Sharon was twenty years old when she went to her physician because she felt like she just needed to make a change in her life. She felt like she was overweight, she felt like she was tired all the time. She felt like she was getting sick more than she needed to get sick. And she just knew she needed to make some changes. So she went to her doctor and the doctor said, “Okay, let's do some tests. Let's do some evaluations. Why don't you do a food journal where you keep track of what you eat. Why don’t you do an exercise journal. Why don't you track how much water you're drinking. Why don't you track your sleep. We'll do some blood tests and that kind of thing. Let’s see where you're at.”
So a couple of weeks later, she comes back in and the doctor says to her, “Look, one of the things we need to work on here is we need to help you change your diet because your diet has a lot of junk food in it.” Now this is kind of new for Sharon. She's trying to adjust. Junk food. Let's talk about what junk food really is. And so the doctor defined it. Junk food is high in calories, high in sugar, fat, salt, it's low in nutrients (that is, things that would be good for you). So you want to avoid these kinds of things. And she looks at the list. And she says, “If I'm going to avoid those things, what am I going to eat?” Okay. Now I know you've been in that experience, like many of us have. You go, “If I have to cut out all those things, what am I going to eat instead?” And so the doctor helped her find these things that she could eat. I know that many of you who have gone through that experience as well. You've come to the fact that I've got to change my diet. And when I change my diet, I need to focus on eating different things in order to be healthy to strengthen my immune system.
We're going to take that same analogy and I want to apply it to our mental health today, not just our physical health. But I want to talk about spiritual junk food. I want to talk about junk food for the mind. But I don't really want to talk about just the junk food because Paul is going to help us know what to focus on. If we focus on what we can't think about, we're going to spend time thinking about those things. We want to focus on what God wants us to focus on. And when we do, that's going to help us deal with our anxiety. It's going to help us deal with any of the challenges that we have. We want to turn our thinking to some healthy thinking. That's the idea today. What do we do in the way of thinking that's healthy.
If we're going to deal with anxiety in our lives, there's a lot of solutions. You can google “solutions for anxiety” and you will find millions of websites that talk about this. There are a lot of solutions out there for dealing with anxiety. But the greatest solutions that you will ever find for dealing with anxiety in your life are the ones that have to do with spiritual health. If we can embrace this idea of understanding our spirituality ties into our emotions, we will have made a significant difference in our own mental, spiritual, and emotional health.
Now I want to take the nine verses that we've been looking at for the last three weeks. I'm going to throw them up as I've done each week. Notice right in the center it says – Do not be anxious about anything. This is a passage dealing with anxiety. All nine verses are really helpful. We looked last week at five different principles that we can apply to our lives about anxiety for the week before. And today we're going to look at verses 8 and 9 to finish off this particular passage, to try to understand what it means and what we're talking about in the midst of this whole subject of anxiety.
But before I go to the other parts of this passage and zero in, look at the whole passage for a moment, because what I wanted to do was circle all of the parts that reference God. God, Lord, Jesus. Eight times in nine verses Paul references the Lord. I think we could stop right there and we can just say, look, there's there is a tendency for us to exclude the Lord when it comes to our emotions. And if we would include him more, we would have better emotional health. That's the first observation I would make just as the big picture of this passage.
The second observation just as we stay on the big picture is to look at this one word that we're going to talk about today. This word think. Think. That's in verse 8. But if you've been with us now walking through this, you probably remember verse 7. Where in verse 7 it says this about this peace of God. It says – This peace of God surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. There's this impression in verse 7 that this isn't about thinking. This is about faith and trusting the Lord. And when you trust the Lord then you don't have to think about it. You can think then this peace is going to come. So now he's talking about how to think.
