I Rejoice in God's Peace

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, August 7, 2011

Stress, anxiety, worry. It affects all of us to one degree or another, some much more than others. I know a guy who is stressed about everything. I mean, he worries about even the least detail of life. He worries that there’s too much rain or there’s too little rain. He worries that maybe he’s cutting his grass too high or too short. He’s worried that the house is not being taken care of. He worries about his kids. He worries about his grandkids. He worries about everything. If his kids go someplace, if they don’t call once they hit the destination, he worries about them. If they do call, he wonders how are they going to pay for the minutes on the cell phone. Twentyfour/seven, he is on edge.

So you can imagine my surprise when about a week ago, I saw him and he was the picture of serenity. He was jovial. He was happy. He was relaxed. I couldn’t help but mention the transformation to him. I said, “What happened?” He says, “Yeah, I had enough of that. I got tired of the sleepless nights. I got tired of all the anxious thoughts.” He says, “I finally just broke down and I hired somebody to worry for me.” I said, “You hired somebody to worry for you?” “Anything that I’d worry about, I’d just tell him. It cost me $1,000 a week, but I think it’s worth it.” I said, “How in the world can you afford $1,000 a week?” He says, “I don’t know. It’s his problem.”

Seriously, stress is a major issue. Study after study shows that up to and maybe exceeding 75% of Americans have an unhealthy amount of stress in their life and that anxiety affects them in their personal relationships. It affects them in their work relationships. It affects them emotionally. It affects them physically. Stress and anxiety were not intended by God for us to have.

But evidently, it’s been with us for a very, very long time because it was already here when Paul writes to the people in Philippi because he addresses the whole idea of anxiety, worry, fear, stress. And what he offers to them, he says, is a “peace from God that goes beyond our comprehension.” But he paints a very beautiful picture of it.

He says, “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” What’s interesting here are the words that he chose. When he says, “will guard your hearts and your minds,” he specifically chose a military term so, literally, what it means is that he will, like a soldier, stand guard over your heart and your mind. Now the people of Philippi would understand that because they had a Roman garrison there in Philippi, so that was home base for a whole lot of Roman soldiers. So when they read that, what they might have heard was God’s peace, like a garrison of soldiers, will keep guard over your thoughts and your feelings so they’ll be safe against the assault of worry and fear.

Would you like that picture? God’s peace, like a garrison of soldiers, will guard your thoughts and your feelings and keep you safe against the assault of fear and worry.

St. Paul then goes on to tell us exactly how is it that God’s peace works. How is it that we can experience that peace in our life? How is it that we can control that stress and anxiety that we often feel? He says first of all, we need to be reactive and then we need to be proactive.

We need to be reactive. That is, when certain things come into our lives that are stressors, we need to be reactive. We all have stressors, right? Whether it’s circumstances, whether it’s decisions that are being made, something that happens relationally, there are those things which will cause our anxiety level to go up, cause us to have a lot of stress. We need to be reactive, but we need to have the right reaction. But my guess is, typically, we have the wrong reaction.

For just a moment, I want you to think what are the stressors in your life. What are the things that just wig you out, keep you up at night, occupy your thoughts, make you ruminate them over and over again? Is it the economy? Oh boy, the last couple of weeks, the last couple of days, it’s not good. I have to believe there are lots of folks that aren’t getting sleep right now and they’re constantly looking at the news. They’re constantly thinking about it. That is a huge stressor for a lot of people. Is that yours?

Is it school? Going off to college? Starting a new grade? Moving to a new building? Don’t know the kids who are there? Is it a job? Don’t have a job? Just got a job? The amount of work you have at the job? Is it the family? Is it the kids? Is it the grandkids? What is it? What is the stressor in your life? What’s the circumstance that causes all kinds of anxiety? Now ask yourself, what is your first reaction to that? I know what my first reaction to that is. How am I going to fix it? What am I going to do about this? And so I start scheming and I start calculating and I start thinking, “Now what in the world am I going to do about this and how am I going to make the situation right and how am I going to make it better? But you know the irony of it is, if I could do something about it, I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Right? Are you with me? The things we worry about, the things that cause us anxiety, the very reason they cause us to be anxious is because they’re out of our control. So we start worrying and scheming and calculating what we can do about it but if we could do something, we wouldn’t be worried about it to begin with.

