4 Components For Deep, Significant Relationships - Philippians 2:2 Series

I smile, as you probably do too, whenever you see that science confirms something we already know in the Bible. Right? Or archaeology comes up with this discovery that this historical place actually was there, which the Bible talks about. Or when it comes to mental health, we know that the Bible just confirms a lot of the things we know in science about mental health. So that's why I smiled when I saw this article from Christianity Today from October 19th last month. It's comparing public health issues or mental health with church attendance, both asking questions about people who go to church frequently and those who go to church every week. And this is what they came up with.

So what are the public health benefits of church attendance? Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler's) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half, using the data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants. Here's some results. Medical workers who said that they attended religious services frequently (now given America's religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches of one stripe or another), they were 29% less likely to become depressed, about 50% less likely to divorce, and five times (that's 500%) less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended church. In perhaps the most striking finding of all, healthcare professionals who attended services weekly (not just frequently, but weekly) were 33% less likely to die during a 16-year follow up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.

Of course, we know that I'm preaching to the choir. That's why you're here. You know that there's a kind of structural thing that happens inside of us. Because we gather together. We really appreciate that.

It's the same message, I think, Paul is communicating in Philippians 2:2 which we're going to look at today. In fact, I would suggest that the passage from Philippians 1:27 all the way to Philippians 2:5 is probably the most significant mental health passage in the Bible. We've already looked at the first two sermons in this regard. I'm taking it kind of slow because just so much is there. But if we review the verses 27-31, what we see that Paul is saying there is this. I plant my feet. Because that's what the verse says. Kind of get your standing. And he says engage in the conflict with me in the purpose of moving forward in the mission that is given to us. So God has given us a mission in our world today. And so Paul is saying to them join into the mission, plant your feet, have purpose in life, have meaning. When we do that, something happens inside of us. Because now we're joining the winning team. We already know the last chapter of the book where Christ is the winner. We may go through some stuff. In the meantime we know that we're on the winning team. So when we join into the mission that God has called us to do, big things happen.

You see, I think that the greatest mental health exercise that anyone could do, the choice that they would make, would be to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Because when they do that, they join the mission. But I need to explain this because I don't think everyone really understands this idea of salvation and being born again and so on. I think some people believe that really it's taking a spoonful of God and putting it on your plate. So now you have God along with all the other things you're devouring in the course of your week. But it's bigger than that. The Christian life is more like He's the whole plate or He’s the whole kitchen that we're in. Everything is about Jesus. My whole life is about Jesus, not just taking a little bit of Jesus and adding it to my life. It's total commitment. If you don't realize it, if you look in the passage six verses earlier, in Philippians 1:21, he says – For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. It is the whole kitchen. It is the whole plate. It's not just a little bit. It is the most important decision that we ever make in our lives, is to trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. So he's saying plant your feet, engage in the conflict, and then he comes to the first verse that we looked at in our last examination of this passage, which talks about emotional resources that God provides.