When Was the Last Time You Felt Happy?

The fountain of youth, the lost city of gold, the genie's lamp. Throughout history, people have searched for something to transform their everyday lives into something spectacular. Not many of us today are traveling the world looking for a literal fountain of youth, but we're still all searching. We sense, deep down, that there's got to be more to life than what we're living. We feel, in our bones, that even though it's elusive, the good life is out there. Centuries ago, an old man with scars on his back, sitting alone in a prison cell, claimed to have finally found it, the secret to the good life. And lucky for us, he wrote it down in a letter to his friends and to us. That letter is the Book of Philippians. Well, Summit family, on a personal level, I would love to ask all of you to pray for me at student camp this coming week. I will be joining nearly 1,000 of our high school students and volunteer leaders for two weeks of high school student camp, which started this morning. They all left on a bus this morning. I'll be joining them later. I don't even need to tell you what to pray for. I feel like you just instinctively know, don't you? Seriously, if you'll pray for the speakers, that'll be me, Pastor Julius, Pastor Curtis. We'll be doing most of the speaking. Most of all, pray for the leaders and the counselors in the high school cabins, because they do most of the heavy lifting, and honestly, it's where most of the life change happens. Colossians 2, 6, and 7 is our theme verse for the week there. You can jot that down and pray through it. As you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, being rooted and grounded in your faith, established, and that you may abound in thanksgiving and in glory to God. That'll be what we'll be preaching through each night. Do that, get you one of these little bracelets, and pray every week that God will send an

awakening to our students that will not just transform their high schools, but transform our church and this whole community. God is doing something in this next generation, and we really want to lean into it. Anyway, that'd be my personal request to you. Now, if you have your Bibles, and I certainly hope that you do, I want you to take them out and open them to Philippians chapter 4, Philippians 4, and we could all stand together for the reading of God's word. You listen as I read the first 10 or so verses, beginning in verse 2. I entreat you, Odiah, and I entreat Syncdote, to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement, and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I will say rejoice, let your reasonableness be known to everyone because the Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, 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 understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. And then let me borrow really quickly from next week's passage, verse 11. I have learned, you see, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

You may be seated. When was the last time you felt happy? That was the name of an article I read this week written by a woman recovering from depression. She said this was the question that her therapist posed to her toward the end of her counseling sessions after she assumed that she had fully recovered from depression. I was thrown by the question, she said. I sat on her couch and mentally began to trawl through 30 years of memories to try to find the point where I last felt that serene, stable, elusive positivity that we... we call happiness. Oh no. Oh no, I thought, don't make me say it. But finally I had to. I can't remember the last time I felt happy. And suddenly she said, my claim that I was on the road to recovery sounded utterly foolish. I cried and she passed me a little box of tissues and then she wrote something down. The writer said this realization hit her harder than her original diagnosis of depression had. You see her life at this point, after all these counseling sessions, her life was going fine. She was functioning, paying the bills, going to work, showing up for her friends, laughing at all the right moments. From the outside, life looked normal.

But she still could not remember the last time she felt happy. I've had similar conversations with so many people, some right here in our church over the years. In fact, if I stopped the message right now and I made my way back to you and I looked you in the face and asked you, when was the last time you were genuinely happy? How quickly would an answer come to your mind? And maybe the answer would come easily. If so, praise God. But every one of us knows the difficulty of trying to find and hold on to happiness. It's like, as we get older, life seems to become a cycle of identifying some new thing that we think will give us that serene state of euphoria, an achievement, a new relationship, a new possession, a new status that you acquire. And when you acquire it, it gives you a little bump for a little while, but soon enough you return to your baseline level of unhappiness. Psychologists even have a term for this. They call it the hedonic treadmill. You got a baseline level of happiness or unhappiness, and you tread along there, right? This is just normal life. It's just what you like. And then you finally get that thing you've been craving for for so long,

