I have a quick question for you. How many of you have ever heard the phrase ‘Helicopter Parent’? Helicopter parenting, for those of you who don’t know, is basically when a parent or parents take an excessive amount of interest in their child or their teenager’s problems. I was thinking that this was probably a relatively new term, but I realized it actually came out in about 1969. There was a book called Between Teenager and Parent, or something like that. In the book, one of the teenage girls in an interview said that “My mom hovers over me like a helicopter.” That was back in 1969. More recently, about the year 2000 or so, this idea of a helicopter parent began to gain new popularity because you had the millennials going into college. The college administrators were experiencing helicopter-type tactics from their baby-boomer parents and also the Generation X parents. They would call the school at 9 or 10 in the morning and have the secretary go to the dorm to make sure the child got up for class. Or when the child did not get the grade that the parent thought he or she deserved, the helicopter parent would call the teacher and complain.
I am willing to admit that I have a little bit of helicopter parenting tendencies. Is anybody else willing to admit that? Good. I have never called the college of any of my children, but I did do something a few years back that I think would classify me as a helicopter parent. I think it was about 2011 that there was a massive hurricane that was headed up towards Washington, D.C. It was moving slowly off the east coast. At that time, my daughter Natalie was in the Air Force. She is still in the Air Force, but she was stationed in Washington, D.C. for some training. As I watched this hurricane on the Weather Channel inch its way up the east coast, I felt my anxiety level inching up my chest. I couldn’t resist. I had to call her and see how she was preparing for this. Of course, I call her and say Natalie how are you preparing for this hurricane. Her response was what hurricane? She was about to just get in her car and get some fast food and this hurricane is barreling down. I said there is this monster hurricane headed your way. You have to make sure that you have plenty of water and food and batteries and flashlights. Her typical teenage response was “I’ll be fine, dad.” But I wasn’t going to let it end there. I said to her it is the weekend. It’s Friday. You have no classes over the weekend. We are only four hours away so why don’t you just get in your car and drive back to Pittsburgh for the weekend and return back on Monday morning. She really didn’t like that idea because she had just arrived at the base. In order to get permission to leave she would have to go through all sorts of red tape. But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Just to keep me quiet, I think, she agreed to go to the supervisor. She said something like “My daddy says there is a big hurricane headed up this way and he thinks I should come home for the weekend to Pittsburgh.” After somewhat of a pause, I think the supervisor said something on par with “Listen, you tell your daddy that the Air Force owns you and we don’t really care that he is worried. If a hurricane is going to hit, we need you right here so you can help the people. Not back home with your daddy in Pittsburgh.” Needless to say, I humiliated her and I did less helicopter parenting.
I notice that some of you have a nervous laugh because some of you can probably relate to it. Some of you are probably thinking that is perfectly normal. I would do the same thing. But sometimes we take our concerns to the point of anxiety. If it is not about our kids, sometimes it has to do with our health or finances or job. The reality is we live in a very chaotic world and so concerns are perfectly normal. It is only when those concerns turn to worries and those worries turn into anxiety that they not only have a negative effect on our physical health, but our mental health and even our spiritual health. As we continue to look in the book of Philippians, we see that the apostle Paul has a nice little formula for dealing with anxiety in a chaotic world. Paul is at the end of the letter. It appears that he is just shooting off all these random thoughts. Although they may appear random to us, they are actually some of the meatiest passages in the Bible. Passages that give very practical advice for how to live as a Christian in this crazy and chaotic world. He starts off by complementing the church, referring to them as joy in his crown. Then he goes on the attack of this disunity issue. Apparently, there were two women in the church with difficult to pronounce names, Euodia and Syntyche, who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get along. We don’t know why they couldn’t get along and what their disagreement was, but we know that Paul would not tolerate it. He wanted to address it before it got out of hand. We don’t know what that disagreement was about, but we do know that Euodia and Syntyche will go down in history as the two people that could not get along in the church in Philippi. That is not a very good legacy to have. He quickly addresses this idea of disunity and then out of the blue he says “Rejoice in the Lord always.” In case they didn’t hear it the first time, he says “I will say it again, Rejoice.” Rejoice is not a word that we hear too often in modern day society, but we know that Paul was very fond of that word. I think he used it about 16 times in his letter to the Philippians.