So you got to be asking the question, are we talking about faith or are we talking about thinking? Because some people what they'll do in their in their minds is they will separate faith from thinking. “Well I'm a Christian, therefore I don't have to think.” And there are a lot of people who don't think today. There's a lot of people that have impressions about Christians that they aren't very intelligent because they don't think, they need faith. I would suggest today that the Bible is full of passages that talk about thinking and how important it is. Christians should be the best thinkers, the greatest thinkers. They have the most information, the greatest understanding about life. And so we want to talk about this thinking, because what we're going to see in the passage is, how does a person with the peace of God think? That's really what we're asking of God today. How does a person with the peace of God think? That's going to help us in our lives.
Sometimes I feel like I have to defend the idea that Christians are thinkers. We really do need to think. Jesus said – Learn of me. He’s describing that process. When the lawyer came to Jesus and talked about the kingdom of God, Jesus said – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Thinking is important. In 1 Peter, Peter says – Grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There's this knowledge that we need. Romans 12:2 says – Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Thinking is important. It's valuable.
In fact, sometimes we say when it comes to food, as in the illustration with Sharon, we say, “You are what you eat.” Right? You've heard that before. And I like that statement because it reminds me to eat healthy because I am what I eat. But the Bible says you are what you think. Notice what it says in Proverbs 23:7 – For as he thinks within himself, so is he. So thinking becomes very important. I think some of us need this transformation spoken of in Romans 12:2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
Now today we're going to talk about how to think. We're going to talk about how to think rightly. We're going to try to understand this idea more of thinking because as we do, it's going to make more sense to us. And so I want to jump in and ask the question, what are the nutrients that we need to focus on in our thinking, because we want to pre-decide. We want to pre-decide how we're going to think. In other words you want to have in your mind, “If this happens in my life, I am going to think this way.” And so if I start to feel anxious about something, I'm going to think this way. That's basically what Paul is saying in this passage. Today we're going to look at what people who have the peace of God, how would they think, and we have several different examples of those.
Let's look at them in verse 8. Verse 8 is going to give us eight nutrients, eight different ways that we can think, eight things that we can focus on in our thinking. I want to take you through these eight things because if we learn how to focus on these things, then we can become more healthy in our mental health, spiritual, emotional health. So these are the things we focus on. There's a lot of junk food out there for the mind. What we want to do is we want to be intentional about eating the right way for our mind. You know that if you are trying to eat healthy, you have to pre-decide. You can't wait until you're hungry and look around for what you want to eat. Because if you wait till you're hungry and you look around, then you've got those doughnuts in the office or those cookies sitting over here.
This week I had an interesting conversation. I gave blood on Thursday. I was at the blood bank and I was just waiting to get into the process. The lady was there and we were just laughing together. She goes over to the table where they have all this food for you after. And all of it's not stuff I would eat. But she said, “Would you like something here?” She picks up some cookies and I said, “No, that's okay. I'm trying not to eat that stuff.” And she says, “Yeah, I know. It's all junk food. I don't like to eat it either.” And I'm thinking I just studied this. Here's a story that I can talk about. And so I said, “Let me tell you, I'm laughing right now because I'm a pastor, I'm preaching this Sunday sermon about junk food. Actually, it's junk food for the mind. But if using this illustration about junk food and how if it's sitting around we’ll eat it.” And she says, “Yeah, yeah. I know I shouldn't be eating this. In fact, I don't usually eat this, but every once in a while I get in this situation and I don't have anything, so I that's what I get. I get the junk food.” I’m thinking that is such a good statement. I'm going to make that on Sunday morning. Because that's what happens. If we don't pre-decide, then what happens? We take what's available, and what's available is often not the best thing for us.
Let's look at these eight words. And let me briefly go through a summary of each one. I'm going to tell you then what you want to do with these words as we try to understand them.
The first one is the word true. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. The first word is true.
True. There's a movement today to define truth in a way that's different than reality, to define truth based on perception or how I feel. This whole basis for the gender dialogue that goes on. If I feel like I'm a woman, then I'm a woman today. You know, that kind of an idea. It’s this how do I feel. But it's not just about the gender discussion. Think about it in terms of our anxiety. Because what happens with our anxiety is we start saying to ourselves, “Well I'm feeling anxiety. That becomes the reality for me.” So Paul is saying focus on what is true. In fact, sometimes we end up saying things about ourselves that are not helpful in the emotions department.
