Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: The train diagram in the back of the little booklet called the "Four Spiritual Laws" illustrates a train running down the track. There is an engine, there are compartment cars, and then there is a caboose. All the power is in the engine. You cannot pull the train by the compartment car, and you cannot pull it by the caboose.

If you think about the engine being fact, the compartment cars as faith, and the caboose as feeling, the way we live our Christian life is we put our faith in the facts, and then God produces the feeling.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in Biblical Studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled, "Where Do You Turn?" Let's listen in as JP gives us Part 1 of "When You Are Stressed."

JP Jones: Stress is a reality for every person at some level: physical, emotional, spiritual. We live in the most stress-filled times in history according to most analysts. We live in one of the most stress-filled communities in our country according to many observers. There are physical dimensions of stress, emotional and psychological dimensions of stress, relational dimensions of stress, and spiritual dimensions of stress.

Sometimes stress is just a matter of having too much activity in our life and what we need is margin. Sometimes stress is because of traumatic experiences and we need safe places and opportunities to grieve and to be re-energized. And sometimes stress is because in the course of living our lives, there is an unseen enemy who is seeking, as Jesus said, to kill, steal, and destroy. He uses the stuff of everyday life to attack us spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

We then exhibit and experience these symptoms that we call stress indicators, but really, they are the factors that rob us of the life that God wants to give us. The presupposition that we have been operating under in this series, "Where Do You Turn?", is that we need to turn to the Lord. We need to turn to the promises of His word, and we need to turn to the encouragement and accountability of His people.

If you have your Bibles, I invite you to look at Philippians chapter 4, verses 4 to 9, as we talk about this whole issue of stress. When I think about stress in my life, this is the picture that I have in my mind. It is like you are vacuuming and your vacuum picks up a loose string, a loose fiber on the carpet. It starts to pull it up and it winds around the motor inside the vacuum, and all of a sudden you start hearing a high-pitched whine and you just get a rip in your carpet.

When you feel stressed, you have this internal whine and there is a rip in something important. Maybe it is a relationship. Maybe it is a belief about God. Maybe it is a confidence in who you are. But that internal stress has created chaos and there is a fracture, a rip in something very important, in something God-ordained. Stress is something that we have to understand and we have to respond to in a way that sets us free, blesses other people, and honors God.

In Philippians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul is giving us not only inspired scripture but really good psychological truth with respect to stress. This is what he says in Philippians 4, verses 4 to 9: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 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. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

What I love about this passage of scripture is that we are promised both the peace of God and the God of peace. That is everything we need when we are experiencing stress: the peace of God and the God of peace. Here are a couple observations. First of all, we need to take charge of our emotions. We are told in this passage, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything."

In those verses, there are three commands. They are imperative statements. They are obligations to the person who would be a follower of Jesus Christ. God is saying, "Here is what I want you to do. I want you to rejoice in the Lord. I want you to live so that your gentleness is evident to everyone, and I want you to not be anxious about anything." Commands are addressed to our wills. In other words, a choice has to be made. We either do what it says or we do not do what it says.

These commands all are affecting areas of life that have to do with our feelings and the demonstration of our feelings, the expression of our feelings. In other words, God is saying to take charge of your feelings, take charge of your emotions. It is not okay just to say, "I feel this way, therefore I can express it any way I want to express it." Nor is God saying there is anything necessarily wrong or evil about your feelings. God is just saying, "Because you feel this way, this is what I want you to do about it."

We need to take charge of our emotions. We are not victims of our feelings. In other words, we are not people who are so consumed with feelings that we have nothing to do with what we do with those feelings or how we express those feelings or how those feelings even affect us. No, God is giving us three commands, and the areas that these commands address have to do with what we feel and what we do with what we feel.

We need to take charge of our emotions. The first thing he says in the positive is to rejoice in the Lord. Again I say, rejoice. This is a whole theme of the book of Philippians. Seventeen times in the book of Philippians this command is given, and it is given in various contexts. In Philippians 1:18, it says, "What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. I'm going to say it again. I rejoice."