I was also reading that of the over 300 times that joy or a variation on joy was mentioned in the New Testament, 40% of those mentioned were tied to Paul. Paul had a very high view of this word joy because he actually felt that true joy should be the mark of a true Christian. When he is thinking about joy, he is not thinking about sometimes joy the way we think about it as happiness. He is thinking about the joy that happens because we have been reconciled back to God through Jesus Christ. That is the joy that he is expecting us to experience. What is kind of significant is that the word joy and all the variations on joy, the root word is actually the same word that is used for grace. It makes sense. Paul often ties those two words together. He sees the grace of God what we would call the unmerited favor of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ is really reason again for joy. Not only for joy because we have life eternal but joy that we can begin to live our life right now and really ideally free of fear and free of anxiety. That could be why he goes on to say “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Anybody familiar with that passage? It is probably one of the most memorized passages in the Bible. I imagine that some of you have taken it and put it on your bathroom mirror or your car visor because you want to be able to refer to it. What Paul is doing here is giving a formula for how to have peace in the midst of a chaotic world.
I would like to spend a few minutes unpacking these two verses. It is clear that he says right off the bat “Do not be anxious about anything.” I want to make it clear that Paul, when he says “Do not be anxious”, is not suggesting that the people should live some sort of a carefree life and that they should throw caution to the wind. The reality is when somebody lives a carefree life, eventually that life may result in some anxiety not only for themselves but for those around them. He is not advocating a carefree life, but he is addressing the excessive concern that the people sometimes could get caught up in, so much so that it begins to affect not only their mental and physical health but their spiritual health. So this is listed as a command; “Do not be anxious about anything.” Really it kind of seems over the top and a little hypocritical because Paul himself a couple chapters back admitted that he had a little bit of anxiety. You may recall back in chapter 2 there was a guy named Epaphroditus. He was a messenger sent by the Philippian people to help care for Paul’s needs while he was in prison. As the story goes, Epaphroditus either got sick or hurt or did something that caused him to be bedridden. We really don’t know. But when the Philippian people learned that Epaphroditus was ill, they became stressed out. When Epaphroditus heard that the Philippians were stressed out, he became stressed out. When Paul heard that Epaphroditus and the Philippians were stressed out, he became stressed out. So much so that instead of sending Timothy back to the Philippian church, which was his first preference, he decided to send back Epaphroditus “so that when you see him again, you may be glad and I may have less anxiety.” I think Paul is admitting he experiences anxiety. I think he is basically saying I struggle with anxiety too so when I am preaching in this letter, I am preaching it not only to you but I am preaching it to me just like when I stand up here giving the sermon. I am just the messenger. I am the first person that has to hear the sermon. I have already suggested that I deal with anxiety. In some cases I deal with it on a regular basis, but I have learned to control that. I think if Paul was here today, he would say I have this anxiety and my anxiety is different than yours because I am in prison and I don’t know whether I am going to be let go or executed. I know that you are experiencing some other forms of anxiety, but he would probably say it doesn’t matter. He would go on to say that what you need to do is you need to take “everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, and present those requests to God.” Everything. You read this passage and you begin to think surely he can’t mean take everything to God. You might be thinking there has to be some deep-rooted meaning here. What does the Greek say? The Greek says everything. That is what it says. It means everything. I know when we read these passages we tend to want to save this sort of passage for the big crisis in life. The phone call that you get that somebody has cancer. Or the financial crisis. Or the relationship crisis. Or some sort of a major accident or crisis going on in the world. Some of you may have seen on the news last week that there was a SkyWest airline that had to make an emergency landing because at least three people began to lose oxygen and were passing out on the plane. So the pilot had to make an emergency landing. He was going down 7,000 feet every few minutes. Can you imagine being on that plane especially when you heard what went on overseas a couple weeks ago? You are thinking what is going on here. I was reading an interview with one of the passengers and he said something like I was watching outside and seeing us get closer to the water and I realized all I could do was pray so I put my head down and just prayed. I think that most of us would say that is a good application for this passage and yes that is a very good application for this passage. But I think what Paul would say is don’t save this passage for the very unique crisis moments that you experience every few years or months or whatever it is. The reality is if anything is taking a chunk of your mind or or consuming a thought life that should be reserved for God, you are going to eventually affect your spiritual life. You are going to struggle with your spiritual life because you are basically creating this idol in your brain. You are holding on to something that doesn’t need to be held on to. You need to just let that go. It really doesn’t matter whether somebody else thinks it is trivial or not. The bottom line is if it is causing you anxiety, you need to give it up to God.
