I Choose Peace - In Anxious Moments, Part 1

How much would you pay someone if they could absolutely guarantee a solution to all your words? In other words, you would never ever have to worry again about anything.

Does this sound impossible? It's not, and that's today on Living on the Edge. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this daily discipleship program, Motivating Christians to Live Like Christians. I'm Dave Gruey, and I'm eager for you to hear this message because it focuses on one of the most powerful passages in the New Testament. In just a minute, Chip continues in his series, I Choose Peace, by picking up where he left off last time in Philippians chapter 4, and breaks down how we can respond to the worries and stresses of life. This is such a relevant topic that we all need to hear, so be sure to stick around after this teaching for additional thoughts from Chip on how we can find peace even in the face of worry.

Well, if you have a Bible handy, turn to Philippians chapter 4 for Chip's message in anxious moments. It is well with my soul. It is well with my soul. You can't sing a song like that and not pause just to ask, how's it going with your soul? I mean, is it well?

When you think of the fears, the frustrations, the thoughts about the future, how are you doing? The song's really powerful, but the story behind it might be more powerful. It was first sung in 1876. It was written by Horatio Spadford. He was an attorney that did well in investments in Chicago. He was a close personal friend of a guy named D.L. Moody, who was an evangelist of an earlier century. In 1871, there was a fire in Chicago.

It's called the Great Chicago Fire. And he lost almost all of his holdings, all of investments. So any of you that have ever gone broke, that's where he was. And as he began to build his life up again, he just felt like, you know, we need to pause for a moment. He said to his wife, and he had four daughters, I want you to get on the ship. We'll all go together.

Let's get a couple months away to get perspective in Europe. I was just ready to get on the ship, and there was a zoning problem with some property. And so he had to stay behind for a few days. He says, I'll catch the next ship.

It is now a famous telegraph. The ship with his wife and his four daughters was hit by another ship at sea. It went down, and he received from his wife a telegram that says, Saved alone. All four of his daughters died in that shipwreck.

Very few weeks later, he was on a second ship to meet his wife. And when he came to the place where the two ships collided, the captain brought him and said, this is about the place where you lost your daughters. And the words that we sang earlier is as he looked out over the ocean, with the Spirit of God speaking into the deepest parts of his hurt and his pain and his loss, he said, when peace like a river, it's well with my soul. Like sea billows roll, it is well with my soul. And I don't know about you, but it seems humanly impossible to lose everything financially, lose four of your daughters, and to honestly and sincerely say, it is well with your soul. And yet, if you'll notice on the front of your teaching handout, that is exactly what Jesus promised his early disciples, and Horatio Spafford is just one person among millions over the last couple millennia, have experienced the Spirit of God to do something inside of them that is beyond any human understanding. The last night, Jesus with his disciples said to them, I have told you these things so to me that you might have peace. In the world you'll have trouble, tribulations. But take heart, I've overcome the world.

This isn't theory here. We've had 10 memorial services in the last 30 days in our church. There's people all around you that have lost a mom, a dad, a grandpa, a child. And that's not unique. Everyone in this room, right, we have our issues. But we can choose peace. But how do you choose peace in moments of extraordinary anxiety? That's what we're going to learn. As we do, sometimes you have to learn a little bit about the problem before you can solve it.

So let's do a little research together. What exactly is anxiety? A textbook definition, it's uneasiness, apprehension, dread, concern, tension, restlessness, and worry. An anxious individual often anticipates misfortune, danger, or doom. We don't need that definition.

That kind of describes where a lot of us are multiple times a week at times. The biblical word for anxiety literally means to take thought. It can be used in a positive way like taking thought for something positively. But mostly it's used in the New Testament for taking thought as being obsessed with something. You can't get your mind off of it.

The German word comes from the word to choke or to strangle. And anxiety at its heart has the idea inside your mind of being pulled in two different directions. What makes us anxious or causes it is fear of the future.

This is probably the most common one. Fear of failure, fear of another terrorist attack, fear of an economic downturn, fear that your kids won't turn out right, fear you'll be single the rest of your life, fear that the marriage that you're in is never going to get any better, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, you name it. For others, anxiety is produced by conflict in the present, conflict in your marriage, conflict with a friend, conflict at work, conflict with a neighbor, conflict with one of your kids, conflict with your in-laws. The third cause for anxiety is, in the past, regret.

