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Words for Worriers - Philippians 4:2-9

By Mike Osborne | May 25, 2007

Introduction: What’s worrying you right now? (write it down)

Not worried about anything? Maybe I can help. Did you know…
• There’s a 1 in 6,250 chance that the asteroid Apophis is going to hit the Earth in 2036.
• 76 million Americans will get food poisoning this year.
• There’s a 1 in 24 chance that you’ll be a victim of property crime.
• A 1 in 700,000 chance that you’ll be attacked by a shark.
• A 1 in 70 million chance that you’ll die from anthrax.
• Why, did you know that 27 people will die this year from contact with a lawn mower?

Not worried yet? Let’s talk about your health:
• What’s your cholesterol level? For half of us adults, it’s too high.
• How much weight have you gained the past year? Did you know adult men & women today are nearly 25 pounds heavier on average than they were in 1960?
• When are you going to start exercising?

Think about the economy…
• What’s going on with the stock market? How much money has your portfolio lost recently? I mean, are you going to have anything at all to live on when you retire?
• Will Social Security run out of money?
• Will someone steal your identity and take you to the cleaners?
• How are you going to pay for your kids’ college?
• Will they pay for your nursing home?
• But then, you might not make it that long – did you know there’s a 1 in 2.8 million chance that you could fall into a hole and die?

We’re 3 weeks into hurricane season and we’ve already had Alberto…
• Will Florida still be on the map this November?
• Is the Earth going to burn up?
• Will we run out of oil?
• Will everyone be riding a bike someday?

And if you’re still not worried, let me say just two words: NORTH KOREA! What city in America are they aiming their long-range ballistic missile at?

Now that you’re all worked up, I want to talk with you about WORRY – vs. 6: “Do not be anxious about anything.”

But before I go further, let me just say that not all worry is bad.
• If you’re one of those rare people who never feels anxious about anything at all, it may be because you don’t CARE about anything at all, and there’s a word for that: “apathy.”
o “anxious” in vs. 6 = same word used in 2:20 in a positive sense as genuine concern (I have no one else like [Timothy], who takes a genuine interest in your welfare.”)
o Anxiety can be a good motivator to action. When you care about life, about people, one of the risks you run is anxiety.
o Paul was legitimately worried about the Philippians (vs. 2).
• So you see, there is such a thing as constructive worry.
o And some of you need that!
o Some of you husbands & wives need to be concerned about the state of your marriage.
o Some of you parents need to care more about the spiritual climate of your home.
o Some of you students need to be concerned about your grades!
o So don’t let anything I say today sound like an excuse for being careless and lackadaisical about things that need to change in your life!

What Paul is talking about here is the kind of worry that is destructive.
• It’s the “what-if” type of worry.
• Our Eng. word “worry” comes from the old German word wurgen, which means “to choke, strangle.”
• Some of us wrestle with worry so much that our spiritual life is choked off by it.
o Someone once said: “Worry is an insidious, life-sapping disease.”
o Someone else: “Worry is an iron-jawed leech with an insatiable appetite for its victim’s blood.”

So what do you do with your worries?
• Some people are “stuffers.” They try to escape their worries by denial.
• It’s the “don’t worry, be happy” philosophy.
• Some people are like the guy you may have heard about:
o He was flying from New York to Houston.
o 15 minutes into the flight the captain announced, “Ladies & gentlemen, one of our engines has failed. But there’s nothing to worry about. Our flight will take an hour longer than scheduled, but we have 3 other engines so we’re OK.”
o A half-hour later the captain announced, “Another engine has failed so our flight is going to take an additional 2 hours. But don’t worry, we can fly just fine on 2 engines.”
o An hour went by, and the captain announced, “Our 3rd engine has failed and our arrival in Houston will be delayed another 3 hours. But don’t worry…we still have one engine left.”
o The guy turned to the man in the next seat and whispered, “If we lose one more engine, we’ll be up here all day!”

No, denial is not the way to go. And neither is apathy.

So how do we deal with our worries?

Clearly, this passage of Philippians says that Christians are not supposed to be worried people.
• Vs. 6 - “Don’t be anxious.”
• Vs. 7 – “The peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
• Vs. 9 – “The God of peace will be with you.”
• You see, those who have found peace WITH God are supposed to experience the peace OF God.

We know this. But how is it to become a reality in our lives?

By consciously practicing four things:

I. Spontaneous prayer
II. Disciplined thinking
III. Responsible action
IV. God-centered faith

I. SPONTANEOUS PRAYER – vs. 6

Illus.: This summer is a huge time of change for my family.
• Rebecca – moving to Gulfport, MS – almost wiped off the map by Katrina!
• David – moving to Tallahassee
• Jennifer – starting MBA program
• Michael – senior at Timber Creek – driving!
That’s a lot to worry about! I wish I could tell you I’m not anxious…I am. But I’ve been learning to take that anxiety to God. Again, and again, and again.

Two main parts to prayer:
A. Petition – “present your requests to God”
• Tell God exactly what you’re worried about, whenever it crosses your mind.
• Be as specific as possible…describe it in detail…look at it from every angle.
• The thinking is, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in every little thing, present your requests to God.”
• Illus.: Steve Brown story —
o Man traveling across India, put everything he owned in a suitcase
o Long train ride…all night long
o Put suitcase in rack above his head
o “There are thieves on this train. If I go to sleep, somebody’s going to steal this suitcase and they’ll have everything I own. So I better stay awake.”
o So he tried to stay awake. He pinched himself every now and then.
o 3:00 a.m. – couldn’t keep his eyes open, fell asleep for just a few seconds, and opened his eyes – looked up and his suitcase was gone.
o “Thank God, now I can go to sleep!”
o 1 Peter 5:7 – “Cast all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you.”

