Attacking Anxiety – Part 1

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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. Today, we're going to look at these four short verses, verses six through nine in Philippians four, and we're going to do three things. First of all, we're going to analyze worry.

We're going to talk about what it is and what causes it in our lives. Secondly, we're going to look at Paul's three answers to worry. And then in verse nine, we're finally going to look at the assurance that God gives to those who practice these principles. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress.

Worry has the power to rob our joy and drain our energy like few other emotions, but overcoming the crippling effects of anxiety is much easier said than done. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares three essential ingredients from Philippians chapter four for living a worry-free life. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David, and welcome to this Friday edition of Pathway to Victory.

We're glad to have you along today. We live in a day when worry and fear have reached epidemic proportions, and Christians are not immune from catching the disease. In our study of Philippians, Paul has shown us that you can't defeat the beast of anxiety with a passive wait and see approach.

The only way to conquer fear is to take it by the throat. In a moment, we'll be looking at Philippians chapter four to equip ourselves with the tools necessary to win this battle. And just before we get started, I'm eager to remind you that time is running out to request your copy of my book on this topic.

It's called Outrageous Joy, Living Above Your Circumstances. Paul said, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. In my book, I'll help you understand how to implement Paul's counsel as we identify three keys for living a worry-free life. A hardbound copy of my book comes with my sincere thanks for your generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. In addition to my book, I'll also include our scripture encouragement card. This is a handy reference tool that you can place in a prominent spot to remind you of Paul's message to the Philippians on finding joy, peace, strength, and hope.

I'll repeat all the details for requesting these resources just after today's message. But right now, let's open our Bibles to Philippians chapter four. I titled today's message Attacking Anxiety.

In his book on the series on Philippians, Laugh Again, Chuck Swindoll reprints an article that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times written by Barry Siegel. It was an article entitled World May End with a Splash. And with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Barry Siegel writes these words, alarmist worrying about such matters as nuclear holocaust and pesticide poisoning may be overlooking much more dire catastrophes. Consider what some scientists are predicting. If everyone keeps stacking National Geographic magazines and garages and attics, instead of throwing them away, the magazine's weight will sink the continent 100 feet sometime soon and will all be inundated by the oceans. Or here's another possibility. If the number of microscope specimen slides submitted to one St. Louis hospital laboratory continue to increase at its current rate, that city will be buried under three feet of glass by the year 2024.

And if that doesn't scare you, if beach goers keep returning home with as much sand clinging to them as they do now, 80% of the country's coastline will disappear in 10 years. Now if that's not enough for concern, consider this. It's been reported that pickles cause cancer, communism, airline tragedies, auto accidents, and crime waves. Did you know that? Pickles are responsible for all of those things.

You say, how do you know that? Consider this. About 99.9% of cancer victims have eaten pickles at some point in their lives. So have 100% of all soldiers, 96.8% of all communist sympathizers, and 99.7% of those involved in car and air accidents. Moreover, those born in 1839 who ate pickles have suffered 100% mortality rate. And this is really frightening.

Did you know that rats that were force fed 20 pounds of pickles a day for a month ended up with bulging abdomens and a loss of appetite? So it really doesn't matter. Whether it's cancer causing pickles or global warming, you can always find something to choose to worry about. Unless you're a Christian. You see, for a Christian, worry is never an acceptable option.

Now don't misunderstand. I'm not saying Christians don't have plenty to worry about. Christians are not exempt from problems. Christians have their share of unwanted divorces, unpredicted illnesses, undeserved terminations from jobs. We have problems. Jesus said the Christian life does not exempt you from problems.

In fact, it's the guarantee of problems. In John 1633, Jesus said, in this world, you will have tribulation. But he went on to say in the same verse, these things I have spoken to you that you might have peace.

The world gives you problems. Jesus Christ offers you peace. Or consider his words in John 14 verse 27. Jesus said, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. One of the lasting legacies that Christ left us before he departed into heaven was the gift of peace. The ability to be free from worry no matter what is happening around you. Peace is a gift, but it's also a command. Notice in the verse.

