see Christ? What needs to change in your life so that when others look at you they see Christ? Don’t give up, but be known for gentleness, for self-effacing kindness. 

Discipleship Week 19: Don't give up, but rejoice in the Lord always!

Philippians 4:4

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”

Remembering that Paul writes this letter from prison, we can quickly reject any idea that the basis for rejoicing in the Lord has anything to do with one’s circumstances. But if we’re honest with ourselves, the basis by which we rejoice most often actually is our circumstances, and understandably so. It is easy to rejoice when you have gotten a new job or received a wonderful gift. And it seems crazy to rejoice in the midst of suffering or pain.

And yet Paul calls us to rejoice in the Lord always. All the time. There is no qualification to always. Always means always. Therefore we can and should rejoice in the midst of wonderful circumstances, and we can and should rejoice in the midst of pain and suffering. But how is it even possible to rejoice in the midst of difficult circumstances?

The key lies in that Paul exhorts us to rejoice in the Lord, not in our circumstances. The basis for our constant rejoicing is God himself and what he has done for us. And God has done so much for us! He has taken us, wretched, miserable sinners, and saved us from the penalty of sin and death by sending his son Jesus to die for us and pay the penalty that we deserve. Christ has not only taken our sin on himself, but he has given us his righteousness, so that while we struggle with sin this side of heaven, God looks at us and sees Christ’s righteousness. Furthermore, when we received Christ as our Lord and Savior we were adopted into God’s family…we are sons and daughters of the most high God! And because of what God has done for us in Christ we have a glorious future ahead of us…eternal life with our heavenly Father!

Therefore when we look at what God has done for us, the natural response should be rejoicing! Even if we face the worst circumstances possible, what God has done for us far outweighs the worst situation we could face in this life. This is why Christians throughout history have been able to joyfully face persecution, suffering, and even martyrdom. Our joy is not found in our circumstances, it is found in what God has done for us.

And not only can we rejoice in what God has done for us, when we do face difficult circumstances in life we can rejoice because we know that God is in control. Romans 8:28 teaches us that God works all things together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Just as always means always, all things means all things, even the hard circumstances in life. So God is in control, and uses even our suffering for his glory and for our good. So we can truly rejoice in the Lord always.

It is liberating when we realize that we can rejoice in the Lord regardless of our circumstances. When we learn to rejoice even in extreme hardship, it makes the struggle so much easier to endure. But rejoicing in the Lord also gives dignity to the suffering that we do go through. So many of us consciously or unconsciously believe in a “put on a happy face” theology that tries to find the silver lining in everything, or puts a positive spin on a bad situation. But if our rejoicing is not based on our circumstances, then we can honestly acknowledge our pain and suffering, and we don’t have to cover it up with a fake smile. Sometimes there is no silver lining. Sometimes there is no positive spin possible. Sometimes we will never see the good, even if we know that God is working in that situation for good. And that’s OK.  We can rejoice in the Lord while in tears, grief, and pain. And that kind of rejoicing glorifies God, strengthens us, and gives dignity to our suffering.

So is your rejoicing based on your circumstances or in the Lord? Is your rejoicing occasional or continual? What do you think it looks like to authentically rejoice in the midst of a difficult circumstance? And what circumstances are you currently facing where you need to begin rejoicing? Don’t give up: Rejoice in the Lord always!

Discipleship Week 18: Don't give up, but be like-minded with other believers

Philippians 4:2-3

"I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life."

It is simple in theory to advise two people who can’t agree to just agree with one another. And yet all of us who have had any disagreement or conflict with another person (which really is all of us!) know that it is rarely that simple. And yet in Paul’s appeal to these two Philippian women to be like-minded in the Lord we find some valuable wisdom for how we handle the disagreements and conflicts that we face in our lives, especially when that conflict is with another Christian.

But first it is important to understand what Paul is not arguing for here. He is not arguing for uniform agreement on every issue. Even Paul had disagreements with his co-workers, seen most clearly when he and Barnabas part ways because they disagreed on whether to take John Mark with them on their second missionary journey (Acts 15:36-41).

Paul is also not arguing for unity at the expense of truth. Of course it is easy to attain unity if you force people to throw away their convictions that lead to disagreements in the first place! But in Galatians 1:8-9 Paul is abundantly clear on how he views those who twist and distort God’s truth. And while most people in our culture would probably deny that they push for unity at the expense of truth, this is often seen in the elevation of one truth that trumps every other truth and so brings about conformity to one viewpoint.

So what is this like-mindedness that Paul is calling for here if it is not uniform agreement on everything? It is an appeal for believers to have a common heart for Christ and for the gospel. Paul reminds these women that they have labored side by side with Paul for the work of the gospel. It is the gospel that brings us together; it is the gospel that gives us a common mission and purpose. Being like-minded means that we are focused together on the gospel, and when we are like-minded with other believers with regards to the gospel, we will be heading in the same direction and have the same priorities. And we may still not agree on every issue, but the centrality of the gospel puts our disagreements into perspective and their relative importance (or lack of importance as the case may be!).  

