SERMON OUTLINE

From Anxiety to Peace Philippians 4.4-9

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.             Philippians 4.6-7

Introduction

Your life reflects both your faith in God and God’s life in you and is a witness to those around you. Three Christian qualities are joy, gentleness and peace. These are not natural qualities but fruit of the Spirit. They require hard work but are rooted in faith and in relationship with God.

Anxiety

-Is increasing among God’s people

-Is a confession of unbelief to others

-Is unbelief and sin

Be Anxious for Nothing

-“Nothing” is emphasized in the Greek

-We are not to be anxious about imagined circumstances

-Some have anxious temperaments and anxiety by trauma

-Not unconcern, denial, or refusing hard work

Prayer, Petition and Thanksgiving

-Come to God with your anxiety and circumstances

-Transfer of strength from me to God and God to me

-Commitment of faith in God

-Acknowledgment of acceptance of outcome

Peace of God

-Not peace with God but experienced peace of God

-Beyond logic and rational understanding

-Do not feel guilty and do not accept accusations

-We must struggle to come to a place of peace

Conclusion

-The importance of faith in going from anxiety to peace

-Keep going back to God as many times as needed

Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.  Arthur Roche

SERMON NOTES

From Anxiety to Peace Philippians 4.4-9

-We have set aside our Communion Sundays to focus on the prayers of Paul. …Today I am not focusing directly on one of Paul’s prayers but on Paul’s teaching of how prayer can keep us from anxiety.

-If you are a true Christian, Jesus your Lord desires that your life reflect both your faith in Him and His life in you. …Both your faith in Christ and the evidence of the life of Christ in you witness to the Grace and Love of God to those around you. …It is through the Church that God is shown to the world, and the Church is made up of each one of you who are born again. …So God calls you to live with Christian character and attitudes and qualities. …In the verses before us we have three of these Christian qualities. …They are joy, gentleness, and peace.

-All three of these Christian qualities are an expression of faith and trust in God. …Joy, gentleness and peace are not natural qualities but qualities that result from trust in a Sovereign and Loving God. …Joy, gentleness and peace are the fruit that a person reaps when they are willing to put the direction, protection, and outcome of their lives fully into the hands of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving, ever present and on the job, Father. …These Christian qualities are not rooted in the soil of positive thinking and self-effort but in the supernatural work of God in the heart and in the mind. …These Christian qualities do require determined and repetitive choices and actions on our part. …These Christian qualities require obedience to God’s commands, they require giving our lives back into God’s control over and over again as we try and take control back from God, they require prayer and thanksgiving, they require concentration of the mind on certain things and excluding other things. …The formation of these Christian qualities in our life requires hard work on our part but that work is toward a deeper trust in God. …Our trust in God grows as we understand Who God is and what His purposes are. …That is why we need to know God through reading His Word and through prayer.

-This morning we only have time to have a brief look at how God can replace anxiety with peace through prayer and thanksgiving.

-Anxiety is increasing even among God’s people. …God wants His children to live in the peace of God and not in anxiety. …Anxiety is a confession of unbelief. …Anxiety is a loud admission that we are not trusting in God but that we are trusting in our own resources. …Anxiety is sin.

-Anxiety is over concern with present and future circumstances. …We can worry over our finances, our future, our health, our children, our jobs, and many other things, but God says we are not to worry over anything.

-The Greek text says “nothing you be anxious about”. …As the first word in the sentence nothing is emphasized. …As Christians there is nothing that we are to be anxious about, we are not be anxious about anything. …Let me say a couple of things here.

1) When Paul says not to be anxious about anything he is thinking about real circumstances that we could be anxious about. …So often we are anxious about circumstances that do not even exist. …We imagine scenarios of what could happen and then we worry about them. …We let our imagination run wild with speculation and then we worry about what we have fabricated in our minds. …We are not to be anxious about our real circumstances and we are certainly not to imagine circumstances to worry about.

2) I want to acknowledge that certain people have temperaments that lean toward anxiety and fear. …Some people are anxious because of traumatic experiences in childhood, or because of drug use (paranoia), or traumatic incidents that have happened to them (post traumatic stress disorder). …God can enable those with anxious temperaments to live in peace and courage by faith (Timothy). …God can bring His peace and healing to those who have undergone trauma, but in this verse Paul is speaking of anxiety over real circumstances in our daily life.

3) To not be anxious does not mean to not be concerned, or to not take circumstances seriously, or to not work hard to solve difficult circumstances. …To not be anxious is to take all of our circumstances to God and to let God’s peace overrule our anxiety.

-Nothing is to make us anxious if we are Christians who are trusting in God. …What we are to do is to take every circumstance that causes us worry and anxiety and we are to take them to God in prayer and petition. …The way to be anxious about nothing is to be prayerful in everything. …Through prayer we transfer our circumstances into the hands of God and make a commitment to trust God in those circumstances and not to worry about the outcome.

–Prayer is a general word for addressing God and expresses how we are to approach God with reverence and devotion. …Petition is making a specific request to God in prayer. …We are to come to God and make the circumstances we are anxious over and our anxiety known to Him.

-To prayer and petition we are to add thanksgiving. …Thanksgiving in this verse means more than adding a “Praise the Lord” to our petition. …Here thanksgiving certifies that a transfer of strength and resources has taken place from you to God and God to you. …By giving thanks you are saying that you have chosen to rely on God’s strength and wisdom in your circumstances and not on your own strength and resources. …Thanksgiving is signing that contract that puts God in charge of your circumstances and leaves you free to no longer be anxious. …The implication here is that because God is now in charge of the circumstances and all the resources of heaven are working in the circumstances that anxiety is no longer required and will not be practiced.

-Thanksgiving is your commitment of faith in God and trust in God that He will work to provide and protect in your circumstances.

-Thanksgiving is also acknowledging that you will accept the outcome of your circumstances. …By thanksgiving you are saying that however the circumstances turn out, be they joyful or filled with grief, be they according to your will or not, you are trusting in the Goodness and Mercy of God in those circumstances and you will not be anxious over the outcome.

-If we have made our request known to God and have received His resources, and transferred our dependence to God, and acknowledged our willingness to leave outcomes in God’s Good hands, then the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. …Guard is a military term which describes a detachment of soldiers protecting a city from attack. …So God’s peace guards our hearts and minds from anxiety.

-This is not peace with God which it the result of our sins being paid for and our reconciliation with God and no longer being under the wrath of God, but the experience of God’s peace in our hearts and in our minds. …God’s peace in our present circumstances goes beyond logical behavior and rational understanding in our circumstances. …Where worry and anxiety and fretting should be our behavior there is the enveloping peace of God. …Where you know you should be falling apart, and overreacting, and feeling stressed out, under the circumstances there is an unexplainable peace.

-If you are anxious about something and you take it to God in prayer and the calm peace of God does not fill your heart and mind then you are still determined to work out those circumstances in your own strength and have not transferred that circumstance into God’s hands. …Once you finally trust God in your circumstances then God’s peace will fill your hearts and minds. …Keep on praying and struggling with giving up the control of your circumstances and the outcome you desires to God and then the peace of God will fill your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. …Like Jesus, who struggled in great stress with the will of God in the Garden of Gethsemane until he could say, “not my will by yours be done” and then got up filled with the peace of God, so we must come to a place where God’s peace overshadows us and takes our anxiety away.

-With God’s peace guarding your heart and mind you may feel guilty because you are so calm under the circumstances. …Accept the gift of the peace of God and thank God for it and do not feel guilty for it. …Others who do not understand the peace of God may accuse you of not caring in the circumstances because you are not filled with stressful anxiety and worry as they are. …Be willing to let the circumstances work out under the hand of God.

-The important factor in changing anxiety to peace is faith. …Through prayer we approach God, and through petition we present to God our anxiety and the circumstances causing that anxiety. …Through thanksgiving we look to God’s strength and wisdom, and we relinquish our own strength and choices in our circumstances. …Through thanksgiving we allow God to work out our circumstances according to His will and pleasure. …God replaces our anxiety with His peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

-One last thought. …We may have to give our anxiety over our circumstances to God over and over again until we learn to live more naturally in the peace of God. …James MacDonald can be very descriptive in his preaching. …He says that so often he has taken his anxieties and put them in a bag and brought them to the foot of the cross and laid them there at the feet of Jesus only to find them within a short time back in his pocket. …It is hard for us to trust God and just rest in God’s peace. …We want to take control of the circumstances, we want to worry and be anxious over our circumstances, as if by being anxious we are doing something to solve the situation. …So often we give our anxiety and circumstances to God and then take them right back again. …We need to keep going back to God, back to prayer and petition and thanksgiving, back over and over again and give all of our anxiety to God, until we are able to leave all our anxiety and all of our circumstances in the hand of God and rest in faith in the peace of God.

-As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning may we discover afresh that we can trust God to care for us in all of our circumstances and may we exchange our anxiety for the peace of God.