
Commands to Comfort Our Anxiety
What Should I Do About my Anxiety?
The Human Issue of Anxiety
You’ve probably noticed, one of the buzz words today that that society likes to talk about is mental health. In recent decades – especially the last few years – people have indicated that a mental health crisis that’s happening – especially among youth and young adults. It is increasingly common to hear about people going in for counseling – having meetings with a therapist. And among the most common issues that people are seeking help for is the issue of anxiety.
There could be any number of things someone might feel anxiety about: going on a date, starting a new job, going in to the hospital for a procedure, being in small spaces, parallel parking – an anxious person might even feel anxious about his or her feelings of anxiety! I think we all recognize that anxiety is a real issue for many people. But the question that many people don’t know how to answer is how should we deal with it?
This morning, we’re going to continue our sermon series through the book of Philippians. And we’re going to see that anxiety isn’t anything new, but it’s a problem that Christians in the city of Philippi were experiencing two thousand years ago. And when God speaks about the problem of anxiety, here, through his servant Paul, who wrote this letter – God doesn’t just see anxiety as an emotional or social problem, or as an environmental problem, or even as a mental problem. Instead, he recognizes that it’s a spiritual problem, that can only truly be resolved through having a right knowledge of God, and relationship with him.
So if you haven’t already, please turn with me to Philippians, Chapter 4, and we’ll consider these things in more detail. I’ll be reading from Philippians 4, verses 4 through 7. But before I read our text, please pray with me:
[Pray and Read Text]
You might notice in the text, here, there’s something of a pattern, that’s repeated twice. Paul first gives a command directly to the Church. Then he gives an indirect command – the text says “Let something be known.” Then Paul gives some sort of statement, or promise to explain why we should be encouraged to carry out those commands.
As we work through the text, I’ll first explain the commands, which deal with how we as Christians should handle anxiety and discouraging situations. And then I’ll wrap up by explaining the promises here, in the text, and how they motivate our obedience.
Commands Directed at Our Anxiety
There are four commands that we’re going to look at – so if you’re taking notes, you can jot down these four headings. First, be rejoicing. Second, be reasonable. Third, be resting from anxieties. And fourth, be requesting God’s help.
When you consider these four commands (encouragements to have joy, to have a steady mind, to not get caught up in worry, and to pray) it should be pretty apparent that Paul must be speaking to people who are dealing with anxiety – people who are discouraged about the future. Part of this may have been related to conflict that was happening inside the church, like we were talking about last week. But it’s also likely that these Christians were worried about threats coming from outside of the church.
You might remember, back in Chapter 1, verse 28, Paul acknowledged that the Philippian church had opponents. It’s hard to know what this opposition looked like for the Christians in Philippi. It’s possible that you’d be cut off from certain friends and family members. Some opponents might refuse to do business with you. People might knock down your animal fences, or vandalize your house, or get violent. We don’t know all the pressures that the Philippians were dealing with. But as their association with Christ became increasingly unpopular, uncomfortable, and costly, they needed words to direct and encourage them, to continue living out their faith. And as a Christian church in Mount Pleasant, MI, in the 21st century, these are words that we should take to heart, too, as we face similar pressures and anxieties today. So let’s turn our attention to these four commands, here, in our text.
Be Rejoicing
Paul’s first word of instruction in this section is that the church should be rejoicing. This shows up in verse 4. Paul tells the church, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice.”
As I’m sure most of you know, to rejoice, means to be joyful or delighted about something – to take pleasure in it. I think it makes sense to all of us that Paul would want to cheer up the Philippians by encouraging them to be happy. So at first, this seems like a pretty simple command. Frankly, it probably doesn’t seem all that interesting.
But it’s quite unusual, here, Paul doesn’t just give this command once. He repeats himself. “Again I will say rejoice.” And this is because the Greek language didn’t have exclamation marks, or italics. If you wanted to emphasize something, you repeated it. So that’s what Paul’s doing here. In fact, this isn’t even the first time that Paul has instructed the Philippians to rejoice. In Chapter 2, verse 18, Paul told them, “you also should be glad and rejoice with me.” Also, in Chapter 3, verse 1, “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.” As far as I can tell, this is the only command that Paul repeats in his letter four times. And so he apparently views this command as having unique significance.
And so we should slow down and ask – why? What is Paul actually asking of us here? (I’ll spend a little more time on this command because of the emphasis Paul places on it).