How many of you last week were really worried that Chuck would not get his sermon done this week? Debbie. Why weren’t you worried? I was worried. In fact, I am worried every week that I am not going to get it done in time. I experience anxiety every week that I am going to show up some Sunday morning with 200 people and I have absolutely nothing to say. That is stressful. And hopefully it has to be something inspirational. So it is a very stressful thing, but it is stressful to me. Just as you are not so worried about what stresses me, I am not necessarily concerned about what stresses you. I don’t even know what you are being stressed about. The bottom line is God cares. If it is occupying too much space in your brain, you need to deal with it. There is a companion verse in 1 Peter 5:7 where it says “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” All of your anxiety, give it to God because he cares for you. Don’t be worried about if this is too insignificant to bring to God. You will know very quickly if it is significant if it is causing you excess concern. If it is causing you excess concern, you have to be quite comfortable in taking it to God. Taking it “by prayer and petition” as Paul goes on to say. We read these words prayer and petition and some people think he is being a little redundant here. Isn’t really a prayer a petition where you are asking God for things? Probably to a degree that is true but that is the wrong way to think about prayer. You end up picturing God as this big vending machine in the sky where you plug in your prayer request and he spits out the rewards. That is not the way you are supposed to approach it. So you have petitions and requests but the prayer that Paul is talking about is at its most basic idea that prayer is first and foremost an act of worship and adoration. You know when you go into prayer, for a brief moment you are leaving the earthly realm and going into the spiritual realm. I know some people struggle with spirituality that doesn’t fit their way of thinking. When you think about it, prayer is the most spiritual activity that there is. The moment you lift up a prayer, mentally you have stepped away from the things of this world, the earthly realm, and stepped into the throne room of God. You have stepped into the very presence of God. Because you have stepped into the presence of God, you need to have the right attitude. You don’t just go in there and show up and start asking for things. You have to have a sense of reverence. I would call it reverent fear. I was thinking about an illustration and I apologize that my illustration is a bit dated. But the illustration that came to me this morning was the movie The Wizard of Oz. The characters, the Tin man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy, are going to see the Wizard of Oz because they want to ask for stuff. The Tin Man wanted a heart. The Scarecrow wanted a brain. The Lion wanted courage. Dorothy wanted to go home back to Kansas. Remember that scene when you were little scared you a lot. They are walking down that great big hallway. You get the sense that they have a fear of Oz. I am not suggesting that that is what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to go to God terrified that he is going to zap us or something, but you have to have a reverent fear. You are entering the throne room of the creator of the universe who is waiting in the wings to meet you. That is an amazing thing if you begin to think about it. You don’t just get a thought and get a prayer and rush in and dump your prayer request on God and then leave. And you wonder why your prayers are not answered. You have to settle your mind. You have to settle your heart. You have to settle your soul.
Jesus talks about this when he is explaining to the disciples about how they should pray. He says “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” This verse is very applicable to your prayer life. I don’t think Jesus is saying go in the room and shut your physical door, although it is good to have your own private prayer room. Really what he is talking about is shut the mental door. Do you ever try to do that? You go before God first thing in the morning and you are running a little bit late and you just want to go in and meet with God, and your mind is going a thousand miles a minute. He is saying the first thing you ought to do is nothing else but shut the door. Shut out all those things that are trying to come into your mind to distract you from God’s presence. There are a lot of different ways you can do that, but if you are ever going to have any sort of real feeling of the presence of God, you have to learn to do this. Try it for ten minutes for a week; it will drive you crazy because you are going to realize that your mind is going a thousand miles a minute. It will scare you because you won’t be able to do it. But if you stick with it long enough, over time you learn how to do it. You do. You become aware of God’s presence not even looking for anything, not even asking for anything at that time. You just want to be in God’s presence. Then when you are in his presence that is when you pray and petition and you do it in a posture of thanksgiving.