So our first reaction, instead of “What am I going to do about this,” our first reaction should be, “What is God going to do about this? How is God going to handle this situation?” Our first reaction when the anxious thoughts come in, when those circumstances surround us, should be to turn to God in prayer. Listen to what St. Paul said, “Do not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Literal translation: Stop worrying. Stop worrying about anything and everything. Instead, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your request known to God. The first reaction should be to go to God in prayer.

Now we as Christians give a lot of lip service to prayer. Oh, we talk about prayer all the time. Somebody shared something with us, we say, “Well, I will pray for you and I will remember you in my prayers.” But do we? And be honest with yourself. Do we honestly believe in the power of prayer? Do we really put our trust in the fact that God is listening and God can do something about it or is it just something we do? Oh yeah, prayer, that’s what we should do.

Prayer does two things for us. First of all, it is a release and I don’t want to discount that. There is an emotional release for us when we take the things that are heavy on our hearts and on our minds and we turn them over to God. When something catastrophic happens in your life, when something is really kind of bugging you, isn’t it good to sit down with a close friend, maybe a relative and just tell them what’s happening? Do you do that? And once you’ve said it, once you’ve just sort of talked it all out, you feel better. More than likely, they can’t do anything about it but for some reason, we as human beings don’t want to carry the burden alone, not by ourselves, so we can sit down with a close friend and we can just tell him all the garbage that’s happening in our lives. And then we feel better.

Prayer is that plus one better. Prayer is that because we can unload to God. Time and time again in scripture, He invites us to have a conversation with Him, to unload our hearts, bring our prayers and petitions to Him and make our requests known to Him but He does one better because God can do something about it. It’s not like a close friend who can just listen. We’re talking to God who actually can make a difference, can actually interject into our lives but once again, do we believe that? Do we honestly believe that God is going to do something?

Or does it go more like this: We take it to God in prayer and we unload our hearts and all of our thoughts and all of our anxiety and as soon as the prayer is done, “Now what in the world am I going to do about this situation?” We start calculating. We start scheming. We’re trying to figure out ways that we’re going to fix this because, after all, “What’s God going to do realistically? True, I mean, after all, He’s just the Lord of the universe, the all knowing, all powerful supreme being of all time. Yeah, what’s He going to do?”

When we take it to God in prayer, we’re taking it to the one source who can change things, who can do something. And so we take it to God in prayer trusting and believing that He’ll do just the right thing. St. Paul picks up on that. He says, “The peace which transcends all understanding.” It exceeds our wildest imagination. It exceeds our ability so that God’s solution to our situation is far superior to anything we could come up with, it’s greater than anything we could imagine. So when the anxious thoughts come and those stressful situations, first of all, be reactive. We need to train ourselves and discipline ourselves that our first reaction is to take it to God in prayer.

But we should be proactive as well. Proactive in that we should control the thoughts that are rolling through our heads and the things we focus on. More times than not, when we’re in a stressful situation, all we do is think doom and gloom. All we can think about are the bad things that are happening and then we just spiral down from there, right? So if things are going bad, we get caught up in the moment, we get caught up in the anxiety. We have a very short distance we can see. We can only project on a day, a week or a month and it doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good.

And so we worst case scenario the situation. How many of you have done that? Worst case scenario the situation, right? Some of you are brave enough to admit it. I’ll admit it. “Yep, something bad’s going on. I’m going to worst case scenario it.” Do you know why we do that? That way, we won’t be disappointed. That’s what we tell ourselves. “If I worst case scenario it, no matter what happens, then I won’t be disappointed.”

I actually talked to a person who said, “I worst case scenario everything. That way, I’m never disappointed.” Doesn’t that sound like a fun existence? The problem is it begins self-fulfilling prophesy. If all we do is focus on the negative, then that’s all we see and, all of a sudden, our life turns very, very negative. Instead, God says “Focus on the positive.” Focus on the promises and the blessings that God has for us. I am not suggesting that we stick our heads in the sand and we ignore the realities going on around us. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t do anything about our situation. I’m just saying that we need to change our way of thinking. Focus on what God has done in the past because that’s an indication of what He will do in the future.

Focus on what God has done for you in the past and that’s an indication of what God will do in the future. St. Paul puts it this way, “First of all, when you take your prayers and your petitions to God, do so with thanksgiving.” Already, he’s saying, “Recall the things that you are thankful for, the areas in which you have seen God active in your life.” Then he goes on, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, pure, lovely and admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.” Better translation: Sense things are excellent and praiseworthy. Think about these things. Since we have seen the excellent things of God, since we have seen in our lives those things which are worthy of praise because of what God has done for us, then focus on those things. Focus on the blessings and the promises of God but be proactive in that, which means we focus on the blessings and the promises of God in all situations.

