Looking Behind You

Philippians 4:4-13

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice
• Do not be anxious about anything
• The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds
• I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content

Applying the Word to My Life:
At NCYC 2023, Bishop Joseph Espaillat stood in front of twelve thousand teenagers at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and told them: choose joy over fear. Then he told them a story.

That same summer, he'd been asked at the last minute to give a talk he wasn't ready for - in Spanish, to eight hundred kids from Spain he'd never met. He admitted he was genuinely scared. He gave the talk anyway. During the question session after, a young man stood up and asked him the real question underneath all of it: "You have all this joy. But what do you do when your friends make fun of you, when you don't want to suffer?" The bishop told him to turn around. Behind the kid was a massive cross. "Son," he said, "you can't avoid the suffering. If He suffered, what makes you think you're not going to?"

That's not a bishop promising an easy road. It's the same thing Paul tells the Philippians: "I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content... I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound." Paul isn't claiming he skipped the hard parts. He's claiming something held steady through the good and difficult times.

We already said nothing we have was ever owed to us in the first place. But there's a flip side worth naming: if we treat the good things in our life as possessions, they end up possessing us right back. We grip them tighter, we get anxious about losing what's "ours," and we start relying on ourselves to protect them instead of relying on God. Once we actually see the good as gift instead - something that was never ours to begin with - the grip loosens. Anxiety about loss turns into joy over the abundance we've already received.

Bishop Joe named the real difference worth knowing here: worldly fear creates panic and anxiety - the kind that spirals, that convinces you something is wrong with you for feeling small. Fear of the Lord is different. It's a source of peace and happiness. "If we love God and we know that we are loved by God," he asked the crowd, "then why do we need to fear?" That's almost word for word what Paul tells the Philippians to do with their own anxiety: "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 surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds."

Neither one of them is promising a life free of difficulty. Both of them are telling you what to do when those times come - not white-knuckle your way through it, and not pretend it away, but hand it over and let a peace you didn't manufacture guard you instead.

That peace doesn't promise things will magically get easier. But it does mean you'll be steady enough to see when God does something with whatever happens next.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll name one source of anxiety in my life, and identify the possessions lying underneath it.