I was working with a seven-year-old boy once and he had some anger issues. We started talking about it and here's what he said. He said, “That's just the way I am.” Already at seven years old he decided he was an angry person. I'm going, “Give me a break. We've got a few years here before you have to decide that.” But that's what happens to us in our anxiety. We start saying things about ourselves and to ourselves that are not true.
The difference between fear and anxiety is notable at this point. Fear has a focus. So if there's a dog coming at me with his teeth barred, getting ready to attack me, then I will feel afraid. That's fear. But if I locked myself in my home because there might be a dog out there if I go outside that is hostile, that is anxiety. Anxiety has to do with potential dangers that exist, potential problems, and they turn into this reality for us. So we lock ourselves into just this prison in our lives. The potential dangers are there. And so we need to go back to what is true, what is real. We need to focus on what is true in order for us to be able to be healthy in our minds. That's the first one. Focus on what is true.
Secondly, what is honorable. Because sometimes something is true but it is not honorable. “Did you know that Betty Sue had this problem with their husband? Can you believe what he did? I can't believe that either. He's such a terrible guy. In fact, all these guys are like this.” And so now we’re starting to talk about something dishonorable. Maybe we need to, even though it might be true, move from something that's true to move to something that's honorable. Honorable. This is the same word used as a quality of someone who's a Christian leader, an elder, or deacon or deacon’s wife even. This idea that there's an honorable response, respectable idea. So we move our thinking into this area of what is honorable. Not just true, but also honorable.
The third word there is the word just. Now just is the word righteous. And righteous has to do with things that are… You know what righteous is. They’re right. They're just. As opposed to wrong. The problem with anxiety and anger and often sadness is that they're often responses to things that are wrong. So here if you start focusing on the bad, then you're going to feel anxious. If you're focusing on the bad, you're going to feel angry because people have mistreated you. If someone's mistreated you, then it's not just, and so you want to get back at them, and it just starts to swirl inside. Paul is saying here, wait a minute. Let's focus on what is just and righteous. Because if we focus on wrongs, it leads us into emotional danger. So let's focus on things that are just.
The next one is, whatever is pure. This is a very valuable word. It's pure, it's clean is the idea. Focus on what is clean. If you go out and exercise and you're all sweaty, or you go out and work in the yard and you're all dirty, you want to come in and take a shower to get all cleaned up. That's the idea here. A good word is clean. And it has this sense of focusing on the clean things in life. Because there can be a tendency because we live in a dirty world to focus on the dirty things in life. Let's focus on the clean things.
The next word is the word lovely, which means moving toward love. That's the idea here. Whatever is lovely. And that's why the scripture uses the term love to refer to love covers a multitude of sins or perfect love casts out fear. There's something about love and moving toward it that allows other things to dissipate in our lives and they don't become as significant, as important because we're focusing on love.
Now we're identifying all of these lists of things that help us to be healthy. And what they do is they create an immune system for us so that we can repel some of the negative disease-like thinking that can create all kinds of problems in our lives, especially as we're focusing in on anxiety.
The next word is commendable. This is the thing that that person gets points for what they did idea. So we're going to commend things that are commendable and worth considering. And when something is commendable, it's valuable.
Now if you look at the news, most of the time the news promotes things or talks about things that are negative – problems, disasters, and so on. If there is a plane crash, it will be reported in the news. But if a plane lands safely, you never hear about it. When I came in on a plane yesterday from Dallas-Fort Worth to Philadelphia and the plane landed, I didn't look and say, “Oh in the news it says flight 407 from Dallas to Philadelphia landed safely.” You will never see that in the news. The same thing is true in our lives. We sometimes gravitate toward the negativity that is out there. There's only so much data that comes out or so much news about a particular thing in any given day. Yet you could turn on the news and they could talk and talk and talk and talk forever about the little bit that came out today. We can then get sucked into that. We have to be careful. I think it's important for Christians to be informed. I'm not saying don't listen to the news. There's a point at which the news starts to create this stuff inside of us we need to be careful of and we need to focus on what is commendable.