There's times when things are just going well and you're just driving in your car and out of the blue, you remember, oh my, what you did back then that you hope no one ever finds out. Or for some of us, we came to know Christ later in life and we made some mistakes and there's issues with some of our kids or some things about our life that we can't change and we just start getting overwhelmed with, I blew it, I blew it, I blew it, and it produces this anxiety. Anxiety isn't just a little thing to take a pill. Anxiety can ruin your life. I have a friend who's a professor, a medical doctor, and he wrote a textbook on psychological disorders. Here's a list of things that anxiety produces in us mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Makes people hyper-alert, irritable, fidgety, over-dependent, insomnia, talkative, poor memory, fainting episodes, excessive perspiration, muscle tension, headaches, including migraines, quivering voice, hyperventilation, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, high blood pressure.

I don't know about you, but that list alone tells me. I don't know how to get rid of anxiety, but I want to get rid of it in a hurry, right? So that's the issue. How do you overcome anxiety? There's many of you, this last week, you woke up at 2.11 and then 3.05 or 4.07, and you're thinking about the future, and your mind, it goes over and over and over again, and you're very fearful about something, or you're in conflict with someone, and the stomach acid is going around. How does that change? That's what we're going to learn.

Open your notes. I want to tell you that you simply do not have to live as an anxious person. It is possible to absolutely be at peace in the midst of horrendous, difficult, and uncertain times. Jesus promised it.

My peace I give to you. You might jot on the very top of your notes 1 Peter 5.7. Peter would make a command, and he would say, Cast all your burdens upon the Lord, because He cares for you.

And the burdens are cares. It's the picture of like a 9 or 10 year old boy coming home on Friday, and he's got his backpack, and he takes his backpack, and he throws it to the corner, and he goes, wow, no homework. Weekend. Literally. And you know what? He doesn't go in and go, I wonder if I've got something to do later. He's 8 years old. He just takes it off.

There's no homework. Man, it's going to be fun. That's the picture of casting all your burdens on the Lord.

Why? He really cares for you. You give your problems, your struggles, and anxiety to a personal God who is in control, who's all wise, who's loving, who's powerful, and you're the object of His affection. And in Philippians chapter 4 verses 6 and 7, He will give you a specific game plan. That every time anxiety comes and knocks on the door of your heart, this game plan will teach you that prayer can answer the door, and you can run into your Father's arms, and God will give peace. You're going to learn that every time anxiety knocks on the door of your heart, that you literally can let prayer answer it, and then run into your Father's arms.

You're going to learn, do I need to say it again? I want you to read the text silently as I read it out loud. Command, do not be anxious about anything. Second command, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God. Promise, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now, if you're a little bit new, we study the Bible together, and so one of the questions we always ask before we make application is, what does it actually say?

And by that, you need to make some observations. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, and it's truth. The second question is after, what does it say? Well, what does it actually mean?

What did it mean to its first century hearers, and what does it mean to us? And then the last question that's most important is, so, God, what do you want me to do? How do I put this into practice? So often, at least when I study, I will outline the text, what I've laid out here for, I call it a mechanical outline. Just like when you study a poem or study Shakespeare, and you want to grammatically see what's happening in it. So what I've done is I've taken it in the original language, and I've just literally put it in order so you can see the grammar. You don't need to know the original language, but in this particular case, it's interesting that he takes a word completely out of order to make his point. So notice, just when I lay it, the first command is nothing be anxious about.

If you have a pen, put a little arrow and write negative command in your notes. In other words, we're commanded, literally, it's stop being anxious, stop worrying. It's not just a little thing. It eats up your soul. It ruins your emotions. It thwarts your relationships.

It chokes the life out of you. Stop worrying. If it's a command, that means there's got to be power and a way to obey this command. Notice the positive command. But in everything, he's going to give us four specific words for prayer.

After the everything, put an arrow and put positive command. In everything, by prayer, petition, with thanksgiving, the request of you be made known unto God. There are four words in the New Testament for prayer.

All four of them are right here. Here's what I want you to know. When anxiety knocks on the door of your heart, let prayer answer it, but not just any kind of prayer. He's going to give you a very clear, using all four words, there's a specific way to pray that when you're anxious, when you're fearful, when the stomach acid starts, when you are awake and can't fall back to sleep, when you have these scenarios where you're projecting into the future how terrible and what's going to happen, and that's your job, and your kids aren't going to turn out right, and this is going to happen, and your marriage will never get better, and this thing at work is never going to change, and the health issue is always going to go from bad to worse. Once you start down that track, there's a kind and there's a way to pray that the Spirit of God will go hush. In fact, notice what the promise is.

The promise is that when you pray, petition, with thanksgiving, and you make your request known to God, the peace of God that's beyond human understanding will guard your heart and your thoughts or literally your minds. Circle the word guard. If you've ever seen the little commercial, I like this commercial, it's the one where the guy's in the bank and the robbers come in and everyone's on the floor, and the lady looks up and says, Do something. He goes, Oh, I'm not a security guard. I'm a security monitor. I'm just monitoring. There's a problem here.