the long-awaited promotion, the marriage, kids, kids out of the house, your son gets married, and there's a temporary euphoria, and the treadmill speeds up, and you're a little bit happier. But pretty soon you return to that same baseline level of happiness or unhappiness that you started with. In fact, there was an absolutely fascinating study that psychologists did a few years ago that compared lottery winners with people who had experienced catastrophic injuries. Of course, the lottery winners had a surge of happiness, and those with the catastrophic life-changing injuries had a surge of sadness. But get this, after time passed, both groups drifted back surprisingly close to the baseline level they started at. Are you happy? Studies suggest this is a problem only getting worse in our society. Despite all the books and all the podcasts devoted to the good life, things aren't getting better. They're getting worse. In the last 10 years, the United States has fallen from 11th to 24th on the World Happiness Index. And this has mostly been driven by Gen Z. How many Gen Z-ers we got out there? Raise your hand. We love you, but y'all are depressed. The rate of young adults who classify themselves

as perennially unhappy has doubled since 2017. Y'all, I think all this makes Paul's statement in Philippians 4 so utterly jolting to us. Verse 11, I've learned, Paul said, in whatever situation I am, I've learned to be content. Or in this context, you could read those words as I've learned how to be happy. In this context, Paul would use happy and content interchangeably. Verse 12, Paul says, when I'm brought low, brought low through bad health, strained relationships, you didn't get the promotion. Or for Paul, you ended up in a prison cell abandoned by your friends. Paul said, even there, I can be happy. And when I abound, that is when everybody's singing my praises, the money is pouring in, and all I can do is win, win, win, no matter what. Yeah, I can be content there too. Studies show that in 21st century America, we don't even know how to hold on to happiness in the abounding stage. And Paul says he can be happy even when he's in the non-abounding stage. Paul's hedonic treadmill runs at happiness. How? That's the question, right? But you notice back in verse four, that this claim that he makes about himself, that he can be happy and joyful in all circumstances, in verse four, he turns that into a command

for you and for me. Verse four, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I'll say it for you guys in the back that didn't hear it, rejoice. The same kind of happiness that Paul had, you and I can have too. So let me just ask an obvious question. Some of you have already been asking it. Was Paul just one of those annoying, unrealistically optimistic people? Always finding the bright side. Always putting a positive spin on everything. Was this what Paul's prison cell would look like if we could have glass back in there? Live life, hashtag blessed, you know? Is this, some of you saw this coming, okay. Is this Paul? Is this Paul? Listen, some of you won't like this, but I say this as a committed optimist. My wife would say a often annoying optimist. Psychologists have studied optimists for decades, and they have concluded that optimistic people are, and I quote, in general, less accurate in their perception of reality. They overestimate their chances of success. That's my entire life story. They underestimate the risk, and they remember the past as better than it was. Listen, y'all, that's the world I live in.

I'm happy to be here. You keep your dark cloud out of it, okay? But was that all that Paul was? Was he just a cheery, chipper optimist? I don't think so. I mean, Paul seems to be really clear-eyed about his pain. Paul knew intimately tears of bereavement and abandonment and disappointment, and there's nothing in here that talks about expectations of a sunny tomorrow, not one word. In fact, y'all, it's the over-the-topness of Paul's words that stand out, right? Verse four, rejoice in the Lord always, not sometimes, not most of the time, always, every second. Verse five, let your reasonableness or your gentleness, your easygoing nature, we'll talk more about this word in a minute, let it be known to everybody, everywhere, at all times. Verse six, do not be anxious about anything. There's nothing in your life that should cause you anxiety. I'll be honest, just reading that makes me uncomfortable. Because I know the kind of pain that some of you are carrying right now. And the thought of just kind of bouncing into your hospital room to tell you this, or by a graveside, or on the other side of a terrible divorce, or in the middle of a divorce, and just to come on back, it's okay, don't worry,

be happy, hakuna matata, or whatever. Either Paul is hopelessly, delusionally, out of touch with reality, or Paul has figured out something we haven't. He calls it the secret. That's what I wanna show you. I want you to notice back in verse 11, Paul says this secret is something he has learned. I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. Happiness was not a feature of Paul's personality, it is something he learned, and the good news in that is that means it's something you can learn too. And so y'all, this passage, maybe more than any other in the book of Philippians, gives us the secret, that is the word that Paul uses, it's where the title of this series came from, he gives us the secret to the good life. My friend Kyle Eidelman, another pastor up in Kentucky, says Paul in this passage identifies a handful of joy thieves and the key to joy is knowing how to get rid of these things. I'm gonna use a couple that Kyle had in this passage, I'm gonna add a couple of my own to the list, and give you four joy thieves, that if you can overcome these, this is the secret to the joy, the happiness, that I brought this up at the beginning. And here we are, the first and biggest joy thief in your life, Paul says, is amnesia, amnesia. Verse five, let your reasonableness be known to everyone,