I love looking at Christianity Today’s news service. Because then you're seeing the Christian view of the news, what's actually going on in a place where there's a disaster or there's a war or something going on. You see the Christians working behind the scenes. Those things are commendable. And now I'm focusing my thoughts on the healthy things that are going to provide for me a healthy immune system so I can address some of the challenges that are faced out there in the world. Commendable.
The next word is the word excellence. These are the things that are high up on the list. I mean, it's not just about for the Christian what's bad or good. I mean, we already know we shouldn't be dealing with the bad stuff. But there's a lot of good stuff that gets in the way of the excellent. Did you ever think about that? So we don't say, “Well what's wrong with it?” about some actions or some activities. We don't ask the question, what's wrong with it? Because we're not just looking for the good, we're looking for the excellent. What is the excellent things that we can be thinking about? Excellence is important here.
And now lastly, he says anything worthy of praise. Anything that is praiseworthy, which leads me to think about these eight words. When I start thinking about these, I just think that we can put right over the top of that Jesus. Because when we focus on Jesus, we focus on all these words – true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, worthy of praise. All of these things are describing Jesus, aren't they? That's why the writer of the Hebrews says these words in Hebrews 12:2 – Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. That's what we fix our eyes. We're fixing our eyes on mental, spiritual, emotional health, which is getting to know Jesus more and then choosing those things that we're going to think about because the person who has the peace of God thinks a particular way. How do they think? They think about these things?
Let me tell you how I use this list as I'm working with a person who's experiencing anxiety in their lives. This kind of captivating anxiety that takes place in a person's life. I just want to share with you a technique that I think is helpful. Remember, we already talked about a technique working with children, where if a child is feeling anxious in those moments they can go through the alphabet and think of one thing for each letter that they're thankful for. Well that idea comes from this passage earlier on in verse 6 where it says – with thanksgiving make your requests be made known to God. So don't be anxious about anything, he says, but with thanksgiving make your requests known to God. So thanksgiving becomes one of these tools that we use to overcome our anxiety. But another tool that I suggest that parents use with their children who are experiencing anxiety and they need to move to a different direction, is to create a notebook that has one page for each one of these things.
The first thing you got to do is you got to define them because children don’t understand what honorable is or just, so we define it so that children can get an idea of what it looks like. And then they can list on it examples of what that means and what it looks like so that when they start to feel anxious, they can go and think about these things, as Paul says. Think about these things. So creating the notebook is helpful so you have it. Now you might not create a notebook, although I think a notebook is good, especially if we have a problem this area. But the goal is to take the notebook and put it in your heart so that you can think about these things in your life.
Another idea that I think is really important to understand is that rarely can you argue yourself out of anxiety. So I find that parents do this with their children. Oh my child's really anxious about whatever thing is going to happen. And so the parents tried to explain to them why this is okay for them to do that. Rarely is that helpful. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that kind of argumentation with children. But the problem is, rarely do children respond to that because it's always the possibility. Well it's possible this bad thing can happen.
So I teach parents you have to teach kids how to jump tracks. Jump tracks. That's what we need in our lives. You have to be able to jump tracks. It goes like this. You're going down the road and then all of a sudden you start to feel anxious, so you start going down the anxiety path. As you're going down the anxiety path, things get bad and then you start thinking how bad they could really get, and that would be disastrous. And by the way, if they get to be that way, it's going to be the end of the world. So it's all down this path is terrible. And really, the best way is not to argue yourself back to here. It’s to jump tracks. To jump over onto this other track where you're thinking about things that are noble and right and just and so on. That's what Paul is saying here. Jump tracks. That's the idea. Think about these things. He doesn’t say argue with yourself so you can get back to where you started or try to figure out these things. Because sometimes, you just can't figure them out. Sometimes we want to know things we will never know or at least we can't know today because they're part of tomorrow. So we want to know them today, but we can't, so we start to feel anxious. So we need to jump tracks. Sometimes we want to control things we just can't control. So we need to jump tracks for our own emotional, spiritual, and mental wellbeing. This is the message Paul is sharing here when he says think about these things.