He said, I'm giving you peace, but I'm giving you this command. Let not your heart be troubled. Don't choose worry as an option.

Well, that's easier said than done, isn't it? How do you keep worry from strangling the joy out of your life? Paul's going to give us the answer in the passage we're going to look at today as we continue our series in Philippians. Take your Bibles and turn to Philippians chapter 4 as we look at three important principles for attacking anxiety. Philippians 4 beginning with verse 6. Now if anybody had enough to worry about it would have been the apostle Paul. Think of what was going on in his life as he wrote these words. He was under house arrest in Rome. The church that he founded and loved in Philippi was being attacked by false teachers from without and by division from within. Not only that, Paul was awaiting the verdict in his two year trial. He was going to learn whether he was going to live or die.

He didn't know from one moment to the next what his future was. And yet in spite of all of these things, he says in verse 6, be anxious for nothing. 19 times in this passage he talks about joy. Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again I say rejoice. How was Paul able to maintain his joy in spite of what was happening around him? Today we're going to look at these four short verses, verses 6 through 9 in Philippians 4 and we're going to do three things. First of all, we're going to analyze worry. We're going to talk about what it is and what causes it in our lives. Secondly, we're going to look at Paul's three answers to worry in verses 6 through 8. And then in verse 9 we're finally going to look at the assurance that God gives to those who practice these principles. First of all, the analysis of worry.

Look at verse 6. What is worry? He says be anxious for nothing or in some translations don't worry about anything. There are two words, two Greek words that are translated be anxious for nothing or don't worry.

And these two Greek words mean literally to divide the mind. And that's really what worry is when you think about it. Worry is a division of our mind. Somebody has said that worry is like a thin stream trickling through our minds that if left alone will cut a deep channel into which all other emotions are drained. Have you ever experienced that before?

You're having a productive day at work, going down your to-do list. Or maybe you're taking a day off and you're sitting around the swimming pool or playing a golf game or watching a movie when suddenly out of nowhere this alien thought comes into your mind. And usually that thought is a what if. What if this happens?

What if that happens? And you try to push that thought out of your mind and continue doing what you're doing but the more you try not to think about it the more you think about until suddenly fear, worry has you in its grip. You're paralyzed with anxiety. That's a good definition of what worry is. It divides our minds. The English word worry comes from a German word wergen which means to strangle. And that's what worry does.

It strangles us. What causes us to worry? As I look through the New Testament I find there are at least three sources of worry, of anxiety in our life.

Write it down on your outline. It will be helpful to you later on. First of all, some of our worry can be traced to a wrong value system. A wrong value system. Notice I didn't say a sinful value system.

I said a wrong value system. And what I mean is building your life, your security around that which is temporal instead of that which is eternal will rob you of joy. I want you to think right now about something you're worried about. Something right now that is robbing you of joy. I'm no psychic but I'm going to predict that whatever it is you have listed as that which you're worried about, I bet that that something is the loss of something important to you. What you fear most is the loss of something important to you. It may be the fear of a loss of a possession.

Something you value, whether it be money or even something like your health. Or perhaps you're fearful about losing a position, your job or something else from which you gain status in life. Your fear may have to do with a loss of a person.

Somebody who's important to you and you fear losing them either through death or through desertion or through distance. Most of the fears we have have to do with the loss of something important to us. And so how do we compensate? How do we tend to deal with worry? If we're fearful of losing our money, we'll try to make as much of it as we can and stockpile as much of it as we can and hopefully make the best investment so we never have to worry about money. If we're fearful of losing our health, what do we do?

We run to the doctor every time we have a cough or an ache or a pain. Or if we're fearful of losing another person that they might change their feelings toward us, we smother them with emotion. We think we can prevent losses in our life, but deep down we know that that thing we value can be taken from us. And that's why we worry. Whenever we build our lives around anything that can be taken away from us, the result is going to be worry.

