Connect

Guest (Female): Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We're so glad you've tuned in today. At Connect with Skip, we're passionate about helping you grow in your relationship with Jesus. That's why we make solid, verse-by-verse Bible teaching that's both clear and practical available to you and others.

Every message you hear is designed to strengthen your faith and help you live out God's truth wherever He's placed you. And you can stay connected beyond the broadcast when you sign up for Pastor Skip's free weekly devotional. You'll receive biblical encouragement, exclusive content, and free resources to help you go deeper in God's word.

It's all delivered straight to your inbox. Signing up is quick, easy, and completely free, and it's a great way to stay rooted in truth every week. Sign up today at connectwithskip.com. That's connectwithskip.com. Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig.

Skip Heitzig: We are in Philippians chapter four. I hope you brought a Bible with you. Did you? Awesome, because this is a Bible study and to make this a satisfactory meaningful time, you're going to need a copy of the scriptures, at least to look at. You may not have brought one. If you didn't, I'm guessing somebody next to you did.

You could sit next to them. They might give you a weird look, but if you look over their shoulder, you'll be able to see their copy of the scriptures. And then again, you have some Bibles in front of you in some of the chairs. Microscopic print, you may need a microscope to read it, but nonetheless, you have a copy of the scriptures. Then you can get it on your phone or your tablet, but I digress. We are in Philippians chapter four. We're going to begin in verse four.

So there was a woman who for like 10 years had trouble sleeping. And the reason being is every night she was worried that a burglar was going to break in their house and rob them. And this was just sort of like an obsessive thought with her. So this went on and went on and went on. One night her husband heard a noise in the house. He went downstairs to investigate and you know what he found? He found a burglar. And so as soon as their eyes locked, the husband said, "Would you please come upstairs and say hello to my wife? She has been waiting 10 years to meet you."

A thief can steal from you once. The thief of anxiety can steal from you for years. Worry, anxiety, depression, emotional stress. The world has many, many problems and there's lots of challenges to our peace, our peace of mind. There's conflict in the Middle East, there's terrorism of people driving cars into crowds of people. The news lately has maybe rekindled your fears of flying, getting on an aircraft because of the crashes that have happened in the East.

None of this is new. Anxiety and discouragement have been around since humanity has been on the earth and the very book we are looking at, the book of Philippians, deals with some of these issues right here in this 2,000-year-old letter. Now, every week I have the privilege of going through the prayer requests that are sent into the church and I notice there are lots of repeats of certain kinds of prayer requests. Prayer for health, prayer for medical tests they're going to face this week, prayer for salvation of a loved one, prayers for reconciliation in relationships that have gone bad, praying for employment for different people.

But there is a request I'm reading more and more as I go through the prayer list and that is: pray for my mental health. I'm struggling with my mental health. Or one person that said, "I am dealing with extreme anxiety." And those requests have gotten my attention because I'm just seeing more and more people who are crying out and asking for help when it comes to anxiety and mental health. So I did a little digging and I discovered, if this is at least helpful to some, that you are not alone.

But it is estimated that 970 million people globally are living with a mental disorder, anxiety and depression being the top tier. 970 million people worldwide. That's one in every eight individuals. Anxiety and depression. Over the past three decades, the last 30 years, anxiety disorders have jumped to more than 1,200% more in the last three decades. The American Psychiatric Association reports 43% of adults say they feel more anxious than they did in the previous year.

And of course, this is not just adults, younger and younger those thresholds get. One psychologist, Robert Leahy, said the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient did in the early 1950s. The psychiatric patient of the 50s and the high school kid presently has the same level of anxiety. Now I want to be careful as I'm going into this topic. I'm going to cover some familiar ground. You know this passage.

In fact, I have preached on this passage of Philippians many times over the years at this church. Many times. And so I was looking over my notes and I looked over the messages that I have preached on this and I thought, those were good messages, those were good truths. But at the same time, when I preached them, perhaps I didn't really understand the weight of those who are actually feeling the grip of anxiety and depression. Perhaps because the way I'm made up, I usually don't dwell in that kind of an area. I'm usually a very happy person.

But I have had times of extreme distress in my life that have helped me. They've helped me feel the weight of those who are undergoing it. If you're in a cloud where you can't see anything else, I want to speak sensitively to you. I want to speak biblically and I'm going to give you principles from the scriptures, but pray that I deal very sensitively as well. Now, the way I look at it, there's a few different stages of feeling bad.