So when we focus on Jesus that takes place. But also when we look at the scriptures this next set of verses here in Psalm 19 describes the Bible. Notice how similar the words are. Let me read this to you. Remember the words we just looked at, the eight words, and notice how many of them here are in this passage. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. The point being that when we find ourself feeling anxious, one of the ways to think about these eight things is to go into God's word and allow it to wash over our heart. To be able to take God's word and spend some time in it so that we can grow and learn and experience these things.
Well let's go back into our passage in Philippians 4:6-7. He says – Think about these things. In other words, meditate on them, ponder them. In the same way that Sharon went into the doctor, recognizing that she had some physical problems and wanted to get some help from the doctor who did some analysis and helped her do some self-evaluation, I would suggest that sometimes we need to do that in our own hearts. “Lord, I want to open my heart to you. And I want to ask you to help me do some of this evaluation that needs to take place.” That's what the psalmist does in Psalm 139. Let's look at those verses. Psalm 139. He says these words – Search me, God, and know my heart! Test me and know my anxious thoughts! I'm going to open my heart, Lord, I want you to test me, I want you to look inside, I want you to see where my anxious thoughts are.
I would suggest that doing this spiritual thinking audit helps us to be able to open ourselves up to the Lord and say, “God, would you check me out here? Where do I need to make some changes?” Because we're spending more time being worried than peaceful, we have a problem. Are we spending more time negative than positive? It's a red flag. Are we spending our time with more worldly thinking than eternal thinking? Then we need to be thinking about changing the way we're responding because maybe we need to make some adjustments in the way we think.
One of the things I find, as we're delving into this issue in people's lives, is that some people find that they're stuck. They feel stuck in their anger, they feel stuck in their anxiety or their depression. They just feel like they're stuck there, they can't get out. And so the normal kinds of things that we're talking about here that set up the immune system to prevent us, they need a little bit more surgery, they need a little bit more work. It's like there's this fortress inside of their heart that needs to be broken down.
So Paul uses some words to describe this whole process in 2 Corinthians 10:3-4. So if you're really struggling in this area of your life, if you've got some strongholds (that's the word used here) then I want you to see what the solution looks like. Because it's not just taking this particular idea from here or taking this medication from here. It's much bigger because it has to do with the heart. Paul uses this way to describe strongholds. Maybe this will touch you today. He says – The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. They're just not the same weapons. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. Demolish. To demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments. These are the internal arguments, these are the internal processes that we go through that causes us to be emotionally unhealthy. 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. We recognize there's junk food over here. We're going to take captive every thought and bring it over into these eight things that Paul's talking about in order to be successful.
Now I mentioned medication. I don't mean to suggest that what we're doing is stopping medication and starting something different. I'm not against medication, I mean, it's part of the privilege we have, the scientific benefits we have is to have some things like medications to help us. And so I'm not suggesting you get off your medications if you're on them. I'm just suggesting that there's a spiritual track here that's really powerful that we can embrace and enjoy and appreciate in our lives.
So if you have a stronghold in your life… For example, some people have experienced significant trauma. Trauma affects a person's brain – how they start responding to triggers, how they respond to problems in their lives. If I were to define a stronghold, I would define a stronghold this way: It's a bad pattern of thinking and acting in response to triggers. A bad pattern of thinking and acting in response to triggers. So if you had a traumatic experience, then you might have post-traumatic stress in your life. And the trauma that you experience is very difficult to overcome. I don't want to minimize that at all. I'm not saying well just pray and you'll be fine (although I do think prayer is a significant piece of that). There's going to be retraining that needs to take place in order for someone to overcome the significant patterns that have existed. We're going to create some new patterns that are going to be more healthy, that are going to create this mental, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing inside of us.