That's this word. He says, when you pray like this, the Spirit of God that gives you a sense of peace and calm will literally guard the deepest parts of your life and your thinking. And in fact, what we're going to learn is there's times when you lose your peace when you realize there's something wrong that actually it's like the red light on the dashboard of the car, and what it tells you is that there's something wrong under the hood.

When you lose your peace, there's something about your abiding in Christ, your focus, your mind, your trust is off of Christ and onto something else, and your loss of peace is like, and it says he'll act as like an arbitrator, a monitor, so that you can get back in line. With that, let's get to the application. Negatively, there's a command. We've looked at them negatively and positively. You'll notice there's four keywords, but it's the how, and there's the promise, which is the why. In your notes where it says negatively, I would like you to write, stop worrying about anything. Part of how our minds work, we see it, we say it, we write it, it sticks.

I just saw a study by Harvard University recently that talked about those graduates that actually wrote down their goals were 80% more likely to succeed. I want you to write down, stop worrying. Don't just sit here and listen.

You're not passive. This is about your life today in this moment. Second, where it says, positive command, I want you to write, pray about everything. Because we're gonna, here's the thing, some of us have practiced being anxious most of our lives. We learned it from our parents.

Almost everyone does it. We think that what you do, you know, when you worry is you take a pill for this, a pill for that. When you feel uptight, we'll turn on the TV. For others, when you lose your peace, you go shopping. For others, you know, it's been really tough and you're uptight about things and you're wondering, so one glass of wine made you feel a little bit better and about three makes you feel a lot better. Some of you had a prescription for some back pain and when you get uptight now, you actually take some of those pills even though your back pain was months ago gone and better. For others, some of us, it's maybe a little bit more healthy.

You just work. The moment you feel anxious, you just start working because you feel like you're in control. At the heart of anxiety is life is out of control and I can't handle this, so you do something that gives you pseudo peace. For many of us, it's just a trip to the refrigerator when we're not really in need of calories. But there's something about a bag of chips, a bag of popcorn, some chocolate that just makes you feel better for what?

Right, 15 to 30 minutes. There's all kind of ways that we address our anxiety. Most of them aren't very helpful. And then when we do a lot of those things, some of you log on and surf, some of you spend mindless hours, not because you want to or need to because it's just a distraction. Is there something wrong inherently with doing some of those things?

Absolutely not. But when I'm doing that because what I'm really trying to do is get my mind off of this gnawing anxiety, you're not letting the peace of Christ rule in your heart and in your mind. I mean, my confession is, my anxiety, ESPN.

Somehow watching other people play games makes me feel better for a half hour or get into my work or go work out. Bad? Evil?

I don't think so. But when I do it, instead of letting prayer answer the door and let God work in my life, my heart, neither wise nor profitable. Now what I want you to see is that prayer answers the door, but it's a very specific kind of prayer. Like you, I have lots of challenges with anxiety.

I think we all do. And I think God would say, okay, I want to teach you a way to pray because I felt very anxious and oh, God, help, help, help. God, God, God.

And then I just pick up the backpack and put the burdens right back on. So I want to walk through these four specific words. You practice this and you do not have to be anxious. The first word is prayer. It's the most common word in the New Testament in prayer. And it's the idea of turning, in the moment you feel anxious, it's turning my thoughts and my feelings upward. It's getting an upward focus. It's adoration.

It's pausing and recognizing, wait a second. In the midst of these struggles right now, I want to get my focus on who is God. Worship. I actually have more than a few struggles with anxiety. I tend to juggle a few more balls than I can really juggle. I'm trying to accomplish more than I'm really capable of. And as a result of that, you know, I don't know about you, but you can wake up. If you wake up, and as you're waking up, the first thoughts in your mind is what about this and what about that meeting and what about this and one of my kids over here. And then if you get up out of bed, watch your face, and if you pick up your phone, oh my gosh, dials down 77 points and I'll just check my email while I'm walking to make coffee. Oh my gosh. You know what you're setting yourself up for? Disaster. The first thing you need to do in the morning, every morning, either Psalm 23 or the Lord's Prayer, before I get out of bed, I realize, God, if I don't see life through your lens, I'm gonna be in trouble because I know this life is gonna bring more challenges, just the ones I know about. They're more than I can handle.

And it's interesting. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, what did he say? When you pray, say, our Father, oh. So in the midst of all the craziness of the world, the one who created all that there is, the one who sent his son to die for you and rise from the dead, the one who's the sovereign king who's all wise, all powerful, and all knowing of every circumstance, real, possible, and potential, he's your papa. And say to him, who art in heaven, you're not pulled into this or that, you're the creator, you're in control. Holy is your name. I can know 100% of the time that God will never lie to me. God's always gonna be pure.

