10-27-13 Choosing Our War

Phil. 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

Phil. 4:5 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

Phil. 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Phil. 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Phil. 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Phil. 4:9 The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

If you were with us last week

you know that these six verses

in the 4^th chapter of Philippians

contain Paul’s attempt to

distill what he has been saying

throughout this whole letter

into a few concise statements.

You also know that this letter

was written by Paul

as a sort of survival manual

for the hard times in our lives.

Through his comments to the Philippians

he offers the principles

that equip us to survive those times

when we feel imprisoned,

when we feel as though

the winter will never end,

when we wonder

if we will ever see another spring.

It is a short, practical letter,

written to real people

fighting real battles,

with real fears,

and real pain in their lives.

Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter,

looking at the very real possibility

of his own execution,

writing what would very likely be

his final words

to a group of Christian friends

he loved deeply.

And our study of this letter

has brought us to the place where

Paul is pointing out

the solid places

in a world of chaos.

I mentioned last week

how crucial it is for us to understand

the intensely practical nature

of everything Paul says to us here.

He has tested

each of the principles he offers us

in the real world

and found them true.

And now he offers them to us.

And I want to offer just one more observation

before we return to Paul’s comments

because I think it will help us

keep this passage in perspective.

Whether we recognize it or not,

everyone of us will spend our entire adult lives involved in some sort of internal warfare.

That warfare is going on this very minute

inside everyone of us here this morning.

There is a warfare surrounding our weaknesses.

There is a warfare surrounding our areas of pain.

There is a warfare surrounding our fears.

The warfare itself is a given,

a nonnegotiable part of life.

None of us have the option of choosing

whether or not we fight.

But all of us are given the choice

of deciding what we will fight for.

And let me see if I can explain

what I’m trying to say

and then I’ll bring it back to our study of Philippians.

I’ll take the area of our weaknesses as an example.

Everyone of us

have certain areas in our lives

where we are especially vulnerable

to moral failure...to sin.

The specific areas that afflict each of us

differ from person to person.

With one person it’s anger,

with another bitterness,

with others its some form of addictive behavior -

alcoholism

sexual addictions

drug addictions

and on and on.

We could spend hours debating

why those areas exist,

whether they have a genetic base,

or whether they are a product of our home environment,

or whether they come from some other source or cause.

But when all those debates are finished

the fact still remains

that each of us possess some areas of weakness.

Those weaknesses create areas of warfare

in each of our lives.

Because they are inconsistent

with the person God designed us to be

they create within us tremendous tension,

tension that demands some kind of resolution within us.

We have to do something with it.

That’s warfare.

That’s a given in each of our lives.

When I was in my mid 20’s

I was living in Seattle

and I found what I though was

a great buy on a house on Queen Ann Hill.

I bought it without researching it very well,

and after I got into it

I noticed that the dinning room floor had a definite down hill slope to it.

When I looked into it

I discovered that

the foundation in that corner of the house

was gradually sinking

because the hill itself was gradually eroding,

and the house had already been jacked up and re-braced several times.

I also discovered that the wiring was ancient

and the water main into the house was broken.

It was an exciting first-time introduction

into home ownership.

The foundation,

the wiring,

and the plumbing were “givens” -

they were facts about my house

I had to accept and deal with somehow.

Each of us have in our lives

some areas of bad wiring,

some broken pipes,

some parts of our foundation

that are really weak.

We do not have the option

of choosing whether or not we fight.

But we do have a choice

about what we fight for.

And I think we have three possible options.

1. We can choose to invest our efforts

into hiding from our weaknesses.

If we choose that route

that then becomes our battle of choice.

The potential hiding places are endless,

but they all require effort

and determination.

We can hide in a frantic work schedule

that just doesn’t allow any time

for troublesome relationships

or difficult issues,

or we can hide in some form of entertainment,

or recreation,

or substance abuse,

or adrenalin highs that keep us forever focused everywhere except on the true underlying issues.

2. Or we can choose to rationalize

and justify our areas of weakness.

We may talk confidently

about our right to choose

any lifestyle we want.

We may boldly proclaim the distinctions

between our public and private lives.

We may tell ourselves and others that

as long as our actions don’t hurt any one else there is nothing wrong with them.

But the bottom line is that

we have chosen to invest our efforts

into some form of justifying

or rationalizing

or defending our areas of weakness.

That becomes the battle we choose to fight.

That is what absorbs our efforts

and our energies

and our mental and emotional powers.

3. And then there are those

who choose to fight for health

and for freedom -

not the freedom to do whatever we want,

but the freedom

that can only come

from breaking the power

of the weaknesses in our lives.

Those in this third category are the ones

who invest their efforts

and their energies

and their learning

and their churning

into facing their areas of weakness honestly,

turning to God

for strength

and courage

and insight

into how to bring healing

where once there was only

sickness and disease.

I’ve brought all of this up

because I have recently discovered in myself another misconception

and it helps me to put it into words.

