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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.
They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your Heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to the span of his life?
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
They neither toil nor spin, and yet, I tell you, even
Solomon, in all of his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, of how much more will he also clothe you,
O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?
For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
The first words that I spoke to you this morning were from our text this morning, and the second words that I spoke to you were from the
Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. In life, we are presented with plenty of opportunities to be anxious.
Your car breaks down and you wonder how you are going to pay for it. You may worry about your business, your crop, difficulty with your manager or other employees at work.
You may wonder, I know a lot of you are self -employed, if you're going to have business, or sometimes you're anxious because you have too much business.
You may be a student that has an exam looming that you need to study for. You may be anxious about your health.
You may worry about your salvation. Am I really saved? Do I really belong to God? Parents, it is easy to worry about your children.
Life is full of worries. So what is the solution to this difficulty that all of us face?
That is what our sermon is about this morning. What we will see is a clear solution to this problem of anxiety that all of us face.
So if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Philippians 4, verses 6 -9.
As we continue our sermon series through the letter of Philippians, our sermon is titled this morning, Cast Your Cares on the
Lord. And our big idea, the main focus of this sermon is to go to God with your many anxieties.
Go to God with your many anxieties. And we're going to see three ways how that we're going to see in our text.
The first way how is by seeking God in prayer. Philippians 4, verses 6 -9.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things. And the
God of peace will be with you. Go to God with your many anxieties.
The first way how is by seeking God in prayer. Last week we looked at conflict resolution among believers in the first five verses of chapter 4.
We learned that we should seek to resolve a conflict between the two parties first. If the conflict remains, then we bring in a third party to help us resolve this conflict among believers.
We saw that Jesus resolves the conflict between God and men through the man,
Jesus Christ. Jesus being fully God and fully man bridges this gap between us and God.
And that is the gospel. He is our mediator. This morning we are going to look at the transition
Paul makes from conflict to how to deal with anxiety. Paul begins this section by giving the church in Philippi a prohibition.
A prohibition is when you tell someone what not to do. So parents, if your child is crossing the road, don't cross the road.
That's a prohibition. Verse 6, this is what he says. Do not be anxious about anything.
Paul is addressing something that is relevant to everyone at Philippi and everyone in this room. We all have worries.
And Paul says strongly here, do not have anxiety.
Now if Paul were to stop with this statement, we would be able to conclude that he wasn't very helpful.
To tell someone don't do something, we need more than that. And thankfully, he gives us more than that.
In his following statement, he gives us the antidote to worry. This is what he says in verse 6.
He says, We are to take our worries to God in prayer.
That's what he's telling us to do here. God is the only one who can quench our anxieties.
This is one of the keys to getting through life. Because the temptation to worry is so strong.
Throw your anxieties upon God. 1 Peter 5, verse 7 says, Psalm 55, verse 22 says,
And he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved.
So whatever worries you have, throw it on God. And he will take care of you.
He will take care of the problem. What we see in verse 6 is there is not one circumstance in life where we should succumb to anxiety.
Paul doesn't say here, do not be anxious about some things. He says, do not be anxious about anything.
No matter how big it is. Anxiety is like an enemy that takes away our peace, our comfort, our joy.
The circumstances in our life weigh on us. What the word of God is telling you is there is no anxiety, no matter how big it may be, that should cause you to be overtaken by it.
And this should be encouraging to us. Now there's something interesting about anxiety that we don't often think about.
Anxiety is a form of pride. And do you know why that is?
It's a form of pride because when you're anxious, you're not trusting God.
You're trying to take care of the problem yourself. And so you're saying, you know what, I'm going to deal with this myself.
I'm not going to give it over to God. And what happens, you get anxious. So it is a form of pride.
So this is something we need to turn from in our lives. And none of us can control a problem because really everything in our life is out of our control.
I mean, how many of us today were responsible for the sun rising in the east? None of us.
Did anybody worry last night about the sun rising? God's in control. He's in control.
He made us come to church today. He's given us life today. There was no guarantee that any of us were going to wake up today.
Any one of us could have died in our sleep last night. We get anxious about so many things in life, and we have control over virtually nothing in our lives.
God is in control. And so what happens in our life is one's life becomes a never -ending cycle of trying to deal with one's own problems.