It reminds me of a trip I was on several years back. I was flying back home and it was just kind of a strange day out because I remember that on one side of the plane, my side of the plane, I looked out the window and it was dark and gloomy and the window was just streaked with the rain that was coming down. On the other side of the plane, it was all bright, sunshiny and cheery. We must have been right on the edge of a storm. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. My side, dark and gloomy. Other side, bright, sunshiny and cheery. I would have rather been on the bright, sunshiny side of the plane. But the reality is we were all going to land in the same destination.

In life, sometimes you’re on the bright, sunshiny side. Sometimes, you’re on the dark, gloomy side. But the promises of God say, “We’re all going to land in the same destination.” Our faith says that God is true to us when life is going well and when life isn’t going so well. So we focus on the promises and the blessings of God during the sunshiny times and during the dark and dreary times. We are proactive in dealing with stress and anxiety in our lives.

Paul concludes this section with a challenge to his readers. He says, “Okay, I’ve spent three-quarters of my letter teaching you. Now just do it.” He says, “Get out there and do it. I’ve been teaching and teaching and teaching and teaching. It’s time for you to put it into practice,” he says. Listen to what he says, “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.”

I believe the challenge for us this morning is to put it into practice. And the challenge that I have for you and the challenge that I have for me, are we serious about having peace? Are we serious about experiencing the peace that God offers to us? Are we serious about reducing stress, taking down the anxiety level in our lives because, I’m not sure we are? In fact, I have a little theory. My little theory is we wear our stress like a badge of honor. Culturally, that’s what I think we do. When you talk to somebody, you want to talk about how busy you are, the things you’re doing, how full the schedule is and if you talk to somebody who says, “Nah, there’s not a whole lot going on,” what’s your thought? “Slacker. They must not have much ambition.” We wear it like a badge of honor. “Yeah, I didn’t take all my vacation last year. Just didn’t have time.” “Oh, you wouldn’t believe the amount of hours that I had to put in.” “Yeah, you might call it retirement, but boy, my schedule’s fuller now than it was when I was working full time.” “Grandkids are so busy. We’ve scheduled everything for every day of the week.” We brag about how busy we are and all the things that we worry and we stress about. But that’s not how God wants us to live. So are you serious about taking down the stress and the anxiety in your life because God has taught us clearly. Are we going to put it into practice?

Scripture talks a lot about worry. It’s been with us since the beginning of time. It talks a lot about stress and anxiety but the teaching is always the same. What Paul is teaching here is nothing different than what Jesus taught. In fact, it’s nothing different than what Jesus lived. Think about it. Can you name any place in the gospel where Jesus walked into a room with His disciples, just sort of plunked down in the chair and said, “Boys, I don’t know. The Father’s just running me ragged. I have too much to do and too little time to do it.” It’s not there. It’s not like He had an easy job. Three years of ministry to save the world.

Instead, what you see in Jesus is going to His Father in prayer. Thumb through the gospel. Time and time again, Jesus takes time and He talks to His Father in prayer. He has His own supplications and prayers and requests that He makes of His Father. Jesus have any trouble sleeping at night? Nope. Remember that little incident in the boat? All of a sudden, there’s this great big storm in the middle of the lake. The disciples are wigging out. They think they’re going to die. Where’s Jesus? He’s catching a couple Z’s in the back. Do you know why? Because He trusted His Father in every situation, during the dark and gloomy times and during the bright, sunshiny times, when the ministry was going well and when things weren’t looking so well.

Do you remember the Garden of Gethsemane and He’s praying and drops like blood come from Him? And yet, how does He end His prayer? “Not my will but your will, Father.” Complete and total trust in the Father during the bright, sunshiny times and during the dark and dismal times. The teaching is the same, just are we going to put it into practice?

We’ll all have to deal with stress and anxiety but can we be reactive, that is, to discipline ourselves that our first reaction is to go to God in prayer, to let Him hear us but also to know and trust and believe that He can do something about it. And then to be proactive so that throughout our lives, we’re constantly reminded of God’s blessings and God’s promises for our lives, whether things are going really, really well or whether things aren’t going so well. Reactive. Proactive.

And then the peace of God, like a garrison of soldiers, will keep guard over your thoughts and your feelings. It’s safeguarding you from the assaults of fear and worry. Amen.