Philippians

Do you have a favorite Bible verse?

If you had to guess which Bible verse was the most popular in 2019, which would you choose?

According to YouVersion, the most popular Scripture last year happens to also be my wife Grace’s life verse. It’s highlighted in context below:

Philippians 4:4-7 – Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In this section of Scripture, we learn five ways to feed faith and starve fear.

1. Focus one eye on each track.
Some years ago, while driving in his truck, Pastor Rick Warren said something to me that has stuck with us ever since. He said most people think of life as being a series of good and bad seasons, but he felt that every season of life was more like train tracks with good and bad happening constantly and congruently. He was right.

When troubles, temptations, and trials come, we tend to see only the bad track. There is always something to be fearful of and always something to be thankful for.

2. Make your will your rudder.
Your emotions are like a sail. They are big, powerful, and drive your life. When filled with fear, your emotions are like a sail in a hurricane. Imagine a sailboat in a hurricane with no rudder. When filled with fear, many people are like that.

Instead, when anxious and fearful, “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone”. Reasonableness means to use mental reasoning to make wise, faith-filled decisions that drive you forward into God’s will. This is the opposite of being unreasonable and allowing your emotions and circumstances to steer you towards rocks that will sink you. Your mind must be your rudder.

3. Replace panic with prayer.
When a spirit of fear comes over us, our first response is often panic. Some people even experience panic attacks. Our mind races with all of the possible danger. Sometimes these fears are legitimate, but often they are lies. Rather than panic, we should pray. Freaking out is not a spiritual gift; faith is. Panic helps nothing, but prayer helps everything.

To remind us to replace panic with prayer. Praying allows us to privately process what we are feeling in relationship with God. Before we talk to anyone, we should talk to God alone.

4. Tell the Father what you want.
When God is silent, it may be because He wants to hear from you. God is a Father, and we are His kids. With our five kids, we tell them some things because we need them to listen and obey, but on many other occasions, we ask the kids what they want. So long as their request is reasonable, we are prone to say yes.

Sometimes we ask God “What do you want?” and God replies “I was going to ask you the same question.”

5. Enjoy God’s presence and peace.
When we sense a spirit of fear coming over us, it can cause us to feel overwhelmed. Fear is such a common experience that the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear not”, which appears roughly a few hundred times. God has to remind us continually to “fear not” in some form or fashion because we forget.

In Philippians 4:5-7, we were told “do not be anxious about anything” because “the Lord is at hand”. For those who choose faith over fear, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Like a soldier, God will guard the emotional life of our hearts and the thought life of our minds if we stand with Him against the spirit of fear, which is an act of spiritual warfare. It is not the absence of trouble that brings peace but the presence of God. The presence of God brings the peace of God.

What is your favorite Bible verse? Why?

Philippians 3:1-6 – Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

One thing that kills joy quicker than anything is religion. Man-made religion is the human attempt to control God and others by making rules, judging others, and meting out punishment.

A religious spirit permeates everything from world religions to cults and legalistic Christians. That same religious spirit also permeates everything from politics to social causes and sports teams. We idolize the people like us as good and demonize the people unlike us as bad.

Paul speaks against joy killing religion with three strong images. He calls them mutilators who scar people. He calls them evildoers, which would have shocked them entirely. And, he calls them dogs which was likely a pejorative slander that religious people used for others. If you have a nice pet who wags its tail and chases a frisbee like we do, don’t be troubled. What Paul is referencing are mangy flea infested wild dogs who bark all night, rummage through the trash, terrorize people, and will even eat a human corpse if they stumble across one. In speaking of this same religious spirit in Galatians 5:15, Paul says they “bite and devour”. Their words and works are like a dog bites as they chew people up.

Before meeting Jesus, Paul tells us that he was a mutilating, evildoing, religious dog himself. According to the religious rules of his day, he was born into the right family as a direct descendant of Abraham with a pure bloodline with a Hebrew mother and father. Coming from the tribe of Benjamin also made him a varsity Pharisee as that was the only son born in the promised land and became the most faithful tribe of Israel. Additionally, Paul knew both Old Testament languages – Aramaic and Hebrew. And, Paul was good at harassing people, arresting people, and even killing people in the name of God. Today, we’d call him a religiously motivated terrorist.