One thing you should notice is that Paul’s command here isn’t just aimed at one or two outward actions. The command to rejoice isn’t just about decorating with balloons, or dancing, or clapping our hands. But the Bible here goes deeper than that. God’s Word is commanding us to have a very specific attitude of the heart. And he’s insisting that we should have that attitude of the heart toward a specific something – a specific someone, actually. He says, “Rejoice in the Lord.” Take pleasure in the Lord.
This is different from the way we normally speak. Hostesses on an airplane may say something similar, when they tell you, “Enjoy your flight!” But they mean something quite different. They’re just expressing something like wishful thinking: I hope you enjoy your flight.” But Paul, here, he’s giving us a real command. There’s a firm expectation here that this is the heart attitude that Christians should have.
But most Americans – and probably many of us – when we think about taking pleasure in something, we don’t think of it as something that we choose to do – or something that we have a responsibility to do. Instead, we’re inclined to think that happiness is simply something that happens to us. It’s simply an emotion that we experience.
And so whenever we’re feeling distressed in some way, it’s common for us to say things like, “I’m anxious because I have an exam tomorrow.” Or, “I’m upset because my house is a mess. We point to situations going on in our life, and we say, “I feel miserable because of that thing.” We assume that our emotions are inevitable. It has become normal to assume, even among Christians, that if you have any kind of disturbance going on your life, you have an excuse to be irritable and anxious. But if our church is going to be true to what the Bible says, we need to change our way of thinking.
The Bible indicates here that we have a responsibility to attend to the attitudes of our heart. We should be reminding our heart why the Lord, our God, is so good and comforting. We need to speak to our soul, just like the Psalmist does in Psalm 103, and say, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” As Christians, we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that joy in the Lord is just an experience that happens to us when the lighting is dim, and people are playing the right type of music. Instead, true joy in the Lord – a joy in the Lord which is rooted in the truth of who He is to us, and what He’s done – that type of rejoicing is something that requires a certain level of effort and intentionality on our part.
So when life is hard, and you’re struggling with the motivation to do anything – don’t just settle for the transient pleasures of binge-watching TV, or distracting yourself with comfort food or board games. Instead, as Christians we should be hungry for a happiness that’s substantial. We should be cultivating a habit of turning our hearts to Jesus. We should earnestly remind ourselves why the good news of Christianity is good, and take pleasure in the Lord. In times of distress, God’s Word for us isn’t “Amuse yourself with your cell phone.” Instead he wants our comfort and confidence to come from something far more real. If you’re rejoicing in the Lord – if He’s the one that you’re delighting in, day after day, then no one will ever be able to take away your joy. That’s the sort of security and strength that the people of God should be marked by. We should be determined to “Rejoice in the Lord.”
Be Reasonable
I could keep going and make the whole sermon about this command. But take it home, continue thinking about it, and let’s consider together the second command that Paul gives us in this text. He says we should be reasonable. And we see this in verse 5: “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.”
At first, it might sound like Paul’s saying, “Show everyone how well-reasoned and logical your beliefs are.” But that’s not the reasonableness that Paul’s talking about. Instead, he’s saying that people should see how level-headed we are. In other parts of the New Testament, we see that this same Greek word has the idea of being gentle. That’s how it’s translated in passages like 1 Timothy 3:3, and Titus 3:2. And so Paul’s saying that gentle, charitable, calmness in our demeanor is what we should be known for as Christians.
I’m pretty sure Paul is aware, when you’re under a lot of stress, when things aren’t going well, when you’re being persecuted – it isn’t natural for us to engage with life and people in a level-headed, calm way. For some of us, our instinctive impulse might be worry, and all of our thoughts are aimed at self-protection rather than serving others. For others of us, our natural reaction might be to become angry and aggressive. We might feel robbed of the control that we thought we had over our lives, and so we want to fight to reclaim it – so we can have control again. Other people might instinctively get overwhelmed with crippling despair, or self-loathing, or grief. There are a variety of reactions that we might have. But what they all have in common, is that they all operate as though our problems – our circumstances – are the most ultimate reality in our lives.
But if we know that Christ has suffered, once for all, to purify us from all our guilt, that he’s given His Spirit of holiness to us, that he has given us new birth and everlasting life in the household of God, that he’s given us the right to call God our Father, that he has granted to us an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading – when we consider the ultimacy of all these circumstances (and more) that Jesus is bringing his people into, it doesn’t make sense that the other things we have going on in life would unravel us, like they often do.
As Christians, we don’t need to have a lot of money, friends, and free time in order to be happy, or in order to have a calmness and level-headedness in how we live. Atheists and pagans need those things – because they don’t have anything greater to comfort themselves with. But as Christians – we have God’s special closeness, his covenant promises, his honest, indestructible faithfulness. Whether we have much or little, whether our days on earth seem hard or happy – we, of all people, have the most reason to have an ongoing calmness and charitableness in the way we deal with others.