the Lord is at hand. Now, let's first press into what exactly Paul's saying here because the wording can be confusing. You see, the word that we translate as reasonableness is a hard word to translate from Greek. The Greek word is epikase, it's a very important Greek word, in fact, say it with me, epikase. Not yippee-ki-yay, okay, that's a different word. Epikase, and it just doesn't have a good English equivalent so it gets translated a bunch of different ways. If you have the ESV version of the Bible, which I'm using, that says reasonableness. The NIV says gentleness. The CSB says graciousness. The New King James Version says moderation. Some translations say a mild spirit. My personal favorite is a radical evenness of temper. Scholars say the word almost carries the connotation of being laid back. Paul's basically telling people to chill out and not be so uptight. Of course, it's always helpful to understand the context into which Paul is speaking, and in this case, Paul tells you. He opens the chapter addressing two women in the church who weren't getting along, Euodia and Syntyche, or as I like to call them, odious and stinky, because quite frankly, their attitude stunk. By the way, if I could just point out

something really quickly, it's significant to me that Paul takes time to address these women. He didn't say, well, that's just the women. They're not getting along. No, he knows how vitally important their ministry is to the health of the church. They are personal friends of his. They are fellow laborers with him in the gospel. It's what he calls them. And their health in this church, he knows, is vitally important to the future of that church. Paul knows that for the church in Philippi to thrive, they need these female leaders to thrive too. And I'll just say, I feel the exact same way about female leaders in our church. There are so many women at our church who co-labor with me in the gospel. Their leadership here is invaluable. Some of them you know, many of them you don't. Dr. Christy Thornton, who works on our discipleship team. Future Dr. Janetta Oney, who runs our creative team. Worship leaders like Molly Vidovich, and Mia Lazar, and Coisha Walton. Student directors like Hannah Spraggans, and Abby Johnson, who left on a bus this morning. In fact, I even hesitate to mention some of their names, because I know that for every one of them I mention, I'm gonna leave out 10. But I thank God for all of them, and so should you.

And I want them to thrive, which is why Paul is writing this, okay? Let's go back now to Odious and Stinky, which again, are just my temporary name for them until they get their stuff worked out. Paul never tells us what their beef was, because his counsel to them goes deeper than their beef. He tells them whatever their beef is, not to take themselves, or winning this little battle, or being vindicated so seriously. Instead he says, you should be gentle, mild, gracious, laid back, radically even-tempered. Why? He tells you, because the Lord is at hand. He is returning soon, and when he comes, well, ladies, earthly vindication, and this little squabble of yours is gonna seem rather trivial, am I right? Now, hear me, Paul is not saying they should not explain their case. Paul is not saying that justice doesn't matter. He's just saying that if in the end, things don't go your way, you shouldn't act like it's the end of the world, because literally it's not. Earthly vindication is rather trivial in light of eternity. The Lord is at hand. I lost my phone this past weekend. I was standing on the back of a ski boat,

trying to throw the rope to somebody in the water, and I had my phone in this hand, and the ski rope in my right hand, because I was also, of course, trying to control the music, and in the process of throwing the ski rope, I clipped my phone, and I watched as if in slow motion, I watched it go spinning through the air, like, no, you know, as it goes in, and it plopped right in the water, and of course, it's got my license and all my credit cards attached to it, and I see it slowly sinking down, disappearing into the water like Leonardo DiCaprio in the North Atlantic after Rose wouldn't share her door with him, okay? So I said to the guy in the water that I was trying to throw the ski rope to, right? My phone, my phone, I'm pointing at it, because he literally was right there, and he could have just reached out and grabbed it, but he could not understand what I was trying to say to him, and by the time I realized he couldn't understand me, I'd wasted those precious few seconds that the phone was still visible, and so at this point, the phone was gone. So I immediately look over at the depth finder on the boat, because there are some places at Lake Gaston

