Joy Stealers – Philippians 3:1-6 Series

You know, the biggest problem that parents report that their children have is not being able to handle disappointment well. How do I know that? Because I helped design what's called the Child Behavior Inventory. It's an inventory that measures nine different areas in a child's life that parents can write this. I asked the Christian psychologist that I'm working for to tabulate all of the reports so far. So throw this slide up there. I want you to see these are the kinds of things that they're measuring. They're measuring electronics addiction, they're measuring ADHD symptoms with focus. The first one is cooperation you see. That's defiance. We're looking at anxiety and anger. But notice the one that's the highest is disappointment. Kids often don't know how to handle disappointment today. They don't get what they want and they freak out. Things don't go their way and they get upset. They lose a game and they lose more than the game – they lose their composure. It's very difficult today many times for children to handle disappointment.

But it's not just a childhood problem, is it? I mean we have a problem with disappointment ourselves when we have these surprises that come into our lives. When your Starbucks order isn't what you expected, or when you get an unexpected bill in the mail, or when you get out into traffic. Sometimes those surprise disappointments are a challenge. We all must have a plan for dealing with disappointment in our lives. That's why it's exciting for me that we jump into Philippians 3 where Paul is going to give us some very specific ideas to address that.

Just to review, I want to show you that we're looking at emotional health from the eyes of the book of Philippians. We've already acknowledged that anger and love are on this continuum. So there's three emotions we all must have a plan for – anger, sadness, and anxiety. And we know that if you're having a problem with anger, then really the solution is to work love out in your life. We think, “Oh, if I'm having a problem with anger, I need self-control.” Well that's great. I think self-control is good. But 1 Corinthians 13:5 says – Love is not easily angered. If you want to really deal with your anger issues, then you work on love. You start thinking more about love and what that looks like. Because love is really the antidote for the anger challenges that we face. There's also sadness and joy. So they're on a continuum. So sometimes we have sadness and when we practice joy then that can reduce the sadness that we experience in our lives. The same thing is true with anxiety. If we work the peace in our lives then the anxiety reduces.

Now all three emotions are not bad. So there's some times we're grieving over something in our lives, a loss of some kind. Because sometimes the losses aren't small. They're not just like our Starbucks order got wrong. Sometimes it’s a job, or loss of our health, or loss of a loved one. Those are very real losses. And we don't just want to say, “Oh put on a smiley face.” So there's times when I've talked to people who are either depressed because of some biological reason, you know, something's off in their body and so they're feeling depressed, or a side effect of a medication, or something like that. Or they've lost a loved one. So I asked this question: Can you experience joy and grieving (or sadness) at the same time? Well I think we'll see the answer to that question today is yes. But it just has a different focus for this joy. Is all anxiety bad? No, it's the anxiety that helps us be responsible in life to get things done. But it's when those things start to control us then we have a problem. That's why we need the truth we're going to see in Philippians 3 today. So if you open your Bibles to Philippians 3:1-6 that will be our passage for today.

Now the first thing I want to show you, before we even start reading it is I want you to see, and I've circled some ideas in the passage. I want you to see how the logic flows in this passage because the logic is important. He starts with this idea of rejoice in the Lord and we're going to talk about that. But see the second idea? He says it is safe for you. What in the world does that mean? How does rejoicing in the Lord, how is that safe for you? We're going to talk about what that looks like. Because there's something about rejoicing in the Lord that creates some kind of safety for us. And then we go to the third idea is a sense of confidence. How does that tie into this idea of joy in the Lord? I don't think we would normally think the way Paul is describing these things today. So I want you to take careful note of the logic because I think it's within this logic that we're going to walk away with the truths we need to put into practice this week.