The fact is you cannot protect yourself from the loss of those things that are most important to you, not if they're temporary. I think of the true story of the famous mural artist J. H. Zorthian. J. H. Zorthian lived in the 1940s and he was planning to build a beautiful home in Pasadena, California, but one day he was reading in the newspaper about a child that had been killed in a traffic accident. And as he thought about his own children, his small children, he thought he couldn't stand to have that happen, so he changed his plans. Instead of building that home in Pasadena, he selected the end of a long winding road on a mountain on which to build his home.

It was free from traffic. He thought this would keep my children safe. And so he planned that house. He constructed the home. Once the home was finished, he put child at play signs all along that winding road. When his house was completed, he stood back, he looked at it, surveyed it.

He was sure he had built a fortress that would keep his children safe. But he noticed one final thing he needed to do. He looked at his driveway and realized that one morning he might accidentally in a rush back his car out and run over one of his children. And so he decided to build a protected turnaround driveway instead. That turnaround driveway would have been completed on February the 9th, 1947 had it not been for a downpour of rain the week before that kept them from pouring the concrete.

It was on that day, Sunday, February the 9th, 1947, that J.H. Zorthian's 18 month old son Tyron squirmed loose from his little sister's grasp, ran out in back of the car that Zorthian was driving as he pulled out and he killed his young son instantly. The thing he feared most came to pass. You cannot protect yourself against the loss of those things that are most important to you if they're temporal. And that's why Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6 verses 19 and 20, he said, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. One cause of worry in our life is whenever we're building our security against those things that can be easily taken from us. Another source of worry in our life can be unconfessed sin in our life. Whenever we are living in a way that we know is displeasing to the Lord, if we're a Christian, we have that sense of foreboding in our heart that says, God's not going to let me keep living like this without intervening in my life. Every child of God who is living in a sinful way knows that they can't get away with it very long. We go around with that proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over our head, wondering when it's going to happen, when God's going to intervene in our life. One reason some of you right now are filled with anxiety is because you know all is not right between you and God, and you know as God's child at some point discipline is coming into your life. By the way, David had that sense of doom.

Remember his story? He was a child of God, and yet he committed that sin of adultery with Bathsheba, and in an attempt to cover over his sin, he killed Bathsheba's husband Uriah. He went for six months, some scholars say up to a year, without confessing that sin and instead covering over it. By the way, nothing can drain your energy anymore than trying to cover over sin, worrying constantly that somebody's going to discover your disobedience. Listen to what David wrote about that period in his life when he refused to confess his sin. In Psalm 32 verses 3 and 4 he wrote, when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Unconfessed sin can be a source of anxiety in life. A third source of anxiety in life can actually be attributable to satanic attack.

Satanic attack. Remember in Ephesians 6 Paul is talking about the spiritual armor that we need to put on as Christians? In Ephesians 6 verse 16 he says, above all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. Understanding what Paul means here, you have to understand something about Roman warfare. Whenever the Romans would be engaged in combat, if you wanted to defeat your enemy, one thing you would do would be to take these arrows, and then you would take the tip of the arrow, dip it in pitch and set it on fire and shoot that flaming arrow at your enemy. And of course it would, you know, light up anything that the arrow would hit and destroy it. The only way to protect yourself against a flaming arrow would be to hold up the Roman shield that had been covered in leather, leather that had been soaked in water.

And so whenever the Roman army would see these flaming arrows coming at them, they would take this leather-covered, water-soaked shield, they would hold it up, and as soon as that flaming arrow would hit it, it would extinguish it. Now Paul is saying, Satan loves to send flaming arrows into your life and my life. Some of those arrows are labeled lust.

Sometimes the arrow is labeled greed. But I think one of his favorite arrows has the label worry on it. And out of nowhere that paralyzing fear comes into your life.