where it's only like 10 to 15 feet deep, and I thought, because at this point, it's still controlling the music on the boat, and I thought, well, maybe if I get somebody to text me, the light will come on, I can see where it is, and I can dive down and get it, but the depth finder said 61 feet, and so I knew that was a little beyond even my range, okay? So, now, that's annoying, right? Phones are expensive to replace, but let's just say that just before going out skiing, I had found that a rich uncle I never even knew I had had left me $10 billion of inheritance, but when I dropped my phone, you're out there on the boat with me, I start losing my mind about how this is gonna cost me several hundred dollars, and I started yelling at the guy in the water, saying, why couldn't you just grab my phone, you idiot? I was telling you what to do. You would probably look at me eventually and say, bro, chill out, don't take this so seriously. A few hundred dollars, you got 10 billion waiting on you back at the dock. Act like it, FBI case. Paul's saying something very similar here. It's not that you're paying or you're inconvenience, it's not that they're not real, it's just that the Lord is at hand. So, you got slighted, big deal.

The ultimate judge is at the door. His approval is the only one that actually matters. So, you're missing out on some of life's pleasures, big deal. The Lord of eternity is nearby, coming soon, and in his presence is the fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. The verse five, let your FBI case, your laid back, reasonable, gentle, moderate disposition, let it be known to everybody, because that's probably the best testimony you could have. This verse means that you don't take anything on earth, positive or negative, that seriously. Because you know none of it's ultimate. Tim Keller says, this verse means positively. When you get a raise at work, that's a good day, right? Everybody wants more money. Okay, heart, don't get too excited about this. Don't be too excited about this. It's about money because money is just temporary and you ought to be able to leave it. When the money's not there, when you don't get the raise, you ought to be able to do without it. If you understand the grace of God, it makes the worst times bearable and the best times leaveable. In fact, before I move on, let me show you one other place that Paul applies this exact same concept because Paul applies it to an area

that a lot of people in our day, the area most people blame for their unhappiness, their singleness or their unhappy marriage. First Corinthians 7, look at verse 29. This is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time is growing very short. In other words, the Lord is at hand. It's exactly what he said in Philippians 4. So from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none and let those who mourn as though they weren't mourning and let those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing. He gives a couple other categories and he ends the whole thing by saying, for the present state of this world is passing away. Let those who have wives live as though they had none. That sounds like terrible marriage advice, like the theme verse of a bunch of deadbeat men headed off to Vegas for the weekend. What Paul means, however, listen, listen. What Paul means is that whatever earthly marital situation you find yourself in, married, unmarried, unhappily married, mourning, not mourning, happy circumstances, unhappy circumstances, it's all light and momentary. The time is short. The Lord is at hand. Your pain, it's temporary. You're unhappily single, just temporary. You're stuck in an unfulfilling marriage, it's temporary.

Look, let's just face the facts. There are a lot of Christians who are in marital situations, maybe through no fault of their own, that are not ideal. They're widowed, they're divorced, or they just never found the right person. Or how about this? They actually did find the right person and then they got married to that person and that person changed. I've seen that happen in this church. You marry somebody and they're one person, but then they change. Maybe they quit following Jesus or they lose all interest in church. And now you're stuck in a terribly unfulfilling marriage. I'm not trying to trivialize this, but Paul addresses that situation directly in 1 Corinthians 7 and says, it's okay. Yeah, it kind of stinks, I get it. Just endure it and realize that none of these states carry on into eternity, none of them. They're all temporary. If you're physically healthy, it's temporary. If you're chronically sick, it's temporary too. If you're single and feel like the day to find the one has passed you by, don't despair. Everything in this life is light and momentary compared to eternity. Let your radical evenness of temper be known to all because the Lord is at hand.

