Peace

Loved this sermon by Tim Keller on overcoming anxiety. Here are my notes from listening to the sermon, just in case anyone's trying to decide if they should listen to the whole sermon (yes! you should!):

Keller says that Christians should be experts of joy, but that our wrong expectations of life leave us ill-prepared to face anxiety.

When we were non-believers, we only had one enemy, and that was God. But God is a nice enemy to have because all He wants is for you to be blessed. When we become Christians, we find that we have new enemies; these enemies are not stronger, but they are meaner and nastier. We shouldn’t overestimate our enemies so that they are bigger than they are, but we also shouldn’t underestimate our enemies so that we enter into battle without being prepared.

Philippians 4:6

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Thanksgiving is the key to dealing with anxiety. Why do we give thanks when we are only presenting a request? Because it acknowledges that no matter what happens, we trust that God will work things out for our good. Peace is the confidence of God’s wise control over our lives. We can pray in this way: “ Lord, whatever you do in response to this request is  good. I thank you for it.”

The “fruit”—singular, not plural—of the Spirit can only come from God. They come as a whole, not as individual traits. You can present a form of peace—that might really be a form of apathy—and pretend that you have peace but you cannot pretend to have all of the fruits at once. Someone might be very self-controlled, but at the expense of joy!

The world (secularism), the flesh, and the devil all attack us. Secularism is a world-ism, a now-ism where we focus only on what we see in front of us in the now. The flesh is the desire to be God. It takes many different forms, but usually manifests itself as a desire to feel in charge, or to feel powerful and it can exist in the church as a religious form too. The devil wants to destroy our peace and joy through lies and accusations.

The reason that we become anxious is usually some combination of the three. When we identify only one of them, we miss the whole picture. These three things succeed when they are able to get at our assurance in Christ. We need to remember that our feelings are the result, not the basis of our salvation. We lose our assurance when we look at our sins more than our savior.

Instead, we need to see our sadness as a sign that God is at work in our lives. No one wants to be more like God on their own. It is the Holy Spirit who puts that desire in our hearts. But we need to remember that the only way to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil is to keep telling ourselves the story of the gospel.

The reason that we struggle with this sadness is because we are locked into works of righteousness. “I still want to feel like I’m good enough to be saved.” But we never were were. We need to look at Christ and stand in him so that our glory is in God. For every look at our sin we need to take five looks at our savior.

Philippians 4:4-9

⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God,which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, 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. ⁹ 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.