And it's exhausting. Instead, the better path is give it over to God.
It is then that you will have peace. The Apostle Paul instructs us to bring everything to God.
Not some things, but everything to him. Verse 6 tells us to bring our petitions to God.
That's what he says here. He says, In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
We need to bring our petitions to God. It might be helpful to make a list of the anxieties that you have in your life, and then pray and say,
Lord, I'm giving this over to you. Brianna and I did that this week, actually. We wrote down the things that we were tempted to worry about, and we said,
I'm just going to give this over to the Lord. This is freeing when you do this. We also need to be thankful as we come to God in prayer with our worries.
You notice that here? It can be easy to move past this, but he says, with thanksgiving.
So we need to come to God in prayer with thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for.
Today we have to be thankful for our mothers, for example. Most importantly, we should be thankful that God sent
Jesus to die in our place. That's what we should be most thankful for.
And then secondary to that, there's so many other things we should be thankful for. Now, giving our anxiety over to God does not mean that your trials will go away.
I don't want to be misunderstood. You will still have difficulties. But what will be taken away is the anxiety that accompanies the trial.
I was with a woman who was a dear friend of mine a number of years ago. She was one of the founding members of Mound Free Church in the 1940s.
And she was 97 years old, near death. We knew that she was going to die soon.
And when I was with her, her name was Lou Brice, I didn't notice any anxiety in her. She was completely at peace with what was happening to her.
She was ready to go to meet with God. Did she have a difficulty? Yes. She was going to die. But she was not anxious.
She gave that over to the Lord. In my own experience, in my own trials in my own life,
I have sometimes found the anxiety to be worse than the actual trial itself. Maybe you've experienced that too.
We worry so much, and it becomes almost overwhelming to deal with that.
God does not want this to be. He wants you to give it over to Him as you seek Him in prayer.
New Testament scholar D .A. Carson said, I have yet to meet a chronic worrier who enjoys an excellent prayer life.
Isn't that true? If we're people who are constantly praying to God, praying without ceasing, as 1
Thessalonians 5 .17 says, if we're those kind of people, we won't be worriers. Praying people are not worriers.
They are worriers, but not worriers. So Eureka, we must be a church that gives our anxieties over to God.
So the first way how you must go to God with your many anxieties is seeking God in prayer. The second way how you must go to God with your many anxieties is by letting the peace of God rule your hearts.
What we saw in point one is that we take care of our anxiety through prayer. So what actually happens to us when we pray and give our worries over to God?
This is what verse 7 says. This is the solution. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
So as you pray, God takes away your anxiety, and He gives you
His peace. So God's peace comes over a believer when he or she prays to Him.
When Paul writes hearts and minds here, he says your hearts and your minds will be guarded in Christ Jesus.
What he's saying here is that your mind is referring to your inner self. This is your soul.
When we say your mind and your heart, we're not talking about anything physical. We're talking about the immaterial side of you.
This is your soul. This is what really runs your life. This is what is guarded.
Your heart is where the anxieties come up. And it shows in your physical state, but it comes up through your inner self.
And as God covers your inner self with His peace, what is accompanied with it, with peace, is joy and comfort.
So you have this feeling that comes over you. It's peace, it's joy, it's comfort. And then
Paul writes in the middle of verse 7 that this surpasses understanding. And why is that? It's because this can't be explained by humans.
You can't run a test to say, okay, this is how you deal with anxiety. It's supernatural.
It comes from God. And as it comes over you, no one in the world can explain it because it comes from God.
This is not some psychological manipulation where you are trained to move on from something.
Rather, this is a real inward feeling that a Christian experiences. This is supernatural.
This is God's peace coming over you. Some of you know what
I'm talking about because you've had this peace during difficult times in your life. And I would love to hear your stories about the peace of God covering you.
And, of course, I can only speak for myself. In 2011, Halloween 2011,
I lost my job. It was unexpected, blindsided by it. But I had this peace come over me.
God's peace came over me. And I didn't even care that I lost my job because I was so content with what
God was doing in my life, his plans for my life. And the temptation to become anxious was taken away.
And his peace replaced that. And so I've had my own experience with that.
And words cannot describe how wonderful this peace is. People will say, how are you dealing with this?