And for some of you, I can feel it. This sounds like crazy talk. Cause you're like, well, the whole point is having a better life. That's the whole deal is we flurry. Yeah, I'm just telling you the Bible says the opposite. Bible says your lack of understanding of what eternity is and the focus that you have on this life is one of the primary problems of destroying your faith and killing your testimony. This is one of the reasons I always tell you, I really chafed at the idea of bucket list. That's not just a light hearted jab for me. I mean, there's nothing wrong. Okay, there's nothing wrong with making a list of things you wanna do as you get older. I'm not being all judgy, judgy and super spiritual. I'm just saying the whole concept behind a true bucket list is that there's a bunch of joys that you could only experience right now on earth and you better experience them before you kick the bucket because otherwise you'll never have the chance to experience them again. And that can be kind of fun when we're talking about going skydiving in Hawaii, but then there are people in our church who despair about never getting married or never knowing the joy of having children or never walking again. And I'm telling you, they need to think the opposite

of how we think in a bucket list. Everything down here Paul says is child's play compared to what God has for us next. And I don't want my silly talk about a bucket list to make the people who are truly in pain here despair that life has passed them by. Whatever you miss out on or experience or fail to experience is not that significant because whatever you miss out on here is amply made up for and multiplied in the life to come. It's like we say, it's not YOLO. It's not you only live once. It's YALF, you actually live forever. So if you're gonna get some tattooed to you, don't do this one, do this one, okay? The secret to happiness, Paul says, is real life. Realizing that nothing down here is ultimate and remembering that the Lord is at hand. Amnesia about the shortness of life and the coming of Jesus is our first joy thief. The second is very closely related. In fact, it's really just an application of the first. So I'll make it pretty quick. Acrimony. Acrimony. Or bitterness over how something worked out. Remember, Paul was addressing a specific situation involving two quarreling women, Eodia and Synctate. And Paul does an attempt to resolve their beef. He aims deeper than the problem.

He says, hey, the Lord is at hand. And then watch this, verse three, he says, hey, help these women whose names are in the book of life. He gently reminds them, hey, ladies, your names are in the book of life. Jesus is for you. He's bringing you a kingdom beyond your wildest imaginations. So if you end up on the short side of justice, you end up on the wrong end of a gossip stream, you end up on the outside of a friend circle, he'll take care of that. In light of that stinky, the damage that Odias did to you is not that bad. One of the things that God has been really working on in my life personally is my need to be vindicated. I like to be in the right. There, I just said it, okay? And I like other people to know that I'm in the right. I've told you, I've lost arguments before, but then I immediately rerun that argument in my head and I win it. I'm like, oh, and then I would have said, and then he would have fallen in shame. Right, I've lost lots of arguments in my life. I've never lost a rerun, not one time, I win all of them. I think this need comes out of an insecurity about my reputation. I want people to think of me as smart and competent and right.

And so I'm sensitive about narratives told about me in which I'm not presented in those ways. Sometimes, joy of joys, I bring that need to be vindicated into my marriage. If my wife and I have an issue, even if she consents to go along with me on something, I really want her to acknowledge that I was right all along. I'm right, my actions were reasonable. You're like, well, I feel sorry for Veronica. Yeah, I'm sure you're super easy to be married to also, okay, so get over yourself. I've had to ask myself, what is this need of mine to always have earthly validation? Isn't it at its core, isn't it an unbelief in a present God who is close at hand and in whom I have ultimate treasure? Doesn't my need to be vindicated by you show you that I either don't believe in God's ultimate vindication of me or that I just don't put that much weight on it? So what if a bunch of no account earthlings have a low opinion of me? No offense to you. The Lord is at hand. So what if this situation didn't work out for me? The wrong story got told. The wrong person got credit. The wrong person got rewarded. That's okay.

The Lord is at hand. Sometimes God has to put an odious to your stinky to teach you this so that you'll say, hey, my name is written in the Lamb's book of life. He is for me. In him, I got the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion really matters. The judge of all the earth is on my side. What more do I really need here? The cure for bitterness, for acrimony is embracing that an all wise, all loving judge is close at hand. One who has written your name in his book and he spelled it right. And his list is the only list that actually matters and he is working all things for your good. So joy thief number one is amnesia. Joy thief number two is acrimony. Joy thief number three, guess what it starts with? Letter A, anxiety. Anxiety steals joy because it fills you with fear about a future that you can't control. You know there is no way that you can know what might happen next and there's so much you can't control. I have a friend who describes his battle with anxiety as a low grade hum that follows him wherever he goes. He says, no matter what good is happening in my life, there's always a low grade fear humming in the back of my head that the other shoe is about to drop.