Well let's go back and look at the last phrase in Philippians 4 because I hope you notice the word there. It says – Practice these things. It's not just a once for all thing. It's not something you do just by going to church on Sunday. This is a way that you practice thinking about these things that he's talked about. We practice them. So now things are going to look different.
If you had some grass in your yard and you walked across that grass a hundred times or a thousand times, it turns into a path. The same thing is true in our brain. It turns into a path and then we don't like that path and we look at it and say, “Oh look, my grass is all messed up inside of my heart.” So what can happen inside of our heart is we start taking a different path. We start going on the sidewalk like God designed, and that path starts to grow its grass back. But it takes time to do that. It takes practice. We change our practices so that we move in a different direction. So now let's say you come home and your spouse is there and he or she starts yelling at you because she had a bad day or whatever. Instead of being defensive like you normally would have, now you come in and say, “Hi, honey. It sounds like you had a bad day or a hard day. How can I help you out here?” There's a different path that you take, you see, now that you are practicing these things. Because I'm going to think about lovely. I'm going to think lovely means to move toward love in a given situation.
Or maybe you're flipping through your Instagram and you're looking at some good things. But the way Instagram setup is it's going to show you the next thing and you know the next thing is going to take you on this path, and pretty soon you're there looking at it for an hour, and now we find ourselves into some pretty raunchy stuff or some stuff that's not healthy. And you go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I need to focus on what is pure” as we flip over to the YouVersion of the Bible and look at some scripture. We're going to change our practices, you see, in order to move in a direction.
Or you’re feeling stressed out, overwhelmed. Now instead of just eating more food or doing something that is unproductive, now we're going to move over here and we're going to pray maybe, as the passage talks about earlier. We're going to focus on things that are excellent. We're going to allow God to work in our lives. We're changing the practice. That's what the word practice means. We're going to do some things different. We're going to think and act in different ways. We're going to practice these things.
And here's the beautiful ending to the whole sermon series, the whole passage. Notice what he says – And the God of peace will be with you. Now if you were with us last week, you saw that we talked about the peace of God in verse 7, right? And the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. We all need the peace of God in our lives. But this is something different. This is the God of peace.
The reason we need the God of peace is because when you start feeling anxious in your life, you start feeling alone. It basically goes like this. We feel anxious about something that's impending. We feel anxious about something that's yet to come, which Jesus calls tomorrow. Okay. Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has enough anxiety of its own (in Matthew 6). When we start worrying about tomorrow and we think about the problems of tomorrow without recognizing that the God of peace will be with us there. If we would recognize that if any kind of disaster, any kind of problem, any kind of sickness, any kind of episode or something that happens in the future, it's not going to be there alone; God is going to be there with me. But God doesn't give me the grace today for tomorrow's problems. God gives me the grace today for today's problems. And tomorrow when I get there, there will be problems tomorrow. But the beautiful thing is the God of peace will be with me tomorrow. That's the beauty of this whole passage. And we could trust in this, the God of peace, who steps into our lives and blesses us in a way that we desperately need.
God wants to do a deeper work in all of our lives. I trust that as you come to challenges in the emotional category, you will come back to these words that Paul has taught us and you'll work on mental good mental health. The thinking about these things that are focused in on Jesus, on God's word, and the true things that are out there. When we do then we start developing this immune system because we pre-decide how we're going to think. We're going to decide today that when this bad thing happens, this is where I'm going with this. I'm going back to my notebook. I'm going back to this verse of scripture. I'm going back to this idea that God wants me to have. When this bad thing happens, this is where I'm going. If we don't plan it, then we just take whatever is available to us and often the junk food is more prevalent than the health food that we eat for our souls and our minds.