B. Thanksgiving – “prayer & petition, with thanksgiving”
• Gratitude does not come naturally to human beings.
o Illus.: Have you noticed that parents always have to say to their kids, “What do you say???”
o I think that a grateful heart is one of the things man lost in the Garden of Eden.
o Romans 1:21 – “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile.”
o So we have to work at being grateful.
• Thanking God in prayer keeps you from becoming over-concerned with your problems.
• It helps you remember how gracious God has been in the past.
• It helps you to think that there are others worse off than you.
• So when you pray, be sure to say “thank you.”

Spontaneous prayer is the first ingredient of the antidote for worry. The second is…

II. DISCIPLINED THINKING – vs. 8

A. Illus.: Lionel train set – switching tracks
• Point your thought life in the direction of things that are reassuring and helpful, not things that stress you out.
• The Message: “meditate on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”
• Illus.: I’m a talk-radio junkie. But for the past couple of months, I’ve had to go on a talk-radio fast…
• You might need to switch your mind to another track, too.
• Maybe a particular TV show is not a good thing for you to watch.
o Psalm 101:3 – “I will set before my eyes no vile thing.”
• Maybe a certain kind of music…
• Perhaps a particular magazine only encourages you to covet clothes, to envy other people’s bodies, to lust…
• Maybe a certain person brings you down by what she wants to talk about, and you need to confront her and say, “No more.”
• Someone: “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a wide channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

B. Or maybe you’re a “what-iffer.” You obsess in your mind about “what if this happens, what if that happens!”
• Vs. 8 teaches you to deliberately choose encouraging thoughts, affirming thoughts, Biblical thoughts.
• The best way I know to reprogram your thinking is to be a reader of the Bible and other good books.
• Psalm 119:45 – “I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.”

Spontaneous prayer – disciplined thinking…

III. RESPONSIBLE ACTION – vs. 9

Paul is here saying, Don’t just pray about everything…don’t just think about good things…DO the right thing.

A. Sometimes we worry because we haven’t taken appropriate action to take care of the things we’re worried about.
• Money, for example…Financial Peace University.
• If you see ants all over your home, you don’t just worry about it, you call the exterminator.
• If you don’t like your weight, you don’t just worry about gaining more weight, you join the gym, or you start running, or you cut back on calories.
• If you’re lonely, you don’t just sit there and fret about it, you pick up the phone and invite somebody over for dinner.
• If your grades aren’t so hot, you study harder.
• Mark Twain: “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”
• See, anxiety can be just the thing to get you moving. But you don’t stay anxious, you follow through, you take responsible action.

So far we’ve seen that the antidote for worry is spontaneous prayer, disciplined thinking, and responsible action.

But we still haven’t really gotten to the heart of worry.

Worry, essentially, is distrust of God. Oswald Chambers called it “unconscious blasphemy.” So if you would cut the heart out of worry and really kill it, you need…

IV. GOD-CENTERED FAITH – vv. 4-5

Do you believe in God?
• Is He the God of the Bible, who controls absolutely everything?
• …Of whom Jesus said that not a bird falls to the ground without His knowledge?
• …Who knows everything about you, even the number of hairs on your head?
• Is this God your Creator? Did He (Col. 1) make all things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; did He exist before all things, and does He hold all things together, by the word of His power?
• Is He the King Immortal (Paul wrote to Timothy), who has all authority in heaven and on earth, over life and death, angels and demons, the present and the future, heights and depths, sin and Satan, before whom devils tremble, mountains shake, and seas divide?
• Is He (Rom 8) the God who works all things for the good of those who love Him?
• Is He (Jesus in Sermon on the Mount) the God who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field, and who considers you much more valuable than birds and flowers?
• Is this God you believe in “near” (as our text says in vs. 5)?
• That is, is He the God who (Psa 139) is with you, no matter where you go, whether you fly up to the heavens or make your bed in the depths of the earth or settle on the far side of the sea, and who has ordained all the days of your life before one of them came to be?
• And is this God infinitely wise in all His dealings with you, who knows the end from the beginning, whose judgments (Rom. 11) are unsearchable, whose paths are beyond tracing out; and is He the God who by His wisdom (Prov 3) laid the earth’s foundations and set the heavens in place, so that you can rest assured He knows what He’s doing in your life right now?
• Is this God the One (Eph 1) who chose you before the creation of the world, who predestined you according to the plan of Him who works out everything according to the purpose of his will?
• Who says (Jer 29) that He has plans for you, plans to prosper you, not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future?
• Does He provide for His people as Jehovah-Jireh, is He sufficient for your every need as El-Shaddai, is He your Shepherd as Jehovah-Rohi, is He your righteousness as Jehovah-Tsidkenu, is He the Lord as Adonai?
• And is this God who chose you also your Father, who has adopted you and justified you and set you apart as His very own treasured possession (Deut 7).
• And in order to do this, did this God send His very own Son, the Son of His love and delight, to shed His blood, bear your burdens, carry your sorrows, heal your wounds, wash your feet, identify with your weaknesses, pray your prayers, pay for your sins, win your forgiveness, and prepare a place for you in heaven?

Yes?

Then, “Rejoice in this Lord. I will say it again, Rejoice!”

Look at that thing you wrote down earlier that you’re worried about…

If you believe in the God of the Bible, there is no reason in the world your life should be characterized by fear and worry. To worry is to think more of your circumstances than of God. And that is unbelief.

Spontaneous prayer –
Disciplined thinking –
Responsible action –
God-centered faith…the antidote for worry.

May God enable us to live in light of His truth, His power, His love as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Topics: Philippians |

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