After achieving the highest honors in the religious world, Paul was not only dangerous, he was also cheerless. After climbing to the top of the ladder, he realized it was on the wrong wall and did not find joy until Jesus found him. His testimony is warning to us that religion kills rejoicing.

How is religion killing your rejoicing?

Philippians 3:1 – Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

Our family recently lead a mission trip to Mexico to renovate a park and host a big Christmas dinner for Mexican pastors and their families. The trip was a great success and my highlight was seeing all the pastors’ kids pick out a Christmas present donated by someone at The Trinity Church in Scottsdale, which we planted as a family project.

Most of the team slept in one big room on air mattresses. Without any heat, things got really cold at night. One of the pastors on the trip literally put on all the clothing he had, including his jacket, and pulled a stocking cap over his face before climbing into his sleeping bag. He slept very little but did shiver a lot. Late at night, his daughter sleeping next to him threw up…in her sister’s blanket. So, dad rushed his girl to the bathroom and cleaned off the blanket in the shower.

The next morning, he came to breakfast with a smile on his face talking about how much he was enjoying the trip. When asked why, he explained that he was grateful to be a dad, grateful to be there to help his daughter in her time of need, glad that at his home he was returning to there was a bed and heater, and more.

His circumstances were not fun, but his mindset was cheerful. It just goes to show that happiness has a lot more to do with the heart and mind in you than the people and things around you.

Everyone lives their life, but few of us actually enjoy our life. The opportunities to grab joy along the journey to the party that never ends are there every day. The problem is we get so overwhelmed at the stuff we need to get done that we run right by happiness because of busyness.

Sometimes, we have to literally just stop, take a break, catch our breath, and regain our joy. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul does while sitting in prison, of all places, to find joy. He tells us something God tells us over and over because we forget it: “rejoice in the Lord”.

You cannot get joy at Costco or have it delivered from Amazon. Nope. If you want joy, you can only find it “in the Lord”. You cannot continually make and keep yourself happy. You can access the Lord’s joy, which is constant, and share in His joy.

What do you need to do, or stop doing, to share in the joy of the Lord today?

Philippians 3:12-16 – Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Paul, from prison, writes the letter to the Philippians while in jail chained to a Roman soldier. As we have established, his theme is joy. If he can wake up every day with a smile on his face, we need to learn the eight reasons he gives for us to wake up cheerful every day:

1. Get past any perfectionism. If you are a perfectionist who is overly focused on where you’ve not quite done everything right and are still a work in process, don’t feel bad. After thirty years as a Christian, the guy writing the Bible says he had not yet arrived and was also still in process.
2. If you cannot fix it then flush it. There are some things in life that we can fix, like a strained relationship, catching up on Bible reading, or starting to give generously. There are many things in life that we cannot fix, like a past mistake, a person that does not want help, or what decisions other people make.
3. You know you have healed when you can talk about the past and have moved on from it. Most people drag the worst of their past into their future. They will say that it’s in the past, they’ve moved on, or it’s behind them. But unless they can talk about it in a way that is healthy and honest, then they are not well. For example, just prior to this section of Philippians, Paul recounted the worst things he’d done in his past.
4. To move forward, you need to leave some people and things behind. To start walking with Jesus meant that lots of people stopped walking with Paul and the same is true for you.
5. Don’t look back. Like Lot’s wife who looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, one way to get frozen is to obsess over your past, thereby neglecting your future. I am told that the reason they put blinders on a horse pulling a wagon is because they will otherwise look back, think they are being chased, and run in terror until they die. The human version is a stressed-out person running through life killing themselves.
6. The best is yet to come so believe by faith until you see by sight. God has greatness, by his standards, in your future. It may not be what the world is hoping for, but it is awesome to live in God’s will.
7. Only God can create joy that is genuine, healthy, and unending. Satan and sin cannot create a culture of joy. That can only be found in the Lord by the children of God.
8. God has joy in your present and future that is bigger than your past mess-ups. Paul was a religious terrorist who had Christians arrested and at least one church leader murdered. His past mess-ups were epic, but Jesus loved him, saved him, forgave him, changed him, and had a future for him.