You can say, you know, I have the peace of God with me that surpasses all understanding. It is so important for us to know how to deal with our anxiety.
There are lots of books written on this topic. And secular psychologists are going to provide advice about how to get over the human struggle of getting over anxiety because they observe this and they say, well, we need to find a solution to this problem.
Those methods are not the solution to your worry. I had a good friend in seminary who was a
Ph .D. student. He was in psychology at the University of Minnesota. And he was an unbeliever when he was going through the program.
And he became a Christian during that time. And he came to see that a lot of the problems that they were trying to address, the problems are solved in Christ.
And he was seeing this as he became a new believer. And as he matured in his faith, he actually came to seminary and he changed his career path.
And he wanted to pursue vocational ministry. And some of his friends in seminary, he took some of his books and they actually burned them.
And some books are better for firewood than they are for reading. And this is what he found. I want to tell you right here and right now that this is the best advice you will get about how to deal with anxiety.
Pray to God. Give it over to Him and the peace of God will cover you. Is it simple?
It's very simple. And that's great about it. This isn't difficult. You don't need to go through years and years of trying to figure out how to get through this.
You just give it over to God and the peace of God covers you. It's simple, but the most important thing is it's effective.
I've experienced this in my own life and some of you have experienced this too. Give it over to Him and His peace will rule your hearts.
So this is the second way how you must go to God with your many anxieties. By letting the peace of God rule over your hearts.
The third way how you must go to God with your many anxieties is by transferring your thinking from anxiety to Godward thoughts.
Transferring your thinking from anxiety to Godward thoughts. As God's peace rules over us, when we give our worries over to Him, there is a much better way to occupy our minds.
Because as we all know, you have to occupy your mind with something. So what do we do?
It is important to occupy our minds with thoughts that are God -honoring. This is what
Paul instructs us in verse 8. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.
If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, what does he tell us to do? Think about these things.
Think about these things. A person's thoughts determine his or her behavior.
You know that saying, show me your friends and I will show you your future? Well, we can use a similar saying for this.
Show me your thoughts and I will show you what kind of person you are. One author simply said, if you think holy thoughts, you will be holy.
If you think garbage, you will be garbage. It's the truth. In the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that all sins can be traced back to our thoughts. Every sin starts with a thought, and then it's acted out.
This is what he said in Matthew chapter 5, verses 21 and 22, and then 27 and 28.
Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire.
And then verses 27 and 28. And then the prophet
Isaiah also says this. In Isaiah 55, verse 7, he says,
So he's saying here, let the wicked forsake his thoughts.
He needs to forsake his thoughts, and he needs to forsake his ways, because it starts with your thoughts. So we need to examine our thought life, and realize that if our thought life is good, then our life will follow.
If our thought life is bad, it will follow that too. The way to change sinful thoughts is to replace them with holy thoughts.
Romans 12, 2 says, Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is. His good, pleasing, and perfect will.
We need to renew our mind. That's what that verse is telling us to do. And we will not go with the pattern of this world.
Because we all know how easy it is to go down that road with the world.
So how do you think holy thoughts? The answer, I think, is immersing yourself in the
Bible. Immersing yourself in God's word. People who read the Bible and meditate on it, what they do is they're changed by it.
And you become a walking Bible. We want to be people like this. And you know people like this.
They're a walking Bible and it shows in their life. And I'm not saying Bible trivia. We don't want to be people who just know a lot about the
Bible. We want to be people who know the Bible and it shows in our life. Because there's also people who, sometimes they know a lot about it, but there's no connection there.
It's gotten in their head, but not in their heart. It hasn't changed them. We want to be people who it gets in our head, and it gets in our heart, and it comes out in our life.
So these people use the
Bible to get through everything in life. Every challenge. Every dilemma.
Every morning, the Bible is on their mind. Psalm 119 .11 says,
I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. So are you a walking
Bible? This is my prayer for us at Eureka. That we would do this. Through our men's ministry, and our women's ministry, and Wednesday evenings, and Sunday school, and Sunday morning worship, and the family events this summer, and the kids events during the school year.
We want each of those programs that we have at our church to help us grow in the faith.
By learning God's word, and becoming more like Christ. This isn't a social gathering.
It is fun to have this fellowship. But we're not a club where we just get together just to have fun.