I have a quick test I want you to take. What do you see? Black dot. That is the problem. Let’s say that black dot represents the concern you are bringing to God. And usually it does. Your mind is all focused on this thing you are going to bring to God and what you do is basically don’t see all the blessings that surround that concern. There are a gazillion blessings and all you see is the concern. That is why Paul inserts that command to do it all with thanksgiving because he knows there is a power that comes with thanksgiving. There is a power that comes when you go into prayer and you begin not simply by beginning to ask for stuff but just thanking God for everything that you can imagine. Over time what happens is the dot gets smaller and smaller even to the point where you say I really don’t even care if this concern is answered because I am feeling so blessed. I am really feeling that God is in control and God is caring for me in so many ways that this concern really just doesn’t matter. This doesn’t just apply to the small little prayer requests or the small little concerns. It really applies very well to the big concerns. Maybe you just got the news that there was cancer in the family or a heart situation or something like that. Immediately, you mind goes down this tube of destruction. What if you just stop and say 100,000 heart beats go on in my body every day. That is a pretty good blessing. I had to look it up. 100,000 times your heart beats every single day. And you are worried about the one prognosis you got that may or may not turn out to be a bad thing. Focus on the fact that you have your hands, your eyes, you are able to walk. Focus on the good things. List out all the blessings that you have before you take that concern to God. Or if you are dealing with a financial crisis. Maybe you got an unexpected bill in the mail. Instead of getting preoccupied with this bill, just begin to thank God for all the possessions that he has given you. That shouldn’t be hard because in America I don’t care who you are, you have more stuff than three-quarters of the world, so you should find something to be able to give thanks for. Let’s say you are in a relationship probably, possibly a divorce or even a death. You say how can I find a blessing in that? You can if you look for it. Because you will see even in a broken relationship or a death that God brings a whole slew of new people into your life that you would never have met had that not occurred. Those are blessings. What I would call the seeds of resurrection that are constantly coming up as we look for it. This is not something that is easy to do. It is very hard to do. It takes a lot of practice. But every single day you have the opportunity to practice. In all the little anxious moments and little concerns you have throughout the day. One example is I was coming home from visiting a patient in the hospital last week. I was downtown and I got all turned around and you have to make quick decisions and which ramp to get on. Before I knew it, I was going the wrong way back to Oakland and realized it was going to add about 15 minutes to my trip. I was anxious to get back so I started feeling this anxiety an annoyance. Then I remembered this verse that I was preaching on this week, so I had to force myself to say find a blessing in the midst of this. The blessing was that it was a beautiful day. It was a nice ride. I had my beautiful wife in the seat next to me. When we continue to do this stuff and we practice over and over and over, when we get to the big stuff, it becomes second nature how we are going to respond.
Eventually, we are going to get to the place where we are going to have what he would define as that peace that surpasses all understanding. “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” When he is talking about peace, he is not talking about the 60s sort of peace. Peace, love, Woodstock. He is not talking about that peace. He is talking about a very special kind of peace. The Hebrews would refer to it as Shalom, which is complete inner peace. The Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have no anxiety whatsoever within the trinity. That is the peace that God wants to give you and he is willing to give you. It is a peace that does transcend all understanding, at least human understanding. When you are experiencing this peace in the middle of a crisis, people are looking at you saying you are crazy. I just don’t get it. How can you experience this peace in the middle of this health crisis? You just sit them down and say let me tell you about it. It goes on to say that that peace will guard our hearts and guard our minds. The word heart is used in a lot of different ways, but here it is believed to be attached to your emotions where the mind is kind of your thought process. When you think about, when you begin to experience concern, it starts in your mind. That is the first battle ground. You have all this stinking thinking. If you meditate on that enough, pretty soon what it does is makes its way into your very being and your emotions. Before you know it, you are feeling tense and body aches and just feeling out of control. What Paul is saying here is that this idea of guarding your heart and mind is actually a military term. It has to do with the garrison of troops that would be surrounding a fort. He is saying to us that that peace is like a garrison of troops that surrounds you to guard your thought life and your emotional life.
In close, that is Paul’s formula for experiencing peace in a chaotic world. It is really a peace that is available almost to everybody. The only condition is actually it says “guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” It is only available to the people that are in Christ Jesus. You say what does it mean to be in Christ Jesus? It means basically accepting Christ into your life, the full gospel of Jesus Christ, the grace of God, the unmerited favor of God that came down and was given to you for the forgiveness of your sins so that now you can have free access into the throne room of God. That is what he is saying. If you are in Christ, you have access to the throne room of God. When you experience that and go into the throne room of God and confidently give your prayers and petitions and requests and you do it in a context of thanksgiving, you will experience that peace that transcends all understanding. It is a peace that was promised to Jesus before the crucifixion. He says “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Let us pray.