Can you imagine if we as followers of Christ were truly like-minded around the gospel with fellow believers? I believe most issues that divide a church would fade away, and the disagreements that remain would be relegated to respectful discussions instead of fights that threaten to tear apart the congregation. Like-mindedness around the gospel would allow us to have disagreements, even arguments, and not have to win every argument (and when winning becomes the objective, disagreements get ugly and destructive very quickly!). I also believe that this kind of like-mindedness would drastically improve our witness as a corporate church body. Unfortunately too many seekers and skeptics come through the doors of our churches and see politics, petty disagreements, and gossip…everything they see in the world around them each and every day! Our (not so) internal fighting with each other keeps those on the outside from seeing and hearing the gospel. But if we are united around the gospel, and allow the gospel to mold us and shape us and give us a common direction and purpose, then those seekers and skeptics who come through our doors will see and hear…the gospel! So like-mindedness around the gospel is critical to our kingdom work.

How is God calling you to grow in like-mindedness with other believers? What are the disagreements you have with other believers where you need to focus more on your common heart for the gospel? Do you care more about the gospel or about winning arguments? And what needs to change in your heart so that you can be more like-minded with other believers? Don’t give up…be like-minded with other believers. 

Discipleship Week 17: Do Not Give Up!

Philippians 4:1

“Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.”

This last section of Philippians begins with Paul exhorting the Philippians believers to stand firm. Do not give up the Christian life! But it is not an isolated call to stand firm, it is a call to stand firm in light of the beautiful truths that have come before this point. Stand firm because of the gospel. Stand firm because of what Christ has done for us. Stand firm because of the example Christ has set for us. And stand firm because of the excellent role models who have stood firm before us.

This is also not a call to stand firm with no practical application. Paul will go on in the rest of this chapter to outline several excellent and practical ways we can persevere and not give up the Christian life. Philippians 4 is one of my favorite chapters in the bible, and is something I keep coming back to time and time again when I do face trials and difficulties, because of the practical encouragement it offers for standing firm in those times.

But why do we need this exhortation to stand firm? Why do we need to be told not to give up the Christian life? Two answers come to mind:

One, we need to be told not to give up because to varying degrees we are predisposed to giving up when times are hard. It is a hard lesson for young kids to learn that even when they fail at something, or don’t understand something right away, that they should keep trying and keep persevering until they succeed. This temptation to give up easily leads to commitment issues, which can lead straight into adulthood. Matt Chandler notes this about his experience as a college pastor:

“One of the things I noticed…was the large group of students who wouldn’t commit to anything—a college major, a gym, a church, a place to live, a group of friends. The only thing they seemed committed to was being noncommittal. Every semester the talk would turn to another school they might transfer to, a new major they were going to try out, or a new part-time job they were interested in (because, you know, their current one was lame).”[i]

Two, given that we give up easily and have commitment issues, we need to be told not to give up because our enemy takes advantage of these weaknesses. If Satan can throw enough frustration and hardship at us, it can be easy to throw in the towel. Consider the variety of ways that we are tempted to give up in the Christian life:

• We are tempted to give up in prayer, especially when we do not see results, or see prayers answered differently than how we think they should be.
• We are tempted to give up on good relationships when there is conflict instead of doing the hard work to strengthen that relationship.
• We are tempted to give up and settle for a bad relationship with someone who does not love Jesus because we don’t see God providing us with a relationship with someone who does love Jesus fast enough.
• We are tempted to give up on sharing our faith because of a fear of rejection. 
• We are tempted to give up on sharing our faith because it threatens our friendships.
• We are tempted to give up on what God has called us to do when it leads to hardship and trials.
• We are tempted to give up on our church when we get hurt by someone in the church (news flash: the church is full of sinners!).
• We are tempted to give up on discipleship and spiritual growth because it messes up our lives too much.
• We are tempted to give up on giving and tithing, because we don’t see God’s immediate provision for us.
• We are tempted to give up on ministry, because it takes too much time and it gets messy (same news flash: the church is full of sinners!). 

This list could go on and on. But I think you get the point. If we are predisposed to give up, and Satan is actively trying to get us to give up the Christian life, then it is critical that we take Paul’s words to heart and never give up. James 1:2-4 tells us that perseverance in trials is what leads to spiritual maturity. So then in the trials that we face, are we going to give up or are we going to persevere? What are the ways that you are tempted to give up in the Christian life? Don’t give up, but stand firm in the Lord.

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[i] Matt Chandler, The Mingling of Souls: God’s Design for Love, Marriage, Sex & Redemption