Do you really believe that what God has for your future is somehow, in His accounting, bigger than any things you regret in your past?

Philippians 2:14-18 – Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

When Jesus walked the earth, kids ran to play with Him and people (including some naughty folks) routinely invited Him to their parties. Why? Because he was cheerful, joyful, and fun to hang out with. In contrast, the religious folks rebuked the kids who wanted to play with Jesus, slandered His reputation as a drunkard and glutton, and threw a party that was all a ruse to find a reason to murder Jesus. Being cheerless is simply not Christ-like. In this section of Philippians, Paul gives us eight reasons to rejoice if you find your joy in God, which enables you to then enjoy your life.

1. You can stop “grumbling” & “disputing”. Unlike the world, which is arguing and mudslinging online every second of every day, you can flush this cheerless critical spirit.
2. You can start being “blameless and innocent”. You don’t have to accept, hide, or excuse some bad habits. Instead, you can replace them in the Spirit with new character patterned after Christ.
3. You can stop being part of “a crooked and twisted generation”. This world ain’t working and thankfully it also ain’t your home.
4. You can start being the “children of God without blemish” and “shine as lights in the world”. God grabs dirty people from the filthy world, cleans them up, and sends them out as lighthouses to help others lost in the dark find their way Home.
5. You can stop living in ways that are “in vain”. It is easy to waste your entire life doing nothing, becoming nothing, and helping no one. God wants your life to be meaningful, valuable, and purposeful.
6. You can start living in a way that you can be “proud” of in a godly way.
7. You can stop cheerlessness and start cheerfulness. Paul from prison still has joy in spite of being single, childless, far from home, and a convicted criminal sitting chained to a Roman soldier. It just goes to show that what God does in you is much bigger than what anyone else around you can do to you.
8. You can die with a smile on your face. Paul does not know whether he will live or die, but he chooses to have a smile on his face either way because he’s walking the path of Jesus and headed Home to see Him face to face. Heaven without Jesus is worse than hell with Jesus because the source of life and joy is Jesus!

Which of these things are most important for you in this season?

Philippians 2:12-13 – Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The holiday season is an overwhelming time for most people. Studies indicate that the pressures of travel, increased spending, holiday parties, crushing year-end workload, packed stores, strained family relationships, and weight gain cause increased stress and fatigue.

Sometimes, when we are overwhelmed by juggling all the balls that life throws at us, it can be helpful to gain perspective by paying attention to what others are juggling. For example, in our study of Philippians we have found that Paul is writing about joy while in prison. The hand he uses to write about joy and rejoicing is chained to a Roman soldier. In the section above, Paul gives us three reasons to rejoice:

God is for you. In calling Christians “beloved” and the “children of God” whom the Father loves and serves for “his good pleasure”, one thing is clear – God is for you and has good for you – things for which you should rejoice.
God lives in you. In saying, “God…works in you, both to will and to work”, Paul is giving us the joyful wonder of the Christian life – everything God created and commands us to be and do He helps us to become. God works at our deepest levels. In the Old Testament, this is referred to as a new heart (Jer. 24:7; Ezek. 36:26-27). In the New Testament, this is referred to as regeneration or new birth (John 3; Eph. 2:1; 2:5; Col. 2:13). Practically, this means that you are new if you belong to Jesus Christ. This new you is not a perfect you, but a new you that God is bringing through a process of growth and life that ends in perfection. New You. Not perfect, but new & in a perfecting process.
God partners with you. Because God is for you, and in you, you can be a person who obeys and is able to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”. God works things in you, that you work out with Him.

No matter what we are experiencing, these three things can be reasons to rejoice since they are grounded and guarded by God and more secure than anything in this life.

What is God working in you that you need to work out with Him (e.g. forgiving someone, learning the Bible, growing in prayer, freedom in worship, generosity in giving, etc.)?