Stress, worry, fear etc & the Christian

Philippians 4:4-9 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.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.Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Today, I’d like all of us to really look closely at the passage above and reflect on it. When Paul wrote this to the Philippians, they weren’t having an easy time of it. Times were hard and their lives were filled with stress, worry and fear. This is the Lord’s prescription for that condition. He not only tells us what we need to do and why, but also what He will do in return when we are obedient.

Let’s start at the beginning then. He says to rejoice in the Lord always. This means in the midst of severe trials, illness, fear, worry, depression or whatever, we are to rejoice in the Lord.

How do we do that and what exactly does it mean? For starters it doesn’t mean that we need to rejoice that the “bad thing” is happening. Instead, we should rejoice that we know our Lord is with us and will help us overcome it, or depending on the circumstances, that He will work the situation out for our good because we are called by Him, or something along those lines. It’s pretty much the same thing, of replacing whatever the situation is with God’s Truth and rejoicing in Him for that Truth.

The next sentence is to let your gentleness be evident to all. That almost seems out of place in this passage doesn’t it? But if you think about it a minute, you’ll realize that when we are feeling worry, fear, depression, stress etc. that whether we recognize it or not, anger is also often present. Now when you think of anger or stress or those other emotions, they just don’t go together with gentleness. Not even depression, because with depression we’ve gone to the extreme of not caring about anyone or anything and only thinking of ourselves. For our gentleness to be evident to all, we must think of others and how they view us. Can you imagine gentleness being joined with anger? Or Stress? I sure can’t! Here he is showing us the kind of spirit we are to aim for. He says it more outright here:

Ephesians 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Next he assures us that the Lord is near. He is telling us that the Lord is perfectly aware of our problems, and of our situation. He knows our thoughts and our struggles. He is not far away, but is instead near to us. He wants us to remember that and to know that our prayers, aren’t going a long distance to be heard, but are heard instantly by the One who is near us and will never leave us.

Next he tells us: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Let’s look and see exactly what he’s talking about here. The dictionary says anxious means to be characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency. Related words would be scared, worried, terrified, apprehensive, upset, uneasy, troubled, frightened, agitated, jittery. Sound familiar?

We are told that we are not to allow those emotions but instead of them, or when we know those emotions may try to break through, and even to prevent them from happening, we are to take everything to God in prayer—but not just pray for what we want but with thanksgiving! That goes right back to his very first sentence: rejoice in the Lord always! So we take the problem/situation/concern to God in prayer and ask Him to take care of it for us. Then we thank Him for taking care of it for us. We can do that because we know from His Word that He will hear our prayers and that He will answer and that His answer will always be to work everything for our good. Then we rejoice in Him, that He loves us, saved us, is concerned for us, takes care of us, is always thinking of us…etc.

Paul tells us that when we do that then, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Really look at that sentence. He is saying that God’s peace will actually guard our hearts and our minds! His peace will protect us from those sinful kinds of thoughts/emotions. The original word that is translated “guard” means to hem in, to protect and keep with a garrison (a garrison is a military fortified post), to mount a sentinel, to watch for in advance. Now if that’s not one fantastic promise to hold on to and to pray for and thank Him for and rejoice in Him for, then I don’t know what is! (nor is this the only place in the bible that God tells us He will do this for us!)

Finally Paul gives us more ammunition to use against the sinful thoughts when he says: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Obviously we can’t just think of “nothing”, so he tells us what we should have in our minds. This is also a guide for us to use to determine if a thought is sinful or if it’s something we should be thinking on. Using this as our guide, we can’t go wrong and there is no confusion. Spend time reflecting on this verse—what it is saying and what each of words means.

Last of all Paul ends this passage with this: Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. Obviously we can’t have learned or received anything from Paul if we don’t study God’s Word, so this again shows how important that is. Just as important however is that next bit: put it into practice! We cannot expect God’s peace to guard us if we’re not willing to obey and put into practice the things God tells us to do. But, if we do put it into practice then God will be with us and He is the God of peace. He is the God of peace who will guard our hearts and minds.

So we’re not in this alone! God will help us! In fact He wants to help us. He longs to help us! He won’t do the work for you however. Just as we aren’t helping our children if we do their schoolwork for them, since then they won’t have learned anything, so He really wouldn’t be helping us if He did the work for us. If we do though, then He rewards us by guarding our hearts and minds. The more we practice His ways, the stronger that guard becomes. I can speak of this through personal experience. It is more then worth the effort my friends!

Join us at FH for this study on Stress!