Be Resting from All Anxieties
And related to this, Paul goes on to give us a third command, to be resting from all anxieties. In verse 6, he says, “Do not be anxious about anything.” The Bible speaks about worry and anxiety in multiple places. And sometimes when the word is used, it’s not always necessarily a sinful or bad thing. Even in this same letter, back in Chapter 2, verse 20, Paul explained how faithful Timothy was by saying, “I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned – or genuinely anxious – for your welfare. It’s the same Greek word. So sometimes, this word is simply used to describe someone’s loving concern for someone else. There’s a right way for us to be concerned about people we love. There’s a right way for us to be concerned and cautious when we’re around dangerous cliffs, or hazardous chemicals.
But in other places, when the Bible speaks about worrying and anxiety – it speaks against it, like in our passage this morning. And this is because most of our anxieties aren’t actually motivated by love for others, or by rational desires to be cautious – but many of our anxieties are motivated by fear, and by a desire for control.
And it would seem that Paul’s concern, here, is if the Philippians are primarily being driven by fear, then they aren’t going to follow Jesus when they’re faced with angry mobs or the threat of jail time. If the Philippians are controlled by those anxious “What if?” questions, instead of being comforted by the truths of God’s Word, they won’t stand firm in the day of trial. They’ll look for their own quick fix to the problem, instead of entrusting themselves to God. They’ll set their hope on self-reliance instead of God’s salvation.
Instead, when anxious thoughts or feelings rise up inside of us, we should actually live as people who believe that we have a Father in heaven. We should call out to him, and cast our burdens on him, because he cares for us, as we’re urged to do in 1 Peter 5:7.
Be Requesting Help from God
And this brings us to the last command, here, in our text. That we should be requesting help from God. After verse 6 tells us “do not be anxious about anything” – it then tells us what we should do: “but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”
The primarily command here is that we should “let our requests be made known to God.” And it’s worth pointing out – this doesn’t mean that God’s knowledge is limited here, that God is ignorant of what we want until we say something. God has given us prayer, not because he’s needy for it, but because we are. And Paul’s simply affirming that, in our neediness, we should be giving expression to our requests. We should be actively involved in communicating our dilemmas and our desires to God.
And notice, Paul gives a few words of instruction on how we should make our requests known.
First, he says we should make our requests known by prayer and supplication. These two words aren’t very different from each other in meaning. But the word prayer might suggest a little more focus on adoring God for his excellence and greatness, whereas the word supplication is a specific type of prayer, where we ask God to supply us with what we need. But in any case, Paul makes it clear that when we’re worried about something, it should drive us to our knees. As Christians, we should have confidence to open our mouths, and our hearts, to our Father in heaven.
And addition to making our requests known by prayer and supplication, Paul also says we should make our requests known with thanksgiving. Now, I want to point out – there’s a way of distorting the text here, to make it seem like prayers, supplications, and thanksgivings are some sort of checklist – and if you just pray in exactly the right way, with the right components, that God will give you what you’re asking for. But that’s not the point.
Paul’s urging the Philippians to pray with thanksgiving, because he’s aware that sometimes we can misuse prayer, and turn it into another opportunity to fixate on our problems. I remember several months ago, the Lord helped me to realize that that’s what I was doing when I was praying. I wasn’t all that attentive to the love and power of the one I was praying to. I wasn’t considering, with gratitude, all the ways that God had walked with me throughout my life. Instead, prayer felt really discouraging, because I was praying about challenges and longings that I knew were out of my control. And so on multiple occasions, I walked away from my prayer time feeling even weaker and more discouraged than when I had started.
But Paul reminds us to pray with thanksgiving – to remember the uncountable number of ways that God has helped us in the past, and how he’s worked throughout the whole expanse of world history – to work out even the smallest details for the Supreme benefit and glory of his people. If our eyes are directed on who God is and what God has done in our prayers – we won’t walk away feeling pessimism or discouragement.
Finally, Paul explains how we should let our requests be made known to God. He says, we should do it in everything. There are no anxieties too small, no problems that are too trivial. We shouldn’t assume that God will ever be bothered or annoyed when we show up in his throne room with our prayer requests. We have confidence, through the purifying work of Jesus’s death on the cross, that we can bring our prayers directly to God – not through a priest. Not through a saint – that’s not what the Bible teaches. In everything, we are urged to bring our requests to God. And God welcomes it. God wants to encourage us in it.