Let's call the first one being downcast. Downcast. When you're downcast, you're having a bad day. But tomorrow's another day. The sun's going to come up, things are going to change. But you've had a bad day, so you're downcast. The Bible speaks about that, Psalm 42: "Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Hope in God." I love that David spoke to himself. He speaks to his own soul who's having a bad day. But if the next day is bad and the next day is bad, you would probably say you're not downcast, you're discouraged. I've had a discouraging week. This thing has lingered a little bit longer, it's lingered a few days.

But if that pattern persists over time and you're thinking the same way, you would get to a deeper level, we'll call it depression. It's not a bad day, it's not a bad week. It's a pattern of thinking now. You're sort of caught over and over in this malaise. And depression can be really serious because if it continues and doesn't let up, it can lead to a fourth category and that is despair. Downcast is you're having a bad day, discouragement is you're having a bad week or month, depression is I don't know what's wrong and I can't shake it, despair is everything is wrong and it's never going to change.

But Paul wrote to Timothy and said God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, of love, and of a sound mind, a sound mind. The two paragraphs that we are looking at in Philippians 4 are dealing with the mind. They focus on our thinking, the mental health of the believer. So what I'd like to do in Philippians 4 is give you five steps that will improve your mental health. They will improve your mental health. If you let them, they will transform your life. Look at verse four. Let's just begin by reading what we're going to be studying.

Verse four of Philippians 4: "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice." Don't you love Paul the apostle? Just in case you didn't hear me the first time, I'm going to say it again: rejoice. "Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, if there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. The things which you have learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you."

Now you read those paragraphs and you think, Paul could have written this from a luxurious hotel somewhere. He's at a spa, at a resort in the French Riviera. Rejoice always and again I say rejoice. All he needs to write now is wish you were here. But you know where he wrote this from, right? Prison. He's in jail in Rome. He is a prisoner incarcerated, chained to Roman guards when he writes this.

Guest (Female): This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Your support helps reach people everywhere with biblical truth that speaks into real life. And this month, we'd love to thank you for your gift with a meaningful resource designed to encourage restoration and connection in your home and family relationships.

When you give today, you'll receive Reconnecting with Family, a powerful book from Pastor Skip that addresses the pressures families face today and offers practical scripture-based guidance for navigating life together with grace, wisdom, and hope. Your gift helps extend the reach of Connect with Skip Heitzig, connecting more people and families to God's unchanging truth.

Request Reconnecting with Family when you give $50 or more at connectwithskip.com/offer or by calling 800-922-1888. Now, here's more from Pastor Skip Heitzig.

Skip Heitzig: The number of times he had been arrested and beaten and left for dead or put in jail or falsely accused would be Paul the apostle. But it's as if when you read the book of Philippians, he's in jail and it's like he's thinking, since I can't get out of prison, I might as well remodel. And so he begins remodeling the inside of himself. And he gives us what I say are five steps to improve your mental health.

Step number one: rejoice in the presence of God. Rejoice in the presence of God. Verse four: "Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men, the Lord is at hand." You should know that the book of Philippians in and of itself, this prison epistle, includes the word rejoice or joy 14 times. That's one of the themes that run through the whole book. 14 times. It's a key theme.

Why is he rejoicing? Because Paul is not in prison by himself. He says, notice in verse five, "The Lord is at hand." What does that mean? Does that mean the Lord is coming soon? Could. It could refer to His second coming like the Lord could come back at any time. Or it could simply mean the Lord is present with me. He is here, He is at hand. He is right here where I am.

And honestly, I believe that is the most responsible way to interpret this. The reason Paul is rejoicing is because God is present with him. So no matter where you are, no matter how dark the prison, no matter how lonely the night, how dark the road, Jesus is there. In Hebrews 13:5, the writer says, "He Himself said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?" So Paul is saying they may have locked me in, but they cannot lock Jesus out. He's at hand, He's with me. I feel His presence.

Psalm 16:11, one of my favorite psalms, David writes, "In Your presence is fullness of joy and at Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore." Now if you look a little bit closer at the text in verse four, you'll notice that Paul does not say rejoice in your circumstances, rejoice in your soon deliverance. He simply says rejoice in the Lord. He certainly doesn't say rejoice that I'm put in prison because that'd be weird.

He says rejoice in the Lord. Paul's joy was found in a person that he had an ongoing relationship with that would be with him no matter where he ended up himself. So he says rejoice in the Lord. Perhaps we don't experience joy because we're looking for joy in all the wrong places or people or circumstances. Because joy is essentially a gauge for the Christian. It is a spiritual reality check.

If you have it under any circumstance, it means you actually believe that you're a child of God, that God is your Father in heaven, that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose, and you believe God is on the throne. God's in charge here. Because God is in charge and He's with me, I can have joy.

Paul and Silas were in prison, this is another time he was in prison, in Acts chapter 16 and he was in Philippi, the very place he is writing to from a prison in Rome. When he first visited Philippi, it did not go well. No reason for joy. He was arrested, falsely accused, beaten and bloody in a prison with his buddy Silas and it says this: at midnight, Paul and Silas sang praises to God.

Why? Why would they do that in prison? They wouldn't unless they believed the Lord is at hand. Rejoice in the Lord, the Lord is at hand. So rejoice in the Lord. How often does it say we're to do that? It says rejoice in the Lord from time to time. Rejoice in the Lord sometimes. Rejoice in the Lord when it's going your way, when things are favorable, when people don't drive slow in the fast lane in traffic, then rejoice in the Lord.

Notice, rejoice in the Lord always. Now let me give you what I think is a pretty good definition of joy. Joy is the personal choice to react to life's circumstances with faith. Joy is the personal choice to react to life's uncertainties with faith. When you are looking at whatever comes your way through the eyes of faith, you got it made. Proverbs 15:15: "He who is of a merry heart has a continual feast." They're always satisfied.

Now the joy of the Lord is a thermostat, it is not a thermometer. It's a thermostat, you set the temperature. A thermometer goes up and down depending on how hot or cold it is in the room. That's a thermometer, just simply reads what's going on around it. If your life is a thermometer, then you are up when things are up, down when things are down, happy when life is happy, sad when things are sad.

If you're a thermostat, you set the temperature. The joy of the Lord is a thermostat, not a thermometer. I'll give you an example. There was a prophet in the Old Testament, not really a little prophet, but he wrote a little book, his name is Habakkuk. He could have been a big tall guy, but Habakkuk wrote a little book, the book of Habakkuk, depending on what part of the country you're from.

And the Lord informed this prophet that things were, though they were pretty bad in Israel, they're about to get much worse. So Habakkuk is complaining to God. "I can't believe that You would allow these things to happen." So then God says, "Habakkuk, I know things are bad right now, but they're about to get far worse. The Babylonians are about to come in and I'm sending them in to overtake your nation." And so Habakkuk is dealing with all this emotion in three chapters, but this is how he closes his book.

He says, "Even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there are no grapes on the vine, even though the olive crop fails and the fields lie empty and barren, even though the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation." What kind of a guy says that? The kind of guy that rejoices in the presence of God. Rejoice in the Lord always. So that's step number one: rejoice in the presence of God.

Second step: rely on the power of God. Verse six. "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." What does that mean? It means if you got a problem, tell God about it. Now look at the beginning of verse six. How does it begin? What's the first word? "Be." That's a command. He's giving a commandment. In the Greek it's present active imperative, which simply means he's giving a command. "Be anxious for nothing."

Now can we just stop and agree that it sort of sounds unreasonable to tell somebody who is worrying: stop worrying. Or somebody filled with anxiety: be anxious for nothing. It almost sounds counterproductive, like what planet are you from? You can't just stop it. But that's exactly what Paul is saying. He is saying stop and I'm giving you a command, stop an action that is starting to occur. Stop it before it gets any further. Present active imperative. In Greek it's even more emphatic. It's: stop worrying about even one thing.

But if that sounds odd, then what Jesus said also sounds odd because He gave the same command. Matthew chapter six: "Do not worry about your life." Present active imperative. Same tense. "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, or about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?" Now what does it mean to be anxious? Well, if you have anxiety, nobody has to define that for you. You know what it feels like.

But the word that is used here by Paul is the word *merimnao*. *Merimnao* is a word that literally means a divided or ripped mind. To divide the mind. It's when your thoughts are divided between legitimate thoughts and destructive thoughts, between hope and despair. You're walking that line. Your thoughts are going in two different directions. To divide the mind.

That's what worry does. Divides the mind. The best thing that you could ever say about worry is that it won't do you any good. Worry will do the same thing to you that sand does to machinery. It'll get you stuck. Now when Jesus said don't worry, you remember He used an example in the Sermon on the Mount? He said, "Look at the birds of the air."

He used them as an example. "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you of not more value than they?" Look at the birds. Ever seen a worried bird? Now think back, think hard. Think of walking in the neighborhood and looking up. No, you hear them singing. You never see their little beak down and their claws, they're sweating and fretting and worried. Look at the birds.

Guest (Female): We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give at least $50 this month, we'll send you Reconnecting with Family as our thanks. It's a powerful new resource from Pastor Skip that offers biblical wisdom and encouragement for navigating real-life family challenges with faith and grace.

Your support helps keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting more people and families to God's unchanging truth. Give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your April resource. See you next time on Connect with Skip Heitzig.