We want to grow together. If you want a club to have fun, that's where you go to a golf club.
Or you go somewhere else. We're here to grow together. So as you read
God's word, and seek to understand what it says, and it's bearing on your life. As you do this, you will have thoughts that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, considered excellent, and worthy of praise.
Living as someone rooted in the word of God will help dictate the choices you make. Like, for example, who you spend your time with.
What you read, what you watch, what you listen to. You will have a purity to your thinking, and not sinful thinking like the world.
The world doesn't think this way. People in the world don't do this. But we must, as followers of Christ.
And this should cause us to evaluate what we are filling our minds with. What do you watch on TV? What do you listen to on the radio or on your iPod?
What do you read? Each day, this is what you are filling your minds with.
And you can tell much about a person by what they fill their minds with. Because what you fill your minds with, that's where it starts.
As I've been stressing, that's where it starts. And we need to understand that. As you think
God -honoring thoughts, it will change the way you live. You'll be able to discern what is garbage and discern what is good.
Brianna and I were watching a TV series a while back. And we're like, you know what, this is garbage.
We're going to stop watching this. And so we did. And we're still learning this.
We're far from perfect in this. We're still trying to figure out how can we go about the best path where we can fill our minds with God -honoring thoughts.
And so we are on this journey with you to try to do this. And then in verse 9 here,
Paul once again tells the church in Philippi to follow him. This has been a theme throughout the letter of Philippians.
He's telling us to follow him as he follows Christ. Verse 9, it says, We've seen this several times during the sermon series.
We're told to follow people who follow Christ. Because what you're doing is you're following Jesus as you follow them.
One of the ways we follow is by thinking the way mature believers think. Mature believers think in a way that is worthy of emulating.
We do not know precisely what is inside the minds of others. And if we did, we'd probably be frightened by what is in the minds of others, if we're honest.
Would we not? But we have a good idea from the fact that people's actions and what they talk about come from their mind.
Jesus said, So we do have somewhat of an understanding of what is in one's mind.
So we need to follow people who are thinking the right things, thinking the right way, thinking God -honoring thoughts.
In verse 9, Paul is instructing them to follow him because he is a good example. He's able to say that with integrity, without being prideful.
He's saying, follow me. We are to follow those who think God -honoring thoughts. So as you immerse yourself in God's word and let it change you and follow the examples of others as they follow
Christ, your mind will be renewed. And it's going to show in your life. You will become like Christ in thought and actions and unlike the world.
I heard it said once that if you're following the world, it's like you're going downstream.
Think of the St. Croix River, how fast it gets under the bridge at Taylor's Falls and St.
Croix Falls. Think of how fast it gets. That's the world. You're going with the pattern of the world, and it's fast.
If you're a Christian, guess what you're doing? You're going the opposite direction. You're going against the stream.
It's harder, but it's the better path. You're thinking God -honoring thoughts, where the fast stream, they're thinking garbage a lot of the time.
So this is what we must do. So this is the third way how you must go to God with your many anxieties, by transferring your thinking from anxiety to God -honoring thoughts.
So go to God with your many anxieties by seeking God in prayer, by letting the peace of God rule your hearts, and by transferring your thinking from anxiety to God -word thoughts.
One of the most difficult aspects of life is dealing with anxiety. The solution to fixing this difficulty is simple.
Some might say too simple, but I'm going to tell you this is real. Under the authority of the
Word of God, this is what God tells us to do. He doesn't give us a 12 -step program here.
He just tells us, give it over to God, and my peace will cover you. So we must give it over to God.
It is wonderful to realize that we worship a God who is willing to take our anxieties and give us his peace in exchange.
And I hope that all of us can have this, that we would all live this out together as a church. So do not worry, but cast your worries on him because he cares for you.
The Lord cares for you. So we must give our anxieties over to him. Let's pray.
Father, I pray that we would live this out. It's one of the secrets to getting through so many challenges.
I think it is true, Lord, that the anxieties are sometimes worse than the trial itself.
We get so overwhelmed. And, Lord, I know this from experience, my own life. I deal with this.
And I pray, Lord, that I would live this out, and I pray that each one here would live this out, that we would cast our anxieties on you, that we would give them over to you as we pray to you, and that the peace of God would rule our hearts.