How Do I Find Peace When I'm Anxious? (Philippians 4:4-9)

What Makes You Anxious?

So, a question for you: what makes you anxious? Maybe a better question is, what doesn't make you anxious right now? The stressors and anxieties we face seem to snowball year over year. As I prepared this sermon, I thought about the last 20 years. We have experienced a recession, political unrest, terror attacks, wars, an increase in school violence, a decrease in people feeling connected, a pandemic, fires, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes. That barely scratches the surface of what we have been through together.

So a passage like this one from Philippians is balm for our weary souls. Its poetic language has become a place many of us go for encouragement. But hearing these words is a breath of fresh air until we try to put them into action. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need to hear when I'm anxious is "Don't be anxious. Everything's going to be fine." All of us know there are many times in life when things are not fine. At the same time, letting my worry run rampant doesn't help anything. When I do that, and I do, things seem to get even harder.

Paul Wrote This From Prison

To understand Paul's words, we need to remember where they were written. Paul was in a Roman prison, shackled and in chains, a dangerous place where a likely outcome was his own death, and eventually it was. The Philippians were facing social and economic hardship because they chose to follow Christ. Both Paul and the Philippians were under extreme pressure to back off their faith. And yet Paul tells them it is worth it, because this is what God is calling them to do.

These words were a huge encouragement to Martin Luther King Jr. It has been reported that he wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail after spending a lot of time meditating on them, another letter written to strengthen a community under pressure for proclaiming God's justice.

Our anxieties keep evolving. Today we worry about data centers and AI ethics, more wars, guns, sexual assault and abuse, an upcoming election. We have no shortage of things to be anxious about, and we have a letter that tells us not to be anxious. So how do we unpack this?

Rejoice: Joy Is a Practice

When we become anxious, we often feel helpless. We worry we are stuck, and we become paralyzed by fear that things are out of our control. In this passage Paul gives us ways to engage God and our community when we feel this way.

The first thing he says is to rejoice. To rejoice means to be delighted and to cultivate joy. Rejoicing is an action, a practice. Joy is something we can commit ourselves to as we walk through the challenges and the beauty of life.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a blessing about joy by Kate Bowler: "Blessed are you when you have filled every corner with worry and work, with plans and precautions. May there be a little room left over for joy." I have carried that blessing on my phone, pulled it out before meetings and classes, and written it in my journal four times now. That is one way we cultivate joy: by reminding ourselves what joy is.

The Lord Is Near

The second thing Paul says is, "The Lord is near." Another message anxiety gives us is that we are alone, that no one is coming to help. But Paul says the Lord is near, and then goes further: the God of peace will be with you.

God has promised that even when we feel alone, we are not. It takes practice to remember that. We need practices that recall the truth about us: that God knows us by heart, made us, loves us, sees us and has not abandoned us. At Christmas we will talk about the name Emmanuel, which means God with us. We may feel alone, but we are not alone.

Coming together in worship, praying, meditating on scripture, having coffee with a trusted friend we can share our hearts with: these are the ways we practice God with us and remember that we truly are not alone.

Bring Your Requests to God

The third thing Paul says is, "Do not be anxious about anything," but he doesn't leave us there. "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."

Anxiety sends us into a tailspin. It makes us catastrophize the future and believe there is no goodness yet to come. It isolates us. Paul says that when we feel that isolation, we go back to God: write our requests down, say them out loud, and tell God how we are feeling.

I think about the TV show This Is Us. One couple had a great marriage, and when they faced a big challenge they played a game called Worst-Case Scenario. When their daughter hopped a train to see a boyfriend three hours away, they named the worst things that could happen. Naming the worst grounded them back in where they actually were. I think we need to play worst-case scenario with God: "Here is what I am most scared of. Here is what I fear."

When Brian was very sick, about two months before he died, two friends from seminary came to visit at the same time, a pastor from Atlanta and a trauma therapist from LA. They could only overlap for 22 hours. After we got Brian settled in bed, we went down to our cold basement in December, turned on the fireplace, and I started weeping. I listed everything we were losing: my husband, my kids' dad, the dad who should help them move into their first apartment, who should walk them down the aisle. I wept for more than an hour, and these sweet friends listened to it all.

Then one of them said, "Danielle, you are losing all those things. You're absolutely right. But what you don't know is how God is going to meet you with grace and love in the future. You can see the loss clearly. What you can't see clearly is how God is going to show up."

That has absolutely been true. We have made it through a graduation without Dad there. We got our first child off to college without Dad there. We are doing it, and God shows up, through all of you, through other people, and by sustaining us in a multitude of ways.

When we hold anxiety to ourselves, it causes us to spiral. Offering our anxieties to God, and having places where we can tell each other the truth, helps us find the way through.

The Peace That Passes All Understanding

Last, Paul tells us the result of these practices is peace. Not bumper-sticker "peace on earth," but gritty, real, unexplainable peace that can only come from God's presence with us. It is the peace that found Paul in prison. It is the peace that finds you in a hospital room, whether you are the patient or the one sitting beside the bed. It is the peace that can come when you are contemplating divorce and realize the best path forward is to divorce.

These circumstances don't feel like they should have peace. But peace comes when we know God is with us, because peace is the very nature of who God is. The peace that passes all understanding is the deep, abiding sense that even in the worst of life, God is still there.

Paul's idea of peace builds on the Hebrew word shalom, best translated as wholeness. It isn't saying everything is great. Wholeness says: all of this is extraordinarily hard, and I am not alone, God is with me, there is a future ahead, hope will return, and this hard thing is not the end of the story.

Whatever Is True

The last thing Paul says, I picture him writing feverishly: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you."

May we as followers of Jesus do our best not to let anxiety take over. When it does, may we ask for help, sometimes even professional help when we need it. May we stay focused on what is most true: the Lord is near, and our community sustains us. And may practicing our faith in Christ ground us in the here and now and propel us to bring hope, service, love and goodness to a world that is drowning in anxiety. This is the way. God is here with us.

Closing Prayer

God, we are so grateful that you hold this world together, that you breathe life into every living creature, and that you see the picture so much more fully than we can. May those truths compel us to trust you more, to offer you our deepest pain, and to rejoice with you in our deepest joys. And may we as a community of faith be responsive to a world longing for hope and love and a next step to take. Use us, we pray. Transform us, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.