The phone's gonna ring, it's gonna bring bad news. Something's gonna go wrong with one of the kids. There's bad news coming from work. I know when I go into work, there's gonna be bad news. Anybody ever feel this way? Like things are good today, I bet they're gonna be bad tomorrow. Paul says, verse six, do not be anxious about anything. Y'all this verse encourages me and shames me all at the same time. Don't be anxious about money things, material things because they only have temporary value but your kids are different now. Your kids are eternal. They have eternal value. Is that what you worry about that? Is that what it says? No, don't be anxious about anything. There's literally nothing in my life that should cost me. anxiety. By the way, get your mind around the fact that it's Paul who was saying this. Paul, who goes to sleep every night not knowing if he's going to get woken up in the middle of the night by a hooded executioner coming to take him to be beheaded. How in the world are you supposed to get a good night's sleep if every night you go to bed not sure if the next face you're going to see is one under a hood who's taking you somewhere to chop off your head? I'm thinking that's going to mess up your aura ring score, am I right? By the way, Paul has also told us he's deeply concerned about false teachers who were infiltrating the churches he's planted, corrupting their doctrine, and turning them against him. And now Paul is in prison hundreds of miles away and can't do anything about that. That feels to me like a legitimate thing to be worried about. And yet this is the one saying, don't be anxious about anything. You know what my favorite aspect of this verse is? It'll surprise you. My favorite aspect of this

verse is that it is a command. I'm literally commanded not to be anxious. This is not a reward, this is not some kind of achievement, this is a command. To be anxious about anything is to be disobedient. Here's why that's my favorite aspect of this verse, follow me. The command only makes sense if it comes coupled with a promise that God will handle whatever it is that is making me anxious, right? Otherwise the command would be cruel. I mean, think about it, if you and I are headed to lunch together, we're sitting in the car and you look over me and say, oh no, I don't have my wallet on me. And I'm like, where is it? And you say, I lost it in the lake. I lost it in the lake. And I say, oh, happens to the best of us, okay? Don't worry about it. The only way that's not a cruel joke is if I plan to pay for lunch, right? I mean, if the bill comes and I pay for my half, and then I look at you and say, well, this is awkward for you. Guess you're going to have to work something out with the waiter or stay and do dishes or something. And you look at me and you say, but you told me not to worry. And I say, oh, well, I didn't mean I was going to pay for things. I just wanted you to have a sense of peace and calm as we dine together. That would be a cruel joke. The only way it makes sense for God to say, don't be anxious about anything is if he is thereby promising to handle anything that would make us anxious. So Paul said, instead of being anxious in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. The key words in that sentence are the words with thanksgiving. Thanking God is a way of expressing trust that God is going to handle it. You see, it is impossible. Hear this. It is impossible to thank God for something. If you are not confident, he is also going to handle it. It is possible to pray and worry. It is not possible to thank and worry. See, I point this out because I used to have a real problem when I was praying. I would pray for stuff out of a sense of duty. Good Christians pray about their problems, but I wouldn't really put trust in God as I was praying. So my prayer time was basically anxiety hour with Jesus, or as a friend of mine calls it, worrying in the direction of the ceiling. I would tell Jesus all about my problems, but I did not trust him with them. The kind of prayer Paul is talking about here does more than inform God about our problems. It lays our problems at Jesus' feet and leaves them there. You thank him for the answer that you are confident that he will give. Let me make this super practical. Try this. When you pray, after telling Jesus what you're worried about, say this literally. I mean, somebody pull out your phone and take a picture of this. I trust you with this. Thank you for how you've promised to respond.

Listen, it is not praying about your problems that removes anxiety. It is trusting God with your problems that removes anxiety. I read this secular strategy for coping with anxiety. It was called the 15-minute strategy. You ever heard of this? Basically, what the strategy prescribes, and it's a pretty good strategy, set aside a special 15-minute block in the day during which you will allow yourself to worry about stuff. And then throughout the day, when you feel anxiety coming on, say to yourself, I'm not going to worry about that right now, but I'm going to spend some focused time worrying about that issue later in your special 15-minute block. That way, they say anxiety doesn't wreck your day, but you're also not blowing off your problems either. It's a pretty good strategy, but here's the Christian version of it. Call that 15-minute period, call that your prayer time. For 15 minutes, worry out loud with Jesus about your problems, but then end that 15 minutes by saying, and Jesus, I trust you with these things because you commanded me to cast these burdens onto you and you commanded me not to worry about them. So now I thank you for how you're gonna handle them because it would have been cruel for you to tell me not to be anxious if you weren't also promising to handle it. He wouldn't give you the command if it wasn't coupled with an unbreakable promise that he'll handle whatever it is you're anxious about. I promise you, I promise you, if you do this, it will make a huge difference in your life. Look at verse seven, Paul says this, and the peace of God, if you do this, we surpass all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That word guard is a military word and it's a really interesting word for Paul to use right there