Philippians 2:17: "But even if I'm being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and I share my joy with you." Philippians 2:18: "You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way as I am and share your joy with me." Philippians 2:28: "Therefore I have sent Epaphroditus all the more eagerly in order that when you see him again, you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you."

Philippians 3:1: "Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again to you is no trouble to me and it's a safeguard for you." Philippians 4:4: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I'll say, rejoice." Philippians 4:10: "But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, before you were concerned, but you lacked an opportunity to express it. So I rejoice." That is pretty much the theme of this book: joy and rejoicing in all circumstances and rejoicing in the confidence of a relationship with God and a relationship with people.

You see, there is a command in this passage addressed to our wills that we have to choose to respond to that says, "rejoice." Secondly, it says to let your gentleness be made known to all. In other words, you may feel the exact opposite of gentle, encouraging, positive, or other-centered. But let your gentleness be made known to all. Do you mean I am supposed to fake it until I make it? Yes, I guess that is what I mean. There is a real sense when our feelings are not to be trusted and our feelings are not to be acted upon in the way we feel like acting upon them.

Do you realize that if I acted upon my feelings exactly as I feel them and exactly as I want to feel them, I would not be your pastor right now? I would be an inmate that you would come visit on weekends. Gentleness is from this Greek word *epieikes*, and it means a reasonableness, a fair and mild response to harshness. So the idea is like you are at a restaurant and you are getting terrible service, the food is late, and once it gets there it is cold and it tastes bad.

You are kind of upset because there have been a lot of things leading up to it, and you ask to see the manager and you complain. That manager says, "I am so sorry. That is our responsibility. What can I do to make it right? Obviously, the meal is on me and I'd like to also give you a gift certificate in the future. Is there anything else, sir, that I can do for you?" Now, inside the manager might be saying, "You're the 15th customer that's complained and I'm sick and tired and I'd like to slap you in the face right now."

But instead, what you pick up is a gentle reasonableness. You see, the whole point of this word, because there are quite a few words in the New Testament that are translated as mild or gentle, is that the impact of this word is it is not necessarily the response that the circumstance warrants, but there is a gentleness anyway, a fair, reasonable response because that is the choice that is made. See, really this comes down to a choice. I hate that when God puts the ball in my court. Rejoice in the Lord, let your gentleness be evident to all, and be anxious for nothing.

I am looking all over the Bible so I can figure out that that does not actually mean what it sounds like it means to me. So I turn to the Gospels because I figured Jesus, of course, will tell me something different than the narrow-minded Pharisee, Paul. Well, this is what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 6: "For this reason, I say to you, do not be anxious for your life as to what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or your body as to what you shall put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his lifespan? And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin. And do not be anxious, then, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'With what shall we clothe ourselves?' But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Jesus says the same things Paul: do not be anxious. Each of these commands is assuming that we act in a way that may supersede how we feel. It is the old fact, faith, feeling. The train diagram in the back of the little booklet called the "Four Spiritual Laws." The illustration is you see a train running down the track. There is an engine, there are compartment cars, and then there is a caboose. All the power is in the engine. You cannot pull the train by the compartment car and you cannot pull it by the caboose.

If you think about the engine being fact and the compartment cars as faith and the caboose as feeling, the way we live our Christian life is we put our faith in the facts and then God produces the feeling. If we try to live our lives based on feelings, it is futile. It will never work. I have never met a person who was 100% all the time up. There are people who are more positive than others. I consider myself a pretty positive person.

There are people who seem to be pretty resilient to hard times. But nobody is 100% positive, gracious, loving, kind—all of the fruit of the spirit and all of the positive qualities that we would aspire to. Nobody has that without wavering in the full capacity of their inner psyche. And so no one, if they just lived by their feelings, could ever be experiencing the kind of life that God wants them to have or the kind of life that they want to have.

There are things that stress us. That is life. We live in a stress-filled world. We cannot eliminate all the stress factors. We just cannot. So what are we going to do? Well, we have to take charge of our emotions, the Bible says. Feelings are just that: they are feelings. We do not even need to make any moral evaluation whether they are good or bad. They are just how we feel. But what we do with our feelings can lead us to love God and love people, or they can lead us into Stress City and we are the mayor.