And the reason I think this is one of his favorite arsenals is because of what it does to us. Worry has a way of paralyzing us, stopping us in our tracks so that we can't move forward in our relationship with God. You know, I read an interesting article one time by a psychologist, Dr. Walter Calvert. He was talking about worry and in his studies he discovered that 92% of the things most people worry about have hardly any chance of occurring.

That only 8% of the things that we worry about have any real probability of taking place. Now isn't that just like Satan? John 8.44 says, Satan is a liar, he is the father of all lies. What he wants to do is get your mind centered on something that probably isn't going to happen anyway, have you obsess about that, and paralyze you in making any progress in what God has planned for you. That's why I say much of the worry that we have is attributable to Satan as well. A wrong value system, unconfessed sin, satanic attack, these are just some of the sources of worry.

What are the answers to worry? Paul tells us beginning in verse 6 of Philippians chapter 4, notice the three answers to anxiety in our life. The first is persistent praying. Look at what he says in verse 6, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

Prayer is a powerful antidote to worry. Newsweek magazine a few years ago had a cover story on the resurgence of prayer in our country, and it reported that 78% of Americans pray at least once a week and 57% of Americans pray at least once a day. But what I found most fascinating about this survey was 20% of atheists and agnostics pray every day. Find that a little bit strange? 20% of atheists pray every day?

How do you explain that? The Newsweek writer makes an interesting point when he says, in allegedly rootless, materialistic, self-centered America, there is also a hunger for a personal experience of God that prayer seeks to satisfy. Serious prayer usually begins after the age of 30 when the illusion that we are the masters of our own fate fades, and adults develop a deeper need to call on the master of the universe. In an age of relativism, God remains for many the one true absolute. In an era of transience and divorce, God can be the only place left to turn for unconditional love. Paul says when you come to the end of your rope, when you realize that you aren't in control of your destiny, that there are many forces at work more powerful than you are, that's the time you can turn to God. Be anxious for nothing. I like the way the Living Bible says it in verse 6. Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything.

Isn't that great? Don't worry about anything, instead pray about everything. That's the key to attacking anxiety, and I'm devoting Monday's entire program to continuing this subject, because overcoming worry and fear is something that requires immediate action.

In addition, I've written a companion book that addresses this pressing topic. It's called Outrageous Joy, Living Above Your Circumstances. In my book, I'll guide you through Paul's four secrets for maintaining joy and his three keys for living a worry-free life.

You'll come to understand that real joy comes when you learn to attack anxiety. While there's still time, I want to send you a copy of my book, Outrageous Joy. It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory.

And when you give a generous gift, you're not only supporting our daily studies on your station, but you're also making it possible for Pathway to Victory to reach into other cities all across the world. For example, I recently heard from a woman who wrote, Pastor Jeffress, my sister passed away in December. She was my very best friend. And when she died, I was angry.

So angry, in fact, that I walked away from God. Then I stumbled onto Pathway to Victory. After listening for the last few months, I've been guided back to knowing and loving God again.

Wow. Those comments should encourage anyone who's invested in Pathway to Victory. We couldn't do this without the voluntary support of loyal friends like you. And today I'm inviting you to join the team. When you give, be sure to request a copy of my book called Outrageous Joy. It comes with my thanks.

David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you a copy of Outrageous Joy. As an added bonus, you'll also receive the Standing on the Promises of God scripture card. To request your copy of these resources, call 866-999-2965 or visit online at ptv.org. Now, when you give an especially generous gift of $75 or more, we'll also send you the audio and video discs from our study in Philippians, Living Above Your Circumstances. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like. Here's that mailing address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.

That's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins. Wishing you a great weekend, then join us again next week when we continue our study of Philippians called, Living Above Your Circumstances. That's Monday, here on Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Picture yourself relaxing aboard a luxury cruise ship as you sail the Mediterranean Sea on the Pathway to Victory Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise, May 5 through 16, 2025. This 11-day journey will take you to unforgettable destinations in Italy, Turkey, and Greece.

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