Promises to Comfort Us
And this is why, to encourage us in all four of these commands, God’s Word here also supplies us with two words of assurance – two promises – to encourage us, as we deal with our anxieties and discouragements.
The Lord’s Presence
The first promise – the promise of the Lord’s Presence – comes at the very end of verse 5. After Paul has urged us to rejoice in the Lord, and to let our reasonableness be known to everyone, we’re told “The Lord is at hand.”
It’s true that Jesus is not currently, physically on earth in his glorified human body. After he satisfied the demands of God’s justice for us, by dying on the cross, after rising from the dead, Jesus then ascended into the heavenly places. That’s where Jesus Christ is, now, bodily, until the day comes for him to return and judge the earth. And because of this, the Lord Jesus, and the realities of his work – they may seem very distant, and hard for us to grasp onto.
But this passage insists that Jesus is not as distant from us as what it often feels. The text here tells us that the Lord is at hand – and when Paul uses this word in his letters, he consistently uses it to refer to proximity. The Lord is close to us.
Yes, the second coming of Jesus is also imminent – the day of Christ is coming rapidly, and that’s an encouragement to us, too. But Paul’s main point here is that Jesus – through whom the world was created, the one who has been appointed the heir of all things, the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power! – this Jesus is near to us right now.
And brothers, sisters, that makes all the difference in the world. If you get bad news at the doctor’s office, if you fail an exam, if you’re struggling with a break-up or a broken relationship – if people rage against you and ridicule you because of your faith in Jesus Christ – you have a powerful, logical, unbreakable reason for why you should continue to rejoice – why you should be level-headed – why you shouldn’t surrender to anxiety, but should be quick to pray – and that’s because Jesus is near to His people, by His Spirit.
That’s the basis of all our confidence. Not the greatness of our intelligence, not the health of our bodies – not even the strength of our faith. But the one we have faith in, the Lord Jesus, and his closeness to us – he’s our confidence. He’s committed to us. He will stand by us, to help us in our anxiety. The Lord is at hand.
The Peace of the Lord
But then Paul goes on to give us an even more expansive promise that Paul in verse 7 – the promise of the Lord’s peace. After saying we shouldn’t be anxious, and telling us to pray, the Bible says, “and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard you hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The first thing to notice, here, is that this promise concerning the peace of God, it’s connected with prayer. This promise is directed to the people who are bringing their requests to God. And that’s because that’s who this peace is for. You shouldn’t expect to experience this peace if you’re still carrying all your anxieties, and relying on yourself to fix all your problems.
But we need to be careful here – some people might imagine that prayer, in itself, has some sort of mystical, therapeutic powers to make us feel better in life. It might seem like Paul’s saying, “if you want to feel better, than you should try this new clinically-proven process of prayer-based therapy.” But that’s not Paul’s point here. Prayer doesn’t have the power to give us peace. God does. It isn’t the peace of prayer that Paul promises to the Philippian church, but the peace of God.
And Paul explains that this peace is unique. It “surpasses all understanding.” The peace that God provides – it’s something that often defies rational explanation, from an earthly perspective. It isn’t constrained by the easiness or difficulty of our situation, but it is vast beyond comprehension. And this is because the God who provides us with this peace – He himself, is eternal in his existence, limitless in his power, and infinite in his goodness.
All this being said, the promise here is not saying that if you just pray once, or twice, or some specific number of times, then all of your feelings of anxiety and discouragement will go away. But as you turn from your anxiety to prayer – when you know the One that you’re praying to, the Bible says that God’s peace will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Which is to say, God’s peace will protect our hearts and minds from anxiety.
And how will God’s peace protect us? – by reminding us how secure and enriched we’ve been made in Christ Jesus. Those who’re persistent in prayer will never receive a mortal wound from the enemy of doubt or disbelief. The one who prays won’t ever be abandoned to the vicious lions of anxiety and fear. But the Lord who is at hand – he will give his peace to protect us, to preserve us, and to point us to the hope of eternal life. And remember that the person telling us this is Paul. Turn with me briefly to 2 Corinthians 11, starting at verse 24; consider what Paul’s life was like: [Reading of Text]
For Paul, the peace of God wasn’t just theory. This was his life – how he kept going through his anxiety. He called out to the God who is for him – who is for us.
And the Bible reminds us, in Romans 8: if the Lord is for us – who can stand against us? “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord.” Brothers, sisters, this is where our peace comes from.
So as we consider the promises of the Lord’s presence and peace, let’s be diligent to keep these commands – and to deal with our anxieties and discouragements as people of faith, who really do have a Father in heaven. Let’s pray: