I have to let you know, for reasons that will become clear, that I prepared this series and this message much earlier in the year, around April/May. This can be verified, but I just wanted you to know that because I will be touching on things in a few moments that have happened more recently in the life of the church. That’s partly God’s timing and partly the joy of going through a book systematically.
Philippians 4:1–9:Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!
2 I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. 3 Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, 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. 9 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.
The book of Philippians is a unique book amongst Paul's writings. Many of his other letters to the churches are written to address, specific problems and issues. He doesn't wait until the last chapter, the closing remarks of his letter, to address such issues in other books. Often he will address these things in the early chapters and then give instructions on how to live. Here in Philippians, he's left a disagreement until the end.
We don't know what these two women are in conflict over. We do know that he thinks highly of them, that they have contended with him for the gospel, which potentially makes them leaders within the church at Philippi. They were obviously well respected, for they are named.
We know that small conflicts can become huge tensions, that molehills can become mountains.
His admonition to them is to agree with each other in the Lord. To be of the same mind. Perhaps this is why, Philippians 2:5 he instructs the whole church that their attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus. If that is the case, and his instruction is based on the doxology found in chapter 2, then perhaps these ladies are in disagreement about who should be leading what, that they are grasping for position.
If you find yourself in a place where you are irritated by another brother or sister in Christ, or in disagreement with them, or can't understand why they think differently about an issue than you do, then these principles will help you.
When we are struggling with someone, do the following:
- Seek the bless them; If you are seeking God to bless someone it’s hard to do that with anger in your heart.
- Start to pray for them - Luke 6:28: … bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
- Practice the 101 rule: find one thing in common wit that person and focus 100% of your attention on it.
Recently, there was a disagreement in church between two women. What you may not know is that I’ve met with them several times and strategies are in place.
What was disappointing was the gossiping in the church about it, taking of sides, even calling the office to verify facts! If something happens, don’t take sides, tell a pastor or elder. If you involve yourself emotionally you cannot be impartial. Gossiping does more long-term damage than the actual disagreement:
- Gossips separate people (Proverbs 16:28)
- Gossips get fed (Proverbs 18:8)
- Gossips get exercise - jumping to conclusions
- Gossips should be avoided (Proverbs 20:19)
So, how do we live at peace with each other? How do we see the power of the Christian life shown lovingly to one another.
Paul seeks to remedy the situation. Paul begins to address this in three ways: right praying, right, thinking, and right living.
1. Right Praying
4:6-7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
The Greek word translated “anxious” in Philippians 4:6 means “to be pulled in different directions.” Our hopes pull us in one direction; our fears pull us the opposite direction; and we are pulled apart!
Anxiety can be overwhelming. When things around us conspire to increase anxiety we can find ourselves in a downward spiral.
When Paul says, do not be anxious about anything, we can read that as a command that we are all bound to fail. All of us will be anxious about something at some point in our life.
What Paul is saying here is: do not let the things that happen around you dictate what happens within you.
When things around us appear to be overwhelming, Paul says one of the ways to deal with this is through prayer.
That is what anxiety does, it reverses the spiritual order of things, it makes us feel as though we are going to have the worst outcome rather than the best outcome.
Paul therefore gives us a framework for prayer. Paul that's not just say pray about it. He's too wise, for that, for prayer is not a trite response to anxiety. Prayer is a multi layered approach to the throne of God that releases faith and hope in our hearts.
- Prayer:
The word prayer is the general word for making requests known to the Lord.
It carries the idea of adoration, devotion, and worship.
Whenever we find ourselves worrying, our first action ought to be to get alone with God and worship Him. Adoration is what is needed. We must see the greatness and majesty of God!
What we need to learn to do is take the bigness of our God to the smallness of our situation, not the bigness of a situation to the smallness of our God.
Too often we rush into His presence and hastily tell Him our needs, when we ought to approach His throne calmly and in deepest reverence.
The first step in “right praying” is adoration.
- Petition:
The second is petition, an earnest sharing of our needs and problems.
There is no place for halfhearted, insincere prayer! While we know we are not heard in “babbling on” religiously (Matthew 6:7–8), we also know realise that our Father wants us to be earnest in our asking (Matthew 7:7-12).
This is the way Jesus prayed in his life and in Gethsemane:
Hebrews. 5:7: During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
Petition is a matter of spiritual intensity (Romans 15:30; Colossians 4:12).
Such praying is often misunderstood by those around us. Hannah, in the old Testament, was misunderstood by Eli, the priest. He thought she was overcome with wine. Yet she was earnestly, petitioning God, but no sound was coming out of her mouth. Only her lips are moving (I Samuel 1).
When you are burdened, when you are overwhelmed with the petition, you need to know that God hears even if the religious, the so-called more spiritual venue, misunderstand what's actually happening.
Keep that petition before God until the burden lifts, until the answer comes, until the anxiety dissipates.
- Thanksgiving:
After adoration and petition comes appreciation, giving thanks to God (see Ephesians 5:20; Colossians 3:15–17).
When Jesus healed ten lepers, only one of the ten returned to give thanks (Luke 17:11–19). It is doubtful the percentage is any higher today.
We are eager to ask but slow to appreciate.
We have three wonderful grandchildren. The youngest, a delightful granddaughter, is learning to speak. One of the first phrases that she has learnt is “thank you”. Why is it important that parents teach their children from an early age to say thank you? It's important to instil gratitude because selfishness is a natural disposition in all of us.
We must come before God in thankfulness, all He has done in the past, and for all He is doing now.
It is not enough to just proclaim, “I am blessed.” If you think you are blessed, then the right statement is, open "I am thankful”.
“I am blessed” puts the focus on me. “I am thankful” puts the focus on the One who gave.
One of the frameworks I have found very helpful in prayer is the acrostic ACTS. Adoration. Confession. Thanksgiving. Supplication (asking God for things).
- The Result
The result of right praying is peace:
7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
It means that God places a protection around your heart, your emotional centre, where peace is the result.
I hear people all the time say that the devil has stolen their peace. Can I say this? The devil cannot steal from you that which was secured for you on the cross. He can trick you out of it! He is the deceiver. He will get you so busy doing other stuff that you no longer pray. You don’t have time to spend with God. Then the peace goes.
Get back to God in ‘right praying’ and the peace will follow - it’s a promise! It’s a peace centred on and found in Jesus.
The peace Jesus spoke of could not be exemption from conflict and trial. Jesus himself had been "troubled" by the impending Crucifixion (John 12:27).
The peace He spoke of here is the calmness of confidence in God. Jesus had this peace because He was sure of the Father's love and approval (Expositor's Bible Commentary (Abridged Edition): New Testament, John 14:27)
The peace we have from Jesus is because we are assured of the Father’s love and approval. We are adopted (Romans 8:15). That means we are secure and have peace.
When peace seems lost, ‘right praying’ takes us back to the One who loves us!
The world can give only false peace, which mostly comes from the ignorance of peril or self-reliance. With Jesus’ promise of peace, He repeated the words of comfort He had spoken in reply to Peter's earlier question (John 14:1).
2. Right thinking:
4:8:Finally, brothers and sisters, 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.
Peace involves the heart and the mind.
Isaiah 26:3: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.
Wrong thinking leads to wrong feeling, and before long the heart and mind are pulled apart and we are strangled by worry.
We must realise that thoughts are real and powerful, even though they cannot be seen, weighed, or measured.
Where your focus is will be where you end up going in life.
I enjoy F1. I like cars in general. Murray Walker once interviewed the British racing driver. Nigel Mansell. He asked Mansell what the most difficult thing was about the circuit. Mansell answered that it wasn't the stresses on the body or keeping your head facing the right direction, or even controlling the car. He said the hardest thing was controlling your eyes. Because when the body is subjected to high g-force the eyes will often go the in the opposite direction of the head. Mansell said the hardest thing was making sure that your eyes were looking in the direction you wanted to go, because, whenever your eyes were looking, that's where the car went.
Our minds and what we are thinking about, where we are putting our mental focus, it's where our life will go.
If we are thinking and ruminating on the wrong things, we will discover that our lives will be in the wrong fruit.
This is no secret. You can go into any bookshop and see many, many books on self-help subjects. They will always speak about the power of the mind. Most of these books have taken a truth, found here in Scripture, stripped it of all biblical references, and presented it as a humanistic answer to life.
- Renewed Minds
But we know we are not just a mind and trapped in a body. We are spiritual beings designed for relationship with Father God through Jesus Christ. We know that our minds must be surrendered to him (Romans 12:1-2).
We know that our minds are designed to think on wholesome things, the things of God, not just the things of this world.
- Captive Thoughts
2 Corinthians 10:5: We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
How are we to take captive every thought and make them obedient Christ. This might sound strange, but the way to take a thought captive, is not to repeatedly think about it.
I love donuts. If I spend my day thinking about doughnuts, I will end up eating doughnuts.
The way to overcome a thought is to think about the things that God wants us to focus on. This is what Paul tells us to do.
You do not take a thought captive by locking it in some mental prison and taking it three meals a day.
Take a thought captive by not giving it room in your life and your mind. You do this by thinking about right things.
Sow a thought, reap an action.
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny!
Paul spells out in detail the things we ought to
think about as Christians.
So many things todayare subjective, individualised, and not absolute. For instance, when Paul says to think about whatever is true, today, truth has become a subjective term.
People talk about (my truth). Means that somebody can present (their truth), and that cannot be argued with, even if it is patently untrue.
So how do we begin to think about the right things in the right way? The way to do this is to immerse ourself daily in the Word of God, the Bible.
We begin to see how God sees things.
We begin to view the world how God views it.
We begin to understand His heart for us.
We begin to see what God says about us.
Story: when I was growing up, although in many ways I felt loved, there was not a lot of value added to me within the home. There was always the feeling that any significant achievement would pass me by, that my life would be spent assisted by the welfare state (I have no real issue with the welfare state, I believe society should look after the most vulnerable and needy). When I became a Christian, and I began to read the Bible and discover what God felt towards me and thought about me, my world began to transform. Why? Because my mind was being cleansed of all the negative rubbish, and replaced with God's good word to me.
That will take discipline, and effort. Because lazy, lax minds want to do other stuff first.
3. Right Living:
Right praying and right thinking will lead to write living.
4:9: Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice.
Outward action and inward attitude are inseparable.
Paul balances four activities: “learned and received” and “heard and seen.”
- Heard and seen:
Teachers of the Word have to have lives that marry up to their preaching. We also need grace to allow to mistakes, that sometimes (many times) preachers also preach to themselves!
The point is, only follow teachers whose lives follow the same direction as their teaching.
2 Thessalonians 3:9: We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.
Hebrews 13:7: Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
1 Corinthians 11:1: Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ
- Learned and Received:
It is one thing to learn a truth, but quite another to receive it inwardly and make it a part of our inner selves:
1 Thessalonians 2:13:And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
Facts in the head are not enough; we must also have truths in the heart.
We must learn the Word, receive it, hear it, and do it. James 1:22: Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
Wrapping this up:
Right praying, right thinking, and right living:
- these bring unity above disagreement,
- peace above anxiety,
- holy living above wayward lives.
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