because when Paul was writing this, literally chained to him, there's a Roman guard standing over him, ready to punish him if he stepped out of line. So Paul's trying to write this down, looks up at this one guard and then thinks bigger than that Roman guard is another guard, an all-powerful savior committed to my good who says he will never leave or forsake me and that no weapon formed against me will prosper. And his chains are way bigger and more powerful than that Roman guard's chains are. So that big, scary Roman guard can't do anything because of the even bigger, more powerful heavenly guard standing over him who is always on my side. Paul's like, look, I don't know if tomorrow I will get out of prison. I hope I am. I'm praying for that. What I do know is that tonight my heavenly guard stands over me. I know he never falls asleep. And this other soldier doesn't do anything without his approval. That brings us to Paul's last joy thief, amnesia, acrimony, anxiety. Guess what this last one starts with? Kind of a Y, kind of an A. Your algorithm.

Finally, brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever is lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Paul gives some surprisingly prescient advice way ahead of his time. The secret to inner joy, Paul says, is how you think. Oh, and how you think is not what you do in the moment of anxiety. Listen, how you think in a moment of anxiety is determined by patterns you lay down over a lifetime. Paul says, practice right thinking, and when you come to a time of anxiety and stress, when you're in a prison cell, well, then you'll just think the right way. Medical scientists now know that when we repeatedly think a certain way, our brain literally hardwires itself to think that way. The nerve fibers responsible for a particular thought pattern get wrapped in a fatty insulating substance called myelin. Myelin allows future electrical signals to travel faster and more efficiently through certain synapses. That's where muscle memory comes from. It makes those patterns of thinking automatic. Think of it like a stream of water running across a field. Pour water out on a piece of dirt, and it will run in all directions.

Do it long enough, however, and it will establish little ruts. And then after that, all future water follows those ruts, deepening them and strengthening them. The same thing is happening with your thoughts, Paul says. A repeated pattern of thinking creates a mental rut wrapped in a very literal myelin that future thoughts naturally follow. And Paul wrote this in a day before he knew what myelin was, and he wrote this in a day before social media. Paul had no idea, no idea, that one day there would be a literal trillion dollar industry devoted to creating negative myelin ruts in your head. People who monetize social media platforms put negative things in front of us because they know we are more likely to click on things that are upsetting than we are things that are uplifting. Every time you click like, it creates an algorithm for a digital pathway, which in turn reinforces a neural pathway. It puts another small layer of myelin there. Every time you click like, I want you to think, I just added some myelin to some part of my brain. I need you to let this set heavily upon you, especially you parents with kids. You and I and our kids are being discipled several hours a day by algorithms that are the complete opposite of Philippians 4.8.

Researchers have been studying anxiety levels in America. You know this. They've been studying this for decades. And anxiety levels skyrocketed in 2012 when social media and smartphones became ubiquitous. Like Pastor Kyle says, if we scroll through 45 minutes of bad news, political arguments, and clips of strangers screaming at each other in the Costco parking lot, then we. close the app, and later we think, why do I feel so anxious? It's like eating gas station sushi, he says, every day, and then wondering why your stomach feels weird. You want to change your happiness quotient. You want to change your default speed on the hedonic treadmill. Change your algorithm. Make your first thoughts every morning Jesus's thoughts. Do not open that phone until you have opened his word. Right? Read his word, fill your mind. Fill your mind with his promises. And if you can't develop that as a habit, throw your phone in the bottom of the lake. It's remarkably easy, okay? Use our daily revival app on your phone if you have one. It's a great way to get in the word every day. Listen to Christian music throughout the day. Put verses up around your room, put them in your workplace.