In the past I have always thought

that there were those who fought

moral battles,

and those who chose not to fight.

But the truth is every one of us fights.

It’s just that most people invest their efforts into defending

and justifying

and rationalizing their sin,

telling themselves

and their world over and over again

why it doesn’t matter,

or why they have every right

to live any way they want to live.

Such battles

take a tremendous amount of energy,

but outside of the healing power of Christ,

there are no other options.

But once Christ enters our lives

and we begin to yield

leadership into His hands,

He offers us the hope of change.

He loves us far too much

to allow us to continue living in our bondage,

and under His leadership

He shows us how to invest that same effort

into fighting for righteousness in our lives.

When Paul writes his letter to the Philippians

he is writing to those who have chosen to fight for health,

offering them powerful weapons for the warfare.

And last week we looked at the first weapon Paul offers us in this section of his letter.

Phil. 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

In that study we saw the first great choice

our Lord calls us to make -

the choice to affirm the absolute goodness of our God.

He words it carefully

so that we understand

he is not calling us to rejoice in what our God has done.

We are to rejoice in HIM,

in who He is.

True Biblical faith

is choosing to forfeit my desire

to use the circumstances around me

as a basis upon which I then pass judgment on the goodness of God.

True faith begins with my affirmation

of the absolute goodness of God

and then seeks to recognize that goodness

in the circumstances of my life.

If Paul would have based his evaluation of the goodness of God

on how the circumstances of his life were going

he would have seen a God

who allowed him to be imprisoned,

who permitted him to suffer loneliness,

who failed to deliver him

from those who accused him falsely.

But Paul began not with his circumstances

but with his knowledge

of who God is

as a result of what God has revealed about Himself through Christ.

And from there he understood

that the question was not

“what are my circumstances?”,

but rather, “Is my God adequate for my needs

no matter what those circumstances may be?”

And on that basis

Paul proclaims YES!

Rom. 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

Rom. 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Rom. 8:33 Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies;

Rom. 8:34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Rom. 8:35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Rom. 8:36 Just as it is written, " For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

Rom. 8:37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

Rom. 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,

Rom. 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul rejoiced in his Lord

not because his circumstances

were going the way he wanted them to go,

but rather because

he knew no circumstances

could ever separate him from God’s love,

or from God’s presence with him.

Let me see if I can simplify it.

The first step in surviving the hard times in our lives

is beginning each day

by reminding ourselves once again

that our God is good,

and that our God loves us,

and that our God is adequate for whatever we face this day.

Which, of course, is exactly the opposite

of what Satan will be saying to you.

You see, there are certain types of lies

that we are especially vulnerable to

during the winters

and the prisons of our lives.

They are lies that are aimed

directly at the character of our God

and His heart attitude toward us.

And the lies go like this.

We wake up in the morning

and before we even have our eyes

fully opened

we feel that dread,

or that fear,

or that loneliness,

or that anxiety inside us.

And then once again

we remember why.

We remember the circumstances in our lives

that are creating that dread,

or that fear,

or that pain.

And it is at that point

that we are most vulnerable to the lie.

That’s when Satan comes along side us

and says,

“If God really loved you,

He would never have allowed you

to be in this prison.

If He had really forgiven you

He would not inflict this pain on you.

If He was really pleased with you,

if He truly delighted in you as His child,

He would not let this storm continue on in your life,

He would not let this winter,

this frozen, endless nothingness go on and on and on.

If you’d behaved better,

if you hadn’t sinned

this would not be happening to you.”

In other words,

during the hard times in life

Satan will try to get us to evaluate

what our God is like

or what His true attitude toward us really is

by getting us to look at our circumstances,

and then reaching our conclusions about God on the basis of what we see.

The day I was writing up these notes

I took my truck out in the morning

and turned my lights on.

When I got home

I forgot to turn them off.

A few hours later I went out and found my battery was absolutely dead.

If I followed Satan’s logic

I would look at that and think to myself,

“Well, God must be irritated with me today.

I wonder which of my failures

has ticked Him off.”

But when Paul offers us these survival tools for the hard times in our lives,

the very first thing he says is don’t begin by looking at your circumstances,

begin by looking at your God.

Look at His love for you.

Look at His kindness to you in Christ.

Look at the way He has removed forever your debt of sin

so that it would never again separate you from His love.

Look at His commitment to work all things together for good in your life.

Look at His promise that He will never leave you,

and never ever forsake you.

Satan’s goal is obvious -

during the hard times in our lives,

he wants us to begin our day

by looking at our circumstances

so that we will then hide from our God in fear or anger.

Paul presents the alternative,

Paul offers us the truth.

He says, don’t begin the day

by looking at your circumstances,

begin by looking at your God,

and keep looking until you once again see Him correctly,

and then Rejoice in the Lord,

knowing He loves you,

He’s with you,

and He will carry you through the day ahead.

The first and most crucial tool for survival

during the hard times in our lives

is to Rejoice in the Lord always,

and again I will say, rejoice!

And next week we’ll move into verse 5.