His intentions. So it's this moment where you pause and you get a high, clear view of God. When anxiety knocks at the door of your heart, let prayer answer it. And the first prayer is, worship and adoration.

Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message in anxious moments from his series, I Choose Peace. Do you feel burdened by life's demands? Are you anxious about the financial pressures on you?

Is there a difficult relationship wearing you down? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need a little more peace in your life. In this series, Chip talks about the peace of God that in the midst of the chaos, restores, calms, and encourages us.

Don't miss a single part of this series. It'll change your relationship with God. For additional info on I Choose Peace, or to order any of the series resources, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org.

App listeners tap special offers. I'll be right back in just a minute with some final kind of application for you and your life about today's message. But I just want to encourage you that peace is something that God gives to every believer. The fact of the matter is, we tend to look for it in three different places.

We tend to look outside, you know, if I just met that person or, you know, if I made a lot of money. We look for peace in circumstances externally. Or for others, it's sort of an inside journey, if I can find oneness with myself, and if I can meditate and ponder and maybe somehow align, do deep breathing exercises.

And, you know, there's a lot of ways that are very functional that maybe help us, but they're superficial. What God wants to give us is inward peace, a peace that transcends even human comprehension, a peace that in the midst of a difficult relationship you can go to bed and sleep, a peace that even when you have uncertainty about work and finances, that there's a calm, there's an absolute certainty for your purpose and your future that God will provide. That's the peace that this series is about. It's what the Apostle Paul taught in Philippians 4, and it's the gift that Jesus promised to his followers then and now. And what I want you to know is that this has been a big part of my journey, and in my journey after I taught this, I wrote a book that I walked through exactly what the Apostle Paul taught and what the Lord has taught me about how do you access this peace. What I want you to know is if you're a follower of Jesus and the Spirit of God lives in you, then you have it.

What I would love to do is help you access it in very practical ways. God longs for you to experience his calm and his peace in the midst of this very, very stressful and chaotic world. The book's called I Choose Peace, How to Quiet Your Heart in an Anxious World. Well, to order your copy of Chip's brand-new book, I Choose Peace, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. If you're ready for more peace in your life, get your hands on this resource or order a few to study together with some friends. You'll want to revisit the truth in this book again and again, especially when anxiety and worry threaten to overwhelm you. To order your copy of I Choose Peace, just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003.

App listeners, tap special offers. Now let's get to Chip's application. As we close today's program, I want to ask you a question. Is it well with your soul? And what I mean by that, are you at peace or are you filled with anxiety and worry? And I know sometimes we reframe it, oh, I'm not worried, I'm just a little frustrated, or I'm not worried, I'm just upset, I'm just really, really concerned. Could you just back off for just a minute right now and ask the Holy Spirit to give you a level of transparency and honesty?

And then let me ask you some questions that I think might really help. If you don't recognize where you're anxious, just certainly can't deal with it. I mean, this is a great passage.

I mean, this is great truth. But what's causing the anxiety in your life? I mean, is it a subtle or not so subtle fear of the future? Is it a relational conflict, you know, like we talked about the last few days? Is it money? I mean, you're just worried about money, or is it a biopsy report? Or like in my case, you know, I'm now and then, it just flashes through my mind.

Is the cancer going to come back that my wife beat? Or is it a regret? Is there something that just keeps coming to your mind? You think, oh, if I wouldn't have done that, or if I would have done something else.

Or maybe it's just a big decision you made, and you're living with the consequences, and somehow you're living in this emotional turmoil of wanting to turn back the clock, but you just can't do it. Here's what I want you to know. When worry and anxiety knocks at the door of your heart, let prayer answer it, and there's just a certain kind of prayer. In fact, I'm going to talk very, very specifically in our next broadcast how to take this passage from, oh, that's a nice verse in the Bible, to a very action-oriented process so that when you begin to worry, how you can literally stop worrying, and God will use it by the power of His Spirit and His Word to really help you develop over time the habit of not worrying and not being anxious.

Until then, however, this is what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to go to the website and get the message notes. I think you need to see how I've laid out this passage. Second, there are certain messages that we all need to listen to more than once. I've actually, here's a confession, I've actually listened to my own message on this, and God has spoken to me through me. I'm teasing, but it's through this passage. And so you really need to listen to this whole series or other series.

It's absolutely free. But I want you to begin to renew your mind. And then here's my last request. I know I'm giving you a lot of options here, but get out a three-by-five card or open your phone and click where it says Notes, and I want you to actually write out or type out Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, whatever version you want. And then when you start feeling anxious and worrying, just open it up and read it slowly. And that will kind of help you start to make progress until our next time together. And I'll give you some very practical ways to absolutely stop worrying, okay? See you next time. this Edition of Living on the Edge.