Memorize verses so they're always dancing about in your head. Change your algorithm. And you'll change your baseline happiness quotient. In this passage, Paul is not encouraging some glib, shallow, optimistic, power of positive thinking type of happiness life hack. Now the joy Paul espouses here in Philippians 4 is a defiant declaration in the face of pain. Kind of joy Paul commends here. Doesn't pretend your pain isn't real. It declares your pain isn't final. I've quoted Pastor Kyle several times in this message. Let me close with a story that he tells. Recently he says, I sat with a woman whose 54 year old husband had been diagnosed with early onset dementia. 54. They'd been busily planning their empty nest years to be full of travel, grandchildren, and just growing old together. Until one doctor's appointment upended everything. And she sat in front of me, she was grieving, scared, and angry. But underneath the grief was a defiant spirit of joy. Later she texted me, Pastor, I've decided something I'm going to enjoy every day I have with him. Every single day. I'm not gonna spend the time I have left dreading what is coming.

I'm going to be present. I'm going to laugh with him while he can still laugh. I'm going to dance with him in the kitchen. I'm going to thank God for every good moment, even more so because I know these moments aren't numbered. See, she knows that because of Jesus, dementia may be able to steal her husband's memory, but it cannot steal her joy. Her joy is a defiant declaration in the face of pain. It's not a denial of pain. It's a declaration in the face of pain. The secret to joy is that it's not found in your circumstances. The secret to joy is that it's not an it you can find. It is a who who found you. And unlike everything else in your life, that who will never walk away from you. Happiness comes and goes with your circumstances, but Jesus won't. Jesus did the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn't leave when life falls apart. He doesn't pack his bags when the diagnosis comes back negative. He doesn't disappear when the marriage is strained or the future is uncertain. Paul wrote these defiant words from a prison cell facing death. Some of you are going to listen to them in a hospital waiting room or a lawyer's office or in an empty bedroom after a child is gone

or in a cubicle where you feel overlooked and forgotten. If that's where you are today, I want to invite you to practice Philippians 4 defiant joy. Joy not because your circumstances are good. Joy not because you think they'll be good tomorrow, but joy because your Savior always is good every single day, every minute of every day. I want you to look your circumstances in the eye this weekend, and I want you to say, hey, circumstances, you don't get the last word. My circumstances don't determine God's character. My diagnosis does not define my future. My marriage might be unraveling, but God's faithfulness is not. My anxiety is loud, oh, but my Lord's promises are louder. My grief is deep, but it's not forever. My world may feel like it's shaky, but my Savior is solid. Yeah, there might be a Roman soldier inches away from you breathing out threats, but there's a heavenly guard standing over him with an even bigger chain, promising nothing can separate you from my love. And whatever your enemy intends for evil, I'm gonna overturn it for good. Joy is not pretending everything is okay. Joy is knowing that even when everything isn't okay, Jesus always is. Joy, it turns out. isn't an it you obtain. Joy is a who who obtains you. I can do all things through

Christ who strengthens me. So I'm at church at all of our campuses. I want to invite you to stand to your feet. Our worship teams are coming. Our worship teams are coming. We're gonna sing a song together at all campuses declaring our hope in Jesus. And we're gonna open up these altars like we often do because I need I know that some of you need to come down here and you needed to ask Jesus for the strength to have defiant hope. I'm gonna invite our prayer team leaders and counselors, elders, wives. I'm gonna invite them to be on the sides. Maybe you want to pray with somebody. They're always there. If you want to pray on your own, you can do this. By the way, maybe you've never begun a relationship with Jesus. You could do that today. Just take the hand of one of these prayer team members at the side and tell them you want to give your life to Jesus and they'll know what to do. As our worship teams come, I want to invite some of you to come. Of course you can pray at your seat. Of course, of course. But some of you need to come and find relief from your anxiety in Jesus. And this needs to be a little bit of a defiant action. Jesus, I need help. I need you to help me to trust in you and see things the way you see them. So I'm gonna invite you to come down here and ask for the ability to practice defiant joy. Father, I pray, Holy Spirit, have your way. I know you look at us sometimes and you think, why do they make it so hard on themselves? You say to many right now through me, come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Let many find the rest right now in this moment, at this altar, at the feet of your Word. I pray in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. As our worship teams come, you come. You respond at all of our campuses as the Holy Spirit moves in your heart.