When I was in seminary and graduate school, I had a professor, Norm Wright. He has written like a hundred books on marriage and marriage counseling and pre-marriage. He was talking about counseling an individual who had a lot of stress in their life, a lot of anxiety in their life, a lot of worry in their life, and they were being victimized by their own feelings. He had them follow this project, kind of a behavior modification experience.

He had them wear a rubber band on their wrist and he had them write on a 3x5 card Philippians 4:6 and 7: "Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God that passes all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." And then on the other side, he had them write in big bold letters, "STOP."

What he had this person commit themselves to do was, whenever they started to feel anxious and worry, they would take the rubber band, pull it, and go "Whack!" Bam! Take the card out and say, "Stop!" And then turn it over and say, "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 passes all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

He would have that person do that several times throughout the day. "Whack! Stop! 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 that passes all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." And at the end of the day, the guy did not want to read Philippians 4:6 and 7.

At the end of the day, the point was he had gotten himself into the habit of worry. This was a combined behavior modification, cognitive therapy approach to basically say that is a negative behavior that you have got to replace with a positive behavior. You have been a person who has been just controlled by your emotions. You need to take charge of your emotions. Maybe you even have to do something radical to reinforce that that approach needs to stop and you need to do a different approach.

The principle, I think, is pretty clear. We have been given commands. These commands have a payoff: the peace of God that passes all comprehension. These commands are associated with living in a stress-filled world but not being controlled by stress. These commands have to do with our emotions. We need to take charge of our emotions.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653.

Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, "Facing Goliath". Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com.

We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. I think the question that every one of us is asking is how to have peace in a stressed-out world. There is so much stress that comes at us every day. There is stress financially, there is stress politically, and there is stress relationally. All of us have to deal with stress. Stress is an ever-present reality in this life. In fact, there is a whole new stress that comes with becoming a follower of Jesus Christ.

It is the stress of the spiritual battle, but God has an answer. His answer is His peace. It is the peace of God that passes all understanding. In fact, in Philippians chapter 4, God gives us a game plan for experiencing peace. It is a game plan for encouraging and living life in the fullness of His spirit and in the fullness of His joy. It is followed, and it is experienced, by keeping certain commands.

Philippians chapter 4 says rejoice in the Lord always. It says let your forbearing spirit be made known to all. It says be anxious for nothing, and it says in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God. And then the promise of God is this: His peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. It is possible to have peace, but we have to take charge of our emotions. That is right.

We have to take charge. We are responsible for how we feel. We are responsible for how we act. God says we have everything we need to feel and react in a way that honors Him, that blesses others, and gives us peace. It all comes down to our choices. The first and most important choice that any one of us must make is the choice to believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. When we make that choice, we have peace with God, eternal peace with God, because the barrier of sin is removed.

Once we have made that choice, we need to make daily choices to surrender our lives to God, to follow His game plan for our lives, and to cast all our burdens upon Him. First Peter chapter 5 says cast all your anxiety on me because I care for you. Matthew chapter 11, Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give rest to your souls. Take my yoke upon you. My load is easy, my burden is light. Come to me and you will find rest for your souls."

In this passage in Philippians chapter 4, talking about the need that we have to take control of our emotions and take control of our feelings, we are given several commands. Commands need to be obeyed; those are choices. Every day I need to make a choice, and you need to make a choice, to rejoice in the Lord, to let our forbearing spirit be made known to all, to not be anxious, but to give all of our anxieties to God in prayer.

What God promises is that His peace will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. These are commands that can be obeyed. These are commands that are obeyed when we make a choice to obey them. As new people in Jesus Christ, we have everything that we need to cast our anxieties on God. We have everything we need to give our stress to God. We have everything we need to take charge of our emotions.

But we have to make a choice. The choice is to follow God's game plan for our lives. The choice is to take our focus off ourselves and off our stress factors and put our focus on God. Because when we do, He will give us His peace. If that is the desire of your heart, and I know that it is, would you pray with me right now?

Lord, I give you all my stress. I give you all my anxiety. I want to choose to follow you. I want to choose to obey your word. I want to choose to take charge of my emotions. Jesus, fill me with your peace. Guard my heart, guard my mind with your